Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
All quotation marks and apostrophes have been changed: " for “," for ”, ' for ‘, and ' for ’.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard
Em-dashes have been rendered as #8212
Spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
IDRIS stirred and awoke; alas! she awoke to misery.
She saw the signs of disease on my countenance, and wondered how she could
permit the long night to pass without her having sought, not cure, that was
impossible, but alleviation to my sufferings. She called Adrian; my couch
was quickly surrounded by friends and assistants, and such medicines as were
judged fitting were administered. It was the peculiar and dreadful
distinction of our visitation, that none who had been attacked by the
pestilence had recovered. The first symptom of the disease was the
death-warrant, which in no single instance had been followed
While fever producing torpor, heavy pains, sitting like lead on my limbs, and making my breast heave, were upon me; I continued insensible to every thing but pain, and at last even to that. I awoke on the fourth morning as from a dreamless sleep. An irritating sense of thirst, and, when I strove to speak or move, an entire dereliction of power, was all I felt.
For three days and nights Idris had not moved from my side. She administered
to all my wants, and never slept nor rested. She did not hope; and therefore
she neither endeavoured to read the physician's countenance, nor to watch
for symptoms of recovery. All her thought was to attend on me to the last,
and then to lie down and die beside me. On the third night animation was
suspended; to the eye and touch of all I was dead. With earnest prayer,
almost with force, Adrian tried to draw Idris from me. He exhausted every
adjura-
At dead of night, when, though it was mid winter, the cock crowed at three
o'clock, as herald of the morning change, while hanging over me, and
mourning in silent, bitter thought for the loss of all of love towards her
that had been enshrined in my heart; her dishevelled hair hung over her
face, and the long tresses fell on the bed; she saw one ringlet in motion,
and the scattered hair slightly stirred, as by a breath. It is not so, she
thought, for he will never breathe more. Several times the same thing
occurred, and she only marked it by the same
Adrian was in the chamber. After long watching, he had unwillingly fallen
into a sleep. He started up, and beheld his sister senseless on the earth,
weltering in a stream of blood that gushed from her mouth. Encreasing signs
of life in me in some degree explained her state; the surprise, the burst of
joy, the revulsion of every sentiment, had been too much for her frame, worn
by long months of care, late shattered by every species of woe and toil. She
was now in far greater danger than I, the wheels and springs of my life,
once again set in motion, acquired elasticity from their short suspension.
For a long time, no one believed that I should indeed continue to live;
during the reign of the
The restoration of Idris was more problematical. When I had been attacked by
illness, her cheeks were sunk, her form emaciated; but now, the vessel,
which had broken from the effects of extreme agitation, did not entirely
heal, but was as a channel that drop by drop drew from her the ruddy stream
that vivified her heart. Her hollow eyes and worn countenance had a ghastly
appearance; her cheek-bones, her open fair brow, the projection of the
mouth, stood fearfully prominent; you might tell each bone in the thin
anatomy of her frame. Her hand hung powerless; each joint lay bare, so that
the light penetrated through and through.
To take her from these heart-breaking scenes, to lead her to forget the
world's desolation in the variety of objects presented by travelling, and to
nurse her failing strength in the mild climate towards which we had resolved
to journey, was my last hope for her preservation. The preparations for our
departure, which had been suspended during my illness, were renewed. I did
not revive to doubtful convalescence; health spent her treasures upon me; as
the tree in spring may feel from its wrinkled limbs the fresh green break
forth, and the living sap rise and circulate, so did the renewed vigour of
my frame, the cheerful current of my blood, the new-born elasticity of my
limbs, influence my mind to cheerful endurance and pleasurable thoughts. My
body, late the heavy weight that bound me to the tomb, was exuberant with
health; mere common exercises
Hope, among my other blessings, was not denied to me; and I did fondly trust
that my unwearied attentions would restore my adored girl. I was therefore
eager to forward our preparations. According to the plan first laid down, we
were to have quitted London on the twenty-fifth of November; and, in
pursuance of this scheme, two-thirds of our people--the people--all that
remained of England, had gone forward, and had already been some weeks in
Paris. First my illness, and subsequently that of Idris, had detained Adrian
with his division, which consisted of three hundred persons, so that we now
departed on the
In the twentieth century futuristic utopias and--more often--dystopias have proliferated: from Gilman, Orwell, Huxley, Zamyatin, Pynchon, Chute, and Burgess, to (more recently) William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Octavia Butler, as well as numerous television shows, films, and computer games.
(It is also possible to speculate about the significance of particular dates in the novel, set three hundred years in the future from the French Revolutionary period.)
It was my wish to keep Idris asImmediately on our departure, I was delighted to find a change in Idris,
which I fondly hoped prognosticated the happiest results. All the
cheerfulness and gentle gaiety natural to
I was only half re-assured by these expressions; I could not believe that the
over-quick flow of her blood was a sign of health, or that her burning
cheeks denoted convalescence. But I had no fears of an immediate
catastrophe; nay, I persuaded myself that she would ultimately recover. And
thus cheerfulness reigned in our little society. Idris conversed with
animation on a thousand topics. Her chief desire was to lead our thoughts
from melancholy reflections; so she drew charming pictures of a tranquil
solitude, of a beauteous retreat, of the simple manners of our little tribe,
and of the
We arrived at Rochester, and an accident caused us to be detained there a
day. During that time, a circumstance occurred that changed our plans, and
which, alas! in its result changed the eternal course of events, turning me
from the pleasant new sprung hope I enjoyed, to an obscure and gloomy
desert. But I must give "The plague" refers to an
acute virulent disease, usually one reaching or threatening to reach
epidemic proportions, and historically one caused by a bacterium.
The medieval Black Death set much of the tone and metaphorical
conventions still operating in many modern-era descriptions of
plagues.
The history of nineteenth-century epidemics,
and their construction as "the plague," reveals telling narrative
and figurative patterns, all of them relevant to reading this novel
(with its fabric of interwoven political, military, social, sexual,
and medical narratives). As the histories are explained by Ranger
and Slack (pp. 3-4),
Flight from an
infected place was usual, and had to be defended (or attacked)
since it took people away from charitable, neighbourly or
political duties. Carriers of disease were identified and
scapegoats stigmatised: foreigners most often, as in Renaissance
Italy and modern Hawaii, since epidemic disease came from
outside, but also inferiors, carriers of pollution of several
kinds, among whom disease had its local roots--untouchables in
India and ex-slaves in Africa, for example, or Jews at the time
of the Black Death (though less commonly in Europe in later
outbreaks of plague). For their part, the inferiors themselves
thought epidemics the consequence of plots by external enemies,
or governors and elites, to 'poison' the poor. (p. 4)
In our own moment at the end of the twentieth century,
as Susan Sontag has suggested, the very idea of "virus" itself
(rather than any actual bacterial infection) has become the
metaphorical equivalent of "plague." Today a "virus" can infect
computers and cultures (where it takes the form of a "meme") as well
as individuals (p. 157). The very real plague of our time is AIDS, a
syndrome that has most often been figured (at least until very
recently) as a potential pandemic threatening a mass
population.
The comparison of Mary Shelley's fictional depiction of a world-wide apocalyptic plague to the actual plague of AIDS has been the subject of works by critics such as Audrey Fisch, Mary Jacobus, Anne K. Mellor, and Barbara Johnson.
had become Queen of the World.There resided a family in the neighbourhood of Windsor, of
very humble pretensions, but which had been an object of interest to us on
account of one of the persons of whom it was composed. The family of the
Claytons had known better days; but, after a series of reverses, the father
died a bankrupt, and the mother heartbroken, and a confirmed invalid,
retired with her five children to a little cottage between Eton and Salt
Hill.
Lucy was besides extremely pretty; so when she grew to be sixteen, it was to
be supposed, notwithstanding her poverty, that she should have admirers. One
of these was the son of a country-curate; he was a generous, frank-hearted
youth, with an ardent love of knowledge, and no mean acquirements. Though
Lucy was untaught, her mother's conversation and manners gave her a taste
for refinements superior to her present situation. She loved the youth even
without knowing it, except that in any difficulty she naturally turned to
him for aid, and awoke with a lighter heart every Sunday, because she knew
that she would be met and accompanied by him in her evening walk with her
sisters. She had another admirer, one of the head-waiters at the inn at Salt
Hill. He also was not without pretensions to urbane superiority, such as he
learnt from gentlemen's servants and waiting-maids, who initiating him in
all the slang of high
Poor Lucy's sad story was but a common one. Her lover's father died; and he
was left destitute. He accepted the offer of a gentleman to go to India with
him, feeling secure that he should soon acquire an independence, and return
to claim the hand of his beloved. He became involved in the war carried on
there, was taken prisoner, and years elapsed before tidings of his existence
were received in his native land. In the meantime disastrous poverty came on
Lucy. Her little cottage, which stood looking from its
It was some years after her marriage that we became acquainted with her. The
accident of a storm caused us to take refuge in the inn, where we witnessed
the brutal and quarrelsome behaviour of her husband, and her patient
endu-
A passion however, if it be wholly pure, entire, and reciprocal, brings with
it its own solace. Lucy was truly, and from the depth of heart, devoted to
her mother; the sole end she proposed to herself in life, was the comfort
and preservation of this parent. Though she grieved for the result, yet she
did not repent of her marriage, even when her lover returned to bestow
competence on her. Three years had intervened, and how, in their pennyless
state, could her mother have existed during this time? This excellent woman
was worthy of her child's devotion. A perfect confidence and friendship
ex-
Meanwhile her husband's affairs grew more and more involved; ruin was near at
hand, and she was about to lose the fruit of all her labours, when
pestilence came to change the aspect of the world. Her husband reaped
benefit from the universal misery; but, as the disaster encreased, the
spirit of lawlessness seized him; he deserted his home to revel in the
luxuries promised him in London, and found there a grave. Her former lover
had
When we had quitted Windsor for London, as the previous step to our final
emigration, The action
of the early portion of the novel is divided between Cumberland,
Windsor, and London, following to some extent the traditional rhythm
of town and country existence in the nineteenth century, the
sporting, social, and artistic "season," which was tied to the
political calendar. The aristocracy and gentry usually came into
London from country estates in the winter, in anticipation of the
opening of Parliament. This orderly structure of existence,
reflecting relatively stable relations among the social classes, is
eventually disrupted in the novel, the seasonal migration back and
forth giving way to more extreme wanderings.
Subsequent circumstances, my illness and that of Idris, drove her from our
remembrance; and we called her to mind at last, only to conclude that she
made one of the few who came from Windsor to join the emigrants, and that
she was already
"I am sure that you will remember and pity me, and I dare hope that you
will assist me; what other hope have I? Pardon my manner of writing, I
am so bewildered. A month ago my dear mother was deprived of the use of
her limbs. She is already better, and in another month would I am sure
be able to travel, in the way you were so kind as to say you would
arrange for us. But now everybody is gone--everybody--as they went away,
each said, that perhaps my mother would be better, before we were quite
deserted. But three days ago I went to Samuel Woods, who, on account of
his new-born child, remained to the last; and there being a large family
of them, I thought I could persuade them to wait a little longer for
us;
"Will you not send some one to us? I am sure we must perish miserably as
we are. If I were to try to move my mother now, she would die on the
road; and if, when she gets better, I were able, I cannot guess how, to
find out the roads, and get on so many many miles to the sea, you would
all be in France, and the great ocean would be between us, which is so
terrible even to sailors. What would it be to me, a woman, who never saw
it? We should be imprisoned by it in this country, all, all alone, with
no help; better die where we are. I can hardly write--I cannot stop my
tears--it is not for myself; I could put my trust in God; and let the
worst come, I think I could bear it, if I were alone. But my mother, my
sick, my dear, dear mother, who never, since I was born, spoke
This letter deeply affected Idris, and she instantly proposed, that we
should return to Datchet, to assist Lucy and her mother. I said that I
would without delay set out for that place, but entreated her to join
her brother, and there await my return with the children. But Idris was
in high spirits, and full of hope. She declared that she could not
consent even to a temporary separation from me, but that there was no
need of this, the motion of the carriage did her good, and the distance
was too trifling to be considered. We could dispatch messengers to
Adrian, to inform him of our deviation from the original plan. She spoke
with vivacity, and drew a picture after her own dear heart, of the
pleasure we should bestow upon Lucy, and declared, if I went, she must
accompany me, and that she should very much dislike to entrust the
charge of rescuing them to others, who might fulfil it with coldness or
inhumanity. Lucy's life had been one act of devotion and virtue; let her
now reap the small reward of finding her excellence
These, and many other arguments, were urged with gentle pertinacity, and the ardour of a wish to do all the good in her power, by her whose simple expression of a desire and slightest request had ever been a law with me. I, of course, consented, the moment that I saw that she had set her heart upon this step. We sent half our attendant troop on to Adrian; and with the other half our carriage took a retrograde course back to Windsor.
I wonder now how I could be so blind and senseless, as thus to risk the
safety of Idris; for, if I had eyes, surely I could see the sure, though
deceitful, advance of death in her burning cheek and encreasing
weakness. But she said she was better; and I believed her. Extinction
could not be near a being, whose vivacity and intelligence hourly
encreased, and whose frame was endowed with an intense, and I fondly
The cross roads which we now entered upon, were even in a worse state
than the long neglected high-ways; and the inconvenience seemed to
menace the perishing frame of Idris with destruction. Passing through
Dartford, we arrived at Hampton on the second day. Even in this short
interval my beloved companion grew sensibly worse in health, though her
spirits were still light, and she cheered my growing anxiety with gay
sallies; sometimes the thought pierced my brain--Is she dying?--as I saw
her fair fleshless hand rest on mine, or observed the feebleness with
which she performed the accustomed acts of life. I drove away the idea,
as if
About mid-day, after quitting Hampton, our carriage broke down: the shock
caused Idris to faint, but on her reviving no other ill consequence
ensued; our party of attendants had as usual gone on before us, and our
coachman went in search of another vehicle, our former one being
rendered by this accident unfit for service. The only place near us was
a poor village, in which he found a kind of caravan, able to hold four
people, but it was clumsy and ill hung; besides this he found a very
excellent cabriolet: our plan was soon arranged; I would drive Idris in
the latter; while the children were conveyed by the servant in the
former. But these arrangements cost time; we had agreed to proceed that
night to Windsor, and thither our purveyors had gone: we should find
considerable difficulty in getting accommodation, before we reached this
place; after all, the distance was only ten miles;
Evening closed in quickly, far more quickly than I was prepared to
expect. At the going down of the sun it began to snow heavily. I
attempted in vain to defend my beloved companion from the storm; the
wind drove the snow in our faces; and it lay so high on the ground, that
we made but small way; while the night was so dark, that but for the
white covering on the ground we should not have been able to see a yard
before us. We had left our accompanying caravan far behind us; and now I
perceived that the storm had made me unconsciously deviate from my
intended route. I had gone some miles out of my way. My knowledge of the
country enabled me to regain the right road; but, instead of going, as
at first agreed upon, by a cross road through Stanwell to Datchet, I was
obliged to take the way of Egham and
The back of our carriage was drawn up, and I hung a pelisse before it,
thus to curtain the beloved sufferer from the pelting sleet. She leaned
on my shoulder, growing every moment more languid and feeble; at first
she replied to my words of cheer with affectionate thanks; but by
degrees she sunk into silence; her head lay heavily upon me; I only knew
that she lived by her irregular breathing and frequent sighs. For a
moment I resolved to stop, and, opposing the back of the cabriolet to
the force of the tempest, to expect morning as well as I might. But the
wind was bleak and piercing, while the occasional shudderings of my poor
Idris, and the intense cold I felt myself, demonstrated that this would
be a dangerous experiment. At length methought she slept--fatal sleep,
induced by frost: at this moment I saw the
As I spoke, my heart was transported, and my senses swam with excessive
delight and thankfulness; I placed the head of Idris against the
carriage, and, leaping out, scrambled through the snow to the cottage,
whose door was open. I had apparatus about me for procuring light, and
that shewed me a comfortable room, with a pile of wood in one corner,
and no appearance of disorder, except that, the door having been left
partly open, the snow, drifting in, had blocked up the threshold. I
returned to the carriage, and the sudden change from light to darkness
at first blinded me. When I recovered my sight--eternal God of this
lawless world! O supreme Death! I will not disturb thy silent reign, or
mar my tale with fruitless exclamations of horror--I saw Idris, who had
fallen
I carried her into the cottage; I placed her on the bed. Lighting a fire,
I chafed her stiffening limbs; for two long hours I sought to restore
departed life; and, when hope was as dead as my beloved, I closed with
trembling hands her glazed eyes. I did not doubt what I should now do.
In the confusion attendant on my illness, the task of interring our
darling Alfred had devolved on his grandmother, the Ex-Queen, and she,
true to her ruling passion, had caused him to be carried to Windsor, and
buried in the family vault, in St. George's Chapel. A famous church in the "Perpendicular
Gothic" style, St. George's Chapel was begun in 1478 for Edward
IV. It contains the tombs of numerous English kings and members
of the royal family, including, in Mary Shelley's day, Princess
Charlotte (d. 1817), daughter of the Regent and heiress
presumptive to the throne. The chapel is also the ceremonial
site for the installation of the Knights of the Garter. As
Blumberg and Crook point out, "in 1826 the east window contained Benjamin West's
huge painted glass design of the resurrection, commissioned by
George III in 1782 but removed in 1863" (p. 280n), an important
detail in the scene between Lionel and the Countess of Windsor
in III.3.
I lighted the lamps of my carriage; I wrapt her in furs, and placed her
along the seat; then taking the reins, made the horses go forward. We
proceeded through the snow, which lay in masses impeding the way, while
the descending flakes, driving against me with redoubled fury, blinded
me. The pain occasioned by the angry elements, and the cold iron of the
shafts of frost which buffetted me, and entered my aching flesh, were a
relief to me; blunting my mental suffering. The horses staggered on, and
the reins hung loosely in my hands. I often thought I would lay my head
close to the sweet, cold face of my lost angel, and thus resign myself
to conquering torpor. Yet I must not leave her a prey to the fowls of
the air; but, in pursuance of my determination place her in the tomb of
her
The road we passed through Egham was familiar to me; but the wind and
snow caused the horses to drag their load slowly and heavily. Suddenly
the wind veered from south-west to west, and then again to north-west.
As Sampson with tug and strain stirred from their bases the columns that
supported the Philistine temple, so did the gale shake the dense vapours
propped on the horizon, while the massy dome of clouds fell to the
south, disclosing through the scattered web the clear empyrean, and the
little stars, which were set at an immeasurable distance in the
crystalline fields, showered their small rays on the glittering snow.
Even the horses were cheered, and moved on with renovated strength. We
entered the forest at Bishopgate, On 3 August 1815, Percy Shelley signed a lease for a
house at Bishopsgate, at the eastern entrance to Windsor Park.
(The image below is a photo of the house reported to be the
Shelleys', as it looked in the 1930s.) Shelley and Mary lived
there for nearly a year, spending time with Thomas Love Peacock,
Thomas Jefferson Hogg, and others, walking and reading in the
wooded park and boating on the Thames--including one
particularly extended expedition up the river in August (an
experience that contributed to Shelley's
A famous church in the "Perpendicular Gothic" style, St. George's Chapel was begun in 1478 for Edward IV. It contains the tombs of numerous English kings and members of the royal family, including, in Mary Shelley's day, Princess Charlotte (d. 1817), daughter of the Regent and heiress presumptive to the throne. The chapel is also the ceremonial site for the installation of the Knights of the Garter.
As Blumberg and Crook point out, "in 1826 the east window contained Benjamin West's huge painted glass design of the resurrection, commissioned by George III in 1782 but removed in 1863" (p. 280n), an important detail in the scene between Lionel and the Countess of Windsor in III.3.
The vault had been lately opened to place our Alfred therein. The
ceremony customary in these latter days had been cursorily performed,
and the pavement of the chapel, which was its entrance, having been
removed, had not been replaced. I descended the steps, and walked
through the long passage to the large vault which contained the kindred
dust of my Idris. I distinguished the small coffin of my babe. With
hasty, trembling hands I constructed a bier beside it, spreading it with
the furs and Indian shawls, which had wrapt Idris in her journey
thither. I lighted the glimmering lamp, which flickered in this damp
abode of the dead; then I bore my lost one to her last bed, decently
composing her limbs, and covering them with a mantle, veiling all except
her face, which remained lovely and placid. She appeared to rest like
one over-wearied, her beauteous eyes steeped
But death does not come at the bidding of the miserable. I had lately recovered from mortal illness, and my blood had never flowed with such an even current, nor had my limbs ever been so instinct with quick life, as now. I felt that my death must be voluntary. Yet what more natural than famine, as I watched in this chamber of mortality, placed in a world of the dead, beside the lost hope of my life? Meanwhile as I looked on her, the features, which bore a sisterly resemblance to Adrian, brought my thoughts back again to the living, to this dear friend, to Clara, and to Evelyn, who were probably now in Windsor, waiting anxiously for our arrival.
Methought I heard a noise, a step in the far chapel, which was re-echoed
by its vaulted roof, and borne to me through the hollow passages. Had
Clara seen my carriage pass up the town, A famous church in the
"Perpendicular Gothic" style, St. George's Chapel was begun in
1478 for Edward IV. It contains the tombs of numerous English
kings and members of the royal family, including, in Mary
Shelley's day, Princess Charlotte (d. 1817), daughter of the
Regent and heiress presumptive to the throne. The chapel is also
the ceremonial site for the installation of the Knights of the
Garter. As Blumberg and Crook point out, "in 1826 the east window contained Benjamin West's
huge painted glass design of the resurrection, commissioned by
George III in 1782 but removed in 1863" (p. 280n), an important
detail in the scene between Lionel and the Countess of Windsor
in III.3.
I pointed to the torn up pavement: she walked to the spot, and looked down into the palpable darkness; for the vault was too distant for the rays of the small lamp I had left there to be discernible.
"Your light," she said. I gave it her; and she regarded the now visible,
but precipitous steps, as if calculating her capacity to descend.
She walked deliberately down, while I, overcome, miserable beyond words,
or tears, or groans, threw myself on the pavement near--the stiffening
form of Idris was before me, the death-struck countenance hushed in
eternal repose beneath. That was to me the end of all! The day before, I
had figured to my self various adventures, and communion with my friends
in after time--now I had leapt the interval, and reached the utmost edge
and bourne of life. Thus wrapt in gloom, enclosed, walled up, vaulted
over by the omnipotent present, I was startled by the sound of feet on
the steps of the tomb, and I remembered her whom I had utterly
forgotten, my angry visitant; her tall form slowly rose upwards from the
vault, a living statue, instinct with
Idris and her mother were unlike in person. The dark hair, deep-set black
eyes, and prominent features of the Ex-Queen
There is a magic power in resemblance. When one we love dies, we hope to see them in another state, and half expect that the agency of mind will inform its new garb in imitation of its decayed earthly vesture. But these are ideas of the mind only. We know that the instrument is shivered, the sensible image lies in miserable fragments, dissolved to dusty nothingness; a look, a gesture, or a fashioning of the limbs similar to the dead in a living person, touches a thrilling chord, whose sacred harmony is felt in the heart's dearest recess. Strangely moved, prostrate before this spectral image, and enslaved by the force of blood manifested in likeness of look and movement, I remained trembling in the presence of the harsh, proud, and till now unloved mother of Idris.
Poor, mistaken woman! in her tenderest
She turned to me. The hard, inflexible, persecuting woman, turned with a
mild expression of face, and said, "If our beloved angel sees us now, it
will delight her to find that I do you even tardy justice. You were
worthy of her; and from my heart I am glad that you won
I seized this docile moment to propose our departure from the church. "First," she said, "let us replace the pavement above the vault."
We drew near to it; "Shall we look on her again?" I asked.
"I cannot," she replied, "and, I pray you, neither do you. We need not torture ourselves by gazing on the soulless body, while her living spirit is buried quick in our hearts, and her surpassing loveliness is so deeply carved there, that sleeping or waking she must ever be present to us."
For a few moments, we bent in solemn silence over the open vault. I
consecrated my future life, to the embalming of her dear memory; I vowed
to serve her brother and her child till death. The convulsive sob of my
companion made me break off my internal orisons. I next