O Death, why now so slow art thou? why fearest thou to smite?
_Lamentation of Don Roderick_.
When all the blandishments of life are gone,
The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.--_Sewell_.
The whispered words of the corporal kindled a spark of hope in
Morton's breast; but it was destined to fade and die. Once he was sure
that he heard the tones of his voice in the passage without his cell;
but weeks passed, months passed, and he did not see him again.
And now let the curtain drop for a space of three years.
Morton was still a prisoner. Despair was at hand. He longed to die.
His longing at length seemed near its accomplishment. A raging fever
seized him, and for days he lay delirious, balanced on the brink of
death. But his constitution endured the shock; and late one night he
lay on his pallet, exhausted, worn to a skeleton, yet fully conscious
of his situation.
The locks clashed, the hinges jarred, and a physician of the prison, a
bulky German, stood at his side.
He felt his patient's pulse.
"Shall I die, or not?" demanded the sick man.
"Die!" echoed the German, a laugh gurgling within him, like the first
symptom of an earthquake; "all men die, but this sickness will never
kill you. It would have killed ninety-nine out of a hundred; but you
are as tough as a rhinoceros."
Morton turned to the wall, and cursed the hour when he was born.
The German gave a prescription to his attendant; the locks clashed
again behind him, and Morton was left alone with his misery.
The lamp in the passage without shone through the grated opening above
the door, and shed a square of yellow light on the black, damp stones
of the dungeon. They sweated and trickled with a clammy moisture; and
the brick pavement was wet, as if the clouds had rained upon it.
Morton lay motionless as a dead man. The crisis of his disorder was
past; but its effects were heavy upon him, and his mind shared the
deep exhaustion of his body. Perilous thoughts rose upon him, spectral
and hollow-eyed.
"By what right am I doomed to this protracted misery? By what justice,
when a refuge is at hand, am I forbidden to fly to it? I have only to
drag myself from this bed, and rest for a few moments on those wet,
cold bricks, and all the medicines in Austria could not keep me many
days a prisoner. And who could blame me? Who could say that I
destroyed myself? It is not suicide. It is but aiding kindly nature to
do a deed of mercy."
He repelled the thought; but it returned. He repelled it again, but
still it returned. The insidious demon was again and again at his ear,
stealing back with a noiseless gliding, smoothly commending her poison
to his lips, soothing his worn spirit as the vampire fans its
slumbering victim with its wings. But his better nature, not without a
higher appeal, fortified itself against her, and struggled to hold its
ground.
When the French besieged Saragossa; when her walls crumbled before
their batteries; when, day by day, through secret mine or open
assault, foot by foot, they won their way inward towards her heart;
when treason within aided force without, and famine and pestilence
leagued against her,--still her undespairing children refused to
yield. Sick men dragged themselves to the barricades, women and boys
pointed the cannon, and her heroic banner still floated above the
wreck.
Thus, spent with disease, gnawed with pertinacious miseries, assailed
by black memories of the past, and blacker forebodings of the future,
did Morton maintain his weary battle with despair.