A slight circumstance induced me to alter my usual route, and to return home by Egham and Bishopgate.  I alighted at Perdita’s ancient abode, her cottage; and, sending forward the carriage, determined to walk across the park to the castle.  This spot, dedicated to sweetest recollections, the deserted house and neglected garden were well adapted to nurse my melancholy.  In our happiest days, Perdita had adorned her cottage with every aid art might bring, to that which nature had selected to favour.  In the same spirit of exaggeration she had, on the event of her separation from Raymond, caused it to be entirely neglected.  It was now in ruin:  the deer had climbed the broken palings, and reposed among the flowers; grass grew on the threshold, and the swinging lattice creaking to the wind, gave signal of utter desertion.  The sky was blue above, and the air impregnated with fragrance by the rare flowers that grew among the weeds.  The trees moved overhead, awakening nature’s favourite melody—­but the melancholy appearance of the choaked paths, and weed-grown flower-beds, dimmed even this gay summer scene.  The time when in proud and happy security we assembled at this cottage, was gone—­soon the present hours would join those past, and shadows of future ones rose dark and menacing from the womb of time, their cradle and their bier.  For the first time in my life I envied the sleep of the dead, and thought with pleasure of one’s bed under the sod, where grief and fear have no power.  I passed through the gap of the broken paling—­I felt, while I disdained, the choaking tears—­I rushed into the depths of the forest.  O death and change, rulers of our life, where are ye, that I may grapple with you!  What was there in our tranquillity, that excited your envy—­in our happiness, that ye should destroy it?  We were happy, loving, and beloved; the horn of Amalthea contained no blessing unshowered upon us, but, alas!

la fortuna deidad barbara importuna, oy cadaver y ayer flor, no permanece jamas![1]

As I wandered on thus ruminating, a number of country people passed me.  They seemed full of careful thought, and a few words of their conversation that reached me, induced me to approach and make further enquiries.  A party of people flying from London, as was frequent in those days, had come up the Thames in a boat.  No one at Windsor would afford them shelter; so, going a little further up, they remained all night in a deserted hut near Bolter’s lock.  They pursued their way the following morning, leaving one of their company behind them, sick of the plague.  This circumstance once spread abroad, none dared approach within half a mile of the infected neighbourhood, and the deserted wretch was left to fight with disease and death in solitude, as he best might.  I was urged by compassion to hasten to the hut, for the purpose of ascertaining his situation, and administering to his wants.

As I advanced I met knots of country-people talking earnestly of this event:  distant as they were from the apprehended contagion, fear was impressed on every countenance.  I passed by a group of these terrorists, in a lane in the direct road to the hut.  One of them stopped me, and, conjecturing that I was ignorant of the circumstance, told me not to go on, for that an infected person lay but at a short distance.