Above all I must guard those entrusted by nature and fate to my especial care.  And surely, if among all my fellow-creatures I were to select those who might stand forth examples of the greatness and goodness of man, I could choose no other than those allied to me by the most sacred ties.  Some from among the family of man must survive, and these should be among the survivors; that should be my task—­to accomplish it my own life were a small sacrifice.  There then in that castle—­in Windsor Castle, birth-place of Idris and my babes, should be the haven and retreat for the wrecked bark of human society.  Its forest should be our world—­its garden afford us food; within its walls I would establish the shaken throne of health.  I was an outcast and a vagabond, when Adrian gently threw over me the silver net of love and civilization, and linked me inextricably to human charities and human excellence.  I was one, who, though an aspirant after good, and an ardent lover of wisdom, was yet unenrolled in any list of worth, when Idris, the princely born, who was herself the personification of all that was divine in woman, she who walked the earth like a poet’s dream, as a carved goddess endued with sense, or pictured saint stepping from the canvas—­she, the most worthy, chose me, and gave me herself—­a priceless gift.

During several hours I continued thus to meditate, till hunger and fatigue brought me back to the passing hour, then marked by long shadows cast from the descending sun.  I had wandered towards Bracknel, far to the west of Windsor.  The feeling of perfect health which I enjoyed, assured me that I was free from contagion.  I remembered that Idris had been kept in ignorance of my proceedings.  She might have heard of my return from London, and my visit to Bolter’s Lock, which, connected with my continued absence, might tend greatly to alarm her.  I returned to Windsor by the Long Walk, and passing through the town towards the Castle, I found it in a state of agitation and disturbance.

“It is too late to be ambitious,” says Sir Thomas Browne.  “We cannot hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons; one face of Janus holds no proportion to the other.”  Upon this text many fanatics arose, who prophesied that the end of time was come.  The spirit of superstition had birth, from the wreck of our hopes, and antics wild and dangerous were played on the great theatre, while the remaining particle of futurity dwindled into a point in the eyes of the prognosticators.  Weak-spirited women died of fear as they listened to their denunciations; men of robust form and seeming strength fell into idiotcy and madness, racked by the dread of coming eternity.  A man of this kind was now pouring forth his eloquent despair among the inhabitants of Windsor.  The scene of the morning, and my visit to the dead, which had been spread abroad, had alarmed the country-people, so they had become fit instruments to be played upon by a maniac.