My friend accompanied me a few miles from Versailles.  He was sad; and, in a tone of unaccustomed despondency, uttered a prayer for our speedy arrival among the Alps, accompanied with an expression of vain regret that we were not already there.  “In that case,” I observed, “we can quicken our march; why adhere to a plan whose dilatory proceeding you already disapprove?”

“Nay,” replied he, “it is too late now.  A month ago, and we were masters of ourselves; now,—­” he turned his face from me; though gathering twilight had already veiled its expression, he turned it yet more away, as he added —­“a man died of the plague last night!”

He spoke in a smothered voice, then suddenly clasping his hands, he exclaimed, “Swiftly, most swiftly advances the last hour for us all; as the stars vanish before the sun, so will his near approach destroy us.  I have done my best; with grasping hands and impotent strength, I have hung on the wheel of the chariot of plague; but she drags me along with it, while, like Juggernaut, she proceeds crushing out the being of all who strew the high road of life.  Would that it were over—­would that her procession achieved, we had all entered the tomb together!”

Tears streamed from his eyes.  “Again and again,” he continued, “will the tragedy be acted; again I must hear the groans of the dying, the wailing of the survivors; again witness the pangs, which, consummating all, envelope an eternity in their evanescent existence.  Why am I reserved for this?  Why the tainted wether of the flock, am I not struck to earth among the first?  It is hard, very hard, for one of woman born to endure all that I endure!”

Hitherto, with an undaunted spirit, and an high feeling of duty and worth, Adrian had fulfilled his self-imposed task.  I had contemplated him with reverence, and a fruitless desire of imitation.  I now offered a few words of encouragement and sympathy.  He hid his face in his hands, and while he strove to calm himself, he ejaculated, “For a few months, yet for a few months more, let not, O God, my heart fail, or my courage be bowed down; let not sights of intolerable misery madden this half-crazed brain, or cause this frail heart to beat against its prison-bound, so that it burst.  I have believed it to be my destiny to guide and rule the last of the race of man, till death extinguish my government; and to this destiny I submit.

“Pardon me, Verney, I pain you, but I will no longer complain.  Now I am myself again, or rather I am better than myself.  You have known how from my childhood aspiring thoughts and high desires have warred with inherent disease and overstrained sensitiveness, till the latter became victors.  You know how I placed this wasted feeble hand on the abandoned helm of human government.  I have been visited at times by intervals of fluctuation; yet, until now, I have felt as if a superior and indefatigable spirit had taken up its abode within me or rather incorporated itself with my weaker being.  The holy visitant has for a time slept, perhaps to show me how powerless I am without its inspiration.  Yet, stay for a while, O Power of goodness and strength; disdain not yet this rent shrine of fleshly mortality, O immortal Capability!  While one fellow creature remains to whom aid can be afforded, stay by and prop your shattered, falling engine!”