His vehemence, and voice broken by irrepressible sighs, sunk to my heart; his eyes gleamed in the gloom of night like two earthly stars; and, his form dilating, his countenance beaming, truly it almost seemed as if at his eloquent appeal a more than mortal spirit entered his frame, exalting him above humanity.  He turned quickly towards me, and held out his hand.  “Farewell, Verney,” he cried, “brother of my love, farewell; no other weak expression must cross these lips, I am alive again:  to our tasks, to our combats with our unvanquishable foe, for to the last I will struggle against her.”

He grasped my hand, and bent a look on me, more fervent and animated than any smile; then turning his horse’s head, he touched the animal with the spur, and was out of sight in a moment.

A man last night had died of the plague.  The quiver was not emptied, nor the bow unstrung.  We stood as marks, while Parthian Pestilence aimed and shot, insatiated by conquest, unobstructed by the heaps of slain.  A sickness of the soul, contagious even to my physical mechanism, came over me.  My knees knocked together, my teeth chattered, the current of my blood, clotted by sudden cold, painfully forced its way from my heavy heart.  I did not fear for myself, but it was misery to think that we could not even save this remnant.  That those I loved might in a few days be as clay-cold as Idris in her antique tomb; nor could strength of body or energy of mind ward off the blow.  A sense of degradation came over me.  Did God create man, merely in the end to become dead earth in the midst of healthful vegetating nature?  Was he of no more account to his Maker, than a field of corn blighted in the ear?  Were our proud dreams thus to fade?  Our name was written “a little lower than the angels;” and, behold, we were no better than ephemera.  We had called ourselves the “paragon of animals,” and, lo! we were a “quint-essence of dust.”  We repined that the pyramids had outlasted the embalmed body of their builder.  Alas! the mere shepherd’s hut of straw we passed on the road, contained in its structure the principle of greater longevity than the whole race of man.  How reconcile this sad change to our past aspirations, to our apparent powers!

Sudden an internal voice, articulate and clear, seemed to say:—­Thus from eternity, it was decreed:  the steeds that bear Time onwards had this hour and this fulfilment enchained to them, since the void brought forth its burthen.  Would you read backwards the unchangeable laws of Necessity?

Mother of the world!  Servant of the Omnipotent! eternal, changeless Necessity! who with busy fingers sittest ever weaving the indissoluble chain of events!—­I will not murmur at thy acts.  If my human mind cannot acknowledge that all that is, is right; yet since what is, must be, I will sit amidst the ruins and smile.  Truly we were not born to enjoy, but to submit, and to hope.