There were
moments, during the first pangs of this agony, when if he had been
possessed of a weapon and of the strength to use it, he would have
sacrificed his ambition for ever by depriving himself of life.
But this desire to end his torments with his existence lasted not long.
Gradually, the anguish in his body awakened a wilder and stronger
distemper in his mind, and then the two agonies, physical and mental,
rioted over him together in fierce rivalry, divesting him of all
thoughts but such as were by their own agency created or aroused.
For some time he lay helpless in his misery, alternately venting by
stifled groans the unalleviated torment of his wounds, and lamenting
with curses the failure of his enterprise, at the very moment of its
apparent success. At length, the pangs that struck through him seemed
to grow gradually less frequent; he hardly knew now from what part of
his frame they more immediately proceeded. Insensibly, his faculties of
thinking and feeling grew blunted; then he remained a little while in a
mysterious unrefreshing repose of body and mind; and then his disordered
senses, left unguided and unrestrained, became the victims of a sudden
and terrible delusion.
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