On Wednesday
night I was seized with an intolerable pain from my right temple to the
tip of my right shoulder, including my right eye, cheek, jaw, and that
side of the throat. I was nearly frantic, and ran about the house almost
naked, endeavouring by every means to excite sensation in different
parts of my body, and so to weaken the enemy by creating a division. It
continued from one in the morning till half-past five, and left me pale
and fainty. It came on fitfully, but not so violently, several times on
Thursday, and began severer threats towards night; but I took between 60
and 70 drops of laudanum, and sopped the Cerberus just as his mouth
began to open. On Friday it only niggled, as if the Chief had departed,
as from a conquered place, and merely left a small garrison behind, or
as if he had evacuated the Corsica, and a few straggling pains only
remained. But this morning he returned in full force, and his name is
Legion. Giant-Fiend of a hundred hands, with a shower of arrowy
death-pangs he transpierced me, and then he became a Wolf and lay
gnawing my bones!--I am not mad, most noble Festus! but in sober sadness
I have suffered this day more bodily pain than I had before a conception
of. My right cheek has certainly been placed with admirable exactness
under the focus of some invisible burning-glass, which concentrated all
the rays of a Tartarean sun.
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