of my wife; even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining
friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend; my father even now
might be writhing under his grasp, and Ernest might be dead at his
feet. This idea made me shudder and recalled me to action. I started
up and resolved to return to Geneva with all possible speed.
There were no horses to be procured, and I must return by the lake; but the
wind was unfavourable, and the rain fell in torrents. However, it was
hardly morning, and I might reasonably hope to arrive by night. I hired men
to row and took an oar myself, for I had always experienced relief from
mental torment in bodily exercise. But the overflowing misery I now felt,
and the excess of agitation that I endured rendered me incapable of any
exertion. I threw down the oar, and leaning my head upon my hands, gave way
to every gloomy idea that arose. If I looked up, I saw scenes which were
familiar to me in my happier time and which I had contemplated but the day
before in the company of her who was now but a shadow and a recollection.
Tears streamed from my eyes. The rain had ceased for a moment, and I saw
the fish play in the waters as they had done a few hours before; they had
then been observed by Elizabeth. Nothing is so painful to the human mind as
a great and sudden change. The sun might shine or the clouds might lower,
but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had
snatched from me every hope of future happiness; no creature had ever been
so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the history of
man.
But why should I dwell upon the incidents that followed this last
overwhelming event? Mine has been a tale of horrors; I have reached their
_acme_, and what I must now relate can but be tedious to you. Know
that, one by one, my friends were snatched away; I was left desolate. My
own strength is exhausted, and I must tell, in a few words, what remains of
my hideous narration.
I arrived at Geneva. My father and Ernest yet lived, but the former sunk
under the tidings that I bore. I see him now, excellent and venerable old
man! His eyes wandered in vacancy, for they had lost their charm and their
delight his Elizabeth, his more than daughter, whom he doted on with
all that affection which a man feels, who in the decline of life, having
few affections, clings more earnestly to those that remain. Cursed, cursed
be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs and doomed him to waste
in wretchedness! He could not live under the horrors that were accumulated
162