e busy eastern part
of the town was silent, or at most you saw only where, half from cupidity,
half from curiosity, the warehouses had been more ransacked than pillaged:
bales of rich India goods, shawls of price, jewels, and spices, unpacked,
strewed the floors. In some places the possessor had to the last kept watch
on his store, and died before the barred gates. The massy portals of the
churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some few lay dead on the
pavement. The wretched female, loveless victim of vulgar brutality, had
wandered to the toilet of high-born beauty, and, arraying herself in the
garb of splendour, had died before the mirror which reflected to herself
alone her altered appearance. Women whose delicate feet had seldom touched
the earth in their luxury, had fled in fright and horror from their homes,
till, losing themselves in the squalid streets of the metropolis, they had
died on the threshold of poverty. The heart sickened at the variety of
misery presented; and, when I saw a specimen of this gloomy change, my soul
ached with the fear of what might befall my beloved Idris and my babes.
Were they, surviving Adrian and myself, to find themselves protectorless in
the world? As yet the mind alone had suffered--could I for ever put off
the time, when the delicate frame and shrinking nerves of my child of
prosperity, the nursling of rank and wealth, who was my companion, should
be invaded by famine, hardship, and disease? Better die at once--better
plunge a poinard in her bosom, still untouched by drear adversity, and then
again sheathe it in my own! But, no; in times of misery we must fight
against our destinies, and strive not to be overcome by them. I would not
yield, but to the last gasp resolutely defended my dear ones against sorrow
and pain; and if I were vanquished at last, it should not be ingloriously.
I stood in the gap, resisting the enemy--the impalpable, invisible foe,
who had so long besieged us--as yet he had made no breach: it must be my
care that he should not, secretly undermining, burst up within the very
threshold of the temple of love, at whose altar I daily sacrificed. The
hunger of Death was now stung more sharply by the diminution of his food:
or was it that before, the survivors being many, the dead were less eagerly
counted? Now each life was a gem, each human breathing form of far, O! far
more worth than subtlest imagery of sculptured stone; and the daily, nay,
hourly decrease vi