!'

"For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had set myself
forever beyond the reach of selfishness; but my imaginations were false.
This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my wife. My joyous
ebullitions vanished, and I asked myself who it was whom I saw?
Methought it could not be Catharine. It could not be the woman who had
lodged for years in my heart; who had slept, nightly, in my bosom; who
had borne in her womb, who had fostered at her breast, the beings who
called me father; whom I had watched with delight, and cherished with a
fondness ever new and perpetually growing: it could not be the same.

"Where was her bloom! These deadly and blood-suffused orbs but ill
resemble the azure and exstatic tenderness of her eyes. The lucid stream
that meandered over that bosom, the glow of love that was wont to sit
upon that cheek, are much unlike these livid stains and this hideous
deformity. Alas! these were the traces of agony; the gripe of the
assassin had been here!

"I will not dwell upon my lapse into desperate and outrageous sorrow.
The breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn and I sunk into
MERE MAN. I leaped from the floor: I dashed my head against the wall:
I uttered screams of horror: I panted after torment and pain. Eternal
fire, and the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music
and a bed of roses.

"I thank my God that this degeneracy was transient, that he deigned once
more to raise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to
duty, and WAS CALM. My wife was dead; but I reflected, that though this
source of human consolation was closed, yet others were still open. If
the transports of an husband were no more, the feelings of a father had
still scope for exercise. When remembrance of their mother should excite
too keen a pang, I would look upon them, and BE COMFORTED.

"While I revolved these ideas, new warmth flowed in upon my heart--I was
wrong. These feelings were the growth of selfishness. Of this I was
not aware, and to dispel the mist that obscured my perceptions, a new
effulgence and a new mandate were necessary.

"From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray that was shot into the
room. A voice spake like that which I had before heard--'Thou hast done
well; but all is not done--the sacrifice is incomplete--thy children
must be offered--they must perish with their mother!--'"

Chapter XX

Will you wonder that I read no farther? Wil