d I experienced
such real, heartfelt joy as when I heard Anna's words. It is easy
to imagine the state of my mind in recollecting the bitter grief
I was in for ten days; then can be understood the mental anguish I
felt. Having witnessed such strange scenes for a considerable time,
it would not have been surprising had I lost my senses. I was an
actor in a furious battle; I had seen the wounded falling around me,
and heard the death-rattle. After the frightful execution, I went home,
and there still deeper grief awaited me. I had watched by the bed-side
of a beloved wife, knowing not whether I should lose her for ever,
or see her spared to me deprived of reason; when all at once, as if by
a miracle, this dear companion of my life, restored to health, threw
herself into my arms. I wept with her; my burning eyes, aching for
want of rest, found at last some tears, but they were tears of joy and
gladness. Soon we became more composed; we related to each other all
that we had suffered. Oh! the sympathy of loving hearts! Our sorrows
bad been the same, we had shared the same fears, she for me and I for
her. Anna's rapid recovery, after her renovating slumber, enabled her
to get up; she dressed herself as usual, and the people who saw her
could not believe she had passed ten days struggling between death
and insanity--two gulphs, from which love and faith had preserved us.

I was happy; my deep sadness was speedily changed to gladness,
even visible on my features. Alas! this joy was transitory, like
all happiness; man here below is a continual prey to misfortune! My
wife, at the end of a month, relapsed into her former sickly state;
the same symptoms showed themselves again, with similar prospects,
during the same space of time. I remained again nine days at her
bed-side, and on the tenth a refreshing sleep brought her to her
senses. But this time, guided by experience, that pitiless mistress,
who gives us lessons we should ever remember, I did not rejoice
as I had done the month before. I feared lest this sudden cure
might only be a temporary recovery, and that every month my poor
invalid would relapse, until her brain becoming weaker and weaker,
she would be deranged for life. This sad idea wounded my heart, and
caused me such grief that I could not even dissimulate it before her
who inspired it. I exhausted all the resources of medicine; all these
expedients proved unavailable. I thought that perhaps, if I removed my
poor in