his former speech had inflicted; and as I
left the window, I felt a degree of confidence in the future that never
entirely deserted me after.

CHAPTER XLIX. THE FIRST DAY

I can more easily imagine a man being able to preserve the memory of
all his sensations during some tremendous operation of surgery than to
recall the varied tortures of his mind in the progress of a long
and eventful trial. Certain incidents will impress themselves more
powerfully than others, not always those of the deepest importance,--far
from it; the veriest trifles--a stern look of the presiding judge, a
murmur in the court--will live in the recollection for long years after
the great events of the scene; and a casual glance, a half-uttered word,
become texts of sorrow for many a day to come.

I could myself be better able to record my sensations throughout a long
fever than tell of the emotions which I suffered in the three days of
that trial. I awake occasionally from a dream full of every circumstance
all sharply defined, clear, and distinct. My throbbing temples and moist
brow evidence the agonies I have gone through; my nerves still tingle
with the torture; but with the first moments of wakefulness the memory
is gone!--the sense of pain alone remains; but the cause fades away in
dim indistinctness, and my heart throbs with gratitude at last to know
it was but a dream, and has passed away.

But there are days, too, when all these memories are revived; and I
could recount, even to the slightest circumstance, the whole progress of
the case, from the moment when a doorkeeper drew aside a heavy curtain
to let me pass into the court, to the dreadful instant when--But I
cannot go on; already are images and forms crowding around me. To
continue this theme would be to call up spirits of torture to the
bedside, or the lonely chamber where, friendless and solitary, I sit as
I write these lines.

I owe it to him whose patience and sympathy may have carried him so far
as my listener, to complete this much of the story of my life; happily a
few words will now suffice to do so.

A newspaper of "Old Dublin," a great authority in those days, the
"Morning Advertiser," informed its readers on a certain day of February
that the interesting events of a recent trial should be its apology for
any deficiency in its attention to foreign news, or even the domestic
occurrences of the country, since the editor could not but participate
in the intense anxi