al and maternal tendernesses; and the
loss of all that bliss--the change of it all into strange, sudden,
shameful, and everlasting misery, smote me till I swooned, and was
delivered up to a trance in which the rueful reality was mixed up with
phantasms more horrible than man's mind can suffer out of the hell of
sleep!

"Wretched coward that I was to outlive that night! But my mind was weak
from great loss of blood--and the blow so stunned me that I had not
strength of resolution to die. I might have torn off the bandages--for
nobody watched me--and my wounds were thought mortal. But the love of
life had not welled out with all those vital streams; and as I began to
recover, another passion took possession of me--and I vowed that there
should be atonement and revenge. I was not obscure. My dishonour was
known through the whole army. Not a tent--not a hut--in which my name
was not bandied about--a jest in the mouths of profligate
poltroons--pronounced with pity by the compassionate brave. I had
commanded my men with pride. No need had I ever had to be ashamed when I
looked on our colours; but no wretch led out to execution for desertion
or cowardice ever shrunk from the sun, and from the sight of human faces
arrayed around him, with more shame and horror than did I when, on my
way to a transport, I came suddenly on my own corps, marching to music
as if they were taking up a position in the line of battle--as they had
often done with me at their head--all sternly silent before an
approaching storm of fire. What brought them there? To do me honour! Me,
smeared with infamy, and ashamed to lift my eyes from the mire. Honour
had been the idol I worshipped--alas! too, too passionately far--and now
I lay in my litter like a slave sold to stripes--and heard as if a
legion of demons were mocking me with loud and long huzzas; and then a
confused murmur of blessings on our noble commander, so they called
me--me, despicable in my own esteem--scorned, insulted, forsaken--me,
who could not bind to mine the bosom that for years had touched it--a
wretch so poor in power over a woman's heart, that no sooner had I left
her to her own thoughts than she felt that she had never loved me, and,
opening her fair breast to a new-born bliss, sacrificed me without
remorse--nor could bear to think of me any more as her husband--not even
for sake of that child whom I knew she loved--for no hypocrite was she
there; and oh! lost creature though she was