once more; he rushed into the kitchen, where
the fire blazed out with fiercer heat; again he imagined that the
thunder came to his ears, but the thunderings which he heard were only
the voice of conscience. Again his own footsteps and his voice sounded
in his fancy as the footsteps and voices of fiends, with which his
imagination peopled the room. His state and his existence seemed to him
a confused and troubled dream; he tore his hair--threw it on the
table--and immediately started back with a hollow groan; for his locks,
which but a few hours before had been as black as the raven's wing, were
now white as snow!

On discovering this, he gave a low but frantic laugh. "Ha, ha, ha!" he
exclaimed; "here is another mark--here is food for despair. Silently,
but surely, did the hand of God work this, as a proof that I am
hopeless! But I will bear it; I will bear the sight! I now feel myself a
man blasted by the eye of God Himself! Ha, ha, ha! Food for despair!
Food for despair!"

Immediately he passed into his own room, and approaching the
looking-glass beheld a sight calculated to move a statue. His hair had
become literally white, but the shades of his dark complexion, now
distorted by terror and madness, flitted, as his features worked under
the influence of his tremendous passions, into an expression so
frightful, that deep fear came over himself. He snatched one of his
razors, and fled from the glass to the kitchen. He looked upon the fire,
and saw the white ashes lying around its edge.

"Ha!" said he, "the light is come! I see the sign. I am directed, and I
will follow it. There is yet ONE hope. The immolation! I shall
be saved, yet so as by fire. It is for this my hair has become
white;--the sublime warning for my self-sacrifice! The colour of
ashes!--white--white! It is so!--I will sacrifice my body in material
fire, to save my soul from that which is eternal! But I had anticipated
the SIGN! The self-sacrifice is accepted!"

We must here draw a veil over that which ensued, as the description of
it would be both unnatural and revolting. Let it be sufficient to say,
that the next morning he was found burnt to a cinder, with the exception
of his feet and legs, which remained as monuments of, perhaps, the most
dreadful suicide that ever was committed by man. His razor, too, was
found bloody, and several clots of gore were discovered about the
hearth; from which circumstances it was plain that he had reduced his
stren