d there
was, besides, a clear tendency to delirium--a common, yet critical
symptom--leaving, even after the patient has recovered, and often for
years, its marks in the weakened intellect. One evening I was standing
by his bedside, studying his symptoms; witnessing the excess of his
sufferings, and listening to the bursts of incoherent speech which, from
time to time, came from him, as if expelled from his sick spirit by some
internal power. He spoke often of his wife, whom he called by the name
of Espras; and, in the midst of his broken ejaculations, gushes of
intense feeling came on him, filling his yellow sunken eyes with rheumy
tears, and producing heavy sobs, which, repressed by his loaded chest,
assumed sounds unlike anything I ever heard, and beyond my power of
description. I could not well understand these indications of the
working of his spirit; but I fancied that, when he felt his own agonies,
became conscious of what it is to suffer a certain extremity of pain,
and learned, for the first time in his life, the sad experience of an
inexorable disease, which presented to him the prospect of a lingering
death, his mind recurred to the situation of his wife, who, as he
thought, was, or might be, enduring tortures produced by his hand,
transcending even his sufferings. There seemed to be less of conscience
in his mental operations, than a new-born sorrow or sympathy, wrung out
of a heart naturally obdurate, by the anguish of a personal experience
of the pain he himself had produced in another, who had the strongest
claims on his protection and love. His mind, though volatile and
wandering, and not far from verging on delirium, was not yet deranged;
and I was about to put a question to him concerning his wife, whom he
had not directly mentioned to me, when the door opened, and the still
pale and emaciated figure of Mrs. P----, dressed in a white morning
gown, entered the apartment, struggling with her weakness to get
forward, and clutching, in her breathless efforts, at whatever presented
itself to her nerveless arms, to support her, and aid her in her
progress to the sick-bed of her husband. The bed being in the middle of
a large room, she was necessitated to trust partly to the weak powers of
her limbs, which having failed her, she, in an attempt to spring forward
and reach it before sinking, came short of her aim, and fell with a
crash on the floor, uttering, as she stumbled, a scream of sorrow,
wrung from her by