the sight of her husband lying extended on a bed of
sickness. The noise started the invalid, who turned his eyes wildly in
the direction of the disturbance; and I rushed forwards to raise in
my arms the exhausted victim. I had scarcely got her placed on her
feet, when she again struggled to reach the bed; and having, by my
assistance, got far enough forward, she threw herself on the body of
the fever-ridden patient, ejaculating, as she seized him in her arms,
and bedewed his pale face with tears--

"Frederick! my honoured husband, whom I am bound to cherish and nurse
as becomes the fondest of wives, why is it that I have been deprived
of this luxury of the grief-stricken heart--to watch your looks, and
anticipate your wants? Thanks to the blessed powers of your faith and of
mine, I have you now in my arms, and no mortal shall come between me and
my love! Night and day I will watch and tend you, till the assiduities
of my affection weary out the effects of your cruel disease brought on
you--O God!--by your grief for me, your worthless Espras."

And she buried her head in the bosom of the sick man, and sobbed
intensely. This scene, from the antithesis of its circumstances,
appeared to me the most striking I had ever beheld; and, though it was
my duty to prevent so exciting a cause of disturbance to the patient, I
felt I had no power to stop this burst of true affection. I watched
narrowly the eye of the patient; but it was too much clouded by the
effects of the fever, and too nervous and fugacious, to enable me to
distinguish between the effects of disease and the working of the
natural affections. But that his mind and feelings were working, and
were responding to this powerful moral impulse, was proved fearfully by
his rapid indistinct muttering and jabbering, mixed with deep sighs, and
the peculiar sound of the repressed sobs which I have already mentioned,
but cannot assimilate to any sound I ever heard. All my efforts to
remove the devoted wife by entreaty were vain; she still clung to him,
as if he had been on the eve of being taken from her by death. Her
sobbing continued unabated, and her tears fell on his cheek. These
intense expressions of love and sorrow awoke the sympathy which I
thought had previously been partially excited, for I now observed that
he turned away his head, while a stream of tears flowed down his face.
It was now, I found, necessary, for the sake of the patient, to remove
the excited lady; a