ce. It
appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him,
who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless and
fully prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to steal slowly back into
consciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without
being awakened by external disturbances.

I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased to
beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses were
unusually active, although eccentrically so--assuming often each
other's functions at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably
confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. The
rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my lips to the last,
affected me with sweet fancies of flowers--fantastic flowers, far more
lovely than any of the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here
blooming around us. The eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no
complete impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance, the balls
could not roll in their sockets but all objects within the range of the
visual hemisphere were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays
which fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the eye,
producing a more vivid effect than those which struck the front or
interior surface. Yet, in the former instance, this effect was so far
anomalous that I appreciated it only as sound--sound sweet or discordant
as the matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark in
shade--curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at the same time,
although excited in degree, was not irregular in action--estimating real
sounds with an extravagance of precision, not less than of sensibility.
Touch had undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were
tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in
the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers
upon my eyelids, at first only recognised through vision, at length,
long after their removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight
immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. All my perceptions were
purely sensual. The materials furnished the passive brain by the
senses were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceased
understanding. Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was
much; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild
sobs floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences,