ch a shower had accidentally
driven him, because it had been idly reported that a wild beast had
escaped from a caravan and been seen in the vicinity of the inn. No dog
had ever been allowed in his household lest it might go mad. In a
word, Crauford was one to whom life and sensual enjoyments were
everything,--the supreme blessings, the only blessings.

As long as he had the hope, and it was a sanguine hope, of saving life,
nothing had disturbed his mind from its serenity. His gayety had never
forsaken him; and his cheerfulness and fortitude had been the theme of
every one admitted to his presence. But when this hope was abruptly
and finally closed; when Death, immediate and unavoidable,--Death, the
extinction of existence, the cessation of sense,--stood bare and hideous
before him, his genius seemed at once to abandon him to his fate, and
the inherent weakness of his nature to gush over every prop and barrier
of his art.

"No hope!" muttered he, in a voice of the keenest anguish, "no
hope; merciful God! none, none? What, I, I, who have shamed kings in
luxury,--I to die on the gibbet, among the reeking, gaping, swinish
crowd with whom--O God, that I were one of them even! that I were the
most loathsome beggar that ever crept forth to taint the air with sores!
that I were a toad immured in a stone, sweltering in the atmosphere of
its own venom! a snail crawling on these very walls, and tracking his
painful path in slime!--anything, anything, but death! And such death!
The gallows, the scaffold, the halter, the fingers of the hangman
paddling round the neck where the softest caresses have clung and sated.
To die, die, die! What, I whose pulse now beats so strongly! whose blood
keeps so warm and vigorous a motion! in the very prime of enjoyment and
manhood; all life's million paths of pleasure before me,--to die, to
swing to the winds, to hang,--ay, ay--to hang! to be cut down, distorted
and hideous; to be thrust into the earth with worms; to rot, or--or--or
hell! is there a hell?--better that even than annihilation!"

"Fool! fool!--damnable fool that I was" (and in his sudden rage he
clenched his own flesh till the nails met in it); "had I but got to
France one day sooner! Why don't you save me, save me, you whom I have
banqueted and feasted, and lent money to! one word from you might have
saved me; I will not die! I don't deserve it! I am innocent! I tell you,
Not guilty, my lord,--not guilty! Have you no heart, no con