_(Concluded from page 46.)_


On recovering from my stupor, I found myself with a physician and two
apothecaries beside me, in bed at the George Inn, Ramsgate. I had been,
it seems, for two whole days delirious, during which pregnant interval I
had lived over again all the horrors of the preceding hours. The wind
sang in my ears, the phantom forms of the unburied flitted pale and
ghastly before my eyes. I fancied that I was still on the sea; that the
massive copper-coloured clouds which hovered scarcely a yard overhead,
were suddenly transformed into uncouth shapes, who glared at me from
between saffron chinks, made by the scudding wrack; that the waters
teemed with life, cold, slimy, preternatural things of life; that their
eyes after assuming a variety of awful expressions, settled down into
that dull frozen character, and their voices into that low, sepulchral,
indefinable tone, which marked the Mysterious Tailor. This wretch was
the Abaddon of my dreamy Pandaemonium. He was ever before me; he lent an
added splendour to the day, and deepened the midnight gloom. On the
heights of Bologne I saw him; far away over the foaming waters he
floated still and lifeless beside me, his eye never once off my face,
his voice never silent in my ear.

My tale would scarcely have an end, were I to repeat but the one half of
what during two brief days (two centuries in suffering) I experienced
from this derangement of the nervous system. My readers may fancy that I
have exaggerated my state of mind: far from it, I have purposely
softened down the more distressing particulars, apprehensive, if not of
being discredited, at least of incurring ridicule. Towards the close of
the third day my fever began to abate, I became more sobered in my turn