been brought up to receive her sentence. On that same day (nay, it was
said in that same hour,) petitions, very numerously signed, and various
petitions from different ranks, different ages, different sexes, were
carried up to the throne, praying, upon manifold grounds, but all
noticing the extreme doubtfulness of the case, for an unconditional
pardon. By whose advice or influence, it was guessed easily, though
never exactly ascertained, these petitions were unanimously, almost
contemptuously rejected. And to express the contempt of public opinion
as powerfully as possible, Agnes was sentenced by the court,
reassembled in full pomp, order, and ceremonial costume, to a
punishment the severest that the laws allowed--viz. hard labor for ten
years. The people raged more than ever; threats public and private were
conveyed to the ears of the minister chiefly concerned in the
responsibility, and who had indeed, by empty and ostentatious talking,
assumed that responsibility to himself in a way that was perfectly
needless.

Thus stood matters when I awoke to consciousness: and this was the
fatal journal of the interval--interval so long as measured by my
fierce calendar of delirium--so brief measured by the huge circuit of
events which it embraced, and their mightiness for evil. Wrath, wrath
immeasurable, unimaginable, unmitigable, burned at my heart like a
cancer. The worst had come. And the thing which kills a man for action
--the living in two climates at once--a torrid and a frigid zone--of
hope and fear--that was past. Weak--suppose I were for the moment: I
felt that a day or two might bring back my strength. No miserable
tremors of hope _now_ shook my nerves: if they shook from that
inevitable rocking of the waters that follows a storm, so much might be
pardoned to the infirmity of a nature that could not lay aside its
fleshly necessities, nor altogether forego its homage to 'these frail