CHAPTER XXXVI.

SWIFT lifted Stella up, carried her home, and laid her upon her bed. He spoke to her, he rubbed her hands; but she still remained senseless. He called for assistance, tore down the bells, burst open the doors and woke up the whole house.

They hurried into Stella's room, they held salts to her nose, they rubbed her temples with vinegar, they tried every imaginable means of restoring her to animation; but it was only at the end of half an hour that she began to give signs of life, and when she did come to herself, her state was no less alarming. She was suffocated and unable to lie down ; they were forced to raise her up, and she sat with her body bent double and her chest resting against her knees. Her breathing was accompanied by a sharp hissing noise which threatened every moment to tear her chest to pieces. It was in vain that they dosed her with ether; it was in vain that they tried every palliative that commonly gave her relief: her suffocating sensations increased. Swift was alarmed. He left her under the charge of Mrs. Dingley, and ran to fetch a doctor.

The doctor was in bed asleep. Swift burst open his door, made him get up whether he would or no, and hurried him off, half-clad and half-asleep.

At length, during the course of the following day, the crisis yielded to medicine or to nature. But this cessation of suffering served but to reveal to her friends the progress made by the disease.

Swift now installed himself in Stafford Street.

He never quitted his beloved patient; he was with her by day and by night; he waited upon her with the most minute and jealous care; he let no one approach her but himself; everything passed through his hands. During the intervals of suffering he found courage to jest and laugh, in the hope of amusing and cheering her.

But all his efforts were vain-nay, mischievous. If his attentions—if his gaity-had formerly produced a bad effect, it was much worse now. Whenever Swift rendered

her any service, Esther could not restrain a nervous tremour which betrayed the wretchedness of her feelings.

Swift perceived it, and resigned the prominent place to Mrs. Dingley. But Stella, enlightened by suffering, had learnt to understand the baneful influence this woman had exercised over her destiny; and such was the irritable state of her nerves, that she involuntarily showed her aversion to her.

Tisdal alone was always welcome; all her smiles were for him; he alone could induce her to obey the physician's orders.

Mrs. Dingley, affronted at finding herself put aside, accused Esther of ingratitude; and finding it very convenient to be offended, left to the favourite friend all the labour consequent upon this unjust preference.

As to Swift, he longed to expiate his errors, involuntary as they had been, and he resigned himself to play the second part; but though usually hidden behind the curtain, he never left Esther's bedside for a minute.

Unfortunately, neither his self-imposed resignation, nor all the care and solicitude of which Esther was the object, nor all the resources of medical skill, were able to stay the progress of her disease. Swift did not deceive himself, nor did he conceal from the physicians that Esther's condition was complicated by mental distress; and, spite of the confidence which the profession usually feel in their drugs, they did not deny that some great and sudden joy might possibly cause a favourable change. This was enough to decide Swift.

His soul was torn by the thought of what he was about to do; his ever-scrupulous conscience saw in it a sort of outrage to the memory of one who was dear and sacred to him! But Stella's life was at stake; he no longer hesitated: he would make his marriage public.

Tisdal, to whom he announced this resolution, thanked him with tears in his eyes, and hastened to tell Stella; but, to his great surprise and grief, she refused, saying it was too late.

Too late! This word pierced like a dagger into Swift's heart. What a reproach it conveyed for the past! what

a threat for the future! Too late! And was it come to this?

Of all our sensations, anxiety is perhaps the most inexhaustible. More alarmed than he had thought it possible he could become, Swift summoned a fresh consultation of physicians.

He assembled all the most celebrated members of the faculty at Dublin: he called their attention to the gravity of the case, with all the energy of which he was master; and awaited the result of their deliberations with the utmost anxiety.

The consultation lasted a long time. Burning with impatience, and fearing that he might be unable to conceal it, he left Stella's bedside, and paced up and down outside the door of the parlour in which the physicians were consulting. He heard their voices at intervals, and listened with eager attention; but he could not distinguish a word: he could tell nothing to Tisdal, who glided every minute from Esther's sick chamber to learn the news, and glided back again as quickly as possible, so as not to alarm her. At length the door opened.

"Well!" said Swift, whose heart beat faster than that of a criminal awaiting his sentence.

The physicians looked at each other with a solemn air; they then made a sign to him to address his question to the most eminent among them.

This one, by way of answer, closed his eyes and puffed out his lips.

Well!" reiterated Swift.

The spokesman at length condescended to explain his meaning, but his explanation was no less mysterious than his pantomime. It was nothing but ill-disguised inuendoes. Swift got angry.

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What does all this mean?" exclaimed he; "what do you take me for? and for what object have you come hither? Do you imagine that I called you in in order to enlighten each other or to enlighten me, if you are able to do so? Judging by the airs of importance which you give yourselves, it would seem that one is taking a liberty when one asks you a question. It would seem as if the

matter under consideration were your affair and not ours. But on leaving this house, gentlemen, you will have to think of other sick patients whom you have to visit. I have only one patient, I shall think only of her. All the faculties of my head and heart will be taxed to the uttermost to discover her disease and to seek the remedy. By what right then would you exclude me from your secrets, which are in fact mine? If you have a conviction, tell it me, whatever it may be: I am not a child. If you have none, spare me your mysterious airs."

Startled and wounded by this apostrophe, the physicians passed from one extreme to another. At first it had been impossible to wring an answer from them; they now roughly blurted out that there was no hope.

On hearing this declaration, Swift, who always thought himself stronger than he really was, staggered and fell like a bull struck down with a mallet.

The physicians bled him, prescribed a few remedies, and left the house.

He was

Swift took none of these prescriptions. ashamed of having shown such weakness: he staggered violently against his disease-against his grief. It was nothing-merely one of those vertigoes to which he was subject he was not ill! He rejected all Tisdal's attentions; he even repelled him with asperity.

This struggle was interrupted by the violent ringing of a bell in Esther's room. She was seized with a frightful fit of suffocation-she had lost the power of speech; there issued from her chest nothing but that sharp hissing sound-that involuntary voice of the disease which choked the other. She caused all the windows and doors to be thrown open; she motioned all her friends away from her she needed all the air of the room herself. She was like a drowned person who feels himself sinking beneath the water; she raised herself up every moment on her hands. But in making these efforts to sit up and breathe, a blood-vessel burst in her chest, and the blood gushed out of her mouth.

And no physician with her! From the moment this attack had begun, they had vainly sought one from house

T

to house. The question was, whether she was not in her

last agony.

Happily the vomiting ceased: it had even relieved her. She was extremely weak, but she breathed more freely.

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Feeling somewhat more composed, she wished to profit by it in order to receive the consolations of religion. Tisdal proposed to go and fetch the Archbishop.

"It is useless," said she; 66 are not you here? No one on earth has so much credit in heaven as you."

Swift had gone up-stairs on hearing the violent ring which summoned Tisdal to his post by Esther's bedside. But he was silent, motionless, and as it were stupified. He had the air of one who saw nothing-he felt nothing. However, he knelt down with the rest while Tisdal read the prayers for the sick.

Esther listened to them with fervour, and at intervals her voice responded to Tisdal's. But it grated painfully on the ear; it sounded dull and broken, as if some foreign substance barred the passage; and the imposing gravity of the ceremony could scarce restrain the sobs with which every heart was bursting.

But when the prayers were ended, whether it was that 'this act of piety had sustained her until that moment, or that it had exhausted her, she heaved a deep sigh, and let her head fall upon her shoulder, like Christ on the Cross.

"Dead! she is dead !" Tisdal could not restrain this cry of despair. He raised her head; it again dropped upon her breast. He held a looking-glass to her lips; not a breath dimmed the glass. looking-glass fell from his hand.

"Dead! dead!" The

He had said that Fsther's happiness was necessary to enable him to support the burden of his life of sacrifices; and now the reward of so many efforts had escaped him! He turned upon Swift with fury, seized him by the collar, and dragging him up to Esther's death-bed-“ You are her murderer! you have killed her !" cried he. "Come

and gloat over your work!"

Swift suffered himself to be dragged along without resistance: the haughty Swift received these bitter re