203 CHAPTER XXXII. ANOTHER OLD LETTER. Love! if thy destined sacrifice am I, Come, slay thy victim, and prepare thy fires; The death which every soul that lives desires. I AM writing these lines in my bedroom in the house of the Widow Gran, in the village of Ober-Ammergau. They are the last you will receive from me for a long time; perhaps the last I shall ever send you, for more and more, as each day advances, I feel that my business with the world is done. 'What brought me hither I know not. I am sure it was with no direct intention of witnessing what so many deem a mere mummery or outrage on religion; but after many wanderings hither and thither, I found myself in the neighbourhood, and whether instinctively or of set purpose, approaching this lonely place. 6 As I have more than once told you, I have of late, ever since my past trouble, been subject to a kind of waking nightmare, in which all natural appearances have assumed a strange unreality, as of shapes seen in dreams; and one characteristic of these seizures has been a curious sense within my own mind that, vivid as such appearances seemed, I should remember nothing of them on actually awaking. A wise physician would shake his head and murmur "diseased cerebration;" nor would his diagnosis of my condition be less gloomy, on learning that my physical powers remain unimpaired, and seem absolutely incapable of fatigue. I eat and drink little; sleep less; yet I have the strength of an athlete still, or so it seems. 'I walked hither across the mountains, having no other shelter for several nights than the boughs of the pine-woods where I slept. The weather was far from warm, yet I felt no cold; the paths were dangerous, yet no evil befell me. If I must speak the truth, I would gladly have perished-by cold, by accident, by any swift and sudden means. 'But when a man thirsts and hungers for death, Death, in its dull perversity, generally spares him. More than once, among these dizzy precipices and black ravines, I thought of suicide; one step would have done it, one quick downward leap; but I was spared that last degradation-indeed, I know not how. 'It was night time when I left the mountains, and came out upon the public road. The moon rose, pale and ghostly, dimly lighting my way. 'Full of my own miserable phantasy, I walked on for hours and descended at last to the outlying houses of a silent village, lying at the foot of a low chain of melancholy hills. All was still; a thin white mist filled the air, floating upward from the valley, and forming thick vaporous clouds around the moon. Dimly I discerned the shadows of the houses, but in none of the windows was there any light. 'I stood hesitating, not knowing which way to direct my footsteps or at which cottage door to knock and seek shelter, and never, at any moment of my recent experience, was the sense of phantasy and unreality so full upon me. While I was thus hesitating I suddenly became conscious of the sound of voices coming from a small cottage situated on the roadside, and hitherto scarcely discernible in the darkness. Without hesitation I approached the door and knocked. 'Immediately the voices ceased, and the moment afterwards the door opened and a figure appeared on the threshold. If the sense of unreality had been strong before it now became paramount, for the figure I beheld wore a white priestly robe quaintly embroidered with gold, and a golden headdress or coronet upon his head. Nor was this all. The large apartment behind him-a kind |