Exhausted
nature asserted herself, and chilled to the bone I went to bed, and, at
last, to sleep.
I slept peacefully at first, but soon the events that had come over my
life began to weave themselves in wild disharmony through my restful
visions, and the events that were to come cast their lengthening shadows
before them. The world of past, present, and future thoughts, came into
my soul, distorted, without perspective, nothing to help me to discern
the good from the evil, the suffering gone and long-forgotten from the
pain in store. The triumph of discrepancy over waking reason, the
fancied victories of the sleep-dulled intellect over the outrageous
discord of the wakeful imagination. I passed a most miserable night. It
seemed rest to wake, until I was awake, and then it seemed rest to sleep
again, until my eyes were closed. At last it came, no dream this time;
Isaacs stood by my bed-side in the gray of the morning, himself grayer
than the soft neutral-tinted dawn. It was a terrible moment to me,
though I had expected it since yesterday. I felt like the condemned
criminal in France, who does not know the day or hour of his death. The
first intimation is when the executioner at daybreak enters his cell and
bids him come forth to die, sometimes in less than sixty seconds from
his waking.
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