End of the world -- Fiction; Epidemics -- Fiction; Science fiction; Twenty-first century -- Fiction
Suddenly I heard a piercing shriek; a form seemed to rise from the
earth; it flew swiftly towards me, sinking to the ground again as it
drew near. All this passed so suddenly, that I with difficulty reined
in my horse, so that it should not trample on the prostrate being. The
dress of this person was that of a soldier, but the bared neck and
arms, and the continued shrieks discovered a female thus disguised. I
dismounted to her aid, while she, with heavy groans, and her hand
placed on her side, resisted my attempt to lead her on. In the hurry of
the moment I forgot that I was in Greece, and in my native accents
endeavoured to soothe the sufferer. With wild and terrific exclamations
did the lost, dying Evadne (for it was she) recognize the language of
her lover; pain and fever from her wound had deranged her intellects,
while her piteous cries and feeble efforts to escape, penetrated me
with compassion. In wild delirium she called upon the name of Raymond;
she exclaimed that I was keeping him from her, while the Turks with
fearful instruments of torture were about to take his life. Then again
she sadly lamented her hard fate; that a woman, with a woman’s heart
and sensibility, should be driven by hopeless love and vacant hopes to
take up the trade of arms, and suffer beyond the endurance of man
privation, labour, and pain—the while her dry, hot hand pressed mine,
and her brow and lips burned with consuming fire.
As her strength grew less, I lifted her from the ground; her emaciated
form hung over my arm, her sunken cheek rested on my breast; in a
sepulchral voice she murmured:—“This is the end of love!—Yet not the
end!”— and frenzy lent her strength as she cast her arm up to heaven:
“there is the end! there we meet again. Many living deaths have I borne
for thee, O Raymond, and now I expire, thy victim!—By my death I
purchase thee— lo! the instruments of war, fire, the plague are my
servitors. I dared, I conquered them all, till now! I have sold myself
to death, with the sole condition that thou shouldst follow me—Fire,
and war, and plague, unite for thy destruction—O my Raymond, there is
no safety for thee!”
With an heavy heart I listened to the changes of her delirium; I made
her a bed of cloaks; her violence decreased and a clammy dew stood on
her brow as the paleness of death succeeded to the crimson of fever, I
placed her on the cloaks. She continued to rave of her speedy meeting
with her beloved in the grave, of his death nigh at hand; sometimes she
solemnly declared that he was summoned; sometimes she bewailed his hard
destiny. Her voice grew feebler, her speech interrupted; a few
convulsive movements, and her muscles relaxed, the limbs fell, no more
to be sustained, one deep sigh, and life was gone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account