"Doctor," said he, "this disease must take its course. It never was designed for ordinary mortals, and I cannot believe that you or any medical man ever witnessed in another these excruciating tortures. There is nothing human about this visitation." "Nonsense," said I, "I know nothing of miraculous diseases." "Like the forked lightning," he proceeded, "it leaves no trace of its progress. There is no wound, no inflammation, no fever, not a spot in the skin, to tell that, under it, and, as it were, touching it, there exists agonies, in comparison of which the pain of red-hot irons applied to the skinless flesh (under which nature would claim the relief of sinking) is as nothing; for I cannot faint--I cannot get refuge in insensibility--I cannot die." "Still, all natural," said I. "No," he went on, "speak no more of remedies against Heaven's visitations; but let me suffer, that, by suffering, I may expiate. I shall immediately have another visit from my messenger. Oh, sir, who shall help him that is accursed of Heaven." He turned his body from me, to hide his face, and I could perceive that he shook as if from a spasm of the heart. I told him that he talked like one under the dark veil of religious melancholy, or rather like one who had something on his conscience different from the ordinary burden of human frailty, making him attribute to retribution what was only a disease incident to mankind; that Heaven was not against the cure of any mortal; and that he would, for certainty, have no attack that day, nor, perhaps, for several days, especially if he used the lotion I recommended to him. He heard me in silence, shaking, at intervals, his head, solemnly and incredulously, turning his eyes to heaven, and clasping his hands as if in mental adjuration. "It will not do," he cried. "I have more faith in the language of this monitor than in that of frail man. I will have another attack instantly. Leave me! Why will you force me thus to brave heaven, between, whose dread powers and me there is a secret compact recorded here--here?"--striking his chest. "This disease I fear and tremble at; but it is _not_ hell, and, by bearing the one, I may avoid the other. So do I claim these pangs, sharper than scorpions' tongues, as my right, my due, my redemption. Oh God! what a price do I pay for relief from eternal fire!"