1829.] [ 477] 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A NIGHT OF FEVER. 
Ir was the eleventh day of my fever. The medical attendants had 
again collected round my bed for a last struggle with the disease, that 
was drying up my blood, and searing the very marrow of my bones. 
Unfortunately, in every sense of the word, for my present comfort, as for 
the chance of recovery, I had little faith in them, though, to judge from 
the result, my opinion had less of reason than of prejudice. But I could 
‘not help myself; I was far away from those in whom I should have put 
trust, in the Isle of Jersey, which, for any useful purpose, as regarded 
distance, might as well been the Isle of Madeira. ' 
My physicians had deemed it proper to bring with them a third—an 
addition to their number that I felt at the time was ominous of nothing 
good, Still I had an instinctive dread of asking the one plain question, 
“ Do you give me over?” This would have ended all. suspense, but 
then it might have also ended all hope ; and who would willingly put 
hope from him? I endeavoured to gather from their looks the opinion, 
which I feared to ask for ; but men of this description have either no 
feelings to conceal—long acquaintance with misery having rendered them 
perfectly callous—or, as in the better and rarer case, the strong sense of 
duty has taught them to subdue every appearance of emotion. How 
eagerly did I watch their passing glances as they stood about me! and 
how yet more anxiously did I listen to their half-whispered consultation 
on their retiring to the next room, to decide upon the awful question of 
life or death ; for to that I knew too well my case had come. I felt 
as the criminal must feel when the jury have left the box, carrying with 
them the power to save or destroy, and much more likely, from what has 
pees to use that power fatally. Death, when it shall come, will never 
have half the bitterness of those few mimutes of horrible suspense, when 
life, the dearest stake we can play for, is on the die, and hope is strug- 
_giing, single-handed, against doubt, and fear, and reason. I listened 
‘till I heard, or seemed to hear, the throbbings of my own heart ; but I 
could catch nothing beyond a few broken sentences, though the folding- 
doors that divided the two rooms were left ajar ; and the words heard 
thus imperfectly, only added to my apprehensions.—“ I think not,” 
said the new-comer. What was it he did not think ?—that I should live, 
or that I should die?“ To-morrow,” said the same voice.—“ Ay, to-mor- 
row !” thoughtI, “ to-morrow I shall be cold and senseless ; she who now 
drops the tears of burning agony over my death-bed—who would give 
her own life, were that possible, to prolong mine but a few hours-—even 
she will shrink in horror from me.”’ I could almost fancy it was written 
on yonder wall that it shall bethus. Fancy ?—why, it is there, written 
by the same hand that. wrote the awful “ Mene, mene tekel upharsin,” 
on the walls of the banquet-room of Belshazzar. 
' Will it be believed? I was yet in the full possession of my senses 
| when this wild notion seized me ; or at least I had a perfect conscious- 
ness of my own identity. The setting sun shone broadly and strongly 
through the red curtains that had been drawn to exclude the light, and 
upon the walls opposite to me in crimson lines, that irresistibly 
alled to my overheated brain the letters of fire that brought dismay 
id death to the heart of the Babylonian king. But, I repeat it, I was 
ill in my perfect senses ; I knew that I was at St. Heliers, in the Isle 
f Jersey ; I could distinguish all around me ; I could count the rapid 
