A SUTTEE. 
95 
revolting customs of a besotted superstition to be 
found in the records of ages. The widow was young 
and interesting,, rather stout, but finely shaped, and 
scarcely darker than a woman of Italy. We had no 
difficulty in approaching the pile sufficiently near to 
see all that passed with a most appalling distinct- 
ness. She had an infant a few months old, at which 
she gazed with a vacant indifference, as if the mental 
absorption of a higher duty left her no thoughts 
for earthly objects; — she seemed scarcely conscious of 
its presence. There was, indeed, a sort of sublime 
tranquillity in the expression of her features, amid 
the frightful preparations that were making around 
her, which could not but excite my admiration at the 
firm tone of her mind and her resolved energy of pur- 
pose ; yet this was almost neutralized in my breast by 
a feeling between pity and disgust, and though I could 
have wept at the contemplation of what she was 
about to suffer, I could also have railed on her for the 
brutal apathy with which she seemed prepared to meet 
her dreadful trial. A considerable interval elapsed 
before all things were ready for the one great act of 
immolation, and by this time some change had clearly 
taken place in her sensations. There was now a 
manifest confusion and nervous anxiety in her clear 
dark eye, which gradually became more expressive, 
but more wild. Her senses had been evidently 
(< steeped in forgetfulness,” or at all events paralyzed 
by the too free use of that drug* which is so often 
employed, and with such fatal efficacy, upon these 
and similar melancholy occasions, in order to disarm 
* Opium. 
