nd haughty government, or at
least upon the weak and obstinate and haughty member of the government
who presided in the police administration, was, to confirm and rivet the
line of conduct which had been made the object of popular denunciation.
More energetically, more scornfully, to express that determination of
flying in the face of public opinion and censure, four days before my
awakening, Agnes had been brought up to receive her sentence. On that
same day (nay, it was said in that same hour), petitions, very
numerously signed, and various petitions from different ranks, different
ages, different sexes, were carried up to the throne, praying, upon
manifold grounds, but all noticing the extreme doubtfulness of the case,
for an unconditional pardon. By whose advice or influence, it was
guessed easily, though never exactly ascertained, these petitions were
unanimously, almost contemptuously, rejected. And to express the
contempt of public opinion as powerfully as possible, Agnes was
sentenced by the court, reassembled in full pomp, order, and ceremonial
costume, to a punishment the severest that the laws allowed--viz. hard
labour for ten years. The people raged more than ever; threats public
and private were conveyed to the ears of the minister chiefly concerned
in the responsibility, and who had indeed, by empty and ostentatious
talking, assumed that responsibility to himself in a way that was
perfectly needless.

Thus stood matters when I awoke to consciousness: and this was the fatal
journal of the interval--interval so long as measured by my fierce
calendar of delirium--so brief measured by the huge circuit of events
which it embraced, and their mightiness for evil. Wrath, wrath
immeasurable, unimaginable, unmitigable, burned at my heart like a
cancer. The worst had come. And the thing which kills a man for
action--the living in two climates at once--a torrid and a frigid
zone--of hope and fear--that was past. Weak--suppose I were for the
moment: I felt that a day or two might bring back my strength. No
miserable tremors of hope _now_ shook my nerves: if they shook from that
inevitable rocking of the waters that follows a storm, so much might be
pardoned to the infirmity of a nature that could not lay aside its
fleshly necessities, nor altogether forego its homage to 'these frail
elements,' but which by inspiration already lived within a region where
no voices were heard but the spiritual voices of transcendant
pas