ed sent from heaven to heal her wounds,
lies panting in the grasp of fierce disease. She has sent for the king,
and together they look upon the suffering one. Full well he knows, that
miserable man, what mean those moans and piteous signs of distress, and
what they betoken. He gazes on the wan, anguished features of his wife
as she bends over her child; his thoughts revert hurriedly to her
surpassing beauty when first he saw her--a vision of the murdered Uriah
flits before him--the three victims of his guilt and the message of
Nathan, which he has just received--the stern words, "Thou art the man,"
bring a full and realizing sense of the depth to which he has fallen,
and overwhelmed with remorse and wretchedness, he leaves the chamber to
give vent to his grief, to fast and weep and pray, in the vain hope of
averting the threatened judgment.

Seven days of alternate hope and fear, of watching and care have fled,
and Bathsheba is childless. Another wave has rolled over her. God grant
it be the last. Surely she has drained the cup of sorrow. She sits
solitary and sad, bowed down with her weight of woes; her thoughts
following ever the same weary track; direful images present to her
imagination; her frame racked and trembling; the heavens clothed in
sackcloth, and life for ever divested of happiness and delight. The king
enters and seats himself beside her. And if Bathsheba is changed, David
is also from henceforth an altered man. "Broken in spirit by the
consciousness of his deep sinfulness, humbled in the eyes of his
subjects and his influence with them weakened by their knowledge of his
crimes; even his authority in his own household, and his claim to the
reverence of his sons, relaxed by his loss of character;" filled also
with fearful anticipations of the future, which is shadowed by the dark
prophecy of Nathan--he is from this time wholly unlike what he has been
in former days. "The balance of his character is broken. Still he is
pious--but even his piety takes an altered aspect. Alas for him! The
bird which once rose to heights unattained before by mortal pinion,
filling the air with its joyful songs, now lies with maimed wing upon
the ground, pouring forth its doleful cries to God." He has scarcely
begun to descend the declivity of life, yet he appears infirm and old.
He is as one who goes down to the grave mourning. Thus does he seem to
Bathsheba as he sits before her. But there is more in David thus humble,
contri