it had been previously. The blow had been struck, and he had
borne it. His cruel goddess had shaken her wings and fled: and left him
alone and friendless, but _virtute sua_. And he had to bear him up, at
once the sense of his right and the feeling of his wrongs, his honour and
his misfortune. As I have seen men waking and running to arms at a sudden
trumpet; before emergency a manly heart leaps up resolute; meets the
threatening danger with undaunted countenance; and, whether conquered or
conquering, faces it always. Ah! no man knows his strength or his
weakness, till occasion proves them. If there be some thoughts and actions
of his life from the memory of which a man shrinks with shame, sure there
are some which he may be proud to own and remember; forgiven injuries,
conquered temptations (now and then), and difficulties vanquished by
endurance.

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It was these thoughts regarding the living, far more than any great
poignancy of grief respecting the dead, which affected Harry Esmond whilst
in prison after his trial: but it may be imagined that he could take no
comrade of misfortune into the confidence of his feelings, and they
thought it was remorse and sorrow for his patron's loss which affected the
young man, in error of which opinion he chose to leave them. As a
companion he was so moody and silent that the two officers, his fellow
sufferers, left him to himself mostly, liked little very likely what they
knew of him, consoled themselves with dice, cards, and the bottle, and
whiled away their own captivity in their own way. It seemed to Esmond as
if he lived years in that prison: and was changed and aged when he came
out of it. At certain periods of life we live years of emotion in a few
weeks--and look back on those times, as on great gaps between the old life
and the new. You do not know how much you suffer in those critical
maladies of the heart, until the disease is over and you look back on it
afterwards. During the time, the suffering is at least sufferable. The day
passes in more or less of pain, and the night wears away somehow. 'Tis
only in after-days that we see what the danger has been--as a man out
a-hunting or riding for his life looks at a leap, and wonders how he
should have survived the taking of it. O dark months of grief and rage! of
wrong and cruel endurance! He is old now who recalls you. Long ago he has
forgiven and blest the soft hand that w