e,
and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where of necessity we
make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had not
the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to
will it, and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty
Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper
than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then like a chorus the
passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier
cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed.
Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of
innumerable fugitives--I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad,
darkness and lights, tempest and human faces, and at last, with the sense
that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the
world to me, and but a moment allowed--and clasped hands, and
heart-breaking partings, and then--everlasting farewells! And with a
sigh, such as the caves of Hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered
the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated--everlasting
farewells! And again and yet again reverberated--everlasting farewells!

And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud--"I will sleep no more."

But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative which has already
extended to an unreasonable length. Within more spacious limits the
materials which I have used might have been better unfolded, and much
which I have not used might have been added with effect. Perhaps,
however, enough has been given. It now remains that I should say
something of the way in which this conflict of horrors was finally
brought to a crisis. The reader is already aware (from a passage near
the beginning of the introduction to the first part) that the Opium-eater
has, in some way or other, "unwound almost to its final links the
accursed chain which bound him." By what means? To have narrated this
according to the original intention would have far exceeded the space
which can now be allowed. It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason
exists for abridging it, that I should, on a maturer view of the case,
have been exceedingly unwilling to injure, by any such unaffecting
details, the impression of the history itself, as an appeal to the
prudence and the conscience of the yet unconfirmed opium-eater--or even
(though a very inferior consideration) to injure its effect as a
composition. The interest o