rests appeared also to have lost half their beauty. Their
hues' were dim and in some places faded away altogether. I watched
Animula for hours with a breaking heart, and she seemed absolutely to
wither away under my very eye. Suddenly I remembered that I had not
looked at the water-drop for several days. In fact, I hated to see it;
for it reminded me of the natural barrier between Animula and myself.
I hurriedly looked down on the stage of the microscope. The slide was
still there--but, great heavens, the water drop had vanished! The awful
truth burst upon me; it had evaporated, until it had become so minute
as to be invisible to the naked eye; I had been gazing on its last atom,
the one that contained Animula--and she was dying!

I rushed again to the front of the lens and looked through. Alas! the
last agony had seized her. The rainbow-hued forests had all melted away,
and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be a spot of dim
light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so round and lovely
shriveling up into nothings; the eyes--those eyes that shone like
heaven--being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now
lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle
of the blackening form--and I fainted.

When I awoke out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid
the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as it.
I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise for many months.

They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken. I am poor, for I have
neither the heart nor the will to work; all my money is spent, and I
live on charity. Young men's associations that love a joke invite me to
lecture on optics before them, for which they pay me, and laugh at me
while I lecture. "Linley, the mad microscopist," is the name I go by. I
suppose that I talk incoherently while I lecture. Who could talk sense
when his brain is haunted by such ghastly memories, while ever and anon
among the shapes of death I behold the radiant form of my lost Animula!

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Diamond Lens, by Fitz-James O'brien

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DIAMOND LENS ***

***** This file should be named 23169.txt or 23169.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/1/6/23169/

Produced by David Widger

Updated editions will replace the previous one-