he case, why have you
obeyed the commands of him whose denunciation of you would bring you to
a scaffold? Why, if life be so horrible to you, have you chosen to
accept it at his hands, and pay the heavy price you are doing for it?"

"Because," answered the notary, in a voice that sunk so low as to be
scarcely audible, "because death brings
forgetfulness--annihilation--and then, too, Cecily--"

"What!" said Polidori, "do you still hope?"

"No," said the notary, "I possess--"

"What?"

"The fond impassioned remembrance of her."

"But what folly is this when you are sure never to see her more, and
when she has brought you to a scaffold!"

"That matters not; I love her even more ardently, more frantically than
ever!" exclaimed Jacques Ferrand, amid a torrent of sighs and sobs that
contrasted strongly with the previous gloomy dejection of his last
remark. "Yes," continued he, with fearful wildness, "I love her too well
to be willing to die, while I can feast my senses upon the recollection
only of that night--that memorable night in which I saw her so lovely,
so loving, so fascinating! Never is her image, as I then beheld her,
absent from my brain; waking or sleeping, she is ever before me, decked
in all the intoxicating beauty that was displayed to my impassioned
gaze! Still do her large, lustrous eyes seem to dart forth their fiery
glances, and I almost fancy I can feel her warm breath on my cheek,
while her clear, melodious voice seems ringing its full sounds into my
ear with promises of bliss, alas, never to be mine! Yet, though to live
thus is torturing--horrible--yet would I prefer it to the apathy, the
still nothingness of the grave. No, no, no; let me live, poor, wretched,
despised,--a branded galley-slave, if you will,--but give me yet the
means of doting in secret on the recollection of this wonderful being;
whether she be fiend or angel, yet does she engross my every thought!"

"Jacques," said Polidori, in a voice and manner contrasting strongly
with his habitual tone of cool, provoking sarcasm, "I have witnessed
almost every description of bodily and mental suffering, but certainly
nothing that equalled what you endure. He who holds us in his power
could not have devised more cruel torture than that you are compelled to
endure. You are condemned to live, to await death through a vista of
long, wasting torments, for your description of your feelings fully
explains to me the many alarming symptoms I have o