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brothers, sisters, and friends who had always loved me. The desire
of seeing them, and long compulsory separation, led me to speak on a
variety of little things, and reveal a thousand thoughts of
gratitude and tenderness, which would not otherwise have occurred to
my mind.
In the same way I took a review of my former life, diverting my
attention by recalling past incidents, and dwelling upon those
happier periods now for ever fled. Often, when the picture I had
thus drawn, and sat contemplating for hours, suddenly vanished from
my sight, and left me conscious only of the fearful present, and
more threatening future, the pen fell from my hand; I recoiled with
horror; the contrast was more than I could bear. These were
terrific moments; I had already felt them, but never with such
intense susceptibility as then. It was agony. This I attributed to
extreme excitement of the passions, occasioned by expressing them in
the form of letters, addressed to persons to whom I was so tenderly
attached.
I turned to other subjects, I determined to change the form of
expressing my ideas, but could not. In whatever way I began, it
always ended in a letter teeming with affection and with grief.
"What," I exclaimed, "am I no more master of my own will? Is this
strange necessity of doing that which I object to, a distortion of
my brain? At first I could have accounted for it; but after being
inured to this solitude, reconciled, and supported by religious
reflections; how have I become the slave of these blind impulses,
these wanderings of heart and mind? let me apply to other matters!"
I then endeavoured to pray; or to weary my attention by hard study
of the German. Alas! I commenced and found myself actually engaged
in writing a letter!
CHAPTER XLV.
Such a state of mind was a real disease, or I know not if it may be
called a kind of somnambulism. Without doubt it was the effect of
extreme lassitude, occasioned by continual thought and watchfulness.
It gained upon me. I grew feverish and sleepless. I left off
coffee, but the disease was not removed. It appeared to me as if I
were two persons, one of them eagerly bent upon writing letters, the
other upon doing something else. "At least," said I, "you shall
write them in German if you do; and we shall learn a little of the
language. Methought HE then set to work, and wrote volumes of bad
German, and he certainly brought me rapidly forward in the study of
it. Towards morning, my mind being wholly exhausted, I fell into a
heavy stupor, during which all those most dear to me haunted my
dreams. I thought that my father and mother were weeping over me; I
heard their lamentations, and suddenly I started out of my sleep
sobbing and affrighted. Sometimes, during short, disturbed
slumbers, I heard my mother's voice, as if consoling others, with
whom she came into my prison, and she addressed me in the most
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