Madame was long
away. I sat down at the window, and tried to appreciate my dreadful
situation. I was stupid--the imagery was all frightful; but I beheld it as
we sometimes see horrors--heads cut off and houses burnt--in a dream, and
without the corresponding emotions. It did not seem as if all this were
really happening to me. I remember sitting at the window, and looking and
blinking at the opposite side of the building, like a person unable but
striving to see an object distinctly, and every minute pressing my hand to
the side of my head and saying--
'Oh, it won't be--it won't be--Oh no!--never!--it could not be!' And in
this stunned state Madame found me on her return.
But the valley of the shadow of death has its varieties of dread. The
'horror of great darkness' is disturbed by voices and illumed by sights.
There are periods of incapacity and collapse, followed by paroxysms
of active terror. Thus in my journey during those long hours I found
it--agonies subsiding into lethargies, and these breaking again into
frenzy. I sometimes wonder how I carried my reason safely through the
ordeal.
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