Pagina 646 di 896

What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of

the Year One of Liberty--the deluge rising from below, not

falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not

opened!

There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting

rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as

regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning

were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of

it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the

fever of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a

whole city, the executioner showed the people the head of the

king--and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the head of

his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned

widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.