Page:Prose works, from the original editions (Volume 1).djvu/53

 wretched Verezzi perceived his situation—overcome by agonising reflection, he relapsed into insensibility.

One fit rapidly followed another, and at last, in a state of the wildest delirium, he was conveyed to bed.

Matilda found that a too eager impatience had carried her too far. She had prepared herself for violent grief, but not for the paroxysms of madness which now seemed really to have seized the brain of the devoted Verezzi.

She sent for a physician—he arrived, and his opinion of Verezzi's danger almost drove the wretched Matilda to desperation.

Exhausted by contending passions, she threw herself on a sofa; she thought of the deeds which she had perpetrated to gain Verezzi's love; she considered that should her purpose be defeated at the very instant which her heated imagination had portrayed as the commencement of her triumph: should all the wickedness, all the crimes, into which she had plunged herself, be of no avail—this idea, more than remorse for her enormities, affected her.

She sat for a time absorbed in a confusion of contending thought; her mind was the scene of anarchy and horror; at last, exhausted by their own violence, a deep, a desperate calm, took possession of her faculties. She started from the sofa, and, maddened by the idea of Verezzi's danger, sought his apartment.

On a bed lay Verezzi.

A thick film overspread his eye, and he seemed sunk in insensibility.

Matilda approached him. She pressed her burning lips to his. She took his hand—it was cold, and at intervals slightly agitated by convulsions.

A deep sigh at this instant burst from his lips—a momentary hectic flushed his cheek, as the miserable Verezzi attempted to rise.

Matilda, though almost too much agitated to com