صفحة 59 من 483

These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my

undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with

study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement.

Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I

clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might

realise. One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which

I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight

labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I

pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the

horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps

of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the

lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the

remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse

urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but

for this one pursuit.