Pickwick Abroad: or, The Tour in France — page 354: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Pickwick Abroad. 293 deceased. A few months were sufficient to arrange all those pecue- niary matters; but instead of finding himself the heir to many—many thousands a-year, my husband’s income was reduced to a few hun- dreds. | This circumstance preyed deeply upon his mind. He was com- pelled to dispose of the old family mansion and his broad lands; and, with an almost broken heart, he returned with me to France. From that period smiles forsook his lips—a deep melancholy seized upon him—he more than ever reverted to the horrible malady which had compelled him to become, instead of a voluntary, an mvoluntary inmate of the Salpetriere; and even my attentions failed sometimes in abstracting his mind from so severe a contemplation of the past. It was with anxiety the most acute, and distress the most poignant, that I perceived my husband—my adored husband, who had passed through so much for me—gradually sinking into a melancholy so pro- found, that I foresaw nothing but the most horrible consequences. One morning I heard him pacing his dressing-room with unusual agitation—muttering to himself strange threats—and reproaching heaven for his misfortunes. A terrible idea flitted across my brain. ““Could he meditate siicide ?” thought I; and in one moment I was at his feet. He held a loaded pistol in his hand—and on the table was a letter addressed to me! | How I survived the terrible scene which ensued, I know not. My first impulse was to snatch the deadly instrument of death from his grasp—my second to clasp his knees and implore him to live, even if it were only for my sake! But at that moment ceased all con- sciousness Of unhappiness on the part of my husband: he laughed wildly—then wept aloud—then laughed again—and, Oh! it was a fearful laugh !—and then he danced about the room, chaunting the burden of a favourite song which he had loved in the days of his early youth. : O Madness! thou hurricane of the passions and the feelings, into which the deluded imagination is plunged ;—Madness! thou parent of suicide, of violent death, of misery, and of woe—how terrible a scourge art thou! Thus with one blow all my dearest and fondest hopes were des- troyed! my husband was conveyed to a private asylum a few leagues from Paris; and in that dwelling he abides xow. Haply, had I resisted the supplications of himself and his father, all this would have been avoided: it 1s my fault—my fault—and only my fault. I am the criminal—I am the weak one who suffered her selfish feel- ings to triumph over her views of rectitude and determination: it is I who +5 consigned a fond husband to a mad-house—Oh! it 1s I —it is L! | But my punishment, self-inflicted, shall be terrible. So long as he, whom I adore, remains within the sad abode to which I have sent him, and to which none may enter, on account of the grievousness of his malady—for those whom he once most loved, he now holds in abhorrence ;—Oh ! so long as he endures the penalty of a too fervent and fatal love, will I submit myself to the same dreaded fate. And the history of my misdeed shall be published to the world—Oh! how my brain wanders—and it shall serve as a fearful lesson to those who, COnnicloookKks (C(O)