The Last Man
beyond the ocean which begirt his lonely island, thousands lived whom
the sun enlightened when it shone also on him: beneath the meridian sun
and visiting moon, I alone bore human features; I alone could give
articulation to thought; and, when I slept, both day and night were
unbeheld of any. He had fled from his fellows, and was transported with
terror at the print of a human foot. I would have knelt down and
worshipped the same. The wild and cruel Caribbee, the merciless
Cannibal—or worse than these, the uncouth, brute, and remorseless
veteran in the vices of civilization, would have been to me a beloved
companion, a treasure dearly prized—his nature would be kin to mine;
his form cast in the same mould; human blood would flow in his veins; a
human sympathy must link us for ever. It cannot be that I shall never
behold a fellow being more!—never! —never!—not in the course of
years!—Shall I wake, and speak to none, pass the interminable hours, my
soul, islanded in the world, a solitary point, surrounded by vacuum?
Will day follow day endlessly thus? —No! no! a God rules the
world—providence has not exchanged its golden sceptre for an aspic’s
sting. Away! let me fly from the ocean-grave, let me depart from this
barren nook, paled in, as it is, from access by its own desolateness;
let me tread once again the paved towns; step over the threshold of
man’s dwellings, and most certainly I shall find this thought a
horrible vision—a maddening, but evanescent dream.
I entered Ravenna, (the town nearest to the spot whereon I had been
cast), before the second sun had set on the empty world; I saw many
living creatures; oxen, and horses, and dogs, but there was no man
among them; I entered a cottage, it was vacant; I ascended the marble
stairs of a palace, the bats and the owls were nestled in the tapestry;
I stepped softly, not to awaken the sleeping town: I rebuked a dog,
that by yelping disturbed the sacred stillness; I would not believe
that all was as it seemed—The world was not dead, but I was mad; I was
deprived of sight, hearing, and sense of touch; I was labouring under
the force of a spell, which permitted me to behold all sights of earth,
except its human inhabitants; they were pursuing their ordinary
labours. Every house had its inmate; but I could not perceive them. If
I could have deluded myself into a belief of this kind, I should have
been far more satisfied. But my brain, tenacious of its reason, refused
to lend itself to such imaginations—and though I endeavoured to play
the antic to myself, I knew that I, the offspring of man, during long
years one among many—now remained sole survivor of my species.
The sun sank behind the western hills; I had fasted since the preceding
evening, but, though faint and weary, I loathed food, nor ceased, while
yet a ray of light remained, to pace the lonely streets. Night came on,
and sent every living creature but me to the bosom of its mate. It was
my solace, to blunt my mental agony by personal hardship—of the
thousand beds around, I would not seek the luxury of one; I lay down on
the pavement,—a cold marble step served me for a pillow—midnight came;
and then, though not before, did my wearied lids shut out the sight of
the twinkling stars, and their reflex on the pavement near. Thus I
passed the second night of my desolation.
CHAPTER X.
I awoke in the morning, just as the higher windows of the lofty houses
received the first beams of the rising sun. The birds were chirping,
perched on the windows sills and deserted thresholds of the doors. I
awoke, and my first thought was, Adrian and Clara are dead. I no longer
shall be hailed by their good-morrow—or pass the long day in their
society. I shall never see them more. The ocean has robbed me of
them—stolen their hearts of love from their breasts, and given over to
corruption what was dearer to me than light, or life, or hope.
I was an untaught shepherd-boy, when Adrian deigned to confer on me his
friendship. The best years of my life had been passed with him. All I
had possessed of this world’s goods, of happiness, knowledge, or
virtue—I owed to him. He had, in his person, his intellect, and rare
qualities, given a glory to my life, which without him it had never
known. Beyond all other beings he had taught me, that goodness, pure
and single, can be an attribute of man. It was a sight for angels to
congregate to behold, to view him lead, govern, and solace, the last
days of the human race.
My lovely Clara also was lost to me—she who last of the daughters of
man, exhibited all those feminine and maiden virtues, which poets,
painters, and sculptors, have in their various languages strove to
express. Yet, as far as she was concerned, could I lament that she was
removed in early youth from the certain advent of misery? Pure she was
of soul, and all her intents were holy. But her heart was the throne of
love, and the sensibility her lovely countenance expressed, was the
prophet of many woes, not the less deep and drear, because she would
have for ever concealed them.
These two wondrously endowed beings had been spared from the universal
wreck, to be my companions during the last year of solitude. I had
felt, while they were with me, all their worth. I was conscious that
every other sentiment, regret, or passion had by degrees merged into a
yearning, clinging affection for them. I had not forgotten the sweet
partner of my youth, mother of my children, my adored Idris; but I saw
at least a part of her spirit alive again in her brother; and after,
that by Evelyn’s death I had lost what most dearly recalled her to me;
I enshrined her memory in Adrian’s form, and endeavoured to confound
the two dear ideas. I sound the depths of my heart, and try in vain to
draw thence the expressions that can typify my love for these remnants
of my race. If regret and sorrow came athwart me, as well it might in
our solitary and uncertain state, the clear tones of Adrian’s voice,
and his fervent look, dissipated the gloom; or I was cheered unaware by
the mild content and sweet resignation Clara’s cloudless brow and deep
blue eyes expressed. They were all to me—the suns of my benighted
soul—repose in my weariness—slumber in my sleepless woe. Ill, most ill,
with disjointed words, bare and weak, have I expressed the feeling with
which I clung to them. I would have wound myself like ivy inextricably
round them, so that the same blow might destroy us. I would have
entered and been a part of them—so that
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
even now I had accompanied them to their new and incommunicable abode.
Never shall I see them more. I am bereft of their dear converse—bereft
of sight of them. I am a tree rent by lightning; never will the bark
close over the bared fibres—never will their quivering life, torn by
the winds, receive the opiate of a moment’s balm. I am alone in the
world— but that expression as yet was less pregnant with misery, than
that Adrian and Clara are dead.
The tide of thought and feeling rolls on for ever the same, though the
banks and shapes around, which govern its course, and the reflection in
the wave, vary. Thus the sentiment of immediate loss in some sort
decayed, while that of utter, irremediable loneliness grew on me with
time. Three days I wandered through Ravenna—now thinking only of the
beloved beings who slept in the oozy caves of ocean—now looking forward
on the dread blank before me; shuddering to make an onward
step—writhing at each change that marked the progress of the hours.
For three days I wandered to and fro in this melancholy town. I passed
whole hours in going from house to house, listening whether I could
detect some lurking sign of human existence. Sometimes I rang at a
bell; it tinkled through the vaulted rooms, and silence succeeded to
the sound. I called myself hopeless, yet still I hoped; and still
disappointment ushered in the hours, intruding the cold, sharp steel
which first pierced me, into the aching festering wound. I fed like a
wild beast, which seizes its food only when stung by intolerable
hunger. I did not change my garb, or seek the shelter of a roof, during
all those days. Burning heats, nervous irritation, a ceaseless, but
confused flow of thought, sleepless nights, and days instinct with a
frenzy of agitation, possessed me during that time.
As the fever of my blood encreased, a desire of wandering came upon me.
I remember, that the sun had set on the fifth day after my wreck, when,
without purpose or aim, I quitted the town of Ravenna. I must have been
very ill. Had I been possessed by more or less of delirium, that night
had surely been my last; for, as I continued to walk on the banks of
the Mantone, whose upward course I followed, I looked wistfully on the
stream, acknowledging to myself that its pellucid waves could medicine
my woes for ever, and was unable to account to myself for my tardiness
in seeking their shelter from the poisoned arrows of thought, that were
piercing me through and through. I walked a considerable part of the
night, and excessive weariness at length conquered my repugnance to the
availing myself of the deserted habitations of my species. The waning
moon, which had just risen, shewed me a cottage, whose neat entrance
and trim garden reminded me of my own England. I lifted up the latch of
the door and entered. A kitchen first presented itself, where, guided
by the moon beams, I found materials for striking a light. Within this
was a bed room; the couch was furnished with sheets of snowy whiteness;
the wood piled on the hearth, and an array as for a meal, might almost
have deceived me into the dear belief that I had here found what I had
so long sought—one survivor, a companion for my loneliness, a solace to
my despair. I steeled myself against the delusion; the room itself was
vacant: it was only prudent, I repeated to myself, to examine the rest
of the house. I fancied that I was proof against the expectation; yet
my heart beat audibly, as I laid my hand on the lock of each door, and
it sunk again, when I perceived in each the same vacancy. Dark and
silent they were as vaults; so I returned to the first chamber,
wondering what sightless host had spread the materials for my repast,
and my repose. I drew a chair to the table, and examined what the
viands were of which I was to partake. In truth it was a death feast!
The bread was blue and mouldy; the cheese lay a heap of dust. I did not
dare examine the other dishes; a troop of ants passed in a double line
across the table cloth; every utensil was covered with dust, with
cobwebs, and myriads of dead flies: these were objects each and all
betokening the fallaciousness of my expectations. Tears rushed into my
eyes; surely this was a wanton display of the power of the destroyer.
What had I done, that each sensitive nerve was thus to be anatomized?
Yet why complain more now than ever? This vacant cottage revealed no
new sorrow— the world was empty; mankind was dead—I knew it well—why
quarrel therefore with an acknowledged and stale truth? Yet, as I said,
I had hoped in the very heart of despair, so that every new impression
of the hard-cut reality on my soul brought with it a fresh pang,
telling me the yet unstudied lesson, that neither change of place nor
time could bring alleviation to my misery, but that, as I now was, I
must continue, day after day, month after month, year after year, while
I lived. I hardly dared conjecture what space of time that expression
implied. It is true, I was no longer in the first blush of manhood;
neither had I declined far in the vale of years—men have accounted mine
the prime of life: I had just entered my thirty-seventh year; every
limb was as well knit, every articulation as true, as when I had acted