Her description of the process of cleansing the rusty tongues showed ingenuity, and ought, at least to have satisfied those expounders of the compensation-laws of nature, who insist upon it that all our sum-totals of good and ill, correspond, however widely the items in our accounts may vary. In this unexpected and bold manner, Mr. Oldtrack, seeking wool, had the scissors applied to his own back.
After remaining five weeks at home, Mary had returned to school. We were not to see her again till after Christmas, as she and her schoolmates generally would be busy rehearsing the pantomime, which their custom was to enact at this holiday-time, for the delectation of themselves and such kind-hearted school-friends as would lend their assistance in capacity of applauding spectators. We were pleasing ourselves with the dream that, as fragile barks have reached land while strong-built vessels have gone down, perhaps the great Shipowner above, working in His mysterious ways, would waft dear Mary over calm seas, and that she would thus sail onwards after we put into port.
Our dreams were scattered by a letter from the matron. It announced that Mary’s health was suddenly low, and added, that the doctor was urgent she should have the benefit of home. In the greatest alarm, and not without risk,—for by this time the smouldering disease of her brain had burst into flame, and they feared she could not bear removal,—we conveyed her to Elmbury with as much speed as was consistent with extreme care.
She never rallied. All night she lay in stupor, from which the alteration was to spasms of pain. She muttered various of the expressions she had been taught to articulate. “Going home,” she said, “going home.” In particular the word “Ephphatha,” which had manifestly taken strong hold of her imagination. Early in the morning she sat up in bed, and made signs to some imaginary companions, for she took no notice of us. When I gave her the spoonfuls of wine-and-water ordered, she turned on me her dull heavy eye on which no change passed to indicate that she recognised me.
It had been a wild night, but with daylight the storm increased. Vehement gusts tore the old trees in the park, and beat with fury against the window of her sick-room where we were watching. But this rather afforded relief than otherwise, as our thoughts were thereby diverted from a too concentrated fixedness on the desolation that was being wrought inside of the house. Poor Mary sank lower and lower. After a terrific attack of convulsions that lasted some minutes, and made us hold our breath in awe, her strength seemed all but drained away. Unable to sit still I was aimlessly moving about, as if impelled by an instinct to find, in bodily activity, some alleviating resources, when it struck me that to handle her old plaything—the vase she had once been so fond of, would recal her mind. I had heard of inanimate things being recognised when familiar faces were forgotten. But, in my agitation, I threw it down. As I stooped to pick up the fragments a sudden roaring blast shook the house, and the crash of an elm-branch driven with force against the window, the thick sash-bars of which gave way like lucifer-matches, startled us to some purpose. We were busy forcing-to the shutters, endeavouring to bar out the wind, till we could remove our beloved to another room, but the violence of the tempest was too great. It dashed aside the shutters that rang again as they slapped upon the wall, and sweeping like an eddy round the room, stripped the clothes from the sickbed with a vindictiveness of fury that seemed like hatred gratified. As we ran to cover her, another wild blast drove in, through the smashed window, a poor unhappy dove which it had caught straying, and flung it against the wall right above where the child lay, but happily with a spent impetus. Recovering itself the bird fluttered about to avoid being handled, and, by-and-by, reaching the open window—when a lull in the storm occurred—flew out again.
What little life had been in Mary was, by this time quite shaken out. We did not see the breath go from her, and were only sensible that the clay-mask was separate from the spirit which had worn it, when we remarked the growing coldness of the form we continued to watch.
THE FAMOUS CITY OF PRAGUE.
PART II. THE ALT STADT AND NEU STADT.
The Hradschin and Kleine Seite communicate with the Alt Stadt, or Old Town, by the venerable stone bridge built by Charles IV., about the middle of the XIVth century, and the finest structure of its age and purpose remaining in Europe. Each pier is surmounted by colossal statues or groups of various modern periods. One only co-eval with the bridge itself now remains; this is an armed figure resting on his shield, above one of the land piers abutting on the Kleine Seite. The rest are all sacred, or ecclesiastical subjects; a fine work in bronze of the Crucifixion, the statue of St. John Nepomuc, the patron saint of Bohemia, and effigies or groups from passages in the lives of men celebrated in the service of religion or humanity. It is much to be regretted that the general effect is greatly degraded by the vast ice fenders formed of solid oak trunks projected in angles against the stream, but which, however unsightly, are necessary for the protection of the structure at the breaking up of the ice in spring. At the foot of the bridge is a fine statue of Charles IV., recently erected, whose memory is still venerated in Bohemia for his great and patriotic character. The first remarkable building which strikes the eye, after crossing the bridge, is the Clementinum, a vast college, containing five courts and two churches. At the highest state of its prosperity, this college numbered 30,000 students, but the Thirty Years’ War reduced them to 5000, and since they have decreased to a still more inconsiderable number, particularly after the insurrection of 1848, in which the greater part of their body was concerned. The library is rich in magnificently illuminated MSS. of the early and middle ages.
The Town Hall in the Grosse Ring is a striking building, dating from the XIVth century, but the