through dazzling rings of light, and I fell forward in the cart and hung
by my chains among the hoofs of the trampling horses who dragged me. On
that day I had taken my last step; I never set foot on the round earth
again. But, with all, I smiled through my groans; for the shining, solid
hoofs that did their work on me did their work as well on the man who
walked by my side,--dashed dead the accursed Neapolitan.

They were not the surgeons of Naples who essayed to galvanize volition
through my paralyzed limbs, but those who knew the utmost resources of
their art. And so I lived,--lived, too, by reason of my inextinguishable
vitality, by reason of this spark that will not quench,--and so I came
to Hellberg. It would have been mockery to give this shapeless hulk to
sentence, and then to headsman or hangman; perhaps, too, her haughty
name had been involved; and so I was never brought to trial, and so I am
at Hellberg.

And I have never set foot on the ground again. But, oh, to touch it
for a moment, to sit anywhere on the summer mould, to pull down the
sun-quivering, sun-steeped branches about me, to scent the fresh grass
as it springs to the light! Oh. but to touch the sweet, kind earth, the
warm earth, silent with ineffable tenderness and soothing, to feel it
under my hand, to lay my cheek there for a moment, while it drew away
pain and weariness with its absorbing, purifying power! Oh, but to lie
once more where the blossoms grow! Soon, soon, they will grow above me!
Soon the kind mother will cover me!

* * * * *

What had happened in the outer world I knew not till you came. I fancied