EDWARD MOLTON TO GEORGE STAFFORD.
The disorder has terminated. Another victim---another
woman---queen-like and beautiful---made for dominion---have
I seen, at my feet, weltering in her own
blood. Another human being---another!---by the same
dark and unsparing fatality, which has pursued me from
my childhood, have I been the means of destroying, without
even wishing for it. How is this, Stafford? How
are we to account for that appetite for blood, which
some men seem to have from nature? How are we to
account, too, for that unerring certainty, with which a
rebellious spirit is made to perform, whether it will or
not, when it imagines itself the furthest from it, too, the
decrees of heaven? I have just awakened, as from a long
trance. I look at my almanack—at the papers that lie
before me—and their dates would persuade me, that I
have been asleep, or worse, for many weeks. Helen
tells me, to be sure, that I have been very sick, very—
but she does not tell me the truth, I fear. Stafford, I have
been mad. Two months have passed, since I stood by
a woman, who slew herself in my presence—whose hot
blood spouted from her very heart, upon my lips and
nostrils. My brain turned on the spot. I have just recovered—and
all that has passed, for many a month, appears
to me, like a dream. Nay, were it not for a certain
feeling in my side; and certain spectres, that beset
me, continually, sleeping or waking, I should be brought
to question, very seriously, my own identity. Stay, I
shall be unable to finish this, to-day. I must put it by;
and when I am more entirely myself, I will renew the
subject, upon which I wrote you last. What was it,
Stafford? It is a long, long time since. Was it not theology?
Or was it—Yes, it was painting. I remember
it, now.
