Maurice Tiernay by Charles Lever

Author:Charles Lever
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

CHAPTER XXVIII. SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES

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I WENT TO BED AT night in all apparent health; save from the flurry and excitement of an anxious mind, I was in no respect different from my usual mood; and yet, when I awoke next morning, my head was distracted with a racking pain, cramps were in all my limbs, and I could not turn or even move without intense suffering. The long exposure to rain, while my mind was in a condition of extreme excitement, had brought on an attack of fever, and before evening set in, I was raving in wild delirium. Every scene I had passed through, each eventful incident of my life, came flashing in disjointed portions through my poor brain, and I raved away of France, of Germany, of the dreadful days of terror, and the fearful orgies of the ‘Revolution.’ Scenes of strife and struggle—the terrible conflicts of the streets—all rose before me; and the names of every blood-stained hero of France now mingled with the obscure titles of Irish insurrection.

What narratives of my early life I may have given—what stories I may have revealed of my strange career, I cannot tell; but the interest my kind hosts took in me grew stronger every day. There was no care nor kindness they did not lavish on me. Taking alternate nights to sit up with me, they watched beside my bed like brothers. All that affection could give they rendered me; and even from their narrow fortunes they paid a physician, who came from a distant town to visit me. When I was sufficiently recovered to leave my bed, and sit at the window, or stroll slowly in the garden, I became aware of the full extent to which their kindness had carried them, and in the precautions for secrecy I saw the peril to which my presence exposed them. From an excess of delicacy towards me, they did not allude to the subject, nor show the slightest uneasiness about the matter; but day by day some little circumstance would occur, some slight and trivial fact reveal the state of anxiety they lived in.

They were averse, too, from all discussion of late events, and either answered my questions vaguely or with a certain reserve; and when I hinted at my hope of being soon able to appear before a magistrate and establish my claim as a French citizen, they replied that the moment was an unfavourable one: the lenity of the Government had latterly been abused, their gracious intentions misstated and perverted—that, in fact, a reaction towards severity had occurred, and military law and courts-martial were summarily disposing of cases that a short time back would have received the mildest sentences of civil tribunals. It was clear, from all they said, that if the rebellion was suppressed, the insurrectionary feeling was not extinguished, and that England was the very reverse of tranquil on the subject of Ireland.

It was to no purpose that I repeated my personal indifference to all these

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