Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 329: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HER ROYAL LOVER, 321 longer a single instant of peace; no longer an hour of sleep! Always the cold sweat of terror pene- trating even to your entrails. At the lightest step which treads the soil, at the least sound of the bell, one would like to conceal one’s self, to disappear. Before the most candid, the most indifferent regard, one trembles. When a door rattles, when a mouth opens to speak, one has a shock. Ah! to escape from this hideous remorse, one would like to flee to stupefy one’s self! But though one may go to the uttermost parts of the earth, it follows you every- where, because it is a part of yourself! And one continues to live, with this slender poniard plunged in his wound, and keeping the wound always bleeding. One feels that reason will at last es- cape, in such a collapse of the mental equilibrium. Half-mad, one contemplates suicide; but the honor of disappearing in the tomb pursued by your crime restrains you. Ah! itis asolace tocry out all this to some one who can denounce you, seize you, malignant and criminal beast, and make the law and mankind overwhelm you, crush vou, in order that this remorse which agitates and devours you, may be extinguished, and annihilated at last in the bloody debris that the basket of the guillotine bears away !” Heiligenthal could not finish. As he was speak- ing Mineleko, suddenly endeavored, convulsively, to arise while uttering a rattle: “I suffocate—I——” He could not even complete this sentence. A lacerating cough strangled him, then a stream of blood, at first quite slender, escaped from his lips and saturated his shirt. Then this stream increas- ing, flowing from his mouth like a bubbling spring, became a torrent. Heiligenthal ran to the bell, At Gomicbooks (E()