And O, what torturing visions were
those in which Charlotte smiled upon him, radiant with health and
happiness; and there had been no such thing as her illness, no such thing
as his grief. And then came hurried dreams, in which Dr. Doddleson was
knocking at the farmhouse door, with the printer of the _Cheapside_. And
then he was a spectator in a mighty theatre, large as those Roman
amphitheatres, wherein the audience seemed a mass of flies, looking down
on the encounter of two other flies, and all the glory of an imperial
court only a little spot of purple and gold, gleaming afar in the
sunshine. To the dreamer it was no surprise that this unknown theatre of
his dreams should be vast as the gladiatorial arena. And then came the
deep thunderous music of innumerable bass-viols and bassoons: and some
one told him it was the first night of a great tragedy. He felt the
breathless hush of expectation; the solemn bass music sank deeper; dark
curtains were drawn aside, with a motion slow and solemn, like the waving
of mountain pines, and there appeared a measureless stage, revealing a
moonlit expanse, thickly studded with the white headstones of unnumbered
graves, and on the foremost of these--revealed to him by what power he
knew not, since mortal sight could never have reached a point so
distant--he read the name of Charlotte Halliday. He awoke with a sharp
cry of pain.
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