and the liquor spilt. Middlemas dealt a blow
to the assailant, which was amply and heartily repaid,
and a combat would have ensued, but for the interference
of the superintendent and his assistants, who, with
a dexterity that showed them well acquainted with
such emergencies, clapped a straight-waistcoat upon
each of the antagonists. Richard’s efforts
at remonstrance only procured him a blow from Captain
Seelencooper’s rattan, and a tender admonition
to hold his tongue, if he valued a whole skin.
Irritated at once by sufferings of the mind and of
the body, tormented by raging thirst, and by the sense
of his own dreadful situation, the mind of Richard
Middlemas seemed to be on the point of becoming unsettled.
He felt an insane desire to imitate and reply to the
groans, oaths, and ribaldry, which, as soon as the
superintendent quitted the hospital, echoed around
him. He longed, though he struggled against the
impulse, to vie in curses with the reprobate, and in
screams with the maniac. But his tongue clove
to the roof of his mouth, his mouth itself seemed
choked with ashes; there came upon him a dimness of
sight, a rushing sound in his ears, and the powers
of life were for a time suspended.
A wise physician, skill’d our wounds
to heal,
Is more than armies to the common weal.
POPE’S
Homer.
As Middlemas returned to his senses, he was sensible
that his blood felt more cool; that the feverish throb
of his pulsation was diminished; that the ligatures
on his person were removed, and his lungs performed
their functions more freely. One assistant was
binding up a vein, from which a considerable quantity
of blood had been taken; another, who had just washed
the face of the patient, was holding aromatic vinegar
to his nostrils. As he began to open his eyes,
the person who had just completed the bandage, said
in Latin, but in a very low tone, and without raising
his head, “Annon sis Ricardus ille Middlemas,
ex civitate Middlemassiense? Responde in lingua
Latina.”
“Sum ille miserrimus,” replied Richard,
again shutting his eyes; for, strange as it may seem,
the voice of his comrade Adam Hartley, though his
presence might be of so much consequence in this emergency,
conveyed a pang to his wounded pride. He was
conscious of unkindly, if not hostile, feelings towards
his old companion; he remembered the tone of superiority
which he used to assume over him, and thus to lie stretched
at his feet, and in a manner at his mercy, aggravated
his distress, by the feelings of the dying chieftain,
“Earl Percy sees my fall.” This was,
however, too unreasonable an emotion to subsist above
a minute. In the next, he availed himself of
the Latin language, with which both were familiar,
(for in that time the medical studies at the celebrated
University of Edinburgh were, in a great measure, conducted
in Latin,) to tell in a few words his own folly, and
the villany of Hillary.
