and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes—­the presence of something unknown and pitiless.  For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me:  to the utterly miserable—­the unloving and the unloved—­there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils.  And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death—­the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain.

Things were in this state near the end of the seventh year.  I had become entirely free from insight, from my abnormal cognizance of any other consciousness than my own, and instead of intruding involuntarily into the world of other minds, was living continually in my own solitary future.  Bertha was aware that I was greatly changed.  To my surprise she had of late seemed to seek opportunities of remaining in my society, and had cultivated that kind of distant yet familiar talk which is customary between a husband and wife who live in polite and irrevocable alienation.  I bore this with languid submission, and without feeling enough interest in her motives to be roused into keen observation; yet I could not help perceiving something triumphant and excited in her carriage and the expression of her face—­something too subtle to express itself in words or tones, but giving one the idea that she lived in a state of expectation or hopeful suspense.  My chief feeling was satisfaction that her inner self was once more shut out from me; and I almost revelled for the moment in the absent melancholy that made me answer her at cross purposes, and betray utter ignorance of what she had been saying.  I remember well the look and the smile with which she one day said, after a mistake of this kind on my part:  “I used to think you were a clairvoyant, and that was the reason why you were so bitter against other clairvoyants, wanting to keep your monopoly; but I see now you have become rather duller than the rest of the world.”

I said nothing in reply.  It occurred to me that her recent obtrusion of herself upon me might have been prompted by the wish to test my power of detecting some of her secrets; but I let the thought drop again at once:  her motives and her deeds had no interest for me, and whatever pleasures she might be seeking, I had no wish to baulk her.  There was still pity in my soul for every living thing, and Bertha was living—­was surrounded with possibilities of misery.

Just at this time there occurred an event which roused me somewhat from my inertia, and gave me an interest in the passing moment that I had thought impossible for me.  It was a visit from Charles Meunier, who had written me word that he was coming to England for relaxation from too strenuous labour, and would like too see me.  Meunier had now a European reputation; but his letter to me expressed that keen remembrance of an early regard, an early debt of sympathy, which is inseparable from nobility of character:  and I too felt as if his presence would be to me like a transient resurrection into a happier pre-existence.