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Updated: June 21, 2025
The slumberer roused in darkness by the relentless insane-seeming bell which hales him to duty, melts at the charms of sleep, and feels that logic is with him in his preference of his pillow; but the tireless revolving world outside, nature's pitiless antagonist, has hung one of its balances about him, and his actions are directed by the state of the scales, wherein duty weighs deep and desireability swings like a pendant doll: so he throws on his harness, astounded, till his blood quickens with work, at the round of sacrifices demanded of nature: which is indeed curious considering what we are taught here and there as to the infallibility of our august mother.
'God of my fathers! said Alroy, 'I am a poor, weak thing, and my life has been a life of dreams and visions, and I have sometimes thought my brain lacked a sufficient master; where am I? Do I sleep or live? Am I a slumberer or a ghost? This trial is too much. He sank down, and hid his face in his hands: his over-exerted mind appeared to desert him: he wept.
He could not tell how many hours elapsed; but, a while after midnight, the torpid senses of the slumberer were awaken'd by a startling shock. It was a cry as of a strong man in his agony a shrill, not very loud cry, but fearful, and creeping into the blood like cold, polish'd steel. The old man raised himself in his seat and listen'd, at once fully awake.
After Annette had counted every Indian, and convinced herself that one and all were soundly sleeping, and that Jean in his tent was the deepest slumberer of all, she whispered softly. "Remain you here, Julie. Should I be discovered fly instantly and take horse. Don't tarry for me. Peace, ma petite amie; I go."
Why did I accept his hand, when I could have made him happy as a friend, and when another could have made him happy as a wife? And now, look here on this unhappy slumberer. I tremble for the moment when she will recover out of this half death-sleep into consciousness. How can she endure to live?
Evidently the slumberer, deep in dreamless sleep, would not interfere with Chauvelin's trap for catching that cunning Scarlet Pimpernel. Again he rubbed his hands together, and, following the example of Sir Percy Blakeney, he too, stretched himself out in the corner of another sofa, shut his eyes, opened his mouth, gave forth sounds of peaceful breathing, and . . . waited!
There, not on broidered cushions, but by preference on the hard floor, without coverlid, lay Lysander calmly sleeping, his crimson warlike cloak, weather-stained, partially wrapt around him; no pillow to his head but his own right arm. By the light of the high lamp that stood within the pavilion, Pausanias contemplated the slumberer. "He says he loves me, and yet can sleep," he murmured bitterly.
For some time the physician gazed in deep thought at the pale face of the unconscious slumberer. Suddenly turning to the Nubian, he said to him: "Ali, where does your master keep the drugs he has been for years accustomed to take?" The Nubian stared in mute amazement, but moved not from his rug. "Ali," said Dr. Orfila, sternly, "unless I see and know those drugs, this night your master dies."
Such callousness was to Janice a source of indignation, and as she debated whether she should wake the slumberer and make her explanation, or punish his apathy by letting him sleep, Mrs. Meredith's voice calling her name in a not-to-be-misunderstood tone turned the balance, and, flying up the servants' stairway, Janice was able to answer her mother's third call from her own room.
Miriam released the young man's hand, but suffered one of her own to lie close to his, and waited a moment to see whether he would make any effort to retain it. There was much depending upon that simple experiment. With a deep sigh as when, sometimes, a slumberer turns over in a troubled dream Donatello changed his position, and clasped both his hands over his forehead.
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