This is the worst of all; it now seems to him that he could be
happy and contented with his parched mouth and his throbbing brain
and his rapid pulse, if only he could know that there were no
swelling under the left arm; but dare he try?--In a moment of
calmness and deliberation he dares not, but when for a while he has
writhed under the torture of suspense, a sudden strength of will
drives him to seek and know his fate. He touches the gland, and
finds the skin sane and sound, but under the cuticle there lies a
small lump like a pistol-bullet, that moves as he pushes it. Oh!
but is this for all certainty, is this the sentence of death? Feel
the gland of the other arm; there is not the same lump exactly, yet
something a little like it: have not some people glands naturally
enlarged?--would to Heaven he were one! So he does for himself the
work of the plague, and when the Angel of Death, thus courted, does
indeed and in truth come, he has only to finish that which has been
so well begun; he passes his fiery hand over the brain of the
victim, and lets him rave for a season, but all chance-wise, of
people and things once dear, or of people and things indifferent.
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