Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 4. Chapter IV (continued)

'Till that time,' renewed the widow's son, 'I had been as other men: thoughtless, not abandoned; taking no heed, but of the things of love and life; nay, I had inclined to the gloomy faith of the earthly Sadducee! But, raised from the dead, from awful and desert dreams that these lips never dare reveal--recalled upon earth, to testify the powers of Heaven--once more mortal, the witness of immortality; I drew a new being from the grave. O faded--O lost Jerusalem!--Him from whom came my life, I beheld adjudged to the agonized and parching death! Far in the mighty crowd I saw the light rest and glimmer over the cross; I heard the hooting mob, I cried aloud, I raved, I threatened--none heeded me--I was lost in the whirl and the roar of thousands! But even then, in my agony and His own, methought the glazing eye of the Son of Man sought me out--His lip smiled, as when it conquered death--it hushed me, and I became calm. He who had defied the grave for another--what was the grave to him? The sun shone aslant the pale and powerful features, and then died away! Darkness fell over the earth; how long it endured, I know not. A loud cry came through the gloom--a sharp and bitter cry!--and all was silent.

'But who shall tell the terrors of the night?' I walked along the city--the earth reeled to and fro, and the houses trembled to their base--the living had deserted the streets, but not the Dead: through the gloom I saw them glide--the dim and ghastly shapes, in the cerements of the grave--with horror, and woe, and warning on their unmoving lips and lightless eyes!--they swept by me, as I passed--they glared upon me--I had been their brother; and they bowed their heads in recognition; they had risen to tell the living that the dead can rise!'

Again the old man paused, and, when he resumed, it was in a calmer tone.

'From that night I resigned all earthly thought but that of serving HIM. A preacher and a pilgrim, I have traversed the remotest corners of the earth, proclaiming His Divinity, and bringing new converts to His fold. I come as the wind, and as the wind depart; sowing, as the wind sows, the seeds that enrich the world.