We have a power given us in any worst extremity, which props the else feeble mind of man, and enables us to endure the most savage tortures with a stillness of soul which in hours of happiness we could not have imagined. A calm, more dreadful in truth than the tempest, allayed the wild beatings of my heart⁠—a calm like that of the gamester, the suicide, and the murderer, when the last die is on the point of being cast⁠—while the poisoned cup is at the lips⁠—as the deathblow is about to be given.