I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased to
beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses were
unusually active, although eccentrically so--assuming often each
other's functions at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably
confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. The
rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my lips to the
last, affected me with sweet fancies of flowers--fantastic flowers,
far more lovely than any of the old Earth, but whose prototypes we
have here blooming around us. The eye-lids, transparent and bloodless,
offered no complete impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance,
the balls could not roll in their sockets--but all objects within the
range of the visual hemisphere were seen with more or less
distinctness; the rays which fell upon the external retina, or into
the corner of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which
struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in the former instance,
this effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only as
_sound_--sound sweet or discordant as the matters presenting
themselves at my side were light or dark in shade--curved or angular
in outline. The hearing, at the same time, although excited in degree,
was not irregular in action--estimating real sounds with an
extravagance of precision, not less than of sensibility.
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