Any person who hath ever been in love may easily imagine what I felt in my mind on receiving those orders; and what still heightened my torments was, that the commanding officer would not permit any one to go out of the garrison that evening; so that I had not even an opportunity of taking leave of my beloved.
"The morning came which was to have put me in the possession of my wishes; but, alas! the scene was now changed, and all the hopes which I had raised were now so many ghosts to haunt, and furies to torment me.
"It was now the midst of winter, and very severe weather for the season; when we were obliged to make very long and fatiguing marches, in which we suffered all the inconveniences of cold and hunger.

The night in which I expected to riot in the arms of my beloved mistress I was obliged to take up with a lodging on the ground, exposed to the inclemencies of a rigid frost; nor could I obtain the least comfort of sleep, which shunned me as its enemy.
"In short, the horrors of that night are not to be described, or perhaps imagined.

They made such an impression on my soul, that I was forced to be dipped three times in the river Lethe to prevent my remembering it in the characters which I afterwards performed in the flesh." Here I interrupted Julian for the first time, and told him no such dipping had happened to me in my voyage from one world to the other: but he satisfied me by saying "that this only happened to those spirits which returned into the flesh, in order to prevent that reminiscence which Plato mentions, and which would otherwise cause great confusion in the other world." He then proceeded as follows: "We continued a very laborious march to Exeter, which we were ordered to besiege.

The town soon surrendered, and his majesty built a castle there, which he garrisoned with his Normans, and unhappily I had the misfortune to be one of the number.
"Here we were confined closer than I had been at Dover; for, as the citizens were extremely disaffected, we were never suffered to go without the walls of the castle; nor indeed could we, unless in large bodies, without the utmost danger.

We were likewise kept to continual duty, nor could any solicitations prevail with the commanding officer to give me a month's absence to visit my love, from whom I had no opportunity of hearing in all my long absence.
"However, in the spring, the people being more quiet, and another officer of a gentler temper succeeding to the principal command, I obtained leave to go to Dover; but alas! what comfort did my long journey bring me?
I found the parents of my darling in the utmost misery at her loss; for she had died, about a week before my arrival, of a consumption, which they imputed to her pining at my sudden departure.
"I now fell into the most violent and almost raving fit of despair.