CHAPTER XV


But tell me to what saint, I pray,
What martyr, or what angel bright,
Is dedicate this holy day,
Which brings you here so gaily
dight?
Dost thou not, simple Palmer, know,
What every child can tell thee here?
–
Nor saint nor angel claims this show,
But the bright season of the year.
QUEEN-HOO HALL, BY STRUTT355


'The sole and beautiful inmate of the isle, though disturbed at the
appearance of her worshippers, soon recovered her tranquillity. She
could not be conscious of fear, for nothing of that world in which
she lived had ever borne a hostile appearance to her. The sun and
the shade --the flowers and foliage --the tamarinds and figs that
prolonged her delightful existence --the water that she drank,
wondering at the beautiful being who seemed to drink whenever she
did --the peacocks, who spread out their rich and radiant plumage
the moment they beheld her --and the loxia, who perched on her
shoulder and hand as she walked, and answered her sweet voice
with imitative chirpings --all these were her friends, and she knew
none but these.

'The human forms that sometimes approached the island, caused
her a slight emotion; but it was rather that of curiosity than alarm;
and their gestures were so expressive of reverence and mildness,
their offerings of flowers, in which she delighted, so acceptable, and
their visits so silent and peaceful, that she saw them without
reluctance, and only wondered, as they rowed away, how they
could move on the water in safety; and how creatures so dark, and
with features so unattractive, happened to grow amid the beautiful
flowers they presented to her as the productions of their abode. The
elements might be supposed to have impressed her imagination with
some terrible ideas; but the periodical regularity of these
phoenomena, in the climate she inhabited, divested them of their
terrors to one who had been accustomed to them, as to the
alternation of night and day --who could not remember the fearful
impression of the first, and, above all, who had never heard any
terror of them expressed by another, --perhaps the primitive cause of
fear in most minds. Pain she had never felt --of death she had no
idea --how, then, could she become acquainted with fear?

'When a north-wester, as it is termed, visited the island, with all
its terrific accompaniments of midnight darkness, clouds of
suffocating dust, and thunders like the trumpet of doom, she stood
amid the leafy colonnades of the banyan-tree, ignorant of her
danger, watching the cowering wings and dropping heads of the
birds, and the ludicrous terror of the monkies, as they skipt from
branch to branch with their young. When the lightning struck a tree,
she gazed as a child would on a fire-work played off for its
amusement; but the next day she wept, when she saw the leaves
would no longer grow on the blasted trunk. When the rains
descended in torrents, the ruins of the pagoda afforded her a shelter;
and she sat listening to the rushing of the mighty waters, and the
murmurs of the troubled deep, till her soul took its colour from the
sombrous356 and magnificent imagery around her, and she believed
herself precipitated to earth with the deluge --borne downward, like
a leaf, by a cataract --engulphed in the depths of the ocean --rising
again to light on the swell of the enormous billows, as if she were
heaved on the back of a whale --deafened with the roar --giddy
with the rush --till terror and delight embraced in that fearful
exercise of imagination. So she lived like a flower amid sun and
storm, blooming in the light, and bending to the shower, and
drawing the elements of her sweet and wild existence from both.
And both seemed to mingle their influences kindly for her, as if she
was a thing that nature loved, even in her angry mood, and gave a
commission to the storm to nurture her, and to the deluge to spare
the ark of her innocence, as it floated over the waters. This existence
of felicity, half physical, half imaginative, but neither intellectual or
impassioned, had continued till the seventeenth year of this
beautiful and mild being, when a circumstance occurred that
changed its hue for ever.

'On the evening of the day after the Indians had departed,
Immalee, for that was the name her votarists had given her, was
standing on the shore, when a being approached her unlike any she
had ever beheld. The colour of his face and hands resembled her
own more than those she was accustomed to see, but his garments,
(which were European), from their square uncouthness, their
shapelessness, and their disfiguring projection about the hips, (it
was the fashion of the year 1680), gave her a mixed sensation of
ridicule, disgust, and wonder, which her beautiful features could
express only by a smile --that smile, a native of the face from which
not even surprise could banish it.

'The stranger approached, and the beautiful vision approached
also, but not like an European female with low and graceful
bendings, still less like an Indian girl with her low salams, but like a
young fawn, all animation, timidity, confidence, and cowardice,
expressed in almost a single action. She sprung from the sands --ran
to her favourite tree; --returned again with her guard of peacocks,
who expanded their superb trains with a kind of instinctive motion,
as if they felt the danger that menaced their protectress, and,
clapping her hands with exultation, seemed to invite them to share
in the delight she felt in gazing at the new flower that had grown in
the sand.

'The stranger advanced, and, to Immalee's utter astonishment,
addressed her in the language which she had retained some words
of since her infancy, and had endeavoured in vain to make her
peacocks, parrots, and loxias, answer her in corresponding sounds.
But her language, from want of practice, had become so limited,
that she was delighted to hear its most unmeaning sounds uttered
by human lips; and when he said, according to the form of the
times, 'How do you, fair maid?' she answered, 'God made me,' from
the words of the Christian Catechism that had been breathed into
her infant lip. 'God never made a fairer creature,' replied the
stranger, grasping her hand, and fixing on her eyes that still burn in
the sockets of that arch-deceiver. 'Oh yes!' answered Immalee, 'he
made many things more beautiful. The rose is redder than I am –
the palm-tree is taller than I am --and the wave is bluer than I am; –
but they all change, and I never change. I have grown taller and
stronger, though the rose fades every six moons; and the rock splits
to let in the bats, when the earth shakes; and the waves fight in
their anger till they turn grey, and far different from the beautiful
colour they have when the moon comes dancing on them, and
sending all the young, broken branches of her light to kiss my feet,
as I stand on the soft sand. I have tried to gather them every night,
but they all broke in my hand the moment I dipt it into water.' –
'And have you fared better with the stars?' said the stranger smiling.
--'No,' answered the innocent being, 'the stars are the flowers of
heaven, and the rays of the moon the boughs and branches; but
though they are so bright, they only blossom in the night, --and I
love better the flowers that I can gather, and twine in my hair.
When I have been all night wooing a star, and it has listened and
descended, springing downwards like a peacock from its nest, it has
hid itself often afterwards playfully amid the mangoes and
tamarinds where it fell; and though I have searched for it till the
moon looked wan and weary of lighting me, I never could find it.
But where do you come from? --you are not scaly and voiceless like
those who grow in the waters, and show their strange shapes as I sit
on the shore at sun-set; --nor are you red and diminutive like those
who come over the waters to me from other worlds, in houses that
can live on the deep, and walk so swiftly, with their legs plunged in
the water. Where do you come from? --you are not so bright as the
stars that live in the blue sea above me, nor so deformed as those
that toss in the darker sea at my feet. Where did you grow, and how
came you here? --there is not a canoe on the sand; and though the
shells bear the fish that five in them so lightly over the waters, they
never would bear me. When I placed my foot on their scolloped
edge of crimson and purple, they sunk into the sand.' --'Beautiful
creature,' said the stranger, 'I come from a world where there are
thousands like me.' --'That is impossible,' said Immalee, 'for I five
here alone, and other worlds must be like this.' --'What I tell you is
true, however,' said the stranger. Immalee paused for a moment, as
if making the first effort of reflection --an exertion painful enough
to a being whose existence was composed of felicitous tacts and
unreflecting instincts --and then exclaimed, We both must have
grown in the world of voices, for I know what you say better than
the chirp of the loxia, or the cry of the peacock. That must be a
delightful world where they all speak --what would I give that my
roses grew in the world of answers!'

'At this moment the stranger made certain signals of hunger,
which Immalee understood in a moment, and told him to follow her
to where the tamarind and the fig were shedding their fruit --where
the stream was so clear, you could count the purple shells in its bed
--and where she would scoop for him in the cocoa-shell the cool
waters that flowed beneath the shade of the mango. As they went,
she gave him all the information about herself that she could. She
told him that she was the daughter of a palm-tree, under whose
shade she had been first conscious of existence, but that her poor
father had been long withered and dead --that she was very old,
having seen many roses decay on their stalks; and though they were
succeeded by others, she did not love them so well as the first,
which were a great deal larger and brighter --that, in fact, every
thing had grown smaller latterly, for she was now able to reach to
the fruit which formerly she was compelled to wait for till it dropt
on the ground; --but that the water was grown taller, for once she
was forced to drink it on her hands and knees, and now she could
scoop in a cocoa-shell. Finally, she added, she was much older than
the moon, for she had seen it waste away till it was dimmer than the
light of a fire-fly; and the moon that was lighting them now would
decline too, and its successor be so small, that she would never
again give it the name she had given to the first --Sun of the Night.
'But,' said her companion, 'how are you able to speak a language
you never learned from your loxias and peacocks?' --'I will tell you,'
said Immalee, with an air of solemnity, which her beauty and
innocence made at once ludicrous and imposing, and in which she
betrayed a slight tendency to that wish to mystify that distinguishes
her delightful sex, – 'there came a spirit to me from the world of
voices, and it whispered to me sounds that I never have forgotten,
long, long before I was born.' --'Really?' said the stranger. 'Oh yes! –
long before I could gather a fig, or gather the water in my hand, and
that must be before I was born. When I was born, I was not so high
as the rose-bud, at which I tried to catch, now I am as near the
moon as the palm-tree --sometimes I catch her beams sooner than
he does, therefore I must be very old, and very high.' At these
words, the stranger, with an expression indescribable, leaned
against a tree. He viewed that lovely and helpless being, while he
refused the fruits and water she offered him, with a look, that, for
the first time, intimated compassion. The stranger feeling did not
dwell long in a mansion it was unused to. The expression was soon
exchanged for that half-ironical, half-diabolical glance Immalee
could not understand. 'And you live here alone,' he said, 'and you
have lived in this beautiful place without a companion?' --'Oh no!'
said Immalee, 'I have a companion more beautiful than all the
flowers in the isle. There is not a rose-leaf that drops in the river so
bright as its cheek. My friend lives under the water,357 but its colours
are so bright. It kisses me too, but its lips are very cold; and when I
kiss it, it seems to dance, and its beauty is all broken into a
thousand faces, that come smiling at me like little stars. But, though
my friend has a thousand faces, and I have but one, still there is one
thing that troubles me. There is but one stream where it meets me,
and that is where are no shadows from the trees --and I never can
catch it but when the sun is bright. Then when I catch it in the
stream, I kiss it on my knees; but my friend has grown so tall, that
sometimes I wish it were smaller. Its lips spread so much wider, that
I give it a thousand kisses for one that I get.' 'Is your friend male or
female,' said the stranger. --'What is that?' answered Immalee. --'I
mean, of what sex is your friend?'

'But to this question he could obtain no satisfactory answer; and
it was not till his return the next day, when he revisited the isle,
that he discovered Immalee's friend was what he suspected. He
found this innocent and lovely being bending over a stream that
reflected her image, and wooing it with a thousand wild and
graceful attitudes of joyful fondness. The stranger gazed at her for
some time, and thoughts it would be difficult for man to penetrate
into, threw their varying expression over his features for a moment.
It was the first of his intended victims he had ever beheld with
compunction. The joy, too, with which Immalee received him,
almost brought back human feelings to a heart that had long
renounced them; and, for a moment, he experienced a sensation like
that of his master when he visited paradise,358 --pity for the flowers
he resolved to wither for ever. He looked at her as she fluttered
round him with outspread arms and dancing eyes; and sighed, while
she welcomed him in tones of such wild sweetness, as suited a being
who had hitherto conversed with nothing but the melody of birds
and the murmur of waters. With all her ignorance, however, she
could not help testifying her amazement at his arriving at the isle
without any visible means of conveyance. He evaded answering her
on this point, but said, 'Immalee, I come from a world wholly unlike
that you inhabit, amid inanimate flowers, and unthinking birds. I
come from a world where all, as I do, think and speak.' Immalee
was speechless with wonder and delight for some time; at length she
exclaimed, 'Oh, how they must love each other! even I love my poor
birds and flowers, and the trees that shade, and the waters that sing
to me!' The stranger smiled. 'In all that world, perhaps there is
not another being beautiful and innocent as you. It is a world of
suffering, guilt, and care.' It was with much difficulty she was made
to comprehend the meaning of these words,359 but when she did,
she exclaimed, 'Oh, that I could live in that world, for I would make
every one happy!' --'But you could not, Immalee,' said the stranger;
'this world is of such extent that it would take your whole life to
traverse it, and, during your progress, you never could be conver-
sant with more than a small number of sufferers at a time, and the
evils they undergo are in many instances such as you or no human
power could relieve.' At these words, Immalee burst into an agony
of tears. 'Weak, but lovely being,' said the stranger, 'could your
tears heal the corrosions of disease? --cool the burning throb of
a cancered heart? --wash the pale slime from the clinging lips of
famine? --or, more than all, quench the fire of forbidden passion?'
Immalee paused aghast at this enumeration, and could only faulter
out, that wherever she went, she would bring her flowers and sun-
shine among the healthy, and they should all sit under the shade
of her own tamarind. That for disease and death, she had long been
accustomed to see flowers wither and die their beautiful death of
nature. 'And perhaps,' she added, after a reflective pause, 'as I
have often known them to retain their delicious odour even after
they were faded, perhaps what thinks 360 may live too after the form
has faded, and that is a thought of joy.' Of passion, she said she
knew nothing, and could propose no remedy for an evil she was
unconscious of. She had seen flowers fade with the season, but
could not imagine why the flower should destroy itself. 'But did you
never trace a worm in the flower?' said the stranger, with the
sophistry of corruption. 'Yes,' answered Immalee, 'but the worm was
not the native of the flower; its own leaves never could have hurt it.'
This led to a discussion, which Immalee's impregnable innocence,
though combined with ardent curiosity and quick apprehension,
rendered perfectly harmless to her. Her playful and desultory
answers, --her restless eccentricity of imagination, --her keen and
piercing, though ill-poised intellectual weapons, --and, above all,
her instinctive and unfailing tact in matters of right and wrong,
formed altogether an array that discomfited and baffled the tempter
more than if he had been compelled to encounter half the wranglers361
of the European academies of that day. In the logic of the schools he
was well-versed, but in this logic of the heart and of nature, he was
'ignorance itself.' It is said, that the 'awless lion' crouches before
'a maid in the pride of her purity.'362 The tempter was departing
gloomily, when he saw tears start from the bright eyes of Immalee,
and caught a wild and dark omen from her innocent grief. 'And you
weep, Immalee?' 'Yes,' said the beautiful being, 'I always weep
when I see the sun set in clouds; and will you, the sun of my heart,
set in darkness too? and will you not rise again? will you not?' and,
with the graceful confidence of pure innocence, she pressed her red
delicious lip to his hand as she spoke. 'Will you not? I shall never
love my roses and peacocks if you do not return, for they cannot
speak to me as you do, nor can I give them one thought, but you can
give me many. Oh, I would like to have many thoughts about the
world that suffers from which you came; and I believe you came
from it, for, till I saw you, I never felt a pain that was not pleasure;
but now it is all pain when I think you will not return.' --‘I will
return,' said the stranger, ‘beautiful Immalee, and will shew you, at
my return, a glimpse of that world from which I come, and in which
you will soon be an inmate.' --‘But shall I see you there,' said
Immalee, ‘otherwise how shall I talk thoughts?' --‘Oh yes, --oh
certainly.' --‘But why do you repeat the same words twice; your once
would have been enough.' --‘Well then, yes.' --‘Then take this rose
from me, and let us inhale its odour together, as I say to my friend
in the fountain, when I bend to kiss it; but my friend withdraws its
rose363 before I have tasted it, and I leave mine on the water. Will
you not take my rose,' said the beautiful suppliant, bending towards
him. ‘I will,' said the stranger; and he took a flower from the cluster
Immalee held out to him. It was a withered one. He snatched it, and
hid it in his breast. ‘And will you go without a canoe across that
dark sea?' said Immalee. --‘We shall meet again, and meet in the
world of suffering said the stranger. --‘Thank you, --oh, thank you,'
repeated Immalee, as she saw him plunge fearless amid the surf. The
stranger answered only, We shall meet again.' Twice, as he parted,
he threw a glance at the beautiful and isolated being; a lingering of
humanity trembled round his heart, --but he tore the withered rose
from his bosom, and to the waved arm and angel-smile of Immalee,
he answered, ‘We shall meet again.'



CHAPTER XVI


Più non ho la dolce
speranza.364

DIDONE


‘Seven mornings and evenings Immalee paced the sands of her
lonely isle, without seeing the stranger. She had still his promise to
console her, that they should meet in the world of suffering; and this
she repeated to herself as if it was full of hope and consolation. In
this interval she tried to educate herself for her introduction into
this world, and it was beautiful to see her attempting, from
vegetable and animal analogies, to form some image of the
incomprehensible destiny of man. In the shade she watched the
withering flower. --‘The blood that ran red through its veins
yesterday is purple to-day, and will be black and dry to-morrow,'
she said; ‘but it feels no pain --it dies patiently, --and the
ranunculus365 and tulip near it are untouched by grief for their
companion, or their colours would not be so resplendent. But can it
be thus in the world that thinks? Could I see him wither and die,
without withering and dying along with him. Oh no! when that
flower fades, I will be the dew that falls over him!'

‘She attempted to enlarge her comprehension, by observing the
animal world. A young loxia had fallen dead from its pendent nest;
and Immalee, looking into the aperture which that intelligent bird
forms at the lower extremity of the nest to secure it from birds of
prey, perceived the old ones with fire-flies in their small beaks, their
young one lying dead before them. At this sight Immalee burst into
tears. --‘Ah! you cannot weep,' she said, ‘what an advantage I have
over you! You eat, though your young one, your own one, is dead;
but could I ever drink of the milk of the cocoa, if he could no longer
taste it? I begin to comprehend what he said --to think, then, is to
suffer --and a world of thought must be a world of pain! But how
delicious are these tears! Formerly I wept for pleasure --but there is
a pain sweeter than pleasure, that I never felt till I beheld him. Oh!
who would not think, to have the joy of tears?'

‘But Immalee did not occupy this interval solely in reflection; a
new anxiety began to agitate her; and in the intervals of her
meditation and her tears, she searched with avidity for the most
glowing and fantastically wreathed shells to deck her arms and hair
with. She changed her drapery of flowers every day, and never
thought them fresh after the first hour; then she filled her largest
shells with the most limpid water, and her hollow cocoa nuts with
the most delicious figs, interspersed with roses, and arranged them
picturesquely on the stone bench of the ruined pagoda. The time,
however, passed over without the arrival of the stranger, and
Immalee, on visiting her fairy banquet the next day, wept over the
withered fruit, but dried her eyes, and hastened to replace them.

‘She was thus employed on the eighth morning, when she saw
the stranger approach; and the wild and innocent delight with
which she bounded towards him, excited in him for a moment a
feeling of gloomy and reluctant compunction, which Immalee's
quick susceptibility traced in his pausing step and averted eye. She
stood trembling in lovely and pleading diffidence, as if intreating
pardon for an unconscious offence, and asking permission to
approach by the very attitude in which she forbore it, while tears
stood in her eyes ready to fall at another repelling motion. This
sight ‘whetted his almost blunted purpose.'366 She must learn to
suffer, to qualify her to become my pupil, he thought. ‘Immalee, you
weep,' he added, approaching her. ‘Oh yes!' said Immalee, smiling
like a spring morning through her tears; ‘you are to teach me to
suffer, and I shall soon be very fit for your world --but I had rather
weep for you, than smile on a thousand roses.' --‘Immalee,' said
the stranger, repelling the tenderness that melted him in spite of
himself, ‘Immalee, I come to shew you something of the world of
thought you are so anxious to inhabit, and of which you must soon
become an inmate. Ascend this hill367 where the palm-trees are
clustering, and you shall see a glimpse of part of it.' --‘But I would
like to see the whole, and all at once!' said Immalee, with the
natural avidity of thirsty and unfed intellect, that believes it can
swallow all things, and digest all things. ‘The whole, and all at
once!' said her conductor, turning to smile at her as she bounded
after him, breathless and glowing with newly excited feeling. ‘I
doubt the part you will see to-night will be more than enough to
satiate even your curiosity.' As he spoke he drew a tube from his
vest, and bid her apply it to her sight. The Indian obeyed him; but,
after gazing a moment, uttered the emphatic exclamation, ‘I am
there! --or are they here?' and sunk on the earth in a frenzy of
delight. She rose again in a moment, and eagerly seizing the
telescope, applied it in a wrong direction, which disclosed merely
the sea to her view, and exclaimed sadly, ‘Gone! --gone! --all that
beautiful world lived and died in a moment --all that I love die so –
my dearest roses live not half so long as those I neglect --you were
absent for seven moons since I first saw you, and the beautiful world
lived only a moment.'

‘The stranger again directed the telescope towards the shore of
India, from which they were not far distant, and Immalee again
exclaimed in rapture, ‘Alive and more beautiful than ever! --all
living, thinking things! --their very walk thinks. No mute fishes,
and senseless trees, but wonderful rocks,368 on which they look with
pride, as if they were the works of their own hands. Beautiful rocks!
how I love the perfect straitness of your sides, and the crisped and
flower-like knots of your decorated tops! Oh that flowers grew, and
birds fluttered round you, and then I would prefer you even to the
rocks under which I watch the setting sun! Oh what a world must
that be where nothing is natural, and every thing beautiful! –
thought must have done all that. But, how little every thing is! –
thought should have made every thing larger --thought should be a
god. But,' she added with quick intelligence and self-accusing
diffidence, ‘perhaps I am wrong. Sometimes I have thought I could
lay my hand on the top of a palm-tree, but when, after a long, long
time, I came close to it, I could not have reached its lowest leaf
were I ten times higher than I am. Perhaps your beautiful world may
grow higher as I approach it.' --‘Hold, Immalee,' said the stranger,
taking the telescope from her hands, ‘to enjoy this sight you should
understand it.' --‘Oh yes!' said Immalee, with submissive anxiety, as
the world of sense rapidly lost ground in her imagination against the
new-found world of mind, --‘yes --let me think.' --‘Immalee, have
you any religion?' said the visitor, as an indescribable feeling of
pain made his pale brow still paler. Immalee, quick in understanding
and sympathizing with physical feeling, darted away at these words,
returned in a moment with a banyan leaf, with which she wiped the
drops from his livid forehead; and then seating herself at his feet,
in an attitude of profound but eager attention, repeated, 'Religion!
what is that? is it a new thought?' --‘It is the consciousness of
a Being superior to all worlds and their inhabitants, because he
is the Maker of all, and will be their judge --of a Being whom we
cannot see, but in whose power and presence we must believe, though
invisible --of one who is every where unseen; always acting, though
never in motion; hearing all things, but never heard.' Immalee
interrupted with an air of distraction --‘Hold! too many thoughts
will kill me --let me pause. I have seen the shower that came to
refresh the rose-tree beat it to the earth.' After an effort
of solemn recollection, she added, ‘The voice of dreams told me
something like that before I was born, but it is so long ago, –
sometimes I have had thoughts within me like that voice. I have
thought I loved the things around me too much, and that I should
love things beyond me --flowers that could not fade, and a sun that
never sets. I could have sprung, like a bird into the air, after such a
thought --but there was no one to shew me that path upward.' And
the young enthusiast lifted towards heaven eyes in which trembled
the tears of ecstatic imaginings, and then turned their mute
pleadings on the stranger.

'It is right,' he continued, 'not only to have thoughts of this
Being, but to express them by some outward acts. The inhabitants of
the world you are about to see, call this, worship, --and they have
adopted (a Satanic smile curled his lip as he spoke) very different
modes; so different, that, in fact, there is but one point in which
they all agree --that of making their religion a torment; --the
religion of some prompting them to torture themselves, and the
religion of some prompting them to torture others. Though, as I
observed, they all agree in this important point, yet unhappily
they differ so much about the mode, that there has been much
disturbance about it in the world that thinks.' --'In the world that
thinks! repeated Immalee, 'Impossible! Surely they must know that a
difference cannot be acceptable to Him who is One.' --'And have
you then adopted no mode of expressing your thoughts of this
Being, that is, of worshipping him?' said the stranger. 'I smile when
the sun rises in its beauty, and I weep when I see the evening star
rise,' said Immalee. --'And do you recoil at the inconsistencies of
varied modes of worship, and yet you yourself employ smiles and
tears in your address to the Deity?' --'I do, --for they are both the
expressions of joy with me,' said the poor Indian; 'the sun is as
happy when he smiles through the rain-clouds, as when he burns in
the mid-height of heaven, in the fierceness of his beauty; and I am
happy whether I smile or I weep.' – 'Those whom you are about to
see,' said the stranger, offering her the telescope, 'are as remote in
their forms of worship as smiles from tears; but they are not, like
you, equally happy in both.' Immalee applied her eye to the
telescope, and exclaimed in rapture at what she saw. 'What do you
see?' said the stranger. Immalee described what she saw with many
imperfect expressions, which, perhaps, may be rendered more
intelligible by the explanatory words of the stranger.

'You see,' said he, 'the coast of India, the shores of the world near
you. --There is the black pagoda of Juggernaut, that enormous
building on which your eye is first fixed. Beside it stands a Turkish
mosque --you may distinguish it by a figure like that of the halfmoon.
It is the will of him who rules that world, that its inhabitants
should worship him by that sign.369 At a small distance you may see a
low building with a trident on its summit --that is the temple of
Maha-deva, one of the ancient goddesses of the country.' --'But the
houses are nothing to me,' said Immalee, 'shew me the living things
that go there. The houses are not half so beautiful as the rocks on
the shore, draperied all over with seaweeds and mosses, and shaded
by the distant palm-tree and cocoa.' --'But those buildings,' said the
tempter, 'are indicative of the various modes of thinking of those
who frequent them. If it is into their thoughts you wish to look, you
must see them expressed by their actions. In their dealings with
each other, men are generally deceitful, but in their dealings with
their gods, they are tolerably sincere in the expression of the
character they assign them in their imaginations. If that character be
formidable, they express fear; if it be one of cruelty, they indicate it
by the sufferings they inflict on themselves; if it be gloomy, the
image of the god is faithfully reflected in the visage of the
worshipper. Look and judge.'

'Immalee looked and saw a vast sandy plain, with the dark pagoda
of Juggernaut in the perspective. On this plain lay the bones of
a thousand skeletons, bleaching in the burning and unmoistened
air. A thousand human bodies, hardly more alive, and scarce less
emaciated, were trailing their charred and blackened bodies over
the sands, to perish under the shadow of the temple, hopeless of
ever reaching that of its walls.

'Multitudes of them dropt dead as they crawled. Multitudes still
living, faintly waved their hands, to scare the vultures that hovered
nearer and nearer at every swoop, and scooped the poor remnants
of flesh from the living bones of the screaming victim, and
retreated, with an answering scream of disappointment at the scanty
and tasteless morsel they had torn away.

'Many tried, in their false and fanatic zeal, to double their
torments, by crawling through the sands on their hands and knees;
but hands through the backs of which the nails had grown, and
knees worn literally to the bone, struggled but feebly amid the sands
and the skeletons, and the bodies that were soon to be skeletons,
and the vultures that were to make them so.

'Immalee withheld her breath, as if she inhaled the abominable
effluvia of this mass of putrefaction, which is said to desolate
the shores near the temple of Juggernaut, like a pestilence.

'Close to this fearful scene, came on a pageant, whose splendour
made a brilliant and terrible contrast to the loathsome and
withering desolation of animal and intellectual life, amid which
its pomp came towering, and sparkling, and trembling on. An
enormous fabric, more resembling a moving palace than a triumphal
car, supported the inshrined image of Juggernaut, and was dragged
forward by the united strength of a thousand human bodies, priests,
victims, brahmins, faqueers and all. In spite of this huge force, the
impulse was so unequal, that the whole edifice rocked and tottered
from time to time, and this singular union of instability and
splendour, of trembling decadence and terrific glory, gave a faithful
image of the meretricious exterior, and internal hollowness, of
idolatrous religion. As the procession moved on, sparkling amid
desolation, and triumphant amid death, multitudes rushed forward
from time to time, to prostrate themselves under the wheels of the
enormous machine, which crushed them to atoms in a moment, and
passed on; --others 'cut themselves with knives and lancets after
their manner,'370 and not believing themselves worthy to perish
beneath the wheels of the idol's chariot, sought to propitiate him by
dying the tracks of those wheels with their blood; --their relatives
and friends shouted with delight as they saw the streams of blood
dye the car and its line of progress, and hoped for an interest in
these voluntary sacrifices, with as much energy, and perhaps as
much reason, as the Catholic votarist does in the penance of St
Bruno, or the ex-oculation of St Lucia, or the martyrdom of St
Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, which, being interpreted,
means the martyrdom of a single female named Undecimilla, which
the Catholic legends read Undecim Mille371

'The procession went on, amid that mixture of rites that
characterizes idolatry in all countries, --half resplendent, half
horrible --appealing to nature while they rebel against her –
mingling flowers with blood, and casting alternately a screaming
infant, or a garland of roses, beneath the car of the idol.
'Such was the picture that presented to the strained, incredulous
eyes of Immalee, those mingled features of magnificence and horror,
--of joy and suffering, --of crushed flowers and mangled bodies, --of
magnificence calling on torture for its triumph, --and the steam of
blood and the incense of the rose, inhaled at once by the triumphant
nostrils of an incarnate demon, who rode amid the wrecks of nature
and the spoils of the heart! Immalee gazed on in horrid curiosity.
She saw, by the aid of the telescope, a boy seated on the front of the
moving temple, who 'perfected the praise'372 of the loathsome idol,
with all the outrageous lubricities of the Phallic worship. From the
slightest consciousness of the meaning of this phenomenon, her
unimaginable purity protected her as with a shield. It was in vain
that the tempter plied her with questions, and hints of explanation,
and offers of illustration. He found her chill, indifferent, and even
incurious. He gnashed his teeth and gnawed his lip en parenthese.373
But when she saw mothers cast their infants under the wheels of the
car, and then turn to watch the wild and wanton dance of the
Almahs,374 and appear, by their open lips and clapped hands, to keep
time to the sound of the silver bells that tinkled round their slight
ankles, while their infants were writhing in their dying agony, --she
dropt the telescope in horror, and exclaimed, 'The world that thinks
does not feel. I never saw the rose kill the bud!'

'But look again,' said the tempter, 'to that square building of
stone, round which a few stragglers are collected, and whose
summit is surmounted by a trident, --that is the temple of Maha-
deva, a goddess who possesses neither the power or the popularity
of the great idol Juggernaut. Mark how her worshippers approach
her.' Immalee looked, and saw women offering flowers, fruits and
perfumes; and some young girls brought birds in cages, whom they
set free; others, after making vows for the safety of some absent,
sent a small and gaudy boat of paper, illuminated with wax, down
the stream of an adjacent river, with injunctions never to sink
till it reached him.

'Immalee smiled with pleasure at the rites of this harmless and
elegant superstition. 'This is not the religion of torment,' said
she. --'Look again,' said the stranger. She did, and beheld those
very women whose hands had been employed in liberating birds from
their cages, suspending, on the branches of the trees which
shadowed the temple of Maha-deva, baskets containing their
newborn infants, who were left there to perish with hunger, or be
devoured by the birds, while their mothers danced and sung in
honour of the goddess.

'Others were occupied in conveying, apparently with the most
zealous and tender watchfulness, their aged parents to the banks
of the river, where, after assisting them to perform their ablutions,
with all the intensity of filial and divine piety, they left them half
immersed in the water, to be devoured by alligators, who did not
suffer their wretched prey to linger in long expectation of their
horrible death; while others were deposited in the jungles near the
banks of the river, where they met with a fate as certain and as
horrible, from the tigers who infested it, and whose yell soon
hushed the feeble wail of their unresisting victims.

'Immalee sunk on the earth at this spectacle, and clasping both
hands over her eyes, remained speechless with grief and horror.

'Look yet again,' said the stranger, 'the rites of all religions
are not so bloody.' Once more she looked, and saw a Turkish
mosque, towering in all the splendour that accompanied the first
introduction of the religion of Mahomet among the Hindoos. It
reared its gilded domes, and carved minarets, and crescented
pinnacles, rich with all the profusion which the decorative
imagination of Oriental architecture, at once light and luxuriant,
gorgeous and aerial, delights to lavish on its favourite works.

'A group of stately Turks were approaching the mosque, at the
call of the muezzin. Around the building arose neither tree nor
shrub; it borrowed neither shade nor ornament from nature; it had
none of those soft and graduating shades and hues, which seem to
unite the works of God and the creature for the glory of the former,
and calls on the inventive magnificence of art, and the spontaneous
loveliness of nature, to magnify the Author of both; it stood the
independent work and emblem of vigorous hands and proud minds,
such as appeared to belong to those who now approached it as
worshippers. Their finely featured and thoughtful countenances,
their majestic habits, and lofty figures, formed an imposing contrast
to the unintellectual expression, the crouching posture, and the half
naked squalidness of some poor Hindoos, who, seated on their
hams, were eating their mess of rice, as the stately Turks passed on
to their devotions. Immalee viewed them with a feeling of awe and
pleasure, and began to think there might be some good in the
religion professed by these noble-looking beings. But, before they
entered the mosque, they spurned and spit at the unoffending and
terrified Hindoos; they struck them in the flats of their sabres, and,
terming them dogs of idolaters, they cursed them in the name of
God and the prophet. Immalee, revolted and indignant at the sight,
though she could not hear the words that accompanied it,
demanded the reason of it. 'Their religion,' said the stranger, 'binds
them to hate all who do not worship as they do.' --'Alas!' said
Immalee, weeping, 'is not that hatred which their religion teaches, a
proof that theirs is the worst? But why,' she added, her features
illuminated with all the wild and sparkling intelligence of wonder,
while flushed with recent fears, 'why do I not see among them some
of those lovelier beings, whose habits differ from theirs, and whom
you call women? Why do they not worship also; or have they a
milder religion of their own?' --'That religion,' replied the stranger,
'is not very favourable to those beings, of whom you are the
loveliest; it teaches that men shall have different companions in the
world of souls; nor does it clearly intimate that women shall ever
arrive there. Hence you may see some of these excluded beings
wandering amid those stones that designate the place of their dead,
repeating prayers for the dead whom they dare not hope to join; and
others, who are old and indigent, seated at the doors of the mosque,
reading aloud passages from a book lying on their knees, (which
they call the Koran), with the hope of soliciting alms, not of exciting
devotion.' At these desolating words, Immalee, who had in vain
looked to any of these systems for that hope or solace which her
pure spirit and vivid imagination alike thirsted for, felt a recoiling of
the soul unutterable at religion thus painted to her, and exhibiting
only a frightful picture of blood and cruelty, of the inversion of
every principle of nature, and the disruption of every tie of the
heart.

'She flung herself on the ground, and exclaiming, 'There is no
God, if there be none but theirs!' then, starting up as if to take a
last view, in the desperate hope that all was an illusion, she dis-
covered a small obscure building overshaded by palm-trees, and sur-
mounted by a cross; and struck by the unobtrusive simplicity of its
appearance, and the scanty number and peaceable demeanour of the
few who were approaching it, she exclaimed, that this must be a
new religion, and eagerly demanded its name and rites. The stranger
evinced some uneasiness at the discovery she had made, and
testified still more reluctance to answer the questions which it
suggested; but they were pressed with such restless and coaxing
importunity, and the beautiful being who urged them made such an
artless transition from profound and meditative grief to childish, yet
intelligent curiosity, that it was not in man, or more or less then
man, to resist her.

'Her glowing features, as she turned them toward him, with an
expression half impatient, half pleading, were indeed those of a
stilled infant smiling through its tears.'375 Perhaps, too, another
cause might have operated on this prophet of curses, and made him
utter a blessing where he meant malediction; but into this we dare
not inquire, nor will it ever be fully known till the day when all
secrets must be disclosed. However it was, he felt himself compelled
to tell her it was a new religion, the religion of Christ, whose rites
and worshippers she beheld. 'But what are the rites?' asked
Immalee. 'Do they murder their children, or their parents, to prove
their love to God? Do they hang them on baskets to perish, or leave
them on the banks of rivers to be devoured by fierce and hideous
animals?' – 'The religion they profess forbids that,' said the stranger,
with reluctant truth; 'it requires them to honour their parents, and
to cherish their children.' --'But why do they not spurn from the
entrance to their church those who do not think as they do?' –
'Because their religion enjoins them to be mild, benevolent, and
tolerant; and neither to reject or disdain those who have not
attained its purer light.' --'But why is there no splendour or
magnificence in their worship; nothing grand or attractive?' –
'Because they know that God cannot be acceptably worshipped but
by pure hearts and crimeless hands; and though their religion gives
every hope to the penitent guilty, it flatters none with false promises
of external devotion supplying the homage of the heart; or artificial
and picturesque religion standing in the place of that single
devotion to God, before whose throne, though the proudest temples
erected to his honour crumble into dust, the heart burns on the altar
still, an inextinguishable and acceptable victim.'

'As he spoke, (perhaps constrained by a higher power), Immalee
bowed her glowing face to the earth, and then raising it with the
look of a new-born angel, exclaimed, 'Christ shall be my God, and I
will be a Christian!' Again she bowed in the deep prostration which
indicates the united submission of soul and body, and remained in
this attitude of absorption so long, that, when she rose, she did not
perceive the absence of her companion. ‘He fled murmuring, and
with him fled the shades of night.’376



CHAPTER XVII


'Why, I did say something about getting a licence from the
Cadi.'

BLUE BEARD377


'The visits of the stranger were interrupted for some time, and when
he returned, it seemed as if their purpose was no longer the same.
He no longer attempted to corrupt her principles, or sophisticate her
understanding, or mystify her views of religion. On the latter subject
he was quite silent, seemed to regret he had ever touched on it, and
not all her restless avidity of knowledge, or caressing importunity of
manner, could extract from him another syllable on the subject. He
repayed her amply, however, by the rich, varied and copious stores
of a mind, furnished with matter apparently beyond the power of
human experience to have collected, confined, as it is, within the
limits of threescore years and ten. But this never struck Immalee;
she took 'no note of time;'378 and the tale of yesterday, or the record
of past centuries, were synchronized in a mind to which facts and
dates were alike unknown; and which was alike unacquainted with
the graduating shades of manner, and the linked progress of events.

'They often sat on the shore of the isle in the evening, where
Immalee always prepared a seat of moss for her visitor, and gazed
together on the blue deep in silence; for Immalee's newly-awaked
intellect and heart felt that bankruptcy of language, which profound
feeling will impress on the most cultivated intellect, and which, in
her case, was increased alike by her innocence and her ignorance;
and her visitor had perhaps reasons still stronger for his silence.
This silence, however, was often broken. There was not a vessel that
sailed in the distance which did not suggest an eager question from
Immalee, and did not draw a slow and extorted reply from the
stranger. His knowledge was immense, various and profound, (but
this was rather a subject of delight than of curiosity to his beau-
tiful pupil); and from the Indian canoe, rowed by naked natives,
to the splendid, and clumsy, and ill-managed vessels of the Rajahs,
that floated like huge and gilded fish tumbling in uncouth and shape-
less mirth on the wave, to the gallant and well-manned vessels of
Europe, that came on like the gods of ocean bringing fertility and
knowledge, the discoveries of art, and the blessings of civilization,
wherever their sails were unfurled and their anchors dropt,--he
could tell her all,--describe the destination of every vessel,--
the feelings, characters and national habits of the many-minded
inmates,--and enlarge her knowledge to a degree which books
never could have done; for colloquial communication is always the
most vivid and impressive medium, and lips have a prescriptive
right to be the first intelligencers in instruction and in love.

'Perhaps this extraordinary being, with regard to whom the laws
of mortality and the feelings of nature seemed to be alike sus-
pended, felt a kind of sad and wild repose from the destiny that
immitigably pursued him, in the society of Immalee. We know not,
and can never tell, what sensations her innocent and helpless beauty
inspired him with, but the result was, that he ceased to regard her
as his victim; and, when seated beside her listening to her questions,
or answering them, seemed to enjoy the few lucid intervals of his
insane and morbid existence. Absent from her, he returned to the
world to torture and to tempt in the mad-house where the
Englishman Stanton was tossing on his straw –'

'Hold!' said Melmoth; 'what name have you mentioned?'--'Have
patience with me, Senhor,' said Monçada, who did not like
interruption; 'have patience, and you will find we are all beads
strung on the same string. Why should we jar against each other?
our union is indissoluble.' He proceeded with the story of the
unhappy Indian, as recorded in the parchments of Adonijah, which
he had been compelled to copy, and of which he was anxious to
impress every line and letter on his listener, to substantiate
his own extraordinary story.

'When absent from her, his purpose was what I have described;
but while present, that purpose seemed suspended; he gazed often
on her with eyes whose wild and fierce lustre was quenched in a
dew that he hastily wiped away, and gazed on her again. While he
sat near her on the flowers she had collected for him,--while he
looked on those timid and rosy lips that waited his signal to speak,
like buds that did not dare to blow till the sun shone on them, –
while he heard accents issue from those lips which he felt it would
be as impossible to pervert as it would be to teach the nightingale
blasphemy,--he sunk down beside her, passed his hand over his
livid brow, and, wiping off some cold drops, thought for a moment
he was not the Cain of the moral world,379 and that the brand was
effaced,--at least for a moment. The habitual and impervious gloom
of his soul soon returned. He felt again the gnawings of the worm
that never dies, and the scorchings of the fire that is never to be
quenched. He turned the fatal light of his dark eyes on the only
being who never shrunk from their expression, for her innocence
made her fearless. He looked intensely at her, while rage, despair
and pity, convulsed his heart; and as he beheld the confiding and
conciliating smile with which this gentle being met a look that
might have withered the heart of the boldest within him,--a Semele
gazing in supplicating love on the lightnings that were to blast her,380
--one human drop dimmed their portentous lustre, as its softened
rays fell on her. Turning fiercely away, he flung his view on the
ocean, as if to find, in the sight of human life, some fuel for the
fire that was consuming his vitals. The ocean, that lay calm and
bright before them as a sea of jasper, never reflected two more
different countenances, or sent more opposite feelings to two hearts.
Over Immalee's, it breathed that deep and delicious reverie, which
those forms of nature that unite tranquillity and profundity dif-
fuse over souls whose innocence gives them a right to an unmingled
and exclusive enjoyment of nature. None but crimeless and unim-
passioned minds ever truly enjoyed earth, ocean and heaven.
At our first transgression, nature expels us, as it did our first
parents, from her paradise for ever.

'To the stranger the view was fraught with far different visions.
He viewed it as a tiger views a forest abounding with prey; there
might be the storm and the wreck; or, if the elements were
obstinately calm, there might be the gaudy and gilded pleasure
barge, in which a Rajah and the beautiful women of his haram were
inhaling the sea breeze under canopies of silk and gold, overturned
by the unskilfulness of their rowers, and their plunge, and struggle,
and dying agony, amid the smile and beauty of the calm ocean,
produce one of those contrasts in which his fierce spirit delighted.
Or, were even this denied, he could watch the vessels as they floated
by, and, from the skiff to the huge trader, be sure that every one
bore its freight of woe and crime. There came on the European
vessels full of the passions and crimes of another world,--of its
sateless cupidity, remorseless cruelty, its intelligence, all awake
and ministrant in the cause of its evil passions, and its very refine-
ment operating as a stimulant to more inventive indulgence, and more
systematized vice. He saw them approach to traffic for 'gold, and sil-
ver, and the souls of men;'381 to grasp, with breathless rapacity, the
gems and precious produce of those luxuriant climates, and deny the
inhabitants the rice that supported their inoffensive existence;--to
discharge the load of their crimes, their lust and their avarice, and
after ravaging the land, and plundering the natives, depart, leaving
behind them famine, despair and execration; and bearing with them
back to Europe, blasted constitutions, inflamed passions, ulcerated
hearts, and consciences that could not endure the extinction of a
light in their sleeping apartment.

'Such were the objects for which he watched; and one evening,
when solicited by Immalee's incessant questions about the worlds to
which the vessels were hastening, or to which they were returning,
he gave her a description of the world, after his manner, in a spirit
of mingled derision, malignity, and impatient bitterness at the
innocence of her curiosity. There was a mixture of fiendish
acrimony, biting irony, and fearful truth, in his wild sketch, which
was often interrupted by the cries of astonishment, grief and terror,
from his hearer. 'They come,' said he, pointing to the European
vessels, 'from a world where the only study of the inhabitants is
how to increase their own sufferings, and those of others, to the
utmost possible degree; and, considering they have only had 4000
years' practice at the task, it must be allowed they are tolerable
proficients.'--'But is it possible?'--'You shall judge. In aid,
doubtless, of this desirable object, they have been all originally
gifted with imperfect constitutions and evil passions; and, not to be
ungrateful, they pass their lives in contriving how to augment the
infirmities of the one, and aggravate the acerbities of the other.
They are not like you, Immalee, a being who breathes amid roses,
and subsists only on the juices of fruits, and the lymph of the pure
element. In order to render their thinking powers more gross, and
their spirits more fiery, they devour animals, and torture from
abused vegetables a drink, that, without quenching thirst, has the
power of extinguishing reason, inflaming passion, and shortening
life--the best result of all--for life under such circumstances owes
its only felicity to the shortness of its duration.'382

'Immalee shuddered at the mention of animal food, as the most
delicate European would at the mention of a cannibal feast; and
while tears trembled in her beautiful eyes, she turned them wistfully
on her peacocks with an expression that made the stranger smile.
'Some,' said he, by way of consolation, 'have a taste by no means so
sophisticated,--they content themselves at their need with the flesh
of their fellow-creatures; and as human life is always miserable,
and animal life never so, (except from elementary causes), one
would imagine this the most humane and salutary way of at once
gratifying the appetite, and diminishing the mass of human suffer-
ing. But as these people pique themselves on their ingenuity in
aggravating the sufferings of their situation, they leave thousands
of human beings yearly to perish by hunger and grief, and amuse
themselves in feeding on animals, whom, by depriving of existence,
they deprive of the only pleasure their condition has allotted them.
When they have thus, by unnatural diet and outrageous stimulation,
happily succeeded in corrupting infirmity into disease, and
exasperating passion into madness, they proceed to exhibit the
proofs of their success, with an expertness and consistency truly
admirable. They do not, like you, Immalee, live in the lovely
independence of nature--lying on the earth, and sleeping with all
the eyes of heaven unveiled to watch you--treading the same grass
till your light step feels a friend in every blade it presses--and
conversing with flowers, till you feel yourself and them children of
the united family of nature, whose mutual language of love you
have almost learned to speak to each other--no, to effect their
purpose, their food, which is of itself poison, must be rendered more
fatal by the air they inhale; and therefore the more civilized crowd
all together into a space which their own respiration, and the
exhalation of their bodies, renders pestilential, and which gives a
celerity inconceivable to the circulation of disease and mortality.
Four thousand of them will live together in a space smaller than the
last and lightest colonnade of your young banyan-tree, in order,
doubtless, to increase the effects of foetid air, artificial heat,
unnatural habits and impracticable exercise. The result of these
judicious precautions is just what may be guessed. The most trifling
complaint becomes immediately infectious, and, during the ravages
of the pestilence, which this habit generates, ten thousand lives aday
are the customary sacrifice to the habit of living in cities.'--'But
they die in the arms of those they love,' said Immalee, whose tears
flowed fast at this recital; 'and is not that better than even life in
solitude,--as mine was before I beheld you?'

'The stranger was too intent on his description to heed her. To
these cities they resort nominally for security and protection, but
really for the sole purpose to which their existence is devoted,--that
of aggravating its miseries by every ingenuity of refinement. For
example, those who live in uncontrasted and untantalized misery,
can hardly feel it--suffering becomes their habit, and they feel no
more jealousy of their situation than the bat, who clings in blind
and famishing stupefaction to the cleft of a rock, feels of the
situation of the butterfly, who drinks of the dew, and bathes in the
bloom of every flower. But the people of the other worlds have
invented, by means of living in cities, a new and singular mode of
aggravating human wretchedness--that of contrasting it with the
wild and wanton excess of superfluous and extravagant splendour.'

'Here the stranger had incredible difficulty to make Immalee
comprehend how there could be an unequal division of the means of
existence,383 and when he had done his utmost to explain it to her,
she continued to repeat, (her white finger on her scarlet lip, and
her small foot beating the moss), in a kind of pouting inquietude,
'Why should some have more than they can eat, and others nothing
to eat?'--'This,' continued the stranger, 'is the most exquisite re
finement on that art of torture which those beings are so expert in
--to place misery by the side of opulence--to bid the wretch who
dies for want feed on the sound of the splendid equipages which
shake his hovel as they pass, but leave no relief behind--to bid the
industrious, the ingenious, and the imaginative, starve, while
bloated mediocrity pants from excess--to bid the dying sufferer feel
that life might be prolonged by one drop of that exciting liquor,
which, wasted, produces only sickness or madness in those whose
lives it undermines;--to do this is their principal object, and it is
fully attained. The sufferer through whose rags the wind of winter
blows, like arrows lodging in every pore--whose tears freeze before
they fall--whose soul is as dreary as the night under whose cope his
resting-place must be--whose glued and clammy lips are unable to
receive the food which famine, lying like a burning coal at his vitals,
craves--and who, amid the horrors of a houseless winter, might
prefer its desolation to that of the den that abuses the name of home
--without food--without light--where the howlings of the storm
are answered by the fiercer cries of hunger--and he must stumble to
his murky and strawless nook over the bodies of his children, who
have sunk on the floor, not for rest, but despair. Such a being,
is he not sufficiently miserable?'

'Immalee's shudderings were her only answer, (though of many parts
of his description she had a very imperfect idea). 'No, he is not
enough so yet,' pursued the stranger, pressing the picture on her;
'let his steps, that know not where they wander, conduct him to the
gates of the affluent and the luxurious--let him feel that plenty and
mirth are removed from him but by the interval of a wall, and yet
more distant than if severed by worlds--let him feel that while his
world is darkness and cold, the eyes of those within are aching with
the blaze of light, and hands relaxed by artificial heat, are soliciting
with fans the refreshment of a breeze--let him feel that every groan
he utters is answered by a song or a laugh--and let him die on the
steps of the mansion, while his last conscious pang is aggravated by
the thought, that the price of the hundredth part of the luxuries that
lie untasted before heedless beauty and sated epicurism, would have
protracted his existence, while it poisons theirs--let him die of want
on the threshold of a banquet-hall, and then admire with me the
ingenuity that displays itself in this new combination of misery. The
inventive activity of the people of the world, in the multiplication of
calamity, is inexhaustibly fertile in resources. Not satisfied with
diseases and famine, with sterility of the earth, and tempests of the
air, they must have laws and marriages, and kings and taxgatherers,
and wars and fetes, and every variety of artificial misery
inconceivable to you.'

'Immalee, overpowered by this torrent of words, to her unintel-
ligible words, in vain asked a connected explanation of them.
The demon of his superhuman misanthropy had now fully possessed
him, and not even the tones of a voice as sweet as the strings of
David's harp, had power to expel the evil one. So he went on fling-
ing about his fire-brands and arrows, and then saying, 'Am I not in
sport? These people,'384 said he, 'have made unto themselves kings,
that is, beings whom they voluntarily invest with the privilege of
draining, by taxation, whatever wealth their vices have left to the
rich, and whatever means of subsistence their want has left to the
poor, till their extortion is cursed from the castle to the cottage –
and this to support a few pampered favourites, who are harnessed
by silken reins to the car, which they drag over the prostrate
bodies of the multitude. Sometimes exhausted by the monotony of
perpetual fruition, which has no parallel even in the monotony of
suffering, (for the latter has at least the excitement of hope, which
is for ever denied to the former), they amuse themselves by making
war, that is, collecting the greatest number of human beings that
can be bribed to the task, to cut the throat of a less, equal, or
greater number of beings, bribed in the same manner for the same
purpose. These creatures have not the least cause of enmity to each
other--they do not know, they never beheld each other. Perhaps
they might, under other circumstances, wish each other well, as far
as human malignity would suffer them; but from the moment they
are hired for legalized massacre, hatred is their duty, and murder
their delight. The man who would feel reluctance to destroy the
reptile that crawls in his path, will equip himself with metals
fabricated for the purpose of destruction, and smile to see it stained
with the blood of a being, whose existence and happiness he would
have sacrificed his own to promote, under other circumstances. So
strong is this habit of aggravating misery under artificial cir-
cumstances, that it has been known, when in a sea-fight a vessel
has blown up, (here a long explanation was owed to Immalee, which
may be spared the reader), the people of that world have plunged
into the water to save, at the risk of their own lives, the lives
of those with whom they were grappling amid fire and blood a moment
before, and whom, though they would sacrifice to their passions,
their pride refused to sacrifice to the elements.'--'Oh that is
beautiful!--that is glorious!' said Immalee, clasping her white
hands; 'I could bear all you describe to see that sight!'

'Her smile of innocent delight, her spontaneous burst of high-toned
feeling, had the usual effect of adding a darker shade to the frown
of the stranger, and a sterner curve to the repulsive contraction of
his upper lip, which was never raised but to express hostility or
contempt.

'But what do the kings do?' said Immalee, 'while they are making
men kill each other for nothing?'--'You are ignorant, Immalee,'
said the stranger, 'very ignorant, or you would not have said it
was for nothing. Some of them fight for ten inches of barren sand
--some for the dominion of the salt wave--some for any thing--and
some for nothing--but all for pay and poverty, and the occasional
excitement, and the love of action, and the love of change, and the
dread of home, and the consciousness of evil passions, and the hope
of death; and the admiration of the showy dress in which they are to
perish. The best of the jest is, they contrive not only to reconcile
themselves to these cruel and wicked absurdities, but to dignify
them with the most imposing names their perverted language supplies
--the names of fame, of glory, of recording memory, and admiring
posterity.

'Thus a wretch whom want, idleness, or intemperance, drives to
this reckless and heart-withering business,--who leaves his wife and
children to the mercy of strangers, or to famish, (terms nearly
synonimous), the moment he has assumed the blushing badge that
privileges massacre, becomes, in the imagination of this intoxicated
people, the defender of his country, entitlded to her gratitude and to
her praise. The idle stripling, who hates the cultivation of intellect,
and despises the meanness of occupation, feels, perhaps, a taste
for arraying his person in colours as gaudy as the parrot's or the
peacock's; and this effeminate propensity is baptised by the
prostituted name of the love of glory--and this complication of
motives borrowed from vanity and from vice, from the fear of
distress, the wantonness of idleness, and the appetite for mischief,
finds one convenient and sheltering appellation in the single sound
--patriotism. And those beings who never knew one generous impulse,
one independent feeling, ignorant of either the principles or the
justice of the cause for which they contend, and wholly uninter-
ested in the result, except so far as it involves the concerns of
their own vanity, cupidity and avarice, are, while living, hailed by
the infatuated world as its benefactors, and when dead, canonized
as its martyrs. He died in his country's cause, is the epitaph
inscribed by the rash hand of indiscriminating eulogy on the grave
of ten thousand, who had ten thousand different motives for their
choice and their fate,--who might have lived to be their country's
enemies if they had not happened to fall in her defence,--and whose
love of their country, if fairly analysed, was, under its various forms
of vanity, restlessness, the love of tumult, or the love of show –
purely love of themselves. There let them rest--nothing but the
wish to disabuse their idolaters, who prompt the sacrifice, and then
applaud the victim they have made, could have tempted me to
dwell thus long on beings as mischievous in their lives, as they are
insignificant in their death.

'Another amusement of these people, so ingenious in multiplying
the sufferings of their destiny, is what they call law. The pretend to
find in this a security for their persons and their properties--with
how much justice, their own felicitous experience must inform
them! Of the security it gives to the latter, judge, Immalee, when I
tell you, that you might spend your life in their courts, without
being able to prove that those roses you have gathered and twined
in your hair were your own--that you might starve for this day's
meal, while proving your right to a property which must
incontestibly be yours, on the condition of your being able to fast on
a few years, and survive to enjoy it--and that, finally, with the
sentiments of all upright men, the opinions of the judges of the land,
and the fullest conviction of your own conscience in your favour,
you cannot obtain the possession of what you and all feel to be your
own, while your antagonist can start an objection, purchase a fraud,
or invent a lie. So pleadings go on, and years are wasted, and
property consumed, and hearts broken,--and law triumphs. One of
its most admirable triumphs is in that ingenuity by which it
contrives to convert a difficulty into an impossibility, and punish a
man for not doing what it has rendered impracticable for him to do.

'When he is unable to pay his debts, it deprives him of liberty
and credit, to insure that inability still further; and while destitute
alike of the means of subsistence, or the power of satisfying his
creditors, he is enabled, by this righteous arrangement, to console
himself, at least, with the reflection, that he can injure his creditor
as much as he has suffered from him--that certain loss is the reward
of immitigable cruelty--and that, while he famishes in prison, the
page in which his debt is recorded rots away faster than his body;
and the angel of death, with one obliterating sweep of his wing,
cancels misery and debt, and presents, grinning in horrid triumph,
the release of debtor and debt, signed by a hand that makes the
judges tremble on their seats.'--'But they have religion,' said the
poor Indian, trembling at this horrible description; 'they have that
religion which you shewed me--its mild and peaceful spirit--its
quietness and resignation--no blood--no cruelty.'--'Yes,--true,'
said the stranger, with some reluctance, 'they have religion; for in
their zeal for suffering, they feel the torments of one world not
enough, unless aggravated by the terrors of another. They have such
a religion, but what use have they made of it? Intent on their settled
purpose of discovering misery wherever it could be traced, and
inventing it where it could not, they have found, even in the pure
pages of that book, which, they presume to say, contains their title
to peace on earth, and happiness hereafter, a right to hate, plunder
and murder each other. Here they have been compelled to exercise
an extraordinary share of perverted ingenuity. The book contains
nothing but what is good, and evil must be the minds, and hard the
labour of those evil minds, to extort a tinge from it to colour their
pretensions withal. But mark, in pursuance of their great object,
(the aggravation of general misery), mark how subtilly they have
wrought. They call themselves by various names, to excite passions
suitable to the names they bear. Thus some forbid the perusal of
that book to their disciples, and others assert, that from the
exclusive study of its pages alone, can the hope of salvation be
learned or substantiated. It is singular, however, that with all their
ingenuity, they have never been able to extract a subject of dif-
ference from the essential contents of that book, to which they all
appeal--so they proceed after their manner.

'They never dare to dispute that it contains irresistible injunctions,
--that those who believe in it should live in habits of peace, ben-
evolence and harmony,--that they should love each other in
prosperity, and assist each other in adversity. They dare not deny
that the spirit that book inculcates and inspires, is a spirit whose
fruits are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, mildness and truth. On
these points they never presumed to differ.--They are too plain to
be denied, so they contrive to make matter of difference out of the
various habits they wear; and they cut each other's throats for the
love of God, on the important subject,385 whether their jackets should
be red or white--or whether their priests should be arrayed in silk
ribbons, † or white linen, ‡ or black household garments¶--or
whether they should immerse their children in water, or sprinkle
them with a few drops of it--or whether they should partake of the
memorials of the death of him they all profess to love, standing or
on their knees--or--But I weary you with this display of human
wickedness and absurdity. One point is plain, they all agree that the
language of the book is, 'Love one another,' while they all translate
that language, 'Hate one another.' But as they can find neither
materials or excuse from that book, they search for them in their
own minds,--and there they are never at a loss, for human minds
are inexhaustible in malignity and hostility; and when they borrow
the name of that book to sanction them, the deification of their
passions becomes a duty, and their worst impulses are hallowed and
practised as virtues.'--'Are there no parents or children in these
horrible worlds?' said Immalee, turning her tearful eyes on this
traducer of humanity; 'none that love each other as I loved the tree
under which I was first conscious of existence, or the flowers that
grew with me?'--'Parents?--children?' said the stranger; 'Oh yes!
There are fathers who instruct their sons –' And his voice was lost –
he struggled to recover it.

'After a long pause, he said, 'There are some kind parents among
those sophisticated people.'--'And who are they?' said Immalee,
whose heart throbbed spontaneously at the mention of kindliness. –
'Those,' said the stranger, with a withering smile, 'who murder their
children at the hour of their birth, or, by medical art, dismiss them
before they have seen the light; and, in so doing, they give the only
credible evidence of parental affection.'

'He ceased, and Immalee remained silent in melancholy meditation
on what she had heard. The acrid and searing irony of his language
had made no impression on one with whom 'speech was truth,'386 and
who could have no idea why a circuitous mode of conveying meaning
could be adopted, when even a direct one was often attended with
difficulty to herself. But she could understand, that he had spo-
ken much of evil and of suffering, names unknown to her before
she beheld him, and she turned on him a glance that seemed at
once to thank and reproach him for her painful initiation into
the mysteries of a new existence. She had, indeed, tasted of the
tree of knowledge, and her eyes were opened, but its fruit was bit
ter to her taste, and her looks conveyed a kind of mild and mel-
ancholy gratitude, that would have wrung the heart for giving its
first lesson of pain to the heart of a being so beautiful, so gen-
tle, and so innocent. The stranger marked this blended expression,
and exulted.

'He had distorted life thus to her imagination, perhaps with the
purpose of terrifying her from a nearer view of it; perhaps in the
wild hope of keeping her for ever in this solitude, where he might
sometimes see her, and catch, from the atmosphere of purity that
surrounded her, the only breeze that floated over the burning desert
of his own existence. This hope was strengthened by the obvious
impression his discourse had made on her. The sparkling intelli-
gence,--the breathless curiosity,--the vivid gratitude of her
former expression,--were all extinguished, and her down cast and
thoughtful eyes were full of tears.

'Has my conversation wearied you, Immalee?' said he.--'It has
grieved me, yet I wish to listen still,' answered the Indian. 'I
love to hear the murmur of the stream, though the crocodile may be
beneath the waves.'--'Perhaps you wish to encounter the people of
this world, so full of crime and misfortune.'--'I do, for it is the
world, you came from, and when you return to it all will be happy
but me.'--'And is it, then, in my power to confer happiness?' said
her companion; 'is it for this purpose I wander among mankind?' A
mingled and indefinable expression of derision, malevolence and
despair, overspread his features, as he added, 'You do me too much
honour, in devising for me an occupation so mild and so congenial
to my spirit.'

'Immalee, whose eyes were averted, did not see this expression,
and she replied, 'I know not, but you have taught me the joy of
grief; before I saw you I only smiled, but since I saw you, I weep,
and my tears are delicious. Oh! They are far different from those I
shed for the setting sun, or the faded rose! And yet I know not –'
And the poor Indian, oppressed by emotions she could neither
understand or express, clasped her hands on her bosom, as if to hide
the secret of its new palpitations, and, with the instinctive diffidence
of her purity, signified the change of her feelings, by retiring a few
steps from her companion, and casting on the earth eyes which
could contain their tears no longer. The stranger appeared troubled,
--an emotion new to himself agitated him for a moment,--then a
smile of self-disdain curled his lip, as if he reproached himself for
the indulgence of human feeling even for a moment. Again his
features relaxed, as he turned to the bending and averted form of
Immalee, and he seemed like one conscious of agony of soul himself,
yet inclined to sport with the agony of another's. This union of
inward despair and outward levity is not unnatural. Smiles are the
legitimate offspring of happiness, but laughter is often the
misbegotten child of madness, that mocks its parent to her face.
With such an expression he turned towards her, and asked, 'But
what is your meaning, Immalee?'--A long pause followed this
question, and at length the Indian answered, 'I know not,' with that
natural and delicious art which teaches the sex to disclose their
meaning in words that seem to contradict it. 'I know not,' means, 'I
know too well.' Her companion understood this, and enjoyed his
anticipated triumph. 'And why do your tears flow, Immalee?'--'I
know not,' said the poor Indian, and her tears flowed faster at the
question.

'At these words, or rather at these tears, the stranger forgot
himself for a moment. He felt that melancholy triumph which the
conqueror is unable to enjoy; that triumph which announces a
victory over the weakness of others, obtained at the expence of a
greater weakness in ourselves. A human feeling, in spite of him,
pervaded his whole soul, as he said, in accents of involuntary
softness, 'What would you have me do, Immalee?' The difficulty of
speaking a language that might be at once intelligible and reserved,
--that might convey her wishes without betraying her heart,--and
the unknown nature of her new emotions, made Immalee faulter
long before she could answer, 'Stay with me,387--return not to that
world of evil and sorrow.--Here the flowers will always bloom and
the sun be as bright as on the first day I beheld you.--Why will you
go back to the world to think and to be unhappy?' The wild and
discordant laugh of her companion, startled and silenced her. 'Poor
girl,' he exclaimed, with that mixture of bitterness and com-
miseration, that at once terrifies and humiliates; 'and is this the
destiny I am to fulfil?--to listen to the chirping of birds, and watch
the opening of buds? Is this to be my lot?' and with another wild
burst of unnatural laughter, he flung away the hand which Immalee
had extended to him as she had finished her simple appeal.--'Yes,
doubtless, I am well fitted for such a fate, and such a partner. Tell
me, 'he added, with still wilder fierceness, 'tell me from what line of
my features,--from what accent of my voice,--from what sentiment
of my discourse, have you extracted the foundation of a hope that
insults me with the view of felicity?' Immalee, who might have
replied, 'I understand a fury in your words, but not your words,'388
had yet sufficient aid from her maiden pride, and female pene-
tration, to discover that she was rejected by the stranger; and a
brief emotion of indignant grief struggled with the tenderness of
her exposed and devoted heart. She paused a moment, and then
checking her tears, said, in her firmest tones, 'Go, then, to your
world,--since you wish to be unhappy--go!--Alas! it is not nec-
essary to go there to be unhappy, for I must be so here. Go,--but
take with you these roses, for they will all wither when you are
gone!--take with you these shells, for I shall no longer love to wear
them when you no longer see them!' And as she spoke, with simple,
but emphatic action, she untwined from her bosom and hair the
shells and flowers with which they were adorned, and threw them
at his feet; then turning to throw one glance of proud and
melancholy grief at him, she was retiring. 'Stay, Immalee,--stay,
and hear me for a moment,' said the stranger; and he would, at that
moment, have perhaps discovered the ineffable and forbidden secret
of his destiny, but Immalee, in silence, which her look of profound
grief made eloquent, shook sadly her averted head, and departed.'



CHAPTER XVIII


Miseram me omnia terrent, et maris
sonitus, et scopuli, et
solitudo, et sancritudo
Apollinis.389 LATIN PLAY


'Many days elapsed before the stranger revisited the isle. How he
was occupied, or what feelings agitated him in the interval, it
would be beyond human conjecture to discover. Perhaps he some-
times exulted in the misery he had inflicted,--perhaps he sometimes
pitied it. His stormy mind was like an ocean that had swallowed a
thousand wrecks of gallant ships, and now seemed to dally with the
loss of a little slender skiff, that could hardly make way on its
surface in the profoundest calm. Impelled, however, by malignity,
or tenderness, or curiosity, or weariness of artificial life, so vividly
contrasted by the unadulterated existence of Immalee, into whose
pure elements nothing but flowers and fragrance, the sparkling of
the heavens, and the odours of earth, had transfused their essence –
or, possibly, by a motive more powerful than all,--his own will;
which, never analysed, and hardly ever confessed to be the ruling
principle of our actions, governs nine-tenths of them.--He returned
to the shore of the haunted isle, the name by which it was
distinguished by those who knew not how to classify the new
goddess who was supposed to inhabit it, and who were as much
puzzled by this new specimen in their theology, as Linnæus himself
could have been by a non-descript in botany.390 Alas! the varieties
in moral botany far exceed the wildest anomalies of those in the
natural. However it was, the stranger returned to the isle. But he
had to traverse many paths, where human foot but his had never
been, and to rend away branches that seemed to tremble at a human
touch, and to cross streams into which no foot but his had ever been
dipped, before he could discover where Immalee had concealed
herself.

'Concealment, however, was not in her thoughts. When he found
her, she was leaning against a rock; the ocean was pouring its
eternal murmur of waters at her feet; she had chosen the most
desolate spot she could find;--there was neither flower or shrub
near her;--the calcined rocks, the offspring of volcano--the restless
roar of the sea, whose waves almost touched her small foot, that
seemed by its heedless protrusion at once to court and neglect
danger--these objects were all that surrounded her. The first time
he had beheld her, she was embowered amid flowers and odours,
amid all the glorious luxuries of vegetable and animal nature; the
roses and the peacocks seemed emulous which should expand their
leaves or their plumes, as a shade to that loveliness which seemed to
hover between them, alternately borrowing the fragrance of the one,
and the hues of the other. Now she stood as if deserted even by
nature, whose child she was; the rock was her resting-place, and the
ocean seemed the bed where she purposed to rest; she had no shells
on her bosom, no roses in her hair--her character seemed to have
changed with her feelings; she no longer loved all that is beautiful
in nature; she seemed, by an anticipation of her destiny, to make
alliance with all that is awful and ominous.391 She had begun to love
the rocks and the ocean, the thunder of the wave, and the sterility of
the sand,--awful objects, the incessant recurrence of whose very
sound seems intended to remind us of grief and of eternity. Their
restless monotony of repetition, corresponds with the beatings of a
heart which asks its destiny from the phenomena of nature, and
feels the answer is--'Misery.'

'Those who love may seek the luxuries of the garden, and inhale
added intoxication from its perfumes, which seem the offerings of
nature on that altar which is already erected and burning in the
heart of the worshipper;--but let those who have loved seek the
shores of the ocean, and they shall have their answer too.

'There was a sad and troubled air about her, as she stood so
lonely, that seemed at once to express the conflict of her internal
emotions, and to reflect the gloom and agitation of the physical
objects around her; for nature was preparing for one of those awful
convulsions--one of those abortive throes of desolation, that seems
to announce a more perfect wrath to come; and while it blasts the
vegetation, and burns up the soil of some visited portion, seems to
proclaim in the murmur of its receding thunders, that it will return
in that day, when the universe shall pass away as a scroll, and the
elements melt with fervent heat, and return to fulfil the dreadful
promise, which its partial and initiatory devastation has left
incomplete. Is there a peal of thunder that does not mutter a
menace, 'For me, the dissolution of the world is reserved, I depart,
but I shall return?' Is there a flash of lightning that does not say,
visibly, if not audibly, 'Sinner, I cannot now penetrate the recesses of
your soul; but how will you encounter my glare, when the hand of
the judge is armed with me, and my penetrating glance displays you
to the view of assembled worlds?'

'The evening was very dark; heavy clouds, rolling on like the forces
of an hostile army, obscured the horizon from east to west. There
was a bright but ghastly blue in the heaven above, like that in
the eye of the dying, where the last forces of life are collected,
while its powers are rapidly forsaking the frame, and feeling their
extinguishment must shortly be. There was not a breath of air to
heave the ocean,--the trees drooped without a whisper to woo their
branches or their buds,--the birds had retired, with that instinct
which teaches them to avoid the fearful encounter of the elements,
and nestled with cowering wings and drooping heads among their
favourite trees. There was not a human sound in the isle; the very
rivulet seemed to tremble at its own tinklings, and its small waves
flowed as if a subterranean hand arrested and impeded their motion.
Nature, in these grand and terrific operations, seems in some degree
to assimilate herself to a parent, whose most fearful denunciations
are preceded by an awful silence, or rather to a judge, whose final
sentence is felt with less horror than the pause that intervenes
before it is pronounced.

'Immalee gazed on the awful scene by which she was surrounded,
without any emotion derived from physical causes. To her, light and
darkness had hitherto been the same; she loved the sun for its lustre,
and the lightning for its transitory brilliancy, and the ocean for
its sonorous music, and the tempest for the agitation which it gave
to the trees, under whose bending and welcoming shadow she danced,
in time kept by the murmur of their leaves, that hung low, as if to
crown their votarist. And she loved the night, when all was still, but
what she was accustomed to call the music of a thousand streams,
that made the stars rise from their beds, to sparkle and nod to
that wild melody.

'Such she had been. Now, her eye was intently fixed on the de-
clining light, and the approaching darkness,--that preternatural
gloom, that seems to say to the brightest and most beautiful of
the works of God, 'Give place to me, thou shalt shine no more.'
'The darkness increased, and the clouds collected like an army
that had mustered its utmost force, and stood in obdured and
collected strength against the struggling light of heaven. A broad,
red and dusky line of gloomy light, gathered round the horizon,
like an usurper watching the throne of an abdicated sovereign, and
expanding its portentous circle, sent forth alternately flashes of
lightning, pale and red;--the murmur of the sea increased, and the
arcades of the banyan-tree, that had struck its patriarchal root392
not five hundred paces from where Immalee stood, resounded the deep
and almost unearthly murmur of the approaching storm through all
its colonnades; the primeval trunk rocked and groaned, and the
everlasting fibres seemed to withdraw their grasp from the earth,
and quiver in air at the sound. Nature, with every voice she could
inspire from earth, or air, or water, announced danger to her
children.

'That was the moment the stranger chose to approach Immalee;
of danger he was insensible, of fear he was unconscious; his
miserable destiny had exempted him from both, but what had it
left him? No hope--but that of plunging others into his own
condemnation. No fear--but that his victim might escape him. Yet
with all his diabolical heartlessness, he did feel some relentings
of his human nature, as he beheld the young Indian; her cheek was
pale, but her eye was fixed, and her figure, turned from him, (as
if she preferred to encounter the tremendous rage of the storm),
seemed to him to say, 'Let me fall into the hands of God, and not
into those of man.'

'This attitude, so unintentionally assumed by Immalee, and so
little expressive of her real feelings, restored all the malignant
energies of the stranger's feelings; the former evil-purposes of his
heart, and the habitual character of his dark and fiendish pursuit,
rushed back on him. Amid this contrasted scene of the convulsive
rage of nature, and the passive helplessness of her unsheltered
loveliness, he felt a glow of excitement, like that which pervaded
him, when the fearful powers of his 'charmed life' enabled him to
penetrate the cells of a madhouse, or the dungeons of an Inquisition.

'He saw this pure being surrounded by the terrors of nature, and
felt a wild and terrible conviction, that though the lightning might
blast her in a moment, yet there was a bolt more burning and more
fatal, which was wielded by his own hand, and which, if he could
aim it aright, must transfix her very soul.

'Armed with all his malignity and all his power, he approached
Immalee, armed only with her purity, and standing like the reflected
beam of the last ray of light on whose extinction she was gazing.
There was a contrast in her form and her situation, that might have
touched any feelings but those of the wanderer.

'The light of her figure shining out amid the darkness that envel-
oped her,--its undulating softness rendered still softer to the
eye by the rock against which it reclined,--its softness, bright-
ness and flexibility, presenting a kind of playful hostility to
the tremendous aspect of nature overcharged with wrath and ruin.

'The stranger approached her unobserved; his steps were unheard
amid the rush of the ocean, and the deep, portentous murmur of
the elements; but, as he advanced, he heard sounds that perhaps
operated on his feelings as the whispers of Eve to her flowers on
the organs of the serpent.393 Both knew their power, and felt their
time. Amid the fast approaching terrors of a storm, more terrible
than any she had ever witnessed, the poor Indian, unconscious, or
perhaps insensible of its dangers, was singing her wild song of
desperation and love to the echoes of the advancing storm. Some
words of this strain of despair and passion reached the ear of
the stranger. They were thus:

'The night is growing dark--but what is that to the darkness that
his absence has cast on my soul? The lightnings are glancing round
me--but what are they to the gleam of his eye when he parted from
me in anger?

'I lived but in the light of his presence--why should I not die
when that light is withdrawn? Anger of the clouds, what have I to
fear from you? You may scorch me to dust, as I have seen you
scorch the branches of the eternal trees--but the trunk still
remained, and my heart will be his for ever.

'Roar on, terrible ocean! thy waves, which I cannot count, can
never wash his image from my soul,--thou dashest a thousand
waves against a rock, but the rock is unmoved--and so would be
my heart amid the calamities of the world with which he threatens
me,--whose dangers I never would have known but for him, and
whose dangers for him I will encounter.'

'She paused in her wild song, and then renewed it, regardless
alike of the terrors of the elements, and the possible presence
of one whose subtle and poisonous potency was more fatal than
all the elements in their united wrath.

'When we first met, my bosom was covered with roses--now it is
shaded with the dark leaves of the ocynum.394 When he saw me first,
the living things all loved me--now I care not whether they love me
or not--I have forgot to love them. When he came to the isle every
night, I hoped the moon would be bright--now I care not whether
she rises or sets, whether she is clouded or bright. Before he came,
every thing loved me, and I had more things to love than I could
reckon by the hairs of my head--now I feel I can love but one, and
that one has deserted me. Since I have seen him all things have
changed. The flowers have not the colours they once had--there is
no music in the flow of the waters--the stars do not smile on me
from heaven as they did,--and I myself begin to love the storm
better than the calm.'

'As she ended her melancholy strain, she turned from the spot
where the increasing fury of the storm made it no longer possible
for her to stand, and turning, met the gaze of the stranger fixed
on her. A suffusion, the most rich and vivid, mantled over her from
brow to bosom; she did not utter her usual exclamation of joy at his
sight, but, with averted eyes and faultering step, followed him as
he pointed her to seek shelter amid the ruins of the pagoda. They
approached it in silence; and, amid the convulsions and fury of
nature, it was singular to see two beings walk on together without
exchanging a word of apprehension, or feeling a thought of danger,
--the one armed by despair, the other by innocence. Immalee would
rather have sought the shelter of her favourite banyan-tree, but the
stranger tried to make her comprehend, that her danger would be
much greater there than in the spot he pointed out to her. 'Danger!'
said the Indian, while a bright and wild smile irradiated her
features; 'can there be danger when you are near me?'--'Is there,
then, no danger in my presence?--few have met me without
dreading, and without feeling it too!' and his countenance, as he
spoke, grew darker than the heaven at which he scowled. 'Immalee,'
he added, in a voice still deeper and more thrilling, from the
unwonted operation of human emotion in its tones; 'Immalee, you
cannot be weak enough to believe that I have power of controuling
the elements? If I had,' he continued, 'by the heaven that is
frowning at me, the first exertion of my power should be to collect
the most swift and deadly of the lightnings that are hissing a-
round us, and transfix you where you stand!'--'Me?' repeated the
trembling Indian, her cheek growing paler at his words, and the
voice in which they were uttered, than at the redoubling fury of
the storm, amid whose pauses she scarce heard them.--'Yes--you--
you – lovely as you are, and innocent, and pure, before a fire
more deadly consumes your existence, and drinks your heart-blood –
before you are longer exposed to a danger a thousand times more
fatal than those with which the elements menace you--the danger
of my accursed and miserable presence!'

'Immalee, unconscious of his meaning, but trembling with impas-
sioned grief at the agitation with which he spoke, approached
him to soothe the emotion of which she knew neither the name or
the cause. Through the fractures of the ruin the red and ragged
lightnings disclosed, from time to time, a glimpse of her figure, –
her dishevelled hair,--her pallid and appealing look,--her locked
hands, and the imploring bend of her slight form, as if she was
asking pardon for a crime of which she was unconscious,--and
soliciting an interest in griefs not her own. All around her wild,
unearthly and terrible,--the floor strewed with fragments of stone,
and mounds of sand,--the vast masses of ruined architecture,
whose formation seemed the work of no human hand, and whose
destruction appeared the sport of demons,--the yawning fissures of
the arched and ponderous roof, through which heaven darkened and
blazed alternately with a gloom that wrapt every thing, or a light
more fearful than that gloom.--All around her gave to her form,
when it was momently visible, a relief so strong and so touching,
that it might have immortalized the hand who had sketched her as
the embodied presence of an angel who had descended to the reg-
ions of woe and wrath,--of darkness and of fire, on a message of
reconciliation,--and descended in vain.

'The stranger threw on her, as she bent before him, one of those
looks that, but her own, no mortal eye had yet encountered unappal-
led. Its expression seemed only to inspire a higher feeling of
devotedness in the victim. Perhaps an involuntary sentiment of
terror mingled itself with that expression, as this beautiful being
sunk on her knees before her writhing and distracted enemy; and,
by the silent supplication of her attitude, seemed to implore him
to have mercy on himself. As the lightnings flashed around her,--
as the earth trembled beneath her white and slender feet,--as the
elements seemed all sworn to the destruction of every living thing,
and marched on from heaven to the accomplishment of their pur-
pose, with Væ victis written and legible to every eye, in the
broad unfolded banners of that resplendent and sulphurous light
that seemed to display the day of hell--the feelings of the devoted
Indian seemed concentrated on the ill-chosen object of their idolatry
alone. Her graduating attitudes beautifully, but painfully, expressed
the submission of a female heart devoted to its object, to his
frailties, his passions, and his very crimes. When subdued by the
image of power, which the mind of man exercises over that of
woman, that impulse becomes irresistibly humiliating. Immalee had
at first bowed to conciliate her beloved, and her spirit had taught
her frame that first inclination. In her next stage of suffering, she
had sunk on her knees, and, remaining at a distance from him, she
had trusted to this state of prostration to produce that effect on his
heart which those who love always hope compassion may produce, –
that illegitimate child of love, often more cherished than its parent.
In her last efforts she clung to his hand--she pressed her pale lips to
it, and was about to utter a few words--her voice failed her, but her
fast dropping tears spoke to the hand which she held,--and its
grasp, which for a moment convulsively returned hers, and then
flung it away, answered her.

'The Indian remained prostrate and aghast. 'Immalee,' said the
stranger, in a struggling voice, 'Do you wish me to tell you the
feelings with which my presence should inspire you?'--'No--no –
no!' said the Indian, applying her white and delicate hands to her
ears, and then clasping them on her bosom; 'I feel them too much.' –
'Hate me--curse me!' said the stranger, not heeding her, and
stamping till the reverberation of his steps on the hollow and
loosened stones almost contended with the thunder; 'hate me, for I
hate you--I hate all things that live--all things that are dead--I
am myself hated and hateful!'--'Not by me,' said the poor Indian,
feeling, through the blindness of her tears, for his averted hand.
'Yes, by you, if you knew whose I am, and whom I serve.' Immalee
aroused her newly-excited energies of heart and intellect to answer
this appeal. 'Who you are, I know not--but I am yours.--Whom you
serve, I know not--but him will I serve--I will be yours for ever.
Forsake me if you will, but when I am dead, come back to this isle,
and say to yourself, The roses have bloomed and faded--the streams
have flowed and been dried up--the rocks have been removed from
their places--and the lights of heaven have altered in their courses,
--but there was one who never changed, and she is not here!'

'As she spoke the enthusiasm of passion struggling with grief, she
added, 'You have told me you possess the happy art of writing
thought.--Do not write one thought on my grave, for one word
traced by your hand would revive me. Do not weep, for one tear
would make me live again, perhaps to draw a tear from you.' –
'Immalee!' said the stranger. The Indian looked up, and, with a
mingled feeling of grief, amazement, and compunction, beheld him
shed tears. The next moment he dashed them away with the hand of
despair; and grinding his teeth, burst into that wild shriek of bitter
and convulsive laughter that announces the object of its derision is
ourselves.

'Immalee, whose feelings were almost exhausted, trembled in sil-
ence at his feet. 'Hear me, wretched girl!' he cried in tones that
seemed alternately tremulous with malignity and compassion, with
habitual hostility and involuntary softness; 'hear me! I know the
secret sentiment you struggle with better than the innocent heart of
which it is the inmate knows it. Suppress, banish, destroy it.
Crush it as you would a young reptile before its growth had made it
loathsome to the eye, and poisonous to existence!'--'I never crushed
even a reptile in my life,' answered Immalee, unconscious that this
matter-of-fact answer was equally applicable in another sense. 'You
love, then,' said the stranger; 'but,' after a long and ominous pause,
'do you know whom it is you love?'--'You!' said the Indian, with
that purity of truth that consecrates the impulse it yields to, and
would blush more for the sophistications of art than the confidence
of nature; 'you! You have taught me to think, to feel and to weep.' –
'And you love me for this?' said her companion, with an expression
half irony, half commiseration. 'Think, Immalee, for a moment, how
unsuitable, how unworthy, is the object of the feelings you lavish
on him. A being unattractive in his form, repulsive in his habits,
separated from life and humanity by a gulph impassable; a disinher-
ited child of nature, who goes about to curse or to tempt his more
prosperous brethren; one who--what withholds me from disclosing
all?'

'At this moment a flash of such vivid and terrific brightness as
no human sight could sustain, gleamed through the ruins, pouring
through every fissure instant and intolerable light. Immalee,
overcome by terror and emotion, remained on her knees, her hands
closely clasped over her aching eyes.

'For a few moments that she remained thus, she thought she heard
other sounds near her, and that the stranger was answering a voice
that spoke to him. She heard him say, as the thunder rolled to
a distance, 'This hour is mine, not thine--begone, and trouble me
not.' When she looked up again, all trace of human emotion was
gone from his expression. The dry and burning eye of despair that
he fixed on her, seemed never to have owned a tear; the hand with
which he grasped her, seemed never to have felt the flow of blood,
or the throb of a pulse; amid the intense and increasing heat of
an atmosphere that appeared on fire, its touch was as cold as that
of the dead.

'Mercy!' cried the trembling Indian, as she in vain endeavoured
to read a human feeling in those eyes of stone, to which her own
tearful and appealing ones were uplifted--'mercy!' And while she
uttered the word, she knew not what she deprecated or dreaded.

'The stranger answered not a word, relaxed not a muscle; it seem-
ed as if he felt not with the hands that grasped her,--as if he
saw her not with the eyes that glared fixedly and coldly on her. He
bore, or rather dragged, her to the vast arch that had once been
the entrance to the pagoda, but which, now shattered and ruinous,
resembled more the gulphing yawn of a cavern that harbours the
inmates of the desert, than a work wrought by the hands of man,
and devoted to the worship of a deity. 'You have called for mercy,'
said her companion, in a voice that froze her blood even under the
burning atmosphere, whose air she could scarce respire. 'You have
cried for mercy, and mercy you shall have. Mercy has not been dealt
to me, but I have courted my horrible destiny, and my reward is just
and sure. Look forth, trembler--look forth,--I command thee!' And
he stamped with an air of authority and impatience that completed
the terror of the delicate and impassioned being who shuddered in
his grasp, and felt half-dead at his frown.

'In obedience to his command, she removed the long tresses of
her auburn hair, which had vainly swept, in luxuriant and fruit-
less redundance, the rock on which the steps of him she adored had
been fixed. With that mixture of the docility of the child, and
the mild submission of woman, she attempted to comply with his
demand, but her eyes, filled with tears, could not encounter the
withering horrors of the scene before her. She wiped those brilliant
eyes with hairs that were every day bathed in the pure and crystal
lymph, and seemed, as she tried to gaze on the desolation, like some
bright and shivering spirit, who, for its further purification, or
perhaps for the enlargement of the knowledge necessary for its
destination, is compelled to witness some evidence of the Almighty's
wrath, unintelligible in its first operations, but doubtless salu-
tary in its final results.

'Thus looking and thus feeling, Immalee shudderingly approached
the entrance of that building, which, blending the ruins of nat-
ure with those of art, seemed to announce the power of desolation
over both, and to intimate that the primeval rock, untouched and
unmodulated by human hands, and thrown upwards perhaps by some
volcanic eruption, perhaps deposited there by some meteoric
discharge, and the gigantic columns of stone, whose erection had
been the work of two centuries,--were alike dust beneath the feet
of that tremendous conqueror, whose victories alone are without
noise and without resistance, and the progress of whose triumph
is marked by tears instead of blood.

'Immalee, as she gazed around her, felt, for the first time, terror
at the aspect of nature. Formerly, she had considered all its
phenomena as equally splendid or terrific. And her childish, though
active imagination, seemed to consecrate alike the sunlight and the
storm, to the devotion of a heart, on whose pure altar the flowers
and the fires of nature flung their undivided offering.

'But since she had seen the stranger, new emotions had pervaded
her young heart. She learned to weep and to fear; and perhaps she
saw, in the fearful aspect of the heavens, the development of that
mysterious terror, which always trembles at the bottom of the hearts
of those who dare to love.

'How often does nature thus become an involuntary interpreter
between us and our feelings! Is the murmur of the ocean without a
meaning?--Is the roll of the thunder without a voice?--Is the
blasted spot on which the rage of both has been exhausted without
its lesson?--Do not they all tell us some mysterious secret, which
we have in vain searched our hearts for?--Do we not find in them,
an answer to those questions with which we are for ever impor-
tuning the mute oracle of our destiny?--Alas! how deceitful
and inadequate we feel the language of man, after love and grief
have made us acquainted with that of nature!--the only one,
perhaps, capable of a corresponding sign for those emotions, under
which all human expression faints. What a difference between words
without meaning, and that meaning without words, which the sublime
phenomena of nature, the rocks and the ocean, the moon and the
twilight, convey to those who have 'ears to hear.'395

'How eloquent of truth is nature in her very silence! How fertile
of reflections amid her profoundest desolations! But the desolation
now presented to the eyes of Immalee, was that which is calculated
to cause terror, not reflection. Earth and heaven, the sea and the dry
land, seemed mingling together, and about to replunge into chaos.
The ocean, deserting its eternal bed, dashed its waves, whose white
surf gleamed through the darkness, far into the shores of the isle.
They came on like the crests of a thousand warriors, plumed and
tossing in their pride, and, like them, perishing in the moment of
victory. There was a fearful inversion of the natural appearance of
earth and sea, as if all the barriers of nature were broken, and all
her laws reversed.

The waves deserting their station, left, from time to time, the
sands as dry as those of the desert; and the trees and shrubs tossed
and heaved in ceaseless agitation, like the waves of a midnight
storm. There was no light, but a livid grey that sickened the eye to
behold, except when the bright red lightning burst out like the eye
of a fiend, glancing over the work of ruin, and closing as it beheld
it completed.

'Amid this scene stood two beings, one whose appealing loveliness
seemed to have found favour with the elements even in their wrath,
and one whose fearless and obdurate eye appeared to defy them.
'Immalee,' he cried, 'is this a place or an hour to talk of love!
--all nature is appalled--heaven is dark--the animals have hid
themselves--and the very shrubs, as they wave and shrink, seem
alive with terror.'--'It is an hour to implore protection,' said the
Indian, clinging to him timidly. 'Look up,' said the stranger, while
his own fixed and fearless eye seemed to return flash for flash to the
baffled and insulted elements; 'Look up, and if you cannot resist the
impulses of your heart, let me at least point out a fitter object
for them. Love,' he cried, extending his arm towards the dim and
troubled sky, 'love the storm in its might of destruction--seek
alliance with those swift and perilous travellers of the groaning air,
--the meteor that rends, and the thunder that shakes it! Court, for
sheltering tenderness, those masses of dense and rolling cloud,--the
baseless mountains of heaven! Woo the kisses of the fiery lightnings,
to quench themselves on your smouldering bosom! Seek all that is
terrible in nature for your companions and your lover!--woo them
to burn and blast you--perish in their fierce embrace, and you will
be happier, far happier, than if you lived in mine! Lived!--Oh who
can be mine and live! Hear me, Immalee!' he cried, while he held
her hands locked in his--while his eyes, rivetted on her, sent forth a
light of intolerable lustre--while a new feeling of indefinite
enthusiasm seemed for a moment to thrill his whole frame, and
new-modulate the tone of his nature; 'Hear me! If you will be mine,
it must be amid a scene like this for ever--amid fire and darkness –
amid hatred and despair--amid –' and his voice swelling to a
demoniac shriek of rage and horror, and his arms extended, as if to
grapple with the fearful objects of some imaginary struggle, he was
rushing from the arch under which they stood, lost in the picture
which his guilt and despair had drawn, and whose images he was
for ever doomed to behold.

'The slender form that had clung to him was, by this sudden
movement, prostrated at his feet; and, with a voice choaked with
terror, yet with that perfect devotedness which never issued but
from the heart and lip of woman, she answered his frightful que-
tions with the simple demand, 'Will you be there?'--'Yes!--THERE
I must be, and for ever! And will you, and dare you, be with me?'
And a kind of wild and terrible energy nerved his frame, and
strengthened his voice, as he spoke and cowered over pale and
prostrate loveliness, that seemed in profound and reckless
humiliation to court its own destruction, as if a dove exposed its
breast, without flight or struggle, to the beak of a vulture. 'Well,
then,' said the stranger, while a brief convulsion crossed his pale
visage, 'amid thunder I wed thee--bride of perdition! mine shalt
thou be for ever! Come, and let us attest our nuptials before the
reeling altar of nature, with the lightnings of heaven for our bed-
lights, and the curse of nature for our marriage-benediction!' The
Indian shrieked in terror, not at his words, which she did not
understand, but at the expression which accompanied them.396
'Come,' he repeated, 'while the darkness yet is witness to our
ineffable and eternal union.' Immalee, pale, terrified, but resolute,
retreated from him.

'At this moment the storm, which had obscured the heavens and
ravaged the earth, passed away with the rapidity common in those
climates, where the visitation of an hour does its work of
destruction unimpeded, and is instantly succeeded by the smiling
lights and brilliant skies of which mortal curiosity in vain asks
the question, Whether they gleam in triumph or in consolation o-
ver the mischief they witness?

'As the stranger spoke, the clouds passed away, carrying their
diminished burden of wrath and terror where sufferings were to be
inflicted, and terrors to be undergone, by the natives of other
climes --and the bright moon burst forth with a glory unknown in
European climes. The heavens were as blue as the waves of the
ocean, which they seemed to reflect; and the stars burst forth with a
kind of indignant and aggravated brilliancy, as if they resented the
usurpation of the storm, and asserted the eternal predominance of
nature over the casual influences of the storms that obscured her.
Such, perhaps, will be the development of the moral world. We shall
be told why we suffered, and for what; but a bright and blessed
lustre shall follow the storm, and all shall yet be light.397

'The young Indian caught from this object an omen alike
auspicious to her imagination and her heart. She burst from him –
she rushed into the light of nature, whose glory seemed like the
promise of redemption, gleaming amid the darkness of the fall. She
pointed to the moon, that sun of the eastern nights, whose broad
and brilliant light fell like a mantle of glory over rock and ruin,
over tree and flower.

'Wed me by this light,' cried Immalee, 'and I will be yours for
ever!' And her beautiful countenance reflected the full light of the
glorious planet that rode bright through the cloudless heaven--and
her white and naked arms, extended towards it, seemed like two
pure attesting pledges of the union. 'Wed me by this light,' she
repeated, sinking on her knees, 'and I will be yours for ever!'
'As she spoke, the stranger approached, moved with what feelings
no mortal thought can discover. At that moment a trifling pheno-
menon interfered to alter his destiny. A darkened cloud at that
moment covered the moon--it seemed as if the departed storm
collected in wrathful haste the last dark fold of its tremendous
drapery, and was about to pass away for ever.

'The eyes of the stranger flashed on Immalee the brightest rays of
mingled fondness and ferocity. He pointed to the darkness,--'WED
ME BY THIS LIGHT!' he exclaimed, 'and you shall be mine for ever and
ever!' Immalee, shuddering at the grasp in which he held her, and
trying in vain to watch the expression of his countenance, yet felt
enough of her danger to tear herself from him. 'Farewell for ever!'
exclaimed the stranger, as he rushed from her.

'Immalee, exhausted by emotion and terror, had fallen senseless
on the sands that filled the path to the ruined pagoda. He returned –
he raised her in his arms--her long dark hair streamed over them
like the drooping banners of a defeated army--her arms sunk down
as if declining the support they seemed to implore--her cold and
colourless cheek rested on his shoulder.

'Is she dead?' he murmured. 'Well, be it so--let her perish--let
her be any thing but mine!' He flung his senseless burden on the
sands, and departed--nor did he ever revisit the island.'



CHAPTER XIX



Que donne le monde aux siens plus
souvent,
　　　　　　　Echo Vent.
Que dois-je vaincre ici, sans jamais
relacher,
　　　　　　　Echo la chair.
Qui fit le cause des maux, qui me sont
survenus,
　　　　　　　Echo Venus.
Que faut dire après d'une telle infidelle,
　　　　　　　Echo Fi d'elle.

MAGDALÈNIADE, by
Father Pierre de St Louis.398



'Three years had elapsed since the parting of Immalee and the
stranger, when one evening the attention of some Spanish
gentlemen, who were walking in a public place in Madrid, was
arrested by a figure that passed them, habited in the dress of the
country, (only without a sword), and walking very slowly. They
stopt by a kind of simultaneous movement, and seemed to ask each
other, with silent looks, what had been the cause of the impression
this person's appearance had made on them. There was nothing
remarkable in his figure, --his demeanour was quiet; it was the
singular expression of his countenance which had struck them with
a sensation they could neither define or account for.

'As they paused, the person returned alone, and walking slowly –
and they again encountered that singular expression of the fea-
tures, (the eyes particularly), which no human glance could meet
unappalled. Accustomed to look on and converse with all things
revolting to nature and to man, --for ever exploring the mad-house,
the jail, or the Inquisition, --the den of famine, the dungeon of
crime, or the death-bed of despair, --his eyes had acquired a light
and a language of their own --a light that none could gaze on, and
a language that few dare understand.

'As he passed slowly by them, they observed two others whose
attention was apparently fixed on the same singular object, for they
stood pointing after him, and speaking to each other with gestures
of strong and obvious emotion. The curiosity of the groupe for once
overcame the restraint of Spanish reserve, and approaching the two
cavaliers, they inquired if the singular personage who had passed
was not the subject of their conversation, and the cause of the
emotion which appeared to accompany it. The others replied in the
affirmative, and hinted at their knowledge of circumstances in the
character and history of that extraordinary being that might justify
even stronger marks of emotion at his presence. This hint operated
still more strongly on their curiosity --the circle of listeners began
to deepen. Some of them, it appeared, had, or pretended to have, some
information relative to this extraordinary subject. And that kind of
desultory conversation commenced, whose principal ingredients are
a plentiful proportion of ignorance, curiosity and fear, mingled with
some small allowance of information and truth; --that conversation,
vague, unsatisfactory, but not uninteresting, to which every speaker
is welcome to contribute his share of baseless report, --wild con-
jecture, --anecdote the more incredible the better credited, --and
conclusion the more falsely drawn the more likely to carry home
conviction.

'The conversation passed very much in language incoherent as
this. – 'But why, if he be what he is described, what he is known to
be, --why is he not seized by order of government? --why is he not
immured in the Inquisition?' --'He has been often in the prison of
the holy office --oftener, perhaps, than the holy fathers wished,' said
another. 'But it is a well-known fact, that whatever transpired on his
examination, he was liberated almost immediately.' Another added,
'That the stranger had been in almost every prison in Europe, but
had always contrived either to defeat or defy the power in whose
grasp he appeared to be inclosed, --and to be active in his purposes
of mischief in the remotest parts of Europe at the moment he was
supposed to be expiating them in others.' Another demanded, 'if it
was known to what country he belonged?' and was answered, 'He is
said to be a native of Ireland --(a country that no one knows, and
which the natives are particularly reluctant to dwell in from various
causes)399 --and his name is Melmoth.' The Spaniard had great
difficulty in expressing that theta,400 unpronounceable by continental
lips. 'Another, who had an appearance of more intelligence than the
rest, added the extraordinary fact of the stranger's being seen in
various and distant parts of the earth within a time in which no
power merely human could be supposed to traverse them --that his
marked and fearful habit was every where to seek out the most
wretched, or the most profligate, of the community among which he
flung himself --what was his object in seeking them was unknown.'
--'It is well known,' said a deep-toned voice, falling on the ears of
the startled listeners like the toll of a strong but muffled bell, --
'it is well known both to him and them.'

'It was now twilight, but the eyes of all could distinguish the
figure of the stranger as he passed; and some even averred they
could see the ominous lustre of those eyes which never rose on
human destiny but as planets of woe. The groupe paused for some
time to watch the retreat of the figure that had produced on them
the effect of the torpedo.401 It departed slowly, --no one offered it
molestation.

'I have heard,' said one of the company, 'that a delicious music
precedes the approach of this person when his destined victim, --the
being whom he is permitted to tempt or to torture, --is about to
appear or to approach him. I have heard a strange tale of such
music being heard; and --Holy Mary be our guide! did you ever hear
such sounds? – 'Where --what? --' and the astonished listeners took
off their hats, unclasped their mantles, opened their lips, and drew
in their breath, in delicious ecstasy at the sounds that floated round
them. 'No wonder,' said a young gallant of the party, 'no wonder
that such sounds harbinger the approach of a being so heavenly. She
deals with the good spirits; and the blessed saints alone could send
such music from above to welcome her.' As he spoke, all eyes were
turned to a figure, which, though moving among a groupe of
brilliant and attractive females, appeared the only one among them
on whom the eye could rest with pure and undivided light and love.
She did not catch observation --observation caught her, and was
proud of its prize.

'At the approach of a large party of females, there was all that
anxious and flattering preparation among the cavaliers, --all
that eager arrangement of capas, and hats, and plumes, --that
characterized the manners of a nation still half-feudal,402 and al-
ways gallant and chivalrous. These preliminary movements were
answered by corresponding ones on the part of the fair and fatal
host approaching. The creaking of their large fans --the tremulous
and purposely-delayed adjustment of their floating veils, whose
partial concealment flattered the imagination beyond the most full
and ostentatious disclosure of the charms they seemed jealous of –
the folds of the mantilla, of whose graceful falls, and complicated
manoeuvres, and coquettish undulations, the Spanish women know
how to avail themselves so well --all these announced an attack,
which the cavaliers, according to the modes of gallantry in that day
(1683), were well prepared to meet and parry.

'But, amid the bright host that advanced against them, there was
one whose arms were not artificial, and the effect of whose singular
and simple attractions made a strong contrast to the studied ar-
rangements of her associates. If her fan moved, it was only to
collect air --if she arranged her veil, it was only to hide her
face --if she adjusted her mantilla, it was but to hide that form,
whose exquisite symmetry defied the voluminous drapery of even that
day to conceal it. Men of the loosest gallantly fell back as she
approached, with involuntary awe --the libertine who looked on her
was half-converted --the susceptible beheld her as one who realized
that vision of imagination that must never be embodied here --and
the unfortunate as one whose sight alone was consolation --the old,
as they gazed on her, dreamt of their youth --and the young for the
first time dreamt of love --the only love which deserves the name –
that which purity alone can inspire, and perfect purity alone can
reward.

'As she mingled among the gay groupes that filled the place, one
might observe a certain air that distinguished her from every female
there, --not by pretension to superiority, (of that her unequalled
loveliness must have acquitted her, even to the vainest of the
groupe), but by an untainted, unsophisticated character, diffusing
itself over look and motion, and even thought --turning wildness
into grace --giving an emphasis to a single exclamation, that made
polished sentences sound trifling – for ever trespassing against
etiquette with vivid and fearless enthusiasm, and apologizing the
next moment with such timid and graceful repentance, that one
doubted whether the offence or the apology were most delightful.

'She presented altogether a singular contrast to the measured
tones, the mincing gait, and the organized uniformity of dress, and
manner, and look, and feeling, of the females about her. The harness
of art was upon every limb and feature from their birth, and its
trappings concealed or crippled every movement which nature had
designed for graceful. But in the movement of this young female,
there was a bounding elasticity, a springiness, a luxuriant and
conscious vitality, that made every action the expression of thought;
and then, as she shrunk from the disclosure, made it the more
exquisite interpreter of feeling. There was around her a mingled
light of innocence and majesty, never united but in her sex. Men
may long retain, and even confirm, the character of power which
nature has stamped on their frames, but they very soon forfeit their
claim to the expression of innocence.

'Amid the vivid and eccentric graces of a form that seemed like a
comet in the world of beauty, bound by no laws, or by laws that she
alone understood and obeyed, there was a shade of melancholy,
that, to a superficial observer, seemed transitory and assumed,
perhaps as a studied relief to the glowing colours of a picture so
brilliant, but which, to other eyes, announced, that with all the
energies of intellect occupied, --with all the instincts of sense
excited, --the heart had as yet no inmate, and wanted one.

'The groupe who had been conversing about the stranger, felt
their attention irresistibly attracted by this object; and the low
murmur of their fearful whispers was converted into broken
exclamations of delight and wonder, as the fair vision passed them.
She had not long done so, when the stranger was seen slowly
returning, seeming, as before, known to all, but knowing none. As
the female party turned, they encountered him. His emphatic glance
selected and centred in one alone. She saw him too, recognized him,
and, uttering a wild shriek, fell on the earth senseless.

'The tumult occasioned by this accident, which so many
witnessed, and none knew the cause of, for some moments drew off
the attention of all from the stranger --all were occupied either in
assisting or inquiring after the lady who had fainted. She was borne
to her carriage by more assistants than she needed or wished for –
and just as she was lifted into it, the voice of some one near her
uttered the word 'Immalee!' She recognized the voice, and turned,
with a look of anguish and a feeble cry, towards the direction from
which it proceeded. Those around her had heard the sound, --but as
they did not understand its meaning, or know to whom it was
addressed, they ascribed the lady's emotion to indisposition, and
hastened to place her in her carriage. It drove away, but the
stranger pursued its course with his eyes --the company dispersed,
he remained alone --twilight faded into darkness --he appeared not
to notice the change --a few still continued lingering at the
extremity of the walk to mark him --they were wholly unmarked by
him.

'One who remained the longest said, that he saw him use the
action of one who wipes away a tear hastily. To his eyes the tear of
penitence was denied for ever. Could this have been the tear of
passion? If so, how much woe did it announce to its object!'



CHAPTER XX


Oh what was love made for, if 'tis not the
same
Through joy and through torment,
through glory and shame!
I know not, I ask not, what guilt's in
thine heart,
I but know I must love thee, whatever
thou art.

MOORE403


'The next day, the young female who had excited so much interest
the preceding evening, was to quit Madrid, to pass a few weeks at a
villa belonging to her family, at a short distance from the city.
That family, including all the company, consisted of her mother Donna
Clara di Aliaga, the wife of a wealthy merchant, who was monthly
expected to return from the Indies; her brother Don Fernan di Aliaga,
and several servants; for these wealthy citizens, conscious of
their opulence and formerly high descent, piqued themselves upon
travelling with no less ceremony and pompous tardiness than
accompanied the progress of a grandee. So the old square-built,
lumbering carriage, moved on like a hearse; the coachman sat fast
asleep on the box; and the six black horses crawled at a pace like
the progress of time when he visits affliction. Beside the carriage
rode Fernan di Aliaga and his servants, with umbrellas and huge
spectacles; and with in it were placed Donna Clara and her daughter.
The interior of this arrangement was the counterpart of its external
appearance, --all announced dullness, formality and withering mono
tony.

'Donna Clara was a woman of a cold and grave temper, with all
the solemnity of a Spaniard, and all the austerity of a bigot. Don
Fernan presented that union of fiery passion and saturnie404 manners
not unusual among Spaniards. His dull and selfish pride was wounded
by the recollection of his family having been in trade; and, looking
on the unrivalled beauty of his sister as a possible means of his
obtaining an alliance with a family of rank, he viewed her with that
kind of selfish partiality as little honourable to him who feels it,
as to her who was its object.

'And it was amid such beings that the vivid and susceptible Immalee,
the daughter of nature, 'the gay creature of the elements,'405 was doom-
ed to wither away the richly-coloured and exquisitely-scented flower
of an existence so ungenially transplanted. Her ingular destiny seemed
to have removed her from a physical wilderness, to place her in a
moral one. And, perhaps, her last state was worse than her first.

'It is certain that the gloomiest prospect presents nothing so
chilling as the aspect of human faces, in which we try in vain to
trace one corresponding expression; and the sterility of nature
itself is luxury compared to the sterility of human hearts, which
communicate all the desolation they feel.

'They had been some time on their way, when Donna Clara, who
never spoke till after a long preface of silence, perhaps to give
what she said a weight it might otherwise have wanted, said, with
oracular deliberation, 'Daughter, I hear you fainted in the public
walks last night --did you meet with any thing that surprised or
terrified you?' --'No, Madam,' --'What, then, could be the cause of
the emotion you betrayed at the sight, as I am told --I know nothing
--of a personage of extraordinary demeanour?' --'Oh, I cannot, dare
not tell!' said Isidora, dropping her veil over her burning cheek.
Then the irrepressible ingenuousness of her former nature, rushing
over her heart and frame like a flood, she sunk from the cushion on
which she sat at Donna Clara's feet, exclaiming, 'Oh, mother, I will
tell you all!' --'No!' said Donna Clara, repelling her with a cold
feeling of offended pride; 'no! --there is no occasion. I seek no
confidence withheld and bestowed in the same breath; nor do I like
these violent emotions --they are unmaidenly. Your duties as a child
are easily understood --they are merely perfect obedience, profound
submission, and unbroken silence, except when you are addressed
by me, your brother, or Father Jose. Surely no duties were ever
more easily performed --rise, then, and cease to weep. If your
conscience disturbs you, accuse yourself to Father Jose, who will,
no doubt, inflict a penance proportioned to the enormity of your
offence. I trust only he will not err on the side of indulgence.'
And so saying, Donna Clara, who had never uttered so long a speech
before, reclined back on her cushion, and began to tell her beads
with much devotion, till the arrival of the carriage at its dest-
ination awoke her from a profound and peaceful sleep.

'It was near noon, and dinner in a cool low apartment near the
garden awaited only the approach of Father Jose, the confessor. He
arrived at length. He was a man of an imposing figure, mounted on
a stately mule. His features, at first view, bore strong traces of
thought; but, on closer examination, those traces seemed rather the
result of physical conformation, than of any intellectual exercise.
The channel was open, but the stream had not been directed there.
However, though defective in education, and somewhat narrow in
mind, Father Jose was a good man, and meant well. He loved power,
and he was devoted to the interests of the Catholic church; but
he had frequently doubts, (which he kept to himself), of the ab-
solute necessity of celibacy, and he felt (strange effect!) a chill
all over him when he heard of the fires of an auto da fe. Dinner was
concluded; the fruit and wine, the latter untasted by the females,
were on the table, --the choicest of them placed before Father Jose,
--when Isidora, after a profound reverence to her mother and the
priest, retired, as usual, to her apartment. Donna Clara turned to the
confessor with a look that demanded to be answered. 'It is her hour
for siesta,' said the priest, helping himself to a bunch of grapes.
'No, Father, no!' said Donna Clara sadly; 'her maid informs me she
does not retire to sleep. She was, alas! too well accustomed to that
burning climate where she was lost in her infancy, to feel the heat
as a Christian should. No, she retires neither to pray or sleep, after
the devout custom of Spanish women, but, I fear, to' --'To do what?'
said the priest, with horror in his voice --'To think, I fear,' said
Donna Clara; 'for often I observe, on her return, the traces of tears
on her face. I tremble, Father, lest those tears be shed for that
heathen land, that region of Satan, where her youth was past.' --'I'll
give her a penance,' said Father Jose, 'that will save her the trouble
of shedding tears on the score of memory at least --these grapes are
delicious.' --'But, Father,' pursued Donna Clara, with all the weak
but restless anxiety of a superstitious mind, 'Though you have made
me easy on that subject, I still am wretched. Oh, Father, how she
will talk sometimes! --like a creature self-taught, that needed
neither director or confessor but her own heart.' --'How!' exclaimed
Father Jose, 'need neither confessor or director! --she must be
beside herself --'Oh, Father,' continued Donna Clara, 'she will say
things in her mild and unanswerable manner, that, armed with all
my authority, I'--'How --how is that?' said the priest, in a tone of
severity --'does she deny any of the tenets of the Holy Catholic
church?' --'No! no! no!' said the terrified Donna Clara crossing
herself. 'How then?' --'Why, she speaks in a manner in which I
never heard you, reverend Father, or any of the reverend brethren,
whom my devotion to the holy church has led me to hear, speak
before. It is in vain I tell her that true religion consists in
hearing mass --in going to confession --in performing penance --in
observing the fasts and vigils --in undergoing mortification and
abstinence --in believing all that the holy church teaches --and
hating, detesting, abhorring and execrating–' 'Enough, daughter –
enough,' said Father Jose; 'there can be no doubt of the orthodoxy
of your creed?' --'I trust not, holy Father,' said the anxious Donna
Clara. 'I were an infidel to doubt it,' interposed the priest; 'I might
as well deny this fruit to be exquisite, or this glass of Malaga to
be worthy the table of his Holiness the Pope, if he feasted all the
Cardinals. But how, daughter, as touching the supposed or appre--
hended defalcations406 in Donna Isidora's creed?' --'Holy Father,
I have already explained my own religious sentiments.' --'Yes --yes
--we have had enough of them; now for your daughter's.' – 'She will
sometimes say,' said Donna Clara, bursting into tears --'she will say,
but never till greatly urged, that religion ought to be a system
whose spirit was universal love. Do you understand any thing of
that, Father?' --'Humph --humph!' --'That it must be something that
bound all who professed it to habits of benevolence, gentleness and
humility, under every difference of creed and of form.' --'Humph –
humph!' --'Father,' said Donna Clara, a little piqued at the apparent
indifference with which Father Jose listened to her communications,
and resolved to rouse him by some terrific evidence of the truth of
her suspicions, 'Father, I have heard her dare to express a hope that
the heretics in the train of the English ambassador might not be
everlastingly' --'Hush! --I must not hear such sounds, or it might be
my duty to take severer notice of these lapses. However, daughter,'
continued Father Jose, 'thus far I will venture for your consolation.
As sure as this fine peach is in my hand --another, if you please –
and as sure as I shall finish this other glass of Malaga' --here a long
pause attested the fulfilment of the pledge --'so sure' --and Father
Jose turned the inverted glass on the table --'Madonna Isidora has –
has the elements of a Christian in her, however improbable it may
seem to you --I swear it to you by the habit I wear; --for the rest, a
little penance --a --I shall consider of it. And now, daughter, when
your son Don Fernan has finished his siesta, --as there is no reason
to suspect him of retiring to think, --please to inform him I am ready
to continue the game of chess which we commenced four months
ago. I have pushed my pawn to the last square but one, and the next
step gives me a queen.' --'Has the game continued so long?' said
Donna Clara. 'Long!' repeated the priest, 'Aye, and may continue
much longer --we have never played more than three hours a-day
on an average.'

'He then retired to sleep, and the evening was passed by the
priest and Don Fernan, in profound silence at their chess --by Donna
Clara, in silence equally profound, at her tapestry --and by Isidora
at the casement, which the intolerable heat had compelled them to
leave open, in gazing at the lustre of the moon, and inhaling the
odour of the tube-rose, and watching the expanding leaves of the
night-blowing cereus.407 The physical luxuries of her former existence
seemed renewed by these objects. The intense blue of the heavens,
and the burning planet that stood in sole glory in their centre, might
have vied with all that lavish and refulgent opulence of light in
which nature arrays an Indian night. Below, too, there were flowers
and fragrance; colours, like veiled beauty, mellowed, not hid; and
dews that hung on every leaf, trembling and sparkling like the tears
of spirits, that wept to take leave of the flowers.

'The breeze, indeed, though redolent of the breath of the orange
blossom, the jasmine, and the rose, had not the rich and balmy
odour that scents the Indian air by night.

.408

'Except this, what was not there that might not renew the deli-
cious dream of her former existence, and make her believe herself
again the queen of that fairy isle? --One image was wanting
--an image whose absence made that paradise of islands, and all the
odorous and flowery luxury of a moonlight garden in Spain, alike
deserts to her. In her heart alone could she hope to meet that
image, --to herself alone did she dare to repeat his name, and those
wild and sweet songs of his country409 which he had taught her in his
happier moods. And so strange was the contrast between her former
and present existence, --so subdued was she by constraint and cold-
ness, --so often had she been told that every thing she did, said,
or thought, was wrong, --that she began to yield up the evidences
of her senses, to avoid the perpetual persecutions of teazing and
imperious medicrity, and considered the appearance of the stranger
as one of those visions that formed the trouble and joy of her
dreamy and illusive existence.

'I am surprised, sister,' said Fernan, whom Father Jose's gaining
his queen had put in unusually bad humour --'I am surprised that
you never busy yourself, as young maidens use, at your needle, or in
some quaint niceties of your sex.' --'Or in reading some devout
book,' said Donna Clara, raising her eyes one moment from her tap-
estry, and then dropping them again; 'there is the legend of that†
Polish saint,410 born, like her, in a land of darkness, yet chosen to
be a vessel --I have forgot his name, reverend Father.' --'Check to
the king,' said Father Jose in reply. 'You regard nothing but watch-
ing a few flowers, or hanging over your lute, or gazing at the moon,'
continued Fernan, vexed alike at the success of his antagonist and
the silence of Isidora. 'She is eminent in alms-deeds and works of
charity,' said the good-natured priest. 'I was summoned to a mis-
erable hovel near your villa, Madonna Clara, to a dying sinner, a
beggar rotting on rotten straw!' --'Jesu!' cried Donna Clara with
involuntary horror, 'I washed the feet of thirteen beggars, on my
knees in my father's hall, the week before my marriage with her
honoured father, and I never could abide the sight of a beggar
since.' --'Associations are sometimes indelibly strong,' said the
priest drily; --then he added, 'I went as was my duty, but your
daughter was there before me. She had gone uncalled, and was utter-
ing the sweetest words of consolation from a homily, which a certain
poor priest, who shall be nameless, had lent her from his humble
store.'

'Isidora blushed at this anonymous vanity, while she mildly smiled
or wept at the harassings of Don Fernan, and the heartless auster-
ity of her mother. 'I heard her as I entered the hovel; and, by
the habit I wear, I paused on the threshold with delight. Her first
words were—Check-mate!' he exclaimed, forgetting his homily in
his triumph, and pointing, with appealing eye, and emphatic finger,
to the desperate state of his adversary's king. 'That was a very
extraordinary exclamation!' said the literal Donna Clara, who had
never raised her eyes from her work. --'I did not think my daughter
was so fond of chess as to burst into the house of a dying beggar
with such a phrase in her mouth.' --'It was I said it, Madonna,' said
the priest, reverting to his game, on which he hung with soul and
eye intent on his recent victory. 'Holy saints!' said Donna Clara,
still more and more perplexed, 'I thought the usual phrase on such
occasions was pax vobiscum,411 or' --Before Father Jose could reply,
a shriek from Isidora pierced the ears of every one. All gathered
round her in a moment, reinforced by four female attendants and two
pages, whom the unusual sound had summoned from the antichamber.
Isidora had not fainted; she still stood among them pale as death,
speechless, her eye wandering round the groupe that encircled her,
without seeming to distinguish them. But she retained that pre-
sence of mind which never deserts woman where a secret is to be
guarded, and she neither pointed with finger, or glanced with
eye, towards the casement, where the cause of her alarm had
presented itself. Pressed with a thousand questions, she appeared
incapable of answering them, and, declining assistance, leaned
against the casement for support.

'Donna Clara was now advancing with measured step to proffer a
bottle of curious essences, which she drew from a pocket of a depth
beyond calculation, when one of the female attendants, aware of her
favourite habits, proposed reviving her by the scent of the flowers
that clustered round the frame of the casement; and collecting a
handful of roses, offered them to Isidora. The sight and scent of
these beautiful flowers, revived the former associations of Isidora;
and, waving away her attendant, she exclaimed, 'There are no roses
like those which surrounded me when he beheld me first!' --'He! –
who, daughter?' said the alarmed Donna Clara. 'Speak, I charge you,
sister,' said the irritable Fernan, 'to whom do you allude?' --'She
raves,' said the priest, whose habitual penetration discovered there
was a secret, --and whose professional jealousy decided that no one,
not mother or brother, should share it with him; 'she raves --ye are
to blame --forbear to hang round and to question her. Madonna,
retire to rest, and the saints watch round your bed!' Isidora, bending
thankfully for this permission, retired to her apartment; and Father
Jose for an hour appeared to contend with the suspicious fears of
Donna Clara, and the sullen irritability of Fernan, merely that he
might induce them, in the heat of controversy, to betray all they
knew or dreaded, that he might strengthen his own conjectures, and
establish his own power by the discovery.

Scire volunt secreta domus, et inde timeri.412

And this desire is not only natural but necessary, in a being from
whose heart his profession has torn every tie of nature and of
passion; and if it generates malignity, ambition, and the wish for
mischief, it is the system, not the individual, we must blame.

'Madonna,' said the Father, 'you are always urging your zeal for
the Catholic church --and you, Senhor, are always reminding me of
the honour of your family --I am anxious for both --and how can
the interests of both be better secured than by Donna Isidora taking
the veil?' --'The wish of my soul!' cried Donna Clara, clasping her
hands, and closing her eyes, as if she witnessed her daughter's
apotheosis. 'I will never hear of it, Father,' said Fernan; 'my
sister's beauty and wealth entitle me to claim alliance with the
first families in Spain --their baboon shapes and copper-coloured
visages might be redeemed for a century by such a graft on the
stock, and the blood of which they boast would not be impoverished
by a transfusion of the aurum potabile 413 of ours into it.' --'You
forget, son,' said the priest, 'the extraordinary circumstances atten-
dant on the early part of your sister's life. There are many of our
Catholic nobility who would rather see the black blood of the ban-
ished Moors, or the proscribed Jews, flow in the veins of their
descendants, than that of one who' --Here a mysterious whisper
drew from Donna Clara a shudder of distress and consternation, and
from her son an impatient motion of angry incredulity. 'I do not
credit a word of it,' said the latter; 'you wish that my sister should
take the veil, and therefore you credit and circulate the monstrous
invention.' --'Take heed, son, I conjure you,' said the trembling
Donna Clara. 'Take you heed, Madam, that you do not sacrifice your
daughter to an unfounded and incredible fiction.' --'Fiction!'
repeated Father Jose --'Senhor, I forgive your illiberal reflections
on me, --but let me remind you, that the same immunity will not be
extended to the insult you offer to the Catholic faith.' --'Reverend
Father,' said the terrified Fernan, 'the Catholic church has not a
more devoted and unworthy professor on earth than myself.' --'I do
believe the latter,' said the priest. 'You admit all that the holy
church teaches to be irrefragably414 true?' --'To be sure I do.' --'Then
you must admit that the islands in the Indian seas are particularly
under the influence of the devil?' --'I do, if the church requires me
so to believe.' --'And that he possessed a peculiar sway over that
island where your sister was lost in her infancy?' --'I do not see how
that follows,' said Fernan, making a sudden stand at this premise of
the Sorites.415 'Not see how that follows!' repeated Father Jose,
crossing himself;

Excæcavit oculos corum ne viderent.416

But why waste I my Latin and logic on thee, who art incapable of
both? Mark me, I will use but one unanswerable argument, the
which whoso gainsayeth is a --gainsayer --that's all. The Inquisition
at Goa knows the truth of what I have asserted, and who will dare
deny it now?' --'Not I! --not I!' exclaimed Donna Clara; 'nor, I am
sure, will this stubborn boy. Son, I adjure you, make haste to believe
what the reverend Father has told you.' --'I am believing as fast as I
can,' answered Don Fernan, in the tone of one who is reluctantly
swallowing a distasteful mess; 'but my faith will be choaked if you
don't allow it time to swallow. As for digestion,' he muttered, 'let
that come when it pleases God.' --'Daughter,' said the priest, who
well knew the mollia tempora fandi,417 and saw that the sullen and
angry Fernan could not well bear more at present; 'daughter, it is
enough --we must lead with gentleness those whose steps find
stumbling-blocks in the paths of grace. Pray with me, daughter, that
your son's eyes may yet be opened to the glory and felicity of his
sister's vocation to a state where the exhaustless copiousness of
divine benignity places the happy inmates above all those mean and
mundane anxieties, those petty and local wants, which --Ah! --hem
--verily I feel some of those wants myself at this moment. I am
hoarse with speaking; and the intense heat of this night hath so
exhausted my strength, that methinks the wing of apartridge would
be no unseasonable refreshment.'

'At a sign from Donna Clara, a salver with wine appeared, and a
partridge that might have provoked the French prelate to renew his
meal once more, spite of his horror of toujours perdrix.'418 'See,
daughter, see how much I am exhausted in this distressing
controversy --well may I say, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me
up.' --'Then you and the zeal of the house will soon be quit,'
muttered Fernan as he retired. And drawing the folds of his mantle
over his shoulder, he threw a glance of wonder at the happy facility
with which the priest discussed the wings and breast of his favourite
bird, --whispering alternately words of admonition to Donna Clara,
and muttering something about the omission of pimento and lemon.

'Father,' said Don Fernan, stalking back from the door, and front-
ing the priest --'Father, I have a favour to ask of you.' --'Glad,
were it in my power to comply with it,' said Father Jose, turning
over the skeleton of the fowl; 'but you see here is only the thigh,
and that somewhat bare.' --'It is not of that I speak or think,
reverend Father,' said Fernan, with a smile; 'I have but to request,
that you will not renew the subject of my sister's vocation till the
return of my father.' --'Certainly not, son, certainly not. Ah! you
know the time to ask a favour --you know I never could refuse you
at a moment like this, when my heart is warmed, and softened, and
expanded, by --by --by the evidences of your contrition and
humiliation, and all that your devout mother, and your zealous
spiritual friend, could hope or wish for. In truth, it overcomes me –
these tears --I do not often weep but on occasions like these, and
then I weep abundantly, and am compelled to recruit my lack of
moisture thus.' --'Fetch more wine,' said Donna Clara. --The order
was obeyed. --'Good night, Father,' said Don Fernan. --'The saints
watch round you, my son! Oh I am exhausted! --I sink in this strug-
gle! The night is hot, and requires wine to slake my thirst --and
wine is a provocative, and requires food to take away its deleterious
and damnable qualities --and food, especially partridge, which is a
hot and stimulative nutritive, requires drink again to absorb or
neutralize its exciting qualities. Observe me, Donna Clara --I speak
as to the learned. There is stimulation, and there is absorption; the
causes of which are manifold, and the effects such as --I am not
bound to tell you at present.' --'Reverend Father,' said the admiring
Donna Clara, not guessing, in the least, from what source all this
eloquence flowed, 'I trespassed on your time merely to ask a favour
also.' --'Ask and 'tis granted,' said Father Jose, with a protrusion of
his foot as proud as that of Sixtus himself.419 'It is merely to know,
will not all the inhabitants of those accursed Indian isles be damned
everlastingly?' --'Damned everlasting, and without doubt,' returned
the priest. 'Now my mind is easy,' rejoined the lady, 'and I shall
sleep in peace to-night.'

'Sleep, however, did not visit her so soon as she expected, for an
hour after she knocked at Father Jose's door, repeating, 'Damned to
all eternity, Father, did you not say?' --'Be damned to all eternity!'
said the priest, tossing on his feverish bed, and dreaming, in the
intervals of his troubled sleep, of Don Fernan coming to confession
with a drawn sword, and Donna Clara with a bottle of Xeres420 in
her hand, which she swallowed at a draught, while his parched lips
were gaping for a drop in vain, --and of the Inquisition being
established in an island off the coast of Bengal,421 and a huge
partridge seated with a cap on at the end of a table covered with
black, as chief Inquisitor, --and various and monstrous chimeras,
the abortive births of repletion and indigestion.

'Donna Clara, catching only the last words, returned to her
apartment with light step and gladdened heart, and, full of pious
consolation, renewed her devotions before the image of the virgin in
her apartment, at each side of whose niche two wax tapers were
burning, till the cool morning breeze made it possible for her to
retire with some hope of rest.

'Isidora, in her apartment, was equally sleepless; and she, too,
had prostrated herself before the sacred image, but with different
thoughts. Her feverish and dreamy existence, composed of wild and
irreconcileable contrasts between the forms of the present, and the
visions of the past, --the difference between all that she felt within,
and all that she saw around her, --between the impassioned life of
recollection, and the monotonous one of reality, --was becoming too
much for a heart bursting with undirected sensibilities, and a head
giddy from vicissitudes that would have deeply tried much firmer
faculties.

'She remained for some time repeating the usual number of ave's,
to which she added the litany of the Virgin, without any corre-
sponding impulses of solace or illumination, till at length, feel-
ing that her prayers were not the expressions of her heart, and
dreading this heterodoxy of the heart422 more than the violation of
the ritual, she ventured to address the image of the Virgin in
language of her own.

'Mild and beautiful Spirit!' she cried, prostrating herself before
the figure --'you whose lips alone have smiled on me since I reached
your Christian land, --you whose countenance I have sometimes
imagined to belong to those who dwelt in the stars of my own
Indian sky, --hear me, and be not angry with me! Let me lose all
feeling of my present existence, or all memory of the past! Why do
my former thoughts return? They once made me happy, now they
are thorns in my heart! Why do they retain their power since their
nature is altered? I cannot be what I was --Oh, let me then no
longer remember it! Let me, if possible, see, feel, and think as those
around me do! Alas! I feel it is much easier to descend to their level
than to raise them to mine. Time, constraint, and dullness, may do
much for me, but what time could ever operate such a change on
them! It would be like looking for the pearls at the bottom of the
stagnant ponds which art has dug in their gardens. No, mother of
the Deity! divine and mysterious woman, no! --they never shall see
another throb of my burning heart. Let it consume in its own fires
before a drop of their cold compassion extinguishes them! Mother
divine! are not burning hearts, then, worthiest of thee? --and does
not the love of nature assimilate itself to the love of God! True, we
may love without religion, but can we be religious without love?
Yet, mother divine! dry up my heart, since there is no longer a
channel for its streams to flow through! --or turn all those streams
into the river, narrow and cold, that holds its course on to eternity!
Why should I think or feel, since life requires only duties that no
feeling suggests, and apathy that no reflection disturbs? Here let me
rest! --it is indeed the end of enjoyment, but it is also the end of
suffering; and a thousand tears are a price too dear for the single
smile which is sold for them in the commerce of life. Alas! it is
better to wander in perpetual sterility than to be tortured with the
remembrance of flowers that have withered, and odours that have
died for ever.' Then a gush of uncontroulable emotion overwhelm-
ing her, she again bowed before the Virgin. 'Yes, help me to ban-
ish every image from my soul but his --his alone! Let my heart be
like this lonely apartment, consecrated by the presence of one
sole image, and illuminated only by that light which affection
kindles before the object of its adoration, and worships it by
for ever!'

'In an agony of enthusiasm she continued to kneel before the
image; and when she rose, the silence of her apartment, and the
calm smile of the celestial figure, seemed at once a contrast and a
reproach to this excess of morbid indulgence. That smile appeared
to her like a frown. It is certain, that in agitation we can feel
no solace from features that express only profound tranquillity. We
would rather wish corresponding agitation, even hostility --any
thing but a calm that neutralizes and absorbs us. It is the answer
of the rock to the wave --we collect, foam, dash, and disperse our-
selves against it, and retire broken, shattered, and murmuring to
the echoes of our disappointment.

'From the tranquil and hopeless aspect of the divinity, smiling on
the misery it neither consoles or relieves, and intimating in that
smile the profound and pulseless apathy of inaccessible elevation,
coldly hinting that humanity must cease to be, before it can cease to
suffer --from this the sufferer rushed for consolation to nature,
whose ceaseless agitation seems to correspond with the vicissitudes
of human destiny and the emotions of the human heart --whose
alternation of storms and calms, --of clouds and sun-light, --of
terrors and delights --seems to keep a kind of mysterious measure of
ineffable harmony with that instrument423 whose chords are doomed
alternately to the thrill of agony and rapture, till the hand of death
sweeps over all the strings, and silences them for ever. --With such a
feeling, Isidora leaned against her casement, gasped for a breath of
air, which the burning night did not grant, and thought how, on
such a night in her Indian isle, she could plunge into the stream
shaded by her beloved tamarind, or even venture amid the still and
silvery waves of the ocean, laughing at the broken beams of the
moonlight, as her light form dimpled the waters --snatching with
smiling delight the brilliant, tortuous, and enamelled shells that
seemed to woo her white footsteps as she turned to the shore. Now
all was different. The duties of the bath had been performed, but
with a parade of soaps, perfumes, and, above all, attendants, who,
though of her own sex, gave Isidora an unspeakable degree of
disgust at the operation. The sponges and odours sickened her
unsophisticated senses, and the presence of another human being
seemed to close up every pore.

'She had felt no refreshment from the bath, or from her prayers –
she sought it at her casement, but there also in vain. The moon was
as bright as the sun of colder climates, and the heavens were all in a
blaze with her light. She seemed like a gallant vessel ploughing the
bright and trackless ocean alone, while a thousand stars burned in
the wake of her quiet glory, like attendant vessels pursuing their
course to undiscovered worlds, and pointing them out to the mortal
eye that lingered on their course, and loved their light.

'Such was the scene above, but what a contrast to the scene be-
low! The glorious and unbounded light fell on an inclosure of stiff
parterres, cropped myrtles and orange-trees in tubs, and quad-
rangular ponds, and bowers of trellis-work, and nature tortured
a thousand ways,424 and indignant and repulsive under her tortures
every way.

'Isidora looked and wept. Tears had now become her language
when alone --it was a language she dared not utter before her
family. Suddenly she saw one of the moonlight alleys darkened by
an approaching figure. It advanced --it uttered her name --the
name she remembered and loved --the name of Immalee! 'Ah!' she
exclaimed, leaning from the casement, 'is there then one who
recognizes me by that name?' --'It is only by that name I can
address you,' answered the voice of the stranger --'I have not yet
the honour of being acquainted with the name your Christian friends
have given you.' --'They call me Isidora, but do you still call me
Immalee. But how is it,' she added in a trembling voice, --her fears
for his safety overcoming all her sudden and innocent joy at his
sight --'how is it that you are here? --here, where no human being
is ever beheld but the inmates of the mansion? --how did you cross
the garden wall? --how did you come from India? Oh! retire for
your own safety! I am among those whom I cannot trust or love. My
mother is severe --my brother is violent. Oh! how did you obtain
entrance into the garden? --How is it,' she added in a broken voice,
'that you risk so much to see one whom you have forgotten so long?'
--'Fair Neophyte, beautiful Christian,' answered the stranger, with a
diabolical sneer, 'be it known to you that I regard bolts, and bars,
and walls, as much as I did the breakers and rocks of your Indian
isle --that I can go where, and retire when I please, without leave
asked or taken of your brother's mastiffs, or Toledos,425 or spring-
guns, and in utter defiance of your mother's advanced guard of
duennas, armed in spectacles, and flanked with a double ammunition
of rosaries, with beads as large as –' 'Hush! --hush! --do not ut-
ter such impious sounds --I am taught to revere those holy things.
But is it you? --and did I indeed see you last night, or was it
a thought such as visits me in dreams, and wraps me again in vis-
ions of that beautiful and blessed isle where first I --Oh that I
never had seen you!' --'Lovely Christian! be reconciled to your
horrible destiny. You saw me last night – I crossed your path twice
when you were sparkling among the brightest and most beautiful of
all Madrid. It was me you saw --I rivetted your eye --I transfixed
your slender frame as with a flash of lightning --you fell fainting
and withered under my burning glance. It was me you saw --me, the
disturber of your angelical existence in that isle of paradise --the
hunter of your form and your steps, even amid the complicated and
artificial tracks in which you have been concealed by the false forms
of the existence you have embraced!' --'Embraced! --Oh no! they
seized on me --they dragged me here --they made me a Christian.
They told me all was for my salvation, for my happiness here and
hereafter --and I trust it will, for I have been so miserable ever
since, that I ought to be happy somewhere.' --'Happy,' repeated the
stranger with his withering sneer --'and are you not happy now?
The delicacy of your exquisite frame is no longer exposed to the
rage of the elements --the fine and feminine luxury of your taste
is solicited and indulged by a thousand inventions of art --your
bed is of down --your chamber hung with tapestry. Whether the moon
be bright or dark, six wax tapers burn in your chamber all night.
Whether the skies be bright or cloudy, --whether the earth be
clothed with flowers, or deformed with tempests, --the art of the
limner426 has surrounded you with 'a new heaven and a new earth';427
and you may bask in suns that never set, while the heavens are
dark to other eyes, --and luxuriate amid landscapes and flowers,
while half your fellow-creatures are perishing amid snows and
tempests!' (Such was the over-flowing acrimony of this being, that
he could not speak of the beneficence of nature, or the luxuries of
art, without interweaving something that seemed like a satire on, or
a scorn of both.) 'You also have intellectual beings to converse with
instead of the chirpings of loxias, and the chatterings of monkeys.' –
'I have not found the conversation I encounter much more intellig-
ible or significant,' murmured Isidora, but the stranger did not
appear to hear her. 'You are surrounded by every thing that can
flatter the senses, intoxicate the imagination, or expand the heart.
All these indulgences must make you forget the voluptuous but un-
refined liberty of your former existence.' --'The birds in my
mother's cages,' said Isidora, 'are for ever pecking at their gilded
bars, and trampling on the clear seeds and limpid water they are
supplied with --would they not rather rest in the mossy trunk of a
doddered oak, and drink of whatever stream they met, and be at
liberty, at all the risk of poorer food and fouler drink --would they
not rather do anything than break their bills against gilded wires?' –
'Then you do not feel your new existence in this Christian land so
likely to surfeit you with delight as you once thought? For shame,
Immalee --shame on your ingratitude and caprice! Do you remember
when from your Indian isle you caught a glimpse of the Christian
worship, and were entranced at the sight?' --'I remember all that
ever passed in that isle. My life formerly was all anticipation,
--now it is all retrospection. The life of the happy is all hopes,
--that of the unfortunate all memory. Yes, I remember catching
a glimpse of that religion so beautiful and pure; and when they
brought me to a Christian land, I thought I should have found them
all Christians.' --'And what did you find them, then, Immalee?' –
'Only Catholics.' --'Are you aware of the danger of the words you
utter? Do you know that in this country to hint a doubt of Cath-
olicism and Christianity being the same, would consign you to
the flames as a heretic incorrigible? Your mother, so lately known
to you as a mother, would bind your hands when the covered litter
came for its victim; and your father, though he has never yet beheld
you, would buy with his last ducat the faggots that were to consume
you to ashes; and all your relations in their gala robes would shout
their hallelujahs to your dying screams of torture. Do you know that
the Christianity of these countries is diametrically opposite to the
Christianity of that world of which you caught a gleam, and which
you may see recorded in the pages of your Bible, if you are
permitted to read it?'

'Isidora wept, and confessed she had not found Christianity what
she had at first believed it; but with her wild and eccentric
ingenuousness, she accused herself the next moment of her
confession, --and she added, 'I am so ignorant in this new world, --I
have so much to learn, --my senses so often deceive me, --and my
habits and perceptions so different from what they ought to be --I
mean from what those around me are --that I should not speak or
think but as I am taught. Perhaps, after some years of instruction
and suffering, I may be able to discover that happiness cannot exist
in this new world, and Christianity is not so remote from Catho-
licism as it appears to me now.' --'And have you not found
yourself happy in this new world of intelligence and luxury?' said
Melmoth, in a tone of involuntary softness. 'I have at times.' --
'What times?' – 'When the weary day was over, and my dreams bore
me back to that island of enchantment. Sleep is to me like some bark
rowed by visionary pilots, that wafts me to shores of beauty and
blessedness, --and all night long I revel in my dreams with spirits.
Again I live among flowers and odours --a thousand voices sing to
me from the brooks and the breezes --the air is all alive and
eloquent with invisible melodists --I walk amid a breathing
atmosphere, and living and loving inanimation --blossoms that shed
themselves beneath my steps --and streams that tremble to kiss my
feet, and then retire; and then return again, wasting themselves in
fondness before me, and touching me, as my lips press the holy
images they have taught me to worship here!' --'Does no other
image ever visit your dreams, Immalee?' --'I need not tell you,' said
Isidora, with that singular mixture of natural firmness, and partial
obscuration of intellect, --the combined result of her original and
native character, and extraordinary circumstances of her early
existence --'I need not tell you --you know you are with me every
night!' --'Me?' --'Yes, you; you are for ever in that canoe that bears
me to the Indian isle --you gaze on me, but your expression is so
changed, that I dare not speak to you --we fly over the seas in a
moment, but you are for ever at the helm, though you never land –
the moment the paradise isle appears, you disappear; and as we re-
turn, the ocean is all dark, and our course is as dark and swift as
the storm that sweeps them --you look at me, but never speak --Oh
yes! you are with me every night!' --'But, Immalee, these are all
dreams --idle dreams. I row you over the Indian seas from Spain! –
this is all a vision of your imagination.' --'Is it a dream that I see
you now?' said Isidora --'is it a dream that I talk with you? --Tell
me, for my senses are bewildered; and it appears to me no less
strange, that you should be here in Spain, than that I should be in
my native island. Alas! in the life that I now lead, dreams have
become realities, and realities seem only like dreams. How is it you
are here, if indeed you are here? --how is it that you have wandered
so far to see me? How many oceans you must have crossed, how many
isles you must have seen, and none like that where I first beheld
you! But is it you indeed I behold? I thought I saw you last night,
but I had rather trust even my dreams than my senses. I believed
you only a visitor of that isle of visions, and a haunter of the
visions that recall it – but are you in truth a living being, and
one whom I may hope to behold in this land of cold realities and
Christian horrors?' --'Beautiful Immalee, or Isidora, or whatever
other name your Indian worshippers, or Christian god-fathers and
god-mothers, have called you by, I pray you listen to me, while I
expound a few mysteries to you.' And Melmoth, as he spoke, flung
himself on a bed of hyacinths and tulips that displayed their
glowing flowers, and sent up their odorous breath right under
Isidora's casement. 'Oh you will destroy my flowers!' cried she,
while a reminiscence of her former picturesque existence, when
flowers were the companions alike of her imagination and her pure
heart, awoke her exclamation. 'It is my vocation --I pray you pardon
me!' said Melmoth, as he basked on the crushed flowers, and darted
his withering sneer and scowling glance at Isidora. 'I am commi-
ssioned to trample on and bruise every flower in the natural
and moral world --hyacinths, hearts, and bagatelles428 of that kind,
just as they occur. And now, Donna Isidora, with as long an et cetera
as you or your sponsors could wish, and with no possible offence to
the herald, here I am to-night --and where I shall be to-morrow
night, depends on your choice. I would as soon be on the Indian
seas, where your dreams send me rowing every night, or crashing
through the ice near the Poles, or ploughing with my naked corse,
(if corses have feeling), through the billows of that ocean where
I must one day (a day that has neither sun or moon, neither
commencement or termination), plough forever, and reap despair!' –
'Hush! --hush! --Oh forbear such horrid sounds! Are you indeed he
whom I saw in the isle? Are you he, inwoven ever since that
moment with my prayers, my hopes, my heart? Are you that being
upon whom hope subsisted, when life itself was failing? On my
passage to this Christian land, I suffered much. I was so ill you
would have pitied me --the clothes they put on me --the language
they made me speak --the religion they made me believe --the
country they brought me to --Oh you! --you alone!--the thought –
the image of you, could alone have supported me! I loved, and to
love is to live. Amid the disruption of every natural tie, --amid
the loss of that delicious existence which seems a dream, and which
still fills my dreams, and makes sleep a second existence, --I have
thought of you --have dreamt of you --have loved you!' --'Loved
me? --no being yet loved me but pledged me in tears.' --'And have I
not wept?' said Isidora --'believe these tears --they are not the
first I have shed, nor I fear will be the last, since I owe the
first to you.' And she wept as she spoke. 'Well,' said the wanderer,
with a bitter and self-satirizing laugh, 'I shall be persuaded at
last that I am 'a marvellous proper man.'429 Well, if it must be so,
happy man be his dole!430 And when shall the auspicious day, beauti-
ful Immalee, still beautiful Isidora, in spite of your Christian
name, (to which I have a most anti-catholic objection)431--when
shall that bright day dawn on your long slumbering eye-lashes, and
waken them with kisses, and beams, and light, and love, and all the
paraphernalia with which folly arrays misery previous to their union
--that glittering and empoisoned drapery that well resembles what of
old Dejanira sent to her husband432--when shall the day of bliss be?'
And he laughed with that horrible convulsion that mingles the expres-
sion of levity with that of despair, and leaves the listener no doubt
whether there is more despair in laughter, or more laughter in despair.
'I understand you not,' said the pure and timid Isidora; 'and if you
would not terrify me to madness, laugh no more --no more, at least,
in that fearful way!' – 'I cannot weep,' said Melmoth, fixing on her
his dry and burning eyes, strikingly visible in the moonlight; 'the
fountain of tears has been long dried up within me, like that of
every other human blessing.' --'I can weep for both,' said Isidora,
'if that be all.' And her tears flowed fast, as much from memory as
from grief --and when those sources are united, God and the sufferer
only know how fast and bitterly they fall. 'Reserve them for our
nuptial hour, my lovely bride,' said Melmoth to himself; 'you
will have occasion for them then.'

'There was a custom then, however indelicate and repulsive it may
sound to modern ears, for ladies who were doubtful of the intent-
ions of their lovers to demand of them the proof of their purity
and honour, by requiring an appeal to their family, and a solemn
union under the sanction of the church. Perhaps there was more
genuine spirit of truth and chastity in this, than in all the ambiguous
flirtation that is carried on with an ill-understood and mysterious
dependence on principles that have never been defined, and fidelity
that has never been removed. When the lady in the Italian tragedy*
asks her lover, almost at their first interview, if his intentions are
honourable, and requires, as the proof of their being so, that he
shall espouse her immediately, does she not utter a language more
unsophisticated, more intelligible, more heartedly pure, than all the
romantic and incredible reliance that other females are supposed to
place in the volatility of impulse, --in that wild and extemporaneous
feeling, --that 'house on the sands,'433--which never has its
foundation in the immoveable depths of the heart. Yielding to this
feeling, Isidora, in a voice that faultered at its own accents,
murmured, 'If you love me, seek me no more clandestinely. My
mother is good, though she is austere --my brother is kind, though
he is passionate --my father --I have never seen him! I know not
what to say, but if he be my father, he will love you. Meet me in
their presence, and I will no longer feel pain and shame mingled
with the delight of seeing you. Invoke the sanction of the church,
and then, perhaps,' – 'Perhaps!' retorted Melmoth; You have learned
the European 'perhaps!'434 --the art of suspending the meaning of an
emphatic word --of affecting to draw the curtain of the heart at the
moment you drop its folds closer and closer --of bidding us despair
at the moment you intend we should feel hope!' --'Oh no! --no!'
answered the innocent being; 'I am truth. I am Immalee when I
speak to you, --though to all others in this country, which they call
Christian, I am Isidora. When I loved you first, I had only one heart
to consult, --now there are many, and some who have not hearts
like mine. But if you love me, you can bend to them as I have done
--you can love their God, their home, their hopes, and their country.
Even with you I could not be happy, unless you adored the cross to
which your hand first pointed my wandering sight, and the religion
which you reluctantly confessed was the most beautiful and bene-
ficent on earth.' – 'Did I confess that?' echoed Melmoth; 'It
must have been reluctantly indeed. Beautiful Immalee! I am a
convert to you;' and he stifled a Satanic laugh as he spoke; 'to
your new religion, and your beauty, and your Spanish birth and
nomenclature, and every thing that you would wish. I will incon-
tinently wait on your pious mother, and angry brother, and all
your relatives, testy, proud, and ridiculous as they may be. I will
encounter the starched ruffs, and rustling manteaus, and whale-boned
fardingales435 of the females, from your good mother down to the
oldest duenna who sits spectacled, and armed with bobbin, on
her inaccessible and untempted sopha; and the twirled whiskers,
plumed hats, and shouldered capas of all your male relatives. And I
will drink chocolate, and strut among them; and when they refer me
to your mustachoed man of law, with his thread-bare cloke of black
velvet over his shoulder, his long quill in his hand, and his soul in
three sheets of wide-spread parchment, I will dower you in the most
ample territory ever settled on a bride.' --'Oh let it be, then, in
that land of music and sunshine where we first met! One spot where I
might set my foot amid its flowers, is worth all the cultivated earth
of Europe!' said Isidora. --'No! --it shall be in a territory with
which your bearded men of law are far better acquainted, and which
even your pious mother and proud family must acknowledge my claim to,
when they shall hear it asserted and explained. Perchance they may
be joint-tenants with me there; and yet (strange to say!) they will
never litigate my exclusive title to possession.' --'I understand
nothing of this,' said Isidora; 'but I feel I am transgressing the
decorums of a Spanish female and a Christian, in holding this con-
ference with you any longer. If you think as you once thought, –
if you feel as I must feel for ever, --there needs not this discus-
sion, which only perplexes and terrifies. What have I to do with
this territory of which you speak? That you are its possessor, is
its only value in my eyes!' --'What have you to do with it?' repeat-
ed Melmoth; 'Oh, you know not how much you may have to do with it
and me yet! In other cases, the possession of the territory is the
security for the man, --but here the man is the security for the
everlasting possession of the territory. Mine heirs must inherit it
for ever and ever, if they hold by my tenure. Listen to me, beautiful
Immalee, or Christian, or whatever other name you choose to be
called by! Nature, your first sponsor, baptized you with the dews of
Indian roses --your Christian sponsors, of course, spared not water,
salt, or oil, to wash away the stain of nature from your regenerated
frame --and your last sponsor, if you will submit to the rite, will
anoint you with a new chrism.436 But of that hereafter. Listen to
me while I announce to you the wealth, the population, the
magnificence of that region to which I will endower you. The rulers
of the earth are there --all of them. There be the heroes, and the
sovereigns, and the tyrants. There are their riches, and pomp, and
power --Oh what a glorious accumulation! --and they have thrones,
and crowns, and pedestals, and trophies of fire, that burn for ever
and ever, and the light of their glory blazes eternally. There are
all you read of in story, your Alexanders and Cassars, your Ptolemies
and Pharaohs. There be the princes of the East, the Nimrods, the
Belshazzars, and the Holoferneses of their day. There are the princes
of the North, the Odins, the Attilas, (named by your church the
scourge of God), the Alarics, and all those nameless and name-
undeserving barbarians, who, under various titles and claims,
ravaged and ruined the earth they came to conquer. There be the
sovereigns of the South, and East, and West, the Mahommedans, the
Caliphs, the Saracens, the Moors, with all their gorgeous pretensions
and ornaments --the crescent, the Koran, and the horse-tail --the
trump, the gong, and the atabal,437 (or to suit it to your Christ-
ianized ear, lovely Neophyte!) 'the noise of the captains, and the
shoutings.'438 There be also those triple-crowned chieftains of the
West,439 who hide their shorn heads under a diadem, and for every
hair they shave, demand the life of a sovereign --who, pretending to
humility, trample on power --whose title is, Servant of servants –
and whose claim and recognizance is, Lord of lords. Oh! you will
not lack company in that bright region, for bright it will be! --and
what matter whether its light be borrowed from the gleam of sulphur,
or the trembling light of the moon, by which I see you look so pale?'
--'I look pale?' said Isidora gasping; 'I feel pale! I know not
the meaning of your words, but I know it must be horrible. Speak
no more of that region, with its pride, its wickedness, and its
splendour! I am willing to follow you to deserts, to solitudes, which
human step never trod but yours, and where mine shall trace, with
sole fidelity, the print of yours. Amid loneliness I was born; amid
loneliness I could die. Let me but, wherever I live, and whenever I
die, be yours! --and for the place, it matters not, let it be even'
--and she shivered involuntarily as she spoke; 'Let it be even' --
'Even --where?' asked Melmoth, while a wild feeling of triumph in
the devotedness of this unfortunate female, and of horror at the
destination which she was unconsciously imprecating on herself,
mingled in the question. 'Even where you are to be,' answered the
devoted Isidora, 'Let me be there! and there I must be happy, as in
the isle of flowers and sunlight, where I first beheld you. Oh! there
are no flowers so balmy and roseate as those that once blew there!
There are no waters so musical, or breezes so fragrant, as those that
I listened to and inhaled, when I thought that they repeated to me
the echo of your steps, or the melody of your voice --that human
music the first I ever heard, and which, when I cease to hear' --
'You will hear much better!' interrupted Melmoth; 'the voices of ten
thousand --ten millions of spirits --beings whose tones are immortal,
without cessation, without pause, without interval!' --'Oh that will
be glorious!' said Isidora, clasping her hands; 'the only language I
have learned in this new world worth speaking, is the language of
music. I caught some imperfect sounds from birds in my first world,
but in my second world they taught me music; and the misery they
have taught me, hardly makes a balance against that new and
delicious language.' – 'But think,' rejoined Melmoth, 'if your taste
for music be indeed so exquisite, how it will be indulged, how it will
be enlarged, in hearing those voices accompanied and re-echoed by
the thunders of ten thousand billows of fire, lashing against rocks
which eternal despair has turned into adamant! They talk of the
music of the spheres! --Dream of the music of those living orbs
turning on their axis of fire for ever and ever, and ever singing as
they shine, like your bretheren the Christians, who had the honour
to illuminate Nero's garden in Rome on a rejoicing night.'440--You
make me tremble!' --'Tremble! --a strange effect of fire. Fie! what a
coyness is this! I have promised, on your arrival at your new
territory, all that is mighty and magnificent, --all that is splendid
and voluptuous --the sovereign and the sensualist --the inebriated
monarch and the pampered slave --the bed of roses and the canopy
of fire!' --'And is this the home to which you invite me?' --'It is --
it is. Come, and be mine! --myriads of voices summon you --hear and
obey them! Their voices thunder in the echoes of mine --their fires
flash from my eyes, and blaze in my heart. Hear me, Isidora, my
beloved, hear me! I woo you in earnest, and for ever! Oh how trivial
are the ties by which mortal lovers are bound, compared to those in
which you and I shall be bound to eternity! Fear not the want of a
numerous and splendid society. I have enumerated sovereigns, and
pontiffs, and heroes, --and if you should condescend to remember
the trivial amusements of your present sejour, you will have enough
to revive its associations. You love music, and doubtless you will
have most of the musicians who have chromatized since the first
essays of Tubai Cain to Lully, who beat himself to death at one of
his own oratorios, or operas, I don't know which.441 They will have a
singular accompaniment --the eternal roar of a sea of fire makes a
profound bass to the chorus of millions of singers in torture!' –
'What is the meaning of this horrible description?' said the
trembling Isidora; 'your words are riddles to me. Do you jest with
me for the sake of tormenting, or of laughing at me?' – 'Laughing!'
repeated her wild visitor, 'that is an exquisite hint --vive la bag-
atelle! Let us laugh for ever! --we shall have enough to keep us in
countenance. There will be all that ever have dared to laugh on
earth --the singers, the dancers, the gay, the voluptuous, the
brilliant, the beloved --all who have ever dared to mistake their
destiny, so far as to imagine that enjoyment was not a crime, or that
a smile was not an infringement of their duty as sufferers. All such
must expiate their error under circumstances which will probably
compel the most inveterate disciple of Democritus,442 the most
inextinguishable laugher among them, to allow that there, at least,
'laughter is madness.'443 'I do not understand you,' said Isidora,
listening to him with that sinking of the heart which is produced by
a combined and painful feeling of ignorance and terror. 'Not
understand me?' repeated Melmoth, with that sarcastic frigidity of
countenance which frightfully contrasted the burning intelligence of
his eyes, that seemed like the fires of a volcano bursting out amid
masses of snow heaped up to its very edge; 'not understand me! –
are you not, then, fond of music?' --'I am.' --'Of dancing, too, my
graceful, beautiful love?' --'I was.' --'What is the meaning of the
different emphasis you give to those answers?' – 'I love music --I
must love it for ever --it is the language of recollection. A single
strain of it wafts me back to the dreamy blessedness, the enchanted
existence, of my own --own isle. Of dancing I cannot say so much. I
have learnt dancing --but I felt music. I shall never forget the hour
when I heard it for the first time, and imagined it was the language
which Christians spoke to each other. I have heard them speak a
different language since.' --'Doubtless their language is not always
melody, particularly when they address each other on controverted
points in religion. Indeed, I can conceive nothing less a-kin to
harmony than the debate of a Dominican and Franciscan on the
respective efficacy of the cowl of the order, to ascertain the
salvation of him who happens to die in it. But have you no other
reason for being fond of music, and for only having been fond of
dancing? Nay, let me have 'your most exquisite reason.'

'It seemed as if this unhappy being was impelled by his ineffable
destiny to deride the misery he inflicted, in proportion to its
bitterness. His sarcastic levity bore a direct and fearful propor-
tion to his despair. Perhaps this is also the case in circumstances
and characters less atrocious. A mirth which is not gaiety is often
the mask which hides the convulsed and distorted features of agony –
and laughter, which never yet was the expression of rapture, has
often been the only intelligible language of madness and misery.
Extacy only smiles, --despair laughs. It seemed, too, as if no
keenness of ironical insult, no menace of portentous darkness, had
power to revolt the feelings, or alarm the apprehensions, of the
devoted being to whom they were addressed. Her 'most exquisite
reasons,' demanded in a tone of ruthless irony, were given in one
whose exquisite and tender melody seemed still to retain the
modulation on which its first sounds had been formed, --that of
the song of birds, mingled with the murmur of waters.

'I love music, because when I hear it I think of you. I have ceased
to love dancing, though I was at first intoxicated with it, because,
when dancing, I have sometimes forgot you. When I listen to music,
your image floats on every note, --I hear you in every sound. The
most inarticulate murmurs that I produce on my guitar (for I am
very ignorant) are like a spell of melody that raises a form
indescribable --not you, but my idea of you. In your presence,
though that seems necessary to my existence, I have never felt that
exquisite delight that I have experienced in that of your image,
when music has called it up from the recesses of my heart. Music
seems to me like the voice of religion summoning to remember and
worship the God of my heart. Dancing appears like a momentary
apostasy, almost a profanation.' --'That, indeed, is a sweet and
subtle reason,' answered Melmoth, 'and one that, of course, has but
one failure, --that of not being sufficiently flattering to the
hearer. And so my image floats on the rich and tremulous waves of
melody one moment, like a god of the overflowing billows of music,
triumphing in their swells, and graceful even in their falls, --
and the next moment appears, like the dancing demon of your op-
eras, grinning at you between the brilliant movement of your
fandangoes,444 and flinging the withering foam of his black and
convulsed lips into the cup where you pledge at your banquetting.
Well --dancing --music --let them go together! It seems that my
image is equally mischievous in both --in one you are tortured by
reminiscence, and in the other by remorse. Suppose that image is
withdrawn from you for ever, --suppose that it were possible to
break the tie that unites us, and whose vision has entered into the
soul of both.' --You may suppose it,' said Isidora, with maiden pride
and tender grief blended in her voice; 'and if you do, believe that I
will try to suppose it too; the effort will not cost much, --nothing
but --my life!'

'As Melmoth beheld this blessed and beautiful being, once so
refined amid nature, and now so natural amid refinement, still
possessing all the soft luxuriance of her first angelic nature, amid
the artificial atmosphere where her sweets were uninhaled, and her
brilliant tints doomed to wither unappreciated, --where her pure
and sublime devotedness of heart was doomed to beat like a wave
against a rock, --exhaust its murmurs, --and expire; --As he felt
this, and gazed on her, he cursed himself; and then, with the sel-
fishness of hopeless misery, he felt that the curse might, by div-
iding it, be diminished.

'Isidora!' he whispered in the softest tones he could assume,
approaching the casement, at which his pale and beautiful victim
stood; 'Isidora! will you then be mine?' --'What shall I say?' said
Isidora; 'if love requires the answer, I have said enough; if only
vanity, I have said too much.' --'Vanity! beautiful trifler, you know
not what you say; the accusing angel himself might blot out that
article from the catalogue of my sins. It is one of my prohibited and
impossible offences; it is an earthly feeling, and therefore one which
I can neither participate or enjoy. Certain it is that I feel some share
of human pride at this moment.' --'Pride! at what? Since I have
known you, I have felt no pride but that of supreme devotedness, –
that self-annihilating pride which renders the victim prouder of its
wreath, than the sacrificer of his office.' --'But I feel another pride,'
answered Melmoth, and in a proud tone he spoke it, --'a pride,
which, like that of the storm that visited the ancient cities,445 whose
destruction you may have read of, while it blasts, withers, and
encrusts paintings, gems, music, and festivity, grasping them in its
talons of annihilation, exclaims, Perish to all the world, perhaps
beyond the period of its existence, but live to me in darkness and in
corruption! Preserve all the exquisite modulation of your forms! all
the indestructible brilliancy of your colouring! --but preserve it for
me alone! --me, the single, pulseless, eyeless, heartless embracer of
an unfertile bride, --the brooder over the dark and unproductive
nest of eternal sterility, --the mountain whose lava of internal fire
has stifled, and indurated, and inclosed for ever, all that was the
joy of earth, the felicity of life, and the hope of futurity!'

'As he spoke, his expression was at once so convulsed and so
derisive, so indicative of malignity and levity, so thrilling to the
heart, while it withered every fibre it touched and wrung, that
Isidora, with all her innocent and helpless devotedness, could not
avoid shuddering before this fearful being, while, in trembling and
unappeasable solicitude, she demanded, 'Will you then be mine? Or
what am I to understand from your terrible words? Alas! my heart
has never enveloped itself in mysteries --never has the light of its
truth burst forth amid the thunderings and burnings in which you
have issued the law of my destiny.' --'Will you then be mine,
Isidora?' --'Consult my parents. Wed me by the rites, and in the face
of the church, of which I am an unworthy member, and I will be
yours for ever.' --'For ever!' repeated Melmoth; 'well-spoken, my
bride. You will then be mine for ever? --will you, Isidora?' --'Yes! –
yes --I have said so. But the sun is about to rise, I feel the increa-
sing perfume of the orange blossoms, and the coolness of the morning
air. Begone --I have staid too long here --the domestics may be
about, and observe you --begone, I implore you.' --'I go --but one
word --for to me the rising of the sun, and the appearance of your
domestics, and every thing in heaven above, and earth beneath, is
equally unimportant. Let the sun stay below the horizon and wait
for me. You are mine!' --'Yes, I am yours; but you must solicit my
family.' --'Oh, doubtless! --solicitation is so congenial to my habits.'
--'And' --'Well, what? --you hesitate.' --'I hesitate,' said the
ingenuous and timid Isidora, 'because' --'Well?' --'Because,' she
added, bursting into tears, 'those with whom you speak will not
utter to God language like mine. They will speak to you of wealth
and dower; they will inquire about that region where you have told
me your rich and wide possessions are held; and should they ask me
of them, how shall I answer?'

'At these words, Melmoth approached as close as possible to the
casement, and uttered a certain word which Isidora did not at first
appear to hear, or understand --trembling she repeated her request.
In a still lower tone the answer was returned. Incredulous, and
hoping that the answer had deceived her, she again repeated her
petition. A withering monosyllable,446 not to be told, thundered in
her ears, --and she shrieked as she closed the casement. Alas! the
casement only shut out the form of the stranger--not his image.'



CHAPTER XXI


He saw the eternal fire that keeps,
In the unfathomable deeps,
Its power for ever, and made a sign
To the morning prince divine;
Who came across the sulphurous flood,
Obedient to the master-call,
And in angel-beauty stood,
High on his star-lit pedestal.447


'In this part of the manuscript, which I read in the vault of Adon-
ijah the Jew,' said Monçada, continuing his narrative, 'there were
several pages destroyed, and the contents of many following wholly
obliterated--nor could Adonijah supply the deficiency. From the
next pages that were legible, it appeared that Isidora imprudently
continued to permit her mysterious visitor to frequent the garden at
night, and to converse with him from the casement, though unable
to prevail on him to declare himself to her family, and perhaps
conscious that his declaration would not be too favourably received.
Such, at least, appeared to be the meaning of the next lines I could
decypher.

'She had renewed, in these nightly conferences, her former
visionary existence. Her whole day was but a long thought of the
hour at which she expected to see him. In the day-time she was sil-
ent, pensive, abstracted, feeding on thought--with the evening her
spirits perceptibly though softly rose, like those of one who has
a secret and incommunicable store of delight; and her mind became
like that flower that unfolds its leaves, and diffuses its odours,
only on the approach of night.

'The season favoured this fatal delusion. It was that rage of
summer when we begin to respire only towards evening, and the
balmy and brilliant night is our day. The day itself is passed in a
languid and feverish doze. At night alone she existed,--at her moonlit
casement alone she breathed freely; and never did the moonlight
fall on a lovelier form, or gild a more angelic brow, or gleam on
eyes that returned more pure and congenial rays. The mutual and
friendly light seemed like the correspondence of spirits who glided
on the alternate beams, and, passing from the glow of the planet to
the glory of a mortal eye, felt that to reside in either was heaven.
*
'She lingered at that casement till she imagined that the clipped and
artificially straitened treillage of the garden was the luxuriant and
undulating foliage of the trees of her paradise isle--that the flowers
had the same odour as that of the untrained and spontaneous roses
that once showered their leaves under her naked feet--that the
birds sung to her as they had once done when the vesper-hymn of
her pure heart ascended along with their closing notes, and formed
the holiest and most acceptable anthem that perhaps ever wooed the
evening-breeze to waft it to heaven.

'This delusion would soon cease. The stiff and stern monotony of
the parterre, where even the productions of nature held their place
as if under the constraint of duty, forced the conviction of its
unnatural regularity on her eye and soul, and she turned to heaven
for relief. Who does not, even in the first sweet agony of passion?
Then we tell that tale to heaven which we would not trust to the ear
of mortal--and in the withering hour that must come to all whose
love is only mortal, we again call on that heaven which we have
intrusted with our secret, to send us back one bright messenger of
consolation on those thousand rays that its bright, and cold, and
passionless orbs, are for ever pouring on the earth as if in mockery.
We ask, but is the petition heard or answered? We weep, but do not
we feel that those tears are like rain falling on the sea? Mare
infructuosum.448 No matter. Revelation assures us there is a period
coming, when all petitions suited to our state shall be granted, and
when 'tears shall be wiped from all eyes.'449 In revelation, then, let
us trust--in any thing but our own hearts. But Isidora had not yet
learned that theology of the skies, whose text is, 'Let us go into the
house of mourning.'450 To her still the night was day, and her sun was
the 'moon walking in its brightness.'451 When she beheld it, the
recollections of the isle rushed on her heart like a flood; and a
figure soon appeared to recall and to realize them.

'That figure appeared to her every night without disturbance or
interruption; and though her knowledge of the severe restraint and
regularity of the household caused her some surprise at the facility
with which Melmoth apparently defied both, and visited the garden
every night, yet such was the influence of her former dream-like
and romantic existence, that his continued presence, under cir-
cumstances so extraordinary, never drew from her a question
with regard to the means by which he was enabled to surmount
difficulties insurmountable to all others.

'There were, indeed, two extraordinary circumstances attendant
on these meetings. Though seeing each other again in Spain, after
an interval of three years elapsing since they had parted on the
shores of an isle in the Indian sea, neither had ever inquired
what circumstances could have led to a meeting so unexpected and
extraordinary. On Isidora's part this incurious feeling was easily
accounted for. Her former existence had been one of such a fabulous
and fantastic character, that the improbable had become familiar to
her,--and the familiar only, improbable. Wonders were her natural
element; and she felt, perhaps, less surprised at seeing Melmoth
in Spain, than when she first beheld him treading the sands of her
lonely island. With Melmoth the cause was different, though the
effect was the same. His destiny forbid alike curiosity or sur-
prise. The world could show him no greater marvel than his own
existence; and the facility with which he himself passed from region
to region, mingling with, yet distinct from all his species, like a
wearied and uninterested spectator rambling through the various
seats of some vast theatre, where he knows none of the audience,
would have prevented his feeling astonishment, had he encountered
Isidora on the summit of the Andes.

'During a month, through the course of which she had tacitly
permitted these nightly visits beneath her casement--(at a distance
which indeed might have defied Spanish jealousy itself to devise
matter of suspicion out of,--the balcony of her window being nearly
fourteen feet above the level of the garden, where Melmoth stood) –
during this month, Isidora rapidly, but imperceptibly, graduated
through those stages of feeling which all who love have alike
experienced, whether the stream of passion be smooth or obstructed.
In the first, she was full of anxiety to speak and to listen, to
hear and to be heard. She had all the wonders of her new existence
to relate; and perhaps that indefinite and unselfish hope of mag-
nifying herself in the eyes of him she loved, which induces us in
our first encounter to display all the eloquence, all the powers, all
the attractions we possess, not with the pride of a competitor, but
with the humiliation of a victim. The conquered city displays all its
wealth in hopes of propitiating the conqueror. It decorates him with
all its spoils, and feels prouder to behold him arrayed in them, than
when she wore them in triumph herself. That is the first bright hour
of excitement, of trembling, but hopeful and felicitous anxiety. Then
we think we never can display enough of talent, of imagination, of
all that can interest, of all that can dazzle. We pride ourselves in
the homage we receive from society, from the hope of sacrificing
that homage to our beloved--we feel a pure and almost spiritualized
delight in our own praises, from imagining they render us more
worthy of meriting his, from whom we have received the grace of
love to deserve them--we glorify ourselves, that we may be enabled
to render back the glory to him from whom we received it, and for
whom we have kept it in trust, only to tender it back with that rich
and accumulated interest of the heart, of which we would pay the
uttermost farthing, if the payment exacted the last vibration of
its fibres,--the last drop of its blood. No saint who ever viewed
a miracle performed by himself with a holy and self-annihilating
abstraction from seity,452 has perhaps felt a purer sentiment of perfect
devotedness, than the female who, in her first hours of love, offers,
at the feet of her worshipped one, the brilliant wreath of music,
painting, and eloquence,--and only hopes, with an unuttered sigh,
that the rose of love will not be unnoticed in the garland.

'Oh! how delicious it is to such a being (and such was Isidora)
to touch her harp amid crowds, and watch, when the noisy and
tasteless bravoes have ceased, for the heart-drawn sigh of the
one, to whom alone her soul, not her fingers, have played,--and
whose single sigh is heard, and heard alone, amid the plaudits of
thousands! Yet how delicious to her to whisper to herself, 'I
heard his sigh, but he has heard the applause!'

'And when she glides through the dance, and in touching, with
easy and accustomed grace, the hands of many, she feels there is
but one hand whose touch she can recognize; and, waiting for its
thrilling and life-like vibration, moves on like a statue, cold and
graceful, till the Pygmalion-touch warms her into woman, and the
marble melts into flesh under the hands of the resistless moulder.453
And her movements betray, at that moment, the unwonted and half-
unconscious impulses of that fair image to which love had given life,
and who luxuriated in the vivid and newly-tried enjoyment of that
animation which the passion of her lover had breathed into her
frame. And when the splendid portfolio is displayed, or the richly-
wrought tapestry expanded by outstretched arms, and cavaliers
gaze, and ladies envy, and every eye is busy in examination, and
every tongue loud in praise, just in the inverted proportion of the
ability of the one to scrutinize with accuracy, and the other to
applaud with taste--then to throw round the secret silent glance,
that searches for that eye whose light alone, to her intoxicated gaze,
contains all judgment, all taste, all feeling--for that lip whose
very censure would be dearer than the applause of a world!--To hear,
with soft and submissive tranquillity, censure and remark, praise
and comment, but to turn for ever the appealing look to one who
alone can understand, and whose swiftly-answering glance can
alone reward it!--This--this had been Isidora's hope. Even in the
isle where he first saw her in the infancy of her intellect, she had
felt the consciousness of superior powers, which were then her
solace, not her pride. Her value for herself rose with her devotion to
him. Her passion became her pride; and the enlarged resources of
her mind, (for Christianity under its most corrupt form enlarges
every mind),454 made her at first believe, that to behold her admired
as she was for her loveliness, her talents, and her wealth, would
compel this proudest and most eccentric of beings to prostrate
himself before her, or at least to acknowledge the power of those
acquirements which she had so painfully been arrived at the
knowledge of, since her involuntary introduction into European
society.

'This had been her hope during the earlier period of his visits;
but innocent and flattering to its object as it was, she was dis-
appointed. To Melmoth 'nothing was new under the sun.'455 Talent was
to him a burden. He knew more than man could tell him, or woman
either. Accomplishments were a bauble--the rattle teazed his ear,
and he flung it away. Beauty was a flower he looked on only to
scorn, and touched only to wither. Wealth and distinction he ap-
preciated as they deserved, but not with the placid disdain of the
philosopher, or the holy abstraction of the saint, but with that
'fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation,'456 to
which he believed their possessors irreversibly devoted, and to
the infliction of which he looked forward with perhaps a feeling
like that of those executioners who, at the command of Mithri-
dates, poured the melted ore of his golden chains down the throat
of the Roman ambassador.457

'With such feelings, and others that cannot be told, Melmoth
experienced an indescribable relief from the eternal fire that was
already kindled within him, in the perfect and unsullied freshness of
what may be called the untrodden verdure of Immalee's heart,--for
she was Immalee still to him. She was the Oasis of his desert--the
fountain at which he drank, and forgot his passage over the burning
sands--and the burning sands to which his passage must conduct
him. He sat under the shade of the gourd, and forgot the worm was
working at its root;458--perhaps the undying worm that gnawed, and
coiled, and festered in his own heart, might have made him forget
the corrosions of that he himself had sown in hers.

'Isidora, before the second week of their interview, had lowered
her pretensions. She had given up the hope to interest or to dazzle –
that hope which is twin-born with love in the purest female heart.
She now had concentrated all her hopes, and all her heart, no longer
in the ambition to be beloved, but in the sole wish to love. She no
longer alluded to the enlargement of her faculties, the acquisition
of new powers, and the expansion and cultivation of her taste. She
ceased to speak--she sought only to listen--then her wish subsided
into that quiet listening for his form alone, which seemed to transfer
the office of hearing into the eyes, or rather, to identify both.
She saw him long before he appeared,--and heard him though he did
not speak. They have been in each other's presence for the short
hours of a Spanish summer's night,--Isidora's eyes alternately fixed
on the sun-like moon, and on her mysterious lover,--while he, with-
out uttering a word, leaned against the pillars of her balcony, or
the trunk of the giant myrtle-tree, which cast the shade he loved,
even by night, over his portentous expression,--and they never
uttered a word to each other, till the waving of Isidora's hand,
as the dawn appeared, was the tacit signal for their parting.

'This is the marked graduation of a profound feeling. Language is
no longer necessary to those whose beating hearts converse audibly
--whose eyes, even by moonlight, are more intelligible to each
other's stolen and shadowed glances, than the broad converse of
face to face in the brightest sunshine--to whom, in the exquisite
inversion of earthly feeling and habit, darkness is light, and si-
lence eloquence.

'At their last interviews, Isidora sometimes spoke,--but it was
only to remind her lover, in a soft and chastened tone, of a pro-
mise which it seems he had at one time made of disclosing himself
to her parents, and demanding her at their hands. Something she
murmured also of her declining health--her exhausted spirits--her
breaking heart--the long delay--the hope deferred459--the myster-
ious meeting; and while she spoke she wept, but hid her tears
from him.

'It is thus, Oh God! we are doomed (and justly doomed when we fix
our hearts on any thing below thee) to feel those hearts repelled
like the dove who hovered over the shoreless ocean, and found not a
spot where her foot might rest,460--not a green leaf to bring back
in her beak. Oh that the ark of mercy may open to such souls, and
receive them from that stormy world of deluge and of wrath, with
which they are unable to contend, and where they can find no
resting place!

'Isidora now had arrived at the last stage of that painful pilgrimage
through which she had been led by a stern and reluctant guide.

'In its first, with the innocent and venial art of woman, she had
tried to interest him by the display of her new acquirements,
without the consciousness that they were not new to him. The
harmony of civilized society, of which she was at once weary and
proud, was discord to his ear. He had examined all the strings that
formed this curious but ill-constructed instrument, and found them
all false.

'In the second, she was satisfied with merely beholding him. His
presence formed the atmosphere of her existence--in it alone she
breathed. She said to herself, as evening approached, 'I shall see
him!'--and the burden of life rolled from her heart as she internally
uttered the words. The constraint, the gloom, the monotony of her
existence, vanished like clouds at the sun, or rather like those clouds
assuming such gorgeous and resplendent colours, that they seemed
to have been painted by the finger of happiness itself. The brilliant
hue diffused itself over every object of her eye and heart. Her
mother appeared no longer a cold and gloomy bigot, and even her
brother seemed kind. There was not a tree in the garden whose
foliage was not illumined as by the light of a setting sun; and the
breeze spoke to her in a voice whose melody was borrowed from
her own heart.

'When at length she saw him,--when she said to herself, He is
there,--she felt as if all the felicity of earth was comprised in that
single sensation,--at least she felt that all her own was. She no
longer indulged the wish to attract or to subdue him--absorbed in
his existence, she forgot her own--immersed in the consciousness of
her own felicity, she lost the wish, or rather the pride, of BESTOWING
it. In the impassioned revelry of the heart, she flung the pearl of
existence into the draught in which she pledged her lover, and saw
it melt away without a sigh. But now she was beginning to feel, that
for this intensity of feeling, this profound devotedness, she was
entitled at least to an honourable acknowledgement on the part of
her lover; and that the mysterious delay in which her existence was
wasted, might make that acknowledgement come perhaps too late.
She expressed this to him; but to these appeals, (not the least
affecting of which had no language but that of looks), he replied
only by a profound but uneasy silence, or by a levity whose wild
and frightful sallies had something in them still more alarming.

'At times he appeared even to insult the heart over which he had
triumphed, and to affect to doubt his conquest with the air of one
who is revelling in its certainty, and who mocks the captive by
asking 'if it is really in chains?'

'You do not love?' he would say;--'you cannot love me at least.
Love, in your happy Christian country, must be the result of
cultivated taste,--of harmonized habits,--of a felicitous
congeniality of pursuits,--of thought, and hopes, and feelings, that,
in the sublime language of the Jewish poet, (prophet I mean), 'tell
and certify to each other; and though they have neither speech or
language, a voice is heard among them.'461 You cannot love a being
repulsive in his appearance,--eccentric in his habits,--wild and
unsearchable in his feelings,--and inaccessible in the settled
purpose of his fearful and fearless existence. No,' he added in a
melancholy and decided tone of voice, 'you cannot love me under
the circumstances of your new existence. Once--but that is past. –
You are now a baptized daughter of the Catholic church,--the
member of a civilized community,--the child of a family that knows
not the stranger. What, then, is there between me and thee, Isidora,
or, as your Fra Jose would phrase it, (if he knows so much Greek),
462--'I loved you,' answered the Spanish maiden,
speaking in the same pure, firm, and tender voice in which she had
spoken when she first was the sole goddess of her fairy and flowery
isle; 'I loved you before I was a Christian. They have changed my
creed--but they never can change my heart. I love you still--I will
be yours for ever! On the shore of the desolate isle,--from the
grated window of my Christian prison,--I utter the same sounds.
What can woman, what can man, in all the boasted superiority of
his character and feeling, (which I have learned only since I became
a Christian, or an European), do more? You but insult me when you
appear to doubt that feeling, which you may wish to have analyzed,
because you do not experience or cannot comprehend it. Tell me,
then, what is it to love? I defy all your eloquence, all your sophistry,
to answer the question as truly as I can. If you would wish to know
what is love, inquire not at the tongue of man, but at the heart of
woman.'--'What is love?' said Melmoth; 'is that the question?' –
'You doubt that I love,' said Isidora--'tell me, then, what is love?' –
'You have imposed on me a task,' said Melmoth smiling, but not in
mirth, 'so congenial to my feelings and habits of thought, that the
execution will doubtless be inimitable. To love, beautiful Isidora, is
to live in a world of the heart's own creation--all whose forms and
colours are as brilliant as they are deceptive and unreal. To those
who love there is neither day or night, summer or winter, society or
solitude. They have but two eras in their delicious but visionary
existence,--and those are thus marked in the heart's calendar --pre-
sence--absence. These are the substitutes for all the distinctions of
nature and society. The world to them contains but one individual, –
and that individual is to them the world as well as its single inmate.
The atmosphere of his presence is the only air they can breathe in, –
and the light of his eye the only sun of their creation, in whose rays
they bask and live.'--'Then I love,' said Isidora internally. 'To
love,' pursued Melmoth, 'is to live in an existence of perpetual
contradictions--to feel that absence is insupportable, and yet be
doomed to experience the presence of the object as almost equally
so--to be full often thousand thoughts while he is absent, the
confession of which we dream will render our next meeting delicious,
yet when the hour of meeting arrives, to feel ourselves, by a tim-
idity alike oppressive and unaccountable, robbed of the power
of expressing one--to be eloquent in his absence, and dumb in his
presence--to watch for the hour of his return as for the dawn of a
new existence, yet when it arrives, to feel all those powers
suspended which we imagined it would restore to energy--to be the
statue that meets the sun, but without the music his presence should
draw from it 463--to watch for the light of his looks, as a traveller
in the deserts looks for the rising of the sun; and when it bursts
on our awakened world, to sink fainting under its overwhelming and
intolerable glory, and almost wish it were night again--this is love!'
--'Then I believe I love,' said Isidora half audibly. 'To feel,' added
Melmoth with increasing energy, 'that our existence is so absorbed
in his, that we have lost all consciousness but of his presence--all
sympathy but of his enjoyments--all sense of suffering but when he
suffers--to be only because he is--and to have no other use of being
but to devote it to him, while our humiliation increases in propor-
tion to our devotedness; and the lower you bow before your idol,
the prostrations seem less and less worthy of being the expres-
sion of your devotion,--till you are only his, when you are not
yourself--To feel that to the sacrifice of yourself, all other
sacrifices are inferior; and in it, therefore, all other sacrifices
must be included. That she who loves, must remember no longer her
individual existence, her natural existence--that she must consider
parents, country, nature, society, religion itself--(you tremble,
Immalee--Isidora I would say)--only as grains of incense flung on
the altar of the heart, to burn and exhale their sacrificed odours
there.'--'Then I do love,' said Isidora; and she wept and trembled
indeed at this terrible confession--'for I have forgot the ties they
told me were natural,--the country of which they said I was a
native. I will renounce, if it must be so, parents,--country,--the
habits which I have acquired,--the thoughts which I have learnt, –
the religion which I--Oh no! my God! my Saviour!' she exclaimed,
darting from the casement, and clinging to the crucifix--'No! I will
never renounce you!--I will never renounce you!--you will not
forsake me in the hour of death!--you will not desert me in the
moment of trial!--you will not forsake me at this moment!'

'By the wax-lights that burned in her apartment, Melmoth could
see her prostrate before the sacred image. He could see that
devotion of the heart which made it throb almost visibly in the
white and palpitating bosom--the clasped hands that seemed
imploring aid against that rebellious heart, whose beatings they
vainly struggled to repress; and then, locked and upraised, asked
forgiveness from heaven for their fruitless opposition. He could see
the wild but profound devotion with which she clung to the crucifix,
--and he shuddered to behold it. He never gazed on that symbol, –
his eyes were immediately averted;--yet now he looked long and
intently at her as she knelt before it. He seemed to suspend the
diabolical instinct that governed his existence, and to view her for
the pure pleasure of sight. Her prostrate figure,--her rich robes that
floated round her like drapery round an inviolate shrine,--her locks
of light streaming over her naked shoulders,--her small white hands
locked in agony of prayer,--the purity of expression that seemed to
identify the agent with the employment, and made one believe they
saw not a suppliant, but the embodied spirit of supplication, and
feel that lips like those had never held communion with aught
below heaven.--All this Melmoth beheld; and feeling that in this he
could never participate, he turned away his head in stern and bitter
agony,--and the moon-beam that met his burning eye saw no tear
there.

'Had he looked a moment longer, he might have beheld a change
in the expression of Isidora too flattering to his pride, if not
to his heart. He might have marked all that profound and perilous
absorption of the soul, when it is determined to penetrate the
mysteries of love or of religion, and chuse 'whom it will serve'464–-
that pause on the brink of an abyss, in which all its energies, its
passions, and its powers, are to be immersed--that pause, while the
balance is trembling (and we tremble with it) between God and
man.

'In a few moments, Isidora arose from before the cross. There was
more composure, more elevation in her air. There was also that air
of decision which an unreserved appeal to the Searcher of hearts
never fails to communicate even to the weakest of those he has
made.

'Melmoth, returning to his station beneath the casement, looked
on her for some time with a mixture of compassion and wonder –
feelings that he hasted to repel, as he eagerly demanded, 'What
proof are you ready to give of that love I have described--of that
which alone deserves the name?'--'Every proof,' answered Isidora
firmly, 'that the most devoted of the daughters of man can give –
my heart and hand,--my resolution to be yours amid mystery and
grief,--to follow you in exile and loneliness (if it must be)
through the world!'

'As she spoke, there was a light in her eye,--a glow on her brow,
--an expansive and irradiated sublimity around her figure,--that
made it appear like the rare and glorious vision of the personified
union of passion and purity,--as if those eternal rivals had agreed
to reconcile their claims, to meet on the confines of their res-
pective dominions, and had selected the form of Isidora as the
temple in which their league might be hallowed, and their union
consummated--and never were the opposite divinities so deliciously
lodged. They forgot their ancient feuds, and agreed to dwell there
for ever.

'There was a grandeur, too, about her slender form, that seemed
to announce that pride of purity,--that confidence in external
weakness, and internal energy,--that conquest without armour, –
that victory over the victor, which makes the latter blush at his
triumph, and compels him to bow to the standard of the besieged
fortress at the moment of its surrender. She stood like a woman
devoted, but not humiliated by her devotion--uniting tenderness
with magnanimity--willing to sacrifice every thing to her lover,
but that which must lessen the value of the sacrifice in his eyes
--willing to be the victim, but feeling worthy to be the priestess.

'Melmoth gazed on her as she stood. One generous, one human feel-
ing, throbbed in his veins, and thrilled in his heart. He saw her
in her beauty,--her devotedness,--her pure and perfect innocence,
--her sole feeling for one who could not, by the fearful power of
his unnatural existence, feel for mortal being. He turned aside,
and did not weep; or if he did, wiped away his tears, as a fiend
might do, with his burning talons, when he sees a new victim arrive
for torture; and, repenting of his repentance, rends away the blot
of compunction, and arms himself for his task of renewed infliction.

'Well, then, Isidora, you will give me no proof of your love? Is
that what I must understand?'--'Demand,' answered the innocent
and high-souled Isidora, 'any proof that woman ought to give –
more is not in human power--less would render the proof of no
value!'

'Such was the impression that these words made on Melmoth,
whose heart, however, plunged in unutterable crimes, had never
been polluted by sensuality, that he started from the spot where he
stood,--gazed on her for a moment,--and then exclaimed, 'Well!
you have given me proofs of love unquestionable! It remains for me
to give you a proof of that love which I have described--of that
love which only you could inspire--of that love which, under happier
circumstances, I might--But no matter--it is not my business to
analyse the feeling, but to give the proof.' He extended his arm
toward the casement at which she stood.--'Would you then consent
to unite your destiny with mine? Would you indeed be mine amid
mystery and sorrow? Would you follow me from land to sea, and
from sea to land,--a restless, homeless, devoted being,--with the
brand on your brow, and the curse on your name? Would you
indeed be mine?--my own--my only Immalee?'--'I would--I will!'
--'Then,' answered Melmoth, 'on this spot receive the proof of my
eternal gratitude. On this spot I renounce your sight!--I disannul
your engagement!--I fly from you for ever!' And as he spoke, he
disappeared.'



CHAPTER XXII


I'll not wed Paris,--Romeo is my
husband.465
SHAKESPEARE


'Isidora was so accustomed to the wild exclamations and (to her)
unintelligible allusions of her mysterious lover, that she felt no
unwonted alarm at his singular language, and abrupt departure.
There was nothing in either more menacing or formidable than she
had often witnessed; and she recollected, that after these paroxysms,
he often re-appeared in a mood comparatively tranquil. She felt
sustained, therefore, by this reflection,--and perhaps by that
mysterious conviction impressed on the hearts of those who love
profoundly--that passion must always be united with suffering; and
she seemed to hear, with a kind of melancholy submission to the fa-
tality of love, that her lot was to suffer from lips that were sure
to verify the oracle. The disappearance, therefore, of Melmoth, gave
her less surprise than a summons from her mother a few hours after,
which was delivered in these words: 'Madonna Isidora, your lady-
mother desires your presence in the tapestried chamber--having
received intelligence by a certain express, which she deems fitting
you should be acquainted withal.'

'Isidora had been in some degree prepared for extraordinary
intelligence by an extraordinary bustle in this grave and quiet
household. She had heard steps passing, and voices resounding, but

'She wist not what they were,'466

and thought not of what they meant. She imagined that her mother
might have some communication to make about some intricate point
of conscience which Fra Jose had not discussed to her satisfact-
ion, from which she would make an instant transition to the
levity visible in the mode in which one attendant damsel arranged
her hair, and the suspected sound of a ghitarra under the window
of another, and then fly off at a tangent to inquire how the ca-
pons were fed, and why the eggs and Muscadine had not been duly
prepared for Fra Jose's supper. Then would she fret about the family
clock not chiming synchronically with the bells of the neighbouring
church where she performed her devotions. And finally, she fretted
about every thing, from the fattening of the 'pullen,'467 and the
preparation for the olio, up to the increasing feuds between the
Molinists and Jansenists,468 which had already visited Spain, and the
deadly dispute between the Dominican and Franciscan orders,469 rel-
ative to the habit in which it was most effective to salvation for
the dying body of the sinner to be wrapped. So between her kitchen
and her oratory,--her prayers to the saints, and her scoldings to
her servants,--her devotion and her anger,--Donna Clara continued
to keep herself and domestics in a perpetual state of interesting
occupation and gentle excitement.

'Something of this Isidora expected on the summons, and she
was, therefore, surprised to see Donna Clara seated at her writing
desk,--a large and fairly written manuscript of a letter extended
before her,--and to hear words thereafter uttered thus: 'Daughter, I
have sent for you, that you might with me partake of the pleasure
these lines should afford both; and that you may do so, I desire you
to sit and hear while they are read to you.'

'Donna Clara, as she uttered these words, was seated in a monstrous
high-backed chair, of which she actually seemed a part, so wooden
was her figure, so moveless her features, so lacklustre her eyes.

'Isidora curtsied low, and sat on one of the cushions with which
the room was heaped,--while a spectacled duenna, enthroned on
another cushion at the right hand of Donna Clara, read, with sundry
pauses and some diffculty, the following letter, which Donna Clara
had just received from her husband, who had landed, not at Ossuna,
but at a real seaport town in Spain,470 and was now on his way to
join his family.

'DONNA CLARA,

'It is about a year since I received your letter advising me of the
recovery of our daughter, whom we believed lost with her nurse on
her voyage to India when an infant, to which I would sooner have
replied, were I not otherwise hindered by concerns of business.
'I would have you understand, that I rejoice not so much that I
have recovered a daughter, as that heaven hath regained a soul and
a subject, as it were, e faucibus Draconis--e profundis Barathri 471
--the which terms Fra Jose will make plain to your weaker
comprehension.

'I trust that, through the ministry of that devout servant of God
and the church, she is now become as complete a Catholic in all
points necessary, absolute, doubtful, or incomprehensible,--formal,
essential, venial and indispensible, as becomes the daughter of an
old Christian such as I (though unworthy of that honour) boast
myself to be. Moreover, I expect to find her, as a Spanish maiden
should be, equipped and accomplished with all the virtues per-
taining to that character, especially those of discretion and re-
serve. The which qualities, as I have always perceived to reside in
you, so I hope you have laboured to transfer to her,--a transfer
by which the receiver is enriched, and the giver not impoverished.
'Finally, as maidens should be rewarded for their chastity and
reserve by being joined in wedlock with a worthy husband, so it is
the duty of a careful father to provide such a one for his daughter,
that she do not pass her marriageable age, and sit in discontent and
squalidness at home, as one overlooked of the other sex. My fatherly
care, therefore, moving me, I shall bring with me one who is to be
her husband, Don Gregorio Montilla, of whose qualifications I have
not now leisure to speak, but whom I expect she will receive as
becomes the dutiful daughter, and you as the obedient wife, of

FRANCISCO ALIAGA.'

'You have heard your father's letter, daughter,' said Donna Clara,
placing herself as in act to speak, 'and doubtless sit silent in
expectation of hearing from me a rehearsal of the duties pertaining
to the state on which you are so soon to enter, and which, I take it,
are three; that is to say, obedience, silence and thriftiness. And
first of the first, which, as I conceive, divides itself into thir-
teen heads,' --'Holy saints!' said the duenna under her breath, 'how
pale Madonna Isidora grows!'--'First of the first,' continued Donna
Clara, clearing her throat, elevating her spectacles with one hand,
and fixing three demonstrative fingers of the other on a huge clasped
volume, containing the life of St Francis Xavier, that lay on the desk
before her,--'as touching the thirteen heads into which the first
divides itself, the eleven first, I take it, are the most profitable
--the two last I shall leave you to be instructed in by your husband.
First, then,' --Here she was interrupted by a slight noise, which
did not, however, draw her attention, till she was startled by a
scream from the duenna, who exclaimed, 'The Virgin be my protection!
Madonna Isidora has fainted!'

'Donna Clara lowered her spectacles, glanced at the figure of her
daughter, who had fallen from her cushion, and lay breathless on
the floor, and, after a short pause, replied, 'She has fainted. Raise
her.--Call for assistance, and apply some cold water, or bear her
into the open air. I fear I have lost the mark in the life of this holy
saint,' muttered Donna Clara when alone; 'this comes of this foolish
business of love and marriage. I never loved in my life, thank the
saints!--and as to marriage, that is according to the will of God and
of our parents.'

'The unfortunate Isidora was lifted from the floor, conveyed into
the open air, whose breath had the same effect on her still
elementary existence, that water was said to have on that of the
ombre pez, (man-fish)472 of whom the popular traditions of Barcelona
were at that time, and still have been, rife.

'She recovered; and sending an apology to Donna Clara for her
sudden indisposition, intreated her attendants to leave her, as she
wished to be alone. Alone!--that is a word to which those who love
annex but one idea,--that of being in society with one who is their
all. She wished in this (to her) terrible emergency, to ask counsel
of him whose image was ever present to her, and whose voice she
heard with the mind's ear distinctly even in absence.

'The crisis was indeed one calculated to try a female heart; and Is-
idora's, with its potency of feeling, opposed to utter destitution
of judgement and of experience,--its native habits of resolution and
self-direction, and its acquired ones of timidity and diffdence
almost to despondency,--became the victim of emotions, whose
struggle seemed at first to threaten her reason.

'Her former independent and instinctive existence revived in her
heart at some moments, and suggested to her resolutions wild and
desperate, but such as the most timid females have been known,
under the pressure of a fearful exigency, to purpose, and even to
execute. Then the constraint of her new habits,--the severity of her
factitious existence,--and the solemn power of her newly-learned
but deeply-felt religion,--made her renounce all thoughts of
resistance or opposition, as offences against heaven.

'Her former feelings, her new duties, beat in terrible conflict
against her heart; and, trembling at the isthmus on which she stood,
she felt it, under the influence of opposing tides, narrowing every
moment under her feet.

'This was a dreadful day to her. She had suffcient time for
reflection, but she had within her the conviction that reflection
could be of no use,--that the circumstances in which she was
placed, not her own thoughts, must decide for her,--and that,
situated as she was, mental power was no match for physical.
'There is not, perhaps, a more painful exercise of the mind than
that of treading, with weary and impatient pace, the entire round of
thought, and arriving at the same conclusion for ever; then setting
out again with increased speed and diminished strength, and again
returning to the very same spot--of sending out all our faculties on
a voyage of discovery, and seeing them all return empty, and watch
the wrecks as they drift helplessly along, and sink before the eye
that hailed their outward expedition with joy and confidence.

'All that day she thought how it was possible to liberate herself
from her situation, while the feeling that liberation was impossible
clung to the bottom of her heart; and this sensation of the energies
of the soul in all their strength, being in vain opposed to imbecility
and mediocrity, when aided by circumstances, is one productive
alike of melancholy and of irritation. We feel like prisoners473 in
romance, bound by threads to which the power of magic has given
the force of adamant.

'To those whose minds incline them rather to observe, than to
sympathize with the varieties of human feeling, it would have been
interesting to watch the restless agony of Isidora, contrasted with
the cold and serene satisfaction of her mother, who employed the
whole of the day in composing, with the assistance of Fra Jose, what
Juvenal calls 'verbosa et grandis epistola,'474 in answer to that of her
husband; and to conceive how two human beings, apparently of
similarly-constructed organs, and destined apparently to sympathize
with each other, could draw from the same fountain waters sweet
and bitter.

'On her plea of continued indisposition, Isidora was excused from
appearing before her mother during the remainder of the day. The
night came on,--the night, which, by concealing the artificial
objects and manners which surrounded her, restored to her, in some
degree, the consciousness of her former existence, and gave her a
sense of independence she never felt by day. The absence of
Melmoth increased her anxiety. She began to apprehend that his
departure was intended to be final, and her heart sunk at the
thought.

'To the mere reader of romance, it may seem incredible475 that a
female of Isidora's energy and devotedness should feel anxiety or
terror in a situation so common to a heroine. She has only to stand
proof against all the importunities and authority of her family,
and announce her desperate resolution to share the destiny of a
mysterious and unacknowledged lover. All this sounds very plau-
sible and interesting. Romances have been written and read, whose
interest arose from the noble and impossible defiance of the he-
roine to all powers human and superhuman alike. But neither the
writers or readers seem ever to have taken into account the
thousand petty external causes that operate on human agency with
a force, if not more powerful, far more effective than the grand
internal motive which makes so grand a figure in romance, and so
rare and trivial a one in common life.

'Isidora would have died for him she loved. At the stake or the
scaffold she would have avowed her passion, and triumphed in
perishing as its victim. The mind can collect itself for one great
effort, but it is exhausted by the eternally-recurring necessity of
domestic conflicts,--victories by which she must lose, and defeats
by which she might gain the praise of perseverance, and feel such
gain was loss. The last single and terrible effort of the Jewish
champion,476 in which he and his enemies perished together, must
have been a luxury compared to his blind drudgery in his mill.

'Before Isidora lay that painful and perpetual struggle of fettered
strength with persecuting weakness, which, if the truth were told,
would divest half the heroines of romance of the power or wish to
contend against the diffculties that beset them. Her mansion was a
prison--she had no power (and if she possessed the power, would
never have exercised it) of obtaining an unpermitted or unobserved
egress from the doors of the house for one moment. Thus her escape
was completely barred; and had every door in the house been thrown
open, she would have felt like a bird on its first flight from
the cage, without a spray that she dared to rest on. Such was her
prospect, even if she could effect her escape--at home it was worse.

'The stern and cold tone of authority in which her father's letter
was written, gave her but little hope that in her father she would
find a friend. Then the feeble and yet imperious mediocrity of her
mother--the selfish and arrogant temper of Fernan--the powerful
influence and incessant documentizing of Fra Jose, whose goodnature
was no match for his love of authority--the daily domestic
persecution--that vinegar that would wear out any rock--the being
compelled to listen day after day to the same exhausting repetition
of exhortation, chiding, reproach and menace, or seek refuge in her
chamber, to waste the weary hours in loneliness and tears--this
strife maintained by one strong indeed in purpose, but feeble in
power, against so many all sworn to work their will, and have their
way--this perpetual conflict with evils so trivial in the items, but
so heavy in the amount, to those who have the debt to pay daily and
hourly,--was too much for the resolution of Isidora, and she wept in
hopeless despondency, as she felt that already her courage shrunk
from the encounter, and knew not what concessions might be
extorted from her increasing inability of resistance.

'Oh!' she cried, clasping her hands in the extremity of her
distress, 'Oh that he were but here to direct, to counsel me!--that
he were here even no longer as my lover, but only as my adviser!'

'It is said that a certain power is always at hand to facilitate the
wishes that the individual forms for his own injury; and so it should
seem in the present instance,--for she had scarce uttered these
words, when the shadow of Melmoth was seen darkening the garden
walk,--and the next moment he was beneath the casement. As she
saw him approach, she uttered a cry of mingled joy and fear, which
he hushed by making a signal of silence with his hand, and then
whispered, 'I know it all!'

'Isidora was silent. She had nothing but her recent distress to
communicate,--and of that, it appeared, he was already apprized.
She waited, therefore, in mute anxiety for some words of counsel or
of comfort. 'I know all!' continued Melmoth; 'your father has landed
in Spain--he brings with him your destined husband. The fixed
purpose of your whole family, as obstinate as they are weak, it will
be bootless in you to resist; and this day fortnight will see you the
bride of Montilla.'--'I will first be the bride of the grave,' said
Isidora, with perfect and fearful calmness.

'At these words, Melmoth advanced and gazed on her more close-
ly. Any thing of intense and terrible resolution,--of feeling or
action in extremity,--made harmony with the powerful but dis-
ordered chords of his soul. He required her to repeat the words –
she did so, with quivering lip, but unfaultering voice. He advanced
still nearer to gaze on her as she spoke. It was a beautiful and
fearful sight to see her as she stood;--her marble face--her move-
less features--her eyes in which burned the fixed and livid light
of despair, like a lamp in a sepulchral vault--the lips that half
opened, and remaining unclosed, appeared as if the speaker was
unconscious of the words that had escaped them, or rather, as if
they had burst forth by involuntary and incontroulable impulse;--so
she stood, like a statue, at her casement, the moonlight giving her
white drapery the appearance of stone, and her wrought-up and
determined mind lending the same rigidity to her expression.
Melmoth himself felt confounded--appalled he could not feel. He
retreated, and then returning, demanded, 'Is this your resolution,
Isidora?--and have you indeed resolution to'--'To die!' answered
Isidora, with the same unaltered accent,--the same calm expression,
--and seeming, as she spake, capable of all she expressed; and this
union, in the same slight and tender form, of those eternal com-
petitors, energy and fragility, beauty and death, made every
human pulse in Melmoth's frame beat with a throbbing unknown
before. 'Can you, then,' he said, with averted head, and in a tone
that seemed ashamed of its own softness--'Can you, then, die for
him you will not live for?'--'I have said I will die sooner than be
the bride of Montilla,' answered Isidora. 'Of death I know nothing,
nor do I know much of life--but I would rather perish, than be the
perjured wife of the man I cannot love.'--'And why can you not
love him?' said Melmoth, toying with the heart he held in his hand,
like a mischievous boy with a bird, around whose leg he has fast-
ened a string477--'Because I can love but one. You were the first
human being I ever saw who could teach me language, and who taught
me feeling. Your image is for ever before me, present or absent,
sleeping or waking. I have seen fairer forms,--I have listened
to softer voices,--I might have met gentler hearts,--but the
first, the indelible image, is written on mine, and its characters
will never be effaced till that heart is a clod of the valley. I
loved you not for comeliness,--I loved you not for gay deportment,
or fond language, or all that is said to be lovely in the eye of
woman,--I loved you because you were my first,--the sole connecting
link between the human world and my heart,--the being who brought
me acquainted with that wondrous instrument that lay unknown
and untouched within me, whose chords, as long as they vibrate,
will disdain to obey any touch but that of their first mover--because
your image is mixed in my imagination with all the glories of nature
--because your voice, when I heard it first, was something in ac-
cordance with the murmur of the ocean, and the music of the stars.
And still its tones recall the unimaginable blessedness of those scenes
where first I heard it,--and still I listen to it like an exile who
hears the music of his native country in a land that is very far off, –
because nature and passion, memory and hope, alike cling round
your image; and amid the light of my former existence, and the
gloom of my present, there is but one form that retains its reality
and its power through light and shade. I am like one who has tra-
versed many climates, and looks but to one sun as the light of all,
whether bright or obscure. I have loved once--and for ever!' Then,
trembling at the words she uttered, she added, with that sweet
mixture of maiden pride and purity that redeems while it pledges
the hostage of the heart, 'The feelings I have entrusted you with
may be abused, but never alienated.'--'And these are your real
feelings?' said Melmoth, pausing long, and moving his frame like
one agitated by deep and uneasy thoughts. 'Real!' repeated Isidora,
with some transient glow on her cheek--'real!' Can I utter any thing
but what is real? Can I so soon forget my existence?' Melmoth
looked up once more as she spoke--'If such is your resolution,--if
such be your feelings indeed,'--'And they are!--they are!'
exclaimed Isidora, her tears bursting through the slender fingers,
which, after extending towards him, she clasped over her burning
eyes. 'Then look to the alternative that awaits you!' said Melmoth
slowly, bringing out the words with diffculty, and, as it appeared,
with some feeling for his victim; 'a union with the man who cannot
love,--or the perpetual hostility, the wearying, wasting, almost
annihilating persecution of your family! Think of days that'--'Oh let
me not think!' cried Isidora, wringing her white and slender hands;
'tell me--tell me what may be done to escape them!'--'Now, in
good troth,' answered Melmoth, knitting his brows with a most
cogitative wrinkle, while it was impossible to discover whether his
predominant expression was that of irony or profound and sincere
feeling--'I know not what resource you have unless you wed me.' –
'Wed you!' cried Isidora, retreating from the window--'Wed you!'
and she clasped her hands over her pale forehead;--and at this
moment, when the hope of her heart, the thread on which her
existence was suspended, was within her reach, she trembled to
touch it. 'Wed you!--but how is that possible?'--'All things are
possible to those who love,' said Melmoth, with his sardonic smile,
which was hid by the shades of the night. 'And you will wed me,
then, by the rites of the church of which I am a member?'--'Aye!
or of any other!'--'Oh speak not so wildly!--say not aye in that
horrible voice! Will you wed me as a Christian maiden should be
wed?--Will you love me as a Christian wife should be loved? My
former existence was like a dream,--but now I am awake. If I unite
my destiny to yours,--if I abandon my family, my country, my'--'If
you do, how will you be the loser?--your family harasses and con-
fines you--your country would shout to see you at the stake, for
you have some heretical feelings about you, Isidora. And for the
rest'--'God!' said the poor victim, clasping her hands, and looking
upwards, 'God, aid me in this extremity!'--'If I am to wait here only
as a witness to your devotions,' said Melmoth with sullen asperity,
'my stay will not be long.'--'You cannot leave me, then, to struggle
with fear and perplexity alone! How is it possible for me to escape,
even if--'By whatever means I possess of entering this place and
retiring unobserved,--by the same you may effect your escape. If
you have resolution, the effort will cost you little,--if love, –
nothing. Speak, shall I be here at this hour to-morrow night, to
conduct you to liberty and'--Safety he would have added, but his
voice faultered. 'To-morrow night,' said Isidora, after a long pause,
and in accents almost inarticulate.



CHAPTER XXIII


If he to thee no answer give,
I'll give to thee a sign;
A secret known to nought that live,
Save but to me and mine.478
*
Gone to be married –
SHAKESPEARE479


'The whole of the next day was occupied by Donna Clara, to whom
letter-writing was a rare, troublesome, and momentous task, in
reading over and correcting her answer to her husband's letter; in
which examination she found so much to correct, interline, alter,
modify, expunge and new-model, that finally Donna Clara's epistle
very much resembled the work she was now employed in, namely
that of overcasting480 a piece of tapestry wrought by her grandmother,
representing the meeting of king Solomon and the queen of Sheba.
The new work, instead of repairing, made fearful havock among the
old; but Donna Clara went on, like her countryman at Mr Peter's
puppet-show,481 playing away (with her needle) in a perfect shower
of back-strokes, forestrokes, side-thrusts, and counter-thrusts,
till not a figure in the tapestry could know himself again. The
faded face of Solomon was garnished with a florid beard of scarlet
silk (which Fra Jose at first told her she must rip out, as it made
Solomon very little better than Judas) that made him resemble a
boiled scallop. The fardingale of the queen of Sheba was expanded
to an enormous hoop, of whose shrunk and pallid wearer it might be
truly said, 'Minima est pars sui.'482 The dog that, in the original
tapestry, stood by the spurred and booted heel of the oriental mon-
arch, (who was clad in Spanish costume), by dint of a few tufts of
black and yellow satin, was converted into a tiger, --a transform-
ation which his grinning fangs rendered as authentic as heart could
wish. And the parrot perched on the queen's shoulder, with the help
of a train of green and gold, which the ignorant mistook for her
majesty's mantle, proved a very passable peacock.

'As little trace of her original epistle did Donna Clara's present
one bear, as did her elaborate overcasting to the original and pain-
ful labours of her grandmother. In both, however, Donna Clara (who
scorned to flinch) went over the same ground with dim eye, and
patient touch, and inextinguishable and remorseless assiduity. The
letter, such as it was, was still sufficiently characteristic of the
writer. Some passages of it the reader shall be indulged with, --and
we reckon on his gratitude for not insisting on his perusal of the
whole. The authentic copy, from which we are favoured with the
extracts, runs thus.

*

'Your daughter takes to her religion like mother's milk; and well
may she do so, considering that the trunk of our family was planted
in the genuine soil of the Catholic church, and that every branch of
it must flourish there or perish. For a Neophyte,483 (as Fra Jose wills
me to word it), she is as promising a sprout as one should wish to
see flourishing within the pale of the holy church; --and for a
heathen, she is so amenable, submissive, and of such maidenly
suavity, that for the comportment of her person, and the discreet
and virtuous ordering of her mind, I have no Christian mother to
envy. Nay, I sometimes take pity on them, when I see the lightness,
the exceeding vain carriage, and the unadvised eagerness to be
wedded, of the best trained maidens of our country. This our
daughter hath nothing of, either in her outward demeanour, or
inward mind. She talks little, therefore she cannot think much; and
she dreams not of the light devices of love, and is therefore well
qualified for the marriage proposed unto her.

*

'One thing, dear spouse of my soul, I would have thee to take no-
tice of, and guard like the apple of thine eye, --our daughter
is deranged, but never, on thy discretion, mention this to Don
Montilla, even though he were the descendant in the right line of
the Campeador, or of Gonsalvo di Cordova.484 Her derangement will
in no wise impede or contravene her marriage, --for be it known to
thee, it breaks out but at times, and at such times, that the most
jealous eye of man could not spy it, unless he had a foretaught
intimation of it. She hath strange fantasies swimming in her brain,
such as, that heretics and heathens shall not be everlastingly
damned --(God and the saints protect us!) --which must clearly
proceed from madness, --but which her Catholic husband, if ever he
comes to the knowledge of them, shall know how to expel, by aid of
the church, and conjugal authority. That thou may'st better know
the truth of what I hereby painfully certify, the saints and Fra
Jose (who will not let me tell a lie, because he in a manner holds
my pen) can witness, that about four days before we left Madrid,
as we went to church, and I was about, while ascending the steps,
to dole alms to a mendicant woman wrapt in a mantle, who held up a
naked child for the receiving of charity, your daughter twitched my
sleeve, while she whispered, 'Madam, she cannot be mother to that
child, for she is covered, and her child is naked. If she were its
mother, she would cover her child, and not be comfortably wrapt
herself.' True it was, I found afterwards the wretched woman had
hired the child from its more wretched mother, and my alms had
paid the price of its hire for the day; but still that not a whit
disproved our daughter insane, inasmuch as it showed her ignorant
of the fashion and usages of the beggars of the country, and did in
some degree shew a doubt of the merit of alms-deeds, which thou
know'st none but heretics or madmen could deny. Other and grievous
proofs of her insanity doth she give daily; but not willing to incum-
-ber you with ink, (which Fra Jose willeth me to call atramentum),485
I will add but a few particulars to arouse your dormant faculties,
which may be wrapt in lethargic obliviousness by the anodyne of my
somniferous epistolation.'

'Reverend Father,' said Donna Clara, looking up to Fra Jose, who
had dictated the last line, 'Don Francisco will know the last line
not to be mine --he heard it in one of your sermons. Let me add the
extraordinary proof of my daughter's insanity at the ball.' – 'Add
or diminish, compose or confound, what you will, in God's name!'
said Fra Jose, vexed at the frequent erasures and lituras486 which
disfigured the lines of his dictation; 'for though in style I may
somewhat boast of my superiority, in scratches no hen on the best
dunghill in Spain can contend with you! On, then, in the name of all
the saints! --and when it pleases heaven to send an interpreter to
your husband, we may hope to hear from him by the next postangel,
for surely such a letter was never written on earth.'

'With this encouragement and applause, Donna Clara proceeded
to relate sundry other errors and wanderings of her daughter,
which, to a mind so swathed, crippled and dwarfed, by the ligatures
which the hand of custom had twined round it since its first hour of
consciousness, might well have appeared like the aberrations of
insanity. Among other proofs, she mentioned that Isidora's first
introduction to a Christian and Catholic church, was on that night of
penitence in passion-week, when, the lights being extinguished, the
miserere is chaunted in profound darkness, the penitents macerate487
themselves, and groans are heard on every side instead of prayers,
as if the worship of Moloch488 was renewed without its fires; --
struck with horror at the sounds she heard, and the darkness which
surrounded her, Isidora demanded what they were doing. –
'Worshipping God,' was the answer.

'At the expiration of Lent, she was introduced to a brilliant
assembly, where the gay fandango was succeeded by the soft notes
of the seguedilla,489 --and the crackling of the castanets, and the
tinkling of the guitars, marked alternate time to the light and
ecstatic step of youth, and the silvery and love-tuned voice of
beauty. Touched with delight at all she saw and heard, --the smiles
that dimpled and sparkled over her beautiful features reflecting
every shade of pleasure they encountered, like the ripplings of a
brook kissed by moon-beams, --she eagerly asked, 'And are not
these worshipping God?' --'Out on it, daughter!' interposed Donna
Clara, who happened to overhear the question; 'This is a vain and
sinful pastime, --the invention of the devil to delude the children of
folly --hateful in the eyes of heaven and its saints, --and abhorred
and renounced by the faithful.' --'Then there are two Gods,' said
Isidora sighing, 'The God of smiles and happiness, and the God of
groans and blood. Would I could serve the former!' --'I will take
order you shall serve the latter, heathenish and profane that you
are!' answered Donna Clara, as she hurried her from the assembly,
shocked at the scandal which her words might have given. These
and many similar anecdotes were painfully indited in Donna Clara's
long epistle, which, after being folded and sealed by Fra Jose, (who
swore by the habit he wore, he had rather study twenty pages of the
Polyglot490 fasting, than read it over once more), was duly forwarded
to Don Francisco.

'The habits and movements of Don Francisco were, like those of
his nation, so deliberate and dilatory, and his aversion to writing
letters, except on mercantile subjects, so well known, that Donna
Clara was actually alarmed at receiving, in the evening of the day in
which her epistle was dispatched, another letter from her husband.

'Its contents must be guessed to be sufficiently singular, when the
result was, that Donna Clara and Fra Jose sat up over them nearly
the whole of the night, in consultation, anxiety and fear. So intense
was their conference, that it is recorded it was never interrupted
even by the lady telling her beads, or the monk thinking of his
supper. All the artificial habits, the customary indulgences, the
factitious existence of both, were merged in the real genuine fear
which pervaded their minds, and which asserted its power over both
in painful and exacting proportion to their long and hardy rejection
of its influence. Their minds succumbed together, and sought and
gave in vain, feeble counsel, and fruitless consolation. They read
over and over again this extraordinary letter, and at every reading
their minds grew darker, --and their counsels more perplexed, --and
their looks more dismal. Ever and anon they turned their eyes on it,
as it lay open before them on Donna Clara's ebony writing-desk, and
then starting, asked each other by looks, and sometimes in words,
'Did either hear some strange noise in the house?' The letter, among
other matter not important to the reader, contained the singular
passage following.

*

'In my travel from the place where I landed, to that whence I now
write, I fortuned to be in company with strangers, from whom I
heard things touching me (not as they meant, but as my fear
interpreted them) in a point the most exquisite that can prick and
wound the soul of a Christian father. These I shall discuss unto thee
at thy more leisure. They are full of fearful matter, and such as
may perchance require the aid of some churchman rightly to understand,
and fully to fathom. Nevertheless this I can commend to thy dis-
cretion, that after I had parted from this strange conference, the
reports of which I cannot by letter communicate to thee, I retired
to my chamber full of sad and heavy thoughts, and being seated in my
chair, pored over a tome containing legends of departed spirits, in
nowise contradictive to the doctrine of the holy Catholic church,
otherwise I would have crushed it with the sole of my foot into the
fire that burned before me on the hearth, and spit on its cinders
with the spittle of my mouth. Now, whether it was the company I
fortuned to be into, (whose conversation must never be known but
to thee only), or the book I had been reading, which contained cer-
tain extracts from Pliny, Artemidore,491 and others, full-filled with
tales which I may not now recount, but which did relate altogether
to the revivification of the departed, appearing in due accordance
with our Catholic conceptions of Christian ghosts in purgatory, with
their suitable accoutrements of chains and flames, --as thus Pliny
writeth, 'Apparebat eidolon senex, made et senie confectus,'492 --or
finally, the weariness of my lonely journey, or other things I know
not, – but feeling my mind ill-disposed for deeper converse with
books at my own thoughts, and though oppressed by sleep,
unwilling to retire to rest, --a mood which I and others have often
experienced, --I took out thy letters from the desk in which I duly
reposit them, and read over the description which thou didst send
me of our daughter, upon the first intelligence of her being
discovered in that accursed isle of heathenism, --and I do assure
thee, the description of our daughter hath been written in such
characters on the bosom to which she hath never been clasped, that
it would defy the art of all the limners in Spain to paint it more
effectually. So, thinking on those dark-blue eyes, --and those natural
ringlets which will not obey their new mistress, art, --and that
slender undulating shape, --and thinking it would soon be folded in
my arms, and ask the blessing of a Christian father in Christian
tones, I dozed as I sat in my chair; and my dreams taking part with
my waking thoughts, I was a-dreamt that such a creature, so fair, so
fond, so cherubic, sat beside me, and asked me blessing. As I bowed
to give it, I nodded in my chair and awoke. Awoke I say, for what
followed was as palpable to human sight as the furniture of my
apartment, or any other tangible object. There was a female seated
opposite me, clad in a Spanish dress, but her veil flowed down to
her feet. She sat, and seemed to expect that I should bespeak her
first. 'Damsel,' I said, 'what seekest thou? --or why art thou here?'
The figure never raised its veil, nor motioned with hand or lip. Mine
head was full of what I had heard and read of; and after making the
sign of the cross, and uttering certain prayers, I approached that
figure, and said, 'Damsel, what wantest thou?' --'A father,' said the
form, raising its veil, and disclosing the identical features of my
daughter Isidora, as described in thy numerous letters. Thou mayest
well guess my consternation, which I might almost term fear, at the
sight and words of this beautiful but strange and solemn figure. Nor
was my perplexity and trouble diminished but increased, when the
figure, rising and pointing to the door, through which she forthwith
passed with a mysterious grace and incredible alacrity, uttered, in
transitu,493 words like these: --'Save me! --save me! --lose not a
moment, or I am lost!' And I swear to thee, wife, that while that
figure sat or departed, I heard not the rustling of her garments, or
the tread of her foot, or the sound of her respiration --only as she
went out, there was a rushing sound as of a wind passing through
the chamber, --and a mist seemed to hang on every object around
me, which dispersed, --and I was conscious of heaving a deep sigh,
as if a load had been removed from my breast. I sat thereafter for
an hour pondering on what I had seen, and not knowing whether to
term it a waking dream, or a dream-like waking. I am a mortal man,
sensible of fear, and liable to error, --but I am also a Catholic
Christian, and have ever been a hearty contemner of your tales of
spectres and visions, excepting always when sanctioned by the
authority of the holy church, and recorded in the lives of her saints
and martyrs. Finding no end or fruit of these my heavy cogitations, I
withdrew myself to bed, where I long lay tossing and sleepless, till
at the approach of morning, just as I was falling into a deep sleep,
I was awoke by a noise like that of a breeze waving my curtains. I
started up, and drawing them, looked around me. There was a glimpse
of day-light appearing through the window-shutters, but not suf-
ficient to enable me to distinguish the objects in the room, were
it not for the lamp that burned on the hearth, and whose light,
though somewhat dim, was perfectly distinct. By it I discovered,
near the door, a figure which my sight, rendered more acute by my
terror, verified as the identical figure I had before beheld, who,
waving its arm with a melancholy gesture, and uttering in a piteous
voice these words, 'It is too late,' disappeared. As, I will own to
thee, overcome with horror at this second visitation, I fell back on
my pillow almost bereft of the use of my faculties, I remember the
clock struck three.'

'As Donna Clara and the priest (on their tenth perusal of the let-
ter) arrived at these words, the clock in the hall below struck three.
'That is a singular coincidence,' said Fra Jose. 'Do you think it
nothing more, Father?' said Donna Clara, turning very pale. 'I know
not,' said the priest; 'many have told credible stories of warnings
permitted by our guardian saints, to be given even by the ministry
of inanimate things. But to what purpose are we warned, when we
know not the evil we are to shun?' --'Hush! --hark!' said Donna
Clara, 'did you hear no noise?' --'None,' said Fra Jose listening,
not without some appearance of perturbation --'None,' he added, in a
more tranquil and assured voice, after a pause; 'and the noise which
I q hear about two hours ago, was of short continuance, and has
not been renewed.' --'What a flickering light these tapers give!'
said Donna Clara, viewing them with eyes glassy and fixed with fear.
'The casements are open,' answered the priest. 'So they have been
since we sat here,' returned Donna Clara; 'yet now see what a
stream of air comes rushing against them! Holy God! They flare
as if they would go out!'

'The priest, looking up at the tapers, observed the truth of what
she said, --and at the same time perceived the tapestry near the
door to be considerably agitated. 'There is a door open in some
other direction,' said he, rising. 'You are not going to leave me,
Father?' said Donna Clara, who sat in her chair paralyzed with
terror, and unable to follow him but with her eyes.

'The Father Jose made no answer. He was now in the passage,
where a circumstance which he observed had arrested all his
attention, --the door of Isidora's apartment was open, and lights
were burning in it. He entered it slowly at first, and gazed around,
but its inmate was not there. He glanced his eye on the bed, but
no human form had pressed it that night --it lay untouched and
undisturbed. The casement next caught his eye, now glancing with
the quickness of fear on every object. He approached it --it was
wide open, --the casement that looked towards the garden. In his
horror at this discovery, the good Father could not avoid uttering a
cry that pierced the ears of Donna Clara, who, trembling and scarce
able to make her way to the room, attempted to follow him in vain,
and fell down in the passage. The priest raised and tried to assist
her back to her own apartment. The wretched mother, when at last
placed in her chair, neither fainted or wept; but with white and
speechless lips, and a paralytic motion of her hand, tried to point
towards her daughter's apartment, as if she wished to be conveyed
there. 'It is too late,' said the priest, unconsciously using the
ominous words quoted in the letter of Don Francisco.'



CHAPTER XXIV


Responde meum argumentum--nomen est nomen –
ergo, quod tibi est nomen--responde argumentum.
BEAUMONT and FLETCHER'S
Wit at Several Weapons494


'That night was the one fixed on for the union of Isidora and Mel-
moth. She had retired early to her chamber, and sat at the casement
watching for his approach for hours before she could probably expect
it. It might be supposed that at this terrible crisis of her fate,
she felt agitated by a thousand emotions,--that a soul susceptible
like hers felt itself almost torn in pieces by the struggle,--but
it was not so. When a mind strong by nature, but weakened by fet-
tering circumstances, is driven to make one strong spring to free
itself, it has no leisure to calculate the weight of its hindrances,
or the width of its leap,--it sits with its chains heaped about it,
thinking only of the bound that is to be its liberation--or--

'During the many hours that Isidora awaited the approach of this
mysterious bridegroom, she felt nothing but the awful sense of that
approach, and of the event that was to follow. So she sat at her
casement, pale but resolute, and trusting in the extraordinary
promise of Melmoth, that by whatever means he was enabled to
visit her, by those she would be enabled to effect her escape,
in spite of her well-guarded mansion, and vigilant household.

'It was near one (the hour at which Fra Jose, who was sitting in
consultation with her mother over that melancholy letter, heard the
noise alluded to in the preceding chapter) when Melmoth appeared
in the garden, and, without uttering a word, threw up a ladder of
ropes, which, in short and sullen whispers, he instructed her to
fasten, and assisted her to descend. They hurried through the
garden,--and Isidora, amid all the novelty of her feelings and
situation, could not avoid testifying her surprise at the facil
ity with which they passed through the well-secured garden gate.

'They were now in the open country,--a region far wilder to Isi-
dora than the flowery paths of that untrodden isle, where she had
no enemy. Now in every breeze she heard a menacing voice,--in the
echoes of her own light steps she heard the sound of steps pursuing
her.

'The night was very dark,--unlike the midsummer nights in that
delicious climate. A blast sometimes cold, sometimes stifling from
heat, indicated some extraordinary vicissitude in the atmosphere.
There is something very fearful in this kind of wintry feeling in a
summer night. The cold, the darkness, followed by intense heat, and
a pale, meteoric lightning, seemed to unite the mingled evils of the
various seasons, and to trace their sad analogy to life,--whose
stormy summer allows youth little to enjoy, and whose chilling
winter leaves age nothing to hope.

'To Isidora, whose sensibilities were still so acutely physical, that
she could feel the state of the elements as if they were the oracles
of nature, which she could interpret at sight,--this dark and troubl-
ed appearance seemed like a fearful omen. More than once she paused,
trembled, and turned on Melmoth a glance of doubt and terror, –
which the darkness of the night, of course, prevented him from
observing. Perhaps there was another cause,--but as they hurried
on, Isidora's strength and courage began to fail together. She
perceived that she was borne on with a kind of supernatural velo-
city,--her breath failed,--her feet faultered,--and she felt like
one in a dream.

'Stay!' she exclaimed, gasping from weakness, 'stay!--whither am
I going?--where do you bear me?'--'To your nuptials,' answered
Melmoth, in low and almost inarticulate tones;--but whether ren-
dered so by emotion, or by the speed with which they seemed to
fly along, Isidora could not discover.

'In a few moments, she was forced to declare herself unable to
proceed, and leaned on his arm, gasping and exhausted. 'Let me
pause,' said she ominously, 'in the name of God!' Melmoth returned
no answer. He paused, however, and supported her with an appear-
ance of anxiety, if not of tenderness.

'During this interval, she gazed around her, and tried to distin-
guish the objects near; but the intense darkness of the night
rendered this almost impossible,--and what she could discover, was
not calculated to dispel her alarm. They seemed to be walking on a
narrow and precipitous path close by a shallow stream, as she could
guess, by the hoarse and rugged sound of its waters, as they fought
with every pebble to win their way. This path was edged on the
other side by a few trees, whose stunted growth, and branches
tossing wild and wide to the blast that now began to whisper
mournfully among them, seemed to banish every image of a summer
night from the senses, and almost from the memory. Every thing
around was alike dreary and strange to Isidora, who had never,
since her arrival at the villa, wandered beyond the precincts of
the garden,--and who, even if she had, would probably have found
no clue to direct her where she now was. 'This is a fearful night'
said she, half internally. She then repeated the same words more
audibly, perhaps in hope of some answering and consolatory sounds.
Melmoth was silent--and her spirits subdued by fatigue and emo-
tion, she wept. 'Do you already repent the step you have taken?'
said he, laying a strange emphasis on the word--already. 'No, love,
no!' replied Isidora, gently wiping away her tears; 'it is impossible
for me ever to repent it. But this loneliness,--this darkness,--this
speed,--this silence,--have in them something almost awful. I feel
as if I were traversing some unknown region. Are these indeed the
winds of heaven that sigh around me? Are these trees of nature's
growth, that nod at me like spectres? How hollow and dismal is the
sound of the blast!--it chills me though the night is sultry!--and
those trees, they cast their shadows over my soul! Oh, is this like
a bridal night?' she exclaimed, as Melmoth, apparently disturbed at
these words, attempted to hurry her on--'Is this like a bridal? No
father, no brother, to support me!--no mother near me!--no kiss of
kindred to greet me!--no congratulating friends!'--and her fears
increasing, she wildly exclaimed, 'Where is the priest to bless our
union?--where is the church under whose roof we are to be
united?'

'As she spoke, Melmoth, drawing her arm under his, attempted to
lead her gently forward. 'There is,' said he, 'a ruined monastery
near --you may have observed it from your window.'--'No! I never saw
it. Why is it in ruins?'--'I know not--there were wild stories told.
It ws said the Superior, or Prior, or--I know not what--had looked
into certain books, the perusal of which was not altogether sanc-
tioned by the rules of his order--books of magic they called them.
There was much noise about it, I remember, and some talk of the
Inquisition,--but the end of the business was, the Prior disappeared,
some said into the prisons of the Inquisition, some said into safer
custody--(though how that could be, I cannot well conceive)--and
the brethren were drafted into other communities, and the building
became deserted. There were some offers made for it by the commun-
ities of other religious houses, but the evil, though vague and
wild reports, that had gone forth about it, deterred them, on in-
quiry, from inhabiting it,--and gradually the building fell to ruin.
It still retains all that can sanctify it in the eyes of the faithful.
There are crucifixes and tombstones, and here and there a cross set
up where there has been murder,--for, by a singular congeniality of
taste, a banditti495 has fixed their seat there now,--and the traffic
of gold for souls, once carried on so profitably by the former in-
mates, is exchanged for that of souls for gold, by the present.'

'At these words, Melmoth felt the slender arm that hung on his
withdrawn,--and he perceived that his victim, between shuddering
and struggling, had shrunk from his hold. 'But there,' he added,
'even amid those ruins, there dwells a holy hermit,--one who has
taken up his residence near the spot,--he will unite us in his
oratory, according to the rites of your church. He will speak the
blessing over us,--and one of us, at least, shall be blessed.'--'Hold!'
said Isidora, repelling, and standing at what distance from him she
could,--her slight figure expanding to that queen-like dignity with
which nature had once invested her as the fair and sole sovereign of
her own island-paradise. 'Hold!' she repeated--'approach me not by
another step,--address me not by another word,--till you tell me
when and where I am to be united to you,--to become your wedded
wife! I have borne much of doubt and terror,--of suspicion and
persecution,--but'--'Hear me, Isidora,' said Melmoth, terrified at
this sudden burst of resolution. 'Hear me,' answered the timid but
heroic girl, springing, with the elasticity of her early movements,
upon a crag that hung over their stony path, and clinging to an ash-
tree that had burst through its fissures--'Hear me! Sooner will you
rend this tree from its bed of stone, than me from its trunk! Sooner
will I dash this body on the stony bed of the stream that groans
below my feet, than descend into your arms, till you swear to me
they will bear me to honour and safety! For you I have given up all
that my newly-taught duties have told me was holy!--all that my
heart long ago whispered I ought to love! Judge by what I have
sacrificed, of what I can sacrifice--and doubt not that I would be
my own victim ten thousand times sooner than yours!'--'By all that
you deem holy!' cried Melmoth, humbling himself even to kneel
before her as she stood,--'my intentions are as pure as your own
soul!--the hermitage is not an hundred paces off. Come, and do not,
by a fantastic and causeless apprehension, frustrate all the
magnanimity and tenderness you have hitherto shewed, and which
have raised you in my eyes not only above your sex, but above your
whole species. Had you not been what you are, and what no other
but you could be, you had never been the bride of Melmoth. With
whom but you did he ever seek to unite his dark and inscrutable
destiny? Isidora,' he added, in tones more potent and emphatic,
perceiving she still hesitated, and clung to the tree--'Isidora,
how weak, how unworthy of you is this! You are in my power, –
absolutely, hopelessly in my power. No human eye can see me--no
human arm can aid you. You are as helpless as infancy in my grasp.
This dark stream would tell no tales of deeds that stained its waters,
--and the blast that howls round you would never waft your groans
to mortal ear! You are in my power, yet I seek not to abuse it. I
offer you my hand to conduct you to a consecrated building, where we
shall be united according to the fashion of your country--and will
you still persevere in this fanciful and profitless waywardness?'

'As he spoke, Isidora looked round her helplessly--every object
was a confirmation of his arguments--she shuddered and submitted.
But as they walked on in silence, she could not help interrupting it
to give utterance to the thousand anxieties that oppressed her heart.

'But you speak,' said she, in a suppressed and pleading tone, –
'you speak of religion in words that make me tremble--you speak of
it as the fashion of a country,--as a thing of form, of accident, of
habit. What faith do you profess?--what church do you frequent? –
what holy rites do you perform?'--'I venerate all faiths--alike, I
hold all religious rites--pretty much in the same respect,' said
Melmoth, while his former wild and scoffing levity seemed to
struggle vainly with a feeling of involuntary horror. 'And do you
then, indeed, believe in holy things?' asked Isidora. 'Do you indeed?'
she repeated anxiously. ' I believe in a God,' answered Melmoth, in a
voice that froze her blood; 'you have heard of those who believe and
tremble,496--such is he who speaks to you!'

'Isidora's acquaintance with the book from which he quoted, was
too limited to permit her to understand the allusion. She knew,
according to the religious education she had received, more of her
breviary than her Bible; and though she pursued her inquiry in a
timid and anxious tone, she felt no additional terror from words she
did not understand.

'But,' she continued, 'Christianity is something more than belief
in a God. Do you also believe in all that the Catholic church declares
to be essential to salvation? Do you believe that'--And here she
added a name too sacred, and accompanied with terms too awful, to
be expressed in pages so light as these.497 'I believe it all--I know it
all,' answered Melmoth, in a voice of stern and reluctant confession.
'Infidel and scoffer as I may appear to you, there is no martyr of the
Christian church, who in other times blazed for his God, that has
borne or exhibited a more resplendent illustration of his faith, than I
shall bear one day--and for ever. There is a slight difference only
between our testimonies498 in point of duration. They burned for the
truths they loved for a few moments--not so many perchance. Some
were suffocated before the flames could reach them,--but I am
doomed to bear my attestation on the truth of the gospel, amid fires
that shall burn for ever and ever. See with what a glorious destiny
yours, my bride, is united! You, as a Christian, would doubtless
exult to see your husband at the stake,--and amid the faggots to
prove his devotion. How it must ennoble the sacrifice to think that it
is to last to eternity!'

'Melmoth uttered these words in ears that heard no longer. Isidora
had fainted; and hanging with one cold hand on his arm still, fell
a helpless, senseless weight on the earth. Melmoth, at this sight,
shewed more feeling than he could have been suspected of. He
disentangled her from the folds of her mantle, sprinkled water from
the stream on her cold cheek, and supported her frame in every
direction where a breath of air was to be caught. Isidora recovered;
for her swoon was that of fatigue more than fear; and, with her
recovery, her lover's short-lived tenderness seemed to cease. The
moment she was able to speak he urged her to proceed,--and while
she feebly attempted to obey him, he assured her, her strength was
perfectly recovered, and that the place they had to reach was but a
few paces distant. Isidora struggled on. Their path now lay up the
ascent of a steep hill,--they left the murmur of the stream, and the
sighing of trees, behind them,--the wind, too, had sunk, but the
night continued intensely dark,--and the absence of all sound seem-
ed to Isidora to increase the desolateness of the scene. She wish-
ed for something to listen to beside her impeded and painful res-
piration, and the audible beatings of her heart. As they descended
the hill on the other side, the murmuring of the waters became once
more faintly audible; and this sound she had longed to hear again,
had now, amid the stillness of the night, a cadence so melancholy,
that she almost wished it hushed.

'Thus always, to the unhappy, the very fulfilment of their morbid
wishings becomes a source of disappointment, and the change they
hoped for is desirable only as it gives them cause to long for another
change. In the morning they say, Would to God it were evening! –
Evening comes,--and in the evening they say, Would to God it were
morning! But Isidora had no time to analyse her feelings,--a new
apprehension struck her,--and, as she could well guess from the
increasing speed of Melmoth, and head thrown backward
impatiently, and often, it had probably reached him too. A sound
they had been for some time watching, (without communicating
their feelings to each other), became every moment more distinct. It
was the sound of a human foot, evidently pursuing them, from the
increasing quickness of its speed, and a certain sharpness of tread,
that irresistibly gave the idea of hot and anxious pursuit. Melmoth
suddenly paused, and Isidora hung trembling on his arm. Neither of
them uttered a word; but Isidora's eyes, instinctively following the
slight but fearful waving of his arm, saw it directed towards a figure
so obscure, that it at first appeared like a spray moving in the misty
night,--then was lost in darkness as it descended the hill,--and
then appeared in a human form, as far as the darkness of the night
would permit its shape to be distinguishable. It came on--its steps
were more and more audible, and its shape almost distinct.--Then
Melmoth suddenly quitted Isidora, who, shivering with terror, but
unable to utter a word that might implore him to stay, stood alone,
her whole frame trembling almost to dissolution, and her feet
feeling as if she were nailed to the spot where she stood. What
passed she knew not. There was a short and darkened struggle be-
tween two figures,--and, in this fearful interval, she imagined she
heard the voice of an ancient domestic, much attached to her, call
on her, first in accents of expostulation and appeal, then in choaked
and breathless cries for help--help--help!--Then she heard a sound
as if a heavy body fell into the water that murmured below.--It fell
heavily--the wave groaned--the dark hill groaned in answer, like
murderers exchanging their stilled and midnight whispers over their
work of blood--and all was silent. Isidora clasped her cold and
convulsed fingers over her eyes, till a whispering voice, the voice of
Melmoth, uttered, 'Let us hasten on, my love.'--'Where?' said
Isidora, not knowing the meaning of the words she uttered.--'To the
ruined monastery, my love,--to the hermitage, where the holy man,
the man of your faith, shall unite us.'--'Where are the steps that
pursued us?' said Isidora, suddenly recovering her recollection. –
'They will pursue you no more.'--'But I saw a figure.'--'But you
will see it no more.'--'I heard something fall into that stream –
heavily--like a corse.'--'There was a stone that fell from the
precipice of the hill--the waters splashed, and curled, and whitened
round it for a moment, but they have swallowed it now, and appear
to have such a relish for the morsel, that they will not be apt to
resign it.'

'In silent horror she proceeded, till Melmoth, pointing to a dusky
and indefinite mass of what, in the gloom of night, bore, according
to the eye or the fancy, the shape of a rock, a tuft of trees, or a
massive and unlighted building, whispered, 'There is the ruin, and
near it stands the hermitage,--one moment more of effort,--of
renewed strength and courage, and we are there.' Urged by these
words, and still more by an undefinable wish to put an end to this
shadowy journey,--these mysterious fears,--even at the risk of
finding them worse than verified at its termination, Isidora exerted
all her remaining strength, and, supported by Melmoth, began to
ascend the sloping ground on which the monastery had once stood.
There had been a path, but it was now all obstructed by stones, and
rugged with the knotted and interlaced roots of the neglected trees
that had once formed its shelter and its grace.

'As they approached, in spite of the darkness of the night, the
ruin began to assume a distinct and characteristic appearance, and
Isidora's heart beat less fearfully, when she could ascertain, from
the remains of the tower and spire, the vast Eastern window, and
the crosses still visible on every ruined pinnacle and pediment,
like religion triumphant amid grief and decay, that this had been
a building destined for sacred purposes. A narrow path, that seem-
ed to wind round the edifice, conducted them to a front which
overlooked an extensive cemetery, at the extremity of which
Melmoth pointed out to her an indistinct object, which he said was
the hermitage, and to which he would hasten to intreat the hermit,
who was also a priest, to unite them. 'May I not accompany you?'
said Isidora, glancing round on the graves that were to be her
companions in solitude.--'It is against his vow,' said Melmoth, 'to
admit a female into his presence, except when obliged by the course
of his duties.' So saying he hasted away, and Isidora, sinking on a
grave for rest, wrapt her veil around her, as if its folds could ex-
clude even thought. In a few moments, gasping for air, she withdrew
it; but as her eye encountered only tomb-stone and crosses, and that
dark and sepulchral vegetation that loves to shoot its roots, and
trail its unlovely verdure amid the joints of gravestones, she clos-
ed it again, and sat shuddering and alone. Suddenly a faint sound,
like the murmur of a breeze, reached her,--she looked up, but the
wind had sunk, and the night was perfectly calm. The same sound
recurring, as of a breeze sweeping past, made her turn her eyes in
the direction from which it came, and, at some distance from her,
she thought she beheld a human figure moving slowly along on the
verge of the inclosure of the burial-ground. Though it did not seem
approaching her, (but rather moving in a low circuit on the verge of
her view), conceiving it must be Melmoth, she rose in expectation of
his advancing to her, and, at this moment, the figure, turning and
half-pausing, seemed to extend its arm towards her, and wave it
once or twice, but whether with a motion or purpose of warning or
repelling her, it was impossible to discover,--it then renewed its
dim and silent progress, and the next moment the ruins hid it from
her view. She had no time to muse on this singular appearance, for
Melmoth was now at her side urging her to proceed. There was a
chapel, he told her, attached to the ruins, but not like them in
decay, where sacred ceremonies were still performed, and where the
priest had promised to join them in a few moments. 'He is there
before us,' said Isidora, adverting to the figure she had seen; 'I
think I saw him.'--'Saw whom?' said Melmoth, starting, and standing
immoveable till his question was answered.--'I saw a figure,' said
Isidora, trembling--'I thought I saw a figure moving towards the
ruin.'--'You are mistaken,' said Melmoth; but a moment after he
added, 'We ought to have been there before him.' And he hurried on
with Isidora. Suddenly slackening his speed, he demanded, in a
choaked and indistinct voice, if she had ever heard any music
precede his visits to her,--any sounds in the air. 'Never,' was
the answer.--'You are sure?'--'Perfectly sure.'

'At this moment they were ascending the fractured and rugged
steps that led to the entrance of the chapel, now they passed under
the dark and ivied porch,--now they entered the chapel, which,
even in darkness, appeared to the eyes of Isidora ruinous and
deserted. 'He has not yet arrived,' said Melmoth, in a disturbed
voice; 'Wait there a moment.' And Isidora, enfeebled by terror
beyond the power of resistance, or even intreaty, saw him depart
without an effort to detain him. She felt as if the effort would be
hopeless. Left thus alone, she glanced her eyes around, and a faint
and watery moon-beam breaking at that moment through the heavy
clouds, threw its light on the objects around her. There was a
window, but the stained glass of its compartments, broken and
discoloured, held rare and precarious place between the fluted
shafts of stone. Ivy and moss darkened the fragments of glass, and
clung round the clustered pillars. Beneath were the remains of an
altar and crucifix, but they seemed like the rude work of the first
hands that had ever been employed on such subjects. There was also
a marble vessel, that seemed designed to contain holy water, but it
was empty,--and there was a stone bench, on which Isidora sunk
down in weariness, but without hope of rest. Once or twice she
looked up to the window, through which the moon-beams fell, with
that instinctive feeling of her former existence, that made
companions of the elements and of the beautiful and glorious family
of heaven, under whose burning light she had once imagined the
moon was her parent, and the stars her kindred. She gazed on the
window still, like one who loved the light of nature, and drank
health and truth from its beams, till a figure passing slowly but
visibly before the pillared shafts, disclosed to her view the face of
that ancient servant, whose features she remembered well. He
seemed to regard her with a look, first of intent contemplation, –
then of compassion,--the figure then passed from before the ruined
window, and a faint and wailing cry rung in the ears of Isidora as it
disappeared.

'At that moment the moon, that had so faintly lit the chapel, sunk
behind a cloud, and every thing was enveloped in darkness so
profound, that Isidora did not recognize the figure of Melmoth till
her hand was clasped in his, and his voice whispered, 'He is here –
ready to unite us.' The long-protracted terrors of this bridal left her
not a breath to utter a word withal, and she leaned on the arm that
she felt, not in confidence, but for support. The place, the hour, the
objects, all were hid in darkness. She heard a faint rustling as of the
approach of another person,--she tried to catch certain words, but
she knew not what they were,--she attempted also to speak, but she
knew not what she said. All was mist and darkness with her,--she
knew not what was muttered,--she felt not that the hand of
Melmoth grasped hers,--but she felt that the hand that united them,
and clasped their palms within his own, was as cold as that of death.’



CHAPTER XXV




HOMER500


'We have now to retrace a short period of our narrative to the night
on which Don Francisco di Aliaga, the father of Isidora, 'fortuned,'
as he termed it, to be among the company whose conversation had
produced so extraordinary an effect on him.

'He was journeying homewards, full of the contemplation of his
wealth,--the certainty of having attained complete security against
the evils that harass life,--and being able to set at defiance all
external causes of infelicity. He felt like a man 'at ease in his
possessions,'501 and he felt also a grave and placid satisfaction at
the thought of meeting a family who looked up to him with profound
respect as the author of their fortunes,--of walking in his own
house, amid bowing domestics and obsequious relatives, with the
same slow authoritative step with which he paced that mart among
wealthy merchants, and saw the wealthiest bow as he approached,--
and when he had passed, point out the man of whose grave salute
they were proud, and whisper, That is Aliaga the rich.--So thinking
and feeling, as most prosperous men do, with an honest pride in
their worldly success,--an exaggerated expectation of the homage
of society,--(which they often find frustrated by its contempt),--
and an ultimate reliance on the respect and devotion of their
family whom they have enriched, making them ample amends for the
slights they may be exposed to where their wealth is unknown,
and their newly assumed consequence unappreciated,--or if ap-
preciated, not valued:--So thinking and feeling, Don Francisco
journeyed homeward.

'At a wretched inn where he was compelled to halt, he found the
accommodation so bad, and the heat of the weather so intolerable
in the low, narrow, and unwindowed rooms, that he preferred taking
his supper in the open air, on a stone bench at the door of the
inn. We cannot say that he there imagined himself to be feasted
with trout and white bread, like Don Quixote,--and still less
that he fancied he was ministered unto by damsels of rank;502--on the
contrary, Don Francisco was digesting a sorry meal with wretched
wine, with a perfect internal consciousness of the mediocrity of
both, when he beheld a person ride by, who paused, and looked as
if he was inclined to stop at the inn. (The interval of this pause
was not long enough to permit Don Francisco to observe particularly
the figure or face of the horseman, or indeed to recognize him on
any future occasion of meeting; nor was there any thing remarkable
in his appearance to invite or arrest observation.) He made a sign
to the host, who approached him with a slow and unwilling pace,--
appeared to answer all his inquiries with sturdy negatives,--and
finally, as the stranger rode on, returned to his station, crossing
himself with every mark of terror and deprecation.

'There was something more in this than the ordinary surliness of
a Spanish innkeeper. Don Francisco's curiosity was excited, and he
asked the innkeeper, whether the stranger had proposed to pass the
night at the inn, as the weather seemed to threaten a storm? 'I know
not what he proposes,' answered the man, 'but this I know, that I
would not suffer him to pass an hour under my roof for the revenues
of Toledo.503 If there be a storm coming on, I care not--those who
can raise them are the fittest to meet them!'

'Don Francisco inquired the cause of these extraordinary expressions
of aversion and terror, but the innkeeper shook his head and remain-
ed silent, with, as it were, the circumspective fear of one who is
inclosed within the sorcerer's circle, and dreads to pass its verge,
lest he become the prey of the spirits who are waiting beyond it to
take advantage of his transgression.

'At last, at Don Francisco's repeated instances, he said, 'Your
worship must needs be a stranger in this part of Spain not to have
heard of Melmoth the wanderer.'--'I have never heard of the name
before,' said Don Francisco; 'and I conjure you, brother, to tell me
what you know of this person, whose character, if I may judge by
the manner in which you speak of him, must have in it something
extraordinary.'--'Senhor,' answered the man, 'were I to relate what
is told of that person, I should not be able to close an eye to-night;
or if I did, it would be to dream of things so horrible, that I had
rather lie awake for ever. But, if I am not mistaken, there is in the
house one who can gratify your curiosity--it is a gentleman who is
preparing for the press a collection of facts relative to that person,
and who has been, for some time, in vain soliciting for a license to
print them, they being such as the government, in its wisdom, thinks
not fit to be perused by the eyes of Catholics, or circulated among a
Christian community.'

'As the innkeeper spoke, and spoke with an earnestness that at
least made the hearer believe he felt the conviction he tried to
impress, the person of whom he spoke was standing beside Don
Francisco. He had apparently overheard their conversation, and
seemed not indisposed to continue it. He was a man of a grave and
composed aspect, and altogether so remote from any appearance of
imposition, or theatrical and conjuror-like display, that Don
Francisco, grave, suspicious and deliberate as a Spaniard, and
moreover a Spanish merchant, may be, could not avoid giving him
his confidence at sight, though he forbore any external expression
of it.

'Senhor,' said the stranger, 'mine host has told you but the truth.
The person whom you saw ride by, is one of those beings after
whom human curiosity pants in vain,--whose life is doomed to be
recorded in incredible legends that moulder in the libraries of
the curious, and to be disbelieved and scorned even by those who
exhaust sums on their collection, and ungratefully depreciate the
contents of the volumes on whose aggregate its value depends.
There has been, however, I believe, no other instance of a person
still alive, and apparently exercising all the functions of a human
agent, who has become already the subject of written memoirs, and
the theme of traditional history. Several circumstances relating to
this extraordinary being are even now in the hands of curious and
eager collectors; and I have myself attained to the knowledge of one
or two that are not among the least extraordinary. The marvellous
period of life said to be assigned him, and the facility with which he
has been observed to pass from region to region, (knowing all, and
known to none), have been the principal causes why the adventures
in which he is engaged, should be at once so numerous and so
similar.'

'As the stranger ceased to speak, the evening grew dark, and a few
large and heavy drops of rain fell. 'This night threatens a storm,'
said the stranger, looking abroad with some degree of anxiety--'we
had better retire within doors; and if you, Senhor, are not other-
wise occupied, I am willing to pass away some hours of this un-
pleasant night in relating to you some circumstances relating to
the wanderer, which have come within my certain knowledge.'

'Don Francisco assented to this proposal as much from curiosity,
as from the impatience of solitude, which is never more insupport-
able than in an inn, and during stormy weather. Don Montilla, too,
had left him on a visit to his father, who was in a declining state,
and was not to join him again till his arrival in the neighbourhood
of Madrid. He therefore bid his servants shew the way to his apart-
ment, whither he courteously invited his new acquaintance.

'Imagine them now seated in the wretched upper apartment of a
Spanish inn, whose appearance, though dreary and comfortless, had
in it, nevertheless, something picturesque, and not inappropriate,
as the scene where a wild and wondrous tale was to be related and
listened to. There was no luxury of inventive art to flatter the
senses, or enervate the attention,--to enable the hearer to break the
spell that binds him to the world of horrors, and recover to all the
soothing realities and comforts of ordinary life, like one who starts
from a dream of the rack, and finds himself waking on a bed of
down. The walls were bare, and the roofs were raftered, and the
only furniture was a table, beside which Don Francisco and his
companion sat, the one on a huge high-backed chair, the other on a
stool so low, that he seemed seated at the listener's foot. A lamp
stood on the table, whose light flickering in the wind, that sighed
through many apertures of the jarring door, fell alternately on lips
that quivered as they read, and cheeks that grew paler as the
listener bent to catch the sounds to which fear gave a more broken
and hollow tone, at the close of every page. The rising voice of
the stormy night seemed to make wild and dreary harmony with the
tones of the listener's feelings. The storm came on, not with sud-
den violence, but with sullen and long-suspended wrath--often re-
ceding, as it were, to the verge of the horizon, and then returning
and rolling its deepening and awful peals over the very roof. And as
the stranger proceeded in his narrative, every pause, which emotion
or weariness might cause, was meetly filled by the deep rushing of
the rain that fell in torrents,--the sighs of the wind,--and now and
then a faint, distant, but long-continued peal of thunder. 'It sounds,'
said the stranger, raising his eyes from the manuscript, 'like the
chidings of the spirits, that their secrets are disclosed!'



CHAPTER XXVI


--And the twain were playing dice.
*
The game is done, I've won, I've won,
Quoth she, and whistled thrice.

COLERIDGE –
Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner504


　　　　　　The Tale of Guzman's Family


'Of what I am about to read to you,' said the stranger, 'I have
witnessed part myself, and the remainder is established on a basis
as strong as human evidence can make it.

'In the city of Seville, where I lived many years, I knew a wealthy
merchant, far advanced in years, who was known by the name of
Guzman the rich. He was of obscure birth,--and those who hon-
oured his wealth sufficiently to borrow from him frequently, never
honoured his name so far as to prefix Don to it, or to add his
surname, of which, indeed, most were ignorant, and among the
number, it is said, the wealthy merchant himself. He was well
respected, however; and when Guzman was seen, as regularly as the
bell tolled for vespers, to issue from the narrow door of his house,
lock it carefully,--view it twice or thrice with a wistful eye,--then
deposit the key in his bosom, and move slowly to church, feeling for
the key in his vest the whole way,--the proudest heads in Seville
were uncovered as he passed,--and the children who were playing
in the streets, desisted from their sports till he had halted by
them.

'Guzman had neither wife or child,--relative or friend. An old
female domestic constituted his whole household, and his personal
expences were calculated on a scale of the most pinching frugality;
it was therefore matter of anxious conjecture to many, how his
enormous wealth would be bestowed after his death. This anxiety
gave rise to inquiries about the possibility of Guzman having
relatives, though in remoteness and obscurity; and the diligence
of inquiry, when stimulated at once by avarice and curiosity, is
indefatigable. Thus it was at length discovered that Guzman had
formerly a sister, many years younger than himself, who, at a very
early age, had married a German musician, a Protestant, and had
shortly after quitted Spain. It was remembered, or reported, that
she had made many efforts to soften the heart and open the hand of
her brother, who was even then very wealthy, and to induce him to
be reconciled to their union, and to enable her and her husband to
remain in Spain. Guzman was inflexible. Wealthy, and proud of his
wealth as he was, he might have digested the unpalatable morsel of
her union with a poor man, whom he could have made rich; but he
could not even swallow the intelligence that she had married a
Protestant. Ines, for that was her name, and her husband, went to
Germany, partly in dependence on his musical talents, which were
highly appreciated in that country,--partly in the vague hope of
emigrants, that change of place will be attended with change of
circumstances,505--and partly, also, from the feeling, that misfor-
tune is better tolerated any where than in the presence of those
who inflict it. Such was the tale told by the old, who affected
to remember the facts,--and believed by the young, whose imag-
ination supplied all the defects of memory, and pictured to
them an interesting beauty, with her children hanging about her,
embarking, with a heretic husband, for a distant country, and
sadly bidding farewell to the land and the religion of her fathers.

'Now, while these things were talked of at Seville, Guzman fell
sick, and was given over by the physicians, whom with considerable
reluctance he had suffered to be called in.

'In the progress of his illness, whether nature revisited a heart
she long appeared to have deserted,--or whether he conceived that
the hand of a relative might be a more grateful support to his dying
head than that of a rapacious and mercenary menial,--or whether
his resentful feelings burnt faintly at the expected approach of
death, as artificial fires wax dim at the appearance of morning;--so
it was, that Guzman in his illness bethought himself of his sister and
her family--sent off, at a considerable expense, an express to that
part of Germany where she resided, to invite her to return and be
reconciled to him,--and prayed devoutly that he might be permitted
to survive till he could breathe his last amid the arms of her and her
children. Moreover, there was a report at this time, in which the
hearers probably took more interest than in any thing that related
merely to the life or death of Guzman,--and this was, that he had
rescinded his former will, and sent for a notary, with whom, in spite
of his apparent debility, he remained locked up for some hours,
dictating in a tone which, however clear to the notary, did not
leave one distinct impression of sound on the ears that were strain-
ed, even to an agony of listening, at the double-locked door of his
chamber.

'All Guzman's friends had endeavoured to dissuade him from
making this exertion, which, they assured him, would only hasten
his dissolution. But to their surprise, and doubtless their de-
light, from the moment his will was made, Guzman's health began
to amend,--and in less than a week he began to walk about his
chamber, and calculate what time it might take an express to
reach Germany, and how soon he might expect intelligence from
his family.

'Some months had passed away, and the priests took advantage
of the interval to get about Guzman. But after exhausting every
effort of ingenuity,--after plying him powerfully but unavailingly
on the side of conscience, of duty, of fear and of religion,--they
began to understand their interest, and change their battery. And
finding that the settled purpose of Guzman's soul was not to be
changed, and that he was determined on recalling his sister and her
family to Spain, they contented themselves with requiring that he
should have no communication with the heretic family, except through
them,--and never see his sister or her children unless they were
witnesses to the interview.

'This condition was easily complied with, for Guzman felt no de-
cided inclination for seeing his sister, whose presence might have
reminded him of feelings alienated, and duties forgot. Besides, he
was a man of fixed habits; and the presence of the most interesting
being on earth, that threatened the slightest interruption or
suspension of those habits, would have been to him insupportable.

'Thus we are all indurated by age and habit,--and feel ultimately,
that the dearest connections of nature or passion may be sacri-
ficed to those petty indulgences which the presence or influence
of a stranger may disturb. So Guzman compromised between his con-
science and his feelings. He determined, in spite of all the
priests in Seville, to invite his sister and her family to Spain,
and to leave the mass of his immense fortune to them; (and to that
effect he wrote, and wrote repeatedly and explicitly). But, on the
other hand, he promised and swore to his spiritual counsellors, that
he never would see one individual of the family; and that, though
his sister might inherit his fortune, she never--never should see
his face. The priests were satisfied, or appeared to be so, with
this declaration; and Guzman, having propitiated them with ample
offerings to the shrines of various saints, to each of whom his
recovery was exclusively attributed, sat down to calculate the pro-
bable expence of his sister's return to Spain, and the necessity of
providing for her family, whom he had, as it were, rooted from their
native bed; and therefore felt bound, in all honesty, to make them
flourish in the soil into which he had transplanted them.

'Within the year, his sister, her husband, and four children,
returned to Spain. Her name was Ines, her husband's was Walberg.
He was an industrious man, and an excellent musician. His talents
had obtained for him the place of Maestro di Capella 506 to the Duke
of Saxony; and his children were educated (according to his means) to
supply his place when vacated by death or accident, or to employ
themselves as musical teachers in the courts of German princes. He
and his wife had lived with the utmost frugality, and looked to their
children for the means of increasing, by the exercise of their ta-
lents, that subsistence which it was their daily labour to provide.

'The eldest son, who was called Everhard, inherited his father's
musical talents. The daughters, Julia and Ines, were musical also,
and very skilful in embroidery. The youngest child, Maurice, was by
turns the delight and the torment of the family.

'They had struggled on for many years in difficulties too petty to
be made the subject of detail, yet too severe not to be painfully
felt by those whose lot is to encounter them every day, and every
hour of the day,--when the sudden intelligence, brought by an ex-
press from Spain, of their wealthy relative Guzman inviting them to
return thither, and proclaiming them heirs to all his vast riches,
burst on them like the first dawn of his half-year's summer on the
crouching and squalid inmate of a Lapland hut. All trouble was for-
got,--all cares postponed,--their few debts paid off,--and their
preparations made for an instant departure to Spain.

'So to Spain they went, and journeyed on to the city of Seville,
where, on their arrival, they were waited on by a grave ecclesiastic,
who acquainted them with Guzman's resolution of never seeing his
offending sister or her family, while at the same time he assured
them of his intention of supporting and supplying them with every
comfort, till his decease put them in possession of his wealth. The
family were somewhat disturbed at this intelligence, and the mother
wept at being denied the sight of her brother, for whom she still
cherished the affection of memory; while the priest, by way of
softening the discharge of his commission, dropt some words of a
change of their heretical opinions being most likely to open a
channel of communication between them and their relative. The
silence with which this hint was received spoke more than many
words, and the priest departed.

'This was the first cloud that had intercepted their view of felicity
since the express arrived in Germany, and they sat gloomily enough
under its shadow for the remainder of the evening. Walberg, in the
confidence of expected wealth, had not only brought over his
children to Spain, but had written to his father and mother, who
were very old, and wretchedly poor, to join him in Seville; and by
the sale of his house and furniture, had been enabled to remit them
money for the heavy expences of so long a journey. They were now
hourly expected, and the children, who had a faint but grateful
recollection of the blessing bestowed on their infant heads by
quivering lips and withered hands, looked out with joy for the
arrival of the ancient pair. Ines had often said to her husband,
'Would it not be better to let your father and mother remain in
Germany, and remit them money for their support, than put them to
the fatigue of so long a journey at their far advanced age?'--And he
had always answered, 'Let them rather die under my roof, than live
under that of strangers.'

'This night he perhaps began to feel the prudence of his wife's
advice;--she saw it, and with cautious gentleness forbore, for that
very reason, to remind him of it.

'The weather was gloomy and cold that evening,--it was unlike a
night in Spain. Its chill appeared to extend to the party. Ines
sat and worked in silence--the children, collected at the window,
communicated in whispers their hopes and conjectures about the
arrival of the aged travellers, and Walberg, who was restlessly
traversing the room, sometimes sighed as he overheard them.

'The next day was sunny and cloudless. The priest again called on
them, and, after regretting that Guzman's resolution was inflexible,
informed them, that he was directed to pay them an annual sum for
their support, which he named, and which appeared to them enor-
mous; and to appropriate another for the education of the chil-
dren, which seemed to be calculated on a scale of princely mun-
ificence. He put deeds, properly drawn and attested for this
purpose, into their hands, and then withdrew, after repeating the
assurance, that they would be the undoubted heirs of Guzman's
wealth at his decease, and that, as the interval would be passed in
affluence, it might well be passed without repining. The priest had
scarcely retired, when the aged parents of Walberg arrived, feeble
from joy and fatigue, but not exhausted, and the whole family sat
down to a meal that appeared to them luxurious, in that placid
contemplation of future felicity, which is often more exquisite
than its actual enjoyment.

'I saw them,' said the stranger, interrupting himself,--'I saw them
on the evening of that day of union, and a painter, who wished to
embody the image of domestic felicity in a group of living figures,
need have gone no further than the mansion of Walberg. He and his
wife were seated at the head of the table, smiling on their children,
and seeing them smile in return, without the intervention of one
anxious thought,--one present harassing of petty difficulty, or
heavy presage of future mischance,--one fear of the morrow, or
aching remembrance of the past. Their children formed indeed a
groupe on which the eye of painter or of parent, the gaze of taste
or of affection, might have hung with equal delight. Everhard their
eldest son, now sixteen, possessed too much beauty for his sex,
and his delicate and brilliant complexion, his slender and exquisitely
moulded form, and the modulation of his tender and tremulous
voice, inspired that mingled interest, with which we watch, in
youth, over the strife of present debility with the promise of future
strength, and infused into his parents' hearts that fond anxiety with
which we mark the progress of a mild but cloudy morning in spring,
rejoicing in the mild and balmy glories of its dawn, but fearing lest
clouds may overshade them before noon. The daughters, Ines and
Julia, had all the loveliness of their colder climate--the luxuriant
ringlets of golden hair, the large bright blue eyes, the snow-like
whiteness of their bosoms, and slender arms, and the rose-leaf tint
and peachiness of their delicate cheeks, made them, as they
attended their parents with graceful and fond officiousness,
resemble two young Hebes507 ministering cups, which their touch
alone was enough to turn into nectar.

'The spirits of these young persons had been early depressed by
the difficulties in which their parents were involved; and even in
childhood they had acquired the timid tread, the whispered tone,
the anxious and inquiring look, that the constant sense of domestic
distress painfully teaches even to children, and which it is the most
exquisite pain to a parent to witness. But now there was nothing to
restrain their young hearts,--that stranger, a smile, fled back
rejoicing to the lovely home of their lips,--and the timidity of their
former habits only lent a grateful shade to the brilliant exuberance
of youthful happiness. Just opposite this picture, whose hues were
so bright, and whose shades were so tender, were seated the figures
of the aged grandfather and grandmother. The contrast was very
strong; there was no connecting link, no graduated medium,--you
passed at once from the first and fairest flowers of spring, to the
withered and rootless barrenness of winter.

'These very aged persons, however, had something in their looks
to soothe the eye, and Teniers or Wouverman508 would perhaps have
valued their figures and costume far beyond those of their young
and lovely grandchildren. They were stiffly and quaintly habited in
their German garb--the old man in his doublet and cap, and the old
woman in her ruff, stomacher and head-gear resembling a skull-cap,
with long depending pinners,509 through which a few white, but very
long hairs, appeared on her wrinkled cheeks; but on the counten-
ances of both there was a gleam of joy, like the cold smile of
a setting sun on a wintry landscape. They did not distinctly hear
the kind importunities of their son and daughter, to partake more
amply of the most plentiful meal they had ever witnessed in their
frugal lives,--but they bowed and smiled with that thankfulness
which is at once wounding and grateful to the hearts of affection-
ate children. They smiled also at the beauty of Everhard and their
elder grandchildren,--at the wild pranks of Maurice, who was as wild
in the hour of trouble as in the hour of prosperity;--and finally,
they smiled at all that was said, though they did not hear half of
it, and at all they saw, though they could enjoy very little--and that
smile of age, that placid submission to the pleasures of the young,
mingled with undoubted anticipations of a more pure and perfect fel-
icity, gave an almost heavenly expression to features, that would
otherwise have borne only the withering look of debility and decay.

'Some circumstances occurred during this family feast, which were
sufficiently characteristic of the partakers. Walberg (himself a
very temperate man) pressed his father repeatedly to take more
wine than he was accustomed to,--the old man gently declined it.
The son still pressed it heartfully, and the old man complied with
a wish to gratify his son, not himself.

'The younger children, too, caressed their grandmother with the
boisterous fondness of children. Their mother reproached them. –
'Nay, let be,' said the gentle old woman. 'They trouble you, mother,'
said the wife of Walberg.--'They cannot trouble me long,' said the
grandmother, with an emphatic smile. 'Father,' said Walberg, 'is not
Everhard grown very tall?'--'The last time I saw him,' said the
grandfather, 'I stooped to kiss him; now I think he must stoop to
kiss me.' And, at the word, Everhard darted like an arrow into the
trembling arms that were opened to receive him, and his red and
hairless lips were pressed to the snowy beard of his grandfather.
'Cling there, my child,' said the exulting father.--'God grant your
kiss may never be applied to lips less pure.'--'They never shall, my
father!' said the susceptible boy, blushing at his own emotions--I
never wish to press any lips but those that will bless me like those of
my grandfather.'--'And do you wish,' said the old man jocularly,
'that the blessing should always issue from lips as rough and hoary
as mine?' Everhard stood blushing behind the old man's chair at this
question, and Walberg, who heard the clock strike the hour at which
he had been always accustomed, in prosperity or adversity, to
summon his family to prayer, made a signal which his children well
understood, and which was communicated in whispers to their aged
relatives.--'Thank God,' said the aged grandmother to the young
whisperer, and as she spoke, she sunk on her knees. Her
grandchildren assisted her. 'Thank God,' echoed the old man,
bending his stiffened knees, and doffing his cap--'Thank God for
this “shadow of a great rock in a weary land!”'510--and he knelt,
while Walberg, after reading a chapter or two from a German Bible
which he held in his hands, pronounced an extempore prayer,
imploring God to fill their hearts with gratitude for the temporal
blessings they enjoyed, and to enable them 'so to pass through
things temporal, that they might not finally lose the things eternal.'511
At the close of the prayer, the family rose and saluted each other
with that affection which has not its root in earth, and whose
blossoms, however diminutive and colourless to the eye of man in
this wretched soil, shall yet bear glorious fruit in the garden of God.
It was a lovely sight to behold the young people assisting their aged
relatives to arise from their knees,--and it was a lovelier hearing, to
listen to the happy good-nights exchanged among the parting
family. The wife of Walberg was most assiduous in preparing the
comforts of her husband's parents, and Walberg yielded to her with
that proud gratitude, that feels more exaltation in a benefit
conferred by those we love, than if we conferred it ourselves. He
loved his parents, but he was proud of his wife loving them because
they were his. To the repeated offers of his children to assist or
attend their ancient relatives, he answered, 'No, dear children, your
mother will do better,--your mother always does best.' As he spoke,
his children, according to a custom now forgot, kneeled before him
to ask his blessing. His hand, tremulous with affection, rested first
on the curling locks of the darling Everhard, whose head towered
proudly above those of his kneeling sisters, and of Maurice, who,
with the irrepressible and venial levity of joyous childhood, laughed
as he knelt. 'God bless you!' said Walberg--'God bless you all,--and
may he make you as good as your mother, and as happy as--your
father is this night;' and as he spoke, the happy father turned aside
and wept.



CHAPTER XXVII


–Quæque ipsa miserrima vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.

VIRGIL512


'The wife of Walberg, who was naturally of a cool sedate temper,
and to whom misfortune had taught an anxious and jealous pre-
voyance, was not so intoxicated with the present prosperity of
the family, as its young, or even its aged members. Her mind was
full of thoughts which she would not communicate to her husband,
and sometimes did not wish to acknowledge to herself; but to the
priest, who visited them frequently with renewed marks of
Guzman's bounty, she spoke explicitly. She said, that however
grateful for her brother's kindness, for the enjoyment of present
competence, and the hope of future wealth, she wished that her
children might be permitted to acquire the means of independent
subsistence for themselves, and that the money destined by Guz-
man's liberality for their ornamental education, might be applied
to the purpose of ensuring them the power of supporting them-
selves, and assisting their parents. She alluded slightly to the
possible future change in her brother's favourable feelings to-
wards her, and dwelt much on the circumstance of her children being
strangers in the country, wholly unacquainted with its language,
and averse from its religion; and she mildly but strongly stated the
difficulties to which a heretic family of strangers might be exposed
in a Catholic country, and implored the priest to employ his
mediation and influence with her brother, that her children might
be enabled, through his bounty, to acquire the means of indepen-
dent subsistence, as if--and she paused. The good and friendly
priest (for he was truly both) listened to her with attention;
and after satisfying his conscience, by adjuring her to renounce her
heretical opinions, as the only means of obtaining a reconciliation
with God and her brother, and receiving a calm, but firm negative,
proceeded to give her his best LAY advice, which was to comply with
her brother's wishes in every thing, to educate her children in the
manner which he prescribed, and to the full extent of the means
which he so amply furnished. He added, en confiance, that Guzman,
though, during his long life, he had never been suspected of any
passion but that of accumulating money, was now possessed with a
spirit much harder to expel, and was resolved that the heirs of his
wealth should be, in point of all that might embellish polished
society, on a level with the descendants of the first nobility of
Spain. Finally, he counselled submission to her brother's wishes
in all things,--and the wife of Walberg complied with tears, which
she tried to conceal from the priest, and had completely effaced
the traces of before she again met her husband.

'In the mean time, the plan of Guzman was rapidly realized. A
handsome house was taken for Walberg,--his sons and daughters
were splendidly arrayed, and sumptuously lodged; and, though
education was, and still is, on a very low level in Spain, they were
taught all that was then supposed to qualify them as companions for
the descendants of Hidalgoes.513 Any attempt, or even allusion to
their being prepared for the ordinary occupations of life, was strictly
forbidden by the orders of Guzman. The father triumphed in this,--
the mother regretted it, but she kept her regret to herself, and
consoled herself with thinking, that the ornamental education her
children were receiving might ultimately be turned to account; for
the wife of Walberg was a woman whom the experience of misfor-
tune had taught to look to the future with an anxious eye, and
that eye, with ominous accuracy, had seldom failed to detect a
speck of evil in the brightest beam of sun-shine that had ever
trembled on her chequered existence.

'The injunctions of Guzman were obeyed,--the family lived in
luxury. The young people plunged into their new life of enjoyment
with an avidity proportioned to their youthful sensibility of
pleasure, and to a taste for refinement and elegant pursuits,
which their former obscurity had repressed, but never extinguish-
ed. The proud and happy father exulted in the personal beauty,
and improving talents of his children. The anxious mother sighed
sometimes, but took care the sigh should never reach her husband's
ear. The aged grandfather and grandmother, whose infirmities had
been much increased by their journey to Spain, and possibly still
more by that strong emotion which is a habit to youth, but a con-
vulsion to age, sat in their ample chairs comfortably idle, dozing
away life in intervals of unuttered though conscious satisfaction,
and calm but venerable apathy;--they slept much, but when they
awoke, they smiled at their grandchildren, and at each other.

'The wife of Walberg, during this interval, which seemed one of
undisturbed felicity to all but her, sometimes suggested a gentle
caution,--a doubtful and anxious hint,--a possibility of future
disappointment, but this was soon smiled away by the rosy, and
laughing, and kissful lips of her children, till the mother at last
began to smile at her apprehensions herself. At times, however, she
led them anxiously in the direction of their uncle's house. She
walked up and down the street before his door with her children,
and sometimes lifted up her veil, as if to try whether her eye could
pierce through walls as hard as the miser's heart, or windows barred
like his coffers,--then glancing on her children's costly dress, while
her eye darted far into futurity, she sighed and returned slowly
home. This state of suspence was soon to be terminated.

'The priest, Guzman's confessor, visited them often; first in
quality of almoner or agent of his bounty, which was amply and
punctually bestowed through his hands; and secondly, in quality of
a professed chess-player, at which game he had met, even in Spain,
no antagonist like Walberg. He also felt an interest in the family
and their fortunes, which, though his orthodoxy disowned, his heart
could not forbear to acknowledge,--so the good priest compromised
matters by playing chess with the father, and praying for the
conversion of his family on his return to Guzman's house. It was
while engaged in the former exercise, that a message arrived to
summon him on the instant home,--the priest left his queen en
prise 514 and hurried into the passage to speak with the messenger.
The family of Walberg, with agitation unspeakable, half rose to follow
him. They paused at the door, and then retreated with a mixed
feeling of anxiety for the intelligence, and shame at the attitude
in which they might be discovered. As they retreated, however, they
could not help hearing the words of the messenger,--'He is at his
last gasp,--he has sent for you,--you must not lose a moment.' As
the messenger spoke, the priest and he departed.

'The family returned to their apartment, and for some hours sat
in profound silence, interrupted only by the ticking of the clock,
which was distinctly and solely heard, and which seemed too loud
to their quickened ears, amid that deep stillness on which it broke
incessantly,--or by the echoes of Walberg's hurried step, as he
started from his chair and traversed the apartment. At this sound
they turned, as if expecting a messenger, then, glancing at the silent
figure of Walberg, sunk on their seats again. The family sat up all
that long night of unuttered, and indeed unutterable emotion. The
lights burnt low, and were at length extinguished, but no one
noticed them;--the pale light of the dawn broke feebly into the
room, but no one observed it was morning. 'God!--how long he
lingers!' exclaimed Walberg involuntarily; and these words, though
uttered under his breath, made all the listeners start, as at the first
sounds of a human voice, which they had not heard for many hours.

'At this moment a knock was heard at the door,--a step trod
slowly along the passage that led to the room,--the door opened,
and the priest appeared. He advanced into the room without speak-
ing, or being spoken to. And the contrast of strong emotion
and unbroken silence,--this conflict of speech that strangled
thought in the utterance, and of thought that in vain asked aid
of speech,--the agony and the muteness,--formed a terrible
momentary association. It was but momentary,--the priest, as he
stood, uttered the words--'All is over!' Walberg clasped his hands
over his forehead, and in ecstatic agony exclaimed,--'Thank God!'
and wildly catching at the object nearest him, as if imagining it one
of his children, he clasped and hugged it to his breast. His wife
wept for a moment at the thought of her brother's death, but roused
herself for her children's sake to hear all that was to be told.
The priest could tell no more but that Guzman was dead,--seals had
been put on every chest, drawer and coffer in the house,--not a
cabinet had escaped the diligence of the persons employed, and the
will was to be read the following day.

'For the following day the family remained in that intensity of
expectation that precluded all thought. The servants prepared the
usual meal,but it remained untasted. The family pressed each other
to partake of it; but as the importunity was not enforced by the
inviter setting any example of the lesson he tried to teach, the
meal remained untasted. About noon a grave person, in the habit of
a notary, was announced, and summoned Walberg to be present at the
opening of Guzman's will. As Walberg prepared to obey the summons,
one of his children officiously offered him his hat, another his
cloke, both of which he had forgot in the trepidation of his an-
xiety; and these instances of reminiscence and attention in his
children, contrasted with his own abstraction, completely overcame
him, and he sunk down on a seat to recover himself. 'You had better
not go, my love,' said his wife mildly. 'I believe I shall--I must take
your advice,' said Walberg, relapsing on the seat from which he had
half risen. The notary, with a formal bow, was retiring. 'I will go!'
said Walberg, swearing a German oath, whose guttural sound made
the notary start,--I will go!' and as he spoke he fell on the floor,
exhausted by fatigue and want of refreshment, and emotion
indescribable but to a father. The notary retired, and a few hours
more were exhausted in torturing conjecture, expressed on the
mother's part only by clasped hands and smothered sighs,--on the
father's by profound silence, averted countenance, and hands that
seemed to feel for those of his children, and then shrink from the
touch,--and on the children's by rapidly varying auguries of hope
and of disappointment. The aged pair sat motionless among their
family;--they knew not what was going on, but they knew if it was
good they must partake of it,--and in the perception or expectation
of the approach of evil, their faculties had latterly become very
obtuse.

'The day was far advanced,--it was noon. The servants, with
whom the munificence of the deceased had amply supplied their
establishment, announced that dinner was prepared; and Ines, who
retained more presence of mind than the rest, gently suggested to
her husband the necessity of not betraying their emotions to their
servants. He obeyed her hint mechanically, and walked into the
dining-hall, forgetting for the first time to offer his arm to his
infirm father. His family followed, but, when seated at the table,
they seemed not to know for what purpose they were collected there.
Walberg, consumed by that thirst of anxiety which nothing seems
sufficient to quench, called repeatedly for wine;and his wife, who
found even the attempt to eat impossible in the presence of the
gazing and unmoved attendants, dismissed them by a signal, but did
not feel the desire of food restored by their absence. The old couple
eat as usual, and sometimes looked up with an expression of vague
and vacant wonder, and a kind of sluggish reluctance to admit the
fear or belief of approaching calamity. Towards the end of their
cheerless meal, Walberg was called out; he returned in a few min-
utes, and there was no appearance of change in his countenance. He
seated himself, and only his wife perceived the traces of a wild smile
stealing over the trembling lines of his face, as he filled a large
glass of wine, and raised it to his lips, pronouncing--'A health to
the heirs of Guzman.' But instead of drinking the wine, he dashed
the glass to the floor, and burying his head in the drapery of the
table on which he flung himself, he exclaimed, 'Not a ducat,--not a
ducat,--all left to the church!--Not a ducat!'

*

'In the evening the priest called, and found the family much more
composed. The certainty of evil had given them a kind of courage.
Suspence is the only evil against which it is impossible to set up
a defence,--and, like young mariners in an untried sea, they almost
felt ready to welcome the storm, as a relief from the deadly and
loathsome sickness of anxiety. The honest resentment, and encour-
aging manner of the priest, were a cordial to their ears and
hearts. He declared his belief, that nothing but the foulest means
that might be resorted to by interested and bigotted monks, could
have extorted such a will from the dying man,--his readiness to
attest, in every court in Spain, the intentions of the testator
(till within a few hours of his death) to have bequeathed his whole
fortune to his family--intentions which he had repeatedly expressed
to him and others, and to whose effect he had seen a former will of
no long date,--and, finally, gave his strenuous advice to Walberg to
bring the matter to legal arbitration, in aid of which he promised his
personal exertions, his influence with the ablest advocates in Seville,
and every thing--but money.

'The family that night went to bed with spirits exalted by hope,
and slept in peace. One circumstance alone marked a change in
their feelings and habits. As they were retiring, the old man laid his
tremulous hand on the shoulder of Walberg, and said mildly, 'My
son, shall we pray before we retire?'--'Not to-night, father,' said
Walberg, who perhaps feared the mention of their heretical worship
might alienate the friendly priest, or who felt the agitation of his
heart too great for the solemn exercise; 'Not to-night, I am--too
happy!'

'The priest was as good as his word,--the ablest advocates in
Seville undertook the cause of Walberg. Proofs of undue influence,
of imposition, and of terror being exercised on the mind of the
testator, were ingeniously made out by the diligence and spiritual
authority of the priest, and skilfully arranged and ably pleaded by
the advocates. Walberg's spirits rose with every hour. The family,
at the time of Guzman's death, were in possession of a considerable
sum of money, but this was soon expended, together with another
sum which the frugality of Ines had enabled her to save, and which
she now cheerfully produced in aid of her husband's exigencies, and
in confidence of eventual success. When all was gone, other
resources still remained,--the spacious house was disposed of, the
servants dismissed, the furniture sold (as usual) for about a fourth
of its value, and, in their new and humble abode in the suburbs of
Seville, Ines and her daughters contentedly resumed those domestic
duties which they had been in the habit of performing in their quiet
home in Germany. Amid these changes, the grandfather and grand-
mother experienced none but mere change of place, of which they
hardly appeared conscious. The assiduous attention of Ines to
their comforts was increased, not diminished, by the necessity of
being herself the sole ministrant to them; and smiling she pleaded
want of appetite, or trifling indisposition, as an excuse for her own
and her children's meal, while theirs was composed of every thing
that could tempt the tasteless palate of age, or that she remembered
was acceptable to theirs.

'The cause had now come to a hearing, and for the two first days
the advocates of Walberg carried all before them. On the third the
ecclesiastical advocates made a firm and vigorous stand. Walberg
returned much dispirited;--his wife saw it, and therefore assumed
no airs of cheerfulness, which only increase the irritation of
misfortune, but she was equable, and steadily and tranquilly
occupied in domestic business the whole evening in his sight. As
they were separating for the night, by a singular contingency, the
old man again reminded his son of the forgotten hour of family
prayer. 'Not to-night, father,' said Walberg impatiently; 'not tonight;
I am--too unhappy!'--'Thus,' said the old man, lifting up his
withered hands, and speaking with an energy he had not showed for
years,--'thus, O my God! Prosperity and adversity alike furnish us
with excuses for neglecting thee!' As he tottered from the room,
Walberg declined his head on the bosom of his wife, who sat beside
him, and shed a few bitter tears. And Ines whispered to herself, 'The
sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit,--a broken heart he will not
despise.'515

*

'The cause had been carried on with a spirit and expedition that had
no precedent in the courts of Spain, and the fourth day was fixed on
for a final hearing and termination of the cause. The day dawned,
and at the dawn of day Walberg arose, and walked for some hours
before the gates of the hall of justice; and when they were opened,
he entered, and sat down mechanically on a seat in the vacant hall,
with the same look of profound attention, and anxious interest, that
he would have assumed had the court been seated, and the cause
about to be decided. After a few moments' pause, he sighed, started
and appearing to awake from a dream, quitted his seat, and walked
up and down the empty passages till the court was prepared to sit.

'The court met early that day, and the cause was powerfully
advocated. Walberg sat on one seat, without ever changing his
place, till all was over; and it was then late in the evening, and he
had taken no refreshment the entire day, and he had never changed
his place, and he had never changed the close and corrupted
atmosphere of the crowded court for a moment. Quid multis morer?516
The chance of a heretic stranger, against the interests of
churchmen in Spain, may be calculated by the most shallow
capacity.

'The family had all that day sat in the innermost room of their
humble dwelling. Everhard had wished to accompany his father to
the court,--his mother witthiheld him. The sisters involuntarily
dropt their work from time to time, and their mother gently
reminded them of the necessity of renewing it. They did resume it,
but their hands, at variance with their feelings, made such blunders,
that their mother, δακρυοευ γελεασασα,517 removed their
work, and suggested to them some active employment in household affairs.
While they were thus engaged, evening came on,--the family from
time to time suspended their ordinary occupations, and crowded to
the window to watch the return of their father. Their mother no
longer interfered,--she sat in silence, and this silence formed a
strong contrast to the restless impatience of her children. 'That is my
father,' exclaimed the voices of the four at once, as a figure crossed
the street. 'That is not my father,' they repeated, as the figure slowly
retired. A knock was heard at the door,--Ines herself rushed
forward to open it. A figure retreated, advanced again, and again
retreated. Then it seemed to rush past her, and enter the house like
a shadow. In terror she followed it, and with terror unutterable saw
her husband kneeling among his children, who in vain attempted to
raise him, while he continued to repeat, 'No, let me kneel,--let me
kneel, I have undone you all! The cause is lost, and I have made
beggars of you all!'--'Rise,--rise, dearest father,' cried the children,
gathering round him, 'nothing is lost, if you are saved!'--'Rise, my
love, from that horrible and unnatural humiliation,' cried Ines,
grasping the arms of her husband; 'help me, my children,--father,--
mother, will you not help me?'--and as she spoke, the tottering,
helpless and almost lifeless figures of the aged grandfather and
grandmother arose from their chairs, and staggering forwards,
added their feeble strength,--their vis impotentiæ,518 to sustain or
succour the weight that dragged heavily on the arms of the children
and their mother. By this sight, more than by any effort, Walberg
was raised from the posture that agonized his family, and placed in
a chair, around which hung the wife and children, while the aged
father and mother, retreating torpidly to their seats, seemed to lose
in a few moments the keen consciousness of evil that had inspired
them for an instant with a force almost miraculous. Ines and her
children hung round Walberg, and uttered all of consolation that
helpless affection could suggest; but perhaps there is not a more
barbed arrow can be sent through the heart, than by the thought
that the hands that clasp ours so fondly cannot earn for us or
themselves the means of another meal,--that the lips that are
pressed to ours so warmly, may the next ask us for bread, and--ask
in vain!

'It was perhaps fortunate for this unhappy family, that the very
extremity of their grief rendered its long indulgence impossible,--
the voice of necessity made itself be heard distinctly and loudly
amid all the cry and clamour of that hour of agony. Something must
be done for the morrow,--and it was to be done immediately. 'What
money have you?' was the first articulate sentence Walberg uttered
to his wife; and when she whispered the small sum that the
expences of their lost cause had left them, he shivered with a brief
emphatic spasm of horror,--then bursting from their arms, and
rising, he crossed the room, as if he wished to be alone for a
moment. As he did so, he saw his youngest child playing with the
long strings of his grandfather's band,--a mode of sportive teazing
in which the urchin delighted, and which was at once chid and
smiled at. Walberg struck the poor child vehemently, and then
catching him in his arms, bid him--'Smile as long as he could!'

*

'They had means of subsistence at least for the following week; and
that was such a source of comfort to them, as it is to men who are
quitting a wreck, and drifting on a bare raft with a slender provision
towards some coast, which they hope to reach before it is
exhausted. They sat up all that night together in earnest counsel,
after Ines had taken care to see the father and mother of her
husband comfortably placed in their apartment. Amid their long and
melancholy conference, hope sprung up insensibly in the hearts of
the speakers, and a plan was gradually formed for obtaining the
means of subsistence. Walberg was to offer his talents as a musical
teacher,--Ines and her daughters were to undertake embroidery,--
and Everhard, who possessed exquisite taste both in music and
drawing, was to make an effort in both departments, and the
friendly priest was to be applied to for his needful interest and
recommendation for all. The morning broke on their long-protracted
consultation, and found them unwearied in discussing its subject.
'We shall not starve,' said the children hopefully.--'I trust not,'
said Walberg sighingly.--His wife, who knew Spain, said not a word.--'



CHAPTER XXVIII


--This to me
In dreadful secrecy they did impart,
And I with them the third night kept the watch.

SHAKESPEARE519


'As they spoke, a soft knock was heard, such as kindness gives at the
door of misfortune, and Everhard started up to answer it. 'Stay,' said
Walberg, absently, 'Where are the servants?' Then recollecting
himself, he smiled agonizingly, and waved his hand to his son to go.
It was the good priest. He entered, and sat down in silence,--no one
spoke to him. It might be truly said, as it is sublimely said in the
original, 'There was neither speech nor language, but voices were
heard among them--and felt too.' The worthy priest piqued himself
on his orthodoxy of all matters of belief and form enjoined by the
Catholic church; and, moreover, had acquired a kind of monastic
apathy, of sanctified stoicism, which priests sometimes imagine is
the conquest of grace over the rebellion of nature, when it is merely
the result of a profession that denies nature its objects and its ties.
Yet so it was, that as he sat among this afflicted family, after
complaining of the keenness of the morning air, and wiping away in
vain the moisture, which he said it had brought into his eyes, he at
last yielded to his feelings, and 'lifted up his voice and wept.'520 But
tears were not all he had to offer. On hearing the plans of Walberg
and his family, he promised, with a faultering voice, his ready
assistance in promoting them; and, as he rose to depart, observing
that he had been entrusted by the faithful with a small sum for the
relief of the unfortunate, and knew not where it could be better
bestowed, he dropped from the sleeve of his habit a well filled purse
on the floor, and hurried away.

'The family retired to rest as the day approached, but rose in a
few hours afterwards without having slept; and the remainder of
that day, and the whole of the three following, were devoted to
applications at every door where efl in person aiding every
application. But there were many circumstances unfavourable to the
ill-starred family of Walberg. They were strangers, and, with the
exception of their mother, who acted as interpreter, ignorant of the
language of the country. This was 'a sore evil,'521 extending almost to
the total preclusion of their exertions as teachers. They were also
heretics,--and this alone was a sufficient bar to their success in
Seville. In some families the beauty of the daughters, in others that
of the son, was gravely debated as an important objection. In others
the recollection of their former splendour, suggested a mean and
rancorous motive to jealous inferiority to insult them by a re-
jection, for which no other cause could be assigned. Unwearied and
undismayed, they renewed their applications every day, at every
house where admission could be obtained, and at many where it
was denied; and each day they returned to examine the diminished
stock, to divide the scantier meal, calculate how far it was possible
to reduce the claims of nature to the level of their ebbing means,
and smile when they talked of the morrow to each other, but weep
when they thought of it alone. There is a withering monotony in the
diary of misery,--'one day telleth another.'522 But there came at
length a day, when the last coin was expended, the last meal de-
voured, the last resource exhausted, the last hope annihilated, and
the friendly priest himself told them weeping, he had nothing to
give them but his prayers.

'That evening the family sat in profound and stupified silence
together for some hours, till the aged mother of Walberg, who had
not for some months uttered any thing but indistinct mono-syllables,
or appeared conscious of any thing that was going on, suddenly,
with that ominous energy that announces its effort to be the last, –
that bright flash of parting life that precedes its total ex-
tinction, exclaimed aloud, apparently addressing her husband,
'There is something wrong here,--why did they bring us from Germany?
They might have suffered us to die there,--they have brought us
here to mock us, I think. Yesterday,--(her memory evidently
confounding the dates of her son's prosperous and adverse fortune),
yesterday they clothed me in silk, and I drank wine, and to-day they
give me this sorry crust,--(flinging away the piece of bread which
had been her share of the miserable meal),--there is something
wrong here. I will go back to Germany,--I will!' and she rose from
her seat in the sight of the astonished family, who, horror-struck,
as they would have been at the sudden resuscitation of a corse,
ventured not to oppose her by word or movement. 'I will go back to
Germany,' she repeated; and, rising, she actually took three or
four firm and equal steps on the floor, while no one attempted to
approach her. Then her force, both physical and mental, seemed to
fail,--she tottered,--her voice sunk into hollow mutterings, as she
repeated, 'I know the way,--I know the way,--if it was not so dark.
--I have not far to go,--I am very near--home!' As she spoke, she
fell across the feet of Walberg. The family collected round her, and
raised--a corse. 'Thank God!' exclaimed her son, as he gazed on his
mother's corse.--And this reversion of the strongest feeling of
nature,--this wish for the death of those for whom, in other
circumstances, we could ourselves have died, makes those who have
experienced it feel as if there was no evil in life but want, and no
object of rational pursuit but the means of avoiding it. Alas! if it
be so, for what purpose were hearts that beat, and minds that burn,
bestowed on us? Is all the energy of intellect, and all the enthusiasm
of feeling, to be expended in contrivances how to meet or shift off
the petty but torturing pangs of hourly necessity? Is the fire caught
from heaven to be employed in lighting a faggot to keep the cold
from the numbed and wasted fingers of poverty. Pardon this digress-
ion, Senhor,' said the stranger, 'but I had a painful feeling, that
forced me to make it.' He then proceeded.

'The family collected around the dead body,--and it might have
been a subject worthy the pencil of the first of painters,523 to
witness its interment, as it took place the following night. As
the deceased was a heretic, the corse was not allowed to be laid in
consecrated ground; and the family, solicitous to avoid giving of-
fence, or attracting notice on the subject of their religion, were
the only attendants on the funeral. In a small inclosure, at the
rear of their wretched abode, her son dug his mother's grave, and
Ines and her daughters placed the body in it. Everhard was absent in
search of employment,--as they hoped,--and a light was held by the
youngest child, who smiled as he watched the scene, as if it had
been a pageant got up for his amusement. That light, feeble as it
was, showed the strong and varying expression of the countenances
on which it fell;--in Walberg's there was a stern and fearful joy,
that she whom they were laying to rest had been 'taken from the
evil to come,'524--in that of Ines there was grief, mingled with
something of horror, at this mute and unhallowed ceremony.--Her
daughters, pale with grief and fear, wept silently; but their tears
were checked, and the whole course of their feelings changed, when
the light fell on another figure who appeared suddenly standing
among them on the edge of the grave,--it was that of Walberg's
father. Impatient of being left alone, and wholly unconscious of the
cause, he had groped and tottered his way till he reached the spot;
and now, as he saw his son heap up the earth over the grave, he
exclaimed, with a brief and feeble effort of reminiscence, sinking on
the ground, 'Me, too,--lay me there, the same spot will serve for
both!' His children raised and supported him into the house, where
the sight of Everhard, with an unexpected supply of provisions,
made them forget the horrors of the late scene, and postpone once
more the fears of want till to-morrow. No inquiry how this supply
was obtained, could extort more from Everhard than that it was the
gift of charity. He looked exhausted and dreadfully pale,--and,
forbearing to press him with further questions, they partook of this
manna-meal,--this food that seemed to have dropped from heaven,
and separated for the night.

*

'Ines had, during this period of calamity, unremittingly enforced the
application of her daughters to those accomplishments from which
she still derived the hopes of their subsistence. Whatever were the
privations and disappointments of the day, their musical and other
exercises were strictly attended to; and hands enfeebled by want
and grief, plied their task with as much assiduity as when
occupation was only a variation of luxury. This attention to the
ornaments of life, when its actual necessaries are wanted,--this
sound of music in a house where the murmurs of domestic anxiety
are heard every moment,--this subservience of talent to necessity,
all its generous enthusiasm lost, and only its possible utility
remembered or valued,--is perhaps the bitterest strife that ever was
fought between the opposing claims of our artificial and our natural
existence. But things had now occurred that shook not only the
resolution of Ines, but even affected her feelings beyond the power
of repression. She had been accustomed to hear, with delight, the
eager application of her daughters to their musical studies;--now –
when she heard them, the morning after the interment of their
grandmother, renewing that application--she felt as if the sounds
struck through her heart. She entered the room where they were,
and they turned towards her with their usual smiling demand for
her approbation.

'The mother, with the forced smile of a sickening heart, said she
believed there was no occasion for their practising any further that
day. The daughters, who understood her too well, relinquished their
instruments, and, accustomed to see every article of furniture
converted into the means of casual subsistence, they thought no
worse than that their ghitarras might be disposed of this day, and
the next they hoped they would have to teach on those of their
pupils. They were mistaken. Other symptoms of failing resolution, –
of utter and hopeless abandonment, appeared that day. Walberg had
always felt and expressed the strongest feelings of tender respect
towards his parents--his father particularly, whose age far exceeded
that of his mother. At the division of their meal that day, he shewed
a kind of wolfish and greedy jealousy that made Ines tremble. He
whispered to her--'How much my father eats--how heartily he
feeds while we have scarce a morsel!'--'And let us want that
morsel, before your father wants one!' said Ines in a whisper--'I
have scarce tasted any thing myself.'--'Father--father,' cried
Walberg, shouting in the ear of the doting old man, 'you are eating
heartily, while Ines and her children are starving!' And he snatched
the food from his father's hand, who gazed at him vacantly, and
resigned the contested morsel without a struggle. A moment
afterwards the old man rose from his seat, and with horrid
unnatural force, tore the untasted meat from his grandchildren's
lips, and swallowed it himself, while his rivelled525 and toothless
mouth grinned at them in mockery at once infantine and malicious.

'Squabbling about your supper?' cried Everhard, bursting among
them with a wild and feeble laugh,--'Why, here's enough for to-
morrow --and to-morrow.' And he flung indeed ample means for
two days' subsistence on the table, but he looked paler and paler.
The hungry family devoured the hoard, and forgot to ask the cause
of his increasing paleness, and obviously diminished strength.

*

'They had long been without any domestics, and as Everhard
disappeared mysteriously every day, the daughters were sometimes
employed on the humble errands of the family. The beauty of the
elder daughter, Julia, was so conspicuous, that her mother had often
undertaken the most menial errands herself, rather than send her
daughter into the streets unprotected. The following evening,
however, being intently employed in some domestic occupation, she
allowed Julia to go out to purchase their food for to-morrow, and
lent her veil for the purpose, directing her daughter to arrange it
in the Spanish fashion, with which she was well acquainted, so as to
hide her face.

'Julia, who went with trembling steps on her brief errand, had
somehow deranged her veil, and a glimpse of her beauty was caught
by a cavalier who was passing. The meanness of her dress and
occupation suggested hopes to him which he ventured to express.
Julia burst from him with the mingled terror and indignation of
insulted purity, but her eyes rested with unconscious avidity on the
handful of gold which glittered in his hand.--She thought of her
famishing parents,--of her own declining strength, and neglected
useless talents. The gold still sparkled before her,--she felt--she
knew not what, and to escape from some feelings is perhaps the best
victory we can obtain over them. But when she arrived at home, she
eagerly thrust the small purchase she had made into her mother's
hand, and, though hitherto gentle, submissive, and tractable,
announced, in a tone of decision that seemed to her startled mother
(whose thoughts were always limited to the exigencies of the hour)
like that of sudden insanity, that she would rather starve than ever
again tread the streets of Seville alone.

'As Ines retired to her bed, she thought she heard a feeble moan
from the room where Everhard lay, and where, from their being
compelled to sell the necessary furniture of the bed, he had
entreated his parents to allow Maurice to sleep with him, alleging
that the warmth of his body would be a substitute for artificial
covering to his little brother. Twice those moans were heard, but
Ines did not dare to awake Walberg, who had sunk into that pro-
found sleep which is as often the refuge of intolerable misery, as
that of saturated enjoyment. A few moments after, when the moans
had ceased, and she had half persuaded herself it was only the
echo of that wave that seems for ever beating in the ears of the
unfortunate,--the curtains of her bed were thrown open, and the
figure of a child covered with blood, stained in breast, arms, and
legs, appeared before her, and cried,--'It is Everhard's blood--he
is bleeding to death,--I am covered with his blood!--Mother--mother
--rise and save Everhard's life!' The object, the voice, the words,
seemed to Ines like the imagery of some terrible dream, such as had
lately often visited her sleep, till the tones of Maurice, her youngest,
and (in her heart) her favourite child, made her spring from the bed,
and hurry after the little blood--spotted figure that paddled before
her on its naked feet, till she reached the adjoining room where
Everhard lay. Amid all her anguish and fear, she trod as lightly as
Maurice, lest she should awake Walberg.

'The moon-light fell strongly through the unshuttered windows
on the wretched closet that just contained the bed. Its furniture was
sufficiently scanty, and in his spasms Everhard had thrown off the
sheet. So he lay, as Ines approached his bed, in a kind of corse-like
beauty, to which the light of the moon gave an effect that would
have rendered the figure worthy the pencil of a Murillo, a Rosa, or
any of those painters, who, inspired by the genius of suffering,
delight in representing the most exquisite of human forms in the
extremity of human agony. A St Bartholomew flayed, with his skin
hanging about him in graceful drapery--a St Laurence, broiled on a
gridiron, and exhibiting his finely-formed anatomy on its bars, while
naked slaves are blowing the coals beneath it,--even these were
inferior to the form half-veiled,--half-disclosed by the moon-light as
it lay.526 The snow-white limbs of Everhard were extended as if for
the inspection of a sculptor, and moveless, as if they were indeed
what they resembled, in hue and symmetry, those of a marble
statue. His arms were tossed above his head, and the blood was
trickling fast from the opened veins of both,--his bright and curled
hair was clotted with the red stream that flowed from his arms,--his
lips were blue, and a faint and fainter moan issued from them as his
mother hung over him. This sight banished in a moment all other
fears and feelings, and Ines shrieked aloud to her husband for
assistance. Walberg, staggering from his sleep, entered the room, –
the object before him was enough. Ines had only strength left to
point to it. The wretched father rushed out in quest of medical aid,
which he was obliged to solicit gratuitously, and in bad Spanish,
while his accents betrayed him at every door he knocked at,--and
closed them against him as a foreigner and a heretic. At length a
barber--surgeon (for the professions were united in Seville)
consented, with many a yawn, to attend him, and came duly armed
with lint and styptics.527 The distance was short, and he was soon by
the bed of the young sufferer. The parents observed, with
consternation unspeakable, the languid looks of recognition, the
ghastly smile of consciousness, that Everhard viewed him with, as
he approached the bed; and when he had succeeded in stopping the
haemorrhage, and bound up the arms, a whisper passed between
him and the patient, and the latter raised his bloodless hand to his
lips, and uttered, 'Remember our bargain.' As the man retired,
Walberg followed, and demanded to know the meaning of the words
he had heard. Walberg was a German, and choleric--the surgeon
was a Spaniard, and cool. 'I shall tell you to-morrow, Senhor,' said
he, putting up his instruments,--'in the mean time be assured of my
gratuitous attendance on your son, and of his certain recovery. We
deem you heretics in Seville, but that youth is enough to canonize
the whole family, and cover a multitude of sins.' And with these
words he departed. The next day he attended Everhard, and so for
several, till he was completely recovered, always refusing the
slightest remuneration, till the father, whom misery had made
suspicious of every thing and nothing, watched at the door, and
heard the horrible secret. He did not disclose it to his wife,--but
from that hour, it was observed that his gloom became more
intense, and the communications he used to hold with his family, on
the subject of their distress, and the modes of evading it by hourly
expedients, utterly and finally ceased.

'Everhard, now recovered, but still pale as the widow of Seneca,
528 was at last able to join the family consultation, and give
advice, and suggest resources, with a mental energy that his
physical weakness could not overcome. The next day, when they
were assembled to debate on the means of procuring subsistence for
the following one, they for the first time missed their father. At
every word that was uttered, they turned to ask for his sanction –
but he was not there. At last he entered the room, but without
taking a part in their consultation. He leaned gloomily against the
wall, and while Everhard and Julia, at every sentence, turned their
appealing looks towards him, he sullenly averted his head. Ines,
appearing to pursue some work, while her trembling fingers could
scarce direct the needle, made a sign to her children not to observe
him. Their voices were instantly depressed, and their heads bent
closely towards each other. Mendicity appeared the only resource of
this unfortunate family,--and they agreed, that the evening was the
best time for trying its effect. The unhappy father remained rocking
against the shattered wainscot till the arrival of evening. Ines
repaired the clothes of the children, which were now so decayed,
that every attempt at repair made a fresh rent, and the very thread
she worked with seemed less attenuated than the worn-out materials
it wrought on.

'The grandfather, still seated in his ample chair by the care of
Ines, (for his son had grown very indifferent about him), watched
her moving fingers, and exclaimed, with the petulance of dotage,
'Aye,--you are arraying them in embroidery, while I am in rags. –
In rags!' he repeated, holding out the slender garments which the
beggared family could with difficulty spare him. Ines tried to
pacify him, and showed her work, to prove that it was the remnants
of her children's former dress she was repairing; but, with horror
unutterable, she perceived her husband incensed at these express-
ions of dotage, and venting his frantic and fearful indignation
in language that she tried to bury the sound of, by pressing
closer to the old man, and attempting to fix his bewildered
attention on herself and her work. This was easily accomplished,
and all was well, till they were about to separate on their wretched
precarious errands. Then a new and untold feeling trembled at the
heart of one of the young wanderers. Julia remembered the
occurrence of a preceding evening,--she thought of the tempting
gold, the flattering language, and the tender tone of the young
cavalier. She saw her family perishing around her for want,--she
felt it consuming her own vitals,--and as she cast her eye round the
squalid room, the gold glittered brighter and brighter in her eye. A
faint hope, aided perhaps by a still more faint suggestion of venial
pride, swelled in her heart. 'Perhaps he might love me,' she
whispered to herself, 'and think me not unworthy of his hand.' Then
despair returned to the charge. 'I must die of famine,' she thought,
'if I return unaided,--and why may I not by my death benefit my
family! I will never survive shame, but they may,--for they will not
know it!'--She went out, and took a direction different from that of
the family.

'Night came on,--the wanderers returned slowly one by one, –
Julia was the last. Her brothers and sisters had each obtained a
trifling alms, for they had learned Spanish enough to beg in,--and
the old man's face wore a vacant smile, as he saw the store pro-
duced, which was, after all, scarce sufficient to afford a meal for
the youngest. 'And have you brought us nothing, Julia?' said her
parents. She stood apart, and in silence. Her father repeated the
question in a raised and angry voice. She started at the sound, and,
rushing forward, buried her head in her mother's bosom. 'Nothing, –
nothing,' she cried, in a broken and suffocated voice; 'I tried,--my
weak and wicked heart submitted to the thought for a moment, –
but no,--no, not even to save you from perishing, could I!--I came
home to perish first myself!' Her shuddering parents comprehended
her,--and amid their agony they blessed her and wept,--but not
from grief. The meal was divided, of which Julia at first steadily
refused to partake, as she had not contributed to it, till her reluc-
tance was overcome by the affectionate importunity of the rest,
and she complied.

'It was during this division of what all believed to be their last
meal, that Walberg gave one of those proofs of sudden and fearful
violence of temper, bordering on insanity, which he had betrayed
latterly. He seemed to notice, with sullen displeasure, that his wife
had (as she always did) reserved the largest portion for his father.
He eyed it askance at first, muttering angrily to himself. Then he
spoke more aloud, though not so as to be heard by the deaf old
man, who was sluggishly devouring his sordid meal. Then the suf-
ferings of his children seemed to inspire him with a kind of wild
resentment, and he started up, exclaiming, 'My son sells his blood to
a surgeon, to save us from perishing!* My daughter trembles on the
verge of prostitution, to procure us a meal!' Then fiercely addressing
his father, 'And what dost thou do, old dotard? Rise up,--rise up,
and beg for us thyself, or thou must starve!'--and, as he spoke, he
raised his arm against the helpless old man. At this horrid sight,
Ines shrieked aloud, and the children, rushing forward, interposed.
The wretched father, incensed to madness, dealt blows among them,
which were borne without a murmur; and then, the storm being
exhausted, he sat down and wept.

'At this moment, to the astonishment and terror of all except
Walberg, the old man, who, since the night of his wife's interment,
had never moved but from his chair to his bed, and that not without
assistance, rose suddenly from his seat, and, apparently in obedience
to his son, walked with a firm and steady pace towards the door.
When he had reached it, he paused, looked back on them with a
fruitless effort at recollection, and went out slowly;--and such was
the terror felt by all at thus last ghasty look, which seemed like that
of a corse moving on to the place of its interment, that no one
attempted to oppose his passage, and several moments elapsed
before Everhard had the recollection to pursue him.

'In the mean time, Ines had dismissed her children, and sitting as
near as she dared to the wretched father, attempted to address some
soothing expressions to him. Her voice, which was exquisitely sweet
and soft, seemed to produce a mechanical effect on him. He turned
towards her at first,--then leaning his head on his arm, he shed a
few silent tears,--then flinging it on his wife's bosom, he wept
aloud. Ines seized this moment to impress on his heart the horror
she felt from the outrage he had committed, and adjured him to
supplicate the mercy of God for a crime, which, in her eyes,
appeared scarce short of parricide. Walberg wildly asked what she
alluded to; and when, shuddering, she uttered the words,--'Your
father,--your poor old father!'--he smiled with an expression of
mysterious and supernatural confidence that froze her blood, and,
approaching her ear, softly whispered, I have no father! He is dead,
--long dead! I buried him the night I dug my mother's grave! Poor
old man,' he added with a sigh, 'it was the better for him,--he
would have lived only to weep, and perish perhaps with hunger. But
I will tell you, Ines,--and let it be a secret, I wondered what made
our provisions decrease so, till what was yesterday sufficient for
four, is not to-day sufficient for one. I watched, and at last I
discovered--it must be a secret--an old goblin, who daily visited
this house. It came in the likeness of an old man in rags, and with a
long white beard, and it devoured every thing on the table, while
the children stood hungry by! But I struck at--I cursed it,--I chased
it in the name of the All--powerful, and it is gone. Oh it was a fell
devouring goblin!--but it will haunt us no more, and we shall have
enough. Enough,' said the wretched man, involuntarily returning to
his habitual associations,--'enough for to-morrow!'

'Ines, overcome with horror at this obvious proof of insanity,
neither interrupted or opposed him; she attempted only to soothe
him, internally praying against the too probable disturbance of her
own intellects. Walberg saw her look of distrust, and, with the quick
jealousy of partial insanity, said, 'If you do not credit me in that,
still less, I suppose, will you in the account of that fearful vis-
itation with which I have latterly been familiar.'--'Oh, my beloved!'
said Ines, who recognized in these words the source of a fear that
had latterly, from some extraordinary circumstances in her husband's
conduct, taken possession of her soul, and made the fear even of
famine trifling in comparison,--'I dread lest I understand you too
well. The anguish of want and of famine I could have borne,--aye,
and seen you bear, but the horrid words you have lately uttered,
the horrid thoughts that escape you in your sleep,--when I think
on these, and guess at'--'You need not guess, said Walberg,
interrupting her, 'I will tell you all.' And, as he spoke, his
countenance changed from its expression of wildness to one of
perfect sanity and calm confidence,--his features relaxed, his eye
became steady, and his tone firm.--'Every night since our late
distresses, I have wandered out in search of some relief, and
supplicated every passing stranger;–latterly, I have met every
night the enemy of man, who'--'Oh cease, my love, to indulge these
horrible thoughts,--they are the results of your disturbed unhappy
state of mind.'--'Ines, listen to me. I see that figure as plainly
as I see yours,--I hear his voice as distinctly as you hear mine this
moment. Want and misery are not naturally fertile in the production
of imagination,--they grasp at realities too closely. No man, who
wants a meal, conceives that a banquet is spread before him, and
that the tempter invites him to sit down and eat at his ease. No, –
no, Ines, the evil one, or some devoted agent of his in human form,
besets me every night,--and how I shall longer resist the snare, I
know not.'--'And in what form does he appear?' said Ines, hoping
to turn the channel of his gloomy thoughts, while she appeared to
follow their direction. 'In that of a middle--aged man, of a ser-
ious and staid demeanour, and with nothing remarkable in his aspect
except the light of two burning eyes, whose lustre is almost in-
tolerable. He fixes them on me sometimes, and I feel as if there
was fascination in their glare. Every night he besets me, and few
like me could have resisted his seductions. He has offered, and
proved to me, that it is in his power to bestow all that human
cupidity could thirst for, on the condition that--I cannot utter!
It is one so full of horror and impiety, that, even to listen to
it, is scarce less a crime than to comply with it!'

'Ines, still incredulous, yet imagining that to soothe his del-
irium was perhaps the best way to overcome it, demanded what
that condition was. Though they were alone, Walberg would com-
municate it only in a whisper; and Ines, fortified as she was by
reason hitherto undisturbed, and a cool and steady temper, could
not but recollect some vague reports she had heard in her early
youth, before she quitted Spain, of a being permitted to wander
through it, with power to tempt men under the pressure of extreme
calamity with similar offers, which had been invariably rejected,
even in the last extremities of despair and dissolution. She was not
superstitious,--but, her memory now taking part with her husband's
representation of what had befallen him, she shuddered at the
possibility of his being exposed to similar temptation; and she
endeavoured to fortify his mind and conscience, by arguments
equally appropriate whether he was the victim of a disturbed
imagination, or the real object of this fearful persecution. She
reminded him, that if, even in Spain, where the abominations of
Antichrist prevailed, and the triumph xof the mother of witchcrafts
and spiritual seduction was complete,529 the fearful offer he alluded
to had been made and rejected with such unmitigated abhorrence,
the renunciation of one who had embraced the pure doctrines of the
gospel should be expressed with a tenfold energy of feeling and holy
defiance. 'You,' said the heroic woman, 'you first taught me that the
doctrines of salvation are to be found alone in the holy scriptures, –
I believed you, and wedded you in that belief.We are united less in
the body than in the soul, for in the body neither of us may prob-
ably sojourn much longer. You pointed out to me, not the legends
of fabulous saints, but the lives of the primitive apostles and
martyrs of the true church. There I read no tales of 'voluntary
humility,'530 of self--inflicted--fruitless sufferings, but I read
that the people of God were 'destitute, afflicted, tormented.'531 And
shall we dare to murmur at following the examples of those you have
pointed out to me as ensamples532 of suffering? They bore the
spoiling of their goods,--they wandered about in sheep skins and
goat skins,--they resisted unto blood, striving against sin.--And
shall we lament the lot that has fallen to us, when our hearts have
so often burned within us, as we read the holy records together?
Alas! what avails feeling till it is brought to the test of fact? How
we deceived ourselves, in believing that we indeed participated in
the feelings of those holy men, while we were so far removed from
the test by which they were proved! We read of imprisonments, of
tortures, and of flames!--We closed the book, and partook of a
comfortable meal, and retired to a peaceful bed, triumphing in the
thought, while saturated with all the world's goods, that if their
trials had been ours, we could have sustained those trials as they
did. Now, our hour has come,--it is an hour sharp and terrible!'--
'It is!' murmured the shuddering husband. 'But shall we therefore
shrink?' replied his wife. Tour ancestors, who were the first in
Germany that embraced the reformed religion, have bled and blazed
for it, as you have often told me,--can there be a stronger at-
testation to it?'--'I believe there can,' said Walberg, whose eyes
rolled fearfully,--'that of starving for it!--Oh Ines,' he exclaimed,
as he grasped her hands convulsively, 'I have felt, –1 still feel,
that a death at the stake would be mercy compared to the lingering
tortures of protracted famine,--to die death that we the daily--
and yet do not die! What is this I hold?' he exclaimed, grasping
unconsciously the hand he held in his. 'It is my hand, my love,'
answered the trembling wife.--'Yours!--no--impossible!--Your
fingers were soft and cool, but these are dry,--is this a human
hand?'--'It is mine,' said the weeping wife. 'Then you must have
been famishing,' said Walberg, awakening as if from a dream. 'We
have all been so latterly,' answered Ines, satisfied to restore her
husband's sanity, even at the expense of this horrible confession, –
We have all been so--but I have suffered the least. When a family is
famishing, the children think of their meals--but the mother thinks
only of her children. I have lived on as little as--I could,--I had
indeed no appetite.'--'Hush, said Walberg, interrupting her--'what
sound was that?--was it not like a dying groan?'--'No--it is the
children who moan in their sleep.'-- What do they moan for?'
'Hunger I believe,' said Ines, involuntarily yielding to the dreadful
conviction of habitual misery.--'And I sit and hear this,' said
Walberg, starting up,--'I sit to hear their young sleep broken by
dreams of hunger, while for a word's speaking I could pile this floor
with mountains of gold, and all for the risk of--'Of what?'--said
Ines, clinging to him,--'of what?--Oh! think of that!--what shall a
man give in exchange for his soul?--Oh! let us starve, die, rot
before your eyes, rather than you should seal your perdition by that
horrible'--'Hear me, woman!' said Walberg, turning on her eyes
almost as fierce and lustrous as those of Melmoth, and whose light,
indeed, seemed borrowed from his; 'Hear me!--My soul is lost!
They who die in the agonies of famine know no God, and want none
--if I remain here to famish among my children, I shall as surely
blaspheme the Author of my being, as I shall renounce him under
the fearful conditions proposed to me!--Listen to me, Ines, and
tremble not. To see my children die of famine will be to me instant
suicide and impenitent despair! But if I close with this fearful offer,
I may yet repent,--I may yet escape!--There is hope on one side--
on the other there is none--none--none! Your hands cling round me,
but their touch is cold!--You are wasted to a shadow with want!
Shew me the means of procuring another meal, and I will spit at the
tempter, and spurn him!--But where is that to be found?--Let me
go, then, to meet him!--You will pray for me, Ines,--will you not? –
and the children?--No, let them not pray for me!--in my despair I
forgot to pray myself, and their prayers would now be a reproach to
me.--Ines!--Ines!--What? am I talking to a corse?' He was indeed,
for the wretched wife had sunk at his feet senseless. 'Thank God!' he
again emphatically exclaimed, as he beheld her lie to all appearance
lifeless before him. 'Thank God a word then has killed her,--it was
a gentler death than famine! It would have been kind to have
strangled her with these hands! Now for the children!' he exclaimed,
while horrid thoughts chased each other over his reeling and
unseated mind, and he imagined he heard the roar of a sea in its full
strength thundering in his ears, and saw ten thousand waves
dashing at his feet, and every wave of blood. 'Now for the children!'
--and he felt about as if for some implement of destruction. In doing
so, his left hand crossed his right, and grasping it, he exclaimed as if
he felt a sword in his hand,--'This will do--they will struggle--they
will supplicate,--but I will tell them their mother lies dead at my
feet, and then what can they say? How now, said the miserable
man, sitting calmly down, 'If they cry to me, what shall I answer?
Julia, and Ines her mother's namesake,--and poor little Maurice,
who smiles even amid hunger, and whose smiles are worse than
curses!--I will tell them their mother is dead!' he cried, staggering
towards the door of his children's apartment--'Dead without a
blow!--that shall be their answer and their doom.'

'As he spoke, he stumbled over the senseless body of his wife;
and the tone of his mind once more strung up to the highest pitch
of conscious agony, he cried, 'Men!--men!--what are your pursuits
and your passions?--your hopes and fears?--your struggles and
your triumphs?--Look on me!--learn from a human being like
yourselves, who preaches his last and fearful sermon over the corse
of his wife, and approaching the bodies of his sleeping children,
whom he soon hopes to see corses also--corses made so by his own
hand!--Let all the world listen to me!--let them resign factitious
wants and wishes, and furnish those who hang on them for sub-
sistence with the means of bare subsistence!--There is no care,
no thought beyond this! Let our children call on me for instruction,
for promotion, for distinction, and call in vain--I hold myself
innocent. They may find those for themselves, or want them if they
list--but let them never in vain call on me for bread, as they have
done,--as they do now! I hear the moans of their hungry sleep! –
World--world, be wise, and let your children curse you to your face
for any thing but want of bread! Oh that is the bitterest of curses, –
and it is felt most when it is least uttered! I have felt it often,
but I shall feel it no longer!'--And the wretch tottered towards
the beds of his children.

'Father!--father!' cried Julia, 'are these your hands? Oh let me
live, and I will do any thing--any thing but'--'Father!--dear
father!' cried Ines, 'spare us!--to-morrow may bring another meal!'
Maurice, the young child, sprung from his bed, and cried, clinging
round his father, 'Oh, dear father, forgive me!--but I dreamed a
wolf was in the room, and was tearing out our throats; and, father, I
cried so long, that I thought you never would come. And now--Oh
God! oh God!'--as he felt the hands of the frantic wretch grasping
his throat,--'are you the wolf?'

'Fortunately those hands were powerless from the very convulsion
of the agony that prompted their desperate effort. The daughters
had swooned from horror,--and their swoon appeared like death.
The child had the cunning to counterfeit death also, and lay ex-
tended and stopping his breath under the fierce but faultering
gripe that seized his young throat--then relinquished--then grasped
it again--and then relaxed its hold as at the expiration of a
spasm.

'When all was over, as the wretched father thought, he retreated
from the chamber. In doing so, he stumbled over the corse-like
form of his wife.--A groan announced that the sufferer was not
dead. 'What does this mean?' said Walberg, staggering in his del-
irium,--'does the corse reproach me for murder?--or does one
surviving breath curse me for the unfinished work?'

'As he spoke, he placed his foot on his wife's body. At this
moment, a loud knock was heard at the door. 'They are come!' said
Walberg, whose frenzy hurried him rapidly through the scenes of an
imaginary murder, and the consequence of a judicial process. 'Well!
--come in--knock again, or lift the latch--or enter as ye list--here
I sit amid the bodies of my wife and children--I have murdered them
--I confess it--ye come to drag me to torture, I know--but never –
never can your tortures inflict on me more than the agony of seeing
them perish by hunger before my eyes. Come in--come in--the
deed is done!--The corse of my wife is at my foot, and the blood of
my children is on my hands--what have I further to fear?' But while
the wretched man spoke thus, he sunk sullenly on his chair,
appearing to be employed in wiping from his fingers the traces of
blood with which he imagined they were stained. At length the
knocking at the door became louder,--the latch was lifted,--and
three figures entered the apartment in which Walberg sat. They
advanced slowly,--two from age and exhaustion,--and the third
from strong emotion. Walberg heeded them not,--his eyes were
fixed,--his hands locked in each other;--nor did he move a limb
as they approached.

'Do you know us?' said the foremost, holding up a lantern which
he held in his hand. Its light fell on a groupe worthy the pencil
of a Rembrandt. The room lay in complete darkness, except where that
strong and unbroken light fell. It glared on the rigid and moveless
obduracy of Walberg's despair, who appeared stiffening into stone
as he sat. It showed the figure of the friendly priest who had been
Guzman's director, and whose features, pale and haggard with age
and austerities, seemed to struggle with the smile that trembled over
their wrinkled lines. Behind him stood the aged father of Walberg,
with an aspect of perfect apathy, except when, with a momentary
effort at recollection, he shook his white head, seeming to ask
himself why he was there--and wherefore he could not speak.
Supporting him stood the young form of Everhard, over whose
cheek and eye wandered a glow and lustre too bright to last, and
instantly succeeded by paleness and dejection. He trembled, ad-
vanced,--then shrinking back, clung to his infirm grandfather, as
if needing the support he appeared to give. Walberg was the first
to break the silence. 'I know ye who ye are,' he said hollowly--'ye
are come to seize me--ye have heard my confession--why do you
delay? Drag me away--I would rise and follow you if I could, but I
feel as if I had grown to this seat--you must drag me from it
yourselves.'

'As he spoke, his wife, who had remained stretched at his feet,
rose slowly but firmly; and, of all that she saw or heard, appear-
ing to comprehend only the meaning of her husband's words, she
clasped her arms round him, as if to oppose his being torn from
her, and gazed on the groupe with a look of impotent and ghastly
defiance. 'Another witness,' cried Walberg, 'risen from the dead
against me? Nay, then, it is time to be gone,'--and he attempted to
rise. 'Stay, father,' said Everhard, rushing forward and detaining
him in his seat; 'stay,--there is good news, and this good priest
has come to tell it,--listen to him, father, I cannot speak.'--'You!
oh you! Everhard,' answered the father, with a look of mournful
reproach, 'you a witness against me too,--I never raised my hand
against you!--Those whom I murdered are silent, and will you be
my accuser?'

'They all now gathered round him, partly in terror and partly in
consolation,--all anxious to disclose to him the tidings with which
their hearts were burdened, yet fearful lest the freight might be too
much for the frail vessel that rocked and reeled before them, as if
the next breeze would be like a tempest to it. At last it burst forth
from the priest, who, by the necessities of his profession, was
ignorant of domestic feelings, and of the felicities and agonies which
are inseparably twined with the fibres of conjugal and parental
hearts. He knew nothing of what Walberg might feel as a husband
or father,--for he could never be either; but he felt that good news
must be good news, into whatever ears they were poured, or by
whatever lips they might be uttered. 'We have the will,' he cried
abruptly, 'the true will of Guzman. The other was--asking pardon of
God and the saints for saying so--no better than a forgery. The will
is found, and you and your family are heirs to all his wealth. I was
coming to acquaint you, late as it was, having with difficulty
obtained the Superior's permission to do so, and in my way I met
this old man, whom your son was conducting,--how came he out so
late?' At these words Walberg was observed to shudder with a brief
but strong spasm. 'The will is found!' repeated the priest, perceiv-
ing how little effect the words seemed to have on Walberg,--and he
raised his voice to its utmost pitch. 'The will of my uncle is
found,' repeated Everhard. 'Found,--found,--found!' echoed the aged
grandfather, not knowing what he said, but vaguely repeating the
last words he heard, and then looking round as if asking for an
explanation of them. 'The will is found, love,' cried Ines, who
appeared restored to sudden and perfect consciousness by the
sound; 'Do you not hear, love? We are wealthy,--we are happy!
Speak to us, love, and do not stare so vacantly,--speak to us!' A
long pause followed. At length,--'Who are those?' said Walberg in a
hollow voice, pointing to the figures before him, whom he viewed
with a fixed and ghastly look, as if he was gazing on a band of
spectres. 'Your son, love,--and your father,--and the good friendly
priest. Why do you look so doubtfully on us?'--'And what do they
come for?' said Walberg. Again and again the import of their
communication was told him, in tones that, trembling with varied
emotion, scarce could express their meaning. At length he seemed
faintly conscious of what was said, and, looking round on them,
uttered a long and heavy sigh. They ceased to speak, and watched
him in silence.--Wealth!--wealth!--it comes too late. Look there, –
look there!' and he pointed to the room where his children lay.

'Ines, with a dreadful presentiment at her heart, rushed into it,
and beheld her daughters lying apparently lifeless. The shriek she
uttered, as she fell on the bodies, brought the priest and her son to
her assistance, and Walberg and the old man were left together
alone, viewing each other with looks of complete insensibility; and
this apathy of age, and stupefaction of despair, made a singular
contrast with the fierce and wild agony of those who still retained
their feelings. It was long before the daughters were recovered from
their death-like swoon, and still longer before their father could be
persuaded that the arms that clasped him, and the tears that fell on
his cold cheek, were those of his living children.

'All that night his wife and family struggled with his despair. At
last recollection seemed to burst on him at once. He shed some
tears;–then, with a minuteness of reminiscence that was equally
singular and affecting, he flung himself before the old man, who,
speechless and exhausted, sat passively in his chair, and exclaiming,
'Father, forgive me!' buried his head between his father's knees.

*

'Happiness is a powerful restorative,--in a few days the spirits of
all appeared to have subsided into a calm. They wept sometimes, but
their tears were no longer painful;--they resembled those showers
in a fine spring morning, which announce the increasing warmth
and beauty of the day. The infirmities of Walberg's father made the
son resolve not to leave Spain till his dissolution, which took place
in a few months. He died in peace, blessing and blessed. His son
was his only spiritual attendant, and a brief and partial interval of
recollection enabled him to understand and express his joy and
confidence in the holy texts which were read to him from the
scriptures. The wealth of the family had now given them impor-
tance; and, by the interest of the friendly priest, the body was
permitted to be interred in consecrated ground. The family then set
out for Germany, where they reside in prosperous felicity;--but to
this hour Walberg shudders with horror when he recals the fearful
temptations of the stranger, whom he met in his nightly wanderings
in the hour of his adversity, and the horrors of this visitation
appear to oppress his recollection more than even the images of
his family perishing with want.

'There are other narratives,' continued the stranger, 'relating to
this mysterious being, which I am in possession of, and which I have
collected with much difficulty; for the unhappy, who are exposed to
his temptations, consider their misfortunes as a crime, and conceal,
with the most anxious secresy, every circumstance of this horrible
visitation. Should we again meet, Senhor, I may communicate them
to you, and you will find them no less extraordinary than that I have
just related. But it is now late, and you need repose after the fa-
tigue of your journey.'--So saying, the stranger departed.

'Don Francisco remained seated in his chair, musing on the singular
tale he had listened to, till the lateness of the hour, combining with
his fatigue, and the profound attention he had paid to the narrative
of the stranger, plunged him insensibly into a deep slumber. He was
awoke in a few minutes by a slight noise in the room, and looking
up perceived seated opposite to him another person, whom he never
recollected to have seen before, but who was indeed the same who
had been refused admittance under the roof of that house the
preceding day. He appeared seated perfectly at his ease, however;
and to Don Francisco's look of surprise and inquiry, replied that
he was a traveller, who had been by mistake shown into that a-
partment,--that finding its occupant asleep and undisturbed by his
entrance, he had taken the liberty of remaining there, but was
willing to retire if his presence was considered intrusive.

'As he spoke, Don Francisco had leisure to observe him. There
was something remarkable in his expression, though the observer
did not find it easy to define what it was; and his manner, though
not courtly or conciliating, had an ease which appeared more the
result of independence of thought, than of the acquired habitudes
of society.

'Don Francisco welcomed him gravely and slowly, not without a
sensation of awe for which he could scarcely account;--and the
stranger returned the salutation in a manner that was not likely
to diminish that impression. A long silence followed. The stranger
(who did not announce his name) was the first to break it, by
apologizing for having, while seated in an adjacent apartment,
involuntarily overheard an extraordinary tale or narrative related
to Don Francisco, in which he confessed he took a profound interest,
such as (he added, bowing with an air of grim and reluctant civil-
ity) would, he trusted, palliate his impropriety in listening to a
communication not addressed to him.

'To all this Don Francisco could only reply by bows equally rigid,
(his body scarce forming an acute angle with his limbs as he sat),
and by looks of uneasy and doubtful curiosity directed towards his
strange visitor, who, however, kept his seat immoveably, and
seemed, after all his apologies, resolved to sit out Don Francisco.

'Another long pause was broken by the visitor. 'You were listening,
I think,' he said, 'to a wild and terrible story of a being who
was commissioned on an unutterable errand,--even to tempt spirits
in woe, at their last mortal extremity, to barter their hopes of
future happiness for a short remission of their temporary sufferings.'
--'I heard nothing of that,' said Don Francisco, whose recollection,
none of the clearest naturally, was not much improved by the length
of the narrative he had just listened to, and by the sleep into which
he had fallen since he heard it. 'Nothing?' said the visitor, with
something of abruptness and asperity in his tone that made the
hearer start--'nothing! –I thought there was mention too of that
unhappy being to whom Walberg confessed his severest trials were
owing,--in comparison with whose fearful visitations those of even
famine were as dust in the balance.'--'Tes, yes,' answered Don
Francisco, startled into sudden recollection, 'I remember there was a
mention of the devil,--or his agent,--or something'--'Senhor,' said
the stranger interrupting him, with an expression of wild and fierce
derision, which was lost on Aliaga--'Senhor, I beg you will not
confound personages who have the honour to be so nearly allied,
and yet so perfectly distinct as the devil and his agent, or agents.
You yourself, Senhor, who, of course, as an orthodox and inveterate
Catholic, must abhor the enemy of mankind, have often acted as his
agent, and yet would be somewhat offended at being mistaken for
him.' Don Francisco crossed himself repeatedly, and devoutly
disavowed his ever having been an agent of the enemy of man. Will
you dare to say so?' said his singular visitor, not raising his voice
as the insolence of the question seemed to require, but depressing
it to the lowest whisper as he drew his seat nearer his astonished
companion--'Will you dare to say so?--Have you never erred? –
Have you never felt one impure sensation?--Have you never indulg-
ed a transient feeling of hatred, or malice, or revenge?--Have
you never forgot to do the good you ought to do,--or remembered
to do the evil you ought not to have done?--Have you never in
trade over--reached a dealer, or banquetted on the spoils of your
starving debtor?--Have you never, as you went to your daily
devotions, cursed from your heart the wanderings of your heretical
brethren,--and while you dipped your fingers in the holy water,
hoped that every drop that touched your pores, would be visited on
them in drops of brimstone and sulphur?--Have you never, as you
beheld the famished, illiterate, degraded populace of your country,
exulted in the wretched and temporary superiority your wealth has
given you,--and felt that the wheels of your carriage would not
roll less smoothly if the way was paved with the heads of your
countrymen? Orthodox Catholic--old Christian--as you boast
yourself to be,--is not this true?--and dare you say you have not
been an agent of Satan? I tell you, whenever you indulge one brutal
passion, one sordid desire, one impure imagination--whenever you
uttered one word that wrung the heart, or embittered the spirit of
your fellow-creature--whenever you made that hour pass in pain to
whose flight you might have lent wings of down--whenever you
have seen the tear, which your hand might have wiped away, fall
uncaught, or forced it from an eye which would have smiled on you
in light had you permitted it--whenever you have done this, you
have been ten times more an agent of the enemy of man than all the
wretches whom terror, enfeebled nerves, or visionary credulity, has
forced into the confession of an incredible compact with the author
of evil, and whose confession has consigned them to flames much
more substantial than those the imagination of their persecutors
pictured them doomed to for an eternity of suffering! Enemy of
mankind!' the speaker continued,--'Alas! how absurdly is that title
bestowed on the great angelic chief,--the morning star fallen from
its sphere! What enemy has man so deadly as himself? If he would
ask on whom he should bestow that title aright, let him smite his
bosom, and his heart will answer,--Bestow it here!'

'The emotion with which the stranger spoke, roused and affected
even the sluggish and incrusted spirit of the listener. His con-
science, like a state coach-horse, had hitherto only been brought
on solemn and pompous occasions, and then paced heavily along a
smooth and well-prepared course, under the gorgeous trappings of
ceremony;--now it resembled the same animal suddenly bestrid by a
fierce and vigorous rider, and urged by lash and spur along a new
and rugged road. And slow and reluctant as he was to own it, he
felt the power of the weight that pressed, and the bit that galled
him. He answered by a hasty and trembling renunciation of all en-
gagements, direct or indirect, with the evil power; but he added,
that he must acknowledge he had been too often the victim of his
seductions, and trusted for the forgiveness of his wanderings to
the power of the holy church, and the intercession of the saints.

'The stranger (though he smiled somewhat grimly at this declar-
ation) seemed to accept the concession, and apologized, in his
turn, for the warmth with which he had spoken; and which he
begged Don Francisco would interpret as a mark of interest in his
spiritual concerns. This explanation, though it seemed to commence
favourably, was not followed, however, by any attempt at renewed
conversation. The parties appeared to stand aloof from each other,
till the stranger again alluded to his having overheard the singular
conversation and subsequent narrative in Aliaga's apartment.
'Senhor,' he added, in a voice whose solemnity deeply impressed the
hearer, wearied as he was,--'I am acquainted with circumstances
relating to the extraordinary person who was the daily watcher of
Walberg's miseries, and the nightly tempter of his thoughts, –
known but to him and me. Indeed I may add, without the impu-
tation of vanity or presumption, that I am as well acquainted
as himself with every event of his extraordinary existence; and that
your curiosity, if excited at all about him, could be gratified by
none so amply and faithfully as by myself--'I thank you, Senhor,'
answered Don Francisco, whose blood seemed congealing in his
veins at the voice and expression of the stranger, he knew not why –
'I thank you, but my curiosity has been completely satisfied by the
narrative I have already listened to. The night is far spent, and I
have to pursue my journey to-morrow; I will therefore defer hearing
the particulars you offer to gratify me with till our next meeting.'

'As he spoke, he rose from his seat, hoping that this action would
intimate to the intruder, that his presence was no longer desirable.
The latter continued, in spite of the intimation, fixed in his seat.
At length, starting as if from a trance, he exclaimed, 'When shall
our next meeting be?'

'Don Francisco, who did not feel particularly anxious to renew
the intimacy, slightly mentioned, that he was on his journey to the
neighbourhood of Madrid, where his family, whom he had not seen
for many years, resided--that the stages of his journey were
uncertain, as he would be obliged to wait for communications from
a friend and future relative,--(he alluded to Montilla his intended
son-in-law, and as he spoke, the stranger gave a peculiar smile), –
and also from certain mercantile correspondents, whose letters were
of the utmost importance. Finally, he added, in a disturbed tone,
(for the awe of the stranger's presence hung round him like a
chilling atmosphere, and seemed to freeze even his words as they
issued from his mouth), he could not--easily--tell when he might
again have the honour of meeting the stranger. 'You cannot,' said
the stranger, rising and drawing his mantle over one shoulder, while
his reverted eyes glanced fearfully on the pale auditor--'You
cannot,--but I can. Don Francisco di Aliaga, we shall meet tomorrow
night!'

'As he spoke, he still continued to stand near the door, fixing on
Aliaga eyes whose light seemed to burn more intensely amid the
dimness of the wretched apartment. Aliaga had risen also, and was
gazing on his strange visitor with dim and troubled vision,--when
the latter, suddenly retreating from the door, approached him and
said, in a stifled and mysterious whisper, 'Would you wish to
witness the fate of those whose curiosity or presumption breaks on
the secrets of that mysterious being, and dares to touch the folds of
the veil in which his destiny has been enshrouded by eternity? If
you do, look here!' And as he spoke, he pointed to a door which
Don Francisco well remembered to be that which the person whom
he had met at the inn the preceding evening, and who had related
to him the tale of Guzman's family, (or rather relatives), had retired
by. Obeying mechanically the waving of the arm, and the beckoning
of the stranger's awful eye, rather than the impulse of his own will,
Aliaga followed him. They entered the apartment; it was narrow,
and dark, and empty. The stranger held a candle aloft, whose dim
light fell on a wretched bed, where lay what had been the form of a
living man within a few hours. 'Look there!' said the stranger; and
Aliaga with horror beheld the figure of the being who had been
conversing with him the preceding part of that very evening, –
extended a corse!

'Advance--look--observe!' said the stranger, tearing off the
sheet which had been the only covering of the sleeper who had now
sunk into the long and last slumber--'There is no mark of violence,
no distortion of feature, or convulsion of limb--no hand of man was
on him. He sought the possession of a desperate secret--he obtained
it, but he paid for it the dreadful price that can be paid but once
by mortals. So perish those whose presumption exceeds their power!'

'Aliaga, as he beheld the body, and heard the words of the strang-
er, felt himself disposed to summon the inmates of the house,
and accuse the stranger of murder; but the natural cowardice of a
mercantile spirit, mingled with other feelings which he could not
analyse, and dared not own, withheld him,--and he continued to
gaze alternately on the corse and the corse-like stranger. The latter,
after pointing emphatically to the body, as if intimating the danger
of imprudent curiosity, or unavailing disclosure, repeated the words,
'We meet again to-morrow night!' and departed.

'Aliaga, overcome by fatigue and emotion, sunk down by the corse,
and remained in that trance-like state till the servants of the
inn entered the room. They were shocked to find a dead body in the
bed, and scarce less shocked at the death-like state in which they
found Aliaga. His known wealth and distinction procured for him
those attentions which otherwise their terrors or their suspicions
might have withheld. A sheet was cast over the body, and Aliaga
was conveyed to another apartment, and attended sedulously by the
domestics.

'In the mean time, the Alcaide arrived; and having learned that
the person who had died suddenly in the inn was one totally
unknown, as being only a writer, and a man of no importance in
public or private life, and that the person found near his bed in a
passive stupor was a wealthy merchant,--snatched, with some
trepidation, the pen from the ink-horn which hung at his buttonhole,
and sketched the record of this sapient inquest:--'That a guest
had died in the house, none could deny; but no one could suspect
Don Francisco di Aliaga of murder.'

'As Don Francisco mounted his mule the following day, on the
strength of this just verdict, a person, who did not apparently
belong to the house, was particularly solicitous in adjusting his
stirrups, &c.; and while the obsequious Alcaide bowed oft and
profoundly to the wealthy merchant, (whose liberality he had amply
experienced for the favourable colour he had given to the strong
circumstantial evidence against him), this person whispered, in a
voice that reached only the ears of Don Francisco, 'We meet tonight!'

'Don Francisco checked his mule as he heard the words. He
looked round him--the speaker was gone. Don Francisco rode on
with a feeling known to few, and which those who have felt are
perhaps the least willing to communicate.




CHAPTER XXIX


533

3
'Don Francisco rode on most of that day. The weather was mild, and
his servants holding occasionally large umbrellas over him as he
rode, rendered travelling supportable. In consequence of his long
absence from Spain, he was wholly unacquainted with his route,
and obliged to depend on a guide; and the fidelity of a Spanish
guide being as proverbial and trust-worthy as Punic faith,534 to-
wards evening Don Francisco found himself just where the Prin-
cess Micomicona, in the romance of his countryman, is said to
have discovered Don Quixote,--'amid a labyrinth of rocks.'535 He
immediately dispatched his attendants in various directions, to
discover the track they were to pursue. The guide gallopped after
as fast as his wearied mule could go, and Don Francisco, looking
round, after a long delay on the part of his attendants, found
himself completely alone. Neither the weather nor the prospect was
calculated to raise his spirits. The evening was very misty, unlike
the brief and brilliant twilight that precedes the nights of the
favoured climates of the south. Heavy showers fell from time to
time,--not incessant, but seeming like the discharge of passing
clouds, that were instantly succeeded by others. Those clouds
gathered blacker and deeper every moment, and hung in fantastic
wreaths over the stony mountains that formed a gloomy perspective
to the eye of the traveller. As the mists wandered over them, they
seemed to rise and fade, and shift their shapes and their stations
like the hills of Ubeda,536 as indistinct in form and as dim in hue,
as the atmospheric illusions which in that dreary and deceptive
light sometimes gave them the appearance of primeval mountains,
and sometimes that of fleecy and baseless clouds.

'Don Francisco at first dropt the reins on his mule's neck, and
uttered sundry ejaculations to the Virgin. Finding this did no good,--
that the hills still seemed to wander before his bewildered eyes,
and the mule, on the other hand, remained immoveable, he bethought
himself of calling on a variety of saints, whose names the echoes of
the hills returned with the most perfect punctuality, but not one of
whom happened just then to be at leisure to attend to his petitions.
Finding the case thus desperate, Don Francisco struck spurs into his
mule, and gallopped up a rocky defile, where the hoofs of his beast
struck fire at every step, and their echo from the rocks of granite
made the rider tremble, lest he was pursued by banditti at every
step he took. The mule, so provoked, gallopped fiercely on, till
the rider, weary as he was, and somewhat incommoded by its speed,
drew up the reins more tightly, at hearing the steps of another rider
close behind him. The mule paused instantly. Some say that animals
have a kind of instinct in discovering and recognizing the approach
of beings not of this world. However that may be, Don Francisco's
mule stood as if its feet had been nailed to the road, till the
approach of the traveller set it once more into a gallop, on which,
as it appeared, the gallop of the pursuer, whose course seemed fleet-
er than that of an earthly rider, gained fast, and in a few moments
a singular figure rode close beside Don Francisco.

'He was not in a riding dress, but muffled from head to foot in a
long cloke, whose folds were so ample as almost to hide the flanks
of his beast. As soon as he was abreast with Aliaga, he removed
that part of the cloke which covered his head and shoulders, and,
turning towards him, disclosed the unwelcome countenance of his
mysterious visitor the preceding night. 'We meet again, Senhor,'
said the stranger, with his peculiar smile, 'and fortunately for
you, I trust. Your guide has ridden off with the money you advanced
him for his services, and your servants are ignorant of the roads,
which, in this part of the country, are singularly perplexed. If
you will accept of me as your guide, you will, I believe, have
reason to congratulate yourself on our encounter.'

'Don Francisco, who felt that no choice was left, acquiesced in
silence, and rode on, not without reluctance, by the side of his
strange companion. The silence was at length broken, by the stran-
ger's pointing out the village at which Aliaga proposed to pass
the night, at no very great distance, and at the same time noticing
the approaching of his servants, who were returning to their master,
after having made a similar discovery. These circumstances contri-
buting to restore Aliaga's courage, he proceeded with some degree
of confidence, and even began to listen with interest to the con-
versation of the stranger; particularly as he observed, that though
the village was near, the windings of the road were likely to
retard their arrival for some hours. The interest which had thus
been excited, the stranger seemed resolved to improve to the
uttermost. He rapidly unfolded the stores of his rich and copiously
furnished mind; and, by skilfully blending his displays of general
knowledge with particular references to the oriental countries where
Aliaga had resided, their commerce, their customs, and their manners,
and with a perfect acquaintance with the most minute topics of mer-
cantile discourse,--he so far conciliated his fellow-traveller,
that the journey, begun in terror, ended in delight, and Aliaga
heard with a kind of pleasure, (not however unmixed with awful
reminiscences), the stranger announce his intention of passing
the night at the same inn.

'During the supper, the stranger redoubled his efforts, and
confirmed his success. He was indeed a man who could please when
he pleased, and whom. His powerful intellects, extensive knowledge,
and accurate memory, qualified him to render the hour of compan-
ionship delightful to all whom genius could interest, or inform-
ation amuse. He possessed a fund of anecdotical history, and,
from the fidelity of his paintings, always appeared himself to have
been an agent in the scenes he described. This night, too, that the
attractions of his conversation might want no charm, and have no
shade, he watchfully forbore those bursts of passion,--those fierce
explosions of misanthropy and malediction, and that bitter and
burning irony with which, at other times, he seemed to delight to
interrupt himself and confound his hearer.

'The evening thus passed pleasurably; and it was not till supper
was removed, and the lamp placed on the table beside which the
stranger and he were seated alone, that the ghastly scene of the
preceding night rose like a vision before the eyes of Aliaga. He
thought he saw the corse lying in a corner of the room, and waving
its dead hand, as if to beck on him away from the society of the
stranger. The vision passed away,--he looked up,--they were alone.
It was with the utmost effort of his mixed politeness and fear, that
he prepared himself to listen to the tale which the stranger had
frequently, amid their miscellaneous conversation, alluded to, and
showed an evident anxiety to relate.

'These allusions were attended with unpleasant reminiscences to
the hearer,--but he saw that it was to be, and armed himself as he
might with courage to hear. 'I would not intrude on you, Senhor,'
said the stranger, with an air of grave interest which Aliaga had
never seen him assume before--'I would not intrude on you with a
narrative in which you can feel but little interest, were I not
conscious that its relation may operate as a warning the most awful,
salutary, and efficacious to yourself--'Me!' exclaimed Don Fran-
cisco, revolting with all the horror of an orthodox Catholic at
the sound.--'Me!' he repeated, uttering a dozen ejaculations to the
saints, and making the sign of the cross twice that number of times.
--'Me!' he continued, discharging a whole volley of fulmination
against all those who, being entangled in the snares of Satan,
sought to draw others into them, whether in the shape of heresy,
witchcraft, or otherwise. It might be observed, however, that he
laid most stress on heresy, the latter evil, from the rigour of their
mythology, or other causes, which it were not unworthy philosoph-
ical curiosity to inquire into, being almost unknown in Spain;--
and he uttered this protestation (which was doubtless very sin-
cere) with such a hostile and denunciatory tone, that Satan, if he
was present, (as the speaker half imagined), would have been
almost justified in making reprisals. Amid the assumed consequence
which passion, whether natural or artificial, always gives to a man
of mediocrity, he felt himself withering in the wild laugh of the
stranger. 'You,--you!' he exclaimed, after a burst of sound that
seemed rather like the convulsion of a demoniac, than the mirth,
however frantic, of a human being--'you!--oh, there's metal more
attractive!537 Satan himself, however depraved, has a better taste than
to crunch such a withered scrap of orthodoxy as you between his
iron teeth. No!--the interest I alluded to as possible for you to
feel, refers to another one, for whom you ought to feel if possible
more than for yourself. Now, worthy Aliaga, your personal fears being
removed, sit and listen to my tale. You are sufficiently acquainted,
through the medium of commercial feelings, and the general inform-
ation which your habits have forced on you, with the history and
manners of those heretics who inhabit the country called England.'

'Don Francisco, as a merchant, avouched his knowledge of their
being fair dealers, and wealthy liberal speculators in trade; but
(crossing himself frequently) he pronounced his utter detestation of
them as enemies to the holy church, and implored the stranger to
believe that he would rather renounce the most advantageous
contract he had ever made with them in the mercantile line, than be
suspected of--'I suspect nothing,' said the stranger, interrupting
him, with that smile that spoke darker and bitterer things than the
fiercest frown that ever wrinkled the features of man.--'Interrupt
me no more,--listen, as you value the safety of a being of more
value than all your race beside. You are acquainted tolerably with
the English history, and manners, and habits; the latter events of
their history are indeed in the mouths of all Europe.' Aliaga was
silent, and the stranger proceeded.


　　　　　　　 　　 The Lovers' Tale


'In a part of that heretic country lies a portion of land they call
Shropshire, ('I have had dealings with Shrewsbury merchants,' said
Aliaga to himself, 'they furnished goods, and paid bills with
distinguished punctuality,')--there stood Mortimer Castle, the seat
of a family who boasted of their descent from the age of the Norman
Conqueror, and had never mortgaged an acre, or cut down a tree, or
lowered a banner on their towers at the approach of a foe, for
five hundred years. Mortimer Castle had held out during the wars
of Stephen and Matilda,--it had even defied the powers that
summoned it to capitulation alternately, (about once a week),
during the struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster,--it
had also disdained the summons of Richard and Richmond,538 as their
successive blasts shook its battlements, while the armies of the
respective leaders advanced to the field of Bosworth. The Mortimer
family, in fact, by their power, their extensive influence, their
immense wealth, and the independency of their spirit, had rendered
themselves formidable to every party, and superior to all.

'At the time of the Reformation, Sir Roger Mortimer, the descend-
ant of this powerful family, vigorously espoused the cause of
the Reformers; and when the nobility and gentry of the neighbour-
hood sent their usual dole, at Christmas, of beef and ale to
their tenants, Sir Roger, with his chaplain attending him, went
about from cottage to cottage, distributing Bibles in English, of the
edition printed by Tyndal in Holland.539 But his loyalism prevailed so
far, that he circulated along with them the uncouth print, cut out of
his own copy, of the King (Henry VIII.) dispensing copies of the
Bible from both hands, which the people, as represented in the
engraving, caught at with theirs, and seemed to devour as the
word of life, almost before it could reach them.

'In the short reign of Edward, the family was protected and
cherished, and the godly Sir Edmund, son and successor to Sir
Roger, had the Bible laid open in his hall window, that while his
domestics passed on their errands, as he expressed himself,--'he
that runs may read.' In that of Mary, they were oppressed,
confiscated and menaced. Two of their servants were burned at
Shrewsbury; and it was said that nothing but a large sum, advanced
to defray the expenses of the entertainments made at Court on the
arrival of Philip of Spain, saved the godly Sir Edmund from the
same fate.

'Sir Edmund, to whatever cause he owed his safety, did not enjoy
it long. He had seen his faithful and ancient servants brought to the
stake, for the opinions he had taught them,--he had attended them
in person to the awful spot, and seen the Bibles he had attempted to
place in their hands flung into the flames, as they were kindled
round them,--he had turned with tottering steps from the scene, but
the crowd, in the triumph of their barbarity, gathered round, and
kept him close, so that he not only involuntarily witnessed the
whole spectacle, but felt the very heat of the flames that were
consuming the bodies of the sufferers. Sir Edmund returned to
Mortimer Castle, and died.

'His successor, during the reign of Elizabeth, stoutly defended
the rights of the Reformers, and sometimes grumbled at those of
prerogative. These grumblings were said to have cost him dear--the
court of purveyors charged him £3000, an enormous sum in those
days, for an expected visit of the Queen and her court--a visit
which was never paid. The money was, however, paid; and it was
said that Sir Orlan de Mortimer raised part of the money by dis-
posing of his falcons, the best in England, to the Earl of Leicester,
the then favourite of the Queen.540 At all events, there was a tradition
in the family, that when, on his last ride through his territorial
demesne, Sir Orlando saw his favourite remaining bird fly from the
falconer's hand, and break her jesses,541 he exclaimed, 'Let her fly;
she knows the way to my lord of Leicester's.'

'During the reign of James, the Mortimer family took a more
decided part. The influence of the Puritans (whom James hated with
a hatred passing that of even a controversialist, and remembered
with pardonable filial resentment, as the inveterate enemies of
his ill--fated mother) was now increasing every hour. Sir Arthur
Mortimer was standing by King James at the first representation
of 'Bartholomew Fair,' written by Ben Jonson, when the prologue
uttered these words:*

'Your Majesty is welcome to a Fair;
Such place, such men, such language, and such ware,
You must expect--with these the zealous noise
Of your land's faction, scandalized at toys.'

'My lord,' said the King, (for Sir Arthur was one of the lords of
the privy council), 'how deem you by that?'--'Please your Majesty,'
answered Sir Arthur, 'those Puritans, as I rode to London, cut off
mine horse's tail, as they said the ribbons with which it was tied
savoured too much of the pride of the beast on which the scarlet
whore sits. Pray God their shears may never extend from the tails of
horses to the heads of kings!' And as he spoke with affectionate and
ominous solicitude, he happened to place his hand on the head of
Prince Charles, (afterwards Charles I.), who was sitting next his
brother Henry, Prince of Wales, and to whom Sir Arthur Mortimer
had had the high honour to be sponsor, as proxy for a sovereign
prince.

'The awful and troubled times which Sir Arthur had predicted
soon arrived, though he did not live to witness them. His son, Sir
Roger Mortimer, a man lofty alike in pride and in principle, and
immoveable in both,--an Arminian in creed, and an aristocrat in
politics,--the zealous friend of the misguided Laud, and the bosom
--companion of the unfortunate Strafford,542--was among the first to
urge King Charles to those high-handed and impolitic measures, the
result of which was so fatal.

When the war broke out between the King and the Parliament, Sir
Roger espoused the royal cause with heart and hand,--raised a
large sum in vain, to prevent the sale of the crown--jewels in
Holland,--and led five hundred of his tenants, armed at his own
expence, to the battles of Edge-hill and Marston-moor.

'His wife was dead, but his sister, Mrs Ann Mortimer, a woman of
uncommon beauty, spirit and dignity of character, and as firmly
attached as her brother to the cause of the court, of which she had
been once the most brilliant ornament, presided over his household,
and by her talents, courage and promptitude, had been of consider-
able service to the cause.

'The time came, however, when valour and rank, and loyalty and
beauty, found all their efforts ineffectual; and of the five hundred
brave men that Sir Roger had led into the field to his sovereign's
aid, he brought back thirty maimed and mutilated veterans to
Mortimer Castle, on the disastrous day that King Charles was
persuaded to put himself into the hands of the disaffected and
mercenary Scots, who sold him for their arrears of pay due by the
Parliament.

'The reign of rebellion soon commenced,--and Sir Roger, as a
distinguished loyalist, felt the severest scourge of its power.
Sequestrations and compositions,--fines for malignancy, and forced
loans for the support of a cause he detested,--drained the well--
filled coffers, and depressed the high spirit, of the aged loyalist.
Domestic inquietude was added to his other calamities. He had
three children.--His eldest son had fallen fighting in the King's
cause at the battle of Newbury, leaving an infant daughter, then
supposed the heiress of immense wealth. His second son had
embraced the Puritanic cause, and, lapsing from error to error,
married the daughter of an Independent, whose creed he had a-
dopted; and, according to the custom of those days, fought all day
at the head of his regiment, and preached and prayed to them all
night, in strict conformity with that verse in the psalms, which
served him alternately for his text and his battle-word--'Let the
praises of God be in their mouth, and a two--edged sword in their
hands.'543 This double exercise of the sword and the word, however,
proved too much for the strength of the saint-militant; and after
having, during Cromwell's Irish campaign, vigorously headed the
attack on Cloghan Casde, the ancient seat of the O'Moores, princes
of Leix,--and being scalded through his buff--coat by a discharge
of hot water from the bartizan,544--and then imprudently given the
word of exhortation for an hour and forty minutes to his soldiers, on
the bare heath that surrounded the castle, and under a drenching
rain,--he died of a pleurisy in three days, and left, like his brother,
an infant daughter who had remained in England, and had been
educated by her mother. It was said in the family, that this man had
written the first lines of Milton's poem 'on the new forcers of
conscience under the Long Parliament.' It is certain, at least, that
when the fanatics who surrounded his dying bed were lifting up
their voices to sing a hymn, he thundered with his last breath,

'Because ye have thrown off your prelate lord,
And with stiff vows renounce his Liturgy,
To seize the widowed w—e pluralitie,
From them whose sin ye envied not,
abhorr'd,' &c.545

'Sir Roger felt, though from different causes, pretty much the
same degree of emotion on the deaths of his two sons. He was
fortified against affliction at the death of the elder, from the
consolation afforded him by the cause in which he had fallen; and
that in which the apostate, as his father always called him, had
perished, was an equal preventive against his feeling any deep or
bitter grief on his dissolution.

'When his eldest son fell in the royal cause, and his friends gath-
ered round him in officious condolence, the old loyalist replied,
with a spirit worthy of the proudest days of classic heroism, 'It
is not for my dead son that I should weep, but for my living one'.
His tears, however, were flowing at that time for another cause.
'His only daughter, during his absence, in spite of the vigilance
of Mrs Ann, had been seduced by some Puritan servants in a neigh-
bouring family, to hear an Independent preacher of the name
of Sandal, who was then a serjeant in Colonel Pride's546 regiment,
and who was preaching in a barn in the neighbourhood, in the
intervals of his military exercises. This man was a natural orator,
and a vehement enthusiast; and, with the license of the day, that
compromised between a pun and a text, and delighted in the union
of both, this serjeant-preacher had baptized himself by the name
of --'Thou-art-not-worthy-to-unloose-the-latchets-of-his-shoes,--
Sandal.'547

'This was the text on which he preached, and his eloquence had
such effect on the daughter of Sir Roger Mortimer, that, forgetting
the dignity of her birth, and the loyalty of her family, she united
her destiny with this low-born man; and, believing herself to be
suddenly inspired from this felicitous conjunction, she actually
outpreached two female Quakers in a fortnight after their marriage,
and wrote a letter (very ill-spelled) to her father, in which she
announced her intention to 'suffer affliction with the people of God,'
and denounced his eternal damnation, if he declined embracing the
creed of her husband;--which creed was changed the following
week, on his hearing a sermon from the celebrated Hugh Peters,548
and a month after, on hearing an itinerant preacher of the Ranters
or Antinomians,549 who was surrounded by a troop of licentious,
half-naked, drunken disciples, whose vociferations of--'We are the
naked truth,' completely silenced a fifth-monarchy man,550 who was
preaching from a tub on the other side of the road. To this preacher
Sandal was introduced, and being a man of violent passions, and
unsettled principles, he instantly embraced the opinions of the last
speaker, (dragging his wife along with him into every gulph of
polemical or political difficulty he plunged in), till he happened to
hear another preacher of the Cameronians,551 whose constant topic,
whether of triumph or of consolation, was the unavailing efforts
made in the preceding reign, to force the Episcopalian552 system
down the throat of the Scots; and, in default of a text, always
repeated the words of Archy, jester to Charles the First, who, on the
first intimation of the reluctance of the Scots to admit Episcopal
jurisdiction, exclaimed to Archbishop Laud,' My Lord, who is the
fool now?'--for which he had his coat stripped over his head, and
was forbid the court. So Sandal vacillated between creed and creed,
between preacher and preacher, till he died, leaving his widow with
one son. Sir Roger announced to his widowed daughter, his
determined purpose never to see her more, but he promised his
protection to her son, if entrusted to his care. The widow was too
poor to decline compliance with the offer of her deserted father.

'So in Mortimer Castle were, in their infancy, assembled the three
grandchildren, born under such various auspices and destinies. Mar-
garet Mortimer the heiress, a beautiful, intelligent, spirited girl,
heiress of all the pride, aristocratical principle and possible wealth
of the family; Elinor Mortimer, the daughter of the Apostate,553
received rather than admitted into the house, and educated in all
the strictness of her Independent family; and John Sandal, the son of
the rejected daughter, whom Sir Roger admitted into the Castle only
on the condition of his being engaged in the service of the royal
family, banished and persecuted as they were; and he renewed his
correspondence with some emigrant loyalists in Holland, for the
establishment of his protegé, whom he described, in language
borrowed from the Puritan preachers, as 'a brand snatched from the
burning.'554

'While matters were thus at the Castle, intelligence arrived of
Monk's unexpected exertions in favour of the banished family.555 The
result was as rapid as it was auspicious. The Restoration took place
within a few days after, and the Mortimer family were then esteemed
of so much consequence, that an express, girthed from his waist to
his shoulders, was dispatched from London to announce the intel-
ligence. He arrived when Sir Roger, whose chaplain he had been
compelled by the ruling party to dismiss as a malignant, was
reading prayers himself to his family. The return and restoration
of Charles the Second was announced. The old loyalist rose from his
knees, waved his cap, (which he had reverently taken from his white
head), and, suddenly changing his tone of supplication for one of
triumph, exclaimed, 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in
peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salva-
tion!'556 As he spoke, the old man sunk on the cushion which Mrs
Ann had pl'aced beneath his knees. His grandchildren rose from
their knees to assist him,--it was too late,--his spirit had part-
ed in that last exclamation.




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