(1820)

Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III (Stanton's Tale)
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Tale of the Spaniard
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Tale of the Indians
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Tale of Guzman's Family
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
The Lovers' Tale
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
The Wanderer's Dream
Chapter XXXIX


CHAPTER I.


Alive again? Then show me where he is;
I'll give a thousand pounds to look upon him.1

SHAKESPEARE.


In the autumn of 1816, John Melmoth, a student in Trinity College,
Dublin, quitted it to attend a dying uncle on whom his hopes for
independence chiefly rested. John was the orphan son of a younger
brother, whose small property scarce could pay John's college expences;
but the uncle was rich, unmarried, and old; and John, from his infancy,
had been brought up to look on him with that mingled sensation of awe,
and of the wish, without the means to conciliate, (that sensation at
once attractive and repulsive), with which we regard a being who (as
nurse, domestic, and parent have tutored us to believe) holds the very
threads of our existence in his hands, and may prolong or snap them when
he pleases.

On receiving this summons, John set immediately out to attend his uncle.

The beauty of the country through which he travelled (it was the county
Wicklow2) could not prevent his mind from dwelling on many painful
thoughts, some borrowed from the past, and more from the future. His
uncle's caprice and moroseness,--the strange reports concerning the
cause of the secluded life he had led for many years,--his own dependent
state,--fell like blows fast and heavy on his mind. He roused himself to
repel them,--sat up in the mail, in which he was a solitary
passenger,--looked out on the prospect,--consulted his watch;--then he
thought they receded for a moment,--but there was nothing to fill their
place, and he was forced to invite them back for company. When the mind
is thus active in calling over invaders, no wonder the conquest is soon
completed. As the carriage drew near the Lodge, (the name of old
Melmoth's seat), John's heart grew heavier every moment.

The recollection of this awful uncle from infancy,--when he was never
permitted to approach him without innumerable lectures,--not to be
troublesome,--not to go too near his uncle,--not to ask him any
questions,--on no account to disturb the inviolable arrangement of his
snuff-box, hand-bell, and spectacles, nor to suffer the glittering of
the gold-headed cane to tempt him to the mortal sin of handling
it,--and, finally, to pilot himself aright through his perilous course
in and out of the apartment without striking against the piles of books,
globes, old newspapers, wig-blocks, tobacco-pipes, and snuff-cannisters,
not to mention certain hidden rocks of rat-traps and mouldy books
beneath the chairs,--together with the final reverential bow at the
door, which was to be closed with cautious gentleness, and the stairs to
be descended as if he were "shod with felt."3--This recollection was
carried on to his school-boy years, when at Christmas and Easter, the
ragged poney, the jest of the school, was dispatched to bring the
reluctant visitor to the Lodge,--where his pastime was to sit vis-a-vis
to his uncle, without speaking or moving, till the pair resembled Don
Raymond and the ghost of Beatrice in the Monk,4--then watching him as he
picked the bones of lean mutton out of his mess of weak broth, the
latter of which he handed to his nephew with a needless caution not to
"take more than he liked,"--then hurried to bed by day-light, even in
winter, to save the expence of an inch of candle, where he lay awake and
restless from hunger, till his uncle's retiring at eight o'clock gave
signal to the governante5 of the meagre household to steal up to him with
some fragments of her own scanty meal, administering between every
mouthful a whispered caution not to tell his uncle. Then his college
life, passed in an attic in the second square,6 uncheered by an
invitation to the country; the gloomy summer wasted in walking up and
down the deserted streets, as his uncle would not defray the expences
of his journey;--the only intimation of his existence, received in
quarterly epistles, containing, with the scanty but punctual remittance,
complaints of the expences of his education, cautions against
extravagance, and lamentations for the failure of tenants and the fall
of the value of lands. All these recollections came over him, and along
with them the remembrance of that last scene, where his dependence on
his uncle was impressed on him by the dying lips of his father.

"John, I must leave you, my poor boy; it has pleased God to take your
father from you before he could do for you what would have made this
hour less painful to him. You must look up, John, to your uncle for
every thing. He has oddities and infirmities, but you must learn to bear
with them, and with many other things too, as you will learn too soon.
And now, my poor boy, may He who is the father of the fatherless look on
your desolate state, and give you favour in the eyes of your uncle." As
this scene rose to John's memory, his eyes filled fast with tears, which
he hastened to wipe away as the carriage stopt to let him out at his
uncle's gate.

He alighted, and with a change of linen in a handkerchief, (his only
travelling equipment), he approached his uncle's gate. The lodge was in
ruins, and a barefooted boy from an adjacent cabin ran to lift on its
single hinge what had once been a gate, but was now a few planks so
villainously put together, that they clattered like a sign in a high
wind. The stubborn post of the gate, yielding at last to the united
strength of John and his barefooted assistant, grated heavily through
the mud and gravel stones, in which it left a deep and sloughy furrow,
and the entrance lay open. John, after searching his pocket in vain for
a trifle to reward his assistant, pursued his way, while the lad, on his
return, cleared the road at a hop step and jump, plunging through the
mud with all the dabbling and amphibious delight of a duck, and scarce
less proud of his agility than of his "sarving a gentleman." As John
slowly trod the miry road which had once been the approach, he could
discover, by the dim light of an autumnal evening, signs of increasing
desolation since he had last visited the spot,--signs that penury had
been aggravated and sharpened into downright misery. There was not a
fence or a hedge round the domain:7 an uncemented wall of loose stones,
whose numerous gaps were filled with furze or thorns, supplied their
place. There was not a tree or shrub on the lawn; the lawn itself was
turned into pasture-ground, and a few sheep were picking their scanty
food amid the pebble-stones, thistles, and hard mould, through which a
few blades of grass made their rare and squalid appearance.

The house itself stood strongly defined even amid the darkness of the
evening sky; for there were neither wings, or offices, or shrubbery, or
tree, to shade or support it, and soften its strong harsh outline. John,
after a melancholy gaze at the grass-grown steps and boarded windows,
"addressed himself" to knock at the door; but knocker there was none:
loose stones, however, there were in plenty; and John was making
vigorous application to the door with one of them, till the furious
barking of a mastiff, who threatened at every bound to break his chain,
and whose yell and growl, accompanied by "eyes that glow and fangs that
grin," savoured as much of hunger as of rage, made the assailant raise
the siege on the door, and betake himself to a well-known passage that
led to the kitchen. A light glimmered in the window as he approached: he
raised the latch with a doubtful hand; but, when he saw the party
within, he advanced with the step of a man no longer doubtful of his
welcome.

Round a turf-fire, whose well-replenished fuel gave testimony to the
"master's" indisposition, who would probably as soon have been placed
on the fire himself as seen the whole kish 8 emptied on it once, were
seated the old housekeeper, two or three followers, (i. e. people
who ate, drank, and lounged about in any kitchen that was open in the
neighbourhood, on an occasion of grief or joy, all for his honor's sake,
and for the great rispict they bore the family), and an old woman, whom
John immediately recognized as the doctress of the neighbourhood,--a
withered Sybil,9 who prolonged her squalid existence by practising on the
fears, the ignorance, and the sufferings of beings as miserable as
herself. Among the better sort, to whom she sometimes had access by the
influence of servants, she tried the effects of some simples, her skill
in which was sometimes productive of success. Among the lower orders she
talked much of the effects of the "evil eye," against which she boasted
a counter-spell, of unfailing efficacy; and while she spoke, she shook
her grizzled locks with such witch-like eagerness, that she never failed
to communicate to her half-terrified, half-believing audience, some
portion of that enthusiasm which, amid all her consciousness of
imposture, she herself probably felt a large share of; still, when the
case at last became desperate, when credulity itself lost all patience,
and hope and life were departing together, she urged the miserable
patient to confess "there was something about his heart;" and when
this confession was extorted from the weariness of pain and the
ignorance of poverty, she nodded and muttered so mysteriously, as to
convey to the bystanders, that she had had difficulties to contend with
which were invincible by human power. When there was no pretext, from
indisposition, for her visiting either "his honor's" kitchen, or the
cottar's hut,10--when the stubborn and persevering convalescence of the
whole country threatened her with starvation,--she still had a
resource:--if there were no lives to be shortened, there were fortunes
to be told;--she worked "by spells, and by such daubry as is beyond our
element."11 No one twined so well as she the mystic yarn to be dropt into
the lime-kiln pit, on the edge of which stood the shivering inquirer
into futurity, doubtful whether the answer to her question of "who
holds?" was to be uttered by the voice of demon or lover.

No one knew so well as she to find where the four streams met, in which,
on the same portentous season, the chemise was to be immersed, and then
displayed before the fire, (in the name of one whom we dare not mention
to "ears polite"12), to be turned by the figure of the destined husband
before morning. No one but herself (she said) knew the hand in which the
comb was to be held, while the other was employed in conveying the apple
to the mouth,--while, during the joint operation, the shadow of the phantom
-spouse was to pass across the mirror before which it was performed. No
one was more skilful or active in removing every iron implement from the
kitchen where these ceremonies were usually performed by the credulous
and terrified dupes of her wizardry, lest, instead of the form of a comely
youth exhibiting a ring on his white finger, an headless figure should stalk
to the rack, (Anglicè,13 dresser), take down a long spit, or, in default of that,
snatch a poker from the fire-side, and mercilessly take measure with its
iron length of the sleeper for a coffin. No one, in short, knew better how
to torment or terrify her victims into a belief of that power which may and
has reduced the strongest minds to the level of the weakest; and under
the influence of which the cultivated sceptic, Lord Lyttleton,14 yelled and
gnashed and writhed in his last hours, like the poor girl who, in the
belief of the horrible visitation of the vampire, shrieked aloud, that
her grandfather was sucking her vital blood while she slept, and expired
under the influence of imaginary horror. Such was the being to whom old
Melmoth had committed his life, half from credulity, and (Hibernicè speak-
ing) more than half from avarice. Among this groupe15 John advanced,--
recognising some,--disliking more,--distrusting all. The old housekeeper
received him with cordiality;--he was always her "whiteheaded boy," she
said,--(imprimis,16 his hair was as black as jet), and she tried to lift her
withered hand to his head with an action between a benediction and a
caress, till the difficulty of the attempt forced on her the conviction that
that head was fourteen inches higher than her reach since she had last
patted it. The men, with the national deference of the Irish to a person
of superior rank, all rose at his approach, (their stools chattering on the
broken flags) and wished his honor "a thousand years and long life to the
back of that; and would not his honor take something to keep the grief
out of his heart;" and so saying, five or six red and bony hands tendered
him glasses of whiskey all at once. All this time the Sybil sat silent in the
ample chimney-corner, sending redoubled whiffs out of her pipe. John gently
declined the offer of spirits, received the attentions of the old housekeeper
cordially, looked askance at the withered crone who occupied the chimney
orner, and then glanced at the table, which displayed other cheer than he
had been accustomed to see in his "honor's time." There was a wooden
dish of potatoes, which old Melmoth would have considered enough for a
week's subsistence. There was the salted salmon, (a luxury unknown even
in London. Vide Miss Edgeworth's Tales, "The Absentee").17

There was the slink-veal,18 flanked with tripe; and, finally, there were
lobsters and fried turbot enough to justify what the author of the
tale asserts, "suo periculo,"19 that when his great grandfather, the Dean
of Killala,20 hired servants at the deanery, they stipulated that they
should not be required to eat turbot or lobster more than twice a-week.
There were also bottles of Wicklow ale, long and surreptitiously
borrowed from his "honor's" cellar, and which now made their first
appearance on the kitchen hearth, and manifested their impatience of
further constraint, by hissing, spitting, and bouncing in the face of
the fire that provoked its animosity. But the whiskey (genuine illegiti-
mate potsheen,21 smelling strongly of weed and smoke, and breathing
defiance to excisemen) appeared, the "veritable Amphitryon"22 of
the feast; every one praised, and drank as deeply as he praised.

John, as he looked round the circle, and thought of his dying uncle, was
forcibly reminded of the scene at Don Quixote's departure, where, in
spite of the grief caused by the dissolution of the worthy knight, we
are informed that "nevertheless the niece eat her victuals, the house-
keeper drank to the repose of his soul, and even Sancho cherished
his little carcase."23 After returning, "as he might," the courtesies of
the party, John asked how his uncle was. "As bad as he can be;"--"Much
better, and many thanks to your honor," was uttered in such rapid and
discordant unison by the party, that John turned from one to the other,
not knowing which or what to believe. "They say his honor has had a
fright," said a fellow, upwards of six feet high, approaching by way of
whispering, and then bellowing the sound six inches above John's head.
"But then his honor has had a cool since," said a man who was quietly
swallowing the spirits that John had refused. At these words the Sybil
who sat in the chimney corner slowly drew her pipe from her mouth, and
turned towards the party: The oracular movements of a Pythoness24 on
her tripod never excited more awe, or impressed for the moment a deep-
er silence. "It's not here," said she, pressing her withered finger on
her wrinkled forehead, "nor here,--nor here;" and she extended her
hand to the foreheads of those who were near her, who all bowed as if
they were receiving a benediction, but had immediate recourse to the
spirits afterwards, as if to ensure its effects.--"It's all here--it's
all about the heart;" and as she spoke she spread and pressed her
fingers on her hollow bosom with a force of action that thrilled her
hearers.--"It's all here," she added, repeating the action, (probably
excited by the effect she had produced), and then sunk on her seat,
resumed her pipe, and spoke no more. At this moment of involuntary awe
on the part of John, and of terrified silence on that of the rest, an
unusual sound was heard in the house, and the whole company started as
if a musket had been discharged among them:--it was the unwonted sound
of old Melmoth's bell. His domestics were so few, and so constantly near
him, that the sound of his bell startled them as much as if he had been
ringing the knell for his own interment. "He used always to rap down
for me," said the old housekeeper, hurrying out of the kitchen; "he said
pulling the bells wore out the ropes."

The sound of the bell produced its full effect. The housekeeper rushed
into the room, followed by a number of women, (the Irish præficæ),25 all
ready to prescribe for the dying or weep for the dead,--all clapping
their hard hands, or wiping their dry eyes. These hags all surrounded
the bed; and to witness their loud, wild, and desperate grief, their
cries of "Oh! he's going, his honor's going, his honor's going," one
would have imagined their lives were bound up in his, like those of the
wives in the story of Sinbad the Sailor, who were to be interred alive
with their deceased husbands.26

Four of them wrung their hands and howled round the bed, while one, with
all the adroitness of a Mrs Quickly, felt his honor's feet, and "upward
and upward," and "all was cold as any stone."

Old Melmoth withdrew his feet from the grasp of the hag,--counted with
his keen eye (keen amid the approaching dimness of death) the number
assembled round his bed,--raised himself on his sharp elbow, and
pushing away the housekeeper, (who attempted to settle his nightcap,
that had been shoved on one side in the struggle, and gave his haggard,
dying face, a kind of grotesque fierceness), bellowed out in tones
that made the company start,--"What the devil brought ye all here?"
The question scattered the whole party for a moment; but rallying
instantly, they communed among themselves in whispers, and frequently
using the sign of the cross, muttered "The devil,--Christ save us, the
devil in his mouth the first word he spoke." "Aye," roared the invalid,
"and the devil in my eye the first sight I see." "Where,--where?"
cried the terrified housekeeper, clinging close to the invalid in her
terror, and half-hiding herself in the blanket, which she snatched
without mercy from his struggling and exposed limbs. "There, there," he
repeated, (during the battle of the blanket), pointing to the huddled
and terrified women, who stood aghast at hearing themselves arointed27
as the very demons they came to banish. "Oh! Lord keep your honor's
head," said the housekeeper in a more soothing tone, when her fright
was over; "and sure your honor knows them all, is'n't her name,--and
her name,--and her name,"--and she pointed respectively to each
of them, adding their names, which we shall spare the English reader
the torture of reciting, (as a proof of our lenity, adding the last
only, Cotchleen O'Mulligan), "Ye lie, ye b----h," growled old Melmoth;
"their name is Legion, for they are many,--turn them all out of the
room,--turn them all out of doors,--if they howl at my death, they
shall howl in earnest,--not for my death, for they would see me dead
and damned too with dry eyes, but for want of the whiskey that they
would have stolen if they could have got at it," (and here old Melmoth
grasped a key which lay under his pillow, and shook it in vain triumph
at the old housekeeper, who had long possessed the means of getting
at the spirits unknown to his "honor"), "and for want of the victuals
you have pampered them with." "Pampered, oh Ch--st!" ejaculated the
housekeeper. "Aye, and what are there so many candles for, all fours,
and the same below I warrant. Ah! you--you--worthless, wasteful old
devil." "Indeed, your honor, they are all sixes." "Sixes,--and
what the devil are you burning sixes for, d'ye think it's the wake
already? Ha?" "Oh! not yet, your honor, not yet," chorussed the
beldams; "but in God's good time, your honor knows," in a tone that
spoke ill suppressed impatience for the event. "Oh! that your honor
would think of making your soul." "That's the first sensible word you
have said," said the dying man, "fetch me the prayer-book,--you'll
find it there under that old boot-jack,28--blow off the cobwebs;--it has
not been opened this many a year." It was handed to him by the old
governante, on whom he turned a reproaching eye. "What made you burn
sixes in the kitchen, you extravagant jade? How many years have you
lived in this house?" "I don't know, your honor." "Did you ever see
any extravagance or waste in it?" "Oh never, never, your honor." "Was
any thing but a farthing candle ever burned in the kitchen?" "Never,
never, your honor." "Were not you kept as tight as hand and head and
heart could keep you, were you not? answer me that." "Oh yes, sure,
your honor; every sowl 29 about us knows that,--every one does your
honor justice, that you kept the closest house and closest hand in
the country,--your honor was always a good warrant for it." "And how
dare you unlock my hold before death has unlocked it," said the dying
miser, shaking his meagre hand at her. "I smelt meat in the house,--I
heard voices in the house,--I heard the key turn in the door over and
over. Oh that I was up," he added, rolling in impatient agony in his
bed, "Oh that I was up, to see the waste and ruin that is going on. But
it would kill me," he continued, sinking back on the bolster, for he
never allowed himself a pillow; "it would kill me,--the very thought
of it is killing me now." The women, discomfited and defeated, after
sundry winks and whispers, were huddling out of the room, till recalled
by the sharp eager tones of old Melmoth.--"Where are ye trooping to
now? back to the kitchen to gormandize and guzzle? Won't one of ye
stay and listen while there's a prayer read for me? Ye may want it one
day for yourselves, ye hags." Awed by this expostulation and menace,
the train silently returned, and placed themselves round the bed,
while the housekeeper, though a Catholic, asked if his honor would not
have a clergyman to give him the rights, (rites) of his church. The
eyes of the dying man sparkled with vexation at the proposal. "What
for,--just to have him expect a scarf and hat-band at the funeral.
Read the prayers yourself, you old ------; that will save something."
The housekeeper made the attempt, but soon declined it, alleging, as
her reason, that her eyes had been watery ever since his honor took
ill. "That's because you had always a drop in them," said the invalid,
with a spiteful sneer, which the contraction of approaching death
stiffened into a hideous grin.--"Here,--is not there one of you that's
gnashing and howling there, that can get up a prayer to keep me from
it?" So adjured, one of the women offered her services; and of her it
might truly be said, as of the "most desartless man of the watch" in
Dogberry's time, that "her reading and writing came by nature;"30 for
she never had been at school, and had never before seen or opened a
Protestant prayer book in her life; nevertheless, on she went, and with
more emphasis than good discretion, read nearly through the service for
the "churching of women;" which in our prayer-books31 following that of
the burial of the dead, she perhaps imagined was someway connected with
the state of the invalid.

She read with great solemnity,--it was a pity that two interruptions
occurred during the performance, one from old Melmoth, who, shortly
after the commencement of the prayers, turned towards the old
housekeeper, and said, in a tone scandalously audible, "Go down and draw
the niggers32 of the kitchen fire closer, and lock the door, and let me
hear it locked. I can't mind any thing till that's done." The other
was from John Melmoth gliding into the room, hearing the inappropriate
words uttered by the ignorant woman, taking quietly as he knelt beside
her the prayer-book from her hands, and reading in a suppressed voice
part of that solemn service which, by the forms of the Church of
England, is intended for the consolation of the departing.

"That is John's voice," said the dying man; and the little kindness he
had ever shewed this unfortunate lad rushed on his hard heart at this
moment, and touched it. He saw himself, too, surrounded by heartless and
rapacious menials; and slight as must have been his dependence on a
relative whom he had always treated as a stranger, he felt at this hour
he was no stranger, and grasped at his support like a straw amid his
wreck. "John, my good boy, you are there.--I kept you far from me when
living, and now you are nearest me when dying.--John, read on." John,
affected deeply by the situation in which he beheld this poor man,
amid all his wealth, as well as by the solemn request to impart
consolation to his dying moments, read on;--but in a short time his
voice became indistinct, from the horror with which he listened to the
increasing hiccup of the patient, which, however, he struggled with from
time to time, to ask the housekeeper if the niggers were closed. John,
who was a lad of feeling, rose from his knees in some degree of
agitation. "What, are you leaving me like the rest?" said old Melmoth,
trying to raise himself in the bed. "No, Sir," said John; "but,"
observing the altered looks of the dying man, "I think you want some
refreshment, some support, Sir." "Aye, I do, I do, but whom can I trust
to get it for me. They, (and his haggard eye wandered round the
groupe), they would poison me." "Trust me, Sir," said John; "I will go
to the apothecary's, or whoever you may employ." The old man grasped
his hand, drew him close to his bed, cast a threatening yet fearful eye
round the party, and then whispered in a voice of agonized constraint,
"I want a glass of wine, it would keep me alive for some hours, but
there is not one I can trust to get it for me,--they'd steal a bottle,
and ruin me." John was greatly shocked. "Sir, for God's sake, let me
get a glass of wine for you." "Do you know where?" said the old man,
with an expression in his face John could not understand. "No, Sir; you
know I have been rather a stranger here, Sir." "Take this key," said old
Melmoth, after a violent spasm; "take this key, there is wine in that
closet,--Madeira.33 I always told them there was nothing there, but they
did not believe me, or I should not have been robbed as I have been. At
one time I said it was whiskey, and then I fared worse than ever, for
they drank twice as much of it."

John took the key from his uncle's hand; the dying man pressed it as he
did so, and John, interpreting this as a mark of kindness, returned the
pressure. He was undeceived by the whisper that followed,--"John, my
lad, don't drink any of that wine while you are there." "Good God!" said
John, indignantly throwing the key on the bed; then, recollecting that
the miserable being before him was no object of resentment, he gave the
promise required, and entered the closet, which no foot but that of old
Melmoth had entered for nearly sixty years. He had some difficulty in
finding out the wine, and indeed staid long enough to justify his
uncle's suspicions,--but his mind was agitated, and his hand unsteady.
He could not but remark his uncle's extraordinary look, that had the
ghastliness of fear superadded to that of death, as he gave him
permission to enter his closet. He could not but see the looks of horror
which the women exchanged as he approached it. And, finally, when he was
in it, his memory was malicious enough to suggest some faint traces of a
story, too horrible for imagination, connected with it. He remembered in
one moment most distinctly, that no one but his uncle had ever been
known to enter it for many years.

Before he quitted it, he held up the dim light, and looked around him
with a mixture of terror and curiosity. There was a great deal of
decayed and useless lumber, such as might be supposed to be heaped up to
rot in a miser's closet; but John's eyes were in a moment, and as if by
magic, rivetted on a portrait that hung on the wall,34 and appeared, even
to his untaught eye, far superior to the tribe of family pictures that
are left to moulder on the walls of a family mansion. It represented a
man of middle age. There was nothing remarkable in the costume, or in
the countenance, but the eyes, John felt, were such as one feels they
wish they had never seen, and feels they can never forget. Had he been
acquainted with the poetry of Southey, he might have often exclaimed in
his after-life,

　　　　　　　　"Only the eyes had life,
　　　　　　　　They gleamed with demon light."--THALABA.35

From an impulse equally resistless and painful, he approached the
portrait, held the candle towards it, and could distinguish the words on
the border of the painting,--Jno. Melmoth, anno 1646. John was neither
timid by nature, or nervous by constitution, or superstitious from
habit, yet he continued to gaze in stupid horror on this singular
picture, till, aroused by his uncle's cough, he hurried into his room.
The old man swallowed the wine. He appeared a little revived; it was
long since he had tasted such a cordial,--his heart appeared to expand
to a momentary confidence. "John, what did you see in that room?"
"Nothing, Sir." "That's a lie; every one wants to cheat or to rob me."
"Sir, I don't want to do either." "Well, what did you see that you--you
took notice of?" "Only a picture, Sir." "A picture, Sir!--the original
is still alive." John, though under the impression of his recent
feelings, could not but look incredulous. "John," whispered his
uncle;--"John, they say I am dying of this and that; and one says it is
for want of nourishment, and one says it is for want of medicine,--but,
John," and his face looked hideously ghastly, "I am dying of a fright.
That man," and he extended his meagre arm toward the closet, as if he
was pointing to a living being; "that man, I have good reason to know,
is alive still." "How is that possible, Sir?" said John involuntarily,
"the date on the picture is 1646." "You have seen it,--you have noticed
it," said his uncle. "Well,"--he rocked and nodded on his bolster for a
moment, then, grasping John's hand with an unutterable look, he
exclaimed, "You will see him again, he is alive." Then, sinking back on
his bolster, he fell into a kind of sleep or stupor, his eyes still
open, and fixed on John.

The house was now perfectly silent, and John had time and space for
reflection. More thoughts came crowding on him than he wished to
welcome, but they would not be repulsed. He thought of his uncle's
habits and character, turned the matter over and over again in his mind,
and he said to himself, "The last man on earth to be superstitious. He
never thought of any thing but the price of stocks, and the rate of
exchange, and my college expences, that hung heavier at his heart than
all; and such a man to die of a fright,--a ridiculous fright, that a man
living 150 years ago is alive still, and yet--he is dying." John paused,
for facts will confute the most stubborn logician. "With all his
hardness of mind, and of heart, he is dying of a fright. I heard it in
the kitchen, I have heard it from himself,--he could not be deceived. If
I had ever heard he was nervous, or fanciful, or superstitious, but a
character so contrary to all these impressions;--a man that, as poor
Butler says, in his Remains of the Antiquarian, would have "sold Christ
over again for the numerical piece of silver which Judas got for
him,"36--such a man to die of fear! Yet he is dying," said John,
glancing his fearful eye on the contracted nostril, the glazed eye, the
dropping jaw, the whole horrible apparatus of the facies Hippocratica 37
displayed, and soon to cease its display.

Old Melmoth at this moment seemed to be in a deep stupor; his eyes
lost　that little expression they had before, and his hands, that had
convulsively been catching at the blankets, let go their short and
quivering grasp, and lay extended on the bed like the claws of some bird
that had died of hunger,--so meagre, so yellow, so spread. John,
unaccustomed to the sight of death, believed this to be only a sign that
he was going to sleep; and, urged by an impulse for which he did not
attempt to account to himself, caught up the miserable light, and once
more ventured into the forbidden room,--the blue chamber of the
dwelling.38 The motion roused the dying man;--he sat bolt upright in his
bed. This John could not see, for he was now in the closet; but he heard
the groan, or rather the choaked and guggling rattle of the throat, that
announces the horrible conflict between muscular and mental convulsion.
He started, turned away; but, as he turned away, he thought he saw the
eyes of the portrait, on which his own was fixed, move, and hurried
back to his uncle's bedside.

Old Melmoth died in the course of that night, and died as he had lived,
in a kind of avaricious delirium. John could not have imagined a scene
so horrible as his last hours presented. He cursed and blasphemed about
three half-pence, missing, as he said, some weeks before, in an account
of change with his groom, about hay to a starved horse that he kept.
Then he grasped John's hand, and asked him to give him the sacrament.
"If I send to the clergyman, he will charge me something for it, which I
cannot pay,--I cannot. They say I am rich,--look at this blanket;--but I
would not mind that, if I could save my soul." And, raving, he added,
"Indeed, Doctor, I am a very poor man. I never troubled a clergyman
before, and all I want is, that you will grant me two trifling requests,
very little matters in your way,--save my soul, and (whispering) make
interest to get me a parish coffin,39--I have not enough left to bury me.
I always told every one I was poor, but the more I told them so, the
less they believed me."

John, greatly shocked, retired from the bed-side, and sat down in a
distant corner of the room. The women were again in the room, which
was very dark. Melmoth was silent from exhaustion, and there was a
death-like pause for some time. At this moment John saw the door open,
and a figure appear at it, who looked round the room, and then quietly
and deliberately retired, but not before John had discovered in his face
the living original of the portrait. His first impulse was to utter an
exclamation of terror, but his breath felt stopped. He was then rising
to pursue the figure, but a moment's reflection checked him. What could
be more absurd, than to be alarmed or amazed at a resemblance between
a living man and the portrait of a dead one! The likeness was doubtless
strong enough to strike him even in that darkened room, but it was
doubtless only a likeness; and though it might be imposing enough to
terrify an old man of gloomy and retired habits, and with a broken
constitution, John resolved it should not produce the same effect on
him.

But while he was applauding himself for this resolution, the door
opened, and the figure appeared at it, beckoning and nodding to him,
with a familiarity somewhat terrifying. John now started up, determined
to pursue it; but the pursuit was stopped by the weak but shrill cries
of his uncle, who was struggling at once with the agonies of death and
his housekeeper. The poor woman, anxious for her master's reputation and
her own, was trying to put on him a clean shirt and nightcap, and
Melmoth, who had just sensation enough to perceive they were taking
something from him, continued exclaiming feebly, "They are robbing
me,--robbing me in my last moments,--robbing a dying man. John, won't
you assist me,--I shall die a beggar; they are taking my last shirt,--I
shall die a beggar."--And the miser died.



CHAPTER II


You that wander, scream, and groan,
Round the mansions once your own.

ROWE.40


A few days after the funeral, the will was opened before proper
witnesses, and John was found to be left sole heir to his uncle's
property, which, though originally moderate, had, by his grasping
habits, and parsimonious life, become very considerable.

As the attorney who read the will concluded, he added, “There are some
words here, at the corner of the parchment, which do not appear to be
part of the will, as they are neither in the form of a codicil, nor is
the signature of the testator affixed to them; but, to the best of my
belief, they are in the hand-writing of the deceased.” As he spoke he
shewed the lines to Melmoth, who immediately recognized his uncle's
hand, (that perpendicular and penurious hand, that seems determined to
make the most of the very paper, thriftily abridging every word, and
leaving scarce an atom of margin), and read, not without some emotion,
the following words: “I enjoin my nephew and heir, John Melmoth, to
remove, destroy, or cause to be destroyed, the portrait inscribed J.
Melmoth, 1646, hanging in my closet. I also enjoin him to search for a
manuscript, which I think he will find in the third and lowest left-hand
drawer of the mahogany chest standing under that portrait,--it is among
some papers of no value, such as manuscript sermons, and pamphlets
on the improvement of Ireland,41 and such stuff; he will distinguish it by
its being tied round with a black tape, and the paper being very mouldy
and discoloured. He may read it if he will;--I think he had better not.42
At all events, I adjure him, if there be any power in the adjuration of
a dying man, to burn it.”

After reading this singular memorandum, the business of the meeting
was again resumed; and as old Melmoth's will was very clear and legally
worded, all was soon settled, the party dispersed, and John Melmoth was
left alone.

We should have mentioned, that his guardians appointed by the will (for
he was not yet of age) advised him to return to College, and complete
his education as soon as proper; but John urged the expediency of paying
the respect due to his uncle's memory, by remaining a decent time in
the house after his decease. This was not his real motive. Curiosity, or
something that perhaps deserves a better name, the wild and awful
pursuit of an indefinite object, had taken strong hold of his mind.43 His
guardians (who were men of respectability and property in the neigh-
bourhood, and in whose eyes John's consequence had risen rapidly
since the reading of the will), pressed him to accept of a temporary
residence in their respective houses, till his return to Dublin. This
was declined gratefully, but steadily. They called for their horses,
shook hands with the heir, and rode off--Melmoth was left alone.

The remainder of the day was passed in gloomy and anxious
deliberation,--in traversing his late uncle's room,--approaching the
door of the closet, and then retreating from it,--in watching the
clouds, and listening to the wind, as if the gloom of the one, or the
murmurs of the other, relieved instead of increasing the weight that
pressed on his mind. Finally, towards evening, he summoned the old
woman, from whom he expected something like an explanation of the
extraordinary circumstances he had witnessed since his arrival at his
uncle's. The old woman, proud of the summons, readily attended, but she
had very little to tell,--her communication was nearly in the following
words: (We spare the reader her endless circumlocutions, her Irishcisms,
and the frequent interruptions arising from her applications to her
snuff-box, and to the glass of whiskey punch with which Melmoth took
care to have her supplied). The old woman deposed,44 “That his honor (as
she always called the deceased) was always intent upon the little room
inside his bed-chamber, and reading there, within the last two
years;--that people, knowing his honor had money, and thinking it must
be there, had broke into that room, (in other words, there was a robbery
attempted there), but finding nothing but some papers, they had
retired;--that he was so frightened, he had bricked up the window; but
she thought there was more in it than that, for when his honor missed
but a half-penny, he would make the house ring about it, but that, when
the closet was bricked up, he never said a word;--that afterwards his
honor used to lock himself up in his own room, and though he was never
fond of reading, was always found, when his dinner was brought him,
hanging over a paper, which he hid the moment any one came into the
room, and once there was a great bustle about a picture that he tried to
conceal;--that knowing there was an odd story in the family, she did
her best to come at it, and even went to Biddy Brannigan's, (the medical
Sybil before mentioned), to find out the rights of it; but Biddy only
shook her head, filled her pipe, uttered some words she did not
understand, and smoked on;--that it was but two evenings before his
honor was struck, (i. e. took ill), she was standing at the door of the
court, (which had once been surrounded by stables, pigeon-house, and
all the usual etceteras of a gentleman's residence, but now presented
only a ruinous range of dismantled out-offices, thatched with thistles,
and tenanted by pigs), when his honor called to her to lock the door,
(his honor was always keen about locking the doors early); she was
hastening to do so, when he snatched the key from her, swearing at her,
(for he was always very keen about locking the doors, though the locks
were so bad, and the keys so rusty, that it was always like the cry of
the dead in the house when the keys were turned);--that she stood aside
for a minute, seeing he was angry, and gave him the key, when she heard
him utter a scream, and saw him fall across the door-way;--that she
hurried to raise him, hoping it was a fit;--that she found him stiff
and stretched out, and called for help to lift him up;--that then people
came from the kitchen to assist;--that she was so bewildered and
terrified, she hardly knew what was done or said; but with all her
terror remembered, that as they raised him up, the first sign of life he
gave was lifting up his arm, and pointing it towards the court, and at
that moment she saw the figure of a tall man cross the court, and go out
of the court, she knew not where or how, for the outer gate was locked,
and had not been opened for years, and they were all gathered round his
honor at the other door;--she saw the figure,--she saw the shadow on the
wall,--she saw him walk slowly through the court, and in her terror
cried, “Stop him,” but nobody minded her, all being busy about her
master; and when he was brought to his room, nobody thought but of
getting him to himself again. And further she could not tell. His honor
(young Melmoth) knew as much as she,--he had witnessed his last illness,
had heard his last words, he saw him die,--how could she know more than
his honor.”

“True,” said Melmoth, “I certainly saw him die; but--you say there was
an odd story in the family, do you know any thing about it?” “Not a
word, it was long before my time, as old as I am.” “Certainly it must
have been so; but, was my uncle ever superstitious, fanciful?”--and
Melmoth was compelled to use many synonymous expressions, before he
could make himself understood. When he did, the answer was plain and
decisive, “No, never, never. When his honor sat in the kitchen in
winter, to save a fire in his own room, he could never bear the talk of
the old women that came in to light their pipes betimes, (from time to
time). He used to shew such impatience of their superstitious nonsense,
that they were fain to smoke them in silence, without the consolatory
accompaniment of one whisper about a child that the evil eye had looked
on, or another, that though apparently a mewling, peevish, crippled brat
all day, went regularly out at night to dance with the good people 45 on
the top of a neighbouring mountain, summoned thereto by the sound of
a bag-pipe, which was unfailingly heard at the cabin door every night.”
Melmoth's thoughts began to take somewhat of a darker hue at this
account. If his uncle was not superstitious, might he not have been
guilty, and might not his strange and sudden death, and even the
terrible visitation that preceded it, have been owing to some wrong that
his rapacity had done the widow and the fatherless. He questioned the
old woman indirectly and cautiously on the subject,--her answer
completely justified the deceased. “He was a man,” she said, “of a hard
hand, and a hard heart, but he was as jealous of another's right as of
his own. He would have starved all the world, but he would not have
wronged it of a farthing.”

Melmoth's last resource was to send for Biddy Brannigan, who was still
in the house, and from whom he at least hoped to hear the odd story that
the old woman confessed was in the family. She came, and, on her
introduction to Melmoth, it was curious to observe the mingled look of
servility and command, the result of the habits of her life, which was
alternately one of abject mendicity, and of arrogant but clever
imposture. When she first appeared, she stood at the door, awed and
curtseying in the presence, and muttering sounds which, possibly
intended for blessings, had, from the harsh tone and witch-like look of
the speaker, every appearance of malediction; but when interrogated on
the subject of the story, she rose at once into consequence,--her figure
seemed frightfully dilated, like that of Virgil's Alecto,46 who exchanges
in a moment the appearance of a feeble old woman for that of a menacing
fury. She walked deliberately across the room, seated, or rather
squatted herself on the hearth-stone like a hare in her form, spread her
bony and withered hands towards the blaze, and rocked for a considerable
time in silence before she commenced her tale. When she had finished it,
Melmoth remained in astonishment at the state of mind to which the late
singular circumstances had reduced him,--at finding himself listening
with varying and increasing emotions of interest, curiosity, and terror,
to a tale so wild, so improbable, nay, so actually incredible, that he
at least blushed for the folly he could not conquer. The result of these
impressions was, a resolution to visit the closet, and examine the
manuscript that very night.

This resolution he found it impossible to execute immediately, for, on
inquiring for lights, the gouvernante confessed the very last had been
burnt at his honor's wake; and a bare-footed boy was charged to run
for life and death to the neighbouring village for candles; and if you
could borry a couple of candlesticks, added the housekeeper. “Are
there no candlesticks in the house?” said Melmoth. “There are, honey,
plinty, but it's no time to be opening the old chest, for the plated
ones, in regard of their being at the bottom of it, and the brass ones
that's in it (in the house), one of them has no socket, and the other
has no bottom.” “And how did you make shift yourself,” said Melmoth. “I
stuck it in a potatoe,” quoth the housekeeper. So the gossoon 47 ran for
life and death, and Melmoth, towards the close of the evening, was left
alone to meditate.

It was an evening apt for meditation, and Melmoth had his fill of it
before the messenger returned. The weather was cold and gloomy; heavy
clouds betokened a long and dreary continuance of autumnal rains; cloud
after cloud came sweeping on like the dark banners48 of an approaching
host, whose march is for desolation. As Melmoth leaned against the
window, whose dismantled frame, and pieced and shattered panes, shook
with every gust of wind, his eye encountered nothing but that most
cheerless of all prospects, a miser's garden,--walls broken down,
grass-grown walks whose grass was not even green, dwarfish, doddered,49
leafless trees, and a luxuriant crop of nettles and weeds rearing their
unlovely heads where there had once been flowers, all waving and bending
in capricious and unsightly forms, as the wind sighed over them. It was
the verdure of the church yard, the garden of death. He turned for
relief to the room, but no relief was there,--the wainscotting dark with
dirt, and in many places cracked and starting from the walls,--the rusty
grate, so long unconscious of a fire, that nothing but a sullen smoke
could be coaxed to issue from between its dingy bars,--the crazy chairs,
their torn bottoms of rush drooping inwards, and the great leathern seat
displaying the stuffing round the worn edges, while the nails, though
they kept their places, had failed to keep the covering they once
fastened,--the chimney-piece, which, tarnished more by time than by
smoke, displayed for its garniture half a pair of snuffers,50 a tattered
almanack of 1750, a time-keeper dumb for want of repair, and a rusty
fowling-piece without a lock.--No wonder the spectacle of desolation
drove Melmoth back to his own thoughts, restless and uncomfortable as
they were. He recapitulated the Sybil's story word by word, with the air
of a man who is cross-examining an evidence,51 and trying to make him
contradict himself.

“The first of the Melmoths, she says, who settled in Ireland, was an
officer in Cromwell's army, who obtained a grant of lands, the con-
fiscated property of an Irish family attached to the royal cause. The
elder brother of this man was one who had travelled abroad, and resided
so long on the Continent, that his family had lost all recollection of
him. Their memory was not stimulated by their affection, for there were
strange reports concerning the traveller. He was said to be (like the
“damned magician, great Glendower,”) “a gentleman profited in strange
concealments.”52

It must be remembered, that at this period, and even to a later, the
belief in astrology and witchcraft was very general. Even so late as the
reign of Charles II. Dryden calculated53 the nativity of his son Charles,
the ridiculous books of Glanville54 were in general circulation, and
Delrio and Wierus were so popular, that even a dramatic writer
(Shadwell) quoted copiously from them, in the notes subjoined to his
curious comedy of the Lancashire witches.55 It was said, that during the
life-time of Melmoth, the traveller paid him a visit; and though he must
have then been considerably advanced in life, to the astonishment of his
family, he did not betray the slightest trace of being a year older than
when they last beheld him. His visit was short, he said nothing of the
past or the future, nor did his family question him. It was said that
they did not feel themselves perfectly at ease in his presence. On his
departure he left them his picture, (the same which Melmoth saw in the
closet, bearing date 1646), and they saw him no more. Some years after,
a person arrived from England, directed to Melmoth's house, in pursuit
of the traveller, and exhibiting the most marvellous and unappeasable
solicitude to obtain some intelligence of him. The family could give him
none, and after some days of restless inquiry and agitation, he
departed, leaving behind him, either through negligence or intention, a
manuscript, containing an extraordinary account of the circumstances
under which he had met John Melmoth the Traveller (as he was called).

The manuscript and portrait were both preserved, and of the original a
report spread that he was still alive, and had been frequently seen in
Ireland even to the present century,--but that he was never known to
appear but on the approaching death of one of the family, nor even then,
unless when the evil passions or habits of the individual had cast a
shade of gloomy and fearful interest over their dying hour.

It was therefore judged no favourable augury for the spiritual
destination of the last Melmoth, that this extraordinary person had
visited, or been imagined to visit, the house previous to his decease.”

Such was the account given by Biddy Brannigan, to which she added her
own solemnly-attested belief, that John Melmoth the Traveller was still
without a hair on his head changed, or a muscle in his frame
contracted;--that she had seen those that had seen him, and would
confirm their evidence by oath if necessary;--that he was never heard to
speak, seen to partake of food, or known to enter any dwelling but that
of his family;--and, finally, that she herself believed that his late
appearance boded no good either to the living or the dead.

John was still musing on these things when the lights were procured,
and, disregarding the pallid countenances and monitory whispers of the
attendants, he resolutely entered the closet, shut the door, and
proceeded to search for the manuscript. It was soon found, for the
directions of old Melmoth were forcibly written, and strongly
remembered. The manuscript, old, tattered, and discoloured, was taken
from the very drawer in which it was mentioned to be laid. Melmoth's
hands felt as cold as those of his dead uncle, when he drew the blotted
pages from their nook. He sat down to read,--there was a dead silence
through the house. Melmoth looked wistfully at the candles, snuffed
them, and still thought they looked dim, (perchance he thought they
burned blue, but such thought he kept to himself.) Certain it is, he
often changed his posture, and would have changed his chair, had there
been more than one in the apartment.

He sunk for a few moments into a fit of gloomy abstraction, till the
sound of the clock striking twelve made him start,--it was the only
sound he had heard for some hours, and the sounds produced by inanimate
things, while all living beings around are as dead, have at such an hour
an effect indescribably awful. John looked at his manuscript with some
reluctance, opened it, paused over the first lines, and as the wind
sighed round the desolate apartment, and the rain pattered with a
mournful sound against the dismantled window, wished----what did he wish
for?--he wished the sound of the wind less dismal, and the dash of the
rain less monotonous.----He may be forgiven, it was past midnight, and
there was not a human being awake but himself within ten miles when he
began to read.



CHAPTER III.


Apparebat eidolon senex.56

PLINY.


The manuscript was discoloured, obliterated, and mutilated beyond any
that had ever before exercised the patience of a reader. Michaelis57
himself, scrutinizing into the pretended autograph of St Mark at Venice,
never had a harder time of it.--Melmoth could make out only a sentence
here and there. The writer, it appeared, was an Englishman of the name
of Stanton, who had travelled abroad shortly after the Restoration.
Travelling was not then attended with the facilities which modern
improvement has introduced, and scholars and literati, the intelligent,
the idle, and the curious, wandered over the Continent for years, like
Tom Coryat, though they had the modesty, on their return, to entitle
the result of their multiplied observations and labours only “crudities.”58

Stanton, about the year 1676, was in Spain; he was, like most of the
travellers of that age, a man of literature, intelligence, and
curiosity, but ignorant of the language of the country, and fighting his
way at times from convent to convent, in quest of what was called
“Hospitality,” that is, obtaining board and lodging on the condition of
holding a debate in Latin, on some point theological or metaphysical,
with any monk who would become the champion of the strife. Now, as the
theology was Catholic, and the metaphysics Aristotelian, Stanton
sometimes wished himself at the miserable Posada59 from whose filth and
famine he had been fighting his escape; but though his reverend
antagonists always denounced his creed, and comforted themselves, even
in defeat, with the assurance that he must be damned, on the double
score of his being a heretic and an Englishman, they were obliged to
confess that his Latin was good, and his logic unanswerable; and he was
allowed, in most cases, to sup and sleep in peace. This was not doomed
to be his fate on the night of the 17th August 1677, when he found
himself in the plains of Valencia, deserted by a cowardly guide, who had
been terrified by the sight of a cross erected as a memorial of a
murder, had slipped off his mule unperceived, crossing himself every
step he took on his retreat from the heretic, and left Stanton amid the
terrors of an approaching storm, and the dangers of an unknown country.
The sublime and yet softened beauty of the scenery around, had filled
the soul of Stanton with delight, and he enjoyed that delight as
Englishmen generally do, silently.

The magnificent remains of two dynasties that had passed away, the ruins
of Roman palaces, and of Moorish fortresses, were around and above
him;--the dark and heavy thunder-clouds that advanced slowly, seemed
like the shrouds of these spectres of departed greatness; they
approached, but did not yet overwhelm or conceal them, as if nature
herself was for once awed by the power of man; and far below, the lovely
valley of Valencia blushed and burned in all the glory of sunset, like a
bride receiving the last glowing kiss of the bridegroom before the
approach of night. Stanton gazed around. The difference between the
architecture of the Roman and Moorish ruins struck him. Among the former
are the remains of a theatre, and something like a public place; the
latter present only the remains of fortresses, embattled, castellated,
and fortified from top to bottom,--not a loop-hole for pleasure to get
in by,60--the loop-holes were only for arrows; all denoted military power
and despotic subjugation a l'outrance.61 The contrast might have pleased
a philosopher, and he might have indulged in the reflection, that though
the ancient Greeks and Romans were savages, (as Dr Johnson says all
people who want a press must be, and he says truly62), yet they were
wonderful savages for their time, for they alone have left traces of
their taste for pleasure in the countries they conquered, in their
superb theatres, temples, (which were also dedicated to pleasure one way
or another), and baths, while other conquering bands of savages never
left any thing behind them but traces of their rage for power. So
thought Stanton, as he still saw strongly defined, though darkened by
the darkening clouds, the huge skeleton of a Roman amphitheatre, its
arched and gigantic colonnades now admitting a gleam of light, and now
commingling with the purple thunder-cloud; and now the solid and heavy
mass of a Moorish fortress, no light playing between its impermeable
walls,--the image of power, dark, isolated, impenetrable. Stanton forgot
his cowardly guide, his loneliness, his danger amid an approaching storm
and an inhospitable country, where his name and country would shut every
door against him, and every peal of thunder would be supposed justified
by the daring intrusion of a heretic in the dwelling of an old Christian,63
as the Spanish Catholics absurdly term themselves, to mark the dis-
tinction between them and the baptised Moors.--All this was forgot
in contemplating the glorious and awful scenery before him,--light
struggling with darkness,--and darkness menacing a light still more
terrible, and announcing its menace in the blue and livid mass of
cloud that hovered like a destroying angel in the air, its arrows aimed,
but their direction awfully indefinite. But he ceased to forget these
local and petty dangers, as the sublimity of romance would term them,
when he saw the first flash of the lightning, broad and red as the
banners of an insulting army whose motto is Væ victis,64 shatter to
atoms the remains of a Roman tower;--the rifted stones rolled down
the hill, and fell at the feet of Stanton. He stood appalled, and, await-
ing his summons from the Power in whose eye pyramids, palaces, and
the worms whose toil has formed them, and the worms who toil out their
existence under their shadow or their pressure, are perhaps all alike
contemptible, he stood collected, and for a moment felt that defiance of
danger which danger itself excites, and we love to encounter it as a
physical enemy, to bid it “do its worst,” and feel that its worst will
perhaps be ultimately its best for us. He stood and saw another flash
dart its bright, brief, and malignant glance over the ruins of ancient
power, and the luxuriance of recent fertility. Singular contrast! The
relics of art for ever decaying,--the productions of nature for ever
renewed.--(Alas! for what purpose are they renewed, better than to mock
at the perishable monuments65 which men try in vain to rival them by).
The pyramids themselves must perish, but the grass that grows between
their disjointed stones will be renewed from year to year. Stanton was
thinking thus, when all power of thought was suspended, by seeing two
persons bearing between them the body of a young, and apparently very
lovely girl, who had been struck dead by the lightning. Stanton approach-
ed, and heard the voices of the bearers repeating, “There is none who
will mourn for her!” “There is none who will mourn for her!” said other
voices, as two more bore in their arms the blasted and blackened figure
of what had once been a man, comely and graceful;--“there is not one
to mourn for her now!” They were lovers, and he had been consumed by
the flash that had destroyed her, while in the act of endeavouring to de-
fend her. As they were about to remove the bodies, a person approached
with a calmness of step and demeanour, as if he were alone unconscious
of danger, and incapable of fear; and after looking on them for some time,
burst into a laugh so loud, wild, and protracted, that the peasants, starting
with as much horror at the sound as at that of the storm, hurried away,
bearing the corse66 with them. Even Stanton's fears were subdued by
his astonishment, and, turning to the stranger, who remained standing on
the same spot, he asked the reason of such an outrage on humanity. The
stranger, slowly turning round, and disclosing a countenance which----
(Here the manuscript was illegible for a few lines),67 said in English----
(A long hiatus followed here, and the next passage that was legible,
though it proved to be a continuation of the narrative, was but a frag-
ment). * * * * * *

The terrors of the night rendered Stanton a sturdy and unappeasable
applicant; and the shrill voice of the old woman, repeating, “no heretic
--no English--Mother of God protect us--avaunt Satan!”--combined
with the clatter of the wooden casement (peculiar to the houses in
Valentia)68 which she opened to discharge her volley of anathematiza-
tion,69 and shut again as the lightning glanced through the aperture, were
unable to repel his importunate request for admittance, in a night whose
terrors ought to soften all the miserable petty local passions into one
awful feeling of fear for the Power who caused it, and compassion for
those who were exposed to it.--But Stanton felt there was something more
than national bigotry in the exclamations of the old woman; there was a
peculiar and personal horror of the English.--And he was right; but this
did not diminish the eagerness of his * * * * * The house was handsome
and spacious, but the melancholy appearance of desertion * * * * * * * *

* * * --The benches were by the wall, but there were none to sit there;
the tables were spread in what had been the hall, but it seemed as if
none had gathered round them for many years;--the clock struck audibly,
there was no voice of mirth or of occupation to drown its sound; time
told his awful lesson to silence alone;--the hearths were black with
fuel long since consumed;--the family portraits looked as if they were
the only tenants of the mansion; they seemed to say, from their
mouldering frames, “there are none to gaze on us;” and the echo of the
steps of Stanton and his feeble guide, was the only sound audible
between the peals of thunder that rolled still awfully, but more
distantly,--every peal like the exhausted murmurs of a spent heart. As
they passed on, a shriek was heard. Stanton paused, and fearful images
of the dangers to which travellers on the Continent are exposed in
deserted and remote habitations, came into his mind. “Don't heed it,”
said the old woman, lighting him on with a miserable lamp;--“it is only
he

* * * * * * * * * * * The old woman having now satisfied herself, by
ocular demonstration, that her English guest, even if he was the devil,
had neither horn, hoof, or tail, that he could bear the sign of the
cross without changing his form, and that, when he spoke, not a puff of
sulphur came out of his mouth, began to take courage, and at length
commenced her story, which, weary and comfortless as Stanton was, * *
* * *

“Every obstacle was now removed; parents and relations at last gave up
all opposition, and the young pair were united. Never was there a
lovelier,--they seemed like angels who had only anticipated by a few
years their celestial and eternal union. The marriage was solemnized
with much pomp, and a few days after there was a feast in that very
wainscotted chamber which you paused to remark was so gloomy. It
was that night hung with rich tapestry, representing the exploits of the
Cid, particularly that of his burning a few Moors70 who refused to
renounce their accursed religion. They were represented beautifully
tortured, writhing and howling, and “Mahomet! Mahomet!” issuing out of
their mouths, as they called on him in their burning agonies;--you could
almost hear them scream. At the upper end of the room, under a splendid
estrade, over which was an image of the blessed Virgin, sat Donna
Isabella de Cardoza, mother to the bride, and near her Donna Ines, the
bride, on rich almohadas;71 the bridegroom sat opposite to her; and though
they never spoke to each other, their eyes, slowly raised, but suddenly
withdrawn, (those eyes that blushed), told to each other the delicious
secret of their happiness. Don Pedro de Cardoza had assembled a large
party in honour of his daughter's nuptials; among them was an Englishman
of the name of Melmoth, a traveller; no one knew who had brought him
there. He sat silent like the rest, while the iced waters and the
sugared wafers were presented to the company. The night was intensely
hot, and the moon glowed like a sun over the ruins of Saguntum;72 the
embroidered blinds flapped heavily, as if the wind made an effort to
raise them in vain, and then desisted.

(Another defect in the manuscript occurred here, but it was soon
supplied).

* * * *

“The company were dispersed through various alleys of the garden; the
bridegroom and bride wandered through one where the delicious perfume
of the orange trees mingled itself with that of the myrtles in blow. On
their return to the hall, both of them asked, Had the company heard the
exquisite sounds that floated through the garden just before they
quitted it? No one had heard them. They expressed their surprise. The
Englishman had never quitted the hall; it was said he smiled with a most
particular and extraordinary expression as the remark was made. His
silence had been noticed before, but it was ascribed to his ignorance of
the Spanish language, an ignorance that Spaniards are not anxious either
to expose or remove by speaking to a stranger. The subject of the music
was not again reverted to till the guests were seated at supper, when
Donna Ines and her young husband, exchanging a smile of delighted
surprise, exclaimed they heard the same delicious sounds floating round
them. The guests listened, but no one else could hear it;--every one
felt there was something extraordinary in this. Hush! was uttered by
every voice almost at the same moment. A dead silence followed,--you
would think, from their intent looks, that they listened with their very
eyes. This deep silence, contrasted with the splendour of the feast, and
the light effused from torches held by the domestics, produced a
singular effect,--it seemed for some moments like an assembly of the
dead. The silence was interrupted, though the cause of wonder had not
ceased, by the entrance of Father Olavida, the Confessor of Donna
Isabella, who had been called away previous to the feast, to administer
extreme unction to a dying man in the neighbourhood. He was a priest
of uncommon sanctity, beloved in the family, and respected in the
neighbourhood, where he had displayed uncommon taste and talents for
exorcism;--in fact, this was the good Father's forte, and he piqued
himself on it accordingly. The devil never fell into worse hands than
Father Olavida's, for when he was so contumacious73 as to resist Latin,
and even the first verses of the Gospel of St John in Greek, which the
good Father never had recourse to but in cases of extreme stubbornness
and difficulty,--(here Stanton recollected the English story of the Boy
of Bilson,74 and blushed even in Spain for his countrymen),--then he
always applied to the Inquisition; and if the devils were ever so
obstinate before, they were always seen to fly out of the possessed,
just as, in the midst of their cries, (no doubt of blasphemy), they were
tied to the stake. Some held out even till the flames surrounded them;
but even the most stubborn must have been dislodged when the operation
was over, for the devil himself could no longer tenant a crisp and
glutinous lump of cinders. Thus Father Olavida's fame spread far and
wide, and the Cardoza family had made uncommon interest to procure him
for a Confessor, and happily succeeded. The ceremony he had just been
performing, had cast a shade over the good Father's countenance, but it
dispersed as he mingled among the guests, and was introduced to them.
Room was soon made for him, and he happened accidentally to be seated
opposite the Englishman. As the wine was presented to him, Father
Olavida, (who, as I observed, was a man of singular sanctity), prepared
to utter a short internal prayer. He hesitated,--trembled,--desisted;
and, putting down the wine, wiped the drops from his forehead with the
sleeve of his habit. Donna Isabella gave a sign to a domestic, and other
wine of a higher quality was offered to him. His lips moved, as if in
the effort to pronounce a benediction on it and the company, but the
effort again failed; and the change in his countenance was so
extraordinary, that it was perceived by all the guests. He felt the
sensation that his extraordinary appearance excited, and attempted to
remove it by again endeavouring to lift the cup to his lips. So strong
was the anxiety with which the company watched him, that the only sound
heard in that spacious and crowded hall, was the rustling of his habit,
as he attempted to lift the cup to his lips once more--in vain. The
guests sat in astonished silence. Father Olavida alone remained
standing; but at that moment the Englishman rose, and appeared
determined to fix Olavida's regards by a gaze like that of fascination.
Olavida rocked, reeled, grasped the arm of a page, and at last, closing
his eyes for a moment, as if to escape the horrible fascination of that
unearthly glare, (the Englishman's eyes were observed by all the guests,
from the moment of his entrance, to effuse a most fearful and
preternatural lustre), exclaimed, “Who is among us?--Who?75--I cannot
utter a blessing while he is here. I cannot feel one. Where he treads,
the earth is parched!--Where he breathes, the air is fire!--Where he
feeds, the food is poison!--Where he turns, his glance is lightning!--
Who is among us?--Who?” repeated the priest in the agony of
adjuration, while his cowl fallen back, his few thin hairs around the
scalp instinct and alive with terrible emotion, his outspread arms
protruded from the sleeves of his habit, and extended towards the awful
stranger, suggested the idea of an inspired being in the dreadful
rapture of prophetic denunciation. He stood--still stood, and the
Englishman stood calmly opposite to him. There was an agitated
irregularity in the attitudes of those around them, which contrasted
strongly the fixed and stern postures of those two, who remained gazing
silently at each other. “Who knows him?” exclaimed Olavida, starting
apparently from a trance; “who knows him? who brought him here?”

The guests severally disclaimed all knowledge of the Englishman, and
each asked the other in whispers, “who had brought him there?” Father
Olavida then pointed his arm to each of the company, and asked each
individually, “Do you know him?” “No! no! no!” was uttered with vehement
emphasis by every individual. “But I know him,” said Olavida, “by these
cold drops!” and he wiped them off;--“by these convulsed joints!” and he
attempted to sign the cross, but could not. He raised his voice, and
evidently speaking with increased difficulty,--“By this bread and wine,
which the faithful receive as the body and blood of Christ, but which
his presence converts into matter as viperous as the suicide foam of
the dying Judas,--by all these--I know him, and command him to be
gone!--He is--he is----” and he bent forwards as he spoke, and gazed on
the Englishman with an expression which the mixture of rage, hatred, and
fear, rendered terrible. All the guests rose at these words,--the whole
company now presented two singular groupes, that of the amazed guests
all collected together, and repeating, “Who, what is he?” and that of
the Englishman, who stood unmoved, and Olavida, who dropped dead in the
attitude of pointing to him. * * * * * * * * * * * *

The body was removed into another room, and the departure of the
Englishman was not noticed till the company returned to the hall. They
sat late together, conversing on this extraordinary circumstance, and
finally agreed to remain in the house, lest the evil spirit (for they
believed the Englishman no better) should take certain liberties with
the corse by no means agreeable to a Catholic, particularly as he had
manifestly died without the benefit of the last sacraments. Just as this
laudable resolution was formed, they were roused by cries of horror and
agony from the bridal-chamber, where the young pair had retired.

They hurried to the door, but the father was first. They burst it open,
and found the bride a corse in the arms of her husband. * * * * * * *

He never recovered his reason; the family deserted the mansion rendered
terrible by so many misfortunes. One apartment is still tenanted by the
unhappy maniac; his were the cries you heard as you traversed the
deserted rooms. He is for the most part silent during the day, but at
midnight he always exclaims, in a voice frightfully piercing, and hardly
human, “They are coming! they are coming!” and relapses into profound
silence.

The funeral of Father Olavida was attended by an extraordinary
circumstance. He was interred in a neighbouring convent; and the
reputation of his sanctity, joined to the interest caused by his
extraordinary death, collected vast numbers at the ceremony. His funeral
sermon was preached by a monk of distinguished eloquence, appointed for
the purpose. To render the effect of his discourse more powerful, the
corse, extended on a bier, with its face uncovered, was placed in the
aisle. The monk took his text from one of the prophets,--“Death is
gone up into our palaces.”76 He expatiated on mortality, whose approach,
whether abrupt or lingering, is alike awful to man.--He spoke of the
vicissitudes of empires with much eloquence and learning, but his
audience were not observed to be much affected.--He cited various
passages from the lives of the saints, descriptive of the glories of
martyrdom, and the heroism of those who had bled and blazed for Christ
and his blessed mother, but they appeared still waiting for something to
touch them more deeply. When he inveighed against the tyrants under
whose bloody persecutions those holy men suffered, his hearers were
roused for a moment, for it is always easier to excite a passion than a
moral feeling. But when he spoke of the dead, and pointed with emphatic
gesture to the corse, as it lay before them cold and motionless, every
eye was fixed, and every ear became attentive. Even the lovers, who,
under pretence of dipping their fingers into the holy water, were
contriving to exchange amorous billets, forbore for one moment this
interesting intercourse, to listen to the preacher.77 He dwelt with much
energy on the virtues of the deceased, whom he declared to be a
particular favourite of the Virgin; and enumerating the various losses
that would be caused by his departure to the community to which he
belonged, to society, and to religion at large; he at last worked up
himself to a vehement expostulation with the Deity on the occasion. “Why
hast thou,” he exclaimed, “why hast thou, Oh God! thus dealt with us?
Why hast thou snatched from our sight this glorious saint, whose merits,
if properly applied, doubtless would have been sufficient to atone for
the apostacy of St Peter, the opposition of St Paul, (previous to his
conversion), and even the treachery of Judas himself? Why hast thou, Oh
God! snatched him from us?”--and a deep and hollow voice from among the
congregation answered,--“Because he deserved his fate.” The murmurs of
approbation with which the congregation honoured this apostrophe,
half-drowned this extraordinary interruption; and though there was some
little commotion in the immediate vicinity of the speaker, the rest of
the audience continued to listen intently. “What,” proceeded the
preacher, pointing to the corse, “what hath laid thee there, servant of
God?”--“Pride, ignorance, and fear,” answered the same voice, in accents
still more thrilling. The disturbance now became universal. The preacher
paused, and a circle opening, disclosed the figure of a monk belonging
to the convent, who stood among them. * * * * * * *

After all the usual modes of admonition, exhortation, and discipline
had been employed, and the bishop of the diocese, who, under the report
of these extraordinary circumstances, had visited the convent in person
to obtain some explanation from the contumacious monk in vain, it was
agreed, in a chapter extraordinary, to surrender him to the power of
the Inquisition. He testified great horror when this determination
was made known to him,--and offered to tell over and over again all
that he could relate of the cause of Father Olavida's death. His
humiliation, and repeated offers of confession, came too late. He was
conveyed to the Inquisition. The proceedings of that tribunal are
rarely disclosed, but there is a secret report (I cannot answer for its
truth) of what he said and suffered there. On his first examination, he
said he would relate all he could. He was told that was not enough,
he must relate all he knew.78 * * * * * * * * *

“Why did you testify such horror at the funeral of Father Olavida?”
--“Every one testified horror and grief at the death of that venerable
ecclesiastic, who died in the odour of sanctity. Had I done otherwise,
it might have been reckoned　a proof of my guilt.” “Why did you inter-
rupt the preacher with such extraordinary exclamations?”--To this no
answer. “Why do you refuse to explain the meaning of those exclam-
ations?”--No answer. “Why do you persist in this obstinate and dan-
gerous silence? Look, I beseech you, brother, at the cross that is
suspended against this wall,” and the Inquisitor pointed to the large
black crucifix at the back of the chair where he sat; “one drop of
the blood shed there can purify you from all the sin you have ever
committed; but all that blood, combined with the intercession of the
Queen of Heaven, and the merits of all its martyrs, nay, even the
absolution of the Pope, cannot deliver you from the curse of dying in
unrepented sin.”--“What sin, then, have I committed?” “The great-
est of all possible sins; you refuse answering the questions put to
you at the tribunal of the most holy and merciful Inquisition;--you
will not tell us what you know concerning the death of Father Olavida.”
--“I have told you that I believe he perished in consequence of his
ignorance and presumption.” “What proof can you produce of that?”
--“He sought the knowledge of a secret withheld from man.” “What
was that?”--“The secret of discovering the presence or agency of
the evil power.” “Do you possess that secret?”--After much ag-
itation on the part of the prisoner, he said distinctly, but very
faintly, “My master forbids me to disclose it.” “If your master were
Jesus Christ, he would not forbid you to obey the commands, or answer
the questions of the Inquisition.”--“I am not sure of that.” There was
a general outcry of horror at these words. The examination then went
on. “If you believed Olavida to be guilty of any pursuits or studies
condemned by our mother the church, why did you not denounce him to
the Inquisition?”--“Because I believed him not likely to be injured
by such pursuits; his mind was too weak,--he died in the struggle,”
said the prisoner with great emphasis. “You believe, then, it requires
strength of mind to keep those abominable secrets, when examined as to
their nature and tendency?”--“No, I rather imagine strength of body.”
“We shall try that presently,” said an Inquisitor, giving a signal for
the torture. * * * * * * * * * * *

The prisoner underwent the first and second applications with un-
shrinking courage, but on the infliction of the water-torture, which is
indeed insupportable to humanity, either to suffer or relate, he exclaim-
ed in the gasping interval, he would disclose every thing. He was released,
refreshed, restored, and the following day uttered the following remarkable
confession * * * * * * *
* * * *

The old Spanish woman further confessed to Stanton, that * * * * * * * *
* and that the Englishman certainly had been seen in the neighbourhood
since;--seen, as she had heard, that very night. “Great G--d!” exclaimed
Stanton, as he recollected the stranger whose demoniac laugh had so
appalled him, while gazing on the lifeless bodies of the lovers, whom
the lightning had struck and blasted.

* * * * *

As the manuscript, after a few blotted and illegible pages, became more
distinct, Melmoth read on, perplexed and unsatisfied, not knowing what
connexion this Spanish story could have with his ancestor, whom,
however, he recognised under the title of the Englishman; and
wondering how Stanton could have thought it worth his while to follow
him to Ireland, write a long manuscript about an event that occurred in
Spain, and leave it in the hands of his family, to “verify untrue things,”
in the language of Dogberry,79--his wonder was diminished, though his
curiosity was still more inflamed, by the perusal of the next lines,
which he made out with some difficulty. It seems Stanton was now in
England. * * * * * * * * * * *

About the year 1677, Stanton was in London, his mind still full of his
mysterious countryman. This constant subject of his contemplations had
produced a visible change in his exterior,--his walk was what Sallust
tells us of Catiline's,--his were, too, the “fœdi oculi.”80 He said to
himself every moment, “If I could but trace that being, I will not call
him man,”--and the next moment he said, “and what if I could?” In this
state of mind, it is singular enough that he mixed constantly in public
amusements, but it is true. When one fierce passion is devouring the
soul, we feel more than ever the necessity of external excitement; and
our dependence on the world for temporary relief increases in direct
proportion to our contempt of the world and all its works. He went
frequently to the theatres, then fashionable, when

“The fair sat panting at a courtier's play,
And not a mask went unimproved away.”81

The London theatres then presented a spectacle which ought for ever
to put to silence the foolish outcry against progressive deterioration of
morals,--foolish even from the pen of Juvenal,82 and still more so from
the lips of a modern Puritan. Vice is always nearly on an average: The
only difference in life worth tracing, is that of manners, and there we
have manifestly the advantage of our ancestors. Hypocrisy is said to be
the homage that vice pays to virtue,--decorum is the outward expression
of that homage; and if this be so, we must acknowledge that vice has
latterly grown very humble indeed. There was, however, something
splendid, ostentatious, and obtrusive, in the vices of Charles the
Second's reign.--A view of the theatres alone proved it, when Stanton
was in the habit of visiting them. At the doors stood on one side the
footmen of a fashionable nobleman, (with arms concealed under their
liveries), surrounding the sedan of a popular actress83, whom they were
to carry off vi et armis,84 as she entered it at the end of the play. At
the other side waited the glass coach 85 of a woman of fashion, who
waited to take Kynaston (the Adonis of the day),86 in his female dress, to
the park after the play was over, and exhibit him in all the luxurious
splendour of effeminate beauty, (heightened by theatrical dress), for
which he was so distinguished.

Plays being then performed at four o'clock, allowed ample time for the
evening drive, and the midnight assignation, when the parties met by
torch-light, masked, in St James's park, and verified the title of
Wycherly's play, “Love in a Wood.” The boxes, as Stanton looked round
him, were filled with females, whose naked shoulders and bosoms, well
testified in the paintings of Lely,87 and the pages of Grammont,88 might
save modern puritanism many a vituperative groan and affected
reminiscence. They had all taken the precaution to send some male
relative, on the first night of a new play, to report whether it was fit
for persons of “honour and reputation” to appear at; but in spite of
this precaution, at certain passages (which occurred about every second
sentence) they were compelled to spread out their fans, or play with the
still cherished love-lock, which Prynne89 himself had not been able to
write down.

The men in the boxes were composed of two distinct classes, the “men
of wit and pleasure about town,” distinguished by their Flanders lace
cravats, soiled with snuff, their diamond rings, the pretended gift of a
royal mistress, (n'importe whether the Duchess of Portsmouth or Nell
Gwynne);90 their uncombed wigs, whose curls descended to their waists, and
the loud and careless tone in which they abused Dryden, Lee, and Otway,
and quoted Sedley and Rochester;91--the other class were the lovers, the
gentle “squires of dames,” equally conspicuous for their white fringed
gloves, their obsequious bows, and their commencing every sentence
addressed to a lady, with the profane exclamation of “Oh Jesu!”92 or
the softer, but equally unmeaning one of “I beseech you, Madam,” or,
“Madam, I burn.”93 One circumstance sufficiently extraordinary marked
the manners of the day; females had not then found their proper level in
life; they were alternately adored as goddesses, and assailed as
prostitutes; and the man who, this moment, addressed his mistress in
language borrowed from Orondates94 worshipping Cassandra, in the next
accosted her with ribaldry that might put to the blush the piazzas of
Covent Garden.95

The pit presented a more various spectacle. There were the critics armed
cap-a-pee96 from Aristotle and Bossu; these men dined at twelve, dictated
at a coffee-house till four, then called to the boy to brush their
shoes, and strode to the theatre, where, till the curtain rose, they sat
hushed in grim repose, and expecting their evening prey. There were the
templars,97 spruce, pert, and loquacious; and here and there a sober
citizen, doffing his steeple-crowned hat, and hiding his little band
under the folds of his huge puritanic cloke, while his eyes, declined
with an expression half leering, half ejaculatory, towards a masked
female, muffled in a hood and scarf, testified what had seduced him into
these “tents of Kedar.”98 There were females, too, but all in vizard
masks,99 which, though worn as well as aunt Dinah's in Tristram Shandy,100
served to conceal them from the “young bubbles” they were in quest of,
and from all but the orange-women,101 who hailed them loudly as they passed
the doors.102 In the galleries were the happy souls who waited for the
fulfilment of Dryden's promise in one of his prologues;103 no matter to
them whether it were the ghost of Almanzor's mother in her dripping
shroud,104 or that of Laius,105 who, according to the stage directions, rises
in his chariot, armed with the ghosts of his three murdered attendants
behind him;--a joke that did not escape l'Abbe le Blanc,106 in his
recipe for writing an English tragedy. Some, indeed, from time to time
called out for the “burning of the Pope;”107 but though

　　　　“Space was obedient to the boundless piece,
　　　　Which oped in Mexico and closed in Greece,”

it was not always possible to indulge them in this laudable amusement,
as the scene of the popular plays was generally laid in Africa or Spain;
Sir Robert Howard,108 Elkanah Settle,109 and John Dryden, all agreeing in
their choice of Spanish and Moorish subjects for their principal plays.
Among this joyous groupe were seated several women of fashion masked,
enjoying in secrecy the licentiousness which they dared not openly
patronise, and verifying Gay's characteristic description, though it was
written many years later,

　　　　“Mobbed in the gallery Laura sits secure,
　　　　And laughs at jests that turn the box demure.”110

Stanton gazed on all this with the look of one who “could not be moved
to smile at any thing.” He turned to the stage, the play was Alexander,111
then acted as written by Lee, and the principal character was performed
by Hart, whose god-like ardour in making love, is said almost to have
compelled the audience to believe that they beheld the “son of Ammon.”112

There were absurdities enough to offend a classical, or even a rational
spectator. There were Grecian heroes with roses in their shoes, feathers
in their hats, and wigs down to their waists; and Persian princesses in
stiff stays and powdered hair. But the illusion of the scene was well
sustained, for the heroines were rivals in real as well as theatrical
life. It was that memorable night, when, according to the history of the
veteran Betterton,113 Mrs Barry, who personated Roxana, had a green-room
squabble with Mrs Bowtell, the representative of Statira, about a veil,
which the partiality of the property-man adjudged to the latter. Roxana
suppressed her rage till the fifth act, when, stabbing Statira, she
aimed the blow with such force as to pierce through her stays, and
inflict a severe though not dangerous wound. Mrs Bowtell fainted, the
performance was suspended, and, in the commotion which this incident
caused in the house, many of the audience rose, and Stanton among them.114
It was at this moment that, in a seat opposite to him, he discovered the
object of his search for four years,--the Englishman whom he had met in
the plains of Valentia, and whom he believed the same with the subject
of the extraordinary narrative he had heard there.

He was standing up. There was nothing particular or remarkable in his
appearance, but the expression of his eyes could never be mistaken or
forgotten. The heart of Stanton palpitated with violence,--a mist
overspread his eyes,--a nameless and deadly sickness, accompanied with a
creeping sensation in every pore, from which cold drops were gushing,
announced the * * * * * * * * * *

Before he had well recovered, a strain of music, soft, solemn, and de-
licious, breathed round him, audibly ascending from the ground, and in-
creasing in sweetness and power till it seemed to fill the whole building.
Under the sudden impulse of amazement and pleasure, he inquired of some
around him from whence those exquisite sounds arose. But, by the manner
in which he was answered, it was plain that those he addressed consider-
ed him insane; and, indeed, the remarkable change in his expression
might well justify the suspicion. He then remembered that night in
Spain, when the same sweet and mysterious sounds were heard only by
the young bridegroom and bride, of whom the latter perished on that
very night. “And am I then to be the next victim?” thought Stanton;
“and are those celestial sounds, that seem to prepare us for heaven,
only intended to announce the presence of an incarnate fiend, who
mocks the devoted with ‘airs from heaven,'115 while he prepares to
surround them with ‘blasts from hell'?” It is very singular that
at this moment, when his imagination had reached its highest pitch
of elevation,--when the object he had pursued so long and fruitlessly,
had in one moment become as it were tangible to the grasp both of mind
and body,--when this spirit, with whom he had wrestled in darkness, was
at last about to declare its name, that Stanton began to feel a kind of
disappointment at the futility of his pursuits, like Bruce at discovering
the source of the Nile, or Gibbon on concluding his History.116 The feel-
ing which he had dwelt on so long, that he had actually converted it
into a duty, was after all mere curiosity; but what passion is more in-
satiable, or more capable of giving a kind of romantic grandeur to all
its wanderings and eccentricities? Curiosity is in one respect like
love, it always compromises between the object and the feeling; and
provided the latter possesses sufficient energy, no matter how con-
temptible the former may be. A child might have smiled at the agita-
tion of Stanton, caused as it was by the accidental appearance of a
stranger; but no man, in the full energy of his passions, was there, but
must have trembled at the horrible agony of emotion with which he felt
approaching, with sudden and irresistible velocity, the crisis of his
destiny.

When the play was over, he stood for some moments in the deserted
streets. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and he saw near him a
figure, whose shadow, projected half across the street, (there were no
flagged ways then, chains and posts were the only defence of the
foot-passenger), appeared to him of gigantic magnitude. He had been so
long accustomed to contend with these phantoms of the imagination, that
he took a kind of stubborn delight in subduing them. He walked up to the
object, and observing the shadow only was magnified, and the figure was
the ordinary height of man, he approached it, and discovered the very
object of his search,--the man whom he had seen for a moment in
Valentia, and, after a search of four years, recognised at the theatre.
* * * * * * * * * * *

“You were in quest of me?”--“I was.” “Have you any thing to inquire of
me?”--“Much.” “Speak, then.”--“This is no place.” “No place! poor
wretch, I am independent of time and place. Speak, if you have any thing
to ask or to learn?”--“I have many things to ask, but nothing to learn,
I hope, from you.” “You deceive yourself, but you will be undeceived
when next we meet.”--“And when shall that be?” said Stanton, grasping
his arm; “name your hour and your place.” “The hour shall be mid-day,”
answered the stranger, with a horrid and unintelligible smile; “and the
place shall be the bare walls of a mad-house, where you shall rise
rattling in your chains, and rustling from your straw, to greet me,--yet
still you shall have the curse of sanity, and of memory. My voice
shall ring in your ears till then, and the glance of these eyes shall be
reflected from every object, animate or inanimate, till you behold them
again.”--“Is it under circumstances so horrible we are to meet again?”
said Stanton, shrinking under the full-lighted blaze of those demon
eyes. “I never,” said the stranger, in an emphatic tone,--“I never
desert my friends in misfortune. When they are plunged in the lowest
abyss of human calamity, they are sure to be visited by me.” * * * * *

The narrative, when Melmoth was again able to trace its continuation,117
described Stanton, some years after, plunged in a state the most
deplorable.

He had been always reckoned of a singular turn of mind, and the belief
of this, aggravated by his constant talk of Melmoth, his wild pursuit of
him, his strange behaviour at the theatre, and his dwelling on the
various particulars of their extraordinary meetings, with all the
intensity of the deepest conviction, (while he never could impress them
on any one's conviction but his own), suggested to some prudent people
the idea that he was deranged. Their malignity probably took part with
their prudence. The selfish Frenchman118 says, we feel a pleasure even
in the misfortunes of our friends,--a plus forte in those of our
enemies; and as every one is an enemy to a man of genius of course, the
report of Stanton's malady was propagated with infernal and successful
industry. Stanton's next relative, a needy unprincipled man, watched the
report in its circulation, and saw the snares closing round his victim.
He waited on him one morning, accompanied by a person of a grave, though
somewhat repulsive appearance. Stanton was as usual abstracted and
restless, and, after a few moments conversation, he proposed a drive a
few miles out of London, which he said would revive and refresh him.
Stanton objected, on account of the difficulty of getting a hackney
coach, (for it is singular that at this period the number of private
equipages, though infinitely fewer than they are now, exceeded the
number of hired ones), and proposed going by water. This, however, did
not suit the kinsman's views; and, after pretending to send for a
carriage, (which was in waiting at the end of the street), Stanton and
his companions entered it, and drove about two miles out of London.

The carriage then stopped. “Come, Cousin,” said the younger
Stanton,--“come and view a purchase I have made.” Stanton absently
alighted, and followed him across a small paved court; the other person
followed. “In troth, Cousin,” said Stanton, “your choice appears not to
have been discreetly made; your house has something of a gloomy
aspect.”--“Hold you content, Cousin,” replied the other; “I shall take
order that you like it better, when you have been some time a dweller
therein.” Some attendants of a mean appearance, and with most suspicious
visages, awaited them on their entrance, and they ascended a narrow
staircase, which led to a room meanly furnished. “Wait here,” said the
kinsman, to the man who accompanied them, “till I go for company to
divertise my cousin in his loneliness.” They were left alone. Stanton
took no notice of his companion, but as usual seized the first book near
him, and began to read. It was a volume in manuscript,--they were then
much more common than now.

The first lines struck him as indicating insanity in the writer. It was
a wild proposal (written apparently after the great fire of London) to
rebuild it with stone, and attempting to prove, on a calculation wild,
false, and yet sometimes plausible, that this could be done out of the
colossal fragments of Stonehenge, which the writer proposed to remove
for that purpose. Subjoined were several grotesque drawings of engines
designed to remove those massive blocks, and in a corner of the page was
a note,--“I would have drawn these more accurately, but was not allowed
a knife to mend my pen.”

The next was entitled, “A modest proposal for the spreading of
Christianity in foreign parts, whereby it is hoped its entertainment
will become general all over the world.”--This modest proposal was, to
convert the Turkish ambassadors, (who had been in London a few years
before), by offering them their choice of being strangled on the spot,
or becoming Christians. Of course the writer reckoned on their embracing
the easier alternative, but even this was to be clogged with a heavy
condition,--namely, that they must be bound before a magistrate to
convert twenty mussulmans a day, on their return to Turkey. The rest of
the pamphlet was reasoned very much in the conclusive style of Captain
Bobadil,119--these twenty will convert twenty more a piece, and these
two hundred converts, converting their due number in the same time, all
Turkey would be converted before the Grand Signior knew where he was.
Then comes the coup d'eclat,--one fine morning, every minaret in
Constantinople was to ring out with bells, instead of the cry of the
Muezzins; and the Imaum, coming out to see what was the matter, was to
be encountered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in pontificalibus,120
performing Cathedral service in the church of St Sophia, which was to
finish the business. Here an objection appeared to arise, which the
ingenuity of the writer had anticipated.--“It may be redargued,” saith
he, “by those who have more spleen than brain, that forasmuch as the
Archbishop preacheth in English, he will not thereby much edify the
Turkish folk, who do altogether hold in a vain gabble of their own.” But
this (to use his own language) he “evites,” by judiciously observing,
that where service was performed in an unknown tongue, the devotion of
the people was always observed to be much increased thereby; as, for
instance, in the church of Rome,--that St Augustine, with his monks,
advanced to meet King Ethelbert singing litanies, (in a language his
majesty could not possibly have understood), and converted him and his
whole court on the spot;--that the sybilline books * * * * * * * *

Cum multis aliis.

Between the pages were cut most exquisitely in paper the likenesses of
some of these Turkish ambassadors; the hair of the beards, in particular,
was feathered with a delicacy of touch that seemed the work of fairy
fingers,--but the pages ended with a complaint of the operator, that
his scissars had been taken from him. However, he consoled himself
and the reader with the assurance, that he would that night catch a
moon-beam as it entered through the grating, and, when he had
whetted it on the iron knobs of his door, would do wonders with it. In
the next page was found a melancholy proof of powerful but prostrated
intellect. It contained some insane lines, ascribed to Lee the dramatic
poet, commencing,

　　　　“O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease,” &c.

There is no proof whatever that these miserable lines were really
written by Lee, except that the measure is the fashionable quatrain of
the period. It is singular that Stanton read on without suspicion of his
own danger, quite absorbed in the album of a mad-house, without ever
reflecting on the place where he was, and which such compositions too
manifestly designated.

It was after a long interval that he looked round, and perceived that
his companion was gone. Bells were unusual then. He proceeded to the
door,--it was fastened. He called aloud,--his voice was echoed in a
moment by many others, but in tones so wild and discordant, that he
desisted in involuntary terror. As the day advanced, and no one
approached, he tried the window, and then perceived for the first time
it was grated. It looked out on the narrow flagged yard, in which no
human being was; and if there had, from such a being no human feeling
could have been extracted.

Sickening with unspeakable horror, he sunk rather than sat down beside
the miserable window, and “wished for day.”

* * * *

At midnight he started from a doze, half a swoon, half a sleep, which
probably the hardness of his seat, and of the deal table on which he
leaned, had not contributed to prolong.

He was in complete darkness; the horror of his situation struck him at
once, and for a moment he was indeed almost qualified for an inmate of
that dreadful mansion. He felt his way to the door, shook it with
desperate strength, and uttered the most frightful cries, mixed with
expostulations and commands. His cries were in a moment echoed by a
hundred voices. In maniacs there is a peculiar malignity, accompanied by
an extraordinary acuteness of some of the senses, particularly in
distinguishing the voice of a stranger. The cries that he heard on every
side seemed like a wild and infernal yell of joy, that their mansion of
misery had obtained another tenant.

He paused, exhausted,--a quick and thundering step was heard in the
passage. The door was opened, and a man of savage appearance stood at
the entrance,--two more were seen indistinctly in the passage.--“Release
me, villain!” “Stop, my fine fellow, what's all this noise for?” “Where
am I?” “Where you ought to be.” “Will you dare to detain me?” “Yes,
and a little more than that,” answered the ruffian, applying a loaded
horse-whip to his back and shoulders, till the patient soon fell to the
ground convulsed with rage and pain. “Now you see you are where you
ought to be,” repeated the ruffian, brandishing the horse-whip over him,
“and now take the advice of a friend, and make no more noise. The lads
are ready for you with the darbies, and they'll clink them on in the
crack of this whip, unless you prefer another touch of it first.” They
then were advancing into the room as he spoke, with fetters in their
hands, (strait waistcoats being then little known or used), and shewed,
by their frightful countenances and gestures, no unwillingness to apply
them. Their harsh rattle on the stone pavement made Stanton's blood run
cold; the effect, however, was useful. He had the presence of mind to
acknowledge his (supposed) miserable condition, to supplicate the
forbearance of the ruthless keeper, and promise complete submission to
his orders. This pacified the ruffian, and he retired.

Stanton collected all his resolution to encounter the horrible night; he
saw all that was before him, and summoned himself to meet it. After
much agitated deliberation, he conceived it best to continue the same
appearance of submission and tranquillity, hoping that thus he might in
time either propitiate the wretches in whose hands he was, or, by his
apparent inoffensiveness, procure such opportunities of indulgence, as
might perhaps ultimately facilitate his escape. He therefore determined
to conduct himself with the utmost tranquillity, and never to let his
voice be heard in the house; and he laid down several other resolutions
with a degree of prudence which he already shuddered to think might be
the cunning of incipient madness, or the beginning result of the horrid
habits of the place.

These resolutions were put to desperate trial that very night. Just next
to Stanton's apartment were lodged two most uncongenial neighbours. One
of them was a puritanical weaver, who had been driven mad by a single
sermon from the celebrated Hugh Peters, and was sent to the mad-house
as full of election and reprobation as he could hold,--and fuller. He
regularly repeated over the five points while day-light lasted, and im-
agined himself preaching in a conventicle with distinguished success;
towards twilight his visions were more gloomy, and at midnight his
blasphemies became horrible. In the opposite cell was lodged a loyalist
tailor, who had been ruined by giving credit to the cavaliers and their
ladies,--(for at this time, and much later, down to the reign of Anne,
tailors were employed by females even to make and fit on their
stays),--who had run mad with drink and loyalty on the burning of the
Rump, and ever since had made the cells of the mad-house echo with
fragments of the ill-fated Colonel Lovelace's songs, scraps from Cow-
ley's “Cutter of Coleman street,” and some curious specimens from Mrs
Aphra Behn's plays, where the cavaliers are denominated the heroicks,
and Lady Lambert and Lady Desborough represented as going to meeting,
their large Bibles carried before them by their pages, and falling in
love with two banished cavaliers by the way.--“Tabitha, Tabitha,” cried
a voice half in exultation and half in derision; “thou shalt go with thy
hair curled, and thy breasts naked;”--and then added in an affected
voice,--“I could dance the Canaries once, spouse.” This never failed to
rouse the feelings, or rather operate on the instincts of the puritanic
weaver, who immediately answered, “Colonel Harrison shall come out of
the west, riding on a sky-coloured mule, which signifies instruction.”
“Ye lie, ye round-head son of a b----h,” roared the cavalier tailor,
“Colonel Harrison will be damned before he ever mounts a sky-coloured
mule;” and he concluded this pithy sentence with fragments of anti-
Oliverian songs.

　　　　“And may I live to see
　　　　Old Noll upon a tree,
　　　　And many such as he;
　　　　Confound him, confound him,
　　　　Diseases all around him.”

“Ye are honest gentlemen, I can play many tunes,” squeaked a poor mad
loyalist fiddler, who had been accustomed to play in the taverns to the
cavalier party, and just remembered the words of a similar minstrel
playing for Colonel Blunt in the committee. “Then play me the air to
“Rebellion is breaking up house,” exclaimed the tailor, dancing wildly
about his cell (as far as his chains allowed him) to an imaginary
measure. The weaver could contain no longer. “How long, Lord, how long,”
he exclaimed, “shall thine enemies insult thy sanctuary, in which I have
been placed an anointed teacher? even here, where I am placed to preach
to the souls in prison?--Open the flood-gates of thy power, and though
thy waves and storms go over me, let me testify in the midst of them,
even as he who spreadeth forth his hands to swim may raise one of them
to warn his companion that he is about to sink.--Sister Ruth, why dost
thou uncover thy bosom to discover my frailty?--Lord, let thine arm of
power be with us as it was when thou brakest the shield, the sword, and
the battle,--when thy foot was dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and
the tongue of thy dogs was red through the same.--Dip all thy garments
in blood, and let me weave thee fresh when thou art stained.--When shall
thy saints tread the wine-press of thy wrath? Blood! blood! the saints
call for it, earth gapes to swallow it, hell thirsts for it!--Sister
Ruth, I pray thee, conceal thy bosom, and be not as the vain women of
this generation.--Oh for a day like that, a day of the Lord of hosts,
when the towers fell!--Spare me in the battle, for I am not a mighty man
of war; leave me in the rear of the host, to curse, with the curse of
Meroz, those who come not to the help of the Lord against the
mighty,--even to curse this malignant tailor,--yea, curse him
bitterly.--Lord, I am in the tents of Kedar, my feet stumble on the dark
mountains,--I fall,--I fall!”--And the poor wretch, exhausted by his
delirious agonies, fell, and grovelled for some time in his straw. “Oh!
I have had a grievous fall,--Sister Ruth,--Oh Sister Ruth!--Rejoice not
against me, Oh mine enemy! though I fall, I shall rise again.” Whatever
satisfaction Sister Ruth might have derived from this assurance, if she
could have heard it, was enjoyed tenfold by the weaver, whose amorous
reminiscences were in a moment exchanged for war-like ones, borrowed
from a wretched and disarranged mass of intellectual rubbish. “The Lord
is a man of war,” he shouted.--“Look to Marston Moor!--Look to the city,
the proud city, full of pride and sin!--Look to the waves of the Severn,
as red with blood as the waves of the Red Sea!--There were the hoofs
broken by means of the prancings, the prancings of the mighty
ones.--Then, Lord, was thy triumph, and the triumph of thy saints, to
bind their kings in chains, and their nobles in links of iron.” The
malignant tailor burst out in his turn: “Thank the false Scots, and
their solemn league and covenant, and Carisbrook Castle, for that, ye
crop-eared Puritan,” he yelled. “If it had not been for them, I would
have taken measure of the king for a velvet cloak as high as the Tower
of London, and one flirt of its folds would have knocked the “copper
nose” into the Thames, and sent it a-drift to Hell.” “Ye lie, in your
teeth,” echoed the weaver; “and I will prove it unarmed, with my shuttle
against your needle, and smite you to the earth thereafter, as David
smote Goliath. It was the man's (such was the indecent language in
which Charles the First was spoken of by the Puritans)--it was the man's
carnal, self-seeking, world-loving, prelatical hierarchy, that drove the
godly to seek the sweet word in season from their own pastors, who
righteously abominated the Popish garniture of lawn-sleeves, lewd
organs, and steeple houses. Sister Ruth, tempt me not with that calf's
head, it is all streaming with blood;--drop it, I beseech thee, sister,
it is unmeet in a woman's hand, though the brethren drink of it.--Woe be
unto thee, gainsayer, dost thou not see how flames envelope the accursed
city under his Arminian and Popish son?--London is on fire!--on fire!”
he yelled; “and the brands are lit by the half-papist, whole-arminian,
all-damned people thereof.--Fire!--fire!” The voice in which he shrieked
out the last words was powerfully horrible, but it was like the moan of
an infant, compared to the voice which took up and re-echoed the cry, in
a tone that made the building shake. It was the voice of a maniac, who
had lost her husband, children, subsistence, and finally her reason, in
the dreadful fire of London. The cry of fire never failed to operate
with terrible punctuality on her associations. She had been in a
disturbed sleep, and now started from it as suddenly as on that dreadful
night. It was Saturday night, too, and she was always observed to be
particularly violent on that night,--it was the terrible weekly festival
of insanity with her. She was awake, and busy in a moment escaping from
the flames; and she dramatized the whole scene with such hideous
fidelity, that Stanton's resolution was far more in danger from her than
from the battle between his neighbours Testimony and Hothead. She
began exclaiming she was suffocated by the smoke; then she sprung from
her bed, calling for a light, and appeared to be struck by the sudden
glare that burst through her casement.--“The last day,” she shrieked,
“The last day! The very heavens are on fire!”--“That will not come till
the Man of Sin be first destroyed,” cried the weaver; “thou ravest of
light and fire, and yet thou art in utter darkness.--I pity thee, poor
mad soul, I pity thee!” The maniac never heeded him; she appeared to be
scrambling up a stair-case to her children's room. She exclaimed she
was scorched, singed, suffocated; her courage appeared to fail, and she
retreated. “But my children are there!” she cried in a voice of un-
speakable agony, as she seemed to make another effort; “here I am
--here I am come to save you.--Oh God! They are all blazing!--Take
this arm--no, not that, it is scorched and disabled--well, any arm--take
hold of my clothes--no, they are blazing too!--Well, take me all on fire
as I am!--And their hair, how it hisses!--Water, one drop of water for
my youngest--he is but an infant--for my youngest, and let me burn!”
She paused in horrid silence, to watch the fall of a blazing rafter that
was about to shatter the stair-case on which she stood.--“The roof
has fallen on my head!” she exclaimed. “The earth is weak, and all the
inhabitants thereof,” chaunted the weaver; “I bear up the pillars of
it.”

The maniac marked the destruction of the spot where she thought
she stood by one desperate bound, accompanied by a wild shriek, and
then calmly gazed on her infants as they rolled over the scorching
fragments, and sunk into the abyss of fire below. “There they go,--
one--two--three--all!” and her voice sunk into low mutterings, and
her convulsions into faint, cold shudderings, like the sobbings of a
spent storm, as she imagined herself to “stand in safety and despair,”
amid the thousand houseless wretches assembled in the suburbs of Lon-
don on the dreadful nights after the fire, without food, roof, or raiment,
all gazing on the burning ruins of their dwellings and their property.
She seemed to listen to their complaints, and even repeated some of them
very affectingly, but invariably answered them with the same words, “But
I have lost all my children--all!” It was remarkable, that when this
sufferer began to rave, all the others became silent. The cry of nature
hushed every other cry,--she was the only patient in the house who was
not mad from politics, religion, ebriety, or some perverted passion; and
terrifying as the outbreak of her frenzy always was, Stanton used to
await it as a kind of relief from the dissonant, melancholy, and
ludicrous ravings of the others.

But the utmost efforts of his resolution began to sink under the
continued horrors of the place. The impression on his senses began to
defy the power of reason to resist them. He could not shut out these
frightful cries nightly repeated, nor the frightful sound of the whip
employed to still them. Hope began to fail him, as he observed, that the
submissive tranquillity (which he had imagined, by obtaining increased
indulgence, might contribute to his escape, or perhaps convince the
keeper of his sanity) was interpreted by the callous ruffian, who was
acquainted only with the varieties of madness, as a more refined
species of that cunning which he was well accustomed to watch and
baffle.

On his first discovery of his situation, he had determined to take the
utmost care of his health and intellect that the place allowed, as the
sole basis of his hope of deliverance. But as that hope declined, he
neglected the means of realizing it. He had at first risen early, walked
incessantly about his cell, and availed himself of every opportunity of
being in the open air. He took the strictest care of his person in point
of cleanliness, and with or without appetite, regularly forced down his
miserable meals; and all these efforts were even pleasant, as long as
hope prompted them. But now he began to relax them all. He passed half
the day in his wretched bed, in which he frequently took his meals,
declined shaving or changing his linen, and, when the sun shone into
his cell, turned from it on his straw with a sigh of heart-broken
despondency. Formerly, when the air breathed through his grating, he
used to say, “Blessed air of heaven, I shall breathe you once more in
freedom!--Reserve all your freshness for that delicious evening when I
shall inhale you, and be as free as you myself.” Now when he felt it, he
sighed and said nothing. The twitter of the sparrows, the pattering of
rain, or the moan of the wind, sounds that he used to sit up in his bed
to catch with delight, as reminding him of nature, were now unheeded.

He began at times to listen with sullen and horrible pleasure to the
cries of his miserable companions. He became squalid, listless, torpid,
and disgusting in his appearance. * * * * * * *

It was one of those dismal nights, that, as he tossed on his loathsome
bed,--more loathsome from the impossibility to quit it without feeling
more “unrest,”--he perceived the miserable light that burned in the
hearth was obscured by the intervention of some dark object. He turned
feebly towards the light, without curiosity, without excitement, but
with a wish to diversify the monotony of his misery, by observing the
slightest change made even accidentally in the dusky atmosphere of his
cell. Between him and the light stood the figure of Melmoth, just as he
had seen him from the first; the figure was the same; the expression of
the face was the same,--cold, stony, and rigid; the eyes, with their
infernal and dazzling lustre, were still the same.

Stanton's ruling passion rushed on his soul; he felt this apparition
like a summons to a high and fearful encounter. He heard his heart beat
audibly, and could have exclaimed with Lee's unfortunate heroine,--“It
pants as cowards do before a battle; Oh the great march has sounded!”

Melmoth approached him with that frightful calmness that mocks the
terror it excites. “My prophecy has been fulfilled;--you rise to meet
me rattling from your chains, and rustling from your straw--am I not
a true prophet?” Stanton was silent. “Is not your situation very
miserable?”--Still Stanton was silent; for he was beginning to believe
this an illusion of madness. He thought to himself, “How could he have
gained entrance here?”--“Would you not wish to be delivered from it?”
Stanton tossed on his straw, and its rustling seemed to answer the ques-
tion. “I have the power to deliver you from it.” Melmoth spoke very
slowly and very softly, and the melodious smoothness of his voice made
a frightful contrast to the stony rigour of his features, and the fiend-
like brilliancy of his eyes. “Who are you, and whence come you?”said
Stanton, in a tone that was meant to be interrogatory and imperative,
but which, from his habits of squalid debility, was at once feeble and
querulous. His intellects had become affected by the gloom of his mis-
erable habitation, as the wretched inmate of a similar mansion, when
produced before a medical examiner, was reported to be a complete
Albinos.--“His skin was bleached, his eyes turned white; he could not
bear the light; and, when exposed to it, he turned away with a mixture
of weakness and restlessness, more like the writhings of a sick infant
than the struggles of a man.”

Such was Stanton's situation; he was enfeebled now, and the power of
the enemy seemed without a possibility of opposition from either his
intellectual or corporeal powers. * * * * * * * *

Of all their horrible dialogue, only these words were legible in the
manuscript, “You know me now.”--“I always knew you.”--“That is false;
you imagined you did, and that has been the cause of all the wild * * *
* * * * * * of the * * * * *

of your finally being lodged in this mansion of misery, where only I
would seek, where only I can succour you.” “You, demon!”--“Demon!
--Harsh words!--Was it a demon or a human being placed you here?--
Listen to me, Stanton; nay, wrap not yourself in that miserable blan-
ket,--that cannot shut out my words. Believe me, were you folded in
thunder-clouds, you must hear me! Stanton, think of your misery.
These bare walls--what do they present to the intellect or to the
senses?--White-wash, diversified with the scrawls of charcoal or red
chalk, that your happy predecessors have left for you to trace over.
You have a taste for drawing,--I trust it will improve. And here's a
grating, through which the sun squints on you like a step-dame, and
the breeze blows, as if it meant to tantalize you with a sigh from
that sweet mouth, whose kiss you must never enjoy. And where's your
library,--intellectual man,--travelled man?” he repeated in a tone
of bitter derision; “where be your companions, your peaked men of
countries, as your favourite Shakespeare has it? You must be content
with the spider and the rat, to crawl and scratch round your flock-bed!
I have known prisoners in the Bastile to feed them for companions,--why
don't you begin your task? I have known a spider to descend at the tap
of a finger, and a rat to come forth when the daily meal was brought,
to share it with his fellow-prisoner!--How delightful to have vermin
for your guests! Aye, and when the feast fails them, they make a meal
of their entertainer!--You shudder--Are you, then, the first prisoner
who has been devoured alive by the vermin that infested his cell?--
Delightful banquet, not “where you eat, but where you are eaten!
Your guests, however, will give you one token of repentance while they
feed; there will be gnashing of teeth, and you shall hear it, and feel
it too perchance!--And then for meals--Oh you are daintily off!--The
soup that the cat has lapped; and (as her progeny has probably con-
tributed to the hell-broth) why not?---- Then your hours of solitude,
deliciously diversified by the yell of famine, the howl of madness, the
crash of whips, and the broken-hearted sob of those who, like you, are
supposed, or driven mad by the crimes of others!--Stanton, do you
imagine your reason can possibly hold out amid such scenes?--Supposing
your reason was unimpaired, your health not destroyed,--suppose all
this, which is, after all, more than fair supposition can grant, guess
the effect of the continuance of these scenes on your senses alone.
A time will come, and soon, when, from mere habit, you will echo the
scream of every delirious wretch that harbours near you; then you will
pause, clasp your hands on your throbbing head, and listen with horrible
anxiety whether the scream proceeded from you or them. The time will
come, when, from the want of occupation, the listless and horrible
vacancy of your hours, you will feel as anxious to hear those shrieks,
as you were at first terrified to hear them,--when you will watch for
the ravings of your next neighbour, as you would for a scene on the
stage. All humanity will be extinguished in you. The ravings of these
wretches will become at once your sport and your torture. You will watch
for the sounds, to mock them with the grimaces and bellowings of a
fiend. The mind has a power of accommodating itself to its situation,
that you will experience in its most frightful and deplorable efficacy.
Then comes the dreadful doubt of one's own sanity, the terrible
announcer that that doubt will soon become fear, and that fear
certainty. Perhaps (still more dreadful) the fear will at last become
a hope,--shut out from society, watched by a brutal keeper, writhing
with all the impotent agony of an incarcerated mind, without com-
munication and without sympathy, unable to exchange ideas but with
those whose ideas are only the hideous spectres of departed intellect,
or even to hear the welcome sound of the human voice, except to
mistake it for the howl of a fiend, and stop the ear desecrated by its
intrusion,--then at last your fear will become a more fearful hope; you
will wish to become one of them, to escape the agony of consciousness.
As those who have long leaned over a precipice, have at last felt a
desire to plunge below, to relieve the intolerable temptation of their
giddiness(11), you will hear them laugh amid their wildest paroxysms;
you will say, ‘Doubtless those wretches have some consolation, but I
have none; my sanity is my greatest curse in this abode of horrors. They
greedily devour their miserable meals, while I loathe mine. They sleep
sometimes soundly, while my sleep is--worse than their waking. They are
revived every morning by some delicious illusion of cunning madness,
soothing them with the hope of escaping, baffling or tormenting their
keeper; my sanity precludes all such hope. I know I never can escape,
and the preservation of my faculties is only an aggravation of my
sufferings. I have all their miseries,--I have none of their consolations.
They laugh,--I hear them; would I could laugh like them.'You will try,
and the very effort will be an invocation to the demon of insanity to
come and take full possession of you from that moment for ever.

(There were other details, both of the menaces and temptations employed
by Melmoth, which are too horrible for insertion. One of them may serve
for an instance).

“You think that the intellectual power is something distinct from the
vitality of the soul, or, in other words, that if even your reason
should be destroyed, (which it nearly is), your soul might yet enjoy
beatitude in the full exercise of its enlarged and exalted faculties,
and all the clouds which obscured them be dispelled by the Sun of
Righteousness, in whose beams you hope to bask for ever and ever. Now,
without going into any metaphysical subtleties about the distinction
between mind and soul, experience must teach you, that there can be no
crime into which madmen would not, and do not precipitate themselves;
mischief is their occupation, malice their habit, murder their sport,
and blasphemy their delight. Whether a soul in this state can be in a
hopeful one, it is for you to judge; but it seems to me, that with the
loss of reason, (and reason cannot long be retained in this place), you
lose also the hope of immortality.--Listen,” said the tempter, pausing,
“listen to the wretch who is raving near you, and whose blasphemies
might make a demon start.--He was once an eminent puritanical preacher.
Half the day he imagines himself in a pulpit, denouncing damnation
against Papists, Arminians, and even Sub-lapsarians, (he being a
Supra-lapsarian himself). He foams, he writhes, he gnashes his teeth;
you would imagine him in the hell he was painting, and that the fire and
brimstone he is so lavish of, were actually exhaling from his jaws. At
night his creed retaliates on him; he believes himself one of the rep-
robates he has been all day denouncing, and curses God for the very
decree he has all day been glorifying Him for.

“He, whom he has for twelve hours been vociferating “is the loveliest
among ten thousand,” becomes the object of demoniac hostility and
execration. He grapples with the iron posts of his bed, and says he is
rooting out the cross from the very foundations of Calvary; and it is
remarkable, that in proportion as his morning exercises are intense,
vivid, and eloquent, his nightly blasphemies are outrageous and
horrible.--Hark! Now he believes himself a demon; listen to his
diabolical eloquence of horror!”

Stanton listened, and shuddered * * * * * *

“Escape--escape for your life,” cried the tempter; “break forth
into life, liberty, and sanity. Your social happiness, your intellect-
ual powers, your immortal interests, perhaps, depend on the choice of
this moment.--There is the door, and the key is my hand. Choose--
choose!”--“And how comes the key in your hand? and what is the
condition of my liberation?” said Stanton.
* * * * * * *

The explanation occupied several pages, which, to the torture of young
Melmoth, were wholly illegible. It seemed, however, to have been
rejected by Stanton with the utmost rage and horror, for Melmoth at last
made out,--“Begone, monster, demon!--begone to your native place. Even
this mansion of horror trembles to contain you; its walls sweat, and its
floors quiver, while you tread them.” * * * * * * * *

The conclusion of this extraordinary manuscript was in such a state,
that, in fifteen mouldy and crumbling pages, Melmoth could hardly make
out that number of lines. No antiquarian, unfolding with trembling hand
the calcined leaves of an Herculaneum manuscript, and hoping to discover
some lost lines of the Æneis in Virgil's own autograph, or at least some
unutterable abomination of Petronius or Martial, happily elucidatory of
the mysteries of the Spintriæ, or the orgies of the Phallic worshippers,
ever pored with more luckless diligence, or shook a head of more
hopeless despondency over his task. He could but just make out what
tended rather to excite than assuage that feverish thirst of curiosity
which was consuming his inmost soul. The manuscript told no more of
Melmoth, but mentioned that Stanton was finally liberated from his
confinement,--that his pursuit of Melmoth was incessant and inde-
fatigable,--that he himself allowed it to be a species of insanity,
--that while he acknowledged it to be the master-passion, he
also felt it the master-torment of his life. He again visited the
Continent, returned to England,--pursued, inquired, traced, bribed, but
in vain. The being whom he had met thrice, under circumstances so
extraordinary, he was fated never to encounter again in his life-time.
At length, discovering that he had been born in Ireland, he resolved to
go there,--went, and found his pursuit again fruitless, and his
inquiries unanswered. The family knew nothing of him, or at least what
they knew or imagined, they prudently refused to disclose to a stranger,
and Stanton departed unsatisfied. It is remarkable, that he too, as
appeared from many half-obliterated pages of the manuscript, never
disclosed to mortal the particulars of their conversation in the
mad-house; and the slightest allusion to it threw him into fits of rage
and gloom equally singular and alarming. He left the manuscript,
however, in the hands of the family, possibly deeming, from their
incuriosity, their apparent indifference to their relative, or their
obvious inacquaintance with reading of any kind, manuscript or books,
his deposit would be safe. He seems, in fact, to have acted like men,
who, in distress at sea, intrust their letters and dispatches to a
bottle sealed, and commit it to the waves. The last lines of the
manuscript that were legible, were sufficiently extraordinary.
* * * * * *

“I have sought him every where.--The desire of meeting him once more,
is become as a burning fire within me,--it is the necessary condition of
my existence. I have vainly sought him at last in Ireland, of which I find
he is a native.--Perhaps our final meeting will be in * * * * * *

Such was the conclusion of the manuscript which Melmoth found in his
uncle's closet. When he had finished it, he sunk down on the table near
which he had been reading it, his face hid in his folded arms, his
senses reeling, his mind in a mingled state of stupor and excitement.
After a few moments, he raised himself with an involuntary start, and
saw the picture gazing at him from its canvas. He was within ten inches
of it as he sat, and the proximity appeared increased by the strong
light that was accidentally thrown on it, and its being the only repre-
sentation of a human figure in the room. Melmoth felt for a moment
as if he were about to receive an explanation from its lips.

He gazed on it in return,--all was silent in the house,--they were alone
together. The illusion subsided at length; and as the mind rapidly
passes to opposite extremes, he remembered the injunction of his uncle
to destroy the portrait. He seized it;--his hand shook at first, but the
mouldering canvas appeared to assist him in the effort. He tore it from
the frame with a cry half terrific, half triumphant;--it fell at his
feet, and he shuddered as it fell. He expected to hear some fearful
sounds, some unimaginable breathings of prophetic horror, follow this
act of sacrilege, for such he felt it, to tear the portrait of his ances-
tor from his native walls. He paused and listened:--“There was no
voice, nor any that answered;”--but as the wrinkled and torn canvas
fell to the floor, its undulations gave the portrait the appearance of
smiling. Melmoth felt horror indescribable at this transient and
imaginary resuscitation of the figure. He caught it up, rushed into the
next room, tore, cut, and hacked it in every direction, and eagerly
watched the fragments that burned like tinder in the turf-fire which had
been lit in his room. As Melmoth saw the last blaze, he threw himself
into bed, in hope of a deep and intense sleep. He had done what was
required of him, and felt exhausted both in mind and body; but his
slumber was not so sound as he had hoped for. The sullen light of the
turf-fire, burning but never blazing, disturbed him every moment. He
turned and turned, but still there was the same red light glaring on,
but not illuminating, the dusky furniture of the apartment. The wind was
high that night, and as the creaking door swung on its hinges, every
noise seemed like the sound of a hand struggling with the lock, or of a
foot pausing on the threshold. But (for Melmoth never could decide) was
it in a dream or not, that he saw the figure of his ancestor appear at
the door?--hesitatingly as he saw him at first on the night of his
uncle's death,--saw him enter the room, approach his bed, and heard
him whisper, “You have burned me, then; but those are flames I can
survive.--I am alive,--I am beside you.” Melmoth started, sprung from
his bed,--it was broad day-light. He looked round,--there was no human
being in the room but himself. He felt a slight pain in the wrist of his
right arm. He looked at it, it was black and blue, as from the recent
gripe of a strong hand.



CHAPTER IV.


Haste with your weapons, cut the shrouds and stay,
And hew at once the mizen-mast away.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　FALCONER.121



The following evening Melmoth retired early. The restlessness of the
preceding night inclined him to repose, and the gloom of the day left
him nothing to wish for but its speedy conclusion. It was now the lat-
ter end of Autumn; heavy clouds had all day been passing laggingly
and gloomily along the atmosphere, as the hours of such a day pass
over the human mind and life. Not a drop of rain fell; the clouds went
portentously off, like ships of war after reconnoitering a strong fort,
to return with added strength and fury. The threat was soon fulfilled;
the evening came on, prematurely darkened by clouds that seemed
surcharged with a deluge. Loud and sudden squalls of wind shook the
house from time to time, and then as suddenly ceased. Towards night
the storm came on in all its strength; Melmoth's bed was shaken so
as to render it impossible to sleep. He “liked the rocking of the bat-
tlements,” but by no means liked the expected fall of the chimneys,
the crashing in of the roof, and the splinters of the broken windows
that were already scattered about his room. He rose and went down to
the kitchen, where he knew a fire was burning, and there the terrified
servants were all assembled, all agreeing, as the blast came roaring
down the chimney, they never had witnessed such a storm, and be-
tween the gusts, breathing shuddering prayers for those who were
“out at sea that night.” The vicinity of Melmoth's house to what
sea-men call an iron-bound coast, gave a dreadful sincerity to their
prayers and their fears.

In a short time, however, Melmoth perceived that their minds were
occupied with terrors beside those of the storm. The recent death of
his uncle, and the supposed visit of that extraordinary being in whose
existence they all firmly believed, were connected in their minds in-
separably with the causes or consequences of this tempest, and they
whispered their fearful suggestions to each other, till the sound reach-
ed Melmoth's ears at every step that he measured across the broken
floor of the kitchen. Terror is very fond of associations;122 we love to
connect the agitation of the elements with the agitated life of man;
and never did a blast roar, or a gleam of lightning flash, that was not
connected in the imagination of some one, with a calamity that was to
be dreaded, deprecated, or endured,--with the fate of the living, or the
destination of the dead. The tremendous storm that shook all England on
the night of Cromwell's death,123 gave the hint to his puritanic chaplains
to declare, that the Lord had caught him up in the whirlwind and chariot
of fire, even thereafter, as he caught the prophet Elijah; while all the
cavalier party, putting their own construction on the matter, proclaimed
their confidence, that the Prince of the power of the air was vindi-
cating his right, and carrying off the body of his victim (whose soul
had long been his purchase) in a tempest, whose wild howl and tri-
umphant ravage might have been variously, and with equal justice,
interpreted by each party as giving testimony to their mutual de-
nunciations. Just such a party (mutatis mutandis)124 were collected
round the bickering fire and rocking chimney in Melmoth's kitchen. “He
is going in that blast,” said one of the hags, taking the pipe from her
mouth, and trying vainly to rekindle it among the embers that the storm
scattered about like dust; “he is going in that blast.”--“He'll come
again,” cried another Sybil, “he'll come again,--he's not at rest!--He
roams and wails about till something is told that he never could tell in
his life-time.--G-d save us!” she added, howling up the chimney, as if
addressing the troubled spirit; “tell us what you want, and stop the
blast, will ye?”--The wind came like thunder down the chimney; the hag
shuddered and retreated. “If it's this you want--and this--and this,”
cried a young female whom Melmoth had not noticed before, “take them;”
and she eagerly tore the papers out of her hair, and flung them into the
fire. Then Melmoth recollected a ridiculous story told him the day
before of this girl, who had had the “bad luck,” as she called it, to
curl her hair with some of the old and useless law-papers of the family,
and who now imagined that they “who kept this dreadful pudder o'er her
head,”125 were particularly provoked by her still retaining about her
whatever belonged to the deceased; and as she flung the fragments of
paper into the fire, she cried aloud, “There stop for the holy J----s'
sake, and let us have no more about it!--You have what you wanted, and
will you have done?” The laugh that Melmoth could hardly resist, was
checked by a sound which he heard distinctly amid the storm.
“Hush--silence! that was a signal gun!--there is a vessel in distress.”
They all paused and listened. We have already mentioned the closeness of
Melmoth's abode to the sea-shore. This had well accustomed its inmates
to all the terrors of shipwrecked vessels and drowning passengers. To
their honour be it spoken, they never heard those sounds but as a claim,
a piteous, irresistible claim on their humanity. They knew nothing of
the barbarous practice on the English coast, of fastening a lanthorn to
the limbs of a spanselled126 horse, whose plungings were to misdirect the
wrecked and sinking wretches, in the vain hope that the light they saw
was a beacon, and thus to double the horrors of death by the baffled
expectation of relief.

The party in the kitchen all watched Melmoth's countenance intently, as
if its expression could have told them “the secrets of the hoary deep.”127
The storm ceased for a moment, and there was a deep and dreary silence
of fearful expectation. The sound was heard again,--it could not be
mistaken. “It is a gun,” cried Melmoth; “there is a vessel in distress!”
and he hurried out of the kitchen, calling on the men to follow him.

The men partook eagerly of the excitement of enterprise and danger. A
storm without doors is, after all, better than a storm within; without
we have something to struggle with, within we have only to suffer; and
the severest storm, by exciting the energy of its victim, gives at once
a stimulus to action, and a solace to pride, which those must want who
sit shuddering between rocking walls, and almost driven to wish they had
only to suffer, not to fear.

While the men were in search of a hundred coats, boots, and hats of
their old master, to be sought for in every part of the house,--while
one was dragging a great coat from the window, before which it had long
hung as a blind, in total default of glass or shutters,--another was
snatching a wig from the jack,128 where it had been suspended for a
duster,--and a third was battling with a cat and her brood of kittens
for a pair of old boots which she had been pleased to make the seat of
her accouchement,--Melmoth had gone up to the highest room in the house.
The window was driven in;--had there been light, this window commanded a
view of the sea and the coast. He leaned far out of it, and listened
with fearful and breathless anxiety. The night was dark, but far off,
his sight, sharpened by intense solicitude, descried a light at sea. The
gust drove him from the window for a moment; at returning the next, he
saw a faint flash, and then the report of a gun followed.

There needed no more; and in a few moments after, Melmoth was on the
shore. Their way was short, and they walked with their utmost speed; but
the violence of the storm made their progress very slow, and their
anxiety made it seem still slower. From time to time they said to each
other, in choaked and breathless accents, “Call up the people in those
cabbins--there is a light in that house--they are all up--no wonder--who
could sleep in such a night--hold the lanthorn low--it is impossible to
keep footing on the strand.” “Another gun!” they exclaimed, as the flash
faintly broke through the darkness, and the heavy sound rolled round the
shore, as if fired over the grave of the sufferers. “Here's the rock,
hold fast, and cling together.” They scaled it. “Great God!” cried
Melmoth, who was among the first, “what a night! and what a spec-
tacle!--Hold up your lanthorns--do you hear cries?--shout to them
--tell them there is help and hope near them.--Stay,” he added, “let
me scramble up that crag--they will hear my voice from that.” He
dashed desperately through the water, while the foam of the breakers
from a distant rock almost choaked him, gained the point, and, elated
by his success, shouted aloud with his utmost strength. But his voice,
baffled and drowned by the tempest, was lost even to his own hearing.
Its sound was faint and querulous, more like the wail of grief, than the
encouraging cry of hope. At this moment, the racking clouds flying
rapidly across the sky, like the scattered fugitives of a routed army,
the moon burst forth with the sudden and appalling effulgence of
lightning. Melmoth caught a full view of the vessel, and of her danger.
She lay beating against a rock, over which the breakers dashed their
foam to the height of thirty feet. She was half in the water, a mere
hulk, her rigging torn to shreds, her main mast cut away, and every sea
she shipped, Melmoth could hear distinctly the dying cries of those who
were swept away, or perhaps of those whose mind and body, alike ex-
hausted, relaxed their benumbed hold of hope and life together,--knew
that the next shriek that was uttered must be their own and their last.
There is something so very horrible in the sight of human beings per-
ishing so near us, that we feel one firm step rightly planted, one arm
steadily held out, might save at least one,--yet feel we know not where
to fix that step, and cannot stretch that arm, that Melmoth's senses
reeled under the shock, and for a moment he echoed the storm with
yells of actual insanity.129 By this time the country, having been alarmed
by the news of a vessel going to pieces on the shore, had poured down
in multitudes; and those who, from experience or confidence, or even
ignorance, repeated incessantly, “it is impossible to save her,--every
soul on board must perish,” involuntarily quickened their steps as they
uttered the words, as if they were anxious to behold the fulfilment of
their own prediction, while they appeared hurrying to avert it.

Of one man, in particular, it was observed, that during their hurried
rush to the shore, he was, with what breath his haste allowed him,
assuring the rest every moment, “she would be down before they could
get there,” and heard the ejaculations of “Christ save us! don't say
that,” “No, please God, we'll do some good,” with a laugh almost of
triumph. When they arrived, this man scaled a rock at the risk of his life,
caught a view of the vessel, pointed out her desperate situation to
those below, and shouted, “Didn't I tell you so? wasn't I right?” And as
the storm increased, his voice was still heard, “wasn't I right?” And
when the cries of the perishing crew were distinctly wafted to their
ears, he was still heard in the interval repeating, “But wasn't I
right?” Singular sentiment of pride, that can erect its trophies amid
the grave. 'Tis in this spirit we give advice to those who suffer from
life, as well as from the elements; and when the heart of the victim
breaks, console ourselves by exclaiming, “Didn't I foretell it all?
did I not tell you how it would be?” It is remarkable that this man lost
his life that very night in the most desperate and fruitless attempt to
save the life of one of the crew who was swimming within six yards130 of
him. The whole shore was now crowded with helpless gazers, every crag
and cliff was manned; it seemed like a battle fought at once by sea and
land, between hope and despair. No effectual assistance could be
rendered,--not a boat could live in that gale,--yet still, and to the
last, cheers were heard from rock to rock,--terrible cheers, that
announced safety was near and--impossible;--lanthorns held aloft in all
directions, that displayed to the sufferers the shore all peopled with
life, and the roaring and impassable waves between;--ropes flung out,
with loud cries of help and encouragement, and caught at by some
chilled, nerveless, and despairing hand, that only grasped the wave,--
relaxed its hold,--was tossed once over the sinking head,--and
then seen no more. It was at this moment that Melmoth, starting from
his trance of terror, and looking round him, saw all, to the number of
hundreds, anxious, restless, and occupied; and, though obviously in
vain, the sight cheered his heart. “How much good there is in man,” he
cried, “when it is called forth by the sufferings of his fellows!” He
had no leisure or inclination, then, to analyse the compound he called
good,131 and resolve it into its component parts of curiosity, strong
excitement, the pride of physical strength, or the comparative
consciousness of safety. He had, indeed, no leisure, for just then he
descried, standing a few yards above him on the rock, a figure that
shewed neither sympathy or terror,--uttered no sound,--offered no help.
Melmoth could hardly keep his footing on the slippery and rocking crag
on which he stood; the figure, who stood still higher, appeared alike
unmoved by the storm, as by the spectacle. Melmoth's surtout, in spite
of his efforts to wrap it round him, was fluttering in rags,--not a
thread of the stranger's garments seemed ruffled by the blast. But this
did not strike him so much as his obvious insensibility to the distress
and terror around him, and he exclaimed aloud, “Good God! is it possible
that any thing bearing the human form should stand there without making
an effort, without expressing a feeling, for those perishing wretches!”
A pause ensued, or the blast carried away the sound; but a few moments
after, Melmoth distinctly heard the words, “Let them perish.” He looked
up, the figure still stood unmoved, the arms folded across the breast,
the foot advanced, and fixed as in defiance of the white and climbing
spray of the wave, and the stern profile caught in the glimpses of the
stormy and doubtful moon-light, seeming to watch the scene with an
expression formidable, revolting, and unnatural. At this moment, a
tremendous wave breaking over the deck of the hulk, extorted a cry of
horror from the spectators; they felt as if they were echoing that of
the victims whose corses were in a few moments to be dashed against
their feet, mangled and lifeless.

When the cry had ceased, Melmoth heard a laugh that chilled his blood.
It was from the figure that stood above him. Like lightning then glanced
on his memory the recollection of that night in Spain, when Stanton
first encountered that extraordinary being, whose charmed life, “defying
space and time,” held such fatal influence over his, and when he first
recognised his supposed demoniac character by the laugh with which he
hailed the spectacle of the blasted lovers. The echo of that laugh rung
in Melmoth's ears; he believed it was indeed that mysterious being who
was standing so near him. His mind, by its late intense and bewildering
pursuits, at once heated and darkened, like the atmosphere under an
incumbent thunder-cloud, had now no power of inquiry, of conjecture, or
of calculation. He instantly began to climb the rock,--the figure was
but a few feet above him,--the object of his daily and nightly dreams
was at last within the reach of his mind and his arm,--was almost
tangible. Fang and Snare132 themselves, in all the enthusiasm of
professional zeal, never uttered, “If I but once get him within my
vice,” with more eagerness than did Melmoth, as he scrambled up his
steep and perilous path, to the ledge of the rock where the figure stood
so calm and dark. Panting from the fury of the storm, the vehemence of
his own exertions, and the difficulty of the task, he was now almost
foot to foot, and face to face, with the object of his pursuit, when,
grasping at the loosened fragment of a stone whose fall could not have
hurt a child, though on its tottering insecurity hung the life-grasp of
a man, his hold failed--he fell backwards,--the roaring deep was
beneath, seeming to toss its ten thousand arms to receive and devour
him. He did not feel the instantaneous giddiness of his fall, but as he
sunk he felt the splash, he heard the roar. He was engulphed, then for a
moment thrown to the surface. He struggled with nothing to grasp at. He
sunk with a vague thought, that if he could reach the bottom, if he
could arrive at any thing solid, he was safe. Ten thousand trumpets then
seemed to ring in his ears; lights flashed from his eyes. “He seemed to
go through fire and water,”133 and remembered no more till several days
afterwards, when he found himself in bed, the old gouvernante beside
him, and uttered faintly, “What a horrid dream!” then sinking back as he
felt his exhaustion, “and how weak it has left me!”



CHAPTER V.


“I have heard,” said the Squire, “that from hell there is no retention.”

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　CERVANTES.134


For some hours after this exclamation, Melmoth lay silent, his memory
returning,--his senses gradually defecated,135--the intellectual lord
slowly returning to his abdicated throne.--

“I remember all now,” he cried, starting up in his bed with a sudden
vehemence, that terrified his old nurse with the apprehension of
returning insanity; but when she approached the bed, candle in hand,
cautiously veiling her eyes with the other, while she threw the full
glare of the light on the face of the patient, she saw in a moment the
light of sanity in his eyes, and the strength of health in his move-
ments. To his eager inquiries of how he had been saved, how the
storm had terminated, and whether any but himself had survived the
wreck, she could not deny herself the gratification of answering, though
conscious of his weakness, and solemnly charged neither to let him speak
or hear, as she valued the recovery of his reason. She had faithfully
observed the charge for several days,--a dreadful trial!--and now she
felt like Fatima in Cymon, who, when threatened by the magician with
the loss of speech, exclaims, “Barbarian, will not my death then satisfy
you?”

She began her narrative, the effect of which was, to lull Melmoth in-
to a profound repose before half of it was concluded; he felt the full
benefit of the invalids mentioned in Spenser, who used to hire Irish
story-tellers, and found those indefatigable persons still pursuing the
tale when they awoke.136 At first Melmoth listened with eager attention;
soon he was in the situation of him described by Miss Baillie,

　　　　“Who, half asleep, but faintly hears,
　　　　The gossip's tale hum in his ears.”137

Soon after his lengthened respiration gave token that she was only
“vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man;”138 while, as she closed the curtain,
and shaded the light, the images of her story were faintly painted on
his dream, that still seemed half a waking one.

In the morning Melmoth sat up, gazed round, remembered every thing in a
moment, though nothing distinctly, but felt the most intense anxiety to
see the stranger saved from the shipwreck, who, he remembered the
gouvernante had told him, (while her words seemed to falter on the
threshold of his closing senses), was still alive, and an inmate in his
house, but weak and ill from the bruises he had received, and the
exhaustion and terror he had undergone. The opinions of the household
on the subject of this stranger were various. The knowledge of his
being a Catholic had conciliated their hearts, for the first act of his
recovered reason was to request that a Catholic priest might be sent
for, and the first use of his speech was to express his satisfaction
that he was in a country where he might enjoy the benefits of the rites
of his own church. So far all was well; but there was a mysterious
haughtiness and reserve about him, that somewhat repelled the officious
curiosity of his attendants. He spoke often to himself in a language
they did not understand; they hoped relief from the priest on this
point, but the priest, after listening long at the invalid's door,
pronounced the language in which he was soliloquizing not to be Latin,139
and, after a conversation of some hours with him, refused to tell what
language the stranger spoke to himself in, and forbid all inquiry on the
subject. This was bad enough; but, still worse, the stranger spoke
English with ease and fluency, and therefore could have no right, as all
the household argued, to torment them with those unknown sounds, that,
sonorous and powerful as they were, seemed to their ears like an
evocation of some invisible being.

“He asks for what he wants in English,” said the harassed housekeeper,
“and he can call for candle in English, and he can say he'll go to bed
in English; and why the devil can't he do every thing in English?--He
can say his prayers too in English to that picture he's always pulling
out of his breast and talking to, though it's no saint, I am sure, he
prays to, (from the glimpse I got of it), but more like the devil,--
Christ save us!” All these strange rumours, and ten thousand more,
were poured into Melmoth's ears, fast and faster than he could
receive them. “Is Father Fay in the house,” said he at last, under-
standing that the priest visited the stranger every day; “if he be,
let me see him.” Father Fay attended him as soon as he quitted the
stranger's apartment.

He was a grave and decent priest, well “spoken of by those that were
without” the pale140 of his own communion; and as he entered the room,
Melmoth smiled at the idle tattle of his domestics. “I thank you for
your attention to this unfortunate gentleman, who, I understand, is in
my house.”--“It was my duty.”--“I am told he sometimes speaks in a
foreign tongue.” The priest assented. “Do you know what countryman he
is?” “He is a Spaniard,” said the priest. This plain, direct answer, had
the proper effect on Melmoth, of convincing him of its veracity, and of
there being no mystery in the business, but what the folly of his ser-
vants had made.

The priest proceeded to tell him the particulars of the loss of the
vessel. She was an English trader bound for Wexford or Waterford, with
many passengers on board; she had been driven up the Wicklow coast by
stress of weather, had struck on the night of the 19th October, during
the intense darkness that accompanied the storm, on a hidden reef of
rocks, and gone to pieces. Crew, passengers, all had perished, except
this Spaniard. It was singular, too, that this man had saved the life of
Melmoth. While swimming for his own, he had seen him fall from the rock
he was climbing, and, though his strength was almost exhausted, had
collected its last remains to preserve the life of a being who, as he
conceived, had been betrayed into danger by his humanity. His efforts
were successful, though Melmoth was unconscious of them; and in the
morning they were found on the strand, locked in each other's hold, but
stiff and senseless. They shewed some signs of life when an attempt was
made to remove them, and the stranger was conveyed to Melmoth's house.
“You owe your life to him,” said the priest, when he had ended. “I shall
go and thank him for it this moment,” said Melmoth; but as he was
assisted to rise, the old woman whispered to him with visible terror,
“Jasus' sake, dear, don't tell him ye're a Melmoth, for the dear life!
He has been as mad as any thing out of Bedlam, since some jist mintioned
the name before him the ither night.” A sickening recollection of some
parts of the manuscript came over Melmoth at these words, but he
struggled with himself, and proceeded to the apartment of the stranger.

The Spaniard was a man about thirty, of a noble form and prepossessing
manners. To the gravity of his nation was superadded a deeper tint of
peculiar melancholy. He spoke English fluently; and when questioned on
it by Melmoth, he remarked with a sigh, that he had learnt it in a
painful school. Melmoth then changed the subject, to thank him with
earnest gratitude for the preservation of his life. “Senhor,” said the
Spaniard, “spare me; if your life was no dearer to you than mine, it
would not be worth thanks.” “Yet you made the most strenuous exertions
to save it,” said Melmoth. “That was instinct,” said the Spaniard. “But
you also struggled to save mine,” said Melmoth. “That was instinct too
at the moment,” said the Spaniard; then resuming his stately politeness,
“or I should say, the influence of my better genius. I am wholly a
stranger in this country, and must have fared miserably but for the
shelter of your roof.”

Melmoth observed that he spoke with evident pain, and he confessed a
few moments afterwards, that though he had escaped without any ser-
ious injury, he had been so bruised and lacerated, that he still breathed
with difficulty, and hardly possessed the use of his limbs. As he con-
cluded the account of his sufferings during the storm, the wreck, and
the subsequent struggle for life, he exclaimed in Spanish, “God! why did
the Jonah survive, and the mariners perish?” Melmoth, imagining he was
engaged in some devotional ejaculation, was going to retire, when the
Spaniard detained him. “Senhor, I understand your name is----” He
paused, shuddered, and with an effort that seemed like convulsion,
disgorged the name of Melmoth. “My name is Melmoth.” “Had you an
ancestor, a very remote one, who was--at a period perhaps beyond
family-tradition----It is useless to inquire,” said the Spaniard,
covering his face with both his hands, and groaning aloud. Melmoth
listened in mingled excitement and terror. “Perhaps, if you would
proceed, I could answer you--go on, Senhor.” “Had you,” said the
Spaniard, forcing himself to speak, abruptly and rapidly, “had you, then,
a relative who was, about one hundred and forty years ago, said to
be in Spain.” “I believe--yes, I fear--I had.” “It is enough, Senhor--
leave me--to-morrow perhaps--leave me now.” “It is impossible to
leave you now,” said Melmoth, catching him in his arms before he sunk on
the floor. He was not senseless, for his eyes were rolling with terrible
expression, and he attempted to articulate. They were alone. Melmoth,
unable to quit him, called aloud for water; and while attempting to open
his vest, and give him air, his hand encountered a miniature portrait
close to the heart of the stranger. As he touched it, his touch operated
on the patient with all the force of the most powerful restorative. He
grasped it with his own cold hand with a force like that of death, and
muttered in a hollow but thrilling voice, “What have you done?” He felt
eagerly the ribbon by which it was suspended, and, satisfied that his
terrible treasure was safe, turned his eyes with a fearful calmness of
expression on Melmoth, “You know all, then?”--“I know nothing,” said
Melmoth faultering. The Spaniard rose from the ground, to which he had
almost fallen, disengaged himself from the arms that supported him, and
eagerly, but staggeringly, hurrying towards the candles, (it was night),
held up the portrait full before Melmoth's eye. It was a miniature
likeness of that extraordinary being. It was painted in a coarse and
unartist-like style, but so faithfully, that the pencil appeared rather
held by the mind than by the fingers.

“Was he--was the original of this--your ancestor?--Are you his
descendant?--Are you the depository of that terrible secret which----”
He again fell to the ground convulsed, and Melmoth, for whose
debilitated state this scene was too much, was removed to his own
apartment.

It was several days before he again saw his visitor; his manner was
then calm and collected, till he appeared to recollect the necessity
of making an apology for his agitation at their last meeting. He
began--hesitated--stopped; tried in vain to arrange his ideas, or rather
his language; but the effort so obviously renewed his agitation, that
Melmoth felt an exertion on his part necessary to avert its conse-
quences, and began most inauspiciously to inquire into the motive
of his voyage to Ireland. After a long pause, the Spaniard said, “That
motive, Senhor, a few days past I believed it was not in mortal power to
compel me to disclose. I deemed it incommunicable as it was incredible.
I conceived myself to be alone on the earth, without sympathy and beyond
relief. It is singular that accident should have placed me within the
reach of the only being from whom I could expect either, and perhaps a
developement of those circumstances which have placed me in a situation
so extraordinary.” This exordium,141 delivered with a composed but
thrilling gravity, had an effect on Melmoth. He sat down and prepared to
listen, and the Spaniard began to speak; but after some hesitation, he
snatched the picture from his neck, and trampling on it with true
continental action, exclaimed, “Devil! devil! thou choakest me!” and
crushing the portrait, glass and all, under his feet, exclaimed, “Now I
am easier.”

The room in which they sat was a low, mean, wretchedly furnished
apartment; the evening was tempestuous, and as the windows and doors
rattled in the blast, Melmoth felt as if he listened to some herald of
“fate and fear.” A deep and sickening agitation shook his frame; and in
the long pause that preceded the narrative of the Spaniard, the beating
of his heart was audible to him. He rose, and attempted to arrest the
narration by a motion of his hand; but the Spaniard mistook this for the
anxiety of his impatience, and commenced his narrative, which, in mercy
to the reader, we shall give without the endless interruptions, and
queries, and anticipations of curiosity, and starts of terror, with
which it was broken by Melmoth.142


　　　　　　　　　Tale of the Spaniard.


“I am, Senhor, as you know, a native of Spain, but you are yet to learn
I am a descendant of one of its noblest houses,--a house of which she
might have been proud in her proudest day,--the house of Monçada. Of
this I was not myself conscious during the first years of my life; but
during those years, I remember experiencing the singular contrast of
being treated with the utmost tenderness, and kept in the most sordid
privacy. I lived in a wretched house in the suburbs of Madrid with an
old woman, whose affection for me appeared prompted as much by in-
terest as inclination. I was visited every week by a young cavalier and a
beautiful female; they caressed me, called me their beloved child, and
I, attached by the grace with which my young father's capa 143 was folded,
and my mother's veil adjusted, and by a certain air of indescribable
superiority over those by whom I was surrounded, eagerly returned their
caresses, and petitioned them to take me home with them; at these
words they always wept, gave a valuable present to the woman I lived
with, whose attention was always redoubled by this expected stimulant,
and departed.

“I observed their visits were always short, and paid late in the
evening; thus a shadow of mystery enveloped my infant days, and perhaps
gave its lasting and ineffaceable tinge to the pursuits, the character,
and the feelings of my present existence. A sudden change took
place;--one day I was visited, splendidly dressed, and carried in a
superb vehicle, whose motion made me giddy with novelty and surprise, to
a palace whose front appeared to me to reach the heavens. I was hurried
through several apartments, whose splendour made my eyes ache, amid an
army of bowing domestics, to a cabinet where sat an old nobleman, whom,
from the tranquil majesty of his posture, and the silent magnificence
that surrounded him, I felt disposed to fall down and worship as we do
those saints, whom, after traversing the aisles of an immense church, we
find niched in some remote and solitary shrine. My father and mother
were there, and both seemed awed by the presence of that aged vision,
pale and august; their awe increased mine, and as they led me to his
feet, I felt as if about to be sacrificed. He embraced me, however, with
some reluctance and more austerity; and when this ceremony was
performed, during which I trembled, I was removed by a domestic, and
conducted to an apartment where I was treated like the son of a grandee;
in the evening I was visited by my father and mother; they shed tears
over me as they embraced me, but I thought I could perceive they mingled
the tears of grief with those of fondness. Every thing around appeared
so strange, that perhaps I felt something appropriate in this change. I
was so much altered myself, that I expected an alteration in others, and
the reverse would have struck me as a phenomenon.

“Change followed change with such rapidity, that it produced on me an
effect like that of intoxication. I was now twelve years old, and the
contracted habits of my early life had had their usual effect, of
exalting my imagination, while they impaired every other faculty. I
expected an adventure whenever the door opened, and that was but sel-
dom, to announce the hours of devotion, food, and exercise. On the third
day after I was received into the palace of Monçada, the door was open-
ed at an unusual hour, (a circumstance that made me tremble with
anticipation), and my father and mother, attended by a number of
domestics, entered, accompanied by a youth whose superior height and
already distinguished figure, made him appear my senior, though he was
in fact a year younger.

“Alonzo,” said my father to me, “embrace your brother.” I advanced with
all the eagerness of youthful affection, that feels delight from new
claims on its store, and half wishes those new claims were endless; but
the slow step of my brother, the measured air with which he extended his
arms, and declined his head on my left shoulder for a moment, and then
raising it, viewed me with eyes in whose piercing and haughty lustre
there was not one beam of fraternity, repelled and disconcerted me. We
had obeyed our father, however, and embraced. “Let me see you hand in
hand together,” said my father, as if he would have enjoyed the sight. I
held out my hand to my brother, and we stood thus linked for a few mo-
ments, my father and mother remaining at some distance to gaze on us;
during these few moments, I had leisure to glance from my parents to
my brother, and judge of the comparative effect our appearance thus
contrasted might produce on them. The contrast was by no means
favourable to me. I was tall, but my brother was much taller; he had an
air of confidence, of conquest I might say; the brilliancy of his comple-
xion could be equalled only by that of his dark eyes, which turned from
me to our parents, and seemed to say, “Chuse between us, and reject
me if you dare.”

“My father and mother advanced and embraced us both. I clung round
their necks; my brother submitted to their caresses with a kind of proud
impatience, that seemed to demand a more marked recognition.

“I saw no more of them,--that evening the whole household, which perhaps
contain two hundred domestics, were in despair. The Duke de Monçada,
that awful vision of anticipated mortality whom I had seen but once, was
dead. The tapestry was torn from the walls; every room was filled with
ecclesiastics; I was neglected by my attendants, and wandered through
the spacious rooms, till I by chance lifted up a curtain of black
velvet, and saw a sight which, young as I was, paralyzed me. My father
and mother, dressed in black, sat beside a figure which I believed to be
my grandfather asleep, but his sleep was very profound; my brother was
there too, in a mourning dress, but its strange and grotesque
disfigurement could not conceal the impatience with which he wore it,
and the flashing eagerness of his expression, and the haughty brilliancy
of his eye, shewed a kind of impatience of the part he was compelled to
act.--I rushed forward;--I was withheld by the domestics;--I asked, “Why
am I not permitted to be here, where my younger brother is?” An
ecclesiastic drew me from the apartment. I struggled with him, and
demanded, with an arrogance which suited my pretensions better than my
prospects, “Who I was?” “The grandson of the late Duke of Monçada,” was
the answer. “And why am I thus treated?” To this no answer. I was
conveyed to my apartment, and closely watched during the interment of
the Duke of Monçada. I was not permitted to attend his funeral. I saw
the splendid and melancholy cavalcade depart from the palace. I ran from
window to window to witness the funeral pomp, but was not allowed to
accompany it. Two days after I was told a carriage waited for me at the
gate. I entered it, and was conveyed to a convent of Ex-Jesuits,144 (as
they were well known to be, though no one in Madrid dared to say so),
where an agreement had been made for my board and education, and where
I became an inmate that very day. I applied myself to my studies, my
teachers were pleased, my parents visited me frequently, and gave the
usual marks of affection, and all was well; till one day as they were
retiring, I heard an old domestic in their suite remark, how singular it
was, that the eldest son of the (now) Duke de Monçada should be edu-
cated in a convent, and brought up to a monastic life, while the younger,
living in a superb palace, was surrounded by teachers suited to his
rank. The word “monastic life” thrilled in my ears; it furnished me with
an interpretation not only of the indulgence I had experienced in the
convent, (an indulgence quite inconsistent with the usual severity of
their discipline), but of the peculiar language in which I had been
always addressed by the Superior, the brethren, and the boarders. The
former, whom I saw once a week, bestowed the most flattering praises on
the progress I had made in my studies, (praises that covered me with
blushes, for I well knew it was very moderate compared with that of the
other boarders), and then gave me his benediction, but never without
adding, “My God! thou wilt not suffer this lamb to wander from thy
fold.”

“The brethren always assumed before me an air of tranquillity, that
eulogized their situation more powerfully than the most exaggerated
eloquence. The petty squabbles and intrigues of the convent, the bitter
and incessant conflict of habits, tempers, and interests, the efforts of
incarcerated minds for objects of excitement, the struggles to diversify
endless monotony, and elevate hopeless mediocrity;--all that makes
monastic life like the wrong side of tapestry, where we see only uncouth
threads, and the harsh outlines, without the glow of the colours, the
richness of the tissue, or the splendour of the embroidery, that renders
the external surface so rich and dazzling; all this was carefully
concealed. I heard something of it, however, and, young as I was, could
not help wondering how men who carried the worst passions of life into
their retreat, could imagine that retreat was a refuge from the
erosions of their evil tempers, the monitions of conscience, and the
accusations of God. The same dissimulation was practised by the
boarders; the whole house was in masquerade145 from the moment I enter-
ed it. If I joined the latter at the time of recreation, they went through
the few amusements allowed them with a kind of languid impatience, as
if it was an interruption of better pursuits to which they were devoted.
One of them, coming up to me, would say, “What a pity that these
exercises are necessary for the support of our frail nature! what a pity
we cannot devote its whole powers to the service of God!” Another would
say, “I never am so happy as in the choir! What a delightful eulogy was
that pronounced by the Superior on the departed Fre Jose! How thrilling
was that requiem! I imagined the heavens opened, and angels descending
to receive his soul, as I listened to it!”

“All this, and much more, I had been accustomed to hear every day. I now
began to understand it. I suppose they thought they had a very weak
person to deal with; but the bare-faced coarseness of their manœuvres
only quickened my penetration, which began to be fearfully awake. I said
to them, “Are you, then, intended for the monastic life?” “We hope so.”
“Yet I have heard you, Oliva, once (it was when you did not think I
overheard you) I heard you complain of the length and tediousness of the
homilies delivered on the eves of the saints.”--“I was then under the
influence of the evil spirit doubtless,” said Oliva, who was a boy not
older than myself; “Satan is sometimes permitted to buffet those whose
vocation is but commencing, and whom he is therefore more afraid to
lose.” “And I have heard you, Balcastro, say you had not taste for
music; and to me, I confess, that of the choir appears least likely to
inspire a taste for it.” “God has touched my heart since,” replied the
young hypocrite,146 crossing himself; “and you know, friend of my soul,
there is a promise, that the ears of the deaf shall be opened.” “Where
are those words?” “In the Bible.” “The Bible?--But we are not permitted
to read it.” “True, dear Monçada, but we have the word of our Superior
and the brethren for it, and that is enough.” “Certainly; our spiritual
guides must take on themselves the whole responsibility of that state,
whose enjoyments and punishments they reserve in their own hands; but,
Balcastro, are you willing to take this life on their word, as well as
the next, and resign it before you have tried it?” “My dear friend, you
only speak to tempt me.” “I do not speak to tempt,” said I, and was
turning indignantly away, when the bell ringing, produced its usual
effect on us all. My companions assumed a more sanctified air, and I
struggled for a more composed one.

“As we went to the church, they conversed in whispers, but those
whispers were intended to reach my ear. I could hear them say, “It is
in vain that he struggles with grace; there never was a more decided
vocation; God never obtained a more glorious victory. Already he has the
look of a child of heaven;--the monastic gait,--the downcast look;--the
motion of his arms naturally imitates the sign of the cross, and the
very folds of his mantle arrange themselves, by a divine instinct, into
those of a Monk's habit.” And all this while my gait was disturbed, my
countenance flushed, and often lifted to heaven, and my arms employed
in hastily adjusting my cloak, that had fallen off my shoulder from my
agitation, and whose disordered folds resembled any thing but those of a
Monk's habit. From that evening I began to perceive my danger, and to
meditate how to avert it. I had no inclination for the monastic life;
but after vespers, and the evening exercise in my own cell, I began to
doubt if this very repugnance was not itself a sin. Silence and night
deepened the impression, and I lay awake for many hours, supplicating
God to enlighten me, to enable me not to oppose his will, but clearly
to reveal that will to me; and if he was not pleased to call me to a
monastic life, to support my resolution in undergoing every thing that
might be inflicted on me, sooner than profane that state by extorted
vows and an alienated mind. That my prayers might be more effectual, I
offered them up first in the name of the Virgin, then in that of the
Patron-saint of the family, and then of the Saint on whose eve I was
born. I lay in great agitation till morning, and went to matins without
having closed my eyes, I had, however, I felt, acquired resolution,--
at least I thought so. Alas! I knew not what I had to encounter. I
was like a man going to sea with a day's provision, and imagining
he is victualled for a voyage to the poles. I went through my exer-
cises (as they were called) with uncommon assiduity that day; al-
ready I felt the necessity of imposition,--fatal lesson of monastic
institutions. We dined at noon; and soon after my father's carriage
arrived, and I was permitted to go for an hour on the banks of the
Manzanares. To my surprise my father was in the carriage, and though
he welcomed me with a kind of embarrassment, I was delighted to
meet him. He was a layman at least,--he might have a heart.

"I was disappointed at the measured phrase he addressed me in, and
this froze me at once into a rigid determination, to be as much on
my guard with him, as I must be within the walls of the convent. The
conversation began, "You like your convent, my son?" "Very much,"
(there was not a word of truth in my answer, but the fear of circum-
vention always teaches falsehood, and we have only to thank our in-
structors). "The Superior is very fond of you." "He seems so." "The
brethren are attentive to your studies, and capable of directing
them, and appreciating your progress." "They seem so." "And the
boarders--they are sons of the first families in Spain, they appear
all satisfied with their situation, and eager to embrace its advan-
tages." "They seem so." "My dear son, why have you thrice answered
me in the same monotonous, unmeaning phrase?" "Because I thought it
all seeming." "How, then, would you say that the devotion of those
holy men, and the profound attention of their pupils, whose studies
are alike beneficial to man, and redounding to the glory of the
church to which they are dedicated--" "My dearest father,--I say
nothing of them,--but I dare to speak of myself,--I can never be
a monk,--if that is your object--spurn me,--order your lacqueys to
drag me from this carriage,--leave me a beggar in the streets to
cry (13)"fire and water,"--but do not make me a monk." My father
appeared stunned by this apostrophe. He did not utter a word. He
had not expected such a premature developement of the secret
which he imagined he had to disclose, not to hear disclosed. At this
moment the carriage turned into the Prado; a thousand magnificent
equipages, with plumed horses, superb caparisons, and beautiful women
bowing to the cavaliers, who stood for a moment on the foot-board, and
then bowed their adieus to the “ladies of their love,” passed before our
eyes. I saw my father, at this moment, arrange his superb mantle, and
the silk net in which his long black hair was bound, and give the signal
to his lacqueys to stop, that he might mingle among the crowd. I caught
this moment,--I grasped his mantle.--“Father, you find this world
delightful then,--would you ask me to resign it,--me,--who am your
child.”--“But you are too young for it, my son.” “Oh, then, my father, I
am surely much too young for another world, to which you would force
me.” “Force you, my child, my first-born!” And these words he uttered
with such tenderness, that I involuntarily kissed his hands, while his
lips eagerly pressed my forehead. It was at this moment that I studied,
with all the eagerness of hope, my father's physiognomy, or what artists
would call his physique.

“He had been my parent before he was sixteen; his features were
beautiful, his figure the most graceful and lover-like I ever beheld,
and his early marriage had preserved him from all the evils of youthful
excess, and spared the glow of feature, and elasticity of muscle, and
grace of juvenility, so often withered by vice, almost before they have
bloomed. He was now but twenty-eight, and looked ten years younger. He
was evidently conscious of this, and as much alive to the enjoyments of
youth, as if he were still in its spring. He was at the same moment
rushing into all the luxuries of youthful enjoyment and voluptuous
splendour, and dooming one, who was at least young enough to be his son,
to the frozen and hopeless monotony of a cloister. I laid hold of this
with the grasp of a drowning man. But a drowning man never grasped a
straw so weak as he who depends on the worldly feeling of another for
the support of his own.

“Pleasure is very selfish; and when selfishness pleads to selfishness
for relief, it is like a bankrupt asking his fellow-prisoner to go bail
for him. This was my conviction at the moment, yet still I reflected,
(for suffering supplies the place of experience in youth, and they are
most expert casuists147 who have graduated only in the school of
misfortune), I reflected, that a taste for pleasure, while it renders a
man selfish in one sense, renders him generous in another. The real
voluptuary, though he would not part with his slightest indulgence to
save the world from destruction, would yet wish all the world to be
enjoying itself, (provided it was not at his expence), because his own
would be increased by it. To this I clung, and intreated my father to
indulge me with another view of the brilliant scene before us. He
complied, and his feelings, softened by this compliance, and exhilarated
by the spectacle, (which interested him more than me, who observed it
only for its effect on him), became more favourable than ever. I availed
myself of this, and, while returning to the convent, threw the whole
power of my nature and intellect into one (almost) shrieking appeal to
his heart. I compared myself to the unhappy Esau,148 deprived of his
birthright by a younger brother, and I exclaimed in his language, “Hast
thou no blessing for me! Bless me, even me also, Oh my father!” My
father was affected; he promised my intreaty every consideration; but he
hinted some difficulty to be encountered on my mother's part, much on
that of her Director, who (I afterwards found) governed the whole
family, and still more remotely hinted at something insurmountable and
inexplicable. He suffered me, however, to kiss his hand at parting, and
vainly struggled with his emotions when he felt it damp with my tears.

“It was not till two days after, that I was summoned to attend my
mother's Director, who was waiting for me in the parlour. I deemed this
delay the result of a long family debate, or (as it seemed to me)
conspiracy; and I tried to prepare myself for the multifarious warfare
in which I had now to engage with parents, directors, superiors, and
monks, and boarders, all sworn to win the day, and not caring whether
they carried their point by storm, sap,149 mine, or blockade. I began to
measure the power of the assailants, and to try to furnish myself with
weapons suited to their various modes of attack. My father was gentle,
flexible, and vacillating. I had softened him in my favour, and I felt
that was all that could be done with him. But the Director was to be
encountered with different arms. As I went down to the parlour, I
composed my looks, my gait, I modulated my voice, I adjusted my dress. I
was on my guard, body, mind, mien, clothes, every thing. He was a grave,
but mild-looking ecclesiastic; one must have had the treachery of Judas
to suspect him of treachery. I felt disarmed, I even experienced some
compunction. “Perhaps,” said I, “I have all this while armed myself
against a message of reconciliation.” The Director began with some
trifling inquiries about my health, and my progress in study, but he
asked them in a tone of interest. I said to myself, it would not be
decorous for him to enter on the subject of his visit too soon;--I
answered him calmly, but my heart palpitated with violence. A silence
ensued, and then suddenly turning towards me, he said, “My dear child, I
understand your objections to a monastic life are insurmountable. I do
not wonder at it; its habits must appear very unconciliating to youth,
and, in fact, I know not to what period of life abstinence, privation,
and solitude, are particularly agreeable; it was the wish of your
parents doubtless; but”--This address, so full of candour, almost
overpowered me; caution and every thing else forsook me as I ex-
claimed, “But what then, my father?” “But, I was going to observe,
how rarely our own views coincide with those which others entertain
for us, and how difficult it is to decide which are the least erroneous.”
“Was that all?” said I, shrinking with disappointment. “That was all; for
instance, some people, (of whom I once happened to be one), might be
fanciful enough to imagine, that the superior experience and proved
affection of parents should qualify them to decide on this point better
than their children; nay, I have heard some carry their absurdity so
far, as to talk of the rights of nature, the obligations of duty, and
the useful coercion of restraint; but since I had the pleasure of
becoming acquainted with your resolution, I am beginning to be of
opinion, that a youth, not thirteen years of age, may be an incomp-
arable judge in the last resort, particularly when the question bears a
trifling relation to his eternal as well as temporal interest; in such a
case, he has doubtless the double advantage of dictating both to his
spiritual and natural parents.” “My father, I beg you to speak without
irony or ridicule; you may be very clever, but I merely wish you to be
intelligible and serious.” “Do you wish me, then, to speak seriously?”
and he appeared to collect himself as he asked this question.
“Certainly.” “Seriously, then, my dear child, do you not believe that
your parents love you? Have you not received from your infancy every
mark of affection from them? Have you not been pressed to their bosoms
from your very cradle?” At these words I struggled vainly with my
feelings, and wept, while I answered, “Yes.” “I am sorry, my dear child,
to see you thus overpowered; my object was to appeal to your reason,
(for you have no common share of reasoning power),--and to your reason I
appeal;--can you suppose that parents, who have treated you with such
tenderness, who love you as they do their own souls, could act (as your
conduct charges them) with causeless and capricious cruelty towards you?
Must you not be aware there is a reason, and that it must be a profound
one? Would it not be more worthy of your duty, as well as your superior
sense, to inquire into, than contend with it?” “Is it founded upon any
thing in my conduct, then?--I am willing to do every thing,--to
sacrifice every thing.”--“I understand,--you are willing to do every
thing but what is required of you,--and to sacrifice every thing but
your own inclination.” “But you have hinted at a reason.” The Director
was silent. “You urged me to inquire into it.” The Director was silent
still. “My father, I adjure you, by the habit you wear, unmuffle this
terrible phantom to me; there is nothing I cannot encounter”--“Except
the commands of your parents. But am I at liberty to discover this
secret to you?” said the Director, in a tone of internal debate. “Can I
imagine that you, who have in the very outset outraged parental
authority, will revere parental feelings?” “My father, I do not
understand you.” “My dear child, I am compelled to act with a caution
and reserve unsuited to my character, which is naturally as open as
yours. I dread the disclosure of a secret; it is repugnant to my habits
of profound confidence; and I dread disclosing any thing to a character
impetuous like yours. I feel myself reduced to a most painful
situation.” “My father, act and speak with candour, my situation
requires it, and your own profession demands it from you. My father,
remember the inscription over the confessional which thrilled my very
blood to read, “God hears thee.” Remember God hears you always, and
will you not deal sincerely with one whom God has placed at your mer-
cy?” I spoke with much agitation, and the Director appeared affected
for a moment; that is, he passed his hand over his eyes, which were
as dry as--his heart. He paused for several minutes, and then said,
“My dear child, dare I trust you? I confess I came prepared to treat
you like a boy, but I feel I am disposed to consider you as a man. You
have the intelligence, the penetration, the decision of a man. Have you
the feelings of one?” “Try me, my father.” I did not perceive that his
irony, his secret, and his parade of feeling, were all alike theatrical,
and substitutionary for real interest and sincerity. “If I should be in-
clined to trust you, my dear child,”--“I shall be grateful.” “And se-
cret.” “And secret, my father.” “Then imagine yourself”--“Oh! my
father, let me not have to imagine any thing--tell me the truth.”
“Foolish boy,--am I then so bad a painter, that I must write the name
under the figure.” “I understand you, my father, and shall not interrupt
you again.” “Then imagine to yourself the honour of one of the first
houses in Spain; the peace of a whole family,--the feelings of a
father,--the honour of a mother,--the interests of religion,--the
eternal salvation of an individual, all suspended in one scale. What do
you think could outweigh them?” “Nothing,” I replied ardently. “Yet,
in the opposite scale you throw nothing,--the caprice of a boy not
thirteen years old;--this is all you have to oppose to the claims of
nature, of society, and of God.” “My father, I am penetrated with horror
at what you have said,--does all this depend on me?” “It does,--it does
all depend on you.” “But how, then,--I am bewildered,--I am willing to
make a sacrifice,--tell me what I am to do.” “Embrace, my dear child,
the monastic life; this will accomplish the views of all who love you,
ensure your own salvation, and fulfil the will of God, who is calling
you at this moment by the voices of your affectionate parents, and the
supplications of the minister of heaven, who is now kneeling before
you.” And he sunk on his knees before me.

“This prostration, so unexpected, so revolting, and so like the monastic
habit of artificial humiliation, completely annihilated the effect of
his language. I retreated from his arms, which were extended towards me.
“My father, I cannot,--I will never become a monk.” “Wretch! and you
refuse, then, to listen to the call of your conscience, the adjuration
of your parents, and the voice of God?” The fury with which he uttered
these words,--the change from a ministering angel to an infuriated and
menacing demon, had an effect just contrary to what he expected. I said
calmly, “My conscience does not reproach me,--I have never disobeyed its
calls. My parents have adjured me only through your mouth; and I hope,
for their sakes, the organ has not been inspired by them. And the voice
of God, echoed from my own heart, bids me not to obey you, by
adulterating his service with prostituted vows.” As I spoke thus, the
Director changed the whole character of his figure, his attitude, and
his language;--from the extreme of supplication or of terror, he passed
in a moment, with the facility of an actor, to a rigid and breathless
sternness. His figure rose from the ground before me like that of the
Prophet Samuel before the astonished eyes of Saul.150 He dropt the
dramatist, and was the monk in a moment. “And you will not take the
vows?” “I will not, my father.” “And you will brave the resentment of
your parents, and the denunciations of the church.” “I have done nothing
to deserve either.” “But you will encounter both, to cherish your horrid
resolution of being the enemy of God.” “I am not the enemy of God for
speaking the truth.” “Liar and hypocrite, you blaspheme!” “Stop, my
father, these are words unbecoming your profession, and unsuited to
this place.” “I acknowledge the justice of the rebuke, and submit to it,
though uttered by the mouth of a child.”--And he dropped his
hypocritical eyes, folded his hands on his breast, and murmured, “Fiat
voluntas tua.151 My dear child, my zeal for the service of God, and the
honour of your family, to which I am attached equally by principle and
affection, have carried me too far,--I confess it; but have I to ask
pardon of you also, my child, for a redundance of that affection and
zeal for your house, which its descendant has proved himself destitute
of?” The mingled humiliation and irony of this address had no effect on
me. He saw it had not; for after slowly raising his eyes to watch that
effect, he saw me standing in silence, not trusting my voice with a
word, lest I should utter something rash and disrespectful,--not daring
to lift up my eyes, lest their expression should speak without making
language necessary.

“I believe the Director felt his situation rather critical; his interest
in the family depended on it, and he attempted to cover his retreat with
all the expertness and fertility of manœuvre which belong to an
ecclesiastical tactician. “My dear child, we have been both wrong, I
from zeal, and you from--no matter what; our business is to exchange
forgiveness with each other, and to implore it of God, whom we have both
offended. My dear child, let us prostrate ourselves before him, and even
while our hearts are glowing with human passion, God may seize that
moment to impress the seal of his grace on both, and fix it there for
ever. Often the earthquake and the whirlwind are succeeded by the still,
small voice, and God is there.152--Let us pray.” I fell on my knees,
resolved to pray in my heart; but in a short time, the fervour of his
language, the eloquence and energy of his prayers, dragged me along with
him, and I felt myself compelled to pray against every dictate of my own
heart. He had reserved this display for the last, and he had judged
well. I never heard any thing so like inspiration; as I listened, and
involuntarily, to effusions that seemed to issue from no mortal lips, I
began to doubt my own motives, and search my heart. I had disdained his
taunts, I had defied and conquered his passion, but as he prayed, I
wept. This going over the same ground with the heart, is one of the
most painful and humiliating of all exercises; the virtue of yesterday
becomes the vice of to-day; we ask with the desponding and restless
scepticism of Pilate, “What is truth?”153 but the oracle that was so
eloquent one moment, is dumb the next, or if it answers, it is with that
ambiguity that makes us dread we have to consult again--again--and
for ever--in vain.

“I was now in a state quite fit for the Director's purpose; but he was
fatigued with the part he had played with so little success, and took
his leave, imploring me to continue my importunities to Heaven to direct
and enlighten me, while he himself would supplicate all the saints in
heaven to touch the hearts of my parents, and reveal to them some means
of saving me from the crime and perjury of a forced vocation, without
involving themselves in a crime, if possible, of blacker dye and
greater magnitude. Saying so he left me, to urge my parents, with all
his influence, to pursue the most rigorous measures to enforce my
adoption of the conventual life. His motives for doing so were
sufficiently strong when he visited me, but their strength was increased
tenfold before his departure. He had reckoned confidently on the power
of his remonstrances; he had been repulsed; the disgrace of such a
defeat rankled in the core of his heart. He had been only a partizan
in the cause, but he was now a party.154 What was a matter of conscience
before, was now a matter of honour with him; and I rather believe that
the Director laid a greater stress on the latter, or made a great havock
of confusion between both in his mind. Be that as it may, I passed a few
days after his visit in a state of indescribable excitement. I had
something to hope, and that is often better than something to enjoy. The
cup of hope always excites thirst, that of fruition disappoints or
quenches it. I took long walks in the garden alone. I framed imaginary
conversations to myself. The boarders observed me, and said to each
other, according to their instructions, “He is meditating on his
vocation, he is supplicating for illuminating grace,155 let us not disturb
him.” I did not undeceive them; but I reflected with increasing horror
on a system that forced hypocrisy to a precocity unparalleled, and
made the last vice of life the earliest of conventual youth. But I soon
forgot reflection, to plunge into reverie. I imagined myself at the
palace of my father; I saw him, my mother, and the Director, engaged in
debate. I spoke for each, and felt for all. I supplied the passionate
eloquence of the Director, his strong representations of my aversion to
the habit, his declaration that further importunity on their part would
be as impious as it was fruitless. I saw all the impression I once
flattered myself I had made on my father revived. I saw my mother yield.
I heard the murmur of doubtful acquiescence,--the decision, the
congratulations. I saw the carriage approaching,--I heard the convent
doors fly open. Liberty,--liberty,--I was in their arms; no, I was at
their feet. Let those who smile at me, ask themselves whether they have
been indebted most to imagination or reality for all they have enjoyed
in life, if indeed they have ever enjoyed any thing. In these internal
dramas, however, I always felt that the persons did not speak with the
interest I wished; and the speeches I put into their mouths would have
been spoken with ten thousand times more animation by myself. Still I
felt the most exquisite enjoyment in these reveries, and perhaps it was
not diminished by the thought how I was deceiving my companions the
whole time. But dissimulation always teaches dissimulation;156 and the
only question is, whether we shall be the masters of the art or its vic-
tims? a question soon decided by our self-love.

“It was on the sixth day that I heard, with a beating heart, a carriage
stop. I could have sworn to the sound of its wheels. I was in the hall
before I was summoned. I felt I could not be in the wrong, nor was I. I
drove to my father's palace in a delirium,--a vision of repulse and of
reconciliation, of gratitude and of despair. I was ushered into a room,
where were assembled my father, my mother, and the Director, all seated,
and silent as statues. I approached, I kissed their hands, and then
stood at a small distance breathless. My father was the first to break
silence, but he spoke very much with the air of a man who was repeating
a part dictated to him; and the tone of his voice contradicted every
word he prepared to utter. “My son, I have sent for you, no longer to
contend with your weak and wicked obstinacy, but to announce to you my
own resolution. The will of Heaven and of your parents has devoted you
to its service, and your resistance can only make us miserable, without
in the least frustrating that resolution.” At these words, gasping for
breath, my lips involuntarily unclosed; my father imagined this was an
attempt to reply, though in fact I was not capable of uttering a
syllable, and hastened to prevent it. “My son, all opposition is
unavailing, all discussion fruitless. Your destiny is decided, and
though your struggles may render it wretched, they cannot reverse it. Be
reconciled, my child, to the will of Heaven and your parents, which you
may insult, but cannot violate. This reverend person can better explain
to you the necessity of your obedience than I can.” And my father,
evidently weary of a task which he had reluctantly undertaken, was
rising to go away, when the Director detained him. “Stay, Senhor, and
assure your son before you depart, that, since I last saw him, I have
fulfilled my promise, and urged every topic on your mind, and that of
the duchess, that I thought might operate for his best interests.” I
was aware of the hypocritical ambiguity of this expression; and,
collecting my breath, I said, “Reverend father, as a son I seek not to
employ an intercessor with my own parents. I stand before them, and
if I have not an intercessor in their hearts, your mediation must be
ineffectual altogether. I implored you merely to state to them my
invincible reluctance.” They all interrupted me with exclamations, as
they repeated my last words,--“Reluctance! invincible! Is it for this
you have been admitted to our presence? Is it for this we have borne so
long with your contumacy, only to hear it repeated with aggravations?”
“Yes, my father,--yes, for this or nothing. If I am not permitted to
speak, why am I suffered in your presence?” “Because we hoped to
witness your submission.” “Allow me to give the proofs of it on my
knees;”--and I fell on my knees, hoping that my posture might soften
the effect of the words I could not help uttering. I kissed my father's
hand,--he did not withdraw it, and I felt it tremble. I kissed the skirt of my
mother's robe,--she attempted to withdraw it with one hand, but with the
other she hid her face, and I thought I saw tears bursting through her
fingers. I knelt to the Director too, and besought his benediction, and
struggled, though with revolting lips, to kiss his hand; but he snatched
his habit from my hand, elevated his eyes, spread out his fingers, and
assumed the attitude of a man who recoils in horror from a being who
merits the extreme of malediction and reprobation. Then I felt my only
chance was with my parents. I turned to them, but they shrunk from me,
and appeared willing to devolve the remainder of the task on the
Director. He approached me. “My child, you have pronounced your
reluctance to the life of God invincible, but may there not be things
more invincible even to your resolution? The curses of that God,
confirmed by those of your parents, and deepened by all the fulminations
of the church, whose embraces you have rejected, and whose holiness you
have desecrated by that rejection.” “Father, these are terrible words,
but I have no time now but for meanings.” “Besotted wretch, I do not
understand you,--you do not understand yourself.” “Oh! I do,--I do!” I
exclaimed. And turning to my father, still on my knees, I cried, “My
dear father, is life,--human life, all shut up from me?” “It is,” said
the Director, answering for my father. “Have I no resource?” “None.” “No
profession?” “Profession! degenerate wretch!” “Let me embrace the
meanest, but do not make me a monk.” “Profligate as weak.” “Oh! my
father,” still calling on my father, “let not this man answer for you.
Give me a sword,--send me into the armies of Spain to seek death,--
death is all I ask, in preference to that life you doom me to.” “It is
impossible,” said my father, gloomily returning from the window against
which he had been leaning; “the honour of an illustrious family,--the
dignity of a Spanish grandee--” “Oh! my father, of how little value will
that be, when I am consuming in my early grave, and you die
broken-hearted on it, over the flower your own voice has doomed to
wither there.” My father trembled. “Senhor, I entreat,--I command you
to retire; this scene will unfit you for the devotional duties you must
perform this evening.” “And you leave me then?” I cried as they
departed. “Yes,--yes,”--repeated the Director; “leave you burdened
with the curse of your father.” “Oh no!” exclaimed my father; but the
Director had hold of his hand, and pressed it strongly. “Of your
mother,” he repeated. I heard my mother weep aloud, and felt it like a
repeal of that curse; but she dared not speak, and I could not. The
Director had now two victims in his hands, and the third at his feet. He
could not avoid showing his triumph. He paused, collected the full power
of his sonorous voice, and thundered forth, “And of God!” And as he
rushed from the room, accompanied by my father and mother, whose hands
he grasped, I felt as if struck by a thunderbolt. The rushing of their
robes, as he dragged them out, seemed like the whirlwind that attends
the presence of the destroying angel.157 I cried out, in my hopeless
agony of destitution, “Oh! that my brother were here to intercede for
me,”--and, as I uttered these words, I fell. My head struck against a
marble table, and I sunk on the floor covered with blood.

“The domestics (of whom, according to the custom of the Spanish
nobility, there were about two hundred in the palace) found me in this
situation. They uttered outcries,--assistance was procured,--it was
believed that I had attempted to kill myself; but the surgeon who
attended me happened to be a man both of science and humanity, and
having cut away the long hair clotted with blood, and surveyed the
wound, he pronounced it trifling. My mother was of his opinion, for
within three days I was summoned to her apartment. I obeyed the summons.
A black bandage, severe head-ache, and an unnatural paleness, were the
only testimonies of my accident, as it was called; and the Director had
suggested to her that this was the time to FIX THE IMPRESSION.158 How
well religious persons understand the secret of making every event of the
present world operate on the future, while they pretend to make the
future predominate over the present. Were I to outlive the age of man, I
should never forget my interview with my mother. She was alone when I
entered, and seated with her back to me. I knelt and kissed her hand. My
paleness and my submission seemed to affect her,--but she struggled with
her emotions, overcame them, and said in a cold dictated tone, “To
what purpose are those marks of exterior reverence, when your heart
disowns them?” “Madam, I am not conscious of that.” “Not conscious! How
then are you here? How is it that you have not, long before this, spared
your father the shame of supplicating his own child,--the shame, still
more humiliating, of supplicating him in vain; spared the Father
Director the scandal of seeing the authority of the church violated in
the person of its minister, and the remonstrances of duty as ineffectual
as the calls of nature? And me,--oh! why have you not spared me this
hour of agony and shame?” and she burst into a flood of tears, that
drowned my soul as she shed them. “Madam, what have I done that deserves
the reproach of your tears? My disinclination to a monastic life is no
crime?” “In you it is a crime.” “But how then, dear mother, were a
similar choice offered to my brother, would his rejection of it be
deemed a crime?” I said this almost involuntarily, and merely by way of
comparison. I had no ulterior meaning, nor the least idea that one could
be developed by my mother, except a reference to an unjustifiable
partiality. I was undeceived, when she added, in a voice that chilled my
blood, “There is a great difference between you.” “Yes, Madam, he is
your favourite.” “No, I take Heaven to witness,--no;” and she, who had
appeared so severe, so decisive, and so impenetrable before, uttered
these words with a sincerity that penetrated to the bottom of my
heart;--she appeared to be appealing to Heaven against the prejudices
of her child. I was affected--I said, “But, Madam, this difference of
circumstances is inexplicable.” “And would you have it explained by
me?” “By any one, Madam.” “By me!” she repeated, not hearing me;
then kissing a crucifix that hung on her bosom, “My God! the chast-
isement is just, and I submit to it, though inflicted by my own child.
You are illegitimate,” she added, turning suddenly towards me; “you are
illegitimate,--your brother is not; and your intrusion into your father's
house is not only its disgrace, but a perpetual monitor of that crime
which it aggravates without absolving.” I stood speechless. “Oh!
my child,” she continued, “have mercy on your mother. Has not this
confession, extorted from her by her own son, been sufficient to expiate
her offence?” “Go on, Madam, I can bear any thing now.” “You must bear
it, for you have forced me to this disclosure. I am of rank far inferior
to your father,--you were our first child. He loved me, and forgiving my
weakness as a proof of my devotion to him, we were married, and your
brother is our lawful child. Your father, anxious for my reputation,
since I was united to him, agreed with me, as our marriage was private,
and its date uncertain, that you should be announced as our legitimate
offspring. For years your grandfather, incensed at our marriage, refused
to see us, and we lived in retirement,--would that I had died there. A
few days before his death he relented, and sent for us; it was no time
to acknowledge the imposition practised on him, and you were introduced
as the child of his son, and the heir of his honours. But from that hour
I have never known a moment's peace. The lie I had dared to utter before
God and the world, and to a dying parent,--the injustice done to your
brother,--the violation of natural duties and of legal claims,--the
convulsions of my conscience, that heavily upbraided me, not only with
vice and perjury, but with sacrilege.” “Sacrilege!” “Yes; every hour you
delay the assumption of the habit is a robbery of God. Before you were
born, I devoted you to him, as the only expiation of my crime. While I
yet bore you in my bosom without life, I dared to implore his forgive-
ness only on the condition of your future intercession for me as
a minister of religion. I relied on your prayers before you could
speak. I proposed to intrust my penitence to one, who, in becoming the
child of God, had atoned for my offence in making him the child of
sin. In imagination I knelt already at your confessional,--heard you, by
the authority of the church, and the commission of Heaven, pronounce
me forgiven. I saw you stand beside my dying bed,--I felt you press the
cross to my cold lips, and point to that heaven where I hoped my vow had
already secured a seat for you. Before your birth I had laboured to lift
you to heaven, and my recompence is, that your obstinacy threatens to
drag us both into the gulph of perdition. Oh! my child, if our prayers
and intercessions are available to the delivery of the souls of our
departed relatives from punishment, hear the adjuration of a living
parent, who implores you not to seal her everlasting condemnation!” I
was unable to answer, my mother saw it, and redoubled her efforts. “My
son, if I thought that my kneeling at your feet would soften your
obduracy, I would prostrate myself before them this moment.” “Oh! madam,
the sight of such unnatural humiliation ought to kill me.” “And yet you
will not yield--the agony of this confession, the interests of my
salvation and your own, nay, the preservation of my life, are of no
weight with you.” She perceived that these words made me tremble, and
repeated, “Yes, my life; beyond the day that your inflexibility exposes
me to infamy, I will not live. If you have resolution, I have resolution
too; nor do I dread the result, for God will charge on your soul, not on
mine, the crime an unnatural child has forced me to--and yet you will
not yield.--Well, then, the prostration of my body is nothing to that
prostration of soul you have already driven me to. I kneel to my own
child for life and for salvation,” and she knelt to me. I attempted to
raise her; she repelled me, and exclaimed, in a voice hoarse with
despair, “And you will not yield?” “I do not say so.” “And what, then,
do you say?--raise me not, approach me not, till you answer me.” “That
I will think.” “Think! you must decide.” “I do, then, I do.” “But how?”
“To be whatever you would have me.” As I uttered these words, my
mother fell in a swoon at my feet. As I attempted to lift her up, scarce
knowing if it was not a corse I held in my arms, I felt I never could
have forgiven myself if she had been reduced to that situation by my
refusing to comply with her last request. * * * * *

“I was overpowered with congratulations, blessings, and embraces. I
received them with trembling hands, cold lips, a rocking brain, and a
heart that felt turned to stone. Every thing passed before me as in a
dream. I saw the pageant move on, without a thought of who was to be the
victim. I returned to the convent--I felt my destiny was fixed--I had no
wish to avert or arrest it--I was like one who sees an enormous engine
(whose operation is to crush him to atoms) put in motion, and, stupified
with horror, gazes on it with a calmness that might be mistaken for that
of one who was coolly analysing the complication of its machinery, and
calculating the resistless crush of its blow. I have read of a wretched
Jew,159 who, by the command of a Moorish emperor, was exposed in an
area to the rage of a lion who had been purposely kept fasting for eight
and forty hours. The horrible roar of the famished and infuriated animal
made even the executioners tremble as they fastened the rope round the
body of the screaming victim. Amid hopeless struggles, supplications for
mercy, and shrieks of despair, he was bound, raised, and lowered into
the area. At the moment he touched the ground, he fell prostrate,
stupefied, annihilated. He uttered no cry--he did not draw a breath--he
did not make an effort--he fell contracting his whole body into a ball,
and lay as senseless as a lump of earth.--So it fared with me; my cries
and struggles were over,--I had been flung into the area, and I lay
there. I repeated to myself, “I am to be a monk,” and there the debate
ended. If they commended me for the performance of my exercises, or
reproved me for my deficiency, I showed neither joy nor sorrow,--I said
only, “I am to be a monk.” If they urged me to take exercise in the
garden of the convent, or reproved me for my excess in walking beyond
the allotted hours, I still answered, “I am to be a monk.” I was showed
much indulgence in these wanderings. A son--the eldest son of the Duke
de Monçada, taking the vows, was a glorious triumph for the ex-Jesuits,
and they did not fail to make the most of it. They asked what books I
would like to read,--I answered, “What they pleased.” They saw I was
fond of flowers, and vases of porcelain, filled with the most exquisite
produce of their garden, (renewed every day), embellished my apartment.
I was fond of music,--that they perceived from my involuntary joining in
the choir. My voice was good, and my profound melancholy gave an ex-
pression to my tones, which these men, always on the watch to grasp at
any thing that may aggrandize them, or delude their victims, assured me
were like the tones of inspiration.

“Amid these displays of indulgence, I exhibited an ingratitude totally
foreign from my character. I never read the books they furnished me
with,--I neglected the flowers with which they filled my room,--and the
superb organ they introduced into my apartment, I never touched, except
to elicit some deep and melancholy chords from its keys. To those who
urged me to employ my talents for painting and music, I still answered
with the same apathetic monotony, “I am to be a monk.” “But, my brother,
the love of flowers, of music, of all that can be consecrated to God, is
also worthy of the attention of man--you abuse the indulgence of the
Superior.” “Perhaps so.” “You must, in gratitude to God, thank him for
these lovely works of his creation;”--the room was at this time filled
with carnations and roses;--“you must also be grateful to him for the
powers with which he has distinguished you in hymning his praises--your
voice is the richest and most powerful in the church.” “I don't doubt
it.” “My brother, you answer at random.” “Just as I feel--but don't heed
that.” “Will you take a turn in the garden?” “If you please.” “Or will
you seek a moment's consolation from the Superior?” “If you please.”
“But why do you speak with such apathy? are the odour of the flowers,
and the consolations of your Superior, to be appreciated in the same
breath?” “I believe so.” “Why?” “Because I am to be a monk.” “Nay,
brother, will you never utter any thing but that phrase, which carries
no meaning with it but that of stupefaction or delirium?” “Imagine me,
then, stupefied, delirious--what you please--you know I must be a monk.”
At these words, which I suppose I uttered in a tone unlike that of the
usual chaunt 160 of monastic conversation, another interposed, and asked
what I was uttering in so loud a key? “I am only saying,” I replied,
“that I must be a monk.” “Thank God it is no worse,” replied the
querist, “your contumacy must long ago have wearied the Superior and
the brethren--thank God it's no worse.” At these words I felt my pas-
sions resuscitated,--I exclaimed, “Worse! what have I to dread?--am I
not to be a monk?” From that evening, (I forget when it occurred), my
liberty was abridged; I was no longer suffered to walk, to converse with
the boarders or novices,--a separate table was spread for me in the
refectory,--the seats near mine were left vacant at service,--yet still
my cell was embellished with flowers and engravings, and exquisitely-
wrought toys were left on my table. I did not perceive they
were treating me as a lunatic, yet certainly my foolishly reiterated
expressions might have justified them in doing so,--they had their own
plans in concert with the Director,--my silence went for proof. The
Director came often to visit me, and the hypocritical wretches would
accompany him to my cell. I was generally (for want of other occupation)
attending to my flowers, or gazing at the engravings,--and they would
say, “You see he is as happy as he wishes to be--he wants for
nothing--he is quite occupied in watching those roses.” “No, I am not
occupied,” I returned, “it is occupation I want.” Then they shrugged
their shoulders, exchanged mysterious looks with the Director, and I was
glad when they were gone, without reflecting on the mischief their
absence threatened me with. At this moment, consultation after
consultation was held at the palace de Monçada, whether I could be
induced to shew sufficient intellect to enable me to pronounce the vows.
It seems the reverend fathers were as anxious as their old enemies the
Moors, to convert an idiot into a saint. There was now a party combined
against me, that it would have required more than the might of man to
resist. All was uproar from the palace de Monçada to the convent, and
back again. I was mad, contumacious, heretical, idiotical,--any
thing--every thing--that could appease the jealous agony of my parents,
the cupidity of the monks, or the ambition of the ex-Jesuits, who
laughed at the terror of all the rest, and watched intently over their
own interests. Whether I was mad or not, they cared very little; to
enroll a son of the first house of Spain among their converts, or to
imprison him as a madman, or to exorcise him as a demoniac, was all
the same to them. There was a coup de theatre to be exhibited, and
provided they played first parts, they cared little about the
catastrophe. Luckily, during all this uproar of imposture, fear,
falsehood, and misrepresentation, the Superior remained steady. He let
the tumult go on, to aggrandize his importance; but he was resolved all
the time that I should have sanity enough to enable me to take the vows.
I knew nothing of all this, but was astonished at being summoned to the
parlour on the last eve of my noviciate. I had performed my religious
exercises with regularity, had received no rebukes from the master of
the novices, and was totally unprepared for the scene that awaited me.
In the parlour were assembled my father, mother, the Director, and some
other persons whom I did not recognize. I advanced with a calm look, and
equal step. I believe I was as much in possession of my reason as any
one present. The Superior, taking my arm, led me round the room, saying,
“You see----” I interrupted him--“Sir, what is this intended for?” He
answered only by putting his finger on his lips, and then desired me to
exhibit my drawings. I brought them, and offered them on one knee, first
to my mother, and then to my father. They were sketches of monasteries
and prisons. My mother averted her eyes--and my father said, pushing
them away, “I have no taste in those things.” “But you are fond of music
doubtless,” said the Superior; “you must hear his performance.” There
was a small organ in the room adjacent to the parlour; my mother was not
admitted there, but my father followed to listen. Involuntarily I selected
an air from the “Sacrifice of Jephtha.”161 My father was affected,
and bid me cease. The Superior imagined this was not only a tribute to
my talent, but an acknowledgement of the power of his party, and he
applauded without measure or judgement. Till that moment, I had never
conceived I could be the object of a party in the convent. The Superior
was determined to make me a Jesuit, and therefore was pledged for my
sanity. The monks wished for an exorcism, an auto de fe,162 or some
such bagatelle, to diversify the dreariness of monasticism, and
therefore were anxious I should be, or appear, deranged or possessed.
Their pious wishes, however, failed. I had appeared when summoned,
behaved with scrupulous correctness, and the next day was appointed
for my taking the vows.

“That next day--Oh! that I could describe it!--but it is impossible--the
profound stupefaction in which I was plunged prevented my noticing
things which would have inspired the most uninterested spectator. I was
so absorbed, that though I remember facts, I cannot paint the slightest
trace of the feelings which they excited. During the night I slept
profoundly, till I was awoke by a knock at my door.--“My dear child, how
are you employed?” I knew the voice of the Superior, and I replied, “My
father, I was sleeping.” “And I was macerating myself at the foot of the
altar for you, my child,--the scourge is red with my blood.” I returned
no answer, for I felt the maceration was better merited by the betrayer
than the betrayed. Yet I was mistaken; for in fact, the Superior felt
some compunction, and had undergone this penance on account of my
repugnance and alienation of mind, more than for his own offences. But
Oh! how false is a treaty made with God, which we ratify with our own
blood, when he has declared there is but one sacrifice he will accept,
even that of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world! Twice in
the night, I was thus disturbed, and twice answered in the same lan-
guage. The Superior, I make no doubt, was sincere. He thought he was
doing all for God, and his bleeding shoulders testified his zeal. But I
was in such a state of mental ossification, that I neither felt, heard,
or understood; and when he knocked a second and third time at the door
of my cell to announce the severity of his macerations, and the efficacy
of his intercessions with God, I answered, “Are not criminals allowed to
sleep the night before their execution?” At hearing these words, which
must have made him shudder, the Superior fell prostrate before the door
of my cell, and I turned to sleep again. But I could hear the voices of
the monks as they raised the Superior, and bore him to his cell. They
said, “He is incorrigible--you humiliate yourself in vain--when he is
ours, you shall see him a different being--he shall then prostrate
himself before you.” I heard this, and slept on. The morning came--I
knew what it would bring--I dramatized the whole scene in my own mind.
I imagined I witnessed the tears of my parents, the sympathy of the
congregation. I thought I saw the hands of the priests tremble as they
tossed the incense, and even the acolytes shiver as they held their
robes. Suddenly my mind changed: I felt--what was it I felt?--a union of
malignity, despair, and power, the most formidable. Lightning seemed
flashing from my eyes as I reflected,--I might make the sacrificers and
the sacrificed change places in one moment,--I might blast my mother as
she stood, by a word,--I might break my father's heart, by a single
sentence,--I might scatter more desolation around me, than it was
apparently possible for human vice, human power, or human malignity,
more potent than both, to cause to its most abject victim.--Yes!--on
that morning I felt within myself the struggles of nature, feeling,
compunction, pride, malevolence, and despair.--The former I had brought
with me, the latter had been all acquired in the convent. I said to
those who attended me that morning, “You are arraying me for a victim,
but I can turn the executioners into the victims if I please”--and I
laughed. The laugh terrified those who were about me--they
retreated--they represented my state to the Superior. He came to my
apartment. The whole convent was by this time alarmed--their credit was
at stake--the preparations had all been made--the whole world was
determined I was to be a monk, mad or not.

“The Superior was terrified, I saw, as he entered my apartment. “My son,
what means all this?” “Nothing, my father--nothing but a sudden thought
that has struck me.” “We will discuss it another time, my son; at
present--” “At present,” I repeated with a laugh that must have
lacerated the Superior's ears--“At present I have but one alternative to
propose--let my father or my brother take my place--that is all. I will
never be a monk.” The Superior, at these words, ran in despair round the
cell. I followed him, exclaiming, in a voice that must have filled him
with horror, “I exclaim against the vows--let those who forced me to it,
take the guilt on themselves--let my father, in his own person, expiate
his guilt in bringing me into the world--let my brother sacrifice his
pride--why must I be the only victim of the crime of the one, and the
passions of the other?” “My son, all this was arranged before.” “Yes, I
know that--I know that by a decree of the Almighty I was doomed to be
cursed even in my mother's womb, but I will never subscribe that decree
with my own hand.” “My son, what can I say to you--you have passed your
noviciate.” “Yes, in a state of stupefaction.” “All Madrid is assembled
to hear you take your vows.” “Then all Madrid shall hear me renounce
them, and disavow them.” “This is the very day fixed on. The ministers
of God are prepared to yield you to his arms. Heaven and earth,--all
that is valuable in time, or precious in eternity, are summoned, are
waiting for the irrevocable words that seal your salvation, and ensure
that of those you love. What demon has taken possession of you, my
child, and seized the moment you were coming to Christ, to cast you
down, and tear you? How shall I--how shall the fraternity, and all the
souls who are to escape from punishment by the merit of your prayers,
answer to God for your horrible apostacy?” “Let them answer for
themselves--let every one of us answer for ourselves--that is the
dictate of reason.” “Of reason, my deluded child,--when had reason any
thing to do with religion?” I had sat down, folded my arms on my breast,
and forbore to answer a word. The Superior stood with his arms crossed,
his head declined, his whole figure in an air of profound and mortified
contemplation. Any one else would have imagined him seeking God in the
abysses of meditation, but I felt he was only seeking him where he is
never to be found,--in the abyss of that heart which is “deceitful and
desperately wicked.”163 He approached--I exclaimed, “Come not near me!
--you will renew again the story of my submission--I tell you it was
artificial;--of my regularity in devotional exercises--it was all
mechanism or imposture;--of my conformity to discipline--it was all
practised with the hope of escaping from it ultimately. Now, I feel my
conscience discharged and my heart lightened. Do you hear, do you
understand me? These are the first words of truth I ever uttered since I
entered these walls--the only ones that will, perhaps, ever be uttered
within them--aye, treasure them up, knit your brows, and cross yourself,
and elevate your eyes as you will. Go on with your religious drama. What
is there you see before you so horrible, that you recoil, that you cross
yourself, that you lift your eyes and hands to heaven?--a creature whom
despair has driven to utter desperate truth! Truth may be horrible to
the inmates of a convent, whose whole life is artificial and perverted,-
-whose very hearts are sophisticated beyond the hand even of
Heaven (which they alienate by their hypocrisy) to touch. But I feel I
am at this moment an object of less horror in the sight of the Deity,
than if I were standing at his altar, to (as you would urge me) insult
him with vows, which my heart was bursting from my bosom to contradict,
at the moment I uttered them.”

“At these words, which I must have uttered with the most indecent and
insulting violence, I almost expected the Superior would have struck me
to the earth,--would have summoned the lay-brothers to bear me to
confinement,--would have shut me up in the dungeon of the convent,
for I knew there was such a place. Perhaps I wished for all this. Driven
to extremity myself, I felt a kind of pride in driving others to it in
return. Any thing of violent excitement, of rapid and giddy vicissitude,
or even of intense suffering, I was prepared for, and equal to, at that
moment. But these paroxysms soon exhaust themselves and us by their
violence.

Astonished by the Superior's silence, I raised my eyes to him. I said,
in a tone of moderation that seemed unnatural to my own ears, “Well, let
me hear my sentence.” He was silent still. He had watched the crisis,
and now skilfully seized the turn of the mental disease, to exhibit his
applications. He was standing before me meek and motionless, his arms
crossed, his eyes depressed, not the slightest indication of resentment
to be traced in his whole figure. The folds of his habit, refusing to
announce his internal agitation, seemed as they were cut out of stone.
His silence imperceptibly softened me,--I blamed myself for my violence.
Thus men of the world command us by their passions, and men of the
other world by the apparent suppression of them. At last he said, “My
son, you have revolted from God, resisted his Holy Spirit, profaned his
sanctuary, and insulted his minister,--in his name and my own I forgive
you all. Judge of the various characters of our systems, by their
different results on us two. You revile, defame, and accuse,--I bless
and forgive; which of us is then under the influence of the gospel of
Christ, and within the pale of the church's benediction? But leaving
this question, which you are not at present in a frame to decide, I
shall urge but one topic more; if that fails, I shall no longer oppose
your wishes, or urge you to prostitute a sacrifice which man would
despise, and God must disdain. I add, I will even do my utmost to
facilitate your wishes, which are now in fact my own.” At these words,
so full of truth and benignity, I was rushing to prostrate myself at his
feet, but fear and experience checked me, and I only bowed. “Promise
me merely that you will wait with patience till this last topic is urged;
whether it succeeds or not I have now little interest, and less care.”
Ipromised,--he went out. A few moments after he returned. His air
was a little more disturbed, but still struggling for a calmness of ex-
pression. There was agitation about him, but I knew not whether it was
felt on his own account or mine. He held the door half open, and his
first sentence astonished me.--“My son, you are well acquainted with the
classical histories.” “But what is that to the purpose, my father?” “You
remember a remarkable story of the Roman general, who spurned from the
steps of his tribune, people, senators, and priests,--trampled on all
law,--outraged all religion,--but was at last moved by nature, for, when
his mother prostrated herself before him, and exclaimed, ‘My son, before
you tread the streets of Rome, you must first tread on the body of her
who bore you!' he relented.”164 “I remember all, but to what does this
tend?” “To this,” and he threw open the door; “now, prove yourself, if
you can, more obdurate than a heathen.” As the door opened, across the
threshold lay my mother, prostrate on her face. She said in a stifled
voice, “Advance,--break your vows,--but you must rush to perjury over
the body of your mother.” I attempted to raise her, but she clung to the
ground, repeating the same words; and her magnificent dress, that
overspread the floor of stone with gems and velvet, frightfully
contrasted her posture of humiliation, and the despair that burned in
her eyes, as she raised them to me for a moment. Convulsed with agony
and horror, I reeled into the arms of the Superior, who seized that
moment to bear me to the church. My mother followed,--the ceremony
proceeded. I vowed chastity, poverty, and obedience, and in a few
moments my destiny was decided. * * * * *

“Day followed day for many a month, of which I have no recollections,
nor wish to have any. I must have experienced many emotions, but they
all subsided like the waves of the sea under the darkness of a midnight
sky,--their fluctuation continues, but there is no light to mark their
motion, or trace when they rise and fall. A deep stupor pervaded my
senses and soul; and perhaps, in this state, I was best fitted for the
monotonous existence to which I was doomed. It is certain that I
performed all the conventual functions with a regularity that left
nothing to be blamed, and an apathy that left nothing for praise. My
life was a sea without a tide.165 The bell did not toll for service with
more mechanical punctuality than I obeyed the summons. No automaton,
constructed on the most exquisite principles of mechanism, and obeying
those principles with a punctuality almost miraculous, could leave the
artist less room for complaint or disappointment, than I did the
Superior and community. I was always first in my place in the choir. I
received no visits in the parlour,--when I was permitted to go, I
declined the permission. If penance was enjoined, I submitted; if
relaxation was permitted, I never partook of it. I never asked a
dispensation from morning prayers, or from vigils. I was silent in the
refectory,--in the garden I walked alone. I neither thought, nor felt,
nor lived,--if life depends on consciousness, and the motions of the
will. I slept through my existence like the Simorgh in the Eastern166
fable, but this sleep was not to last long. My abstraction and calmness
would not do for the Jesuits. My stupor, my noiseless tread, my fixed
eyes, my ghastly silence, might indeed have impressed a superstitious
community with the idea that it was no human creature who stalked
through their cloisters, and haunted their choir. But they had quite
different ideas. They considered all this as a tacit reproach to the
struggles, the squabbles, the intrigues, and the circumventions, in
which they were immersed, body and soul, from morn till night. Perhaps
they thought I was lying in reserve, only to watch them. Perhaps there
might have been a dearth of some matter of curiosity or complaint in the
convent just then,--a very little serves for either. However it was,
they began to revive the old story of my being deranged, and resolved to
make the most of it. They whispered in the refectory, consulted in the
garden,--shook their heads, pointed at me in the cloister, and finally,
I faithfully believe, worked themselves into the conviction that what
they wished or imagined was actually true. Then they all felt their
consciences interested in the investigation; and a select party, headed
by an old monk of influence and reputation, waited on the Superior. They
stated to him my abstraction, my mechanical movements, my automaton
figure, my meanless words, my stupified devotion, my total alienation
from the spirit of the monastic life, while my scrupulous, wooden,
jointless exactness in its forms was only a mockery. The Superior
heard them with great indifference. He had held secret intelligence with
my family, had communicated with the Director, and pledged himself that
I should be a monk. He had succeeded by dint of exertions, (the result
of which has been seen), and now cared very little whether I was mad or
not. With a grave air he forbid their further interference in the
matter, and reserved its future cognizance to himself. They retired
defeated, but not disappointed, and they all pledged themselves to each
other to watch me; that is, to harass, persecute, and torment me into
being the very character with which their malice, their curiosity, or
their mere industry of idleness and wantonness of unoccupied invention,
had invested me already. From that hour the whole convent was in a
tumult of conspiracy and combination. Doors were clapped to wherever I
was heard to approach; and three or four would stand whispering near
where I walked, and clear their throats, and exchange signs, and pass
audibly to the most trifling topics in my hearing, as if to intimate,
while they affected to conceal it, that their last topic had been me.
I laughed at this internally. I said to myself, “Poor perverted beings,
with what affectation of dramatic bustle and contrivance you labour to
diversify the misery of your hopeless vacancy;--you struggle,--I sub-
mit.” Soon the toils167 they were preparing began to tighten round me.
They would throw themselves in my way with an assiduity I could not
avoid, and an appearance of kindness I did not willingly repel. They
would say, in the blandest tones, “My dear brother, you are melan-
choly,--you are devoured with chagrin,--would to God our fraternal
efforts could banish your regrets. But from what arises that melancholy
that appears to consume you?” At these words I could not help fixing
on them eyes full of reproaches, and I believe of tears,--but I did not
utter a word. The state in which they saw me, was a sufficient cause
for the melancholy with which I was reproached. * * * * * *

“This attack having failed, another method was tried. They attempted to
make me a party in the parties of the convent. They told me a thousand
things of unjust partialities,--of unjust punishments, daily to be
witnessed in the convent. They talked of a sickly brother being
compelled to attend matins, while the physician pronounced his
attendance on them must be his death,--and he died,--while a young
favourite, in the bloom of health, had a dispensation from matins
whenever he pleased to lie till nine in the morning;--of complaints that
the confessional was not attended to as it ought,--and this might have
made some impression on me, till another complainant added, and the
turning-box 168 is not attended to as it ought to be. This union of
dissonant sounds,--this startling transition from a complaint of
neglecting the mysteries of the soul in its profoundest communion with
God, to the lowest details of the abuses of conventual discipline,
revolted me at once. I had with difficulty concealed my disgust till
then, and it was now so obvious, that the party gave up their attempt
for the moment, and beckoned to an experienced monk to join me in my
solitary walk, as I broke from them. He approached, “My brother, you are
alone.” “I wish to be so.” “But why?” “I am not obliged to announce my
reasons.” “True, but you may confide them to me.” “I have nothing to
confide.” “I know that,--I would not for the world intrude on your
confidence; reserve that for friends more honoured.” It struck me as
rather odd, that he should, in the same breath, ask for my
confidence,--declare that he was conscious I had nothing to intrust to
him,--and, lastly, request a reserve of my confidence for some more
favoured friend. I was silent, however, till he said, “But, my brother,
you are devoured with ennui.” I was silent still. “Would to God I could
find the means to dissipate it.” I said, looking on him calmly, “Are
those means to be found within the walls of a convent?” “Yes, my dear
brother,--yes, certainly,--the debate in which the convent is now
engaged about the proper hour for matins, which the Superior wants to
have restored to the original hour.” “What is the difference?” “Full
five minutes.” “I confess the importance of the question.” “Oh! if you
once begin to feel it, there will be no end of your happiness in a
convent. There is something every moment to inquire, to be anxious
about, and to contend for. Interest yourself, my dear brother, in these
questions, and you will not have a moment's ennui to complain of.” At
these words I fixed my eyes on him. I said calmly, but I believe
emphatically, “I have, then, only to excite in my own mind, spleen,
malignity, curiosity, every passion that your retreat should have
afforded me protection against, to render that retreat supportable.
Pardon me, if I cannot, like you, beg of God permission to take his
enemy into compact against the corruption which I promote, while I
presume to pray against it.” He was silent, lifted up his hands, and
crossed himself; and I said to myself, “God forgive your hypocrisy,” as
he went into another walk, and repeated to his companions, “He is mad,
irrecoverably mad.” “But how, then?” said several voices. There was a
stifled whisper. I saw several heads bent together. I did not know what
they were meditating, nor did I care. I was walking alone,--it was a
delicious moon-light evening. I saw the moon-beams through the trees,
but the trees all looked to me like walls. Their trunks were as adamant,
and the interlaced branches seemed to twine themselves into folds that
said, “Beyond us there is no passing.” I sat down by the side of a
fountain,--there was a tall poplar over it,--I remember their situation
well. An elderly priest (who, I did not see, was detached by the party)
sat down beside me. He began some common-place observations on the
transiency of human existence. I shook my head, and he understood, by a
kind of tact not uncommon among Jesuits, that it would not do. He
shifted the subject, remarked on the beauty of the foliage, and the
limpid purity of the fountain. I assented. He added, “Oh that life were
pure as that stream!” I sighed, “Oh that life were verdant and fertile
to me as that tree!” “But, my son, may not fountains be dried up, and
trees be withered?” “Yes, my father,--yes,--the fountain of my life has
been dried up, and the green branch of my life has been blasted for
ever.” As I uttered these words, I could not suppress some tears. The
father seized on what he called the moment when God was breathing on my
soul. Our conversation was very long, and I listened to him with a kind
of reluctant and stubborn attention, because I had involuntarily been
compelled to observe, that he was the only person in the whole community
who had never harassed me by the slightest importunity either before my
profession or after; and when the worst things were said of me, never
seemed to attend; and when the worst things were predicted of me, shook
his head and said nothing. His character was unimpeached, and his
religious performances as exemplary and punctual as my own. With all
this I felt no confidence in him, or in any human being; but I listened
to him with patience, and my patience must have had no trivial trial,
for, at the end of an hour, (I did not perceive that our conference was
permitted quite beyond the usual hour of retirement), he continued
repeating, “My dear son, you will become reconciled to the conventual
life.” “My father, never, never,--unless this fountain is dried up, and
this tree withered, by to-morrow.” “My son, God has often performed
greater miracles for the salvation of a soul.”

“We parted, and I retired to my cell. I know not how he and the o--
thers were employed, but, before matins, there was such a tumult in
the convent, that one would have thought Madrid was on fire. Board-
ers, novices, and monks, ran about from cell to cell, up and down
the stair-case, through all the corridors, unrestrained and unques-
tioned,--all order was at an end. No bell was rung, no commands for
restoring tranquillity issued; the voice of authority seemed to have
made peace for ever with the shouts of uproar. From my window I saw
them running through the garden in every direction, embracing each other,
ejaculating, praying, and counting their beads with hands tremulous, and
eyes uplifted in extacy. The hilarity of a convent has something in it
uncouth, unnatural, and even alarming. I suspected some mischief
immediately, but I said to myself, “The worst is over, they cannot make
me more than a monk.”--I was not long left in doubt. Many steps
approached my cell, numerous voices were repeating, “Hasten, dear
brother, hasten to the garden.” I was left no choice; they surrounded
and almost bore me to the garden.

“The whole community were assembled there, the Superior among them not
attempting to suppress the confusion, but rather encouraging it. There
was a suffusion of joy in every countenance, and a kind of artificial
light in every eye, but the whole performance struck me as hollow and
hypocritical. I was led, or rather hurried to the spot where I had sat
and conversed so long the preceding evening. The fountain was dried up,
and the tree was withered. I stood speechless with astonishment, while
every voice around me repeated, “A miracle! a miracle!--God himself has
sealed your vocation with his own hand.” The Superior made a signal to
them to stop. He said to me in a calm voice, “My son, you are required
only to believe the evidence of your own eyes. Will you make infidels of
your very senses, sooner than believe God? Prostrate yourself, I adjure
you, before him this moment, and, by a public and solemn act of faith,
recognise that mercy that has not scrupled a miracle to invite you to
salvation.” I was amazed more than touched by what I saw and heard, but
I threw myself on my knees before them all, as I was directed. I clasped
my hands, and said aloud, “My God, if you have indeed vouchsafed this
miracle on my account, you will also doubtless enrich and illuminate me
with grace to apprehend and appreciate it. My mind is dark, but you can
illuminate it. My heart is hard, but it is not beyond the power of
omnipotence to touch and subdue it. An impression made on it this
moment, a whisper sent to its recesses, is not less worthy of your mercy
than an impression on inanimate matter, which only confounds my senses.”
The Superior interrupted me. He said, “Hold, those are not the words you
should use. Your very faith is incredulous, and your prayer an ironical
insult on the mercy it pretends to supplicate.” “My father, put what
words you please in my mouth, and I will repeat them,--if I am not
convinced, I am at least subdued.” “You must ask pardon of the community
for the offence your tacit repugnance to the life of God has caused
them.” I did so. “You must express your gratitude to the community for
the joy they have testified at this miraculous evidence of the truth of
your vocation.” I did so. “You must also express your gratitude to God,
for a visible interposition of supernatural power, not more to the
vindication of his grace, than to the eternal honour of this house,
which he has been pleased to irradiate and dignify by a miracle.” I
hesitated a little. I said, “My father, may I be permitted to utter this
prayer internally?” The Superior hesitated too; he thought it might not
be well to push matters too far, and he said at length, “As you please.”
I was still kneeling on the ground, close to the tree and the fountain.
I now prostrated myself, with my face to the earth, and prayed
internally and intensely, while they all stood around me; but the
language of my prayer was very different from what they flattered
themselves I was uttering. On rising from my knees, I was embraced by
half the community. Some of them actually shed tears, the source of
whose fountain was surely not in their hearts. Hypocritical joy insults
only its dupe, but hypocritical grief degrades the professor. That whole
day was passed in a kind of revelry. Exercises were abridged,--the
refections embellished with confectionary,--every one had permission to
go from cell to cell, without an order from the Superior. Presents of
chocolate, snuff, iced water, liqueurs, and (what was more acceptable
and necessary than any of them) napkins and towels of the finest and
whitest damask, circulated among all the members. The Superior was shut
up half the day with two discreet brethren, as they are called, (that
is, men who are elected to take part with the Superior, on supposition
of their utter, superannuated incapacity, as Pope Sixtus170 was elected for
his (supposed) imbecillity), preparing an authenticated account of the
miracle, to be dispatched to the principal convents in Spain. There was
no need to distribute the intelligence through Madrid,--they were in
possession of it an hour after it happened,--the malicious say an hour
before.

“I must confess the agitating exhilaration of this day, so unlike what I
had ever witnessed before in a convent, produced an effect on me I
cannot describe. I was caressed,--made the hero of the fete,--(a
conventual fete has always something odd and unnatural in it),--almost
deified. I gave myself up to the intoxication of the day,--I did verily
believe myself the favourite of the Deity for some hours. I said to
myself a thousand flattering things. If this deception was criminal, I
expiated my crime very soon. The next day every thing was restored to
its usual order, and I found that the community could pass from the
extreme of disorder in a moment to the rigidity of their usual habits.

“My conviction of this was certainly not diminished within the few
following days. The oscillations of a convent vibrate within a very
short interval. One day all is relaxation, another all is inexorable
discipline. Some following days I received a striking proof of that
foundation on which, in despite of a miracle, my repugnance to a
monastic life rested. Some one, it was said, had committed a slight
breach of monastic duty. The slight breach was fortunately committed
by a distant relation of the Archbishop of Toledo, and consisted merely
in his entering the church intoxicated, (a rare vice in Spaniards),
attempting to drag the matin preacher from the pulpit, and failing in
that, getting astride as well as he could on the altar, dashing down the
tapers, overturning the vases and the pix, and trying to scratch out, as
with the talons of a demon, the painting that hung over the table,
uttering all the while the most horrible blasphemies, and even
soliciting the portrait of the Virgin in language not to be repeated.
A consultation was held. The community, as may be guessed, was in an
uproar while it lasted. Every one but myself was anxious and agitated.
There was much talk of the inquisition,--the scandal was so
atrocious,--the outrage so unpardonable,--and atonement so
impracticable. Three days afterwards the archbishop's mandate came to
stop all proceedings; and the following day the youth who had committed
this sacrilegious outrage appeared in the hall of the Jesuits, where the
Superior and a few monks were assembled, read a short exercise which one
of them had written for him on the pithy word “Ebrietas,”171 and departed
to take possession of a large benefice in the diocese of the archbishop
his relative. The very next day after this scandalous scene of
compromise, imposture, and profanation, a monk was detected in the act
of going, after the permitted hour, to an adjacent cell to return a book
he had borrowed. As a punishment for this offence, he was compelled to
sit for three days at refection, while we were dining, barefooted and
his tunic reversed, on the stone floor of the hall. He was compelled to
accuse himself aloud of every crime, and of many not at all fit to be
mentioned to our ears, and exclaim at every interval, “My God, my
punishment is just.” On the second day, it was found that a mat had been
placed under him by some merciful hand. There was an immediate commotion
in the hall. The poor wretch was labouring under a complaint that made
it worse than death to him to be compelled to sit or rather lie on a
stone floor; some merciful being had surreptitiously conveyed to him
this mat. An investigation was immediately commenced. A youth whom I
had not noticed before, started from the table, and kneeling to the
Superior, confessed his guilt. The Superior assumed a stern look,
retired with some old monks to consult on this new crime of humanity,
and in a few moments the bell was rung, to give every one notice to
retire to their cells. We all retired trembling, and while we prostrated
ourselves respectively before the crucifix in our cells, wondered who
would be the next victim, or what might be his punishment. I saw that
youth but once again. He was the son of a wealthy and powerful family,
but even his wealth was no balance against his contumacy, in the opinion
of the convent, that is, of four monks of rigid principles, whom the
Superior consulted that very evening. The Jesuits are fond of courting
power, but they are still fonder of keeping it, if they can, to
themselves. The result of their debate was, that the offender should
undergo a severe humiliation and penance in their presence. His sentence
was announced to him, and he submitted to it. He repeated every word of
contrition they dictated to him. He then bared his shoulders, and
applied the scourge till the blood flowed, repeating between every
stroke, “My God, I ask pardon of thee for having given the slightest
comfort or relief to Fra Paolo, during his merited penance.” He
performed all this, cherishing in the bottom of his soul an intention
still to comfort and relieve Fra Paolo, whenever he could find
opportunity. He then thought all was over. He was desired to retire
to his cell. He did so, but the monks were not satisfied with this
examination. They had long suspected Fra Paolo of irregularity, and
imagined they might extort the confession of it from this youth, whose
humanity increased their suspicion. The virtues of nature are always
deemed vices in a convent. Accordingly, he had hardly been in bed when
they surrounded him. They told him they came by command of the Superior
to enjoin him a further penance, unless he disclosed the secret of the
interest he felt for Fra Paolo. It was in vain he exclaimed, “I have no
interest but that of humanity and compassion.” Those were words they
did not understand. It was in vain he urged, “I will inflict whatever
penance the Superior is pleased to order, but my shoulders are bleeding
still,”--and he shewed them. The executioners were pitiless. They
compelled him to quit his bed, and applied the scourge with such
outrageous severity, that at last, mad with shame, rage, and pain, he
burst from them, and ran through the corridor calling for assistance or
for mercy. The monks were in their cells, none dared to stir,--they
shuddered, and turned on their straw pallets. It was the vigil of Saint
John the Lesser, and I had been commanded what is called in convents an
hour of recollection, which was to be passed in the church. I had obeyed
the order, and remained with my face and body prostrate on the marble
steps of the altar, till I was almost unconscious, when I heard the
clock strike twelve. I reflected the hour had elapsed without a single
recollection on my part. “And thus it is to be always,” I exclaimed,
rising from my knees; “they deprive of the power of thinking, and then
they bid me recollect.” As I returned through the corridor, I heard
frightful cries--I shuddered. Suddenly a phantom approached me--I dropt
on my knees--I cried, “Satana vade retro--apage Satana.”172 A naked
human being, covered with blood, and uttering screams of rage and torture,
flashed by me; four monks pursued him--they had lights. I had shut the
door at the end of the gallery--I felt they must return and pass me--I
was still on my knees, and trembling from head to foot. The victim
reached the door, found it shut, and rallied. I turned, and saw a groupe
worthy of Murillo.173 A more perfect human form never existed than that
of this unfortunate youth. He stood in an attitude of despair--he was
streaming with blood. The monks, with their lights, their scourges, and
their dark habits, seemed like a groupe of demons who had made prey of
a wandering angel,--the groupe resembled the infernal furies pursuing a
mad Orestes.174 And, indeed, no ancient sculptor ever designed a figure
more exquisite and perfect than that they had so barbarously mangled.
Debilitated as my mind was by the long slumber of all its powers, this
spectacle of horror and cruelty woke them in a moment. I rushed forward
in his defence--I struggled with the monks--I uttered some expressions
which, though I hardly was conscious of, they remembered and exaggerated
with all the accuracy of malice.

“I have no recollection of what followed; but the issue of the business
was, that I was confined to my cell for the following week, for my
daring interference in the discipline of the convent. And the additional
penance of the unfortunate novice, for resisting that discipline, was
inflicted with such severity, that he became delirious with shame and
agony. He refused food, he got no rest, and died the eighth night after
the scene I had witnessed. He was of a temper unusually mild and
amiable--he had a taste for literature, and even the disguise of a
convent could not conceal the distinguished graces of his person and
manners. Had he lived in the world, how these qualities would have
embellished it! Perhaps the world would have abused and perverted
them--true; but would the abuses of the world ever have brought them to
so frightful and disastrous a conclusion?--would he have been first
lashed into madness, and then lashed out of existence? He was interred
in the church of the convent, and the Superior himself pronounced his
eulogium--the Superior! by whose order, or else permission, or at least
connivance, he had been driven mad, in order to obtain a trivial and
imaginary secret.

”During this exhibition, my disgust arose to a degree incalculable. I
had loathed the conventual life--I now despised it; and every judge of
human nature knows, that it is harder to eradicate the latter sentiment
than the former. I was not long without an occasion for the renewed
exercise of both feelings. The weather was intensely hot that year--an
epidemic complaint broke out in the convent--every day two or three were
ordered to the infirmary, and those who had merited slight penances were
allowed, by way of commutation, to attend the sick. I was most anxious
to be of the number--I was even resolved, by some slight deviation, to
tempt this punishment, which would have been to me the highest
gratification. Dare I confess my motive to you, Sir? I was anxious to
see those men, if possible, divested of the conventual disguise, and
forced to sincerity by the pangs of disease, and the approach of death.
I triumphed already in the idea of their dying confession, of hearing
them acknowledge the seductions employed to ensnare me, deplore the
miseries in which they had involved me, and implore, with convulsed
lips, my pardon in--no--not in vain.

“This wish, though vindictive, was not without its palliations; but I
was soon saved the trouble of realizing it at my own expence. That very
evening the Superior sent for me, and desired me to attend in the
infirmary, allowing me, at the same time, remission from vespers. The
first bed I approached, I found Fra Paolo extended on. He had never
recovered the effects of the complaint he laboured under at the time of
his penance; and the death of the young novice so (fruitlessly incurred)
had been mortal to him.

“I offered him medicines--I attempted to adjust him in his bed. He had
been greatly neglected. He repelled both offers, and, feebly waving his
hand, said, “Let me, at least, die in peace.” A few moments after, he
unclosed his eyes, and recognized me. A gleam of pleasure trembled over
his countenance, for he remembered the interest I had shewn for his
unfortunate friend. He said, in a voice hardly intelligible, “It is you,
then?” “Yes, my brother, it is I--can I do any thing for you?” After a
long pause, he added, “Yes, you can.” “Tell me then.” He lowered his
voice, which was before almost inaudible, and whispered, “Let none of
them come near me in my dying moments--it will not give you much
trouble--those moments are approaching.” I pressed his hand in token
of acquiescence. But I felt there was something at once terrifying and
improper in this request from a dying man. I said to him, “My dear
brother, you are then dying?--would you not wish an interest in the
prayers of the community?--would you not wish the benefit of the last
sacraments?” He shook his head, and I fear that I understood him too
well. I ceased any further importunity; and a few moments he uttered, in
tones I could hardly distinguish, “Let them, let me die.--They have
left me no power to form another wish.” His eyes closed,--I sat beside
his bed, holding his hand in mine. At first, I could feel he attempted
to press it--the attempt failed, his hold relaxed. Fra Paolo was no
more.

“I continued to sit holding the dead hand in mine, till a groan from an
adjacent bed roused me. It was occupied by the old monk with whom I had
held a long conversation the night before the miracle, in which I still
believed most firmly.

“I have observed, that this man was of a temper and manners remark-
ably mild and attractive. Perhaps this is always connected with great
weakness of intellect, and coldness of character in men. (It may be
different in women--but my own experience has never failed in the
discovery, that where there was a kind of feminine softness and
pliability in the male character, there was also treachery,
dissimulation, and heartlessness.) At least, if there be such an union,
a conventual life is sure to give it every advantage in its range of
internal debility, and external seductiveness.--That pretence of a wish
to assist, without the power, or even the wish, that is so flattering
both to the weak minds that exercise it, and the weaker on whom it is
exercised. This man had been always judged very weak, and yet very
fascinating. He had been always employed to ensnare the young novices.
He was now dying--overcome by his situation, I forgot every thing but
its tremendous claims, and offered him every assistance in my power. “I
want nothing but to die,” was his answer. His countenance was perfectly
calm, but its calmness was rather that of apathy than of resignation.
“You are, then, perfectly sure of your approach to blessedness?” “I know
nothing about it.” “How, my brother, are those words for a dying man to
utter?” “Yes, if he speaks the truth.” “But a monk?--a catholic?” “Those
are but names--I feel that truth, at least, now.” “You amaze me!” “I
care not--I am on the verge of a precipice--I must plunge from it--and
whether the by-standers utter outcries or not, is a matter of little
consequence to me.” “And yet, you expressed a willingness to die?”
“Willingness! Oh impatience!--I am a clock that has struck the same
minutes and hours for sixty years. Is it not time for the machine to
long for its winding up? The monotony of my existence would make a
transition, even to pain, desirable. I am weary, and would change--that
is all.” “But to me, and to all the community, you seemed to be resigned
to the monastic life.” “I seemed a lie--I lived a lie--I was a lie--I
ask pardon of my last moments for speaking the truth--I presume they
neither can refuse me, or discredit my words--I hated the monastic life.
Inflict pain on man, and his energies are roused--condemn him to
insanity, and he slumbers like animals that have been found inclosed in
wood and stone, torpid and content; but condemn him at once to pain and
inanity, as they do in convents, and you unite the sufferings of hell
and of annihilation. For sixty years I have cursed my existence. I never
woke to hope, for I had nothing to do or to expect. I never lay down
with consolation, for I had, at the close of every day, only to number
so many deliberate mockeries of God, as exercises of devotion. The
moment life is put beyond the reach of your will, and placed under the
influence of mechanical operations, it becomes, to thinking beings, a
torment insupportable.

“I never ate with appetite, because I knew, that with or without it, I
must go to the refectory when the bell rung. I never lay down to rest in
peace, because I knew the bell was to summon me in defiance of nature,
whether it was disposed to prolong or shorten my repose. I never prayed,
for my prayers were dictated to me. I never hoped, for my hopes were
founded not on the truth of God, but on the promises and threatenings of
man. My salvation hovered on the breath of a being as weak as myself,
whose weakness I was nevertheless obliged to flatter, and struggle to
obtain a gleam of the grace of God, through the dark distorted medium of
the vices of man. It never reached me--I die without light, hope, faith,
or consolation.”--He uttered these words with a calmness that was
more terrific than the wildest convulsions of despair. I gasped for
breath--“But, my brother, you were always punctual in your religious
exercises.” “That was mechanism--will you not believe a dying man?”
“But you urged me, in a long conversation, to embrace the monastic
life; and your importunity must have been sincere, for it was after my
profession.” “It is natural for the miserable to wish for companions in
their misery. This is very selfish, very misanthropic, you will say, but
it is also very natural. You have yourself seen the cages suspended in
the cells--are not the tame birds always employed to allure the wild
ones? We were caged birds, can you blame us for the deception?” In
these words I could not help recognizing that simplicity of profound
corruption,175--that frightful paralysis of the soul, which leaves it
incapable of receiving any impression or making one,--that says to the
accuser, Approach, remonstrate, upbraid--I defy you. My conscience is
dead, and can neither hear, utter, or echo a reproach. I was amazed--I
struggled against my own conviction. I said, “But your regularity in
religious exercises--” “Did you never hear a bell toll?” “But your
voice was always the loudest and most distinct in the choir.” “Did you
never hear an organ played?” * * * * * * *

I shuddered, yet I still went on with my queries--I thought I could not
know too much. I said, “But, my brother, the religious exercises in
which you were constantly engaged, must have imperceptibly instilled
something of their spirit into you?--is it not so? You must have passed
from the forms of religion into its spirit ultimately?--is it not so, my
brother? Speak on the faith of a dying man. May I have such a hope! I
would undergo any thing--any thing, to obtain it.” “There is no such
hope,” said the dying man, “deceive not yourself with it. The repetition
of religious duties, without the feeling or spirit of religion, produces
an incurable callosity of heart. There are not more irreligious people
to be found on earth than those who are occupied always in its ex-
ternals.176 I verily believe half our lay-brothers to be Atheists. I have
heard and read something of those whom we call heretics. They have
people to open their pews, (shocking profanation you will call it, to
sell seats in the house of God, and you are right), they have people to
ring bells when their dead are to be interred; and these wretches have
no other indication of religion to give, but watching during the whole
time of service, (in which their duties forbid them to partake), for the
fees which they extort, and dropping upon their knees, ejaculating the
names of Christ and God, amid the rattling of the pew-doors, which
always operates on their associations, and makes them bound from their
knees to gape for a hundredth part of the silver for which Judas sold
his Saviour and himself. Then their bell-ringers--one would imagine
death might humanize them. Oh! no such thing--they extort money in
proportion to the depth of the grave. And the bell-ringer, the sexton,
and the survivors, fight sometimes a manual battle over the senseless
remains, whose torpidity is the most potent and silent reproach to this
unnatural conflict.” I knew nothing of this, but I grasped at his former
words, “You die, then, without hope or confidence?” He was silent. “Yet
you urged me by eloquence almost divine, by a miracle verified before my
own eyes.” He laughed. There is something very horrible in the laugh of
a dying man: Hovering on the verge of both worlds, he seems to give the
lie to both, and proclaim the enjoyments of one, and the hopes of
another, alike an imposture. “I performed that miracle myself,” he said
with all the calmness, and, alas! something of the triumph of a
deliberate impostor. “I knew the reservoir by which the fountain was
supplied--by consent of the Superior it was drawn off in the course of
the night. We worked hard at it, and laughed at your credulity every
pump we drew.” “But the tree--” “I was in possession of some chemical
secrets--I have not time to disclose them now--I scattered a certain
fluid over the leaves of the poplar that night, and they appeared
withered by the morning--go look at them a fortnight hence, and you will
see them as green as ever.” “And these are your dying words?” “They
are.” “And why did you deceive me thus?” He struggled a short time at
this question, and then rising almost upright in his bed, exclaimed,
“Because I was a monk, and wished for victims of my imposture to gratify
my pride! and companions of my misery, to soothe its malignity!” He was
convulsed as he spoke, the natural mildness and calmness of his phys-
iognomy were changed for something that I cannot describe--something
at once derisive, triumphant, and diabolical. I forgave him every thing
in that horrible moment. I snatched a crucifix that lay by his bed--I
offered it to his lips. He pushed it away. “If I wanted to have this
farce acted, I should choose another actor. You know I might have the
Superior and half the convent at my bed-side this moment if I pleased,
with their tapers, their holy water, and their preparations for extreme
unction, and all the masquerade of death, by which they try to dupe even
the dying, and insult God even on the threshold of his own eternal
mansion. I suffered you to sit beside me, because I thought, from your
repugnance to the monastic life, you might be a willing hearer of its
deceptions, and its despair.”

“Deplorable as had been the image of that life to me before, this
representation exceeded my imagination. I had viewed it as excluding all
the enjoyments of life, and thought the prospect blasting; but now the
other world was weighed in the balance, and found wanting. The genius of
monasticism seemed to wield a two-edged sword, and to lift it between
and against time and eternity. The blade bore a two-fold inscription--on
the side next the world was written the word “suffer,”--on that opposed
to eternity, “despair.” In the utter hopelessness of my soul, I still
continued to question him for hope--him! while he was bereaving me of
its very shadow, by every word he uttered. “But, must all be plunged in
this abyss of darkness? Is there no light, no hope, no refuge, for the
sufferer? May not some of us become reconciled to our situation--first
patient of it, then attached to it? Finally, may we not (if our
repugnance be invincible) make a merit of it with God, and offer to him
the sacrifice of our earthly hopes and wishes, in the confidence of an
ample and glorious equivalent? Even if we are unable to offer this
sacrifice with the unction which would ensure its acceptance, still may
we not hope it will not be wholly neglected?--that we may become
tranquil, if not happy--resigned, if not content. Speak, tell me if this
may be?” “And you wish to extort deception from the lips of death--but
you will fail. Hear your doom--Those who are possessed of what may be
called the religious character, that is, those who are visionary, weak,
morose, and ascetic, may elevate themselves to a species of intoxication
in the moments of devotion. They may, while clasping the images, work
themselves into the delusion, that the dead stone thrills to their
touch; that the figures move, assent to their petitions, and turn their
lifeless eyes on them with an expression of benignity. They may, while
kissing the crucifix,177 believe that they hear celestial voices
pronouncing their pardon; that the Saviour of the world extends his arms
to them, to invite them to beatitude; that all heaven is expanded to
their view, and the harmonies of paradise are enriched to glorify their
apotheosis. But this is a mere inebriation that the most ignorant
physician could produce in his patients by certain medicines. The secret
of this ecstatic swoon might be traced to an apothecary's shop, or
purchased at a cheaper rate. The inhabitants of the north of Europe
procure this state of exaltation by the use of liquid fire--the Turks by
opium--the Dervises by dancing--and Christian monks by spiritual pride
operating on the exhaustion of a macerated frame. It is all
intoxication, with this difference only, that the intoxication of men of
this world produces always self-complacency--that of men of the other
world, a complacency whose supposed source is derived from God. The
intoxication is, therefore, more profound, more delusive, and more
dangerous. But nature, violated by these excesses, exacts a most
usurious interest for this illicit indulgence. She makes them pay for
moments of rapture with hours of despair. Their precipitation from
extasy to horror is almost instantaneous. In the course of a few
moments, they pass from being the favourites of Heaven to becoming its
outcasts. They doubt the truth of their raptures,--the truth of their
vocation. They doubt every thing--the sincerity of their prayers, even
the efficacy of the Saviour's atonement, and the intercession of the
blessed Virgin. They plunge from paradise to hell. They howl, they
scream, they blaspheme. From the bottom of the infernal gulph in which
they imagine themselves plunged, they bellow imprecations against their
Creator--they denounce themselves as damned from all eternity for their
sins, while their only sin is their inability to support preternatural
excitement. The paroxysm ceases, they become the elect of God again in
their own imaginations. And to those who interrogate them with regard to
their late despair, they answer, That Satan was permitted to buffet them
--that they were under the hidings of God's face, &c. All saints, from
Mahomet down to Francis Xavier,178 were only a compound of insanity,
pride, and self-imposition;--the latter would have been of less conse-
quence, but that men always revenge their imposition on themselves,
by imposing to the utmost on others.”

“There is no more horrible state of mind than that in which we are
forced by conviction to listen on, wishing every word to be false, and
knowing every word to be true. Such was mine, but I tried to palliate
it by saying, “It was never my ambition to be a saint; but is the lot of
all, then, so deplorable?” The monk, who appeared to rejoice in this
opportunity to discharge the concentrated malignity of sixty years of
suffering and hypocrisy, collected his dying voice to answer. He seemed
as if he never could inflict enough, for what had been inflicted on
himself. “Those who possess strong sensibility, without the religious
character, are of all others the most unhappy, but their miseries are
soonest terminated. They are harassed by trivial constraints, stupified
by monotonous devotion, exasperated by dull insolence and bloated
superiority. They struggle, they resist. Penance and punishment are
applied. Their own violence justifies increased violence of treatment;
and, at all events, it would be applied without this justification, for
there is nothing that delights the pride of power, more than a
victorious strife with the pride of intellect. The remainder is easily
to be conceived by you, who have witnessed it. You saw the unfortunate
youth who interfered about Paolo. He was lashed to madness. Tortured
first to phrenzy, then to stupefaction,--he died! I was the secret,
unsuspected adviser of the whole proceeding.” “Monster!” I exclaimed,
for truth had made us equal now, and even precluded the language that
humanity would dictate when uttered to a dying man.--“But why?”--
said he, with that calmness which had once attracted, and now revolt-
ed me, but which had at all times undisputed possession of his
physiognomy;--“his sufferings were shorter, do you blame me for
diminishing their duration?”--There was something cold, ironical, and
jeering, even in the suavity of this man, that gave a certain force to
his simplest observations. It seemed as if he had reserved the truth all
his life, to utter it at his dying hour. “Such is the fate of those who
possess strong sensibility; those who have less languish away in an
imperceptible decline. They spend their time in watching a few flowers,
in tending birds. They are punctual in their religious exercises, they
receive neither blame or praise,--they melt away in torpor and ennui.
They wish for death, as the preparation it might put the convent to
might produce a short excitement, but they are disappointed, for their
state forbids excitement, and they die as they have lived,--unexcited,
unawakened. The tapers are lit, they do not see them,--the unction is
applied, they do not feel it,--prayers are uttered, they cannot partake
in them;--in fact, the whole drama is acted, but the principal performer
is absent,--is gone. Others indulge themselves in perpetual reverie.
They walk alone in the cloister,--in the garden. They feed themselves
with the poison of delicious, innutritive illusion. They dream that an
earthquake will shake the walls to atoms, that a volcano will burst
forth in the centre of the garden. They imagine a revolution of gov-
ernment,--an attack of banditti,--any thing, however improbable. Then
they take refuge in the possibility of a fire, (if a fire bursts out in
a convent, the doors are thrown open, and “Sauve qui peut,” is the
word). At this thought they conceive the most ardent hope,--they could
rush out,--they could precipitate themselves into the streets, into the
country,--in fact, they would fly any where to escape. Then these hopes
fail,--they begin to get nervous, morbid, restless. If they have inter-
est, they are indulged with remission from their duties, and they re-
main in their cells, relaxed,--torpid,--idiotical; if they have not interest,
they are forced to the punctual performance of their duties, and then
idiotism comes on much sooner, as diseased horses, employed in
a mill, become blind sooner than those who are suffered to wear out
existence in ordinary labour. Some of them take refuge in religion, as
they call it. They call for relief on the Superior, but what can the
Superior do? He is but human too, and perhaps feels the despair that is
devouring the wretches who supplicate him to deliver them from it. Then
they prostrate themselves before the images of the saints,--they invoke,
they sometimes revile them. They call for their intercession, deplore
its inefficacy, and fly to some other, whose merits they imagine are
higher in the sight of God. They supplicate for an interest in the
intercession of Christ and the Virgin, as their last resort. That resort
fails them too,--the Virgin herself is inexorable, though they wear out
her pedestal with their knees, and her feet with their kisses. Then they
go about the galleries at night, they rouse the sleepers, they knock at
every door,--they cry, “Brother Saint Jerome, pray for me,--Brother
Saint Augustine, pray for me.” Then the placard is seen fastened to the
rails of the altar, “Dear brothers, pray for the wandering soul of a
monk.” The next day the placard bears this inscription, “The prayers of
the community are implored for a monk who is in despair.” Then they find
human intercession as unavailing as divine, to procure them a remission
of the sufferings which, while their profession continues to inflict
on them, no power can reverse or mitigate. They crawl to their cells,
--in a few days the toll of the bell is heard, and the brethren exclaim,
“He died in the odour of sanctity,”179 and hasten to spread their
snares for another victim.” “And is this, then, monastic life?” “It
is,--there are but two exceptions, that of those who can every day
renew, by the aid of imagination, the hope of escape, and who cherish
that hope even on their dying bed; and those who, like me, diminish
their misery by dividing it, and, like the spider, feel relieved of the
poison that swells, and would burst them, by instilling a drop of it
into every insect that toils, agonizes, and perishes in their net,--
like you.” At these last words, a glare of malignity flashed on the
features of the dying wretch, that appalled me. I retreated from his
bed for a moment. I returned, I looked at him,--his eyes were closed
,--his hands extended. I touched him,--raised him,--he was dead,
--those were his last words. The expression of his features was the
physiognomy of his soul,--they were calm and pale, but still a cold
expression of derision lingered about the curve of his lips.

“I rushed from the infirmary. I was at that time indulged, like all the
other visitants of the sick, to go to the garden beyond the allotted
hours, perhaps to diminish the chance of infection. I was but too ready
to avail myself of this permission. The garden, with its calm moon-light
beauty, its innocence of heaven, its theology of the stars, was at once
a reproach and a consolation to me. I tried to reflect, to feel,--both
efforts failed; and perhaps it is in this silence of the soul, this
suspension of all the clamorous voices of the passions, that we are most
ready to hear the voice of God. My imagination suddenly represented to
me the august and ample vault above me as a church,--the images of the
saints grew dim in my eyes as I gazed on the stars, and even the altar,
over which the crucifixion of the Saviour of the world was represented,
turned pale to the eye of the soul, as I gazed on the moon “walking in
her brightness.”180 I fell on my knees. I knew not to whom I was about
to pray, but I never felt so disposed to pray. I felt my habit touched at
this moment. I at first trembled, from the idea of being detected in a
forbidden act. I started up. A dark figure stood beside me, who said in
indistinct and faultering tones, “Read this,” and he thrust a paper into
my hand; “I have worn it sewed into my habit for four days. I have
watched you night and day. I had no opportunity but this,--you were in
your cell, in the choir, or in the infirmary. Tear it in pieces, throw
the fragments into the fountain, or swallow them, the moment you have
read it.--Adieu. I have risked every thing for you,” and he glided away.
I recognized his figure as he departed; it was the porter of the
convent. I well understood the risk he must have run in delivering this
paper, for it was the regulation of the convent, that all letters,
whether addressed to or written by boarders, novices, or monks, were
first to be read by the Superior, and I never knew an instance of its
infringement. The moon gave me sufficient light. I began to read, while
a vague hope, that had neither object or basis, trembled at the bottom
of my heart. The paper contained these words:

“My dearest brother, (my God! how I started!) I see you revolt at the
first lines which I address to you,--I implore you, for both our sakes,
to read them with calmness and attention. We have been both the victims
of parental and priestly imposition; the former we must forgive, for our
parents are the victims of it too. The Director has their consciences in
his hand, and their destiny and ours at his feet. Oh, my brother, what a
tale have I to disclose to you! I was brought up, by the Director's
orders, whose influence over the domestics is as unbounded as it is over
their unhappy master, in complete hostility against you, as one who was
depriving me of my natural rights, and degrading the family by your
illegitimate intrusion. May not this palliate, in some degree, my
unnatural repulsiveness when we first met? I was taught from my cradle
to hate and fear you,--to hate you as an enemy, and fear you as an
impostor. This was the Director's plan. He thought the hold he had over
my father and mother too slight to gratify his ambition of domestic
power, or realize his hopes of professional distinction. The basis of
all ecclesiastical power rests upon fear. A crime must be discovered or
invented. The vague reports circulated in the family, my mother's
constant dejection, my father's occasional agitation, offered him a
clue, which he followed with incessant industry through all its windings
of doubt, mystery, and disappointment, till, in a moment of penitence,
my mother, terrified by his constant denunciations if she concealed any
secret of her heart or life from him, disclosed the truth.

“We were both infants then. He adopted immediately the plan he has since
realized at the expence of all but himself. I am convinced he had not,
from the first hour of his machinations, the least malignity against
you. The aggrandizement of his interest, which ecclesiastics always
individualize with that of the church, was his only object. To dictate,
to tyrannize, to manage a whole family, and that of rank, by his
knowledge of the frailty of one of its members, was all he looked to.
Those who by their vows are excluded from the interest which natural
affections give us in life, must seek for it in the artificial ones of
pride and domination, and the Director found it there. All thenceforth
was conducted and inspired by him. It was he who caused us to be kept
asunder from our infancy, fearful that nature might frustrate his
plans,--it was he who reared me in sentiments of implacable animosity
against you. When my mother fluctuated, he reminded her of her vow, with
which she had rashly intrusted him. When my father murmured, the shame
of my mother's frailty, the bitter feuds of domestic discussion, the
tremendous sounds of imposture, perjury, sacrilege, and the resentment
of the church, were thundered in his ears. You may conceive there is
nothing this man would shrink at, when, almost in my childhood, he
disclosed to me my mother's frailty, to insure my early and zealous
participation in his views. Heaven blast the wretch who could thus
contaminate the ears, and wither the heart of a child, with the tale of
a parent's shame, to secure a partizan for the church! This was not all.
From the first hour I was able to hear and comprehend him, he poisoned
my heart by every channel he could approach. He exaggerated my mother's
partiality for you, which he assured me often contended vainly with her
conscience. He represented my father as weak and dissipated, but
affectionate; and, with the natural pride of a boy-father, immoveably
attached to his eldest offspring. He said, “My son, prepare yourself to
struggle with a host of prejudices,--the interests of God, as well as of
society, demand it. Assume a high tone with your parents,--you are in
possession of the secret that corrodes their consciences, make your own
use of it.” Judge the effect of these words on a temper naturally
violent,--words, too, uttered by one whom I was taught to regard as the
agent of the Divinity.

“All this time, as I have since been informed, he was debating in his
own mind whether he would not adopt your part instead of mine, or at
least vacillate between both, so as to augment his influence over our
parents, by the additional feature of suspicion. Whatever influenced his
determination, the effect of his lessons on me may be easily calculated.
I became restless, jealous, and vindictive;--insolent to my parents, and
suspicious of all around me. Before I was eleven years of age I reviled
my father for his partiality to you,--I insulted my mother with her
crime,--I tyrannized over the domestics,--I was the dread and the
torment of the whole household; and the wretch who had made me thus a
premature demon, had outraged nature, and compelled me to trample on
every tie he should have taught me to hallow and cherish, consoled
himself with the thought that he was obeying the calls of his function,
and strengthening the hands of the church.

　　　　　　“Scire volunt secreta domus et inde timeri.”181

“On the day preceding our first meeting, (which had not been intended
before), the Director went to my father; he said, “Senhor, I think it
best the brothers should meet. Perhaps God may touch their hearts, and
by his merciful influence over them, enable you to reverse the decree
that threatens one of them with seclusion, and both with a cruel and
final separation.” My father assented with tears of delight. Those tears
did not melt the heart of the Director; he hastened to my apartment, and
said, “My child, summon all your resolution, your artful, cruel, partial
parents, are preparing a scene for you,--they are determined on
introducing you to your spurious brother.” “I will spurn him before
their faces, if they dare to do so,” said I, with the pride of premature
tyranny. “No, my child, that will not do, you must appear to comply with
their wishes, but you must not be their victim,--promise me that, my
dear child,--promise me resolution and dissimulation.” “I promise you
resolution, keep the dissimulation for yourself.” “Well, I will do so,
since your interests require it.” He hurried back to my father. “Senhor,
I have employed all the eloquence of heaven and nature with your younger
son. He is softened,--he melts already,--he longs to precipitate himself
into the fraternal embrace, and hear your benediction poured over the
united hearts and bodies of your two children,--they are both your
children. You must banish all prejudices, and----” “I have no
prejudices!” said my poor father; “let me but see my children embrace,
and if Heaven summoned me at that moment, I should obey it by dying of
joy.”--The Director reproved him for the expressions which gushed from
his heart, and, wholly unmoved by them, hurried back to me, full of his
commission. “My child, I have warned you of the conspiracy formed
against you by your own family. You will receive a proof of it
to-morrow,--your brother is to be introduced,--you will be required to
embrace him,--your consent is reckoned on, but at the moment you do
so, your father is resolved to interpret this as the signal, on your part,
of the resignation of all your natural rights. Comply with your
hypocritical parents, embrace this brother, but give an air of
repugnance to the action that will justify your conscience, while it
deceives those who would deceive you. Watch the signal-word, my dear
child; embrace him as you would a serpent,--his art is not less, and his
poison as deadly. Remember that your resolution will decide the event of
this meeting. Assume the appearance of affection, but remember you hold
your deadliest enemy in your arms.” At these words, unnatural as I was,
I shuddered. I said, “My brother!” “Never mind,” said the Director, “he
is the enemy of God,--an illegitimate impostor. Now, my child, are you
prepared?” and I answered, “I am prepared.” That night, however, I was
very restless. I required the Director to be summoned. I said in my
pride, “But how is this poor wretch (meaning you) to be disposed of?”
“Let him embrace the monastic life,” said the Director. At these words I
felt an interest on your account I had never recognized before. I said
decidedly, for he had taught me to assume a tone of decision, “He shall
never be a monk.” The Director appeared staggered, yet he trembled
before the spirit he had himself raised. “Let him go into the army,” I
said; “let him inlist as a common soldier, I can supply him with the
means of promotion;--let him engage in the meanest profession, I shall
not blush to acknowledge him, but, father, he shall never be a monk.”
“But, my dear child, on what foundation does this extraordinary
objection rest? It is the only means to restore peace to the family, and
procure it for the unfortunate being for whom you are so much
interested.” “My father, have done with this language. Promise me, as
the condition of my obedience to your wishes to-morrow, that my brother
shall never be compelled to be a monk.” “Compelled, my dear child! there
can be no compulsion in a holy vocation.” “I am not certain of that; but
I demand from you the promise I have mentioned.” The Director hesitated,
at last he said, “I promise.” And he hastened to tell my father there
was no longer any opposition to our meeting, and that I was delighted
with the determination which had been announced to me of my brother
eagerly embracing the monastic life. Thus was our first meeting
arranged. When, at the command of my father, our arms were entwined,
I swear to you, my brother, I felt them thrill with affection. But the
instinct of nature was soon superseded by the force of habit, and I
recoiled, collected all the forces of nature and passion in the terrible
expression that I dared to direct towards our parents, while the
Director stood behind them smiling, and encouraging me by gestures.
I thought I had acted my part with applause, at least I gave myself
enough, and retired from the scene with as proud a step as if I had
trampled on a prostrate world,--I had only trampled on nature and my
own heart. A few days after I was sent to a convent. The Director was
alarmed at the dogmatizing tone he himself had taught me to assume, and
he urged the necessity of my education being attended to. My parents
complied with every thing he required. I, for a wonder, consented; but,
as the carriage conveyed me to the convent, I repeated to the Director,
“Remember, my brother is not to be a monk.”

“(After these lines several were unintelligible to me, apparently from
the agitation under which they were written;--the precipitancy and fiery
ardor of my brother's character communicated itself to his writings.
After many a defaced page I could trace the following words.)182 * * *
*

“It was singular enough that you, who were the object of my inveterate
hatred before my residence in the convent, became the object of my
interest from that moment. I had adopted your cause from pride, I now
upheld it from experience. Compassion, instinct, whatever it was, began
to assume the character of a duty. When I saw the indignity with which
the lower classes were treated, I said to myself, “No, he shall never
suffer that,--he is my brother.” When I succeeded in my exercises, and
was applauded, I said, “This is applause in which he never can share.”
When I was punished, and that was much more frequently, I said, “He
shall never feel this mortification.” My imagination expanded. I be-
lieved myself your future patron, I conceived myself redeeming the
injustice of nature, aiding and aggrandizing you, forcing you to confess
that you owed more to me than to your parents, and throwing myself, with
a disarmed and naked heart, on your gratitude alone for affection. I
heard you call me brother,--I bid you stop, and call me benefactor. My
nature, proud, generous, and fiery, had not yet quite emancipated itself
from the influence of the Director, but every effort it made pointed, by
an indescribable impulse, towards you. Perhaps the secret of this is to
be found in the elements of my character, which always struggled against
dictation, and loved to teach itself all it wished to know, and inspire
itself with the object of its own attachments. It is certain that I
wished for your friendship, at the moment I was instructed to hate you.
Your mild eyes and affectionate looks haunted me perpetually in the
convent. To the professions of friendship repeatedly made me by the
boarders, I answered, “I want a brother.” My conduct was eccentric and
violent,--no wonder, for my conscience had begun to operate against my
habits. Sometimes I would apply with an eagerness that made them tremble
for my health; at others, no punishment, however severe, could make me
submit to the ordinary discipline of the house. The community grew weary
of my obstinacy, violence, and irregularities. They wrote to the
Director to have me removed, but before this could be accomplished I was
seized with a fever. They paid me unremitting attention, but there was
something on my mind no cares of theirs could remove. When they brought
me medicine with the most scrupulous punctuality, I said, “Let my
brother fetch it, and if it be poison I will drink it from his hand; I
have injured him much.” When the bell tolled for matins and vespers, I
said, “Are they going to make my brother a monk? The Director promised
me differently, but you are all deceivers.” At length they muffled the
bell. I heard its stifled sound, and I exclaimed, “You are tolling for
his funeral, but I,--I am his murderer!” The community became terrified
at these exclamations so often repeated, and with the meaning of which
they could not accuse themselves. I was removed in a state of delirium
to my father's palace in Madrid. A figure like yours sat beside me in
the carriage, alighted when we stopped, accompanied me where I remained,
assisted me when I was placed again in the carriage. So vivid was the
impression, that I was accustomed to say to the attendants, “Stop, my
brother is assisting me.” When they asked me in the morning how I had
rested? I answered, “Very well,--Alonzo has been all night at my
bed-side.” I invited this visionary companion to continue his
attentions; and when the pillows were arranged to my satisfaction, I
would say, “How kind my brother is,--how useful,--but why will he not
speak?” At one stage I absolutely refused nourishment, because the
phantom appeared to decline it. I said, “Do not urge me, my brother,
you see, will not accept of it. Oh, I entreat his pardon, it is a day of
abstinence,--that is his reason, you see how he points to his habit,
--that is enough.” It is very singular that the food at this house hap-
pened to be poisoned, and that two of my attendants died of partaking
of it before they could reach Madrid. I mention these circumstances,
merely to prove the rivetted hold you had taken both of my imagination
and my affections. On the recovery of my intellect, my first inquiry was
for you. This had been foreseen, and my father and mother, shunning the
discussion, and even trembling for the event, as they knew the violence
of my temper, intrusted the whole business to the Director. He undertook
it,--how he executed it is yet to be seen. On our first meeting he
approached me with congratulations on my convalescence, with regrets for
the constraints I must have suffered in the convent, with assurances
that my parents would make my home a paradise. When he had gone on for
some time, I said, “What have you done with my brother?” “He is in the
bosom of God,” said the Director, crossing himself. I understood him in
a moment,--I rushed past him before he had finished. “Where are you
going, my son?” “To my parents.” “Your parents,--it is impossible that
you can see them now.” “But it is certain that I will see them. Dictate
to me no longer,--degrade yourself not by this prostituted humiliation,”
for he was putting himself in a posture of intreaty,--“I will see my
parents. Procure for me an introduction to them this moment, or tremble
for the continuance of your influence in the family.” At these words he
trembled. He did not indeed dread my influence, but he dreaded my
passions. His own lessons were bitterly retaliated on him that moment.
He had made me fierce and impetuous, because that suited his purpose,
but he had neither calculated on, or prepared himself for, this
extraordinary direction which my feelings had taken, so opposite to that
which he had laboured to give them. He thought, in exciting my passions,
he could ascertain their direction. Woe be to those, who, in teaching
the elephant to direct his trunk against their foes, forget that by a
sudden convolution of that trunk, he may rend the driver from his back,
and trample him under his feet into the mire. Such was the Director's
situation and mine, I insisted on going instantly to my father's
presence. He interposed, he supplicated; at last, as a hopeless
resource, he reminded me of his continual indulgence, his flattery of my
passions. My answer was brief, but Oh that it might sink into the souls
of such tutors and such priests! “And that has made me what I am. Lead
the way to my father's apartment, or I will spurn you before me to the
door of it.” At this threat, which he saw I was able to execute, (for
you know my frame is athletic, and my stature twice that of his), he
trembled; and I confess this indication of both physical and mental
debility completed my contempt for him. He crawled before me to the
apartment where my father and mother were seated, in a balcony that
overlooked the garden. They had imagined all was settled, and were
astonished to see me rush in, followed by the Director, with an aspect
that left them no reason to hope for an auspicious result of our
conference. The Director gave them a sign which I did not observe, and
which they had not time to profit by,--and as I stood before them livid
from my fever, on fire with passion, and trembling with inarticulate
expressions, they shuddered. Some looks of reproach were levelled by
them at the Director, which he returned, as usual, by signs. I did not
understand them, but I made them understand me in a moment. I said to
my father, “Senhor, is it true you have made my brother a monk?” My
father hesitated; at last he said, “I thought the Director had been
commissioned to speak to you on that subject.” “Father, what has a
Director to do in the concerns of a parent and child? That man never can
be a parent,--never can have a child, how then can he be a judge in a
case like this?” “You forget yourself,--you forget the respect due to a
minister of the church.” “My father, I am but just raised from a
death-bed, my mother and you trembled for my life,--that life still
depends on your words. I promised submission to this wretch, on a
condition which he has violated, which--” “Command yourself, Sir,” said
my father, in a tone of authority which ill suited the trembling lips it
issued from, “or quit the apartment.” “Senhor,” interposed the Director,
in a softened tone, “let not me be the cause of dissension in a family
whose happiness and honour have been always my object, next to the
interests of the church. Let him go on, the remembrance of my crucified
Master will sustain me under his insults,” and he crossed himself.
“Wretch!” I cried, grasping his habit, “you are a hypocrite, a deceiv-
er!” and I know not of what violence I might have been guilty, but
my father interposed. My mother shrieked with terror, and a scene of
confusion followed, in which I recollect nothing but the hypocritical
exclamations of the Director, appearing to struggle between my father
and me, while he mediated with God for both. He repeated incessantly,
“Senhor, do not interpose, every indignity I suffer I make a sacrifice
to Heaven; it will qualify me to be an intercessor for my traducer with
God;” and, crossing himself, he called on the most sacred names, and
exclaimed, “Let insults, calumnies, and blows, be added to that pre-
ponderance of merit which is already weighed in the scales of heaven
against my offences,” and he dared to mix the claims of the intercession
of the saints, the purity of the immaculate Virgin, and even the blood
and agony of Jesus Christ, with the vile submissions of his own
hypocrisy. The room was by this time filled with attendants. My mother
was conveyed away, still shrieking with terror. My father, who loved
her, was driven by this spectacle, and by my outrageous conduct, to a
pitch of fury,--he drew his sword. I burst into a laugh, that froze his
blood as he approached me. I expanded my arms, and presented my breast,
exclaiming, “Strike!--this is the consummation of monastic power,--it
begun by violating nature, and ends in filicide. Strike! give a glorious
triumph to the influence of the church, and add to the merits of the
holy Director. You have sacrificed your Esau, your first-born, already,
let Jacob be your next victim.”183 My father retreated from me, and,
revolted by the disfigurement which the violence of my agitation had
caused, almost to convulsion, he exclaimed, “Demon!” and stood at a
distance viewing, and shuddering at me. “And who has made me so? He
who fostered my evil passions for his own purposes; and, because one
generous impulse breaks out on the side of nature, would represent or
drive me mad, to effectuate his purposes. My father, I see the whole
power and system of nature reversed, by the arts of a corrupt eccle-
siastic. By his means my brother has been imprisoned for life;--by his
means our birth has been made a curse to my mother and to you. What
have we had in the family since his influence was fatally established in
it, but dissension and misery? Your sword was pointed against my heart
this moment; was it nature or a monk that armed a parent against his
child, whose crime was--interceding for his brother? Dismiss this man,
whose presence eclipses our hearts, and let us confer together for a
moment as father and son, and if I do not humiliate myself before you,
spurn me for ever. My father, for God's sake examine the difference
between this man and me, as we stand before you. We are together at the
bar of your heart, judge between us. A dry and featureless image of
selfish power, consecrated by the name of the church, occupies his whole
soul,--I plead to you by the interests of nature, that must be sincere,
because they are contrary to my own. He only wishes to wither your
soul,--I seek to touch it. Is his heart in what he says? does he shed a
tear? does he employ one impassioned expression? he calls on God,--while
I call only on you. The very violence which you justly condemn, is not
only my vindication but my eulogy. They who prefer their cause to
themselves, need no proof of their advocacy being sincere.” “You
aggravate your crime, by laying it on another; you have always been
violent, obstinate, and rebellious.” “But who has made me so? Ask
himself,--ask this shameful scene, in which his duplicity has driven me
to act such a part.” “If you wish to show submission, give me the first
proof of it, by promising never to torture me by renewing the mention of
this subject. Your brother's fate is decided,--promise not to utter his
name again, and----” “Never,--never,” I exclaimed, “never will I violate
my conscience by such a vow; and his who could propose it must be seared
beyond the power of Heaven to touch it.” Yet, in uttering these words, I
knelt to my father, but he turned from me. I turned in despair to the
Director. I said, “If you are the minister of Heaven, prove the truth of
your commission,--make peace in a distracted family, reconcile my father
to both his children. You can effect this by a word, you know you can,
yet you will not utter it. My unfortunate brother was not so inflexible
to your appeals, and yet were they inspired by a feeling as justifiable
as mine.” I had offended the Director beyond all forgiveness. I knew
this, and spoke indeed rather to expose than to persuade him. I did not
expect an answer from him, and I was not disappointed,--he did not utter
a word. I knelt in the middle of the floor between them. I cried,
“Deserted by my father and by you, I yet appeal to Heaven. I call on it
to witness my vow never to abandon my persecuted brother, whom I have
been made a tool to betray. I know you have power,--I defy it. I know
every art of circumvention, of imposture, of malignant industry,--every
resource of earth and hell, will be set at work against me. I take
Heaven to witness against you, and demand only its aid to insure my
victory.” My father had lost all patience; he desired the attendants to
raise and remove me by force. This mention of force, so repugnant to my
habits of imperious indulgence, operated fatally on intellects scarcely
recovering from delirium, and too strongly tried in the late struggle. I
relapsed into partial insanity. I said wildly, “My father, you know not
how mild, generous, and forgiving is the being you thus persecute,--I
owe my life to him. Ask your domestics if he did not attend me, step by
step, during my journey? If he did not administer my food, my
medicines, and smoothe the pillows on which I was supported?” “You
rave,” cried my father, as he heard this wild speech, but he cast a look
of fearful inquiry on the attendants. The trembling servants swore, one
and all, as well they might, that not a human being but themselves had
been suffered to approach me since I quitted the convent, till my
arrival at Madrid. The small remains of reason forsook me completely at
this declaration, which was however true every word of it. I gave the
lie to the last speaker with the utmost fury,--I struck those who were
next me. My father, astonished at my violence, suddenly exclaimed, “He
is mad.” The Director, who had till then been silent, instantly caught
the word, and repeated, “He is mad.” The servants, half in terror, half
in conviction, re-echoed the cry.

“I was seized, dragged away; and this violence, which always excited
corresponding violence in me, realized all my father feared, and the
Director wished for. I behaved just as a boy, scarce out of a fever, and
still totally delirious, might be supposed to behave. In my apartment I
tore down the hangings, and there was not a porcelain vase in the room
that I did not dash at their heads. When they seized me, I bit their
hands; when at length they were compelled to bind me, I gnawed the
strings, and finally snapt them by a violent effort. In fact, I complete-
ly realized all the hopes of the Director. I was confined to my
apartment for several days. During this time, I recovered the only
powers that usually revive in a state of isolation,--those of inflexible
resolution and profound dissimulation. I had soon exercise enough for
both of them. On the twelfth day of my confinement, a servant appeared
at the door of my apartment, and, bowing profoundly, announced, that if
my health was recovered, my father wished to see me. I bowed in complete
imitation of his mechanical movements, and followed him with the steps
of a statue. I found my father, armed with the Director at his side. He
advanced, and addressed me with an abruptness which proved that he
forced himself to speak. He hurried over a few expressions of pleasure
at my recovery, and then said, “Have you reflected on the subject of our
last conversation?” “I have reflected on it.”--“I had time to do so.”
--“And you have employed that time well?”--“I hope so.”--“Then the
result will be favourable to the hopes of your family, and the interests
of the church.” The last words chilled me a little, but I answered as I
ought. In a few moments after the Director joined me, He spoke amicably,
and turned the conversation on neutral topics. I answered him,--what an
effort did it cost me!--yet I answered him in all the bitterness of
extorted politeness. All went on well, however. The family appeared
gratified by my renovation. My father, harassed out, was content to
procure peace on any terms. My mother, still weaker, from the struggles
between her conscience and the suggestions of the Director, wept, and
said she was happy. A month has now elapsed in profound but treacherous
peace on all sides. They think me subdued, but * * * * *

“In fact, the efforts of the Director's power in the family would alone
be sufficient to precipitate my determinations. He has placed you in a
convent, but that is not enough for the persevering proselytism of the
church. The palace of the Duke de Monçada is, under his influence,
turned into a convent itself. My mother is almost a nun, her whole life
is exhausted in imploring forgiveness for a crime for which the
Director, to secure his own influence, orders her a new penance every
hour. My father rushes from libertinism to austerity,--he vacillates
between this world and the next;--in the bitterness of exasperated
feeling, sometimes reproaches my mother, and then joins her in the
severest penance. Must there not be something very wrong in the religion
which thus substitutes external severities for internal amendment? I
feel I am of an inquiring spirit, and if I could obtain a book they call
the Bible, (which, though they say it contains the words of Jesus
Christ, they never permit us to see) I think----but no matter. The very
domestics have assumed the in ordine ad spiritualia 184 character already.
They converse in whispers--they cross themselves when the clock
strikes--they dare to talk, even in my hearing, of the glory which will
redound to God and the church, by the sacrifice my father may yet be
induced to make of his family to its interests.

* * * *

“My fever has abated--I have not lost a moment in consulting your
interests--I have heard that there is a possibility of your reclaiming
your vows--that is, as I have been told, of declaring they were extorted
under impressions of fraud and terror. Observe me, Alonzo, I would
rather see you rot in a convent, than behold you stand forth as a living
witness of our mother's shame. But I am instructed that this reclamation
of your vows may be carried on in a civil court: If this be practicable,
you may yet be free, and I shall be happy. Do not hesitate for
resources, I am able to supply them. If you do not fail in resolution, I
have no doubt of our ultimate success.--Ours I term it, for I shall
not know a moment's peace till you are emancipated. With the half of my
yearly allowance I have bribed one of the domestics, who is brother to
the porter of the convent, to convey these lines to you. Answer me by
the same channel, it is secret and secure. You must, I understand,
furnish a memorial, to be put into the hands of an advocate. It must be
strongly worded,--but remember, not a word of our unfortunate mother;--I
blush to say this to her son. Procure paper by some means. If you find
any difficulty, I will furnish you; but, to avoid suspicion, and too
frequent recurrences to the porter, try to do it yourself. Your
conventual duties will furnish you with a pretext of writing out your
confession,--I will undertake for its safe delivery. I commend you to
the holy keeping of God,--not the God of monks and directors, but the
God of nature and mercy.----I am your affectionate brother,

JUAN DI MONÇADA.”

“Such were the contents of the papers which I received in fragments, and
from time to time, by the hands of the porter. I swallowed the first the
moment I had read it, and the rest I found means to destroy unperceived
as I received them,--my attendance on the infirmary entitling me to
great indulgences.”

* * * * *

At this part of the narrative, the Spaniard became so much agitated,
though apparently more from emotion than fatigue, that Melmoth intreated
him to suspend it for some days, and the exhausted narrator willingly
complied.

END OF FIRST VOLUME.



CHAPTER VI.


185

HOMER.


When, after some days interval, the Spaniard attempted to describe
his feelings on the receipt of his brother's letter, the sudden
resuscitation of heart, and hope, and existence, that followed its
perusal, he trembled,--uttered some inarticulate sounds;--wept;--and
his agitation appeared to Melmoth, with his uncontinental feelings,
so violent, that he entreated him to spare the description of his
feelings, and proceed with his narrative.

“You are right,” said the Spaniard, drying his tears, “joy is a
convulsion, but grief is a habit, and to describe what we never can
communicate, is as absurd as to talk of colours to the blind. I will
hasten on, not to tell of my feelings, but of the results which they
produced. A new world of hope was opened to me. I thought I saw liberty
on the face of heaven when I walked in the garden. I laughed at the jar
of the doors as they opened, and said to myself, “You shall soon expand
to me for ever.” I behaved with uncommon complacency to the community.
But I did not, amid all this, neglect the most scrupulous precautions
suggested by my brother. Am I confessing the strength or the weakness
of my heart? In the midst of all the systematic dissimulation that I was
prepared and eager to carry on, the only circumstance that gave me real
compunction, was my being obliged to destroy the letters of that dear
and generous youth who had risked every thing for my emancipation. In
the mean time, I pursued my preparations with industry inconceivable to
you, who have never been in a convent.

“Lent was now begun,--all the community were preparing themselves for
the great confession. They shut themselves up,--they prostrated
themselves before the shrines of the saints,--they occupied themselves
whole hours in taking minutes of their consciences, and magnifying the
trivial defects of conventual discipline into offences in the eye of
God, in order to give consequence to their penitence in the hearing of
the confessor,--in fact, they would have been glad to accuse themselves
of a crime, to escape from the monotony of a monastic conscience. There
was a kind of silent bustle in the house, that very much favoured my
purposes. Hour after hour I demanded paper for my confession. I obtained
it, but my frequent demands excited suspicion,--they little knew what I
was writing. Some said, for every thing excites inquiry in a convent,
“He is writing the history of his family; he will discharge it into the
ears of the confessor, along with the secrets of his own soul.” Others
said, “He has been in a state of alienation for some time, he is
giving an account to God for it,--we shall never hear a word about it.”
Others, who were more judicious, said, “He is weary of the monastic
life, he is writing an account of his monotony and ennui, doubtless that
must be very long;” and the speakers yawned as they uttered these words,
which gave a very strong attestation to what they said. The Superior
watched me in silence. He was alarmed, and with reason. He consulted
with some of the discreet brethren, whom I mentioned before, and the
result was a restless vigilance on their part, to which I supplied an
incessant fuel, by my absurd and perpetual demand for paper. Here, I
acknowledge, I committed a great oversight. It was impossible for the
most exaggerated conscience to charge itself, even in a convent, with
crimes enough to fill all the paper I required. I was filling them all
the time with their crimes, not my own. Another great mistake I made,
was being wholly unprepared for the great confession when it came on. I
received intimations of this as we walked in the garden,--I have before
mentioned that I had assumed an amicability of habit toward them. They
would say to me, “You have made ample preparations for the great
confession.” “I have prepared myself.” “But we expect great edification
from its results.” “I trust you will receive it.”--I said no more, but I
was very much disturbed at these hints. Others would say, “My brother,
amid the multitudinous offences that burden your conscience, and which
you have found necessary to employ quires of paper to record, would it
not be a relief to you to open your mind to the Superior, and ask for a
few previous moments of consolation and direction from him.” To this I
answered, “I thank you, and will consider of it.”--I was thinking all
the time of something else.

“It was a few nights before the time of the great confession, that I had
to entrust the last packet of my memorial to the porter. Our meetings
had been hitherto unsuspected. I had received and answered my brother's
communications, and our correspondence had been conducted with a secrecy
unexampled in convents. But this last night, as I put my packet into the
porter's hand, I saw a change in his appearance that terrified me. He
had been a comely, robust man, but now, even by the moon-light, I could
perceive he was wasted to a shadow,--his hands trembled as he took the
papers from me,--his voice faultered as he promised his usual secrecy.
The change, which had been observed by the whole convent, had escaped
me till that night; my mind had been too much occupied by my own situation.
I noticed it then, however, and I said, “But what is the matter?” “Can
you then ask? I am withered to a spectre by the terrors of the office I
have been bribed to. Do you know what I risk?--incarceration for life,
or rather for death,--perhaps a denunciation to the Inquisition. Every
line I deliver from you, or to you, seems a charge against my own
soul,--I tremble when I meet you. I know that you have the sources of
life and death, temporal and eternal, in your hands. The secret in which
I am an agent should never be intrusted but to one, and you are an-
other. As I sit in my place, I think every step in the cloister is advanc-
ing to summon me to the presence of the Superior. When I attend in
the choir, amid the sounds of devotion your voice swells to accuse me.
When I lie down at night, the evil spirit is beside my bed, reproaching
me with perjury, and reclaiming his prey;--his emissaries surround me
wherever I move,--I am beset by the tortures of hell. The saints from
their shrines frown on me,--I see the painting of the traitor Judas on
every side I turn to. When I sleep for a moment, I am awakened by my own
cries. I exclaim, “Do not betray me, he has not yet violated his vows, I
was but an agent,--I was bribed,--do not kindle those fires for me.” I
shudder,--I start up in a cold sweat. My rest, my appetite, are gone.
Would to God you were out of this convent;--and O! would that I had
never been instrumental to your release, then both of us might have
escaped damnation to all eternity.” I tried to pacify him, to assure him
of his safety, but nothing could satisfy him but my solemn and sincere
assurance that this was the last packet I would ever ask him to deliver.
He departed tranquillized by this assurance; and I felt the dangers of
my attempt multiplying around me every hour.

“This man was faithful, but he was timid; and what confidence can we
have in a being whose right hand is held out to you, while his left
trembles to be employed in transferring your secret to your enemy. This
man died a few weeks after. I believe I owed his dying fidelity to the
delirium that seized on his last moments. But what I suffered during
those moments!--his death under such circumstances, and the unchris-
tian joy I felt at it, were only in my mind stronger evidences against the
unnatural state of life that could render such an event, and such
feelings, almost necessary. It was on the evening after this, that I was
surprised to see the Superior, with four of the monks, enter my cell. I
felt this visit boded me no good. I trembled all over, while I received
them with deference. The Superior seated himself opposite to me,
arranging his seat so as that I was opposite the light. I did not
understand what this precaution meant, but I conceive now, that he
wished to watch every change in my countenance, while his was con-
cealed from me. The four monks stood at the back of his chair; their
arms were folded, their lips closed, their eyes half shut, their heads
declined--they looked like men assembled reluctantly to witness the
execution of a criminal. The Superior began, in a mild voice, “My son,
you have been intently employed on your confession for some time--that
was laudable. But have you, then, accused yourself of every crime your
conscience charges you with?” “I have, my father.” “Of all, you are
sure?” “My father, I have accused myself of all I was conscious of. Who
but God can penetrate the abysses of the heart? I have searched mine as
far as I could.” “And you have recorded all the accusations you found
there?” “I have.” “And you did not discover among them the crime of
obtaining the means of writing out your confession, to abuse them to a
very different purpose?”--This was coming to the point. I felt it nec-
essary to summon my resolution--and I said, with a venial equivocation,186
“That is a crime of which my conscience does not accuse me.” “My
son, do not dissemble with your conscience, or with me. I should be
even above it in your estimation; for if it errs and deceives you, it
is to me you should apply to enlighten and direct it. But I see it is in
vain to attempt to touch your heart. I make my last appeal to it in
these plain words. A few moments only of indulgence await you--use
them or abuse them, as you will. I have to ask you a few plain
questions, which, if you refuse to answer, or do not answer truly, your
blood be on your own head.” I trembled, but I said, “My father, have I
then refused to answer your questions?” “Your answers are all either
interrogations or evasions. They must be direct and simple to the
questions I am about to propose in the presence of these brethren. More
depends on your answer than you are aware of. The warning voice breaks
forth in spite of me.”--Terrified at these words, and humbled to the
wish to propitiate them, I rose from my chair--then gasping, I leant on
it for support. I said, “My God! what is all this terrible preparation for?
Of what am I guilty? Why am I summoned by this warning voice so of-
ten, whose warnings are only so many mysterious threatenings? Why
am I not told of my offence?”

“The four monks, who had never spoken or lifted up their heads till
that moment, now directed their livid eyes at me, and repeated,
all together, in a voice that seemed to issue from the bottom of
a sepulchre, “Your crime is--” The Superior gave them a signal to
be silent, and this interruption increased my consternation. It is
certain, that when we are conscious of guilt, we always suspect
that a greater degree of it will be ascribed to us by others. Their
consciences avenge the palliations of our own, by the most horrible
exaggerations. I did not know of what crime they might be disposed
to accuse me; and already I felt the accusation of my clandestine
correspondence as dust in the balance of their resentment. I had heard
the crimes of convents were sometimes unutterably atrocious; and I
felt as anxious now for a distinct charge to be preferred against me,
as I had a few moments before to evade it. These indefinite fears were
soon exchanged for real ones, as the Superior proposed his questions.
“You have procured a large quantity of paper--how did you employ it?”
I recovered myself, and said, “As I ought to do.” “How, in unburdening
your conscience?” “Yes, in unburdening my conscience.” “That is false;
the greatest sinner on earth could not have blotted so many pages with
the record of his crimes.” “I have often been told in the convent, I
was the greatest sinner on earth.” “You equivocate again, and convert
your ambiguities into reproaches--this will not do--you must answer
plainly: For what purpose did you procure so much paper, and how have
you employed it?” “I have told you already.” “It was, then, employed
in your confession?”--I was silent, but bowed assentingly.--“You
can, then, shew us the proofs of your application to your duties.
Where is the manuscript that contains your confession?” I blushed and
hesitated, as I showed about half-a-dozen blotted and scrawled pages as
my confession. It was ridiculous. It did not occupy more than a tenth
part of the paper which I had received. “And this is your confession?”
“It is.” “And you dare to say that you have employed all the paper
entrusted to you for that purpose.”--I was silent. “Wretch!” said the
Superior, losing all patience, “disclose instantly for what purpose
you have employed the paper granted you. Acknowledge instantly that
it was for some purpose contrary to the interests of this house.”--At
these words I was roused. I saw again the cloven foot of interest
peeping from beneath the monastic garb. I answered, “Why am I suspected
if you are not guilty? What could I accuse you of? What could I
complain of if there were no cause? Your own consciences must answer
this question for me.” At these words, the monks were again about to
interpose, when the Superior, silencing them by a signal, went on with
his matter-of-fact questions, that paralyzed all the energy of passion.
“You will not tell me what you have done with the paper committed
to you?”--I was silent.--“I enjoin you, by your holy obedience, to
disclose it this moment.”--His voice rose in passion as he spoke, and
this operated as a signal on mine. I said, “You have no right, my
father, to demand such a declaration.” “Right is not the question now.
I command you to tell me. I require your oath on the altar of Jesus
Christ, and by the image of his blessed Mother.” “You have no right to
demand such an oath. I know the rules of the house--I am responsible
to the confessor.” “Do you, then, make a question between right and
power? You shall soon feel, within these walls, they are the same.” “I
make no question--perhaps they are the same.” “And you will not tell
what you have done with those papers, blotted, doubtless, with the most
infernal calumnies?” “I will not.” “And you will take the consequences
of your obstinacy on your own head?” “I will.” And the four monks
chorussed again, all in the same unnatural tone, “The consequences be
on his own head.” But while they spoke thus, two of them whispered in
my ears, “Deliver up your papers, and all is well. The whole convent
knows you have been writing.” I answered, “I have nothing to give
up--nothing on the faith of a monk. I have not a single page in my
possession, but what you have seized on.” The monks, who had whis-
pered in a conciliatory tone to me before, quitted me. They conversed
in whispers with the Superior, who, darting on me a terrible look,
exclaimed, “And you will not give up your papers?” “I have nothing to
give up: Search my person--search my cell--every thing is open to you.”
“Every thing shall be soon,” said the Superior in fury. In a moment
the examination commenced. There was not an article of furniture in
my cell that was not the object of their investigation. My chair and
table were overturned, shaken, and finally broken, in the attempt to
discover whether any papers had been secreted in them. The prints were
snatched from the walls,--held up between them and the light.--Then
the very frames were broken, to try if any thing was concealed in
them. Then they examined my bed;--they threw all the furniture about
the floor, they unripped the mattress, and tore out the straw; one of
them, during this operation, actually applied his teeth to facilitate
it,--and this malice of activity formed a singular contrast to the
motionless and rigid torpor with which they had clothed themselves
but a few moments before. All this time, I stood in the centre of the
floor, as I was ordered, without turning to right or left. Nothing was
found to justify their suspicions. They then surrounded me; and the
examination of my person was equally rapid, minute, and indecorous.
Every thing I wore was on the floor in a moment: The very seams of my
habit were ript open; and, during the examination, I covered myself
with one of the blankets they had taken from my bed. When it was over,
I said, “Have you discovered any thing?” The Superior answered, in a
voice of rage, struggling proudly, but vainly, with disappointment, “I
have other means of discovery--prepare for them, and tremble when they
are resorted to.” At these words he rushed from my cell, giving a sign
to the four monks to follow him. I was left alone. I had no longer any
doubt of my danger. I saw myself exposed to the fury of men who would
risk nothing to appease it. I watched, waited, trembled, at every step
I heard in the gallery--at the sound of every door that opened or shut
near me. Hours went on in this agony of suspense, and terminated at
last without an event. No one came near me that night--the next was
to be that of the great confession. In the course of the day, I took my
place in the choir, trembling, and watching every eye. I felt as if
every countenance was turned on me, and every tongue said in silence,
“Thou art the man.” Often I wished that the storm I felt was gathering
around me, would burst at once. It is better to hear the thunder than
to watch the cloud. It did not burst, however, then. And when the
duties of the day were over, I retired to my cell, and remained there,
pensive, anxious, and irresolute.

“The confession had begun; and as I heard the penitents, one by one,
return from the church, and close the doors of their cells, I began
to dread that I was to be excluded from approaching the holy chair,
and that this exclusion from a sacred and indispensible right, was to
be the commencement of some mysterious course of rigour. I waited,
however, and was at last summoned. This restored my courage, and I went
through my duties more tranquilly. After I had made my confession, only
a few simple questions were proposed to me, as, Whether I could accuse
myself of any inward breach of conventual duty? of any thing I had
reserved? any thing in my conscience? &c.--and on my answering them
in the negative, was suffered to depart. It was on that very night the
porter died. My last packet had gone some days before,--all was safe
and well. Neither voice or line could bear witness against me now, and
hope began to revisit me, as I reflected that my brother's zealous
industry would discover some other means for our future communication.

“All was profound calm for a few days, but the storm was to come soon
enough. On the fourth evening after the confession, I was sitting alone
in my cell, when I heard an unusual bustle in the convent. The bell was
rung,--the new porter seemed in great agitation,--the Superior hurried
to the parlour first, then to his cell,--then some of the elder monks
were summoned. The younger whispered in the galleries,--shut their
doors violently,--all seemed in agitation. In a domestic building,
occupied by the smallest family, such circumstances would hardly be
noticed, but, in a convent, the miserable monotony of what may be
called their internal existence, gives an importance,--an interest, to
the most trivial external circumstance in common life. I felt all this.
I said to myself, “Something is going on.”--I added, “Something is
going on against me.” I was right in both my conjectures. Late in the
evening I was ordered to attend the Superior in his own apartment,--I
said I was ready to go. Two minutes after the order was reversed, and
I was desired to remain in my cell, and await the approach of the
Superior,--I answered I was willing to obey. But this sudden change
of orders filled me with an indefinite fear; and in all the changes of
my life, and vicissitude of my feelings, I have never felt any fear
so horrible. I walked up and down, I repeated incessantly, “My God
protect me! my God strengthen me!” Then I dreaded to ask the protection
of God, doubting whether the cause in which I was engaged merited
his protection. My ideas, however, were all scattered by the sudden
entrance of the Superior and the four monks who had attended him on
the visit previous to the confession. At their entrance I rose,--no
one desired me to sit down. The Superior advanced with a look of fury,
and, dashing some papers on my table, said, “Is that your writing?” I
threw a hurried and terrified eye over the papers,--they were a copy
of my memorial. I had presence of mind enough to say, “That is not my
writing.” “Wretch! you equivocate, it is a copy of your writing.”--I
was silent.--“Here is a proof of it,” he added, throwing down another
paper. It was a copy of the memoir of the advocate, addressed to me,
and which, by the influence of a superior court, they had not the power
of withholding from me. I was expiring with anxiety to examine it, but
I did not dare to glance at it. The Superior unfolded page after page.
He said, “Read, wretch! read,--look into it, examine it line by line.”
I approached trembling,--I glanced at it,--in the very first lines I
read hope. My courage revived.--I said, “My father, I acknowledge
this to be the copy of my memorial. I demand your permission to read
the answer of the advocate, you cannot refuse me this right.” “Read
it,” said the Superior, and he flung it towards me.

“You may readily believe, Sir, that, under such circumstances, I could
not read with very steady eyes; and my penetration was not at all
quickened by the four monks disappearing from the cell, at a signal I
did not see. The Superior and I were now alone. He walked up and down my
cell, while I appeared to hang over the advocate's memoir. Suddenly he
stopped;--he struck his hand with violence on the table,--the pages I
was trembling over quivered from the violence of the blow,--I started
from my chair. “Wretch,” said the Superior, “when have such papers as
those profaned the convent before? When, till your unhallowed entrance,
were we insulted with the memoirs of legal advocates? How comes it that
you have dared to----” “Do what, my father?” “Reclaim your vows, and
expose us to all the scandal of a civil court and its proceedings.” “I
weighed it all against my own misery.” “Misery! is it thus you speak of
a conventual life, the only life that can promise tranquillity here, or
ensure salvation hereafter.” These words, uttered by a man convulsed by
the most frantic passion, were their own refutation. My courage rose in
proportion to his fury; and besides, I was driven to a point, and forced
to act on my defence. The sight of the papers added to my confidence. I
said, “My father, it is in vain to endeavour to diminish my repugnance
to the monastic life; the proof that that repugnance is invincible lies
before you. If I have been guilty of a step that violates the decorum of
a convent, I am sorry,--but I am not reprehensible. Those who forced me
into a convent, are guilty of the violence which is falsely ascribed to
me. I am determined, if it be possible, to change my situation. You see
the efforts I have already made, be assured they will never cease.
Disappointment will only redouble their energy; and if it be in the
power of heaven or earth to procure the annulment of my vows, there is
no power in either I will not have recourse to.” I expected he would not
have heard me out, but he did. He even listened with calmness, and I
prepared myself to encounter and repel that alternation of reproach and
remonstrance, of solicitation and menace, which they so well know how to
employ in a convent. “Your repugnance to a conventual life is then
invincible?” “It is.” “But to what do you object?--not to your duties,
for you perform them with the most edifying punctuality,--not to the
treatment you receive, for it has been the most indulgent that our
discipline admits of,--not to the community itself, who are all disposed
to cherish and love you;--of what do you complain?” “Of the life
itself,--that comprehends every thing. I am not fit to be a monk.”
“Remember, I implore you, that though the forms of earthly courts must
be obeyed, from the necessity that makes us dependent on human
institutions, in all matters between man and man, they never can be
available in matters between God and man. Be assured, my deluded child,
that if all the courts on earth pronounced you absolved from your vows
this moment, your own conscience never can absolve you. All your
ignominious life, it will continue to reproach you with the violation of
a vow, whose breach man has connived at, but God has not. And, at your
last hour, how horrible will those reproaches be!” “Not so horrible as
at the hour I took that vow, or rather at the hour when it was
extorted.” “Extorted!” “Yes, my father, yes,--I take Heaven to witness
against you. On that disastrous morning, your anger, your remonstrances,
your pleadings, were as ineffectual as they are now, till you flung the
body of my mother before my feet.” “And do you reproach me with my zeal
in the cause of your salvation?” “I do not wish to reproach you. You
know the step I have taken, you must be aware I will pursue it with all
the powers of nature,--that I will never rest till my vows are annulled,
while a hope of it remains,--and that a soul, determined as mine, can
convert despair itself into hope. Surrounded, suspected, watched as I
have been, I yet found the means of conveying my papers to the hands of
the advocate. Calculate the strength of that resolution which could
effectuate such a measure in the very heart of a convent. Judge of the
futility of all future opposition, when you failed in defeating, or even
detecting, the first steps of my design.” At these words the Superior
was silent. I believed I had made an impression on him. I added, “If you
wish to spare the community the disgrace of my prosecuting my appeal
within its walls, the alternative is easy. Let the door be left unguarded
some day, connive at my escape, and my presence shall never molest
or dishonour you another hour.” “How! would you make me not only
a witness, but an accomplice in your crime? Apostate from God, and
plunged in perdition as you are, do you repay the hand stretched out to
save you, by seizing it, that you may drag me into the infernal gulph
along with you?” and he walked up and down the cell in the most violent
agitation. This unlucky proposal operated on his master-passion, (for he
was exemplarily rigid in discipline), and produced only convulsions of
hostility. I stood waiting till this fresh burst had subsided, while he
continued to exclaim incessantly, “My God, for what offence am I thus
humiliated?--for what inconceivable crime is this disgrace precipitated
on the whole convent? What will become of our character? What will all
Madrid say?” “My father, whether an obscure monk lives, dies, or recalls
his vows, is an object of little importance beyond the walls of his
convent. They will forget me soon, and you will be consoled by the
restored harmony of the discipline, in which I should always be a
jarring note. Besides, all Madrid, with all the interest you ascribe to
it, could never be made responsible for my salvation.” He continued to
walk up and down, repeating, “What will the world say? What will become
of us?” till he had worked himself into a state of fury; and, suddenly
turning on me, he exclaimed, “Wretch! renounce your horrible
resolution,--renounce it this moment! I give you but five minutes for
consideration.” “Five thousand would make no change.” “Tremble, then,
lest you should not have life spared to see the fulfilment of your
impious purposes.”

“As he uttered these words he rushed from my cell. The moments I passed
during his absence were, I think, the most horrible of my life. Their
terror was aggravated by darkness, for it was now night, and he had
carried away the light along with him. My agitation did not at first
permit me to observe this. I felt I was in the dark, but knew not how or
why. A thousand images of indescribable horror rushed in a host on me. I
had heard much of the terrors of convents,--of their punishments, often
carried to the infliction of death, or of reducing their victim to a
state in which death would have been a blessing. Dungeons, chains, and
scourges, swam before my eyes in a fiery mist. The threatening words of
the Superior appeared emblazoned on the darkened walls of my cell in
characters of flame. I shuddered,--I cried aloud, though conscious that
my voice would be echoed by no friendly answering tones in a community
of sixty persons,--such is the sterility of humanity in a convent. At
last my very fears recovered me by their excess. I said to myself, “They
dare not murder me,--they dare not incarcerate me;--they are answerable
to the court to which I have appealed for my forthcoming,--they dare not
be guilty of any violence.” Just as I had come to this comfortable
conclusion, which indeed was the triumph of the sophistry of hope, the
door of my cell was thrown open, and the Superior, attended by his four
satellites, re-entered. My eyes were dim from the darkness in which I
had been left, but I could distinguish that they carried with them a
rope and a piece of sackcloth. I drew the most frightful presages from
this apparatus. I altered my reasoning in a moment, and instead of
saying they dare not do so and so, I instantly argued, “What dare they
not do? I am in their power,--they know it. I have provoked them to the
utmost,--what is it monks will not do in the impotence of their
malignity?--what is to become of me?” They advanced, and I imagined the
rope was to strangle me, and the sackcloth to inclose my murdered body.
A thousand images of blood swam before me,--a gush of fire choaked up my
respiration. The groans of a thousand victims seemed to rise from the
vaults of the convent, to which they had been hurried by a fate like
mine. I know not what is death, but I am convinced I suffered the
agonies of many deaths in that moment. My first impulse was to throw
myself on my knees. I said, “I am in your power,--I am guilty in your
eyes,--accomplish your purpose, but do not keep me long in pain.” The
Superior, without heeding, or perhaps hearing me, said, “Now you are in
the posture that becomes you.” At hearing these words, which sounded
less dreadful than I had feared, I prostrated myself to the ground. A
few moments before I would have thought this a degradation, but fear is
very debasing. I had a dread of violent means,--I was very young, and
life was not the less attractive from its being arrayed only in the
brilliant drapery of imagination. The monks observed my posture,--they
feared its effect on the Superior. They said, in that choral
monotony,--that discordant unison that had frozen my blood when I
knelt in the same posture but a few nights before, “Reverend father, do
not suffer yourself to be imposed on by this prostituted
humiliation,--the time for mercy is past. You gave him his moments of
deliberation,--he refused to avail himself of them. You come now not to
listen to pleadings, but to inflict justice.” At these words, that
announced every thing horrible, I went on my knees from one to the
other, as they all stood in a grim and executioner-like row. I said to
each with tears, “Brother Clement,--Brother Justin,--why do you try to
irritate the Superior against me? Why do you precipitate a sentence
which, whether just or not, must be severe, since you are to be the
executioners? What have I done to offend you? I interceded for you when
you were guilty of any slight deviation--Is this my return?” “This is
wasting time,” said the monks. “Hold,” said the Superior; “give him
leave to speak. Will you avail yourself of the last moment of indulgence
I can ever afford you, to renounce your horrible resolution of recalling
your vows?” Those words renewed all my energies. I stood upright before
them all. I said, in a loud distinct voice, “Never--I stand at the bar
of God.” “Wretch! you have renounced God.” “Well, then, my father, I
have only to hope that God will not renounce me. I have appealed to a
bar also, over which you have no power.” “But we have power here, and
that you shall feel.” He made a signal, and the four monks approached. I
uttered one short cry of fear, but submitted the next moment. I felt
convinced it was to be my last. I was astonished, when, instead of
fastening the cords round my neck, they bound my arms with them. They
then took off my habit, and covered me with the sackcloth. I made no
resistance; but shall I confess to you, Sir, I felt some disappointment.
I was prepared for death, but something worse than death appeared
threatened in these preparations. When we are driven to the precipice of
mortality, we spring forward with resolution, and often defeat the
triumph of our murderers, by merging it in our own. But when we are led
to it step by step, held often over it, and then withdrawn, we lose our
resolution along with our patience; and feel, that the last blow would
be mercy, compared with its long-suspended, slowly descending, wavering,
mutilating, hesitating stroke. I was prepared for every thing but what
followed. Bound with this rope as fast as a felon, or a galley-slave,
and covered only with the sackcloth, they dragged me along the gallery.
I uttered no cry, made no resistance. They descended the stairs that led
to the church. I followed, or rather was dragged after them. They
crossed the aisle; there was a dark passage near it which I had never
observed before. We entered it. A low door at the end presented a
frightful perspective. At sight of it I cried aloud, “You will not
immure me? You will not plunge me in that horrible dungeon, to be
withered by damps, and devoured by reptiles? No, you will not,--remember
you are answerable for my life.” At these words, they surrounded me;
then, for the first time, I struggled,--I called for help;--this was the
moment they waited for; they wanted some repugnance on my part. The
signal was instantly given to a lay-brother, who waited in the
passage,--the bell was rung,--that terrible bell, that requires every
member of a convent to plunge into his cell, as something extraordinary
is going on in the house. At the first toll I lost all hope. I felt as
if not a living being was in existence but those who surrounded me, and
who appeared, in the livid light of one taper burning faintly in that
dismal passage, like spectres hurrying a condemned soul to his doom.
They hurried me down the steps to this door, which was considerably
below the level of the passage. It was a long time before they could
open it; many keys were tried; perhaps they might have felt some
agitation at the thoughts of the violence they were going to commit. But
this delay increased my terrors beyond expression; I imagined this
terrible vault had never been inclosed before; that I was to be the
first victim inhumed within it; and that their determination was, I
should never quit it alive. As these thoughts occurred, in unutterable
agony I cried aloud, though I felt I was beyond all human hearing; but
my cries were drowned in the jarring of the heavy door, as it yielded to
the efforts of the monks, who, uniting their strength, pushed it with
extended arms, grating all the way against the floor of stone. The monks
hurried me in, while the Superior stood at the entrance with the light,
appearing to shudder at the view it disclosed. I had time to view all
the furniture of what I thought my last abode. It was of stone; the roof
formed an arch; a block of stone supported a crucifix, and a death's
head, with a loaf and a pitcher of water. There was a mat on the floor,
to lie on; another rolled up at the end of it formed a pillow. They
flung me on it, and prepared to depart. I no longer struggled, for I
knew escape was in vain, but I supplicated them at least to leave me a
light; and I petitioned for this with as much earnestness as I could
have done for my liberty. Thus it is that misery always breaks down the
mind into petty details. We have not strength to comprehend the whole of
our calamity. We feel not the mountain which is heaped on us, but the
nearest grains press on and grind us. I said, “In Christian mercy leave
me a light, if it be but to defend myself against the reptiles that must
swarm here.” And already I saw this was true, for some of extraordinary
size, disturbed by the phænomenon of the light, came crawling down the
walls. All this time the monks were straining their strength to close
the heavy door; they did not utter a word. “I adjure you to leave me
light, if it is but to gaze on that skull; fear not the exercise of
sight can be any indulgence in this place; but still let me have a
light; think that when I wish to pray, I must feel my way to that
crucifix.” As I spoke, the door was with difficulty closed and locked,
and I heard their departing steps. You will hardly believe, Sir, that I
slept profoundly; yet I did; but I would rather never sleep again, than
awake so horribly. I awoke in the darkness of day. I was to behold the
light no more; nor to watch those divisions of time, which, by measuring
our portions of suffering, appear to diminish them. When the clock
strikes, we know an hour of wretchedness is past, never to return. My
only time-keeper was the approach of the monk, who every day renewed my
allowance of bread and water; and had he been the object I loved most on
earth, the sound of his steps could not have made more delicious music.
These æras187 by which we compute the hours of darkness and inanity are
inconceivable to any but those who are situated as I was. You have
heard, Sir, no doubt, that the eye which, on its being first immersed
into darkness, appears deprived of the power of vision for ever,
acquires, imperceptibly, a power of accommodating itself to its darkened
sphere, and even of distinguishing objects by a kind of conventional
light. The mind certainly possesses the same power, otherwise, how could
I have had the power to reflect, to summon some resolution, and even to
indulge some hope, in this frightful abode? Thus it is, when all the
world seems sworn to hostility against us, we turn friends to ourselves
with all the obstinacy of despair;--and while all the world is
flattering and deifying us, we are the perpetual victims of lassitude
and self-reproach.

“The prisoner whose hours are visited by a dream of emancipation, is
less a prey to ennui than the sovereign on a throne, begirt with
adulation, voluptuousness, and satiety. I reflected that all my papers
were safe,--that my cause was prosecuting with vigour,--that, owing to
my brother's zeal, I had the ablest advocate in Madrid,--that they dared
not murder me, and were answerable with the whole credit of the house
for my re-appearance whenever the courts demanded it,--that the very
rank of my family was a powerful protection, though none of them but my
generous fiery Juan was probably favourable to me;--that if I was
permitted to receive and read the advocate's first memoir, even through
the hands of the Superior, it was absurd to imagine that I could be
denied intercourse with him in a more advanced and important stage of
the business. These were the suggestions of my hope, and they were
plausible enough. What were the suggestions of my despair, I shudder
even at this moment to reflect on. The most terrible of all was, that I
might be murdered conventually before it was possible that my
liberation could be accomplished.

“Such, Sir, were my reflections; you may ask, what were my occupations?
My situation supplied me with those, and, revolting as they were, they
were still occupations. I had my devotions to perform; religion was my
only resource in solitude and darkness, and while I prayed only for
liberty and peace, I felt I was not at least insulting God by the
prayers of hypocrisy, which I would have been compelled to utter in the
choir. There I was obliged to join in a sacrifice that was odious to me,
and offensive to him;--in my dungeon I offered up the sacrifice of my
heart, and felt it was not unacceptable. During the glimpse of light
afforded me by the approach of the monk who brought me bread and water,
I arranged the crucifix so as that I could feel it when I awoke. This
was very often, and not knowing whether it was day or night, I uttered
my prayers at random. I knew not whether it was matins or vespers; there
was neither morning or evening for me, but it was like a talisman to me
to touch the crucifix, and I said as I felt for it, “My God is with me
in the darkness of my dungeon; he is a God who has suffered, and can
pity me. My extremest point of wretchedness can be nothing to what this
symbol of divine humiliation for the sins of man, has undergone for
mine!”--and I kissed the sacred image (with lips wandering from the
darkness) with more emotion than I had ever felt when I saw it
illuminated by the blaze of tapers, amid the elevation of the Host, the
tossing of the perfumed censers, the gorgeous habits of the priests, and
the breathless prostration of the faithful. I had other occupations less
dignified, but quite as necessary. The reptiles, who filled the hole
into which I had been thrust, gave me opportunity for a kind of
constant, miserable, ridiculous hostility. My mat had been placed in the
very seat of warfare;--I shifted it,--still they pursued me;--I placed
it against the wall,--the cold crawling of their bloated limbs often
awoke me from my sleep, and still oftener made me shudder when awake.
I struck at them;--I tried to terrify them by my voice, to arm myself
against them by the help of my mat; but above all, my anxiety was
ceaseless to defend my bread from their loathsome incursions, and my
pitcher of water from their dropping into it. I adopted a thousand
precautions, trivial as they were inefficacious, but still there was
occupation. I do assure you, Sir, I had more to do in my dungeon than
in my cell. To be fighting with reptiles in the dark appears the most
horrible struggle that can be assigned to man; but what is it compared
to his combat with those reptiles which his own heart hourly engenders
in a cell, and of which, if his heart be the mother, solitude is the
father. I had another employment,--I cannot call it occupation. I had
calculated with myself, that sixty minutes made an hour, and sixty
seconds a minute. I began to think I could keep time as accurately as
any clock in a convent, and measure the hours of my confinement or--my
release. So I sat and counted sixty; a doubt always occurred to me, that
I was counting them faster than the clock. Then I wished to be the
clock, that I might have no feeling, no motive for hurrying on the
approach of time. Then I reckoned slower. Sleep sometimes overtook me
in this exercise, (perhaps I adopted it from that hope); but when I
awoke, I applied to it again instantly. Thus I oscillated, reckoned, and
measured time on my mat, while time withheld its delicious diary of
rising and setting suns,--of the dews of dawn and of twilight,--of the
glow of morning and the shades of the evening. When my reckoning was
broken by my sleep, (and I knew not whether I slept by day or by night),
I tried to eke it out by my incessant repetition of minutes and seconds,
and I succeeded; for I always consoled myself, that whatever hour it
was, sixty minutes must go to an hour. Had I led this life much longer,
I might have been converted into the idiot, who, as I have read, from
the habit of watching a clock, imitated its mechanism so well, that when
it was down, he sounded the hour as faithfully as ear could desire.188
Such was my life. On the fourth day, (as I reckoned by the visits of the
monk), he placed my bread and water on the block of stone as usual,
but hesitated for some time before he departed. In fact, he felt a
repugnance at delivering an intimation of hope; it was not consonant
either to his profession, or the office which, in the wantonness of
monastic malignity, he had accepted as penance. You shudder at this,
Sir, but it is nevertheless true; this man thought he was doing service
to God, by witnessing the misery of a being incarcerated amid famine,
darkness, and reptiles. He recoiled when his penance terminated. Alas!
how false is that religion which makes our aggravating the sufferings of
others our mediator with that God who willeth all men to be saved. But
this is a question to be solved in convents. This man hesitated long,
struggled with the ferocity of his nature, and at last departed and
bolted the door, that he might indulge it a few moments longer. Perhaps
in those moments he prayed to God, and ejaculated a petition, that this
protraction of my sufferings might be accepted as a melioration of his
own. I dare say he was very sincere; but if men were taught to look to
the one great Sacrifice, would they be so ready to believe that their
own, or those of others, could ever be accepted as a commutation189 for
it? You are surprised, Sir, at these sentiments from a Catholic; but another
part of my story will disclose the cause of my uttering them. At length
this man could delay his commission no longer. He was obliged to tell me
that the Superior was moved by my sufferings, that God had touched his
heart in my behalf, and that he permitted me to quit my dungeon. The
words were scarce out of his mouth, before I rose, and rushed out with a
shout that electrified him. Emotion is very unusual in convents, and the
expression of joy a phenomenon. I had gained the passage before he
recovered his surprise; and the convent walls, which I had considered as
those of a prison, now appeared the area of emancipation. Had its doors
been thrown open to me that moment, I don't think I could have felt a
more exquisite sensibility of liberty. I fell on my knees in the passage
to thank God. I thanked him for the light, for the air, for the restored
power of respiration. As I was uttering these effusions, (certainly not
the least sincere that were ever poured forth within those walls), sud-
denly I became sick,--my head swam round,--I had feasted on the light
to excess. I fell to the ground, and remember nothing for many hours
afterwards. When I recovered my senses, I was in my cell, which appear-
ed just as I had left it; it was day-light, however; and I am persuaded
that circumstance contributed more to my restoration, than the food and
cordials with which I was now liberally supplied. All that day I heard
nothing, and had time to meditate on the motives of the indulgence with
which I had been treated. I conceived that an order might have been
issued to the Superior to produce me, or, at all events, that he could
not prevent those interviews between the advocate and me, which the
former might insist on as necessary while my cause was carrying on.
Towards evening some monks entered my cell; they talked of indif-
ferent matters,--affected to consider my absence as the result of
indisposition, and I did not undeceive them. They mentioned, as if
incidentally, that my father and mother, overwhelmed with grief at the
scandal I had brought on religion by appealing against my vows, had
quitted Madrid. At this intelligence I felt much more emotion than I
showed. I asked them how long I had been ill? They answered, Four
days. This confirmed my suspicions with regard to the cause of my
liberation, for the advocate's letter had mentioned, that on the fifth
day he would require an interview with me on the subject of my appeal.
They then departed; but I was soon to receive another visitor. After
vespers, (from which I was excused), the Superior entered my cell alone.
He approached my bed. I attempted to rise, but he desired me to compose
myself, and sat down near me with a calm but penetrating look. He said,
“You have now found we have it in our power to punish.”--“I never
doubted it.”--“Before you tempt that power to an extremity, which, I
warn you, you will not be able to endure, I come to demand of you to
resign this desperate appeal against your vows, which can terminate only
in dishonouring God, and disappointing yourself.”--“My father, without
entering into details, which the steps taken on both sides have rendered
wholly unnecessary, I can only reply, that I will support my appeal with
every power Providence190 puts within my reach, and that my punishment
has only confirmed my resolution.”--“And this is your final deter-
mination?”--“It is, and I implore you to spare me all further impor-
tunity,--it will be useless.” He was silent for a long time; at length
he said, “And you will insist on your right to an interview with the
advocate to-morrow?”--“I shall claim it.”--“It will not be neces-
sary, however, to mention to him your late punishment.” These words
struck me. I comprehended the meaning which he wished to conceal in
them, and I answered, “It may not be necessary, but it will probably be
expedient.”--“How?--would you violate the secrets of the house, while
you are yet within its walls?”--“Pardon me, my father, for saying, that
you must be conscious of having exceeded your duty, to be so anxious
for its concealment. It is not, then, the secrets of your discipline, but
the violation of it, I shall have to disclose.”--He was silent, and I
added, “If you have abused your power, though I have been the sufferer,
it is you who are guilty.”--The Superior rose, and quitted my cell in
silence. The next morning I attended matins. Service went on as usual,
but at its conclusion, when the community were about to rise from
their knees, the Superior, striking the desk violently with his hand,
commanded them all to remain in the same posture. He added, in a
thundering voice, “The intercession of this whole community with God is
supplicated for a monk who, abandoned by the Spirit of God, is about to
commit an act dishonourable to Him, disgraceful to the church, and
infallibly destructive of his own salvation.” At these terrible sounds
the monks, all shuddering, sunk on their knees again. I was kneeling
among them, when the Superior, calling me by my name, said aloud, “Rise,
wretch! rise, and pollute not our incense with your unhallowed breath!”
I rose, trembling and confounded, and shrunk to my cell, where I
remained till I was summoned by a monk to the parlour, to meet the
advocate, who waited for me there. This interview was rendered quite
ineffective by the presence of the monk, who was desired by the Superior
to witness our conference, and whom the advocate could not order away.
When we entered into details, he interrupted us with declarations, that
his duty would not permit such a violation of the rules of the parlour.
When I asserted a fact, he contradicted it, gave me the lie repeatedly,
and finally disturbed the purpose of our conference so completely, that
in mere self-defence, I spoke of the subject of my punishment, which he
could not deny, and to which my livid looks bore a testimony invincible.
The moment I spoke on this subject the monk became silent, (he was
treasuring every word for the Superior), and the advocate redoubled his
attention. He took minutes of every thing I said, and appeared to lay
more stress on the matter than I had imagined, or indeed wished for.
When the conference was over, I retired again to my cell. The advocate's
visits were repeated for some days, till he had obtained the information
requisite for carrying on my suit; and during this time, my treatment in
the convent was such as to give me no cause of complaint; and this
doubtless was the motive of their forbearance. But the moment those
visits ceased, the warfare of persecution commenced. They considered
me as one with whom no measures were to be kept, and they treated me
accordingly. I am convinced it was their intention that I should not
survive the event of my appeal; at least it is certain they left nothing
unaccomplished that could verify that intention. This began, as I
mentioned, on the day of the advocate's last visit. The bell rung for
refection;--I was going to take my place as usual, when the Superior
said, “Hold,--place a mat for him in the midst of the hall.” This was
done, and I was required to sit down on it, and supplied with bread and
water. I eat a little, which I moistened with my tears. I foresaw what I
had to undergo, and did not attempt to expostulate. When grace was about
to be said, I was desired to stand without the door, lest my presence
should frustrate the benediction they implored.

“I retired, and when the bell rung for vespers, I presented myself among
the rest at the door of the church. I was surprised to find it shut, and
they all assembled. When the bell ceased, the Superior appeared, the
door was opened, and the monks hurried in. I was following, when the
Superior repelled me, exclaiming, “You, wretch, you! Remain where you
are.” I obeyed; and the whole community entered the church, while I
remained at the door. This species of excommunication produced its full
effect of terror on me. As the monks slowly came out, and cast on me
looks of silent horror, I thought myself the most abject being on earth;
I could have hid myself under the pavement till the event of my appeal
was over.

“The next morning, when I went to matins, the same scene was re-
newed, with the horrible addition of audible reproaches, and almost
imprecations, denounced against me, as they entered and returned. I
knelt at the door. I did not answer a word. I returned not “railing for
railing,”191 and lifted up my heart with a trembling hope, that this
offering might be as acceptable to God as the sonorous chaunt of the
choir, which I still felt it was miserable to be excluded from joining.

“In the course of the day, every sluice of monastic malignity and
vengeance was thrown open. I appeared at the door of the refectory. I
did not dare to enter. Alas! Sir, how are monks employed in the hour of
refection? It is an hour, when, while they swallow their meal, they
banquet on the little scandal of the convent. They ask, “Who was late
at prayers? Who is to undergo penance?” This serves them for conver-
sation; and the details of their miserable life supply no other subject
for that mixture of exhaustless malignity and curiosity, which are the
inseparable twins of monastic birth. As I stood at the door of the
refectory, a lay-brother, to whom the Superior nodded, bid me retire. I
went to my cell, waited for several hours, and just when the bell for
vespers had rung, was supplied with food, which famine itself would have
shrunk from. I tried to swallow it, but could not, and hurried away, as
the bell tolled, to attend vespers; for I wished to have no cause of
complaint against my neglect of duties. I hastened down. The door was
again shut; service began; and again I was compelled to retire without
partaking of it. The next day I was excluded from matins; the same
degrading scene was acted over when I appeared at the door of the
refectory. Food was sent to my cell, that a dog would have rejected; and
the door was shut when I attempted to enter the church. A thousand
circumstances of persecution, too contemptible, too minute, either for
recollection or repetition, but infinitely harassing to the sufferer,
were heaped on me every day. Imagine, Sir, a community of upwards
of sixty persons, all sworn to each other to make the life of one
individual insupportable; joined in a common resolution to insult, ha-
rass, torment, and persecute him; and then imagine how that individual
can support such a life. I began to dread the preservation of my
reason--of my existence, which, miserable as it was, still fed on the
hope of my appeal. I will sketch one day of my life for you. Ex uno
disce omnes.192 I went down to matins, and knelt at the door; I did not
dare to enter. When I retired to my cell, I found the crucifix taken
away. I was about to go to the Superior's apartment to complain of this
outrage; in the passage I happened to meet a monk and two boarders.
They all shrunk close to the walls; they drew in their garments, as if
trembling to encounter the pollution of my touch. I said mildly, “There
is no danger; the passage is wide enough.” The monk replied, “Apage
Satana.193 My children,” addressing the boarders, “repeat with me, apage
Satana; avoid the approach of that demon, who insults the habit he
desecrates.” They did so; and to render the exorcism complete, they spit
in my face as they passed. I wiped it off, and thought how little of the
spirit of Jesus was to be found in the house of his nominal brethren. I
proceeded to the apartment of the Superior, and knocked timidly at the
door. I heard the words, “Enter in peace;” and I prayed that it might be
in peace. As I opened the door, I saw several monks assembled with the
Superior. The latter uttered an exclamation of horror when he saw me,
and threw his robe over his eyes; the monks understood the signal; the
door was closed, and I was excluded. That day I waited several hours in
my cell before any food was brought me. There is no state of feeling
that exempts us from the wants of nature. I had no food for many days
requisite for the claims of adolescence, which were then rapidly
manifesting themselves in my tall, but attenuated frame. I descended to
the kitchen to ask for my share of food. The cook crossed himself as I
appeared at the door; for even at the door of the kitchen I faultered at
the threshold. He had been taught to consider me as a demon incarnate,
and shuddered, while he asked, “What do you want?”--“Food,” I replied;
“food;--that is all.”--“Well, you shall have it--but come no
further--there is food.” And he flung me the offal of the kitchen on the
earth; and I was so hungry, that I devoured it eagerly. The next day I
was not so lucky; the cook had learned the secret of the convent, (that
of tormenting those whom they no longer have hopes of commanding), and
mixed the fragments he threw to me, with ashes, hair, and dust. I could
hardly pick out a morsel that, famished as I was, was eatable. They
allowed me no water in my cell; I was not permitted to partake of it at
refection; and, in the agonies of thirst, aggravated by my constant
solicitude of mind, I was compelled to kneel at the brink of the well,
(as I had no vessel to drink out of), and take up the water in my hand,
or lap it like a dog. If I descended to the garden for a moment, they
took the advantage of my absence to enter my cell, and remove or destroy
every article of furniture. I have told you that they took away my
crucifix. I had still continued to kneel and repeat my prayers before
the table on which it stood. That was taken away,--table, chair, missal,
rosary, every thing, disappeared gradually; and my cell presented
nothing but four bare walls, with a bed, on which they had rendered it
impossible for me to taste repose. Perhaps they dreaded I might,
however, and they hit on an expedient, which, if it had succeeded, might
have deprived me of reason as well as repose.

“I awoke one night, and saw my cell in flames; I started up in horror,
but shrunk back on perceiving myself surrounded by demons, who, clothed
in fire, were breathing forth clouds of it around me. Desperate with
horror, I rushed against the wall, and found what I touched was cold. My
recollection returned, and I comprehended, that these were hideous
figures scrawled in phosphorus, to terrify me. I then returned to my
bed, and as the day-light approached, observed these figures gradually
decline. In the morning, I took a desperate resolution of forcing my way
to the Superior, and speaking to him. I felt my reason might be
destroyed amid the horrors they were surrounding me with.

“It was noon before I could work myself up to execute this resolution. I
knocked at his cell, and when the door was opened, he exhibited the same
horror as at my former intrusion, but I was not to be repelled. “My
father, I require you to hear me, nor will I quit this spot till you do
so.”--“Speak.”--“They famish me,--I am not allowed food to support
nature.”--“Do you deserve it?”--“Whether I do or not, neither the laws
of God or man have yet condemned me to die of hunger; and if you do,
you commit murder.”--“Have you any thing else to complain of?”--“Every
thing; I am not allowed to enter the church,--I am forbid to pray,--they
have stripped my cell of crucifix, rosary, and the vessel for holy
water. It is impossible for me to perform my devotions even
alone.”--“Your devotions!”--“My father, though I am not a monk, may I
not still be a Christian?”--“In renouncing your vows, you have abjured
your claim to either character.”--“But I am still a human being, and as
such--But I appeal not to your humanity, I call on your authority for
protection. Last night, my cell was covered with representations of
fiends. I awoke in the midst of flames and spectres.”--“So you will at
the last day!”--“My punishment will then be enough, it need not commence
already.”--“These are the phantoms of your conscience.”--“My father, if
you will deign to examine my cell, you will find the traces of
phosphorus on the walls.”--“I examine your cell? I enter it?”--“Am I
then to expect no redress? Interpose your authority for the sake of the
house over which you preside. Remember that, when my appeal becomes
public, all these circumstances will become so too, and you are to judge
what degree of credit they will attach to the community.” “Retire!” I
did so, and found my application attended to, at least with regard to
food, but my cell remained in the same dismantled state, and I continued
under the same desolating interdiction from all communion, religious or
social. I assure you, with truth, that so horrible was this amputation
from life to me, that I have walked hours in the cloister and the
passages, to place myself in the way of the monks, who, I knew, as they
passed, would bestow on me some malediction or reproachful epithet. Even
this was better than the withering silence which surrounded me. I began
almost to receive it as a customary salutation, and always returned it
with a benediction. In a fortnight my appeal was to be decided on; this
was a circumstance I was kept in ignorance of, but the Superior had
received a notification of it, and this precipitated his resolution to
deprive me of the benefit of its eventual success, by one of the most
horrible schemes that ever entered the human (I retract the expression)
the monastic heart. I received an indistinct intimation of it the very
night after my application to the Superior; but had I been apprised,
from the first, of the whole extent and bearings of their purpose, what
resources could I have employed against it?

“That evening I had gone into the garden; my heart felt unusually
oppressed. Its thick troubled beatings, seemed like the vibrations of a
time-piece, as it measures our approach to some hour of sorrow.

“It was twilight; the garden was empty; and kneeling on the ground, in
the open air, (the only oratory they had left me), I attempted to pray.
The attempt was in vain;--I ceased to articulate sounds that had no
meaning--and, overcome by a heaviness of mind and body inexpressible, I
fell on the ground, and remained extended on my face, torpid, but not
senseless. Two figures passed, without perceiving me; they were in
earnest conversation. One of them said, “More vigorous measures must be
adopted. You are to blame to delay them so long. You will be answerable
for the disgrace of the whole community, if you persist in this foolish
lenity.”--“But his resolution remains unbroken,” said the Superior, (for
it was he).--“It will not be proof against the measure I have proposed.”
--“He is in your hands then; but remember I will not be accountable
for--” They were by this time out of hearing. I was less terrified than
you will believe, by what I had heard. Those who have suffered much,
are always ready to exclaim, with the unfortunate Agag, “Surely the
bitterness of death is past.”194 They know not, that that is the very mo-
ment when the sword is unsheathed to hew them in pieces. That
night, I had not been long asleep, when I was awoke by a singular noise
in my cell: I started up, and listened. I thought I heard some one hurry
away barefooted. I knew I had no lock to my door, and could not prevent
the intrusion of any one into my cell who pleased to visit it; but still
I believed the discipline of the convent too strict to allow of this. I
composed myself again, but was hardly asleep, when I was again awoke by
something that touched me. I started up again; a soft voice near me said
in whispers, “Compose yourself; I am your friend.”--“My friend? Have I
one?--but why visit me at this hour?”--“It is the only hour at which I
am permitted to visit you.”--“But who are you, then?”--“One whom these
walls can never exclude. One to whom, if you devote yourself, you may
expect services beyond the power of man.”--There was something frightful
in these words. I cried out, “Is it the enemy of souls that is tempting
me?” As I uttered these words, a monk rushed in from the passage, (where
he had been evidently waiting, for his dress was on). He exclaimed,
“What is the matter? You have alarmed me by your cries,--you pronounced
the name of the infernal spirit,--what have you seen? what is it you
fear?” I recovered myself, and said, “I have seen or heard nothing
extraordinary. I have had frightful dreams, that is all. Ah! Brother St
Joseph, no wonder, after passing such days, my nights should be
disturbed.”

“The monk retired, and the next day passed as usual; but at night the
same whispering sounds awoke me again. The preceding night these sounds
had only startled me; they now alarmed me. In the darkness of night, and
the solitude of my cell, this repeated visitation overcame my spirits. I
began almost to admit the idea that I was exposed to the assaults of the
enemy of man. I repeated a prayer, but the whisper, which seemed close
to my ear, still continued. It said, “Listen,--listen to me, and be
happy. Renounce your vows, place yourself under my protection, and you
shall have no cause to complain of the exchange. Rise from your bed,
trample on the crucifix which you will find at the foot of it, spit on
the picture of the Virgin that lies beside it, and----” At these words I
could not suppress a cry of horror. The voice ceased in a moment, and
the same monk, who occupied the cell next to mine, rushed in with the
same exclamations as on the preceding night; and, as he entered my cell,
the light in his hand shewed a crucifix, and a picture of the blessed
Virgin, placed at the foot of my bed. I had sprung up when the monk
entered my cell; I saw them, and recognized them to be the very crucifix
and picture of the Virgin which had been taken from my cell. All the
hypocritical outcries of the monk, at the disturbance I had again caused
him, could not efface the impression which this slight circumstance made
on me. I believed, and not without reason, they had been left there by
the hands of some human tempter. I started, awake to this horrible
imposition, and required the monk to leave my cell. He demanded, with a
frightful paleness in his looks, why I had again disturbed him? said it
was impossible to obtain repose while such noises were occurring in my
cell; and, finally, stumbling over the crucifix and picture, demanded
how they came there. I answered, “You know best.”--“How, then, do you
accuse me of a compact with the infernal demon? By what means could
these have been brought to your cell?”--“By the very hands that removed
them,” I answered; and these words appeared to produce an effect on him
for a moment; but he retired, declaring, that if the nightly disturbance
in my cell continued, he must represent it to the Superior. I answered,
the disturbance did not proceed from me,--but I trembled for the
following night.

“I had reason to tremble. That night, before I lay down, I repeated
prayer after prayer, the terrors of my excommunication pressing heavy on
my soul. I also repeated the prayers against possession or temptation by
the evil spirit. These I was compelled to utter from memory, for I have
told you that they had not left a book in my cell. In repeating these
prayers, which were very long, and somewhat verbose, I at last fell
asleep. That sleep was not to continue long. I was again addressed by
the voice that whispered close to my bed. The moment I heard it, I rose
without fear. I crept around my cell with my hands extended, and my feet
bare. I could feel nothing but the empty walls,--not a single object,
tangible or visible, could I encounter. I lay down again, and had hardly
begun the prayer with which I tried to fortify myself, when the same
sounds were repeated close to my ear, without the possibility either of
my discovering from whence they proceeded, or preventing their reaching
me. Thus I was completely deprived of sleep; and if I dozed for a
moment, the same terrible sounds were re-echoed in my dreams. I became
feverish from want of rest. The night was passed in watching for these
sounds, or listening to them, and the day in wild conjectures or fearful
anticipations. I felt a mixture of terror and impatience inconceivable
at the approach of night. I had a consciousness of imposture the whole
time, but this gave me no consolation, for there is a point to which
human malice and mischief may be carried, that would baffle those of a
demon. Every night the persecution was renewed, and every night it
became more terrible. At times the voice would suggest to me the most
unutterable impurities,--at another, blasphemies that would make a demon
shudder. Then it would applaud me in a tone of derision, and assure me
of the final success of my appeal, then change to the most appalling
menaces. The wretched sleep I obtained, during the intervals of this
visitation, was any thing but refreshing. I would awake in a cold
perspiration, catching at the bed-furniture, and repeating in an
inarticulate voice, the last sounds that had rung in my closing ears. I
would start up and see the bed surrounded by monks, who assured me they
had been disturbed by my cries,--that they had hurried in terror to my
cell. Then they would cast looks of fear and consternation on each other
and on me; say, “Something extraordinary is the matter,--something
presses on your mind that you will not disburden it of.” They implored
me, in the most awful names, and for the interests of my salvation, to
disclose the cause of these extraordinary visitations. At these words,
however agitated before, I always became calm. I said, “Nothing is the
matter,--why do you intrude into my cell?” They shook their heads,
and affected to retire slowly and reluctantly, as if from pity of my
dreadful situation, while I repeated, “Ah, Brother Justin, ah Brother
Clement, I see you, I understand you,--remember there is a God in
heaven.”

“One night I lay for a considerable time without hearing any sound. I
fell asleep, but was soon awoke by an extraordinary light. I sat up in
my bed, and beheld displayed before me the mother of God, in all the
glorious and irradiated incarnation of beatitude. She hovered, rather
than stood, in an atmosphere of light at the foot of my bed, and held a
crucifix in her hand, while she appeared to invite me, with a benign
action, to kiss the five mysterious wounds.195 For a moment I almost
believed in the actual presence of this glorious visitor, but just then
the voice was heard louder than ever, “Spurn them,--spit on them,--you
are mine, and I claim this homage from my vassal.” At these words the
figure disappeared instantly, and the voice was renewing its whispers,
but they were repeated to an insensible ear, for I fell into a swoon. I
could easily distinguish between this state and sleep, by the deadly
sickness, the cold sweats, and the horrid sense of evanition,196 that
preceded it, and by the gasping, sobbing, choaking efforts that attended
my recovery. In the mean time the whole community carried on and even
aggravated the terrible delusion, which, while it was my torment to
detect, it was my greater to be the victim of. When art assumes the
omnipotence of reality, when we feel we suffer as much from an illusion
as from truth, our sufferings lose all dignity and all consolation. We
turn demons against ourselves, and laugh at what we are writhing under.
All day long I was exposed to the stare of horror, the shudder of
suspicion, and, worst of all, the hastily-averted glance of hypocritical
commiseration, that dropt its pitying ray on me for a moment, and was
then instantly raised to heaven, as if to implore forgiveness for the
involuntary crime of compassionating one whom God had renounced. When I
encountered any of them in the garden, they would strike into another
walk, and cross themselves in my sight. If I met them in the passages of
the convent, they drew their garments close, turned their faces to the
wall, and told their beads as I went by. If I ventured to dip my hands
in the holy water that stood at the door of the church, it was thrown
out before my face. Certain extraordinary precautions were adopted by
the whole community against the power of the evil one. Forms of exorcism
were distributed, and additional prayers were used in the service of
matins and vespers. A report was industriously diffused, that Satan was
permitted to visit a favoured and devoted servant of his in the convent,
and that all the brethren might expect the redoubled malice of his
assaults. The effect of this on the young boarders was indescribable.
They flew with the speed of lightning from me, whenever they saw me. If
accident forced us to be near each other for a moment, they were armed
with holy water, which they flung at me in pailfuls; and when that
failed, what cries,--what convulsions of terror! They knelt,--they
screamed,--they shut their eyes,--they cried, “Satan have mercy on
me,--do not fix your infernal talons on me,--take your victim,” and they
mentioned my name. The terror that I inspired I at last began to feel. I
began to believe myself--I know not what, whatever they thought me.
This is a dreadful state of mind, but one impossible to avoid. In some
circumstances, where the whole world is against us, we begin to take its
part against ourselves, to avoid the withering sensation of being alone
on our own side. Such was my appearance, too, my flushed and haggard
look, my torn dress, my unequal gait, my constant internal muttering,
and my complete isolation from the habits of the house, that it was no
wonder I should justify, by my exterior, all of horrible and awful that
might be supposed passing in my mind. Such an impression I must have
made on the minds of the younger members. They had been taught to hate
me, but their hatred was now combined with fear, and such a union is the
most terrible amid all the complications of human passion. Desolate as
my cell was, I retired to it early, as I was excluded from the exercises
of the community. The bell for vespers would ring, I would hear the
steps of those who were hastening to join in the service of God, and
tedious as that service had once appeared to me, I would now have
given worlds to be permitted to join in it, as a defence against that
horrible midnight mass of Satan,197 that I was awaiting to be summon-
ed to. I knelt however in my cell, and repeated what prayers I could
recollect, while every toll of the bell struck on my heart, and the
chaunt of the choir from below sounded like a repulsive echo to an
answer which my fears already anticipated from heaven.

“One evening that I still continued to pray, and audibly, as the monks
passed my cell they said, “Do you presume to pray? Die, desperate
wretch,--die and be damned. Precipitate yourself into the infernal gulph
at once, no longer desecrate these walls by your presence.” At these
words I only redoubled my prayers; but this gave greater offence, for
churchmen cannot bear to hear prayers uttered in a form different
from their own. The cry of a solitary individual to God, sounds like
profanation in their ears. They ask, Why do they not employ our form?
How dare they hope to be heard? Alas! is it forms then that God regards?
or is it not rather the prayer of the heart which alone reaches him, and
prospers in its petition? As they called out, passing my cell, “Perish,
impious wretch, perish,--God will not hear you,” I answered them on my
knees with blessings,--which of us had the spirit of prayer? That night
was one of trial I could no longer support. My frame was exhausted, my
mind excited, and, owing to our frail nature, this battle of the senses
and soul is never long carried on without the worst side remaining
conqueror. I was no sooner laid down than the voice began to whisper. I
began to pray, but my head swam round, my eyes flashed fire,--fire
almost tangible, my cell appeared in flames. Recollect my frame worn out
with famine, my mind worn out with persecution. I struggled with what I
was conscious was delirium,--but this consciousness aggravated its
horror. It is better to be mad at once, than to believe that all the
world is sworn to think and make you be so, in spite of your own
consciousness of your sanity. The whispers this night were so horrible,
so full of ineffable abominations, of--I cannot think of them,--that
they maddened my very ear. My senses seemed deranged along with my
intellect. I will give you an instance, it is but a slight one, of the
horrors which----” Here the Spaniard whispered Melmoth.198 The hearer
shuddered, and the Spaniard went on in an agitated tone.

“I could bear it no longer. I sprung from my bed, I ran through the
gallery like a maniac, knocking at the doors of the cells, and
exclaiming, “Brother such a one, pray for me,--pray for me, I beseech
you.” I roused the whole convent. Then I flew down to the church; it was
open, and I rushed in. I ran up the aisle, I precipitated myself before
the altar, I embraced the images, I clung to the crucifix with loud and
reiterated supplications. The monks, awakened by my outcries, or perhaps
on the watch for them, descended in a body to the church, but,
perceiving I was there, they would not enter,--they remained at the
doors, with lights in their hands, gazing on me. It was a singular
contrast between me, hurrying round the church almost in the dark, (for
there were but a few lamps burning dimly), and the groupe at the door,
whose expression of horror was strongly marked by the light, which
appeared to have deserted me to concentrate itself among them. The most
impartial person on earth might have supposed me deranged, or possessed,
or both, from the state in which they saw me. Heaven knows, too, what
construction might have been put on my wild actions, which the
surrounding darkness exaggerated and distorted, or on the prayers which
I uttered, as I included in them the horrors of the temptation against
which I implored protection. Exhausted at length, I fell to the ground,
and remained there, without the power of moving, but able to hear and
observe every thing that passed. I heard them debate whether they should
leave me there or not, till the Superior commanded them to remove that
abomination from the sanctuary; and such was the terror of me into which
they had acted themselves, that he had to repeat his orders before he
could procure obedience to them. They approached me at last, with the
same caution that they would an infected corse, and dragged me out by
the habit, leaving me on the paved floor before the door of the church.
They then retired, and in this state I actually fell asleep, and
continued so till I was awoke by the bell for matins. I recollected
myself, and attempted to rise; but my having slept on a damp floor, when
in a fever from terror and excitement, had so cramped my limbs, that I
could not accomplish this without the most exquisite pain. As the
community passed in to matins, I could not suppress a few cries of pain.
They must have seen what was the matter, but not one of them offered
me assistance, nor did I dare to implore it. By slow and painful efforts, I
at last reached my cell; but, shuddering at the sight of the bed, I
threw myself on the floor for repose.

“I was aware that some notice must be taken of a circumstance so
extraordinary--that such a subversion of the order and tranquillity of a
convent, would force an inquiry, even if the object was less remarkable.
But I had a sad foreboding, (for suffering makes us full of presages),
that this inquiry, however conducted, would terminate unfavourably to
me. I was the Jonah of the vessel199--let the storm blow from what point it
would, I felt the lot was to fall on me. About noon, I was summoned to
the apartment of the Superior. I went, but not as at former times, with
a mixture of supplication and remonstrance on my lips,--with hope and
fear in my heart,--in a fever of excitement or of terror,--I went
sullen, squalid, listless, reckless; my physical strength, borne down by
fatigue and want of sleep; my mental, by persecution, incessant and
insupportable. I went no longer shrinking from, and deprecating their
worst, but defying, almost desiring it, in the terrible and indefinite
curiosity of despair. The apartment was full of monks; the Superior
stood among them, while they formed a semicircle at a respectful
distance from him. I must have presented a miserable contrast to these
men arrayed against me in their pride of power,--their long and not
ungraceful habits, giving their figures an air of solemnity, perhaps
more imposing than splendour--while I stood opposed to them, ragged,
meagre, livid, and obdurate, the very personification of an evil spirit
summoned before the angels of judgment. The Superior addressed me in a
long discourse, in which he but slightly touched on the scandal given by
the attempt to repeal my vows. He also suppressed any allusion to the
circumstance which was known to every one in the convent but myself,
that my appeal would be decided on in a few days. But he adverted in
terms that (in spite of my consciousness that they were hollow) made me
shudder, to the horror and consternation diffused through the convent by
my late tremendous visitation, as he called it. “Satan hath desired to
have you,” he said, “because you have put yourself within his power, by
your impious reclamation of your vows. You are the Judas among the
brethren; a branded Cain amid a primitive family; a scape-goat that
struggles to burst from the hands of the congregation into the
wilderness. The horrors that your presence is hourly heaping on us here,
are not only intolerable to the discipline of a religious house, but to
the peace of civilized society. There is not a monk who can sleep within
three cells of you. You disturb them by the most horrible cries--you
exclaim that the infernal spirit is perpetually beside your bed--that he
is whispering in your ears. You fly from cell to cell, supplicating the
prayers of the brethren. Your shrieks disturb the holy sleep of the
community--that sleep which they snatch only in the intervals of
devotion. All order is broken, all discipline subverted, while you
remain among us. The imaginations of the younger members are at once
polluted and inflamed, by the idea of the infernal and impure orgies
which the demon celebrates in your cell; and of which we know not
whether your cries, (which all can hear), announce triumph in, or
remorse for. You rush at midnight into the church, deface the images,
revile the crucifix, spurn at the altar; and when the whole community is
forced, by this unparalleled atrocity of blasphemy, to drag you from the
spot you are desecrating, you disturb, by your cries, those who are
passing to the service of God. In a word, your howls, your distortions,
your demoniac language, habits, and gestures, have but too well
justified the suspicion entertained when you first entered the convent.
You were abominable from your very birth,--you were the offspring of
sin--you are conscious of it. Amid the livid paleness, that horrible
unnatural white that discolours your very lips, I see a tinge like
crimson burning on your cheek at the mention of it. The demon who
was presiding at your natal hour--the demon of impurity and
anti-monasticism--pursues you in the very walls of a convent. The
Almighty, in my voice, bids you begone;--depart, and trouble us no
more.--Stop,” he added, as he saw I was obeying his directions
literally,200 “hold, the interests of religion, and of the community, have
required that I should take particular notice of the extraordinary
circumstances that have haunted your unhallowed presence within these
walls. In a short time you may expect a visit from the Bishop--prepare
yourself for it as you may.” I considered these as the final words
addressed to me, and was about to retire, when I was recalled. I was
desired to utter some words, which every one was eager to put into my
mouth, of expostulation, of remonstrance, of supplication. I resisted
them all as steadily as if I had known (which I did not) that the Bishop
had himself instituted the examination into the deranged state of the
convent; and that instead of the Superior inviting the Bishop to examine
into the cause of the disturbance in his convent, (the very last step he
would have taken), the Bishop, (a man whose character will shortly be
developed), had been apprized of the scandal of the convent, and had
determined to take the matter into his own hands. Sunk in solitude and
persecution, I knew not that all Madrid was on fire,--that the Bishop
had determined to be no longer a passive hearer of the extraordinary
scenes reported to pass in the convent,--that, in a word, my exorcism
and my appeal were quivering in alternate scales, and that the Superior
himself doubted which way the scale might incline. All this I was
ignorant of, for no one dared to tell it to me. I therefore was about to
retire without uttering a word in answer to the many whispered speeches
to humble myself to the Superior, to implore his intercession with the
Bishop to suspend this disgraceful examination that threatened us all.
I broke from them as they surrounded me; and standing calm and sullen
at the door, I threw a retorting look at them, and said, “God forgive you
all, and grant you such an acquittal at his judgment-seat, as I hesitate
not to claim at that of the Bishop-visitant.” These words, though
uttered by a ragged demoniac, (as they thought me), made them tremble.
Truth is rarely heard in convents, and therefore its language is equally
emphatical and portentous.

“The monks crossed themselves, and, as I left the apartment, repeated,
“But how then,--what if we prevented this mischief?”--“By what
means?”--“By any that the interests of religion may suggest,--the
character of the convent is at stake. The Bishop is a man of a strict
and scrutinizing character,--he will keep his eyes open to the
truth,--he will inquire into facts,--what will become of us? Were it not
better that----” “What?”--“You comprehend us.”--“And if I dared to
comprehend you, the time is too short.”--“We have heard of the death
of maniacs being very sudden, of----” “What do you dare to hint
at?”--“Nothing, we only spoke of what every one knows, that a profound
sleep is often a restorative to lunatics. He is a lunatic, as all the
convent are ready to swear,--a wretch possessed by the infernal spirit,
whom he invocates every night in his cell,--he disturbs the whole
convent by his outcries.”

“The Superior all this time walked impatiently up and down his
apartment. He entangled his fingers in his rosary,--he threw on the
monks angry looks from time to time; at last he said, “I am myself
disturbed by his cries,--his wanderings,--his undoubted commerce with
the enemy of souls. I need rest,--I require a profound sleep to repair
my exhausted spirits,--what would you prescribe?” Several pressed
forward, not understanding the hint, and eagerly recommended the
common opiates--Mithridate, &c. &c. An old monk whispered in his ear,
“Laudanum,--it will procure a deep and sound sleep.201 Try it, my father,
if you want rest; but to make the experiment sure, were it not best to
try it first on another?” The Superior nodded, and the party were about
to disperse, when the Superior caught the old monk by his habit, and
whispered, “But no murder!”--“Oh no! only profound sleep.--What matter
when he wakes? It must be to suffering in this life or the next. We
are not guilty in the business. What signifies a few moments sooner or
later?” The Superior was of a timid and passionate character. He still
kept hold of the monk's habit;--he whispered, “But it must not be
known.”--“But who can know it?” At this moment the clock struck, and an
old ascetic monk, who occupied a cell adjacent to the Superior's, and
who had accustomed himself to the exclamation, “God knoweth all things,”
whenever the clock struck, repeated it aloud. The Superior quitted his
hold of the monk's habit,--the monk crawled to his cell God-struck, if
I may use the expression,--the laudanum was not administered that
night,--the voice did not return,--I slept the entire night, and the
whole convent was delivered from the harassings of the infernal spirit.
Alas! none haunted it, but that spirit which the natural malignity of
solitude raises within the circle of every heart, and forces us, from
the terrible economy of misery, to feed on the vitals of others, that we
may spare our own.

“This conversation was repeated to me afterwards by a monk who was
on his dying bed. He had witnessed it, and I have no reason to doubt
his sincerity. In fact, I always considered it as rather a palliation than
an aggravation of their cruelty to me. They had made me suffer worse
than many deaths,--the single suffering would have been instant-
aneous,--the single act would have been mercy. The next day the
visit of the Bishop was expected. There was an indescribable kind of
terrified preparation among the community. This house was the first in
Madrid, and the singular circumstance of the son of one of the highest
families in Spain having entered it in early youth,--having protested
against his vows in a few months,--having been accused of being in a
compact with the infernal spirit a few weeks after,--the hope of a scene
of exorcism,--the doubt of the success of my appeal,--the probable
interference of the Inquisition,--the possible festival of an auto da
fe,--had set the imagination of all Madrid on fire; and never did an
audience long more for the drawing up of the curtain at a popular opera,
than the religious and irreligious of Madrid did for the developement of
the scene which was acting at the convent of the Ex-Jesuits.

“In Catholic countries, Sir, religion is the national drama; the priests
are the principal performers, the populace the audience; and whether
the piece concludes with a “Don Giovanni” plunging in flames, or the
beatification of a saint, the applause and the enjoyment is the same.202

“I feared my destiny was to be the former. I knew nothing of the Bi-
shop, and hoped nothing from his visit; but my hopes began to rise in
proportion to the visible fears of the society. I argued, with the
natural malignity of wretchedness, “If they tremble, I may exult.” When
suffering is thus weighed against suffering, the hand is never steady;
we are always disposed to make the balance incline a little on our own
side. The Bishop came early, and passed some hours with the Superior in
his own apartment. During this interval, there was a stillness in the
house that was strongly contrasted with its previous agitation. I stood
alone in my cell,--stood, for I had no seat left me. I said to myself,
“This event bodes neither good or evil to me. I am not guilty of what
they accuse me of. They never can prove it,--an accomplice with
Satan!--the victim of diabolical delusion!--Alas! my only crime is my
involuntary subjection to the delusions they have practised on me. This
man, this Bishop, cannot give me freedom, but he may at least do me
justice.” All this time the community were in a fever--the character of
the house was at stake--my situation was notorious. They had laboured to
represent me as a possessed being beyond their walls, and to make me
appear as one within them. The hour of trial approached. For the honour
of human nature,--from the dread of violating decency,--from the dread
of apparently violating truth, I will not attempt to relate the means
they had recourse to the morning of the Bishop's visitation, to qualify
me to perform the part of a possessed, insane, and blasphemous wretch.
The four monks I have before mentioned, were the principal executioners,
(I must call them so).--Under pretence that there was no part of my
person which was not under the influence of the demon, * * * * * * *

“This was not enough. I was deluged almost to suffocation with
aspersions of holy water. Then followed, &c. * * * * *

“The result was, that I remained half-naked, half-drowned, gasping,
choaking, and delirious with rage, shame, and fear, when I was summoned
to attend the Bishop, who, surrounded by the Superior and the community,
awaited me in the church. This was the moment they had fixed on--I
yielded myself to them. I said, stretching out my arms, “Yes, drag me
naked, mad--religion and nature alike violated in my abused
figure--before your Bishop. If he speaks truth,--if he feels
conscience,--woe be to you, hypocritical, tyrannical wretches. You have
half-driven me mad!--half-murdered me, by the unnatural cruelties you
have exercised on me!--and in this state you drag me before the Bishop!
Be it so, I must follow you.” As I uttered these words, they bound my
arms and legs with ropes, carried me down, and placed me at the door of
the church, standing close to me. The Bishop was at the altar, the
Superior near him; the community filled the choir. They flung me down
like a heap of carrion, and retreated as if they fled from the pollution
of my touch. This sight struck the Bishop: He said, in a loud voice,
“Rise, unhappy, and come forward.” I answered, in a voice whose tones
appeared to thrill him, “Bid them unbind me, and I will obey you.” The
Bishop turned a cold and yet indignant look on the Superior, who
immediately approached and whispered him. This whispering consultation
was carried on for some time; but, though lying on the ground, I could
perceive the Bishop shook his head at every whisper of the Superior; and
the end of the business was an order to unbind me. I did not fare much
the better for this order, for the four monks were still close to me.
They held my arms as they led me up the steps to the altar. I was then,
for the first time, placed opposite to the Bishop. He was a man, the
effect of whose physiognomy was as indelible as that of his
character.--The one left its impress on the senses, as strongly as the
other did on the soul. He was tall, majestic, and hoary; not a feeling
agitated his frame--not a passion had left its trace on his features. He
was a marble statue of Episcopacy, chiselled out by the hand of
Catholicism,--a figure magnificent and motionless. His cold black eyes
did not seem to see you, when they were turned on you. His voice, when
it reached you, did not address you, but your soul. Such was his
exterior:--for the rest, his character was unimpeachable, his discipline
exemplary, his life that of an Anchorite hewed out in stone. But he was
partially suspected of what is called liberality in opinions, (that
is, of an inclination to Protestantism), and the sanctity of his
character went bail in vain for this imputed heterodoxy, which the
Bishop could hardly redeem by his rigid cognizance of every conventual
abuse in his district, among which my convent happened to be. Such was
the man before whom I stood. At the command to unloose me, the Superior
shewed much agitation; but the command was positive, and I was released.
I was then between the four monks, who held me, and I felt that my
appearance must have justified the impression he had received. I was
ragged, famished, livid, and on fire, with the horrible treatment I had
just received. I hoped, however, that my submission to whatever was to
be performed, might, in some degree, redeem the opinion of the Bishop.
He went with evident reluctance through the forms of exorcism, which
were delivered in Latin, while all the time, the monks crossed them-
selves, and the Acolytes were not sparing of holy water and of in-
cense. Whenever the terms “diabole te adjuro”203 occurred, the monks who
held me twisted my arms, so that I appeared to make contortions, and
uttered cries of pain. This, at first, seemed to disturb the Bishop; but
when the form of exorcism was over, he commanded me to approach the
altar alone. I attempted to do so; but the four monks surrounding me,
made it appear an act of great difficulty. He said, “Stand apart--let
him alone.” They were compelled to obey. I advanced alone, trembling. I
knelt. The Bishop, placing his stole on my head, demanded, “Did I
believe in God, and the holy Catholic church?” Instead of answering, I
shrieked, flung off the stole, and trampled in agony on the steps of the
altar. The Bishop retreated, while the Superior and the rest advanced. I
collected courage as I saw them approach; and, without uttering a word,
pointed to the pieces of broken glass which had been thrown on the steps
where I stood, and which had pierced me through my torn sandals. The
Bishop instantly ordered a monk to sweep them away with the sleeve of
his tunic. The order was obeyed in a moment, and the next I stood before
him without fear or pain. He continued to ask, “Why do you not pray in
the church?”--“Because its doors are shut against me.”--“How? what is
this? A memorial is in my hands urging many complaints against you, and
this among the first, that you do not pray in the church.”--“I have told
you the doors of the church are shut against me.--Alas! I could no more
open them, than I could open the hearts of the community--every thing is
shut against me here.” He turned to the Superior, who answered, “The
doors of the church are always shut to the enemies of God.” The Bishop
said, with his usual stern calmness, “I am asking a plain question--
evasive and circuitous answers will not do. Have the doors of the
church been shut against this wretched being?--have you denied him
the privilege of addressing God?”--“I did so, because I thought and
believed--” “I ask not what you thought or believed; I ask a plain
answer to a matter-of-fact question. Did you, or did you not, deny him
access to the house of God?”--“I had reason to believe that--” “I warn
you, these answers may compel me to make you exchange situations in
one moment with the object you accuse. Did you, or did you not, shut the
doors of the church against him?--answer yes or no.” The Superior,
trembling with fear and rage, said, “I did; and I was justified in doing
so.”--“That is for another tribunal to judge. But it seems you plead
guilty to the fact of which you accuse him.” The Superior was dumb. The
Bishop then examining his paper, addressed me again, “How is it that the
monks cannot sleep in their cells from the disturbance you cause?”--“I
know not--you must ask them.”--“Does not the evil spirit visit you
nightly? Are not your blasphemies, your execrable impurities, disgorged
even in the ears of those who have the misfortune to be placed near you?
Are you not the terror and the torment of the whole community?” I
answered, “I am what they have made me. I do not deny there are
extraordinary noises in my cell, but they can best account for them. I
am assailed by whispers close to my bed-side: It seems these whispers
reach the ears of the brethren, for they burst into my cell, and take
advantage of the terror with which I am overwhelmed, to put the most
incredible constructions on it.”--“Are there no cries, then, heard in
your cell at night?”--“Yes, cries of terror--cries uttered not by one
who is celebrating infernal orgies, but dreading them.”--“But the
blasphemies, the imprecations, the impurities, which proceed from your
lips?”--“Sometimes, in irrepressible terror, I have repeated the sounds
that were suggested to my ears; but it was always with an exclamation of
horror and aversion, that proved these sounds were not uttered but
echoed by me,--as a man may take up a reptile in his hand, and gaze on
its hideousness a moment, before he flings it from him. I take the whole
community to witness the truth of this. The cries I uttered, the
expressions I used, were evidently those of hostility to the infernal
suggestions which had been breathed into my ears. Ask the whole
community--they must testify, that when they broke into my cell, they
found me alone, trembling, convulsed. That I was the victim of those
disturbances, they affected to complain of; and though I never was able
to guess the means by which this persecution was effected, I am not rash
in ascribing it to the hands that covered the walls of my cell with
representations of demons, the traces of which still remain.”--“You are
also accused of having burst into the church at midnight, defaced the
images, trampled on the crucifix, and performed all the acts of a demon
violating the sanctuary.” At this accusation, so unjust and cruel, I was
agitated beyond controul. I exclaimed, “I flew to the church for
protection in a paroxysm of terror, which their machinations had filled
me with! I flew there at night, because it was shut against me during
the day, as you have discovered! I prostrated myself before the cross,
instead of trampling on it! I embraced the images of the blessed saints,
instead of violating them! And I doubt whether prayers more sincere were
ever offered within these walls, than those I uttered that night amid
helplessness, terror, and persecutions!”--“Did you not obstruct and
deter the community next morning by your cries, as they attempted to
enter the church?”--“I was paralyzed from the effects of lying all night
on the stone pavement, where they had flung me. I attempted to rise and
crawl away at their approach, and a few cries of pain were extorted from
me by my efforts to do so--efforts rendered more painful by their
refusing to offer me the slightest assistance. In a word, the whole is a
fabrication. I flew to the church to implore for mercy, and they
represent it as the outrages of an apostate spirit. Might not the same
arbitrary and absurd construction be put on the daily visits of
multitudes of afflicted souls, who weep and groan audibly as I did? If I
attempted to overturn the crucifix, to deface the images, would not the
marks of this violence remain? Would they not have been preserved with
care, to substantiate the accusation against me? Is there a trace of
them?--there is not, there cannot be, because they never existed.” The
Bishop paused. An appeal to his feelings would have been vain, but this
appeal to facts had its full effect. After some time, he said, “You can
have no objection, then, to render before the whole community the same
homage to the representations of the Redeemer and the holy saints, that
you say it was your purpose to render them that night?”--“None.” A
crucifix was brought me, which I kissed with reverence and unction, and
prayed, while the tears streamed from my eyes, an interest in the
infinite merits of the sacrifice it represented. The Bishop then said,
“Make a deed of faith, of love, of hope.” I did so; and though they were
extempore, my expressions, I could perceive, made the dignified
ecclesiastics who attended on the Bishop, cast on each other looks in
which were mingled compassion, interest, and admiration. The Bishop
said, “Where did you learn those prayers?”--“My heart is my only
teacher--I have no other--I am allowed no book.”--“How!--recollect
what you say.”--“I repeat I have none. They have taken away my bre-
viary, my crucifix;--they have stript my cell of all its furniture. I kneel
on the floor--I pray from the heart. If you deign to visit my cell, you
will find I have told you the truth.” At these words, the Bishop cast a
terrible look on the Superior. He recovered himself, however, immed-
iately, for he was a man unaccustomed to any emotion, and felt it
at once a suspension of his habits, and an infringement of his rank. In
a cold voice he bid me retire; then, as I was obeying him, he recalled
me,--my appearance for the first time seemed to strike him. He was a man
so absorbed in the contemplation of that waveless and frozen tide of
duty in which his mind was anchored, without fluctuation, progress, or
improvement, that physical objects must be presented before him a long
time before they made the least impression on him,--his senses were
almost ossified. Thus he had come to examine a supposed demoniac; but he
had made up his mind that there must be injustice and imposture in the
case, and he acted in the matter with a spirit, decision, and integrity,
that did him honour.

“But, all the time, the horror and misery of my appearance, which would
have made the first impression on a man whose feelings were at all
external, made the last. They struck him as I slowly and painfully
crawled from the steps of the altar, and the impression was forcible in
proportion to its slowness. He called me back and inquired, as if he saw
me for the first time, “How is it your habit is so scandalously ragged?”
At these words I thought I could disclose a scene that would have added
to the Superior's humiliation, but I only said, “It is the consequence
of the ill treatment I have experienced.” Several other questions of the
same kind, relating to my appearance, which was deplorable enough,
followed, and at last I was forced to make a full discovery. The Bishop
was incensed at the detail more than was credible. Rigid minds, when
they yield themselves to emotion, do it with a vehemence inconceivable,
for to them every thing is a duty, and passion (when it occurs) among
the rest. Perhaps the novelty of emotion, too, may be a delightful
surprise to them.

“More than all this was the case now with the good Bishop, who was as
pure as he was rigid, and shrunk with horror, disgust, and indignation,
at the detail I was compelled to give, which the Superior trembled at my
uttering, and which the community dared not to contradict. He resumed
his cold manner; for to him feeling was an effort, and rigour a habit,
and he ordered me again to retire. I obeyed, and went to my cell. The
walls were as bare as I had described them, but, even contrasted with
all the splendour and array of the scene in the church, they seemed
emblazoned with my triumph. A dazzling vision passed before me for a
moment, then all subsided; and, in the solitude of my cell, I knelt and
implored the Almighty to touch the Bishop's heart, and impress on him
the moderation and simplicity with which I had spoken. As I was thus
employed, I heard steps in the passage. They ceased for a moment, and I
was silent. It appeared the persons overheard me, and paused; and these
few words, uttered in solitude, made, I found, a deep impression on
them. A few moments after the Bishop, with some dignified attendants,
followed by the Superior, entered my cell. The former all stopped,
horror-struck at its appearance.

“I have told you, Sir, that my cell now consisted of four bare walls and
a bed;--it was a scandalous, degrading sight. I was kneeling in the
middle of the floor, God knows, without the least idea of producing an
effect. The Bishop gazed around him for some time, while the
ecclesiastics who attended him testified their horror by looks and
attitudes that needed no interpretation. The Bishop, after a pause,
turned to the Superior, “Well, what do you say to this?” The Superior
hesitated, and at last said, “I was ignorant of this.”--“That is false,”
said the Bishop; “and even if it was true, it would be your crimination,
not your apology. Your duty binds you to visit the cells every day; how
could you be ignorant of the shameful state of this cell, without
neglecting your own duties?” He took several turns about the cell,
followed by the ecclesiastics, shrugging their shoulders, and throwing
on each other looks of disgust. The Superior stood dismayed. They went
out, and I could hear the Bishop say, in the passage, “All this disorder
must be rectified before I quit the house.” And to the Superior, “You
are unworthy of the situation you hold,--you ought to be deposed.” And
he added in severer tones, “Catholics, monks, Christians, this is
shocking,--horrible! tremble for the consequences of my next visit, if
the same disorders exist,--I promise you it shall be repeated soon.”
He then returned, and standing at the door of my cell, said to the
Superior, “Take care that all the abuses committed in this cell are
rectified before to-morrow morning.” The Superior signified his
submission to this order in silence.

“That evening I went to sleep on a bare mattress, between four dry
walls. I slept profoundly, from exhaustion and fatigue. I awoke in the
morning far beyond the time for matins, and found myself surrounded by
all the comforts that can be bestowed on a cell. As if magic had been
employed during my sleep, crucifix, breviary, desk, table, every thing
was replaced. I sprung from bed, and actually gazed in extasy around my
cell. As the day advanced, and the hour for refection approached, my
extasy abated, and my terrors increased;--it is not easy to pass from
extreme humiliation and utter abhorrence, to your former state in the
society of which you are a member. When the bell rung I went down. I
stood at the door for a moment,--then, with an impulse, like despair, I
entered, and took my usual place. No opposition was made,--not a word
was said. The community separated after dinner. I watched for the toll
of the bell for vespers,--I imagined that would be decisive. The bell
tolled at last,--the monks assembled. I joined them without oppo-
sition,--I took my place in the choir,--my triumph was complete, and
I trembled at it. Alas! in what moment of success do we not feel a
sensation of terror? Our destiny always acts the part of the ancient
slave to us, who was required every morning to remind the monarch that
he was a man; and it seldom neglects to fulfil its own predictions
before the evening. Two days passed away,--the storm that had so long
agitated us, seemed to have sunk into a sudden calm. I resumed my former
place,--I performed the customary duties,--no one congratulated or
reviled me. They all seemed to consider me as one beginning monastic
life de novo.204 I passed two days of perfect tranquillity, and I take
God to witness, I enjoyed this triumph with moderation. I never reverted
to my former situation,--I never reproached those who had been agents in
it,--I never uttered a syllable on the subject of the visitation, which
had made me and the whole convent change places in the space of a few
hours, and the oppressed take the part (if he pleased) of the oppressor.
I bore my success with temperance, for I was supported by the hope of
liberation. The Superior's triumph was soon to come.

“On the third morning I was summoned to the parlour, where a messenger
put into my hands a packet, containing (as I well understood) the result
of my appeal. This, according to the rules of the convent, I was
compelled to put first into the hands of the Superior to read, before I
was permitted to read it myself. I took the packet, and slowly walked to
the Superior's apartment. As I held it in my hand, I considered it, felt
every corner, weighed it over and over again in my hand, tried to catch
an omen from its very shape. Then a withering thought crossed me, that,
if its intelligence was auspicious, the messenger would have put it into
my hands with an air of triumph, that, in spite of convent etiquette, I
might break open the seals which inclosed the sentence of my liberation.
We are very apt to take our presages from our destination, and mine
being that of a monk, no wonder its auguries were black,--and were
verified.

“I approached the Superior's cell with the packet. I knocked, was
desired to enter, and, my eyes cast down, could only distinguish the
hems of many habits, whose wearers were all assembled in the Superior's
apartment. I offered the packet with reverence. The Superior cast a
careless eye over it, and then flung it on the floor. One of the monks
approached to take it up. The Superior exclaimed, “Hold, let him take
it up.” I did so, and retired to my cell, making first a profound
reverence to the Superior. I then went to my cell, where I sat down with
the fatal packet in my hands. I was about to open it, when a voice from
within me seemed to say,--It is useless, you must know the contents
already. It was some hours before I perused it,--it contained the
account of the failure of my appeal. It seemed, from the detail, that
the advocate had exerted his abilities, zeal, and eloquence to the
utmost; and that, at one time, the court had been near deciding in
favour of my claims, but the precedent was reckoned too dangerous. The
advocate on the other side had remarked, “If this succeeds, we shall
have all the monks in Spain appealing against their vows.” Could a
stronger argument have been used in favour of my cause? An impulse
so universal must surely originate in nature, justice, and truth.”

* * * * *

On reverting to the disastrous issue of his appeal, the unfortunate
Spaniard was so much overcome, that it was some days before he could
resume his narrative.



CHAPTER VII.


Pandere res alta terrâ et caligine mersas.205

I'll shew your Grace the strangest sight,--
Body o'me, what is it, Butts?--

HENRY THE EIGHTH.206


“Of the desolation of mind into which the rejection of my appeal plung-
ed me, I can give no account, for I retain no distinguishing image. All
colours disappear in the night, and despair has no diary,207--monotony is
her essence and her curse. Hours have I walked in the garden, without
retaining a single impression but that of the sounds of my footsteps;
--thought, feeling, passion, and all that employs them,--life and fu-
turity, extinct and swallowed up. I was already like an inhabitant of
the land where “all things are forgotten.”208 I hovered on the regions
of mental twilight, where the “light is as darkness.”209 The clouds were
gathering that portended the approach of utter night,--they were
scattered by a sudden and extraordinary light.

“The garden was my constant resort,--a kind of instinct supplying the
place of that choice I had no longer energy enough to make, directed me
there to avoid the presence of the monks. One evening I saw a change in
its appearance. The fountain was out of repair. The spring that supplied
it was beyond the walls of the convent, and the workmen, in prosecuting
the repairs, had found it necessary to excavate a passage under the
garden-wall, that communicated with an open space in the city. This
passage, however, was closely watched during the day while the workmen
were employed, and well secured at night by a door erected for the
purpose, which was chained, barred, and bolted, the moment the workmen
quitted the passage. It was, however, left open during the day; and this
tantalizing image of escape and freedom, amid the withering certainty of
eternal imprisonment, gave a kind of awakened sting to the pains that
were becoming obtuse. I entered the passage, and drew as close as
possible to the door that shut me out from life. My seat was one of the
stones that were scattered about, my head rested on my hand, and my
eyes were sadly fixed on the tree and the well, the scene of that false
miracle. I knew not how long I sat thus. I was aroused by a slight noise
near me, and perceived a paper, which some one was thrusting under the
door, where a slight inequality in the ground rendered the attempt just
practicable. I stooped and attempted to seize it. It was withdrawn; but
a moment after a voice, whose tones my agitation did not permit me to
distinguish, whispered, “Alonzo.”--“Yes,--yes,” I answered eagerly. The
paper was instantly thrust into my hands, and I heard a sound of steps
retreating rapidly. I lost not a moment in reading the few words it
contained. “Be here to-morrow evening at the same hour. I have suffered
much on your account,--destroy this.” It was the hand of my brother
Juan, that hand so well remembered from our late eventful correspond-
ence,--that hand whose traces I never beheld without feeling corres-
ponding characters of hope and confidence retraced in my soul, as
lines before invisible appear on exposure to the heat that seems to
vivify them. I am surprised that between this and the following evening
my agitation did not betray me to the community. But perhaps it is only
agitation arising from frivolous causes, that vents itself in external
indications,--I was absorbed in mine. It is certain, at least, that my
mind was all that day vacillating like a clock that struck every minute
the alternate sounds, “There is hope,--there is no hope.” The
day,--the eternal day, was at last over. Evening came on; how I watched
the advancing shades! At vespers, with what delight did I trace the
gradual mellowing of the gold and purple tinges that gleamed through the
great eastern window, and calculated that their western decline, though
slower, must come at last!--It came. Never was a more propitious
evening. It was calm and dark--the garden deserted, not a form to be
seen, not a step to be heard in the walks.--I hurried on. Suddenly I
thought I heard the sound of something pursuing me. I paused,--it was
but the beating of my own heart, audible in the deep stillness of that
eventful moment. I pressed my hand on my breast, as a mother would on
an infant whom she tried to pacify;--it did not cease to throb, however. I
entered the passage. I approached the door, of which hope and despair
seemed to stand the alternate portresses. The words still rung in my
ears, “Be here to-morrow evening at the same hour.” I stooped, and saw,
with eyes that devoured the sight, a piece of paper appear under the
door. I seized and buried it in my habit. I trembled with such ecstacy,
that I thought I never should be able to carry it undiscovered to my
cell. I succeeded, however; and the contents, when I read them,
justified my emotion. To my unspeakable uneasiness, great part of it was
illegible, from being crushed amid the stones and damp clay contiguous
to the door, and from the first page I could hardly extract that he had
been kept in the country almost a prisoner, through the influence of the
Director; that one day, while shooting with only one attendant, the hope
of liberation suddenly filled him with the idea of terrifying this man
into submission. Presenting his loaded fowling piece at the terrified
wretch, he threatened him with instant death, if he made the least op-
position. The man suffered himself to be bound to a tree; and the next
page, though much defaced, gave me to understand he had reached Madrid
in safety, and heard for the first time the event of my ill-fated appeal.
The effect of this intelligence on the impetuous, sanguine, and affect-
ionate Juan, could be easily traced in the broken and irregular lines
in which he vainly attempted to describe it. The letter then proceeded.
“I am now in Madrid, pledged body and soul never to quit it till you
are liberated. If you possess resolution, this is not impossible,--the
doors even of convents are not inaccessible to a silver key. My first
object, that of obtaining a communication with you, appeared as impract-
icable as your escape, yet it has been accomplished. I understood that
repairs were going on in the garden, and stationed myself at the door
evening after evening, whispering your name, but it was not till the
sixth that you were there.”

“In another part he detailed his plans more fully. “Money and secrecy
are the primary objects,--the latter I can insure by the disguises I
wear, but the former I scarce know how to obtain. My escape was so
sudden, that I was wholly unprovided, and have been obliged to dispose
of my watch and rings since I reached Madrid, to purchase disguises and
procure subsistence. I could command what sums I pleased by disclosing
my name, but this would be fatal. The report of my being in Madrid would
immediately reach my father's ears. My resource must be a Jew;210 and
when
I have obtained money, I have little doubt of effecting your liberation.
I have already heard of a person in the convent under very extraordinary
circumstances, who would probably not be disinclined to * * * * * * *

“Here a long interval occurred in the letter, which appeared to be
written at different times. The next lines that I could trace, expressed
all the light-heartedness of this most fiery, volatile, and generous of
created beings. * * * * * *

“Be not under the least uneasiness about me, it is impossible that I
should be discovered. At school I was remarkable for a dramatic talent,
a power of personation almost incredible, and which I now find of in-
finite service. Sometimes I strut as a Majo(4), with enormous whiskers.
Sometimes I assume the accent of a Biscayan, and, like the husband of
Donna Rodriguez, “am as good a gentleman as the king, because I came
from the mountains.”211 But my favourite disguise is that of a mendicant
or a fortune-teller,--the former procures me access to the convent, the
other money and intelligence. Thus I am paid, while I appear to be the
buyer. When the wanderings and stratagems of the day are over, you
would smile to see the loft and pallet to which the heir of Monçada
retires. This masquerade amuses me more than the spectators. A con-
sciousness of our superiority is often more delightful when confined
to our own breasts, than when expressed by others. Besides, I feel as
if the squalid bed, the tottering seat, the cobwebbed rafters, the
rancid oil, and all the other agremens 212 of my new abode, were a kind
of atonement for the wrongs I have done you, Alonzo. My spirits
sometimes sink under privations so new to me, but still a kind of
playful and wild energy, peculiar to my character, supports me. I
shudder at my situation when I retire at night, and place, for the first
time with my own hands, the lamp on the miserable hearth; but I laugh
when, in the morning, I attire myself in fantastic rags, discolour my
face, and modulate my accent, so that the people in the house, (where I
tenant a garret), when they meet me on the stairs, do not know the being
they saw the preceding evening. I change my abode and costume every day.
Feel no fears for me, but come every evening to the door in the passage,
for every evening I shall have fresh intelligence for you. My industry
is indefatigable, my zeal unquenchable, my heart and soul are on fire in
the cause. Again I pledge myself, soul and body, never to quit this spot
till you are free,--depend on me, Alonzo.”

“I will spare you, Sir, the detail of the feelings,--feelings! Oh my
God, pardon me the prostration of heart with which I kissed those lines,
with which I could have consecrated the hand that traced them, and which
are worthy only to be devoted to the image of the great Sacrifice.213 Yet
a being so young, so generous, so devoted, with a heart at once so wild
and warm, sacrificing all that rank, and youth, and pleasure could
offer,--submitting to the vilest disguises, undergoing the most
deplorable privations, struggling with what must have been most
intolerable to a proud voluptuous boy, (and I knew he was all this),
hiding his revoltings under a gaiety that was assumed, and a magnanimity
that was real--and all this for me!----Oh what I felt! * * * * * *

“The next evening I was at the door; no paper appeared, though I sat
watching for it till the declining light made it impossible for me to
discover it, had it been there. The next I was more fortunate; it ap-
peared. The same disguised voice whispered “Alonzo,” in tones that
were the sweetest music that ever reached my ears. This billet con-
tain ed but a very few lines, (so I found no difficulty in swallowing it
immediately after perusal). It said, “I have found a Jew, at last, who
will advance me a large sum. He pretends not to know me, though I am
satisfied he does.--But his usurious interest and illegal practices are
my full security. I shall be master of the means of liberating you in a
few days; and I have been fortunate enough to discover how those
means may be applied. There is a wretch----”

“Here the billet ended; and for four following evenings the state of
the repairs excited so much curiosity in the convent, (where it is so
easy to excite curiosity), that I dared not to remain in the passage,
without the fear of exciting suspicion. All this time I suffered not
only the agony of suspended hope, but the dread of this accidental
communication being finally closed; for I knew the workmen could not
have more than a few days to employ on their task. This I conveyed
the intelligence of to my brother in the same way in which I received
his billets. Then I reproached myself for hurrying him. I reflected
on the difficulties of his concealment--of his dealing with Jews--of
his bribing the servants of the convent. I thought of all he had un-
dertaken, and all he had undergone. Then I dreaded that all might be
in vain. I would not live over those four days again to be sovereign
of the earth. I will give you one slight proof of what I must have
felt, when I heard the workmen say, “It will be finished soon.” I
used to rise at an hour before matins, displace the stones, trample
on the mortar, which I mingled with the clay, so as to render it to-
tally useless; and finally, re-act Penelope's web 214 with such success,
that the workmen believed the devil himself was obstructing their
operations, and latterly never came to their task unless armed with
a vessel of holy water, which they dashed about with infinite san-
ctimony and profusion. On the fifth evening I caught the following
lines beneath the door. “All is settled--I have fixed the Jew on
Jewish terms. He affects to be ignorant of my real rank, and cer-
tain (future) wealth, but he knows it all, and dare not, for his
own sake, betray me. The Inquisition, to which I could expose him
in a moment, is my best security--I must add, my only. There is a
wretch in your convent, who took sanctuary from parricide, and con-
sented to become a monk, to escape the vengeance of heaven in this
life at least. I have heard, that this monster cut his own father's
throat, as he sat at supper, to obtain a small sum which he had lost at
gambling. His partner, who was a loser also, had, it seems, made a vow
to an image of the Virgin, that was in the neighbourhood of the wretched
house where they gamed, to present two wax tapers before it in the event
of his success. He lost; and, in the fury of a gamester, as he repassed
the image, he struck and spit at it. This was very shocking--but what
was it to the crime of him who is now an inmate of your convent? The one
defaced an image, the other murdered his father: Yet the former expired
under tortures the most horrible, and the other, after some vain efforts
to elude justice, took sanctuary, and is now a lay-brother in your
convent. On the crimes of this wretch I build all my hopes. His soul
must be saturated with avarice, sensuality, and desperation. There is
nothing he will hesitate at if he be bribed;--for money he will
undertake your liberation--for money he will undertake to strangle you
in your cell. He envies Judas the thirty pieces of silver for which the
Redeemer of mankind was sold. His soul might be purchased at
half-price. Such is the instrument with which I must work.--It is
horrible, but necessary. I have read, that from the most venomous
reptiles and plants, have been extracted the most sanative medicines. I
will squeeze the juice, and trample on the weed.

“Alonzo, tremble not at these words. Let not your habits prevail over
your character. Entrust your liberation to me, and the instruments I am
compelled to work with; and doubt not, that the hand which traces these
lines, will soon be clasping that of a brother in freedom.”

“I read these lines over and over again in the solitude of my cell,
when the excitement of watching for, secreting, and perusing it for the
first time, were over, and many doubts and fears began to gather round
me like twilight clouds. In proportion as Juan's confidence increased,
mine appeared to diminish. There was a terrifying contrast between the
fearlessness, independence, and enterprise of his situation, and the
loneliness, timidity, and danger of mine. While the hope of escape,
through his courage and address, still burnt like an inextinguishable
light in the depth of my heart, I still dreaded entrusting my destiny
to a youth so impetuous, though so affectionate; one who had fled from
his .parents' mansion, was living by subterfuge and imposture in Ma-
drid, and had engaged, as his coadjutor, a wretch whom nature must
revolt from. Upon whom and what did my hopes of liberation rest? On
the affectionate energies of a wild, enterprising, and unaided being,
and the co-operation of a demon, who might snatch at a bribe, and then
shake it in triumph in his ears, as the seal of our mutual and eternal
despair, while he flung the key of liberation into an abyss where no
light could penetrate, and from which no arm could redeem it.

“Under these impressions, I deliberated, I prayed, I wept in the agony
of doubt. At last I wrote a few lines to Juan, in which I honestly
stated my doubts and apprehensions. I stated first my doubts of the
possibility of my escape. I said, “Can it be imagined that a being whom
all Madrid, whom all Spain, is on the watch for, can elude their
detection? Reflect, dear Juan, that I am staked against a community, a
priesthood, a nation. The escape of a monk is almost impossible,--but
his concealment afterwards is downright impossible. Every bell in every
convent in Spain would ring out untouched in pursuit of the fugitive.
The military, civil, and ecclesiastical powers, would all be on the “qui
vive.”215 Hunted, panting, and despairing, I might fly from place to
place--no place affording me shelter. The incensed powers of the
church--the fierce and vigorous gripe of the law--the execration and
hatred of society--the suspicions of the lowest order among whom I
must lurk, to shun and curse their penetration; think of encountering
all this, while the fiery cross of the Inquisition blazes in the van,
followed by the whole pack, shouting, cheering, hallooing on to the
prey. Oh Juan! if you knew the terrors under which I live--under which
I would rather die than encounter them again, even on the condition of
liberation! Liberation! Great God! what chance of liberation for a monk
in Spain? There is not a cottage where I could rest one night in sec-
urity--there is not a cavern whose echoes would not resound to the
cry of my apostacy. If I was hid in the bowels of the earth, they would
discover me, and tear me from its entrails. My beloved Juan, when I
consider the omnipotence of the ecclesiastical power in Spain, may I
not address it in the language applied to Omnipotence itself: “If I climb
up to heaven, thou art there;--if I go down to hell, thou art there
also;--if I take the wings of the morning, and flee unto the uttermost
parts of the sea, even there--”216 And suppose my liberation was accom-
plished--suppose the convent plunged in a profound torpor, and the
unsleeping eye of the Inquisition winked at my apostacy--where am I to
reside? how am I to procure subsistence? The luxurious indolence of my
early years unfit me for active employment. The horrible conflict of
apathy the deepest, with hostility the most deadly, in monastic life,
disqualifies me for society. Throw the doors of every convent in Spain
open, and for what will their inmates be fit? For nothing that will
either embellish or improve it. What could I do to serve myself?--
what could I do that would not betray me? I should be a persecuted,
breathless fugitive,--a branded Cain.217 Alas!--perhaps expiring in
flames, I might see Abel not my victim, but that of the Inquisition.”

“When I had written these lines, with an impulse for which all can
account but the writer, I tore them to atoms, burnt them deliberately by
the assistance of the lamp in my cell, and went to watch again at the
door in the passage--the door of hope. In passing through the gallery, I
encountered, for a moment, a person of a most forbidding aspect. I drew
on one side--for I had made it a point not to mix, in the slightest
degree, with the community, beyond what the discipline of the house
compelled me to. As he passed, however, he touched my habit, and gave a
most significant look. I immediately comprehended this was the person
Juan alluded to in his letter. And in a few moments after, on descending
to the garden, I found a note that confirmed my conjectures. It
contained these words: “I have procured the money--I have secured our
agent. He is an incarnate devil, but his resolution and intrepidity are
unquestionable. Walk in the cloister to-morrow evening--some one will
touch your habit--grasp his left wrist, that will be the signal. If he
hesitates, whisper to him--“Juan,” he will answer--“Alonzo.” That is
your man, consult with him. Every step that I have taken will be
communicated to you by him.”

“After reading these lines, I appeared to myself like a piece of mech-
anism218 wound up to perform certain functions, in which its co-operation
was irresistible. The precipitate vigour of Juan's movements seemed
to impel mine without my own concurrence; and as the shortness of
the time left me no opportunity for deliberation, it left me also none
for choice. I was like a clock whose hands are pushed forward, and I
struck the hours I was impelled to strike. When a powerful agency is
thus exercised on us,--when another undertakes to think, feel, and
act for us, we are delighted to transfer to him, not only our phys-
ical, but our moral responsibility. We say, with selfish cowardice,
and self-flattering passiveness, “Be it so--you have decided for
me,”--without reflecting that at the bar of God there is no bail.
So I walked the next evening in the cloister. I composed my habit,
--my looks; any one would have imagined me plunged in profound
meditation,--and so I was, but not on the subjects with which they
conceived I was occupied. As I walked, some one touched my habit. I
started, and, to my consternation, one of the monks asked my pardon for
the sleeve of his tunic having touched mine. Two minutes after another
touched my habit. I felt the difference,--there was an intelligential
and communicative force in his grasp. He seized it as one who did not
fear to be known, and who had no need to apologise. How is it that
crime thus seizes us in life with a fearless grasp, while the touch of
conscience trembles on the verge of our garment. One would almost
parody the words of the well known Italian proverb, and say that guilt
is masculine, and innocence feminine. I grasped his wrist with a trem-
bling hand, and whispered--“Juan,” in the same breath. He answered
--“Alonzo,” and passed me onward in a moment. I had then a few
moments leisure to reflect on a destiny thus singularly entrusted to a
being whose affections honoured humanity, and a being whose crimes
disgraced it. I was suspended like Mahomet's tomb between heaven and
earth. I felt an antipathy indescribable to hold any communication with
a monster who had tried to hide the stains of parricide, by casting over
their bloody and ineffaceable traces the shroud of monasticism. I felt
also an inexpressible terror of Juan's passions and precipitancy; and I
felt ultimately that I was in the power of all I dreaded most, and must
submit to the operation of that power for my liberation.

“I was in the cloisters the following evening. I cannot say I walked
with a step so equal, but I am sure I did with a step much more
artificially regular. For the second time the same person touched my
habit, and whispered the name of Juan. After this I could no longer
hesitate. I said, in passing, “I am in your power.” A hoarse repulsive
voice answered, “No, I am in yours.” I murmured, “Well, then, I under-
stand you, we belong to each other.”--“Yes. We must not speak here,
but a fortunate opportunity presents itself for our communication. To-
morrow will be the eve of the feast of Pentecost;219 the vigil is kept by
the whole community, who go two and two every hour to the altar, pass
their hour in prayer, and then are succeeded by two more, and this
continues all night. Such is the aversion with which you have inspired
the community, that they have one and all refused to accompany you
during your hour, which is to be from two till three. You will therefore
be alone, and during your hour I will come and visit you,--we shall be
undisturbed and unsuspected.” At these words he quitted me. The next
night was the eve of Pentecost, the monks went two and two all night to
the altar,--at two o'clock my turn arrived. They rapped at my cell, and
I descended to the church alone.”



CHAPTER VIII.


Ye monks and nuns throughout the land,
Who go to church at night in pairs,
Never take bell-ropes in your hands,
To raise you up again from prayers.

COLMAN.220


“I am not superstitious, but, as I entered the church, I felt a chill of
body and soul inexpressible. I approached the altar, and attempted to
kneel,--an invisible hand repelled me. A voice seemed to address me from
the recesses of the altar, and demand what brought me there? I reflected
that those who had just quitted that spot had been absorbed in prayer,
that those who were to succeed me would be engaged in the same pro-
found homage, while I sought the church with a purpose of imposture
and deception, and abused the hour allotted to the divine worship in
contriving the means to escape from it. I felt I was a deceiver,
shrouding my fraud in the very veils of the temple. I trembled at my
purpose and at myself. I knelt, however, though I did not dare to pray.
The steps of the altar felt unusually cold,--I shuddered at the silence
I was compelled to observe. Alas! how can we expect that object to
succeed, which we dare not entrust to God. Prayer, Sir, when we are
deeply engaged in it, not only makes us eloquent, but communicates a
kind of answering eloquence to the objects around us. At former times,
while I poured out my heart before God, I felt as if the lamps burnt
brighter, and the images smiled,--the silent midnight air was filled
with forms and voices, and every breeze that sighed by the casement bore
to my ear the harpings of a thousand angels. Now all was stilled,--the
lamps, the images, the altar, the roof, seemed to behold me in silence.
They surrounded me like witnesses,221 whose presence alone is enough
to condemn you, without their uttering a word. I dared not look up,--I
dared not speak,--I dared not pray, lest it would unfold a thought I
could not supplicate a blessing on; and this kind of keeping a secret,
which God must know, is at once so vain and impious.

“I had not remained long in this state of agitation, when I heard a step
approach,--it was that of him I expected. “Rise,” said he, for I was on
my knees; “rise,--we have no time to lose. You have but an hour to
remain in the church, and I have much to tell you in that hour.” I rose.
“To-morrow night is fixed for your escape.”--“To-morrow night,--merciful
God!”--“Yes; in desperate steps there is always more danger from delay
than from precipitation. A thousand eyes and ears are on the watch
already,--a single sinister or ambiguous movement would render it
impossible to escape their vigilance. There may be some danger in
hastening matters thus, but it is unavoidable. To-morrow night, after
midnight, descend to the church, it is probable no one will then be
here. If any one should, (engaged in recollection or in penance), retire
to avoid suspicion. Return as soon as the church is empty,--I will be
here. Do you observe that door?” and he pointed to a low door which I
had often observed before, but never remembered to have seen opened;
“I have obtained the key of that door,--no matter by what means. It
formerly led to the vaults of the convent, but, for some extraordinary
reasons, which I have not time to relate, another passage has been
opened, and the former has not been employed or frequented for many
years. From thence branches another passage, which, I have heard, opens
by a trap-door into the garden.”--“Heard,” I repeated; “Good God! is it
on report, then, you depend in a matter so momentous? If you are not
certain that such a passage exists, and that you will be able to trace
its windings, may we not be wandering amid them all night? Or
perhaps----” “Interrupt me no more with those faint objections; I have
no time to listen to fears which I can neither sympathise with or
obviate. When we get through the trap-door into the garden, (if ever we
do), another danger awaits us.” He paused, I thought, like a man who is
watching the effect of the terrors he excites, not from malignity but
vanity, merely to magnify his own courage in encountering them. I was
silent; and, as he heard neither flattery nor fear, he went on. “Two
fierce dogs are let loose in the garden every night,--but they must be
taken care of. The wall is sixteen feet high,--but your brother has
provided a ladder of ropes, which he will fling over, and by which you
may descend on the other side in safety.”--“Safety! but then Juan will
be in danger.”--“Interrupt me no more,--the danger within the walls is
the least you have to dread, beyond them, where can you seek for refuge
or secrecy? Your brother's money will enable you possibly to escape from
Madrid. He will bribe high, and every inch of your way must be paved
with his gold. But, after that, so many dangers present themselves, that
the enterprise and the danger seem but just begun. How will you cross
the Pyrennees? How----” and he passed his hand over his forehead,
with the air of a man engaged in an effort beyond his powers, and sorely
perplexed about the means to effect it. This expression, so full of
sincerity, struck me forcibly. It operated as a balance against all my
former prepossessions. But still the more confidence I felt in him, the
more I was impressed by his fears. I repeated after him, “How is it
possible for me to escape ultimately? I may, by your assistance,
traverse those intricate passages, whose cold dews I feel already
distilling on me. I may emerge into light, ascend and descend the wall,
but, after that, how am I to escape?--how am I even to live? All Spain
is but one great monastery,--I must be a prisoner every step that I
take.”--“Your brother must look to that,” said he abruptly; “I have done
what I have undertaken.” I then pressed him with several questions
relating to the details of my escape. His answer was monotonous,
unsatisfactory, and evasive, to a degree that again filled me first with
suspicion, and then with terror. I asked, “But how have you obtained
possession of the keys?”--“It is not your business to inquire.” It was
singular that he returned the same answer to every question I put to
him, relative to his becoming possessed of the means to facilitate my
escape, so that I was compelled to desist unsatisfied, and revert to
what he had told me.--“But, then, that terrible passage near the
vaults,--the chance, the fear that we may never emerge to light! Think
of wandering amid sepulchral ruins, of stumbling over the bones of the
dead, of encountering what I cannot describe,--the horror of being among
those who are neither the living or the dead;--those dark and shadowless
things that sport themselves with the reliques of the dead, and feast
and love amid corruption,--ghastly, mocking, and terrific. Must we
pass near the vaults?”--“What matter? perhaps I have more reason to
dread them than you. Do you expect the spirit of your father to start
from the earth to blast you?” At these words, which he uttered in a tone
intended to inspire me with confidence, I shuddered with horror. They
were uttered by a parricide, boasting of his crime in a church at
midnight, amid saints, whose images were silent, but seemed to tremble.
For relief I reverted to the unscaleable wall, and the difficulty of
managing the ladder of ropes without detection. The same answer was on
his lips,--“Leave that to me,--all that is settled.” While he answered
thus, he always turned his face away, and broke his words into
monosyllables. At last I felt that the case was desperate,--that I must
trust every thing to him. To him! Oh, my God! what I felt when I said
this to myself! The conviction thrilled on my soul,--I am in his power.
And yet, even under the impression, I could not help recurring to the
impracticable difficulties that appeared to obstruct my escape. He then
lost patience,--reproached me with timidity and ingratitude; and, while
resuming his naturally ferocious and menacing tone, I actually felt more
confidence in him than when he had attempted to disguise it.
Half-remonstrance, half-invective as it was, what he said displayed so
much ability, intrepidity, and art, that I began to feel a kind of
doubtful security. I conceived, at least, that if any being on earth
could effect my liberation, this was the man. He had no conception of
fear,--no idea of conscience. When he hinted at his having murdered his
father, it was done to impress me with an idea of his hardihood. I saw
this from his expression, for I had involuntarily looked up at him. His
eye had neither the hollowness of remorse, or the wandering of fear,--it
glared on me bold, challenging, and prominent. He had but one idea
annexed to the word danger,--that of strong excitement. He undertook a
perilous attempt as a gamester would sit down to encounter an antagonist
worthy of him; and, if life and death were the stake, he only felt as if
he were playing at a higher rate, and the increased demands on his
courage and talent actually supplied him with the means of meeting them.
Our conference was now nearly at an end, when it occurred to me that
this man was exposing himself to a degree of danger which it was almost
incredible he should brave on my account; and this mystery, at least, I
was resolved to penetrate. I said, “But how will you provide for your
own safety? What will become of you when my escape is discovered?
Would not the most dreadful punishments attend even the suspicion of
your having been an agent in it, and what must be the result when that
suspicion is exchanged for the most undeniable certainty?” It is impos-
sible for me to describe the change his expression underwent while
I uttered these words. He looked at me for some time without speaking,
with an indefinable mixture of sarcasm, contempt, doubt, and curiosity
in his countenance, and then attempted to laugh, but the muscles of his
face were too stubborn and harsh to admit of this modulation. To
features like his, frowns were a habit, and smiles a convulsion. He
could produce nothing but a rictus Sardonicus.222 the terrors of which
there is no describing. It is very frightful to behold crime in its
merriment,--its smile must be purchased by many groans. My blood ran
cold as I looked at him. I waited for the sound of his voice as a kind
of relief. At length he said, “Do you imagine me such an ideot as to
promote your escape at the risk of imprisonment for life,--perhaps of
immurement,--perhaps of the Inquisition?” and again he laughed. “No, we
must escape together. Could you suppose I would have so much anxiety
about an event, in which I had no part but that of an assistant? It was
of my own danger I was thinking,--it was of my own safety I was
doubtful. Our situation has happened to unite very opposite characters
in the same adventure, but it is an union inevitable and inseparable.
Your destiny is now bound to mine by a tie which no human force can
break,--we part no more for ever. The secret that each is in possession
of, must be watched by the other. Our lives are in each other's hands,
and a moment of absence might be that of treachery. We must pass life in
each watching every breath the other draws, every glance the other
gives,--in dreading sleep as an involuntary betrayer, and watching the
broken murmurs of each other's restless dreams. We may hate each other,
torment each other,--worst of all, we may be weary of each other, (for
hatred itself would be a relief, compared to the tedium of our
inseparability), but separate we must never.” At this picture of the
liberty for which I had risked so much, my very soul recoiled. I gazed
on the formidable being with whom my existence was thus incorporated.
He was now retiring, when he paused at some distance to repeat his
last words, or perhaps to observe their effect. I was sitting on the
altar,--it was late,--the lamps in the church burned very dimly, and, as
he stood in the aisle, he was placed in such a position, with regard to
that which hung from the roof, that the light fell only on his face and
one hand, which he extended towards me. The rest of his figure,
enveloped in darkness, gave to this bodyless and spectre head an effect
truly appalling. The ferocity of his features, too, was softened into a
heavy and death-like gloom, as he repeated, “We part never,--I must be
near you for ever,” and the deep tones of his voice rolled like
subterranean thunder round the church. A long pause followed. He
continued to stand in the same posture, nor had I power to change mine.
The clock struck three, its sound reminded me that my hour had expired.
We separated, each taking different directions; and the two monks who
succeeded me luckily came a few minutes late, (both of them yawning
most fearfully), so our departure was unobserved.

“The day that followed I have no more power of describing, than of
analysing a dream to its component parts of sanity, delirium, defeated
memory, and triumphant imagination. The sultan in the eastern tale,223
who plunged his head in a bason of water, and, before he raised it again,
passed through adventures the most vicissitudinous and incredible--was
a monarch, a slave, a husband, a widower, a father, childless,--in five
minutes, never underwent the changes of mind that I did during that
memorable day. I was a prisoner,--free,--a happy being, surrounded by
smiling infants,--a victim of the Inquisition, writhing amid flames and
execrations. I was a maniac, oscillating between hope and despair. I
seemed to myself all that day to be pulling the rope of a bell, whose
alternate knell was heaven--hell, and this rung in my ears with all
the dreary and ceaseless monotony of the bell of the convent. Night
came at last. I might almost say day came, for that day had been my
night. Every thing was propitious to me,--the convent was all hushed.
I put my head several times out of my cell, to be assured of this,--all
was hushed. There was not a step in the corridor,--not a voice, not a
whisper to be heard under a roof containing so many souls. I stole from
my cell, I descended to the church. This was not unusual for those whose
consciences or nerves were disturbed, during the sleepless gloom of a
conventual night. As I advanced to the door of the church, where the
lamps were always kept burning, I heard a human voice. I retreated in
terror;--then I ventured to give a glance. An old monk was at prayers
before one of the images of the saints, and the object of his prayers
was to be relieved, not from the anguish of conscience, or the anni-
hilation of monasticism, but from the pains of a toothache, for which
he had been desired to apply his gums to the image of a saint quite
notorious for her efficacy in such cases.224 The poor, old, tortured
wretch, prayed with all the fervency of agony, and then rubbed his
gums over and over again on the cold marble, which increased his
complaint, his suffering, and his devotion. I watched, listened,--there
was something at once ludicrous and frightful in my situation. I felt
inclined to laugh at my own distress, while it was rising almost to
agony every moment. I dreaded, too, the approach of another intruder,
and feeling my fear about to be realized by the approach of some one, I
turned round, and, to my inexpressible relief, saw my companion. I made
him comprehend, by a sign, how I was prevented from entering the church;
he answered me in the same way, and retreated a few steps, but not with-
out shewing me a bunch of huge keys under his habit. This revived my
spirits, and I waited for another half-hour in a state of mental ex-
cruciation, which, were it inflicted on the bitterest enemy I have on
earth, I think I would have cried, “Hold,--hold, spare him.” The clock
struck two,--I writhed and stamped with my feet, as loud as I dared, on
the floor of the passage. I was not at all tranquillized by the visible
impatience of my companion, who started, from time to time, from his
hiding-place behind a pillar of the cloister, flung on me a glance----
no, a glare--of wild and restless inquiry, (which I answered with
one of despondency), and retired, grinding curses between his
teeth, whose horrible grating I could hear distinctly in the intervals
of my long-withheld breath. At last I took a desperate step. I walked
into the church, and, going straight up to the altar, prostrated myself
on the steps. The old monk observed me. He believed that I had come
there with the same purpose, if not with the same feelings, as himself;
and he approached me, to announce his intention of joining in my
aspirations, and intreating an interest in them, as the pain had now
reached from the lower jaw to the upper. There is something that one
can hardly describe in this union of the lowest with the highest
interests of life. I was a prisoner, panting for emancipation, and
staking my existence on the step I was compelled to take,--my whole
interest for time, and perhaps for eternity, hung on a moment; and
beside me knelt a being whose destiny was decided already, who could be
nothing but a monk for the few years of his worthless existence, and who
was supplicating a short remission from a temporary pain, that I would
have endured my whole life for an hour's liberty. As he drew near me,
and supplicated an interest in my prayers, I shrunk away. I felt a
difference in the object of our addresses to God, that I dared not
search my heart for the motive of. I knew not, at the moment, which of
us was right,--he, whose prayer did no dishonour to the place,--or I,
who was to struggle against a disorganized and unnatural state of life,
whose vows I was about to violate. I knelt with him, however, and prayed
for the removal of his pain with a sincerity that cannot be questioned,
as the success of my petitions might be the means of procuring his
absence. As I knelt, I trembled at my own hypocrisy. I was profaning the
altar of God,--I was mocking the sufferings of the being I supplicated
for,--I was the worst of all hypocrites, a hypocrite on my knees, and at
the altar. Yet, was I not compelled to be so? If I was a hypocrite,
who had made me one? If I profaned the altar, who had dragged me there,
to insult it by vows my soul belied and reversed faster than my lips
could utter them? But this was no time for self-examination. I knelt,
prayed, and trembled, till the poor sufferer, weary of his ineffectual
and unanswered supplications, rose, and began to crawl away. For a few
minutes I shivered in horrible anxiety, lest some other intruder might
approach, but the quick decisive step that trod the aisle restored my
confidence in a moment,--it was my companion. He stood beside me. He
uttered a few curses, which sounded very shocking in my ears, more from
the force of habit, and influence of the place, than from the meaning
attached to them, and then hurried on to the door. A large bunch of
keys was in his hand, and I followed instinctively this pledge of my
liberation.

“The door was very low--we descended to it by four steps. He applied
his key, muffling it in the sleeve of his habit to suppress the sound. At
every application he recoiled, gnashed his teeth, stamped--then applied
both hands. The lock did not give way--I clasped my hands in agony--I
tossed them over my head. “Fetch a light,” he said in a whisper; “take a
lamp from before one of those figures.” The levity with which he spoke
of the holy images appalled me, and the act appeared to me nothing short
of sacrilege; yet I went and took a lamp, which, with a shuddering hand,
I held to him as he again tried the key. During this second attempt, we
communicated in whispers those fears that left us scarce breath even for
whispers. “Was not that a noise?”--“No, it was the echo of this jarring,
stubborn lock. Is there no one coming?”--“Not one.”--“Look out into the
passage.”--“Then I cannot hold the light to you.”--“No matter--any thing
but detection.”--“Any thing for escape,” I retorted with a courage that
made him start, as I set down the lamp, and joined my strength to his to
turn the key. It grated, resisted; the lock seemed invincible. Again we
tried, with cranched teeth,225 indrawn breath, and fingers stripped almost
to the bone,--in vain.--Again--in vain.--Whether the natural ferocity of
his temper bore disappointment worse than mine, or that, like many men
of undoubted courage, he was impatient of a slight degree of physical
pain, in a struggle where he would have risked and lost life without a
murmur,--or how it was, I know not,--but he sunk down on the steps
leading to the door, wiped away the big drops of toil and terror from
his forehead with the sleeve of his habit, and cast on me a look that
was at once the pledge of sincerity and of despair. The clock struck
three. The sound rung in my ears like the trumpet of the day of
doom--the trumpet that will sound. He clasped his hands with a fierce
and convulsive agony, that might have pictured the last struggles of the
impenitent malefactor,--that agony without remorse, that suffering
without requital or consolation, that, if I may say so, arrays crime in
the dazzling robe of magnanimity, and makes us admire the fallen spirit,
with whom we dare not sympathize. “We are undone,” he cried; “you are
undone. At the hour of three another monk is to enter on his hour of
recollection.” And he added, in a lower tone of horror inexpressible, “I
hear his steps in the passage.” At the moment he uttered these words,
the key, that I had never ceased to struggle with, turned in the lock.
The door opened, the passage lay free to us. My companion recovered
himself at the sight, and in the next moment we were both in the
passage. Our first care was to remove the key, and lock the door on the
inside; and during this, we had the satisfaction to discover, that there
was no one in the church, no one approaching it. Our fears had deceived
us; we retired from the door, looked at each other with a kind of
breathless, half-revived confidence, and began our progress through the
vault in silence and in safety. In safety! my God! I yet tremble at the
thought of that subterranean journey, amid the vaults of a convent, with
a parricide for my companion. But what is there that danger will not
familiarize us with? Had I been told such a story of another, I would
have denounced him as the most reckless and desperate being on
earth--yet I was the man. I had secured the lamp, (whose light
appeared to reproach me with sacrilege at every gleam it shed on our
progress), and followed my companion in silence. Romances have made
your country, Sir, familiar with tales of subterranean passages, and
supernatural horrors. All these, painted by the most eloquent pen, must
fall short of the breathless horror felt by a being engaged in an
enterprise beyond his powers, experience, or calculation, driven to
trust his life and liberation to hands that reeked with a father's
blood. It was in vain that I tried to make up my mind,--that I said to
myself, “This is to last but for a short time,”--that I struggled to
force on myself the conviction that it was necessary to have such
associates in desperate enterprises;--it was all in vain. I trembled at
my situation,--at myself, and that is a terror we can never overcome. I
stumbled over the stones,--I was chilled with horror at every step. A blue
mist226 gathered before my eyes,--it furred the edges of the lamp with
a dim and hazy light. My imagination began to operate, and when I heard
the curses with which my companion reproached my involuntary delay, I
began almost to fear that I was following the steps of a demon, who had
lured me there for purposes beyond the reach of imagination to picture.
Tales of superstition crowded on me like images of terror on those who
are in the dark. I had heard of infernal beings who deluded monks with
the hopes of liberation, seduced them into the vaults of the convent,
and then proposed conditions which it is almost as horrible to relate as
to undergo the performance of. I thought of being forced to witness the
unnatural revels of a diabolical feast,--of seeing the rotting flesh
distributed,--of drinking the dead corrupted blood,--of hearing the
anthems of fiends howled in insult, on that awful verge where life and
eternity mingle,--of hearing the hallelujahs of the choir, echoed even
through the vaults, where demons were yelling the black mass of their
infernal Sabbath.--I thought of all that the interminable passages, the
livid light, and the diabolical companion, might suggest.

“Our wanderings in the passage seemed to be endless. My companion
turned to right, to left,--advanced, retreated, paused,--(the pause
was dreadful)!--Then advanced again, tried another direction, where
the passage was so low that I was obliged to crawl on my hands and
knees to follow him, and even in this posture my head struck against
the ragged roof. When we had proceeded for a considerable time, (at
least so it appeared to me, for minutes are hours in the noctuary 227 of
terror,--terror has no diary), this passage became so narrow and so
low, that I could proceed no farther, and wondered how my companion
could have advanced beyond me. I called to him, but received no answer;
and, in the darkness of the passage, or rather hole, it was impossible
to see ten inches before me. I had the lamp, too, to watch, which I had
held with a careful trembling hand, but which began to burn dim in the
condensed and narrow atmosphere. A gush of terror rose in my throat.
Surrounded as I was by damps and dews, my whole body felt in a fever.
I called again, but no voice answered. In situations of peril, the
imagination is unhappily fertile, and I could not help recollecting
and applying a story I had once read of some travellers228 who attempted
to explore the vaults of the Egyptian pyramids. One of them, who was
advancing, as I was, on his hands and knees, stuck in the passage, and,
whether from terror, or from the natural consequences of his situation,
swelled so that it was impossible for him to retreat, advance, or allow
a passage for his companions. The party were on their return, and
finding their passage stopped by this irremoveable obstruction, their
lights trembling on the verge of extinction, and their guide terrified
beyond the power of direction or advice, proposed, in the selfishness to
which the feeling of vital danger reduces all, to cut off the limbs of
the wretched being who obstructed their passage. He heard this proposal,
and, contracting himself with agony at the sound, was reduced, by that
strong muscular spasm, to his usual dimensions, dragged out, and
afforded room for the party to advance. He was suffocated, however, in
the effort, and left behind a corse. All this detail, that takes many
words to tell, rushed on my soul in a moment;--on my soul?--no, on my
body. I was all physical feeling,--all intense corporeal agony, and God
only knows, and man only can feel, how that agony can absorb and
annihilate all other feeling within us,--how we could, in such a moment,
feed on a parent, to gnaw out our passage into life and liberty, as
sufferers in a wreck have been known to gnaw their own flesh, for the
support of that existence which the unnatural morsel was diminishing at
every agonizing bite.

“I tried to crawl backwards,--I succeeded. I believe the story I
recollected had an effect on me, I felt a contraction of muscles
corresponding to what I had read of. I felt myself almost liberated by
the sensation, and the next moment I was actually so;--I had got out of
the passage I knew not how. I must have made one of those extraordinary
exertions, whose energy is perhaps not only increased by, but dependent
on, our unconsciousness of them. However it was, I was extricated, and
stood breathless and exhausted, with the dying lamp in my hand, staring
around me, and seeing nothing but the black and dripping walls, and the
low arches of the vault, that seemed to lower over me like the frown of
an eternal hostility,--a frown that forbids hope or escape. The lamp was
rapidly extinguishing in my hand,--I gazed on it with a fixed eye. I
knew that my life, and, what was dearer than my life, my liberation,
depended on my watching its last glimpse, yet I gazed on it with the eye
of an ideot,--a stupified stare. The lamp glimmered more faintly,--its
dying gleams awoke me to recollection. I roused myself,--I looked
around. A strong flash discovered an object near me. I shuddered,--I
uttered cries, though I was unconscious of doing so, for a voice said to
me,--“Hush, be silent; I left you only to reconnoitre the passages. I
have made out the way to the trap-door,--be silent, and all is well.” I
advanced trembling, my companion appeared trembling too. He whispered,
“Is the lamp so nearly extinguished?”--“You see.”--“Try to keep it in
for a few moments.”--“I will; but, if I cannot, what then?”--“Then we
must perish,” he added, with an execration that I thought would have
brought down the vaults over our heads. It is certain, Sir, however,
that desperate sentiments are best suited to desperate emergencies, and
this wretch's blasphemies gave me a kind of horrible confidence in his
courage. On he went, muttering curses before me; and I followed,
watching the last light of the lamp with agony increased by my fear
of further provoking my horrible guide. I have before mentioned how
our feelings, even in the most fearful exigencies, dwindle into
petty and wretched details. With all my care, however, the lamp
declined,--quivered,--flashed a pale light, like the smile of despair
on me, and was extinguished. I shall never forget the look my guide
threw on me by its sinking light. I had watched it like the last
beatings of an expiring heart, like the shiverings of a spirit about to
part for eternity. I saw it extinguished, and believed myself already
among those for “whom the blackness of darkness is reserved for
ever.”229

“It was at this moment that a faint sound reached our frozen ears;--it
was the chaunt of matins, performed by candle-light at this season of
the year, which was begun in the chapel now far above us. This voice of
heaven thrilled us,--we seemed the pioneers of darkness, on the very
frontiers of hell. This superb insult of celestial triumph, that amid
the strains of hope spoke despair to us, announced a God to those who
were stopping their ears against the sound of his name, had an effect
indescribably awful. I fell to the ground, whether from stumbling from
the darkness, or shrinking from emotion, I know not. I was roused by the
rough arm, and rougher voice of my companion. Amid execrations that
froze my blood, he told me this was no time for failing or for fear. I
asked him, trembling, what I was to do? He answered, “Follow me, and
feel your way in darkness.” Dreadful sounds!--Those who tell us the
whole of our calamity always appear malignant, for our hearts, or our
imaginations, always flatter us that it is not so great as reality
proves it to be. Truth is told us by any mouth sooner than our own.

“In darkness, total darkness, and on my hands and knees, for I could no
longer stand, I followed him. This motion soon affected my head; I grew
giddy first, then stupified. I paused. He growled a curse, and I
instinctively quickened my movements, like a dog who hears the voice of
a chiding master. My habit was now in rags from my struggles, my knees
and hands stript of skin. I had received several severe bruises on my
head, from striking against the jagged and unhewn stones which formed
the irregular sides and roof of this eternal passage. And, above all,
the unnatural atmosphere, combined with the intensity of my emotion, had
produced a thirst, the agony of which I can compare to nothing but that
of a burning coal dropt into my throat, which I seemed to suck for
moisture, but which left only drops of fire on my tongue. Such was my
state, when I called out to my companion that I could proceed no
farther. “Stay there and rot, then,” was the answer; and perhaps the
most soothing words of encouragement could not have produced so strong
an effect on me. This confidence of despair, this bravado against
danger, that menaced the power in his very citadel, gave me a temporary
courage,--but what is courage amid darkness and doubt? From the
faultering steps, the suffocated breath, the muttered curses, I guessed
what was going on. I was right. The final--hopeless stop followed
instantly, announced by the last wild sob, the cranching of despairing
teeth, the clasping, or rather clap, of the locked hands, in the
terrible extacy of utter agony. I was kneeling behind him at that
moment, and I echoed every cry and gesture with a violence that started
my guide. He silenced me with curses. Then he attempted to pray; but his
prayers sounded so like curses, and his curses were so like prayers to
the evil one, that, choaking with horror, I implored him to cease. He
did cease, and for nearly half an hour neither of us uttered a word. We
lay beside each other like two panting dogs that I have read of, who lay
down to die close to the animal they pursued, whose fur they fanned with
their dying breath, while unable to mouthe her.

“Such appeared emancipation to us,--so near, and yet so hopeless. We
lay thus, not daring to speak to each other, for who could speak but of
despair, and which of us dared to aggravate the despair of the other.
This kind of fear which we know already felt by others, and which we
dread to aggravate by uttering, even to those who know it, is perhaps
the most horrible sensation ever experienced. The very thirst of my body
seemed to vanish in this fiery thirst of the soul for communication,
where all communication was unutterable, impossible, hopeless. Perhaps
the condemned spirits will feel thus at their final sentence, when they
know all that is to be suffered, and dare not disclose to each other
that horrible truth which is no longer a secret, but which the profound
silence of their despair would seem to make one. The secret of silence
is the only secret. Words are a blasphemy against that taciturn and invis-
ible God, whose presence enshrouds us in our last extremity.230 These
moments that appeared to me endless, were soon to cease. My companion
sprung up,--he uttered a cry of joy. I imagined him deranged,--he was
not. He exclaimed, “Light, light,--the light of heaven; we are near the
trap-door, I see the light through it.” Amid all the horrors of our
situation, he had kept his eye constantly turned upwards, for he knew
that, if we were near it, the smallest glimmering of light would be
visible in the intense darkness that enveloped us. He was right. I
started up,--I saw it too. With locked hands, with dropt and wordless
lips, with dilated and thirsting eyes, we gazed upwards. A thin line of
grey light appeared above our heads. It broadened, it grew brighter,--it
was the light of heaven, and its breezes too came fluttering to us
through the chinks of the trap-door that opened into the garden.”



CHAPTER IX.



“Though life and liberty seemed so near, our situation was still very
critical. The morning light that aided our escape, might open many an
eye to mark it. There was not a moment to be lost. My companion proposed
to ascend first, and I did not venture to oppose him. I was too much in
his power to resist; and in early youth superiority of depravity always
seems like a superiority of power. We reverence, with a prostituted
idolatry, those who have passed through the degrees of vice before us.
This man was criminal, and crime gave him a kind of heroic immunity in
my eyes. Premature knowledge in life is always to be purchased by guilt.
He knew more than I did,--he was my all in this desperate attempt. I
dreaded him as a demon, yet I invoked him as a god.

“In the end I submitted to his proposal. I was very tall, but he was
much stronger than I. He rose on my shoulders, I trembled under his
weight, but he succeeded in raising the trap-door,--the full light of
day broke on us both. In a moment he dropt his hold of the door,--he
fell to the ground with a force that struck me down. He exclaimed, “The
workmen are there, they have come about the repairs, we are lost if we
are discovered. They are there, the garden is full of them already, they
will be there the whole day. That cursed lamp, it has undone us! Had it
but kept in for a few moments, we might have been in the garden, might
have crossed the wall, might have been at liberty, and now----” He fell
to the ground convulsed with rage and disappointment, as he spoke.
To me there was nothing so terrible in this intelligence. That we were
disappointed for a time was evident, but we had been relieved from the
most horrible of all fears, that of wandering in famine and darkness
till we perished,--we had found the way to the trap-door. I had
unfailing confidence in Juan's patience and zeal. I was sure that if he
was watching for us on that night, he would watch for many a successive
night. Finally, I felt we had but twenty-four hours or less to wait, and
what was that to the eternity of hours that must otherwise be wasted
in convent. I suggested all this to my companion as I closed the
trap-door; but I found in his complaints, imprecations, and tossing
restlessness of impatience and despair, the difference between man and
man in the hour of trial. He possessed active, and I passive fortitude.
Give him something to do, and he would do it at the risk of limb, and
life, and soul,--he never murmured. Give me something to suffer, to
undergo, to submit, and I became at once the hero of submission. While
this man, with all his physical strength, and all his mental hardihood,
was tossing on the earth with the imbecillity of an infant, in a par-
oxysm of unappeasable passion, I was his consoler, adviser, and sup-
porter. At last he suffered himself to hear reason; he agreed that we
must remain twenty-four hours more in the passage, on which he be-
stowed a whole litany of curses. So we determined to stand in stillness
and darkness till night; but such is the restlessness of the human heart,
that this arrangement, which a few hours before we would have embraced
as the offer of a benignant angel for our emancipation, began to dis-
play, as we were compelled to examine its aspect more closely, cer-
tain features that were repulsive almost to hideousness. We were ex-
hausted nearly to death. Our physical exertions had been, for the last
few hours, almost incredible; in fact, I am convinced that nothing but
the consciousness that we were engaged in a struggle for life or death,
could have enabled us to support it, and now that the struggle was o-
ver, we began to feel our weakness. Our mental sufferings had not been
less,--we had been excruciated body and soul alike. Could our mental
struggles have operated like our bodily ones, we would have been seen
to weep drops of blood, as we felt we were doing at every step of our
progress. Recollect too, Sir, the unnatural atmosphere we had breathed
so long, amid darkness and danger, and which now began to show its
anti-vital and pestilent effect, in producing alternately on our bodies
deluges of perspiration, succeeded by a chill that seemed to freeze the
very marrow. In this state of mental fever, and bodily exhaustion, we
had now to wait many hours, in darkness, without food, till Heaven
pleased to send us night. But how were those hours to be passed? The
preceding day had been one of strict abstinence,--we began already to
feel the gnawings of hunger, a hunger not to be appeased. We must fast
till the moment of liberation, and we must fast amid stone walls, and
damp seats on floors of stone, which diminished every moment the
strength necessary to contend with their impenetrable hardness,--their
withering chillness.

“The last thought that occurred to me was,--with what a companion those
hours must be passed. With a being whom I abhorred from my very soul,
while I felt that his presence was at once an irrepealable231 curse, and
an invincible necessity. So we stood, shivering under the trap-door, not
daring to whisper our thoughts to each other, but feeling that despair
of incommunication which is perhaps the severest curse that can be
inflicted on those who are compelled to be together, and compelled, by
the same necessity that imposes their ungenial union, not even to
communicate their fears to each other. We hear the throb of each
others hearts, and yet dare not say, “My heart beats in unison with
yours.”

“As we stood thus, the light became suddenly eclipsed. I knew not
from what this arose, till I felt a shower, the most violent perhaps
that ever was precipitated on the earth, make its way even through the
trap-door, and drench me in five minutes to the skin. I retreated from
the spot, but not before I had received it in every pore of my body.
You, Sir, who live in happy Ireland, blessed by God with an exemption
from those vicissitudes of the atmosphere, can have no idea of their
violence in continental countries.232 This rain was followed by peals of
thunder, that made me fear God was pursuing me into the abysses where
I had shrunk to escape from his vengeance, and drew from my companion
blasphemies more loud than thunder, as he felt himself drenched by the
shower, that now, flooding the vault, rose almost to our ancles. At
last he proposed our retiring to a place which he said he was acquaint-
ed with, and which would shelter us. He added, that it was but a few
steps from where we stood, and that we could easily find our way back.
I did not dare to oppose him, and followed to a dark recess, only dis-
tinguished from the rest of the vault by the remains of what had once
been a door. It was now light, and I could distinguish objects plainly.
By the deep hollows framed for the shooting of the bolt, and the size of
the iron hinges that still remained, though covered with rust, I saw it
must have been of no common strength, and probably intended to secure
the entrance to a dungeon,--there was no longer a door, yet I shuddered
to enter it. As we did so, both of us, exhausted in body and mind, sunk
on the hard floor. We did not say a word to each other, an inclination
to sleep irresistibly overcame us; and whether that sleep was to be my
last or not, I felt a profound indifference. Yet I was now on the verge
of liberty, and though drenched, famishing, and comfortless, was, in
any rational estimate, an object much more enviable than in the heart-
withering safety of my cell. Alas! it is too true that our souls al-
ways contract themselves on the approach of a blessing, and seem as if
their powers, exhausted in the effort to obtain it, had no longer energy
to embrace the object. Thus we are always compelled to substitute the
pleasure of the pursuit for that of the attainment,--to reverse the
means for the end, or confound them, in order to extract any enjoyment
from either, and at last fruition becomes only another name for lass-
itude. These reflections certainly did not occur to me, when, worn out
with toil, terror, and famine, I fell on the stone floor in a sleep
that was not sleep,--it seemed the suspension both of my mortal and
immortal nature. I ceased from animal and intellectual life at once.
There are cases, Sir, where the thinking power appears to accompany
us to the very verge of slumber, where we sleep full of delightful
thoughts, and sleep only to review them in our dreams: But there are
also cases when we feel that our sleep is a “sleep for ever,”233--when
we resign the hope of immortality for the hope of a profound repose,--
when we demand from the harassings of fate, “Rest, rest,” and no
more,--when the soul and body faint together, and all we ask of God
or man is to let us sleep.and body faint together, and all we ask of God
or man is to let us sleep.

“In such a state I fell to the ground; and, at that moment, would have
bartered all my hopes of liberation for twelve hours profound repose, as
Esau sold his birth-right for a small but indispensible refreshment.234 I
was not to enjoy even this repose long. My companion was sleeping too.
Sleeping! great God! what was his sleep?--that in whose neighbourhood
no one could close an eye, or, worse, an ear. He talked as loudly and
incessantly as if he had been employed in all the active offices of
life. I heard involuntarily the secret of his dreams. I knew he had
murdered his father, but I did not know that the vision of parricide
haunted him in his broken visions. My sleep was first broken by sounds
as horrible as any I ever had heard at my bed-side in the convent. I
heard sounds that disturbed me, but I was not yet fully awake. They
increased, they redoubled,--the terrors of my habitual associations
awoke me. I imagined the Superior and the whole community pursuing us
with lighted torches. I felt the blaze of the lights in contact with my
very eye-balls. I shrieked. I said, “Spare my sight, do not blind me, do
not drive me mad, and I will confess all.” A deep voice near me
muttered, “Confess.” I started up fully awake,--it was only the voice of
my sleeping companion. I stood on my feet, I viewed him as he lay. He
heaved and wallowed on his bed of stone, as if it had been down. He
seemed to have a frame of adamant. The jagged points of stone, the
hardness of the floor, the ruts and rudenesses of his inhospitable bed,
produced no effect on him. He could have slept, but his dreams were from
within. I have heard, I have read, of the horrors attending the dying
beds of the guilty. They often told us of such in the convent. One monk
in particular, who was a priest, was fond of dwelling on a death-bed
scene he had witnessed, and of describing its horrors. He related
that he had urged a person, who was sitting calmly in his chair,
though evidently dying, to intrust him with his confession. The dy-
ing person answered, “I will, when those leave the room.” The monk,
conceiving that this referred to the relatives and friends, motioned
them to retire. They did so, and again the monk renewed his demands
on the conscience of the penitent. The room was now empty. The monk
renewed his adjuration to the dying man to disclose the secrets of
his conscience. The answer was the same,--“I will, when those are
gone.”--“Those!”--“Yes, those whom you cannot see, and cannot
banish,--send them away, and I will tell you the truth.”--“Tell
it now, then; there are none here but you and me.”--“There are,”
answered the dying man. “There are none that I can see,” said
the monk, gazing round the room. “But there are those that I do
see,” replied the dying wretch, “and that see me; that are watch-
ing, waiting for me, the moment the breath is out of my body. I see
them, I feel them,--stand on my right side.” The monk changed his
position. “Now they are on the left.” The monk shifted again.
“Now they are on my right.” The monk commanded the children and
relatives of the dying wretch to enter the room, and surround the
bed. They obeyed the command. “Now they are every where,” ex-
claimed the sufferer, and expired.235

“This terrible story came freshly to my recollection, accompanied by
many others. I had heard much of the terrors that surrounded the dying
bed of the guilty, but, from what I was compelled to hear, I almost
believe them to be less than the terrors of a guilty sleep. I have said
my companion began at first with low mutterings, but among them I could
distinguish sounds that reminded me too soon of all I wished to forget,
at least while we were together. He murmured, “An old man?--yes,--well,
the less blood in him.236 Grey hairs?--no matter, my crimes have helped
to turn them grey,--he ought to have rent them from the roots long ago.
They are white, you say?--well, to-night they shall be dyed in blood,
then they will be white no longer. Aye,--he will hold them up at the day
of judgment, like a banner of condemnation against me. He will stand at
the head of an army stronger than the army of martyrs,--the host of
those whose murderers have been their own children. What matter whe-
ther they cut their parents' hearts or their throats. I have cut one
through and through, to the very core,--now for the other, it will give
him less pain, I feel that,”--and he laughed, shuddered, and writhed on
his stony bed. Trembling with horror ineffable, I tried to awake him. I
shook his muscular arms, I rolled him on his back, on his face,--nothing
could awake him. It seemed as if I was only rocking him on his cradle
of stone. He went on, “Secure the purse, I know the drawer of the
cabinet where it lies, but secure him first. Well, then, you cannot,
--you shudder at his white hairs, at his calm sleep!--ha! ha! that
villains should be fools. Well, then, I must be the man, it is but a
short struggle with him or me,--he may be damned, and I must. Hush,
--how the stairs creak, they will not tell him it is his son's foot
that is ascending?--They dare not, the stones of the wall would give
them the lie. Why did you not oil the hinges of the door?--now for it.
He sleeps intensely,--aye, how calm he looks!--the calmer the fitter
for heaven. Now,--now, my knee is on his breast,--where is the knife?
--where is the knife?--if he looks at me I am lost. The knife,--I am
a coward; the knife,--if he opens his eyes I am gone; the knife, ye
cursed cravens,--who dare shrink when I have griped my father's throat?
There,--there,--there,--blood to the hilt,--the old man's blood; look
for the money, while I wipe the blade. I cannot wipe it, the grey hairs
are mingled with the blood,--those hairs brushed my lips the last time
he kissed me. I was a child then. I would not have taken a world to
murder him then, now,--now, what am I? Ha! ha! ha! Let Judas shake his
bag of silver against mine,--he betrayed his Saviour, and I have mur-
dered my father. Silver against silver, and soul against soul. I have
got more for mine,--he was a fool to sell his for thirty. But for which
of us will the last fire burn hotter?--no matter, I am going to try.”
At these horrible expressions, repeated over and over, I called, I
shrieked to my companion to awake. He did so, with a laugh almost as
wild as the chattering of his dreams. “Well, what have you heard? I
murdered him,--you knew that long before. You trusted me in this
cursed adventure, which will risk the life of both, and can you not
bear to hear me speak to myself, though I am only telling what you knew
before?”--“No, I cannot bear it,” I answered, in an agony of horror;
“not even to effect my escape, could I undertake to sustain another hour
like the past,--the prospect of seclusion here for a whole day amid
famine, damps, and darkness, listening to the ravings of a ----. Look
not at me with that glare of mockery, I know it all, I shudder at your
sight. Nothing but the iron link of necessity could have bound me to
you even for a moment. I am bound to you,--I must bear it while it
continues, but do not make those moments insupportable. My life and
liberty are in your hands,--I must add my reason, too, in the cir-
cumstances in which we are plunged,--I cannot sustain your horrible
eloquence of sleep. If I am forced to listen to it again, you may bear
me alive from these walls, but you will bear me away an ideot, stupified
by terrors which my brain is unable to support. Do not sleep, I adjure
you. Let me watch beside you during this wretched day,--this day which
is to be measured by darkness and suffering, instead of light and
enjoyment. I am willing to famish with hunger, to shudder with cold, to
couch on these hard stones, but I cannot bear your dreams,--if you
sleep, I must rouse you in defence of my reason. All physical strength
is failing me fast, and I am become more jealous of the preservation of
my intellect. Do not cast at me those looks of defiance, I am your
inferior in strength, but despair makes us equal.” As I spoke, my voice
sounded like thunder in my own ears, my eyes flashed visibly to myself.
I felt the power that passion gives us, and I saw that my companion felt
it too. I went on, in a tone that made myself start, “If you dare to
sleep, I will wake you,--if you dose even, you shall not have a moment
undisturbed,--you shall wake with me. For this long day we must starve
and shiver together, I have wound myself up to it. I can bear every
thing,--every thing but the dreams of him whose sleep reveals to him the
vision of a murdered parent. Wake,--rave,--blaspheme,--but sleep you
shall not!”

“The man stared at me for some time, almost incredulous of my being
capable of such energy of passion and command. But when he had, by the
help of his dilated eyes, and gaping mouth, appeared to satisfy himself
fully of the fact, his expression suddenly changed. He appeared to feel
a community of nature with me for the first time. Any thing of ferocity
appeared congenial and balsamic to him; and, with oaths, that froze my
blood, swore he liked me the better for my resolution. “I will keep
awake,” he added, with a yawn that distended like the jaws of an Ogre
preparing for his cannibal feast. Then suddenly relaxing, “But how shall
we keep awake? We have nothing to eat, nothing to drink, what shall we
do to keep awake?” And incontinently he uttered a volley of curses.
Then he began to sing. But what songs?--full of such ribaldry and
looseness, that, bred as I was first in domestic privacy, and then in
the strictness of a convent, made me believe it was an incarnate demon
that was howling beside me. I implored him to cease, but this man
could pass so instantaneously from the extremes of atrocity to those of
levity,--from the ravings of guilt and horror ineffable, to songs that
would insult a brothel, that I knew not what to make of him. This union
of antipodes, this unnatural alliance of the extremes of guilt and
light-mindedness, I had never met or imagined before. He started from
the visions of a parricide, and sung songs that would have made a harlot
blush. How ignorant of life I must have been, not to know that guilt and
insensibility often join to tenant and deface the same mansion, and that
there is not a more strong and indissoluble alliance on earth, than that
between the hand that dare do any thing, and the heart that can feel
nothing.

“It was in the midst of one of his most licentious songs, that my
companion suddenly paused. He gazed about him for some time; and faint
and dismal as the light was by which we beheld each other, I thought I
could observe an extraordinary expression overshadow his countenance. I
did not venture to notice it. “Do you know where we are?” he whispered.
“Too well;--in the vault of a convent, beyond the help or reach of
man,--without food, without light, and almost without hope.”--“Aye, so
its last inhabitants might well say.”--“Its last inhabitants!--who were
they?”--“I can tell you, if you can bear it.”--“I cannot bear it,” I
cried, stopping my ears, “I will not listen to it. I feel by the
narrator it must be something horrid.”--“It was indeed a horrid night,”
said he, unconsciously adverting to some circumstance in the narrative;
and his voice sunk into mutterings, and he forbore to mention the
subject further. I retired as far from him as the limits of the vault
admitted; and, burying my head between my knees, tried to forbear to
think. What a state of mind must that be, in which we are driven to
wish we no longer had one!--when we would willingly become “as the
beasts that perish,”237 to forget that privilege of humanity, which only
seems an undisputed title to superlative misery! To sleep was
impossible. Though sleep seems to be only a necessity of nature, it
always requires an act of the mind to concur in it. And if I had been
willing to rest, the gnawings of hunger, which now began to be exchanged
for the most deadly sickness, would have rendered it impossible. Amid
this complication of physical and mental suffering, it is hardly
credible, Sir, but it is not the less true, that my principal one arose
from the inanity, the want of occupation, inevitably attached to my
dreary situation. To inflict a suspension of the action on a being
conscious of possessing the powers of action, and burning for their
employment,--to forbid all interchange of mutual ideas, or acquirement
of new ones to an intellectual being,--to do this, is to invent a
torture that might make Phalaris blush for his impotence of cruelty.238

“I had felt other sufferings almost intolerable, but I felt this
impossible to sustain; and, will you believe it, Sir, after wrestling
with it during an hour (as I counted hours) of unimaginable misery, I
rose, and supplicated my companion to relate the circumstance he had
alluded to, as connected with our dreadful abode. His ferocious good
nature took part with this request in a moment; and though I could see
that his strong frame had suffered more than my comparatively feeble
one, from the struggles of the night and the privations of the day, he
prepared himself with a kind of grim alacrity for the effort. He was now
in his element. He was enabled to daunt a feeble mind by the narration
of horrors, and to amaze an ignorant one with a display of crimes;--and
he needed no more to make him commence. “I remember,” said he, “an
extraordinary circumstance connected with this vault. I wondered how I
felt so familiar with this door, this arch, at first.--I did not
recollect immediately, so many strange thoughts have crossed my mind
every day, that events which would make a life-lasting impression on
others, pass like shadows before me, while thoughts appear like
substances. Emotions are my events 239--you know what brought me
to this cursed convent--well, don't shiver or look paler--you were pale
before. However it was, I found myself in the convent, and I was obliged
to subscribe to its discipline. A part of it was, that extraordinary
criminals should undergo what they called extraordinary penance; that
is, not only submit to every ignominy and rigour of conventual life,
(which, fortunately for its penitents, is never wanting in such amusing
resources), but act the part of executioner whenever any distinguished
punishment was to be inflicted or witnessed. They did me the honour to
believe me particularly qualified for this species of recreation, and
perhaps they did not flatter me. I had all the humility of a saint on
trial; but still I had a kind of confidence in my talents of this
description, provided they were put to a proper test; and the monks had
the goodness to assure me, that I never could long be without one in a
convent. This was a very tempting picture of my situation, but I found
these worthy people had not in the least exaggerated. An instance
occurred a few days after I had the happiness to become a member of this
amiable community, of whose merits you are doubtless sensible. I was
desired to attach myself to a young monk of distinguished family, who
had lately taken the vows, and who performed his duties with that
heartless punctuality that intimated to the community that his heart was
elsewhere. I was soon put in possession of the business; from their
ordering me to attach myself to him, I instantly conceived I was bound
to the most deadly hostility against him. The friendship of convents is
always a treacherous league--we watch, suspect, and torment each other,
for the love of God. This young monk's only crime was, that he was
suspected of cherishing an earthly passion. He was, in fact, as I have
stated, the son of a distinguished family, who (from the fear of his con-
tracting what is called a degrading marriage, i. e. of marrying a woman
of inferior rank whom he loved, and who would have made him happy,
as fools, that is, half mankind, estimate happiness) forced him to take
the vows. He appeared at times broken-hearted, but at times there was a
light of hope in his eye, that looked somewhat ominous in the eyes of
the community. It is certain, that hope not being an indigenous plant in
the parterre of a convent, must excite suspicion with regard both to its
origin and its growth.

“Some time after, a young novice entered the convent. From the mo-
ment he did so, a change the most striking took place in the young
monk. He and the novice became inseparable companions--there was some-
thing suspicious in that. My eyes were on the watch in a moment. Eyes
are particularly sharpened in discovering misery when they can hope to
aggravate it. The attachment between the young monk and the novice went
on. They were for ever in the garden together--they inhaled the odours
of the flowers--they cultivated the same cluster of carnations--they en-
twined themselves as they walked together--when they were in the choir,
their voices were like mixed incense. Friendship is often carried to ex-
cess in conventual life, but this friendship was too like love. For in-
stance, the psalms sung in the choir sometimes breathe a certain language;
at these words, the young monk and the novice would direct their voices
to each other in sounds that could not be misunderstood. If the least
correction was inflicted, one would intreat to undergo it for the other.
If a day of relaxation was allowed, whatever presents were sent to the
cell of one, were sure to be found in the cell of the other. This was
enough for me. I saw that secret of mysterious happiness, which is the
greatest misery to those who never can share it. My vigilance was
redoubled, and it was rewarded by the discovery of a secret--a secret
that I had to communicate and raise my consequence by. You cannot guess
the importance attached to the discovery of a secret in a convent,
(particularly when the remission of our own offences depends on the
discovery of those of others.)

“One evening as the young monk and his darling novice were in the
garden, the former plucked a peach, which he immediately offered to
his favourite; the latter accepted it with a movement I thought rather
awkward--it seemed like what I imagined would be the reverence of a
female. The young monk divided the peach with a knife; in doing so,
the knife grazed the finger of the novice, and the monk, in agitation
inexpressible, tore his habit to bind up the wound. I saw it all--my
mind was made up on the business--I went to the Superior that very
night. The result may be conceived. They were watched, but cautiously
at first. They were probably on their guard; for, for some time it defied
even my vigilance to make the slightest discovery. It is a situation
incomparably tantalizing, when suspicion is satisfied of her own
suggestions, as of the truth of the gospel, but still wants the little
fact to make them credible to others. One night that I had, by dir-
ection of the Superior, taken my station in the gallery, (where I was
contented to remain hour after hour, and night after night, amid
solitude, darkness, and cold, for the chance of the power of retaliating
on others the misery inflicted on myself)--One night, I thought I heard
a step in the gallery--I have told you that I was in the dark--a light
step passed me. I could hear the broken and palpitating respiration of
the person. A few moments after, I heard a door open, and knew it to be
the door of the young monk. I knew it; for by long watching in the dark,
and accustoming myself to number the cells, by the groan from one, the
prayer from another, the faint shriek of restless dreams from a third,
my ear had become so finely graduated, that I could instantly
distinguish the opening of that door, from which (to my sorrow) no
sound had ever before issued. I was provided with a small chain, by
which I fastened the handle of the door to a contiguous one, in such a
manner, that it was impossible to open either of them from the inside. I
then hastened to the Superior, with a pride of which none but the
successful tracer of a guilty secret in convents, can have any
conception. I believe the Superior was himself agitated by the luxury of
the same feelings, for he was awake and up in his apartment, attended by
four monks, whom you may remember.” I shuddered at the remembrance. “I
communicated my intelligence with a voluble eagerness, not only unsuited
to the respect I owed these persons, but which must have rendered me
almost unintelligible, yet they were good enough not only to overlook
this violation of decorum, which would in any other case have been
severely punished, but even to supply certain pauses in my narrative,
with a condescension and facility truly miraculous. I felt what it was
to acquire importance in the eyes of a Superior, and gloried in all the
dignified depravity240 of an informer. We set out without losing a
moment,--we arrived at the door of the cell, and I pointed out with
triumph the chain unremoved, though a slight vibration, perceptible at
our approach, showed the wretches within were already apprised of their
danger. I unfastened the door,--how they must have shuddered! The
Superior and his satellites burst into the cell, and I held the light.
You tremble,--why? I was guilty, and I wished to witness guilt that
palliated mine, at least in the opinion of the convent. I had only
violated the laws of nature, but they had outraged the decorum of a
convent, and, of course, in the creed of a convent, there was no
proportion between our offences. Besides, I was anxious to witness
misery that might perhaps equal or exceed my own, and this is a
curiosity not easily satisfied. It is actually possible to become
amateurs241 in suffering. I have heard of men who have travelled into
countries where horrible executions were to be daily witnessed, for the
sake of that excitement which the sight of suffering never fails to
give, from the spectacle of a tragedy, or an auto da fe, down to the
writhings of the meanest reptile on whom you can inflict torture, and
feel that torture is the result of your own power. It is a species of
feeling of which we never can divest ourselves,--a triumph over those
whose sufferings have placed them below us, and no wonder,--suffering
is always an indication of weakness,--we glory in our impenetrability. I
did, as we burst into the cell. The wretched husband and wife were
locked in each others arms. You may imagine the scene that followed.
Here I must do the Superior reluctant justice. He was a man (of course
from his conventual feelings) who had no more idea of the intercourse
between the sexes, than between two beings of a different species. The
scene that he beheld could not have revolted him more, than if he had
seen the horrible loves of the baboons and the Hottentot women, at the
Cape of Good Hope; or those still more loathsome unions between the
serpents of South America and their human victims,242 when they can
catch them, and twine round them in folds of unnatural and ineffable243
union. He really stood as much astonished and appalled, to see two human
beings of different sexes, who dared to love each other in spite of
monastic ties, as if he had witnessed the horrible conjunctions I have
alluded to. Had he seen vipers engendering in that frightful knot which
seems the pledge of mortal hostility, instead of love, he could not have
testified more horror,--and I do him the justice to believe he felt all
he testified. Whatever affectation he might employ on points of
conventual austerity, there was none here. Love was a thing he always
believed connected with sin, even though consecrated by the name of a
sacrament, and called marriage, as it is in our church. But, love in a
convent!--Oh, there is no conceiving his rage; still less is it possible
to conceive the majestic and overwhelming extent of that rage, when
strengthened by principle, and sanctified by religion. I enjoyed the
scene beyond all power of description. I saw those wretches, who had
triumphed over me, reduced to my level in a moment,--their passions all
displayed, and the display placing me a hero triumphant above all. I had
crawled to the shelter of their walls, a wretched degraded outcast, and
what was my crime? Well,--you shudder, I have done with that. I can only
say want drove me to it. And here were beings whom, a few months before,
I would have knelt to as to the images round the shrine,--to whom, in
the moments of my desperate penitence, I would have clung as to the
“horns of the altar,”244 all brought as low, and lower than myself. “Sons
of the morning,” as I deemed them in the agonies of my humiliation, “how
were they fallen!” I feasted on the degradation of the apostate monk and
novice,--I enjoyed, to the core of my ulcerated heart, the passion of
the Superior,--I felt that they were all men like myself. Angels, as I
had thought them, they had all proved themselves mortal; and, by
watching their motions, and flattering their passions, and promoting
their interest, or setting up my own in opposition to them all, while I
made them believe it was only theirs I was intent on, I might make shift
to contrive as much misery to others, and to carve out as much
occupation to myself, as if I were actually living in the world. Cutting
my father's throat was a noble feat certainly, (I ask your pardon, I did
not mean to extort that groan from you), but here were hearts to be
cut,--and to the core, every day, and all day long, so I never could
want employment.”

“Here he wiped his hard brow, drew his breath for a moment, and then
said, “I do not quite like to go through the details by which this
wretched pair were deluded into the hope of effecting their escape from
the convent. It is enough that I was the principal agent,--that the
Superior connived at it,--that I led them through the very passages you
have traversed to-night, they trembling and blessing me at every
step,--that----” “Stop,” I cried; “wretch! you are tracing my course
this night step by step.”--“What?” he retorted, with a ferocious laugh,
“you think I am betraying you, then; and if it were true, what good
would your suspicions do you,--you are in my power? My voice might
summon half the convent to seize you this moment,--my arm might fasten
you to that wall, till those dogs of death, that wait but my whistle,
plunged their fangs into your very vitals. I fancy you would not find
their bite less keen, from their tusks being so long sharpened by an
immersion in holy water.” Another laugh, that seemed to issue from the
lungs of a demon, concluded this sentence. “I know I am in your power,”
I answered; “and were I to trust to that, or to your heart, I had better
dash out my brains at once against these walls of rock, which I believe
are not harder than the latter. But I know your interests to be some way
or other connected with my escape, and therefore I trust you,--because I
must. Though my blood, chilled as it is by famine and fatigue, seems
frozen in every drop while I listen to you, yet listen I must, and trust
my life and liberation to you. I speak to you with the horrid confidence245
our situation has taught me,--I hate,--I dread you. If we were to meet
in life, I would shrink from you with loathings of unspeakable
abhorrence, but here mutual misery has mixed the most repugnant
substances in unnatural coalition. The force of that alchemy must cease
at the moment of my escape from the convent and from you; yet, for these
miserable hours, my life is as much dependent on your exertions and
presence, as my power of supporting them is on the continuance of your
horrible tale,246--go on, then. Let us struggle through this dreadful day.
Day! a name unknown here, where noon and night shake hands that
never unlock. Let us struggle through it, “hateful and hating one
another;”247 and when it has passed, let us curse and part.”

“As I uttered these words, Sir, I felt that terrible confidence of
hostility which the worst beings are driven to in the worst of
circumstances, and I question whether there is a more horrible situation
than that in which we cling to each other's hate, instead of each
other's love,--in which, at every step of our progress, we hold a dagger
to our companion's breast, and say, “If you faulter for a moment, this
is in your heart. I hate,--I fear, but I must bear with you.” It was
singular to me, though it would not be so to those who investigate human
nature, that, in proportion as my situation inspired me with a ferocity
quite unsuited to our comparative situations, and which must have been
the result of the madness of despair and famine, my companion's respect
for me appeared to increase. After a long pause, he asked, might he
continue his story? I could not speak, for, after the slightest exertion,
the sickness of deadly hunger returned on me, and I could only signify,
by a feeble motion of my hand, that he might go on.

“They were conducted here,” he continued; “I had suggested the plan,
and the Superior consented to it. He would not be present, but his dumb
nod was enough. I was the conductor of their (intended) escape; they
believed they were departing with the connivance of the Superior. I led
them through those very passages that you and I have trod. I had a map
of this subterranean region, but my blood ran cold as I traversed it;
and it was not at all inclined to resume its usual temperament, as I
felt what was to be the destination of my attendants. Once I turned the
lamp, on pretence of trimming it, to catch a glimpse of the devoted
wretches. They were embracing each other,--the light of joy trembled in
their eyes. They were whispering to each other hopes of liberation and
happiness, and blending my name in the interval they could spare from
their prayers for each other. That sight extinguished the last remains
of compunction with which my horrible task had inspired me. They dared
to be happy in the sight of one who must be for ever miserable,--could
there be a greater insult? I resolved to punish it on the spot. This
very apartment was near,--I knew it, and the map of their wanderings no
longer trembled in my hand. I urged them to enter this recess, (the door
was then entire), while I went to examine the passage. They entered it,
thanking me for my precaution,--they knew not they were never to quit it
alive. But what were their lives for the agony their happiness cost me?
The moment they were inclosed, and clasping each other, (a sight that
made me grind my teeth), I closed and locked the door. This movement
gave them no immediate uneasiness,--they thought it a friendly
precaution. The moment they were secured, I hastened to the Superior,
who was on fire at the insult offered to the sanctity of his convent,
and still more to the purity of his penetration, on which the worthy
Superior piqued himself as much as if it had ever been possible for him
to acquire the smallest share of it. He descended with me to the
passage,--the monks followed with eyes on fire. In the agitation of
their rage, it was with difficulty they could discover the door after I
had repeatedly pointed it out to them. The Superior, with his own hands,
drove several nails, which the monks eagerly supplied, into the door,
that effectually joined it to the staple, never to be disjoined; and
every blow he gave, doubtless he felt as if it was a reminiscence to the
accusing angel, to strike out a sin from the catalogue of his
accusations. The work was soon done,--the work never to be undone. At
the first sound of steps in the passage, and blows on the door, the
victims uttered a shriek of terror. They imagined they were detected,
and that an incensed party of monks were breaking open the door. These
terrors were soon exchanged for others,--and worse,--as they heard the
door nailed up, and listened to our departing steps. They uttered
another shriek, but O how different was the accent of its despair!--they
knew their doom.

* * * * * It was my penance (no,--my delight) to watch at the door,
under the pretence of precluding the possibility of their escape,
(of which they knew there was no possibility); but, in reality, not
only to inflict on me the indignity of being the convent gaoler, but
of teaching me that callosity of heart, and induration248 of nerve, and
stubbornness of eye, and apathy of ear, that were best suited to my
office. But they might have saved themselves the trouble,--I had them
all before ever I entered the convent. Had I been the Superior of the
community, I should have undertaken the office of watching the door.
You will call this cruelty, I call it curiosity,--that curiosity that
brings thousands to witness a tragedy, and makes the most delicate fe-
male feast on groans and agonies. I had an advantage over them,--the
groan, the agony I feasted on, were real. I took my station at the door
--that door which, like that of Dante's hell, might have borne the in-
scription, “Here is no hope,”249--with a face of mock penitence, and
genuine--cordial delectation. I could hear every word that transpired.
For the first hours they tried to comfort each other,--they suggested to
each other hopes of liberation,--and as my shadow, crossing the thres-
hold, darkened or restored the light, they said, “That is he;”--then,
when this occurred repeatedly, without any effect, they said, “No,--no,
it is not he,” and swallowed down the sick sob of despair, to hide it
from each other. Towards night a monk came to take my place, and to offer
me food. I would not have quitted my place for worlds; but I talked to
the monk in his own language, and told him I would make a merit with God
of my sacrifices, and was resolved to remain there all night, with the
permission of the Superior. The monk was glad of having a substitute on
such easy terms, and I was glad of the food he left me, for I was hungry
now, but I reserved the appetite of my soul for richer luxuries. I heard
them talking within. While I was eating, I actually lived on the famine
that was devouring them, but of which they did not dare to say a word to
each other. They debated, deliberated, and, as misery grows ingenious in
its own defence, they at last assured each other that it was impossible
the Superior had locked them in there to perish by hunger. At these
words I could not help laughing. This laugh reached their ears, and they
became silent in a moment. All that night, however, I heard their
groans,--those groans of physical suffering, that laugh to scorn all the
sentimental sighs that are exhaled from the hearts of the most
intoxicated lovers that ever breathed. I heard them all that night. I
had read French romances, and all their unimaginable nonsense. Madame
Sevignè250 herself says she would have been tired of her daughter in a long
tete-a-tete journey, but clamp251 me two lovers into a dungeon, without
food, light, or hope, and I will be damned (that I am already, by the
bye) if they do not grow sick of each other within the first twelve
hours. The second day hunger and darkness had their usual influence.
They shrieked for liberation, and knocked loud and long at their dungeon
door. They exclaimed they were ready to submit to any punishment; and
the approach of the monks, which they would have dreaded so much the
preceding night, they now solicited on their knees. What a jest, after
all, are the most awful vicissitudes of human life!--they supplicated
now for what they would have sacrificed their souls to avert
four-and-twenty hours before. Then the agony of hunger increased, they
shrunk from the door, and grovelled apart from each other. Apart!--how
I watched that. They were rapidly becoming objects of hostility to each
other,--oh what a feast to me! They could not disguise from each other
the revolting circumstances of their mutual sufferings. It is one thing
for lovers to sit down to a feast magnificently spread, and another for
lovers to couch252 in darkness and famine,--to exchange that appetite which
cannot be supported without dainties and flattery, for that which would
barter a descended Venus253 for a morsel of food. The second night they
raved and groaned, (as occurred); and, amid their agonies, (I must do
justice to women, whom I hate as well as men), the man often accused the
female as the cause of all his sufferings, but the woman never,--never
reproached him. Her groans might indeed have reproached him bitterly,
but she never uttered a word that could have caused him pain. There was
a change which I well could mark, however, in their physical feelings.
The first day they clung together, and every movement I felt was like
that of one person. The next the man alone struggled, and the woman
moaned in helplessness. The third night,--how shall I tell it?--but you
have bid me go on. All the horrible and loathsome excruciations of
famine had been undergone; the disunion of every tie of the heart, of
passion, of nature, had commenced. In the agonies of their famished
sickness they loathed each other,--they could have cursed each other,
if they had had breath to curse. It was on the fourth night that I heard
the shriek of the wretched female,--her lover, in the agony of hunger,
had fastened his teeth in her shoulder;--that bosom on which he had so
often luxuriated, became a meal to him now.”

* * * * * “Monster! and you laugh?”--“Yes, I laugh at all mankind,
and the imposition they dare to practise when they talk of hearts. I
laugh at human passions and human cares,--vice and virtue, religion
and impiety; they are all the result of petty localities, and arti-
ficial situation. One physical want, one severe and abrupt lesson from
the tintless and shrivelled lip of necessity, is worth all the logic
of the empty wretches who have presumed to prate it, from Zeno down
to Burgersdicius.254 Oh! it silences in a second all the feeble sophistry
of conventional life, and ascetitious255 passion. Here were a pair who
would not have believed all the world on their knees, even though an-
gels had descended to join in the attestation, that it was possible
for them to exist without each other. They had risked every thing,
trampled on every thing human and divine, to be in each others sight
and arms. One hour of hunger undeceived them. A trivial and ordinary
want, whose claims at another time they would have regarded as a vulgar
interruption of their spiritualised intercourse, not only, by its nat-
ural operation, sundered it for ever, but, before it ceased, converted
that intercourse into a source of torment and hostility inconceivable,
except among cannibals. The bitterest enemies on earth could not have
regarded each other with more abhorrence than these lovers. Deluded
wretches! you boasted of having hearts, I boast I have none, and which
of us gained most by the vaunt, let life decide. My story is nearly fin-
ished, and so I hope is the day. When I was last here I had something to
excite me;--talking of those things is poor employment to one who has
been a witness to them. On the sixth day all was still. The door was un-
nailed, we entered,--they were no more. They lay far from each other,
farther than on that voluptuous couch into which their passion had con-
verted the mat of a convent bed. She lay contracted in a heap, a lock of
her long hair in her mouth. There was a slight scar on her shoulder,--
the rabid despair of famine had produced no farther outrage. He lay ex-
tended at his length,--his hand was between his lips; it seemed as if
he had not strength to execute the purpose for which he had brought it
there. The bodies were brought out for interment. As we removed them
into the light, the long hair of the female, falling over a face no
longer disguised by the novice's dress, recalled a likeness I thought
I could remember. I looked closer, she was my own sister,--my only one,
----and I had heard her voice grow fainter and fainter. I had heard----”
and his own voice grew fainter--it ceased.

“Trembling256 for a life with which my own was linked, I staggered towards
him. I raised him half up in my arms, and recollecting there must be a
current of air through the trap-door, I attempted to trail him along
thither. I succeeded, and, as the breeze played over him, I saw with
delight unutterable the diminution of the light that streamed through
it. It was evening,--there was no longer any necessity, no longer any
time for delay. He recovered, for his swoon arose not from exhausted
sensibility, but from mere inanition. However it was, I found my
interest in watching his recovery; and, had I been adequate to the task
of observing extraordinary vicissitudes of the human mind, I would have
been indeed amazed at the change that he manifested on his recovery.
Without the least reference to his late story, or late feelings, he
started from my arms at the discovery that the light had diminished, and
prepared for our escape through the trap-door, with a restored energy of
strength, and sanity of intellect, that might have been deemed
miraculous if it had occurred in a convent:--Happening to occur full
thirty feet below the proper surface for a miracle, it must be put to
the account of strong excitement merely. I could not indeed dare to
believe a miracle was wrought in favour of my profane attempt, and so I
was glad to put up with second causes. With incredible dexterity he
climbed up the wall, with the help of the rugged stones and my
shoulders,--threw open the trap-door, pronounced that all was safe,
assisted me to ascend after him,--and, with gasping delight, I once more
breathed the breath of heaven. The night was perfectly dark. I could not
distinguish the buildings from the trees, except when a faint breeze
gave motion to the latter. To this darkness, I am convinced, I owe the
preservation of my reason under such vicissitudes,--the glory of a
resplendent night would have driven me mad, emerging from darkness,
famine, and cold. I would have wept, and laughed, and knelt, and turned
idolater. I would have “worshipped the host of heaven, and the moon
walking in her brightness.”257 Darkness was my best security, in every
sense of the word. We traversed the garden, without feeling the ground
under our feet. As we approached the wall, I became again deadly
sick,--my senses grew giddy, I reeled. I whispered to my companion, “Are
there not lights gleaming from the convent windows?”--“No, the lights
are flashing from your own eyes,--it is only the effect of darkness,
famine, and fear,--come on.”--“But I hear a sound of bells.”--“The bells
are ringing only in your ears,--an empty stomach is your sexton, and you
fancy you hear bells. Is this a time to faulter?--come on, come on.
Don't hang such a dead weight on my arm,--don't fall, if you can help
it. Oh God, he has swooned!”

“These were the last words I heard. I had fallen, I believe, into his
arms. With that instinct that acts most auspiciously in the absence of
both thought and feeling, he dragged me in his brawny arms to the wall,
and twisted my cold fingers in the ropes of the ladder. The touch
restored me in a moment; and, almost before my hand had touched the
ropes, my feet began to ascend them. My companion followed extempore.
We reached the summit,--I tottered from weakness and terror. I felt a
sickly dread, that, though the ladder was there, Juan was not. A moment
after a lanthorn flashed in my eyes,--I saw a figure below. I sprung
down, careless, in that wild moment, whether I met the dagger of an
assassin, or the embrace of a brother. “Alonzo, dear Alonzo,” murmured a
voice. “Juan, dear Juan,” was all I could utter, as I felt my shivering
breast held close to that of the most generous and affectionate of
brothers. “How much you must have suffered,--how much I have suffered,”
he whispered; “during the last horrible twenty-four hours, I almost gave
you up. Make haste, the carriage is not twenty paces off.” And, as he
spoke, the shifting of a lanthorn shewed me those imperious and
beautiful features, which I had once dreaded as the pledge of eternal
emulation, but which I now regarded as the smile of the proud but
benignant god of my liberation. I pointed to my companion, I could not
speak,--hunger was consuming my vitals. Juan supported me, consoled me,
encouraged me; did all, and more, than man ever did for man,--than man
ever did, perhaps, for the most shrinking and delicate of the other sex
under his protection. Oh, with what agony of heart I retrace his manly
tenderness! We waited for my companion,--he descended the wall. “Make
haste, make haste,” Juan whispered; “I am famishing too. I have not
tasted food for four-and-twenty hours, watching for you.” We hurried on.
It was a waste place,--I could only distinguish a carriage by the light
of a dim lanthorn, but that was enough for me. I sprung lightly into it.
“He is safe,” cried Juan, following me. “But are you?” answered a
voice of thunder. Juan staggered back from the step of the carriage,
--he fell. I sprung out, I fell too--on his body. I was bathed in his
blood,----he was no more.”



CHAPTER X.


Men who with mankind were foes.
* * * *
Or who, in desperate doubt of grace.--
* * * *

SCOTT'S MARMION.258


“One wild moment of yelling agony,--one flash of a fierce and fiery
light, that seemed to envelope and wither me soul and body,--one sound,
that swept through my ears and brain like the last trumpet, as it will
thrill on the senses of those who slept in guilt, and awake in
despair,--one such moment, that condenses and crowds all imaginable
sufferings in one brief and intense pang, and appears exhausted itself
by the blow it has struck,--one such moment I remember, and no more.
Many a month of gloomy unconsciousness rolled over me, without date or
notice. One thousand waves may welter over a sunk wreck, and be felt as
one. I have a dim recollection of refusing food, of resisting change
of place, &c. but they were like the faint and successless attempts we
make under the burden of the night-mare; and those with whom I had to
do, probably regarded any opposition I could make no more than the
tossings of a restless sleeper.

“From dates that I have since been enabled to collect, I must have been
four months at least in this state; and ordinary persecutors would have
given me up as a hopeless subject for any further sufferings; but
religious malignity is too industrious, and too ingenious, to resign the
hope of a victim but with life. If the fire is extinguished, it sits and
watches the embers. If the strings of the heart crack in its hearing, it
listens if it be the last that has broken. It is a spirit that
delights to ride on the tenth wave, and view it whelm and bury the
sufferer for ever. * * * * * * *

“Many changes had taken place, without any consciousness on my part
of them. Perhaps the profound tranquillity of my last abode contributed
more than any thing else to the recovery of my reason. I distinctly
remember awaking at once to the full exercise of my senses and reason,
and finding myself in a place which I examined with the most amazed and
jealous curiosity. My memory did not molest me in the least. Why I was
there? or what I had suffered before I was brought there? it never
occurred to me to inquire. The return of the intellectual powers came
slowly in, like the waves of an advancing tide, and happily for me
memory was the last,--the occupation of my senses was at first quite
enough for me. You must expect no romance-horrors, Sir, from my
narrative. Perhaps a life like mine may revolt the taste that has
feasted to fastidiousness; but truth sometimes gives full and dreadful
compensation, in presenting us facts instead of images.259

“I found myself lying on a bed, not very different from that in my cell,
but the apartment was wholly unlike the latter. It was somewhat larger,
and covered with matting. There was neither crucifix, painting, or
vessel for holy water;--the bed, a coarse table which supported a
lighted lamp, and a vessel containing water for the purpose, were all
the furniture. There was no window; and some iron knobs in the door, to
which the light of the lamp gave a kind of dismal distinctness and
prominence, proved that it was strongly secured. I raised myself on my
arm, and gazed round me with the apprehensiveness of one who fears that
the slightest motion may dissolve the spell, and plunge him again in
darkness. At that moment the recollection of all the past struck me like
a thunder-bolt. I uttered a cry, that seemed to drain me of breath and
being at once, and fell back on the bed, not senseless but exhausted. I
remembered every event in a moment, with an intenseness that could only
be equalled by actual and present agency in them,--my escape,--my
safety,--my despair. I felt Juan's embrace,--then I felt his blood
stream over me. I saw his eyes turn in despair, before they closed for
ever, and I uttered another cry, such as had never before been heard
within those walls. At the repetition of this sound the door opened, and
a person, in a habit I had never seen before, approached, and signified
to me by signs, that I must observe the most profound silence. Nothing,
indeed, could be more expressive of this meaning, than his denying
himself the use of his voice to convey it. I gazed on this apparition in
silence,--my amazement had all the effect of an apparent submission to
his injunctions. He retired, and I began to wonder where I was. Was it
among the dead? or some subterranean world of the mute and voiceless,
where there was no air to convey sounds, and no echo to repeat them, and
the famished ear waited in vain for its sweetest banquet,--the voice of
man? These wanderings were dispelled by the re-entrance of the person.
He placed bread, water, and a small portion of meat on the table,
motioned me to approach, (which I did mechanically), and, when I was
seated, whispered me, That my unhappy situation having hitherto
rendered me incapable of understanding the regulations of the place
where I was, he had been compelled to postpone acquainting me with them;
but now he was obliged to warn me, that my voice must never be raised
beyond the key in which he addressed me, and which was sufficient for
all proper purposes of communication; finally, he assured me that cries,
exclamations of any kind, or even coughing too loud(8), (which might
be interpreted as a signal), would be considered as an attempt on the
inviolable habits of the place, and punished with the utmost severity.
To my repeated questions of “Where am I? what is this place, with its
mysterious regulations?” he replied in a whisper, that his business was
to issue orders, not to answer questions; and so saying he departed.
However extraordinary these injunctions appeared, the manner in which
they were issued was so imposing, peremptory, and habitual,--it seemed
so little a thing of local contrivance and temporary display,--so much
like the established language of an absolute and long-fixed system, that
obedience to it seemed inevitable. I threw myself on the bed, and
murmured to myself, “Where am I?” till sleep overcame me.

“I have heard that the first sleep of a recovered maniac is intensely
profound. Mine was not so, it was broken by many troubled dreams. One,
in particular, brought me back to the convent. I thought I was a boarder
in it, and studying Virgil. I was reading that passage in the second
book, where the vision of Hector appears to Æneas in his dream, and his
ghastly and dishonoured form suggests the mournful exclamation,

“----Heu quantum mutatus ab illo,--
----Quibus ab oris, Hector expectate venis?”260

Then I thought Juan was Hector,--that the same pale and bloody phantom
stood calling me to fly--“Heu fuge,” while I vainly tried to obey him.
Oh that dreary mixture of truth and delirium, of the real and visionary,
of the conscious and unconscious parts of existence, that visits the
dreams of the unhappy! He was Pantheus, and murmured,

“Venit summa dies, et ineluctabile tempus.”

I appeared to weep and struggle in my dream. I addressed the figure that
stood before me sometimes as Juan, and sometimes as the image of the
Trojan vision. At last the figure uttered, with a kind of querulous
shriek,--that vox stridula 261 which we hear only in dreams,

“Proximus ardet Ucalegon,”

and I started up fully awake, in all the horrors of an expected
conflagration.

“It is incredible, Sir, how the senses and the mind can operate thus,
during the apparent suspension of both; how sound can affect organs that
seem to be shut, and objects affect the sight, while its sense appears
to be closed,--can impress on its dreaming consciousness, images more
horribly vivid than even reality ever presented. I awoke with the idea
that flames were raging in contact with my eye-balls, and I saw only a
pale light, held by a paler hand--close to my eyes indeed, but withdrawn
the moment I awoke. The person who held it shrouded it for a moment, and
then advanced and flashed its full light on me, and along with it--the
person of my companion. The associations of our last meeting rushed on
me. I started up, and said, “Are we free, then?”--“Hush,--one of us is
free; but you must not speak so loud.”--“Well, I have heard that before,
but I cannot comprehend the necessity of this whispering secrecy. If I
am free, tell me so, and tell me whether Juan has survived that last
horrible moment,--my intellect is but just respiring. Tell me how Juan
fares.”--“Oh, sumptuously. No prince in all the land reposes under a
more gorgeous canopy,--marble pillars, waving banners, and nodding
plumes. He had music too, but he did not seem to heed it. He lay
stretched on velvet and gold, but he appeared insensible of all these
luxuries. There was a curl on his cold white lip, too, that seemed to
breathe ineffable scorn on all that was going on,--but he was proud
enough even in his life-time.”--“His life-time!” I shrieked; “then he
is dead?”--“Can you doubt that, when you know who struck the blow?
None of my victims ever gave me the trouble of a second.”--“You,--you?”
I swam for some moments in a sea of flames and blood. My frenzy
returned, and I remember only uttering curses that would have exhausted
divine vengeance in all its plenitude to fulfil. I might have continued
to rave till my reason was totally lost, but I was silenced and stunned
by his laugh bursting out amid my curses, and overwhelming them.

“That laugh made me cease, and lift up my eyes to him, as if I expected
to see another being,--it was still the same. “And you dreamt,” he
cried, “in your temerity, you dreamt of setting the vigilance of a
convent at defiance? Two boys, one the fool of fear, and the other of
temerity, were fit antagonists for that stupendous system, whose roots
are in the bowels of the earth, and whose head is among the
stars,--you escape from a convent! you defy a power that has defied
sovereigns! A power whose influence is unlimited, indefinable, and
unknown, even to those who exercise it, as there are mansions so vast,
that their inmates, to their last hour, have never visited all the
apartments;--a power whose operation is like its motto,--one and
indivisible. The soul of the Vatican breathes in the humblest convent in
Spain,--and you, an insect perched on a wheel of this vast machine,
imagined you were able to arrest its progress, while its rotation was
hurrying on to crush you to atoms.” While he was uttering these words,
with a rapidity and energy inconceivable, (a rapidity that literally
made one word seem to devour another), I tried, with that effort of
intellect which seems like the gasping respiration of one whose breath
has long been forcibly suppressed or suspended, to comprehend and follow
him. The first thought that struck me was one not very improbable in my
situation, that he was not the person he appeared to be,--that it was
not the companion of my escape who now addressed me; and I summoned
all the remains of my intellect to ascertain this. A few questions must
determine this point, if I had breath to utter them. “Were you not the
agent in my escape? Were you not the man who---- What tempted
you to this step, in the defeat of which you appear to rejoice?”--“A
bribe.”--“And you have betrayed me, you say, and boast of your
treachery,--what tempted you to this?”--“A higher bribe. Your brother
gave gold, but the convent promised me salvation,--a business I was very
willing to commit to their hands, as I was totally incompetent to manage
it myself.”--“Salvation, for treachery and murder?”--“Treachery and
murder,--hard words. Now, to talk sense, was not yours the vilest
treachery? You reclaimed your vows,--you declared before God and man,
that the words you uttered before both were the babble of an infant;
then you seduced your brother from his duty to his and your
parents,--you connived at his intriguing against the peace and sanctity
of a monastic institution, and dare you talk of treachery? And did you
not, with a callosity of conscience unexampled in one so young, accept,
nay, cling to an associate in your escape whom you knew you were
seducing from his vows,--from all that man reveres as holy, and all that
God (if there be a God) must regard as binding on man? You knew my
crime, you knew my atrocity, yet you brandished me as your banner of
defiance against the Almighty, though its inscription was, in glaring
characters,--impiety--parricide--irreligion. Torn as the banner was, it
still hung near the altar, till you dragged it away, to wrap yourself
from detection in its folds,--and you talk of treachery?--there is not
a more traitorous wretch on earth than yourself. Suppose that I was all
that is vile and culpable, was it for you to double-dye the hue of my
crime in the crimson of your sacrilege and apostacy? And for murder, I
know I am a parricide. I cut my father's throat, but he never felt the
blow,--nor did I,--I was intoxicated with wine, with passion, with
blood,--no matter which; but you, with cold deliberate blows, struck at
the hearts of father and mother. You killed by inches,--I murdered at a
blow,--which of us is the murderer?--And you prate of treachery and
murder? I am as innocent as the child that is born this hour, compared
to you. Your father and mother have separated,--she is gone into a
convent, to hide her despair and shame at your unnatural conduct,--your
father is plunging successively into the abysses of voluptuousness and
penitence, wretched in both; your brother, in his desperate attempt to
liberate you, has perished,--you have scattered desolation over a whole
family,--you have stabbed the peace and heart of each of them, with a
hand that deliberated and paused on its blow, and then struck it
calmly,--and you dare to talk of treachery and murder? You are a
thousand times more culpable than I am, guilty as you think me. I stand
a blasted tree,--I am struck to the heart, to the root,--I wither alone,
--but you are the Upas,262 under whose poisonous droppings all things
living have perished,--father--mother--brother, and last yourself;--the
erosions of the poison, having nothing left to consume, strike inward,
and prey on your own heart. Wretch, condemned beyond the sympathy of
man, beyond the redemption of the Saviour, what can you say to this?”--I
answered only, “Is Juan dead, and were you his murderer,--were you
indeed? I believe all you say, I must be very guilty, but is Juan dead?”
As I spoke, I lifted up to him eyes that no longer seemed to see,--a
countenance that bore no expression but that of the stupefaction of
intense grief. I could neither utter nor feel reproaches,--I had
suffered beyond the power of complaint. I awaited his answer; he was
silent, but his diabolical silence spoke. “And my mother retired to a
convent?” he nodded. “And my father?” he smiled, and I closed my eyes.
I could bear any thing but his smile. I raised my head a few moments
after, and saw him, with an habitual motion, (it could not have been
more), make the sign of the cross, as a clock in some distant passage
struck. This sight reminded me of the play so often acted in Madrid, and
which I had seen in my few days of liberation,--El diablo Predicador.263
You smile, Sir, at such a recollection operating at such a moment, but
it is a fact; and had you witnessed that play under the singular
circumstances I did, you would not wonder at my being struck with the
coincidence. In this performance the infernal spirit is the hero, and in
the disguise of a monk he appears in a convent, where he torments and
persecutes the community with a mixture of malignity and mirth truly
Satanic. One night that I saw it performed, a groupe of monks were
carrying the Host to a dying person; the walls of the theatre were so
slight, that we could distinctly hear the sound of the bell which they
ring on that occasion. In an instant, actors, audience, and all, were on
their knees, and the devil, who happened to be on the stage,264 knelt
among the rest, and crossed himself with visible marks of a devotion
equally singular and edifying. You will allow the coincidence to be irre-
sistibly striking.

“When he had finished his monstrous profanation of the holy sign, I
fixed my eyes on him with an expression not to be mistaken. He saw it.
There is not so bitter a reproach on earth as silence, for it always
seems to refer the guilty to their own hearts, whose eloquence seldom
fails to fill up the pause very little to the satisfaction of the accused.
My look threw him into a rage, that I am now convinced not the most
bitter upbraidings could have caused. The utmost fury of imprecation
would have fallen on his ear like the most lulling harmony;--it would
have convinced him that his victim was suffering all he could pos-
sibly inflict. He betrayed this in the violence of his exclamations.
“What, wretch!” he cried;--“Do you think it was for your masses
and your mummeries, your vigils, and fasts, and mumbling over
senseless unconsoling beads, and losing my rest all night watching for
the matins, and then quitting my frozen mat to nail my knees to stone
till they grew there,--till I thought the whole pavement would rise with
me when I rose,--do you think it was for the sake of listening to
sermons that the preachers did not believe,--and prayers that the
lips that uttered them yawned at in the listlessness of their infidel-
ity,--and penances that might be hired out to a lay-brother to under-
go for a pound of coffee or of snuff,--and the vilest subserviencies
to the caprice and passion of a Superior,--and the listening to men
with God for ever in their mouths, and the world for ever in their
hearts,265--men who think of nothing but the aggrandizement
of their temporal distinction, and screen, under the most revolting
affectation of a concern in spiritualities, their ravening cupidity
after earthly eminence:--Wretch! do you dream that it was for
this?--that this atheism of bigotry,--this creed of all the priests
that ever have existed in connexion with the state, and in hope of
extending their interest by that connexion,--could have any influence
over me? I had sounded every depth in the mine of depravity before
them. I knew them,--I despised them. I crouched before them in body, I
spurned them in my soul. With all their sanctimony, they had hearts so
worldly, that it was scarce worth while to watch their hypocrisy, the
secret developed itself so soon. There was no discovery to be made, no
place for detection. I have seen them on their high festivals, prelates,
and abbots, and priests, in all their pomp of office, appearing to the
laity like descended gods, blazing in gems and gold, amid the lustre of
tapers and the floating splendour of an irradiated atmosphere alive with
light, and all soft and delicate harmonies and delicious odours, till,
as they disappeared amid the clouds of incense so gracefully tossed from
the gilded censers, the intoxicated eye dreamed it saw them ascending to
Paradise. Such was the scene, but what was behind the scene?--I saw
it all. Two or three of them would rush from service into the vestry
together, under the pretence of changing their vestments. One would
imagine that these men would have at least the decency to refrain, while
in the intervals of the holy mass. No, I overheard them. While shifting
their robes, they talked incessantly of promotions and appointments,--of
this or that prelate, dying or dead,--of a wealthy benefice being
vacant,--of one dignitary having bargained hard with the state for the
promotion of a relative,--of another who had well-founded hopes of
obtaining a bishoprick, for what? neither for learning or piety, or one
feature of the pastoral character, but because he had valuable benefices
to resign in exchange, that might be divided among numerous candidates.
Such was their conversation,--such and such only were their thoughts,
till the last thunders of the allelujah from the church made them start,
and hurry to resume their places at the altar. Oh what a compound of
meanness and pride, of imbecillity and pretension, of sanctimony so
transparently and awkwardly worn, that the naked frame of the natural
mind was visible to every eye beneath it,--that mind which is “earthly,
sensual, devilish.”266 Was it to live among such wretches, who, all-villain
as I was, made me hug myself with the thought that at least I was not
like them, a passionless prone reptile,--a thing made of forms and
dressings, half satin and shreds, half ave's and credo's,--bloated and
abject,--creeping and aspiring,--winding up and up the pedestal of power
at the rate of an inch a day, and tracking its advance to eminence by
the flexibility of its writhings, the obliquity of its course, and the
filth of its slime,--was it for this?”--he paused, half-choaked with his
emotions.

“This man might have been a better being under better circumstances;
he had at least a disdain of all that was mean in vice, with a wild avidity
for all that was atrocious. “Was it for this,” he continued, “that I have
sold myself to work their works of darkness,--that I have become in
this life as it were an apprentice to Satan, to take anticipated lessons
of torture,--that I have sealed those indentures here, which must be
fulfilled below? No, I despise--I loathe it all, the agents and the
system,--the men and their matters. But it is the creed of that system,
(and true or false it avails not,--some kind of creed is necessary, and
the falser perhaps the better, for falsehood at least flatters), that
the greatest criminal may expiate his offences, by vigilantly watching,
and severely punishing, those of the enemies of heaven. Every offender
may purchase his immunity, by consenting to become the executioner of
the offender whom he betrays and denounces. In the language of the
laws of another country, they may turn “king's evidence,”267 and buy
their own lives at the price of another's,--a bargain which every man
is very ready to make. But, in religious life, this kind of transfer, this
substitutional suffering, is adopted with an avidity indescribable. How
we love to punish those whom the church calls the enemies of God, while
conscious that, though our enmity against him is infinitely greater, we
become acceptable in his sight by tormenting those who may be less
guilty, but who are in our power! I hate you, not because I have any
natural or social cause to do so, but because the exhaustion of my
resentment on you, may diminish that of the Deity towards me. If I
persecute and torment the enemies of God, must I not be the friend of
God? Must not every pang I inflict on another, be recorded in the book
of the All-remembering, as an expurgation of at least one of the pangs
that await me hereafter? I have no religion, I believe in no God, I
repeat no creed, but I have that superstition of fear and of futurity,
that seeks its wild and hopeless mitigation in the sufferings of others
when our own are exhausted, or when (a much more common case) we are
unwilling to undergo them. I am convinced that my own crimes will be
obliterated, by whatever crimes of others I can promote or punish. Had I
not, then, every motive to urge you to crime? Had I not every motive to
watch and aggravate your punishment? Every coal of fire that I heaped on
your head, was removing one from that fire that burns for ever and ever
for mine. Every drop of water that I withheld from your burning tongue,
I expect will be repaid to me in slaking the fire and brimstone into
which I must one day be hurled. Every tear that I draw, every groan that
I extort, will, I am convinced, be repaid me in the remission of my
own!--guess what a price I set on yours, or those of any other victim.
The man in ancient story trembled and paused over the scattered limbs of
his child, and failed in the pursuit,268--the true penitent rushes over the
mangled members of nature and passion, collects them with a hand in
which there is no pulse, and a heart in which there is no feeling, and
holds them up in the face of the Divinity as a peace-offering. Mine
is the best theology,--the theology of utter hostility to all beings
whose sufferings may mitigate mine. In this flattering theory, your
crimes become my virtues,--I need not any of my own. Guilty as I am of
the crime that outrages nature, your crimes (the crimes of those who
offend against the church) are of a much more heinous order. But your
guilt is my exculpation, your sufferings are my triumph. I need not
repent, I need not believe; if you suffer, I am saved,--that is enough
for me. How glorious and easy it is to erect at once the trophy of our
salvation, on the trampled and buried hopes of another's! How subtle and
sublime that alchemy, that can convert the iron of another's contumacy
and impenitence into the precious gold of your own redemption! I have
literally worked out my salvation by your fear and trembling. With
this hope I appeared to concur in the plan laid by your brother, every
feature of which was in its progress disclosed to the Superior. With
this hope I passed that wretched night and day in the dungeon with you,
for, to have effected our escape by day-light, would have startled
credulity as gross as even yours. But all the time I was feeling the
dagger I bore in my breast, and which I had received for a purpose amply
accomplished. As for you,--the Superior consented to your attempt to
escape, merely that he might have you more in his power. He and the
community were tired of you, they saw you would never make a monk,--your
appeal had brought disgrace on them, your presence was a reproach and a
burden to them. The sight of you was as thorns in their eyes,--they
judged you would make a better victim than a proselyte, and they judged
well. You are a much fitter inmate for your present abode than your
last, and from hence there is no danger of your escaping.”--“And where,
then, am I?”--“You are in the prison of the Inquisition.”



CHAPTER XI.

Oh! torture me no more, I will confess.

HENRY THE SIXTH.269

You have betrayed her to her own reproof.

COMEDY OF ERRORS.270


“And it was true,--I was a prisoner in the Inquisition. Great emer-
gencies certainly inspire us with the feelings they demand; and many
a man has braved a storm on the wide wild ocean, who would have shrunk
from its voice as it pealed down his chimney. I believe so it fared with
me,--the storm had risen, and I braced myself to meet it. I was in the
Inquisition, but I knew that my crime, heinous as it was, was not one
that came properly under the cognizance of the Inquisition. It was a
conventual fault of the highest class, but liable only to be punished
by the ecclesiastical power. The punishment of a monk who had dared to
escape from his convent, might be dreadful enough,--immurement, or death
perhaps, but still I was not legitimately a prisoner of the Inquisition.
I had never, under all my trials, spoken a disrespectful word of the
holy Catholic church, or a doubtful one of our most holy faith,--I had
not dropped one heretical, obnoxious, or equivocal expression, relative
to a single point of duty, or article of faith. The preposterous charges
of sorcery and possession, brought against me in the convent, had been
completely disproved at the visitation of the Bishop. My aversion to
the monastic state was indeed sufficiently known and fatally proved,
but that was no subject for the investigation or penalties of the
Inquisition. I had nothing to fear from the Inquisition,--at least so
I said to myself in my prison, and I believed myself. The seventh day
after the recovery of my reason was fixed on for my examination, and of
this I received due notice, though I believe it is contrary to the usual
forms of the Inquisition to give this notice; and the examination took
place on the day and hour appointed.

“You are aware, Sir, that the tales related in general of the interior
discipline of the Inquisition, must be in nine out of ten mere fables,
as the prisoners are bound by an oath never to disclose what happens
within its walls; and they who could violate this oath, would certainly
not scruple to violate truth in the details with which their
emancipation from it indulges them. I am forbidden, by an oath which I
shall never break, to disclose the circumstances of my imprisonment or
examination. I am at liberty to mention some general features of both,
as they are connected with my extraordinary narrative. My first
examination terminated rather favourably; my contumacy and aversion to
monasticism were indeed deplored and reprobated, but there was no
ulterior hint,--nothing to alarm the peculiar fears of an inmate of the
Inquisition. So I was as happy as solitude, darkness, straw, bread, and
water, could make me, or any one, till, on the fourth night after my
first examination, I was awoke by a light gleaming so strongly on my
eyes, that I started up. The person then retired with his light, and I
discovered a figure sitting in the farthest corner of my cell. Delighted
at the sight of a human form, I yet had acquired so much of the habit of
the Inquisition, that I demanded, in a cold and peremptory voice, who
had ventured to intrude on the cell of a prisoner? The person answered
in the blandest tones that ever soothed the human ear, that he was, like
myself, a prisoner in the Inquisition;--that, by its indulgence, he had
been permitted to visit me, and hoped----“And is hope to be named
here?” I could not help exclaiming. He answered in the same soft and
deprecatory tone; and, without adverting to our peculiar circumstances,
suggested the consolation that might be derived from the society of two
sufferers who were indulged with the power of meeting and communicating
with each other.

“This man visited me for several successive nights; and I could not help
noticing three extraordinary circumstances in his visits and his
appearance. The first was, that he always (when he could) concealed his
eyes from me; he sat sideways and backways, shifted his position,
changed his seat, held up his hand before his eyes; but when at times he
was compelled or surprised to turn their light on me, I felt that I
had never beheld such eyes blazing in a mortal face,--in the darkness of
my prison, I held up my hand to shield myself from their preternatural
glare. The second was, that he came and retired apparently without help
or hindrance,--that he came, like one who had a key to the door of my
dungeon, at all hours, without leave or forbiddance,--that he traversed
the prisons of the Inquisition, like one who had a master-key to its
deepest recesses. Lastly, he spoke not only in a tone of voice clear and
audible, totally unlike the whispered communications of the Inquisition,
but spoke his abhorrence of the whole system,--his indignation against
the Inquisition, Inquisitors, and all their aiders and abettors, from St
Dominic down to the lowest official,--with such unqualified rage of
vituperation, such caustic inveteracy of satire, such unbounded license
of ludicrous and yet withering severity, that I trembled.

“You know, Sir, or perhaps have yet to know, that there are persons
accredited in the Inquisition, who are permitted to solace the solitude
of the prisoners, on the condition of obtaining, under the pretence
of friendly communication, those secrets which even torture has
failed to extort. I discovered in a moment that my visitor was not one
of these,--his abuse of the system was too gross, his indignation too
unfeigned. Yet, in his continued visits, there was one circumstance
more, which struck me with a feeling of terror that actually paralyzed
and annihilated all the terrors of the Inquisition.

“He constantly alluded to events and personages beyond his possible
memory,--then he checked himself,--then he appeared to go on, with a
kind of wild and derisive sneer at his own absence.271 But this perpetual
reference to events long past, and men long buried, made an impression
on me I cannot describe. His conversation was rich, various, and
intelligent, but it was interspersed with such reiterated mention of the
dead, that I might be pardoned for feeling as if the speaker was one of
them. He dealt much in anecdotical history, and I, who was very ignorant
of it, was delighted to listen to him, for he told every thing with the
fidelity of an eye-witness. He spoke of the Restoration in England,
and repeated the well-remembered observation of the queen-mother,
Henriette of France,272--that, had she known as much of the English on
her first arrival, as she did on her second, she never would have been
driven from the throne; then he added, to my astonishment, I was beside
her carriage(9), it was the only one then in London. He afterwards
spoke of the superb fetes given by Louis Quatorze, and described, with
an accuracy that made me start, the magnificent chariot in which that
monarch personated the god of day, while all the titled pimps and harlots
of the court followed as the rabble of Olympus. Then he reverted to the
death of the Duchesse d'Orleans,273 sister to Charles II.--to Pere
Bourdalone's awful sermon, preached at the death-bed of the royal
beauty, dying of poison, (as suspected); and added, I saw the roses
heaped on her toilette, to array her for a fete that very night, and
near them stood the pix, and tapers, and oil, shrouded with the lace of
that very toilette. Then he passed to England; he spoke of the wretched
and well-rebuked pride of the wife of James II.274 who “thought it scorn”275
to sit at the same table with an Irish officer who informed her husband
(then Duke of York) that he had sat at table, as an officer in the Aus-
trian service, where the Duchess's father (Duke of Modena) had stood
behind a chair, as a vassal to the Emperor of Germany.

“These circumstances were trifling, and might be told by any one, but
there was a minuteness and circumstantiality in his details, that per-
petually forced on the mind the idea that he had himself seen what he
described, and been conversant with the personages he spoke of. I
listened to him with an indefinable mixture of curiosity and terror. At
last, while relating a trifling but characteristic circumstance that
occurred in the reign of Louis the Thirteenth, he used the following
expressions:276 “One night that the king was at an entertainment, where
Cardinal Richelieu also was present, the Cardinal had the insolence to
rush out of the apartment before his Majesty, just as the coach of the
latter was announced. The King, without any indignant notice of the
arrogance of the minister, said, with much bon hommie, “His Eminence
the Cardinal will always be first.”--“The first to attend your Majesty,”
answered the Cardinal, with admirable polite presence of mind; and,
snatching a flambeau from a page who stood near me, he lighted the
King to his carriage.” I could not help catching at the extraordinary
words that had escaped him; and I asked him, “Were you there?” He gave
some indirect answer; and, avoiding the subject, went on to amuse me
with some other curious circumstances of the private history of that
age, of which he spoke with a minute fidelity somewhat alarming. I
confess my pleasure in listening to them was greatly diminished by the
singular sensation with which this man's presence and conversation
inspired me. He departed, and I regretted his absence, though I could
not account for the extraordinary feeling which I experienced during his
visits.

“A few days after I was to encounter my second examination. The night
before it one of the officials visited me. These are men who are not
the common officers of a prison, but accredited in some degree by the
higher powers of the Inquisition, and I paid due respect to his
communications, particularly as they were delivered more in detail, and
with more emphasis and energy than I could have expected from an inmate
of that speechless mansion. This circumstance made me expect something
extraordinary, and his discourse verified all, and more than I expected.
He told me in plain terms, that there had been lately a cause of
disturbance and inquietude, which had never before occurred in the
Inquisition. That it was reported a human figure had appeared in the
cells of some of the prisoners, uttering words not only hostile to the
Catholic religion, and the discipline of the most holy Inquisition, but
to religion in general, to the belief of a God and a future state.277 He
added, that the utmost vigilance of the officials, on the rack for
discovery, had never been able to trace this being in his visits to the
cells of the prisoners; that the guards had been doubled, and every
precaution that the circumspection of the Inquisition could employ, was
had recourse to, hitherto without success; and that the only intimation
they had of this singular visitor, was from some of the prisoners whose
cells he had entered, and whom he had addressed in language that seemed
lent him by the enemy of mankind,278 to accomplish the perdition of these
unhappy beings. He himself had hitherto eluded all discovery; but he
trusted, that, with the means lately adopted, it was impossible for this
agent of the evil one to insult and baffle the holy tribunal much
longer. He advised me to be prepared on this point, as it would
undoubtedly be touched on at my next examination, and perhaps more
urgently than I might otherwise imagine; and so, commending me to the
holy keeping of God, he departed.

“Not wholly unconscious of the subject alluded to in this extraordinary
communication, but perfectly innocent of any ulterior signification, as
far as related to myself, I awaited my next examination rather with hope
than fear. After the usual questions of--Why I was there? who had
accused me? for what offence? whether I could recollect any expression
that had ever intimated a disregard for the tenets of the holy church?
&c. &c. &c.--after all this had been gone through, in a detail that may
be spared the hearer, certain extraordinary questions were proposed to
me, that appeared to relate indirectly to the appearance of my late
visitor. I answered them with a sincerity that seemed to make a
frightful impression on my judges. I stated plainly, in answer to their
questions, that a person had appeared in my dungeon. “You must call
it cell,” said the Supreme.279 “In my cell, then. He spoke with the
utmost severity of the holy office,--he uttered words that it would
not be respectful for me to repeat. I could scarcely believe that such
a person would be permitted to visit the dungeons (cells, I should say)
of the holy Inquisition.” As I uttered these words, one of the judges,
trembling on his seat, (while his shadow, magnified by the imperfect
light, pictured the figure of a paralytic giant on the wall opposite to
me), attempted to address some question to me. As he spoke, there came
a hollow sound from his throat, his eyes were rolled upwards in their
sockets,--he was in an apoplectic paroxysm, and died before he could be
removed to another apartment. The examination terminated suddenly,
and in some confusion; but, as I was remanded back to my cell, I could
perceive, to my consternation, that I had left an impression the most
unfavourable on the minds of the judges. They interpreted this acci-
dental circumstance in a manner the most extraordinary and unjust,
and I felt the consequences of it at my next examination.

“That night I received a visit in my cell from one of the judges of
the Inquisition, who conversed with me a considerable time, and in an
earnest and dispassionate manner. He stated the atrocious and revolt-
ing character under which I appeared from the first before the Inqui-
sition,--that of a monk who had apostatized, had been accused of the
crime of sorcery in his convent, and, in his impious attempt at es-
cape, had caused the death of his brother, whom he had seduced to join
in it, and had overwhelmed one of the first families with despair and
disgrace. Here I was going to reply, but he stopped me, and observed,
that he came not to listen, but to speak; and went on to inform me, that
though I had been acquitted of the charge of communication with the evil
spirit at the visitation of the Bishop, certain suspicions attached to
me had been fearfully strengthened, by the fact that the visits of the
extraordinary being, of whom I had heard enough to assure me of his
actuality, had never been known in the prison of the Inquisition till my
entrance into it. That the fair and probable conclusion was, that I was
really the victim of the enemy of mankind, whose power (through the
reluctant permission of God and St Dominic,280 and he crossed himself as
he spoke) had been suffered to range even through the walls of the holy
office. He cautioned me, in severe but plain terms, against the danger
of the situation in which I was placed, by the suspicions universally
and (he feared) too justly attached to me; and, finally, adjured me, as
I valued my salvation, to place my entire confidence in the mercy of
the holy office, and, if the figure should visit me again, to watch what
its impure lips might suggest, and faithfully report it to the holy
office.

“When the Inquisitor had departed, I reflected on what he had said. I
conceived it was something like the conspiracies so often occurring in
the convent. I conceived that this might be an attempt to involve me in
some plot against myself, something in which I might be led to be active
in my own condemnation,--I felt the necessity of vigilant and breathless
caution. I knew myself innocent, and this is a consciousness that defies
even the Inquisition itself; but, within the walls of the Inquisition,
the consciousness, and the defiance it inspires, are alike vain. I
finally resolved, however, to watch every circumstance that might occur
within the walls of my cell very closely, threatened as I was at once by
the powers of the Inquisition, and those of the infernal demon, and I
had not long to watch. It was on the second night after my examination,
that I saw this person enter my cell. My first impulse was to call aloud
for the officials of the Inquisition. I felt a kind of vacillation I
cannot describe, between throwing myself into the power of the
Inquisition, or the power of this extraordinary being, more formidable
perhaps than all the Inquisitors on earth, from Madrid to Goa.281 I dreaded
imposition on both sides. I believed that they were playing off terror
against terror; I knew not what to believe or think. I felt myself
surrounded by enemies on every side, and would have given my heart to
those who would first throw off the mask, and announce themselves
as my decided and avowed enemy. After some reflection, I judged it
best to distrust the Inquisition, and to hear all that this extraordinary
visitor had to say. In my secret soul I believed him their secret
agent,--I did them great injustice. His conversation on this second
visit was more than usually amusing, but it was certainly such as might
justify all the suspicions of the Inquisitors. At every sentence he
uttered, I was disposed to start up and call for the officials. Then I
represented to myself his turning accuser, and pointing me out as the
victim of their condemnation. I trembled at the idea of committing
myself by a word, while in the power of that dreadful body that might
condemn me to expire under the torture,--or, worse, to die the long
and lingering death of inanity,--the mind famished, the body scarcely
fed,--the annihilation of hopeless and interminable solitude,--the
terrible inversion of natural feeling, that makes life the object of
deprecation, and death of indulgence.

“The result was, that I sat and listened to the conversation (if it may
be called so) of this extraordinary visitor, who appeared to regard the
walls of the Inquisition no more than those of a domestic apartment, and
who seated himself beside me as quietly as if he had been reposing on
the most luxurious sofa that ever was arrayed by the fingers of
voluptuousness. My senses were so bewildered, my mind so disarranged,
that I can hardly remember his conversation. Part of it ran thus: “You
are a prisoner of the Inquisition. The holy office, no doubt, is
instituted for wise purposes, beyond the cognizance of sinful beings
like us; but, as far as we can judge, its prisoners are not only
insensible of, but shamefully ungrateful for, the benefits they might
derive from its provident vigilance. For instance, you, who are accused
of sorcery, fratricide, and plunging an illustrious and affectionate
family in despair, by your atrocious misconduct, and who are now
fortunately restrained from farther outrages against nature, religion,
and society, by your salutary confinement here;--you, I venture to say,
are so unconscious of these blessings, that it is your earnest desire to
escape from the further enjoyment of them. In a word, I am convinced
that the secret wish of your heart (unconverted by all the profusion of
charity which has been heaped on you by the holy office) is not on any
account to increase the burden of your obligation to them, but, on the
contrary, to diminish as much as possible the grief these worthy persons
must feel, as long as your residence pollutes their holy walls, by
abridging its period, even long before they intend you should do so.
Your wish is to escape from the prison of the holy office, if
possible,--you know it is.” I did not answer a word. I felt a terror at
this wild and fierce irony,--I felt a terror at the mention of escape,
(I had fatal reasons for this feeling),--a terror of every thing, and
every one near me, indescribable. I believed myself tottering on a
narrow ridge,--an Al-araf,282 between the alternate gulphs which the
infernal spirit and the Inquisition (not less dreaded) disclosed on each
side of my trembling march. I compressed my lips,--I hardly suffered my
breath to escape.

“The speaker went on. “With regard to your escape, though I can pro-
mise that to you, (and that is what no human power can promise you),
you must be aware of the difficulty which will attend it,--and, should
that difficulty terrify you, will you hesitate?” Still I was silent;
--my visitor perhaps took this for the silence of doubt. He went on.
“Perhaps you think that your lingering here, amid the dungeons of the
Inquisition, will infallibly secure your salvation. There is no error
more absurd, and yet more rooted in the heart of man, than the belief
that his sufferings will promote his spiritual safety.” Here I thought
myself safe in rejoining, that I felt,--I trusted, my sufferings here
would indeed be accepted as a partial mitigation of my well-merited
punishment hereafter. I acknowledged my many errors,--I professed my-
self as penitent for my misfortunes as if they had been crimes; and the
energy of my grief combining with the innocence of my heart, I commend-
ed myself to the Almighty with an unction I really felt,--I called on the
names of God, the Saviour, and the Virgin, with the earnest supplication
of sincere devoutness. When I had risen from my knees, my visitor had
retired. * * * * * * *

“Examination followed examination before the judges, with a rapidity
unexampled in the annals of the Inquisition. Alas! that they should be
annals,--that they should be more than records of one day of abuse,
oppression, falsehood, and torture. At my next examination before the
judges, I was interrogated according to the usual forms, and afterwards
was led, by questions as artfully constructed, as if there was any
necessity for art to lead me, to speak to the question on which I longed
to disburden myself. The moment the subject was mentioned, I entered on
my narrative with an eagerness of sincerity that would have undeceived
any but Inquisitors. I announced that I had received another visit from
this unknown being. I repeated, with breathless and trembling eagerness,
every word of our late conference. I did not suppress a syllable of the
insults on the holy office, the wild and fiend-like acrimony of his
satire, the avowed atheism, the diabolism of his conversation,--I dwelt
on every particular. I hoped to make merit with the Inquisition, by
accusing their enemy, and that of mankind. Oh! there is no telling the
agony of zeal with which we work between two mortal adversaries, hoping
to make a friend of one of them! I had suffered enough already from the
Inquisition, but at this moment I would have crouched at the knees of
the Inquisitors,--I would have pleaded for the place of the meanest
official in their prison,--I would have supplicated for the loathsome
office of their executioner,--I would have encountered any thing that
the Inquisition could inflict, to be spared the horror of being imagined
the ally of the enemy of souls. To my distraction, I perceived that
every word I uttered, in all the agony of truth,--in all the hopeless
eloquence of a soul struggling with the fiends who are bearing it beyond
the reach of mercy, was disregarded. The judges appeared struck, indeed,
by the earnestness with which I spoke. They gave, for a moment, a kind
of instinctive credit to my words, extorted by terror; but, a moment
after, I could perceive that I, and not my communication, was the
object of that terror. They seemed to view me through a distorting
atmosphere of mystery and suspicion. They urged me, over and over again,
for further particulars,--for ulterior circumstances,--for something
that was in their minds, but not in mine. The more pains they took to
construct their questions skilfully, the more unintelligible they became
to me. I had told all I knew, I was anxious to tell all, but I could not
tell more than I knew, and the agony of my solicitude to meet the object
of the judges, was aggravated in proportion to my ignorance of it. On
being remanded to my cell, I was warned, in the most solemn manner, that
if I neglected to watch, remember, and report every word uttered by the
extraordinary being, whose visits they tacitly acknowledged they could
neither prevent or detect, I might expect the utmost severity of the
holy office. I promised all this,--all that could be demanded, and,
finally, as the last proof I could give of my sincerity, I implored that
some one might be allowed to pass the night in my cell,--or, if that was
contrary to the rules of the Inquisition, that one of the guard might be
stationed in the passage communicating with my cell, to whom I could, by
a signal agreed on, intimate when this nameless being burst on me, and
his impious intrusion might be at once detected and punished. In
speaking thus, I was indulged with a privilege very unusual in the
Inquisition, where the prisoner is only to answer questions, but never
to speak unless when called on. My proposal, however, caused some
consultation; and it was with horror I found, on its termination, that
not one of the officials, even under the discipline of the Inquisition,
would undertake the task of watching at the door of my cell.

“I went back to it in an agony inexpressible. The more I had laboured to
clear myself, the more I had become involved. My only resource and
consolation was in a determination to obey, to the strictest letter, the
injunctions of the Inquisition. I kept myself studiously awake,--he
came not all that night. Towards the morning I slept,--Oh what a sleep
was mine!--the genii, or the demons of the place, seemed busy in the
dream that haunted me. I am convinced that a real victim of an auto da
fe (so called) never suffered more during his horrible procession to
flames temporal and eternal, than I did during that dream. I dreamed
that the judgement had passed,--the bell had tolled,--and we marched
out from the prison of the Inquisition;--my crime was proved, and my
sentence determined, as an apostate monk and a diabolical heretic. The
procession commenced,--the Dominicans went first, then followed the
penitents, arms and feet bare, each hand holding a wax taper, some with
san benitos,283 some without, all pale, haggard, and breathless, the hue
of their faces frightfully resembling that of their clay-coloured arms
and feet. Then followed those who had on their black dresses the fuego
revolto284. Then followed--I saw myself; and this horrid tracing of
yourself in a dream,--this haunting of yourself by your own spectre,
while you still live, is perhaps a curse almost equal to your crimes
visiting you in the punishments of eternity. I saw myself in the garment
of condemnation, the flames pointing upwards, while the demons painted
on my dress were mocked by the demons who beset my feet, and hovered
round my temples. The Jesuits on each side of me, urged me to consider
the difference between these painted fires, and those which were about
to enwrap my writhing soul for an eternity of ages. All the bells of
Madrid seemed to be ringing in my ears. There was no light but a dull
twilight, such as one always sees in his sleep, (no man ever dreamed of
sun-light);--there was a dim and smoky blaze of torches in my eyes,
whose flames were soon to be in my eyes. I saw the stage before me,--
I was chained to the chair, amid the ringing of bells, the preaching of
the Jesuits, and the shouts of the multitude. A splendid amphitheatre
stood opposite,--the king and queen of Spain, and all the nobility and
hierarchy of the land, were there to see us burn. Our thoughts in dreams
wander; I had heard a story of an auto da fe, where a young Jewess,
not sixteen, doomed to be burnt alive, had prostrated herself before the
queen, and exclaimed, “Save me,--save me, do not let me burn, my only
crime is believing in the God of my fathers;”--the queen (I believe
Elizabeth of France, wife of Philip)285 wept, but the procession went on.
Something like this crossed my dream. I saw the supplicant rejected; the
next moment the figure was that of my brother Juan, who clung to me,
shrieking, “Save me, save me.” The next moment I was chained to my
chair again,--the fires were lit, the bells rang out, the litanies were
sung;--my feet were scorched to a cinder,--my muscles cracked, my blood
and marrow hissed, my flesh consumed like shrinking leather,--the bones
of my legs hung two black withering and moveless sticks in the ascending
blaze;--it ascended, caught my hair,--I was crowned with fire,--my head
was a ball of molten metal, my eyes flashed and melted in their
sockets;--I opened my mouth, it drank fire,--I closed it, the fire was
within,--and still the bells rung on, and the crowd shouted, and the
king and queen, and all the nobility and priesthood, looked on, and we
burned, and burned!--I was a cinder body and soul in my dream.

“I awoke from it with the horrible exclamation--ever shrieked, never
heard--of those wretches, when the fires are climbing fast and fell,
--Misericordia por amor di Dios 286 - My own screams awoke me,--I was
in my prison, and beside me stood the tempter. With an impulse I could
not resist,--an impulse borrowed from the horrors of my dream, I flung
myself at his feet, and called on him to “save me.”

“I know not, Sir, nor is it a problem to be solved by human intellect,
whether this inscrutable being had not the power to influence my dreams,
and dictate to a tempting demon the images which had driven me to fling
myself at his feet for hope and safety. However it was, he certainly
took advantage of my agony, half-visionary, half-real as it was, and,
while proving to me that he had the power of effecting my escape from
the Inquisition, proposed to me that incommunicable condition which I am
forbid to reveal, except in the act of confession.”

Here Melmoth could not forbear remembering the incommunicable con-
dition proposed to Stanton in the mad-house,--he shuddered, and was
silent. The Spaniard went on.

“At my next examination, the questions were more eager and earnest
than ever, and I was more anxious to be heard than questioned; so, in
spite of the eternal circumspection and formality of an inquisitorial
examination, we soon came to understand each other. I had an object
to gain, and they had nothing to lose by my gaining that object. I
confessed, without hesitation, that I had received another visit from
that most mysterious being, who could penetrate the recesses of the
Inquisition, without either its leave or prevention, (the judges trem-
bled on their seats, as I uttered these words);--that I was most will-
ing to disclose all that had transpired at our last conference, but
that I required to first confess to a priest, and receive absolution.
This, though quite contrary to the rules of the Inquisition, was, on
this extraordinary occasion, complied with. A black curtain was dropt
before one of the recesses; I knelt down before a priest, and confided
to him that tremendous secret, which, according to the rules of the
Catholic church, can never be disclosed by the confessor but to the
Pope. I do not understand how the business was managed, but I was called
on to repeat the same confession before the Inquisitors. I repeated it
word for word, saving only the words that my oath, and my consciousness
of the holy secret of confession, forbade me to disclose. The sincerity
of this confession, I thought, would have worked a miracle for me,--and
so it did, but not the miracle that I expected. They required from me
that incommunicable secret; I announced it was in the bosom of the
priest to whom I had confessed. They whispered, and seemed to debate
about the torture.

“At this time, as may be supposed, I cast an anxious and miserable look
round the apartment, where the large crucifix, thirteen feet high, stood
bending above the seat of the Supreme. At this moment I saw a person
seated at the table covered with black cloth, intensely busy as a
secretary, or person employed in taking down the depositions of the
accused. As I was led near the table, this person flashed a look of
recognition on me,--he was my dreaded companion,--he was an official
now of the Inquisition. I gave all up the moment I saw his ferocious and
lurking scowl, like that of the tiger before he springs from his jungle,
or the wolf from his den. This person threw on me looks, from time to
time, which I could not mistake, and I dared not interpret;--and I had
reason to believe that the tremendous sentence pronounced against me,
issued, if not from his lips, at least from his dictation.--“You, Alonzo
di Monçada, monk, professed of the order of ----, accused of the crimes
of heresy, apostacy, fratricide, (“Oh no,--no!” I shrieked, but no one
heeded me), and conspiracy with the enemy of mankind against the peace
of the community in which you professed yourself a votary of God, and
against the authority of the holy office; accused, moreover, of inter-
course in your cell, the prison of the holy office, with an infernal
messenger of the foe of God, man, and your own apostatized soul; con-
demned on your own confession of the infernal spirit having had ac-
cess to your cell,--are hereby delivered to----”

“I heard no more. I exclaimed, but my voice was drowned in the murmur
of the officials. The crucifix suspended behind the chair of the judge,
rocked and reeled before my eyes; the lamp that hung from the ceiling,
seemed to send forth twenty lights. I held up my hands in abjuration
--they were held down by stronger hands. I tried to speak--my mouth
was stopped. I sunk on my knees--on my knees I was about to be dragg-
ed away, when an aged Inquisitor giving a sign to the officials, I
was released for a few moments, and he addressed me in these words--
words rendered terrible by the sincerity of the speaker. From his
age, from his sudden interposition, I had expected mercy. He was a
very old man--he had been blind for twenty years; and as he rose to
speak my malediction, my thoughts wandered from Appius Claudius of
Rome,287--blessing the loss of sight, that saved him from beholding the
disgrace of his country,--to that blind chief Inquisitor of Spain, who
assured Philip, that in sacrificing his son, he imitated the Almighty, who
had sacrificed his Son also for the salvation of mankind.288--Horrid
profanation! yet striking application to the bosom of a Catholic. The
words of the Inquisitor were these: “Wretch, apostate, and excom-
municate, I bless God that these withered balls can no longer behold
you. The demon has haunted you from your birth--you were born in sin
--fiends rocked your cradle, and dipt their talons in the holy font,
while they mocked the sponsors of your unsanctified baptism. Illegi-
timate and accursed, you were always the burden of the holy church;
and now, the infernal spirit comes to claim his own, and you acknow-
ledge him as your lord and master. He has sought and sealed you as
his own, even amid the prison of the Inquisition. Begone, accursed, we
deliver you over to the secular arm, praying that it may deal with you
not too severely.” At these terrible words, whose meaning I understood
but too well, I uttered one shriek of agony--the only human sound ever
heard within the walls of the Inquisition. But I was borne away; and
that cry into which I had thrown the whole strength of nature, was
heeded no more than a cry from the torture room. On my return to my
cell, I felt convinced the whole was a scheme of inquisitorial art, to
involve me in self-accusation, (their constant object when they can
effect it), and punish me for a crime, while I was guilty only of an
extorted confession.

“With compunction and anguish unutterable, I execrated my own beast-
like and credulous stupidity. Could any but an idiot, a driveller,
have been the victim of such a plot? Was it in nature to believe that
the prisons of the Inquisition could be traversed at will by a stranger
whom no one could discover or apprehend? That such a being could enter
cells impervious to human power, and hold conversation with the pris-
oners at his pleasure--appear and disappear--insult, ridicule, and
blaspheme--propose escape, and point out the means with a precision and
facility, that must be the result of calm and profound calculation--and
this within the walls of the Inquisition, almost in the hearing of the
judges--actually in the hearing of the guards, who night and day paced
the passages with sleepless and inquisitorial vigilance?--ridiculous,
monstrous, impossible! it was all a plot to betray me to self-condemn-
ation. My visitor was an agent and accomplice of the Inquisition, and
I was my own betrayer and executioner. Such was my conclusion; and,
hopeless as it was, it certainly seemed probable.

“I had now nothing to await but the most dreadful of all destinations,
amid the darkness and silence of my cell, where the total suspension of
the stranger's visits confirmed me every hour in my conviction of their
nature and purport, when an event occurred, whose consequences alike
defeated fear, hope, and calculation. This was the great fire that broke
out within the walls of the Inquisition, about the close of the last
century.

“It was on the night of the 29th November 17--, that this extraordinary
circumstance took place--extraordinary from the well-known precautions
adopted by the vigilance of the holy office against such an accident,
and also from the very small quantity of fuel consumed within its walls.
On the first intimation that the fire was spreading rapidly, and
threatened danger, the prisoners were ordered to be brought from their
cells, and guarded in a court of the prison. I must acknowledge we were
treated with great humanity and consideration. We were conducted
deliberately from our cells, placed each of us between two guards, who
did us no violence, nor used harsh language, but assured us, from time
to time, that if the danger became imminent, we would be permitted every
fair opportunity to effect our escape. It was a subject worthy of the
pencil of Salvator Rosa,289 or of Murillo, to sketch us as we stood. Our
dismal garbs and squalid looks, contrasted with the equally dark, but
imposing and authoritative looks of the guards and officials, all
displayed by the light of torches, which burned, or appeared to burn,
fainter and fainter, as the flames rose and roared in triumph above the
towers of the Inquisition. The heavens were all on fire--and the
torches, held no longer in firm hands, gave a tremulous and pallid
light. It seemed to me like a wildly painted picture of the last day.
God appeared descending in the light that enveloped the skies--and
we stood pale and shuddering in the light below.

“Among the groupe of prisoners, there were fathers and sons, who perhaps
had been inmates of adjacent cells for years, without being conscious of
each others vicinity or existence--but they did not dare to recognize
each other. Was not this like the day of judgement, where similar mortal
relations may meet under different classes of the sheep and goats,
without presuming to acknowledge the strayed one amid the flock of a
different shepherd? There were also parents and children who did
recognize and stretch out their wasted arms to each other, though
feeling they must never meet,--some of them condemned to the flames,
some to imprisonment, and some to the official duties of the
Inquisition, as a mitigation of their sentence,--and was not this like
the day of judgement, where parent and child may be allotted different
destinations, and the arms that would attest the last proof of mortal
affection, are expanded in vain over the gulph of eternity. Behind and
around us stood the officials and guards of the Inquisition, all
watching and intent on the progress of the flames, but fearless of the
result with regard to themselves. Such may be the feeling of those
spirits who watch the doom of the Almighty, and know the destination of
those they are appointed to watch. And is not this like the day of
judgement? Far, far, above us, the flames burst out in volumes, in solid
masses of fire, spiring up to the burning heavens. The towers of the
Inquisition shrunk into cinders--that tremendous monument of the power,
and crime, and gloom of the human mind, was wasting like a scroll in the
fire. Will it not be thus also at the day of judgement? Assistance was
slowly brought--Spaniards are very indolent--the engines played
imperfectly--the danger increased--the fire blazed higher and
higher--the persons employed to work the engines, paralyzed by terror,
fell to the ground, and called on every saint they could think of, to
arrest the progress of the flames. Their exclamations were so loud and
earnest, that really the saints must have been deaf, or must have felt a
particular predilection for a conflagration, not to attend to them. How-
ever it was, the fire went on. Every bell in Madrid rang out.--Orders
were issued to every Alcalde290 to be had.--The king of Spain291 himself,
(after a hard day's shooting), attended in person. The churches were
all lit up, and thousands of the devout supplicated on their knees by
torchlight, or whatever light they could get, that the reprobate souls
confined in the Inquisition might feel the fires that were consuming its
walls, as merely a slight foretaste of the fires that glowed for them
for ever and ever. The fire went on, doing its dreadful work, and
heeding kings and priests no more than if they were firemen. I am
convinced twenty able men, accustomed to such business, could have
quenched the fire; but when our workmen should have played their
engines, they were all on their knees.

“The flames at last began to descend into the court. Then commenced a
scene of horror indescribable. The wretches who had been doomed to the
flames, imagined their hour was come. Idiots from long confinement, and
submissive as the holy office could require, they became delirious as
they saw the flames approaching, and shrieked audibly, “Spare me--spare
me--put me to as little torture as you can.” Others, kneeling to the
approaching flames, invoked them as saints. They dreamt they saw the
visions they had worshipped,--the holy angels, and even the blessed
virgin, descending in flames to receive their souls as parting from the
stake; and they howled out their allelujahs half in horror, half in
hope. Amid this scene of distraction, the Inquisitors stood their
ground. It was admirable to see their firm and solemn array. As the
flames prevailed, they never faultered with foot, or gave a sign with
hand, or winked with eye;--their duty, their stern and heartless duty,
seemed to be the only principle and motive of their existence. They
seemed a phalanx clad in iron impenetrable. When the fires roared, they
crossed themselves calmly;--when the prisoners shrieked, they gave a
signal for silence;--when they dared to pray, they tore them from their
knees, and hinted the inutility of prayer at such a juncture, when they
might be sure that the flames they were deprecating would burn hotter in
a region from which there was neither escape or hope of departure. At
this moment, while standing amid the groupe of prisoners, my eyes were
struck by an extraordinary spectacle. Perhaps it is amid the moments of
despair, that imagination has most power, and they who have suffered,
can best describe and feel. In the burning light, the steeple of the
Dominican church was as visible as at noon-day. It was close to the
prison of the Inquisition. The night was intensely dark, but so strong
was the light of the conflagration, that I could see the spire blazing,
from the reflected lustre, like a meteor. The hands of the clock were
as visible as if a torch was held before them; and this calm and silent
progress of time, amid the tumultuous confusion of midnight
horrors,--this scene of the physical and mental world in an agony of
fruitless and incessant motion, might have suggested a profound and
singular image, had not my whole attention been rivetted to a human
figure placed on a pinnacle of the spire, and surveying the scene in
perfect tranquillity. It was a figure not to be mistaken--it was the
figure of him who had visited me in the cells of the Inquisition. The
hopes of my justification made me forget every thing. I called aloud on
the guard, and pointed out the figure, visible as it was in that strong
light to every eye. No one had time, however, to give a glance towards
it. At that very moment, the archway of the court opposite to us gave
way, and sunk in ruins at our feet, dashing, as it fell, an ocean of
flame against us. One wild shriek burst from every lip at that moment.
Prisoners, guards, and Inquisitors, all shrunk together, mingled in one
groupe of terror.

“The next instant, the flames being suppressed by the fall of such a
mass of stone, there arose such a blinding cloud of smoke and dust, that
it was impossible to distinguish the face or figure of those who were
next you. The confusion was increased by the contrast of this sudden
darkness, to the intolerable light that had been drying up our sight for
the last hour, and by the cries of those who, being near the arch, lay
maimed and writhing under its fragments. Amid shrieks, and darkness, and
flames, a space lay open before me. The thought, the motion, were
simultaneous--no one saw--no one pursued;--and hours before my absence
could be discovered, or an inquiry be made after me, I had struggled
safe and secret through the ruins, and was in the streets of Madrid.

“To those who have escaped present and extreme peril, all other peril
seems trifling. The wretch who has swum from a wreck cares not on what
shore he is cast; and though Madrid was in fact only a wider prison of
the Inquisition to me, in knowing that I was no longer in the hands of
the officials, I felt a delirious and indefinite consciousness of
safety. Had I reflected for a moment, I must have known, that my
peculiar dress and bare feet must betray me wherever I went. The
conjuncture, however, was very favourable to me--the streets were
totally deserted;--every inhabitant who was not in bed, or bed-rid, was
in the churches, deprecating the wrath of heaven, and praying for the
extinction of the flames.

“I ran on, I know not where, till I could run no longer. The pure air,
which I had been so long unaccustomed to breathe, acted like the most
torturing spicula292 on my throat and lungs as I flew along, and utterly
deprived me of the power of respiration, which at first it appeared to
restore. I saw a building near me, whose large doors were open. I rushed
in--it was a church. I fell on the pavement panting. It was the aisle
into which I had burst--it was separated from the chancel by large
grated railings. Within I could see the priests at the altar, by the
lamps recently and rarely lighted, and a few trembling devotees on their
knees, in the body of the chancel. There was a strong contrast between
the glare of the lamps within the chancel, and the faint light that
trembled through the windows of the aisle, scarcely showing me the
monuments, on one of which I leaned to rest my throbbing temples for a
moment. I could not rest--I dared not--and rising, I cast an involuntary
glance on the inscription which the monument bore. The light appeared to
increase maliciously, to aid my powers of vision. I read, “Orate pro
anima.”293 I at last came to the name--“Juan di Monçada.” I flew from the
spot as if pursued by demons--my brother's early grave had been my
resting place.

END OF VOLUME SECOND




CHAPTER XII


Juravi lingua, mentem injuratam gero.--294
Who brought you first acquainted with the devil?
SHIRLEY'S ST PATRICK FOR IRELAND295


‘I ran on till I had no longer breath or strength, (without perceiving
that I was in a dark passage), till I was stopt by a door. In falling
against it, I burst it open, and found myself in a low dark room.
When I raised myself, for I had fallen on my hands and knees, I
looked round, and saw something so singular, as to suspend even
my personal anxiety and terror for a moment.

‘The room was very small; and I could perceive by the rents, that
I had not only broken open a door, but a large curtain which hung
before it, whose ample folds still afforded me concealment if I
required it. There was no one in the room, and I had time to study
its singular furniture at leisure.

‘There was a table covered with a cloth; on it were placed a
vessel of a singular construction, a book, into whose pages I looked,
but could not make out a single letter. I therefore wisely took it for
a book of magic, and closed it with a feeling of exculpatory horror.
(It happened to be a copy of the Hebrew Bible, marked with the
Samaritan points).296 There was a knife too; and a cock was fastened
to the leg of the table, whose loud crows announced his impatience
of further constraint.297

‘I felt that this apparatus was somewhat singular – it looked like
a preparation for a sacrifice. I shuddered, and wrapt myself in the
volumes of the drapery which hung before the door my fall had
broken open. A dim lamp, suspended from the ceiling, discovered to
me all these objects, and enabled me to observe what followed
almost immediately. A man of middle age, but whose physiognomy
had something peculiar in it, even to the eye of a Spaniard, from the
clustering darkness of his eye-brows, his prominent nose, and a
certain lustre in the balls of his eyes, entered the room, knelt before
the table, kissed the book that lay on it, and read from it some
sentences that were to precede, as I imagined, some horrible
sacrifice; – felt the edge of the knife, knelt again, uttered some
words which I did not understand, (as they were in the language of
that book), and then called aloud on some one by the name of
Manasseh-ben-Solomon. No one answered. He sighed, passed his
hand over his eyes with the air of a man who is asking pardon of
himself for a short forgetfulness, and then pronounced the name of
‘Antonio.' A young man immediately entered, and answered, ‘Did
you call me, Father?' – But while he spoke, he threw a hollow and
wandering glance on the singular furniture of the room.

‘I called you, my son, and why did you not answer me?' – ‘I did
not hear you, father – I mean, I did not think it was on me you
called. I heard only a name I was never called by before. When you
said ‘Antonio,' I obeyed you – I came.' – ‘But that is the name by
which you must in future be called and be known, to me at least,
unless you prefer another. – You shall have your choice.' – ‘My
father, I shall adopt whatever name you choose.' – ‘No; the choice of
your new name must be your own – you must, for the future, either
adopt the name you have heard, or another.' – ‘What other, Sir?' –
‘That of parricide.' The youth shuddered with horror, less at the
words than at the expression that accompanied them; and, after
looking at his father for some time in a posture of tremulous and
supplicating inquiry, he burst into tears. The father seized the
moment. He grasped the arms of his son, ‘My child, I gave you life,
and you may repay the gift – my life is in your power. You think me
a Catholic – I have brought you up as one for the preservation of our
mutual lives, in a country where the confession of the true faith
would infallibly cost both. I am one of that unhappy race every
where stigmatized and spoken against,298 yet on whose industry and
talent the ungrateful country that anathematizes us, depends for half
the sources of its national prosperity. I am a Jew, ‘an Israelite,' one
of those to whom, even by the confession of a Christian apostle,
‘pertain the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the
giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose
are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh –' Here he
paused, not willing to go on with a quotation that would have
contradicted his sentiments.299 He added, ‘The Messias will come,
whether suffering or triumphant.300 I am a Jew. I called you at the
hour of your birth by the name of Manasseh-ben-Solomon. I called
on you by that name, which I felt had clung to the bottom of my
heart from that hour, and which, echoing from its abyss, I almost
hoped you would have recognized. It was a dream, but will you not,
my beloved child, realize that dream? Will you not? – will you not?
The God of your fathers is waiting to embrace you – and your father
is at your feet, imploring you to follow the faith of your father
Abraham, the prophet Moses, and all the holy prophets who are
with God, and who look down on this moment of your soul's
vacillation between the abominable idolatries of those who not only
adore the Son of the carpenter, but even impiously compel you to
fall down before the image of the woman his mother, and adore her
by the blasphemous name of Mother of God, – and the pure voice of
those who call on you to worship the God of your fathers, the God
of ages, the eternal God of heaven and earth, without son or mother,
without child or descendant, (as impiously presumed in their
blasphemous creed), without even worshipper, save those who, like
me, sacrifice their hearts to him in solitude, at the risk of those
hearts being PIERCED BY THEIR OWN CHILDREN.'

‘At these words, the young man, overcome by all he saw and
heard, and quite unprepared for this sudden transition from
Catholicism to Judaism, burst into tears. The father seized the
moment, ‘My child, you are now to profess yourself the slave of
these idolaters, who are cursed in the law of Moses, and by the
commandment of God, – or to enrol yourself among the faithful,
whose rest shall be in the bosom of Abraham, and who, reposing
there, shall see the unbelieving crawling over the burning ashes of
hell, and supplicate you in vain for a drop of water, according to the
legends of their own prophet. And does not such a picture excite
your pride to deny them a drop?' – ‘I would not deny them a drop,'
sobbed the youth, ‘I would give them these tears.' – ‘Reserve them
for your father's grave,' added the Jew, ‘for to the grave you have
doomed me. – I have lived, sparing, watching, temporizing, with
these accursed idolaters, for you. And now – and now you reject a
God who is alone able to save, and a father kneeling to implore you
to accept that salvation.' – ‘No, I do not,' said the bewildered youth.
‘What, then, do you determine? – I am at your feet to know your
resolution. Behold, the mysterious instruments of your initiation are
ready. There is the uncorrupted book of Moses, the prophet of God,
as these idolaters themselves confess. There are all the preparations
for the year of expiation – determine whether those rites shall now
dedicate you to the true God, or seize your father, (who has put his
life into your hands), and drag him by the throat into the prisons of
the Inquisition. You may – you can – will you?'

‘In prostrate and tremulous agony, the father held up his locked
hands to his child. I seized the moment – despair had made me
reckless. I understood not a word of what was said, except the
reference to the Inquisition. I seized on that last word – I grasped,
in my despair, at the heart of father and child. I rushed from behind
the curtain, and exclaiming, ‘if he does not betray you to the
Inquisition. I will.' I fell at his feet. This mixture of defiance and
prostration, my squalid figure, my inquisitorial habit, and my
bursting on this secret and solemn interview, struck the Jew with a
horror he vainly gasped to express, till, rising from my knees, on
which I had fallen from my weakness, I added, ‘Yes, I will betray
you to the Inquisition, unless you instantly promise to shelter me
from it.' The Jew glanced at my dress, perceived his danger and
mine, and, with a physical presence of mind unparalleled, except in
a man under strong impressions of mental excitation and personal
danger, bustled about to remove every trace of the expiatory
sacrifice, and of my inquisitorial costume, in a moment. In the same
breath he called aloud for Rebekah, to remove the vessels from the
table; bid Antonio quit the apartment, and hastened to clothe me in
some dress that he had snatched from a wardrobe collected from
centuries; while he tore off my inquisitorial dress with a violence
that left me actually naked, and the habit in rags.

‘There was something at once fearful and ludicrous in the scene
that followed. Rebekah, an old Jewish woman, came at his call; but,
seeing a third person, retreated in terror, while her master, in his
confusion, called her in vain by her Christian name of Maria.
Obliged to remove the table alone, he overthrew it, and broke the
leg of the unfortunate animal fastened to it, who, not to be without
his share in the tumult, uttered the most shrill and intolerable
screams, while the Jew, snatching up the sacrificial knife, repeated
eagerly, ‘Statim mactat gallum,'301 and put the wretched bird out of
its pain; then, trembling at this open avowal of his Judaism, he sat
down amid the ruins of the over thrown table, the fragments of the
broken vessels, and the remains of the martyred cock. He gazed at
me with a look of stupified and ludicrous inanity, and demanded in
delirious tones, what ‘my lords the Inquisitors had pleased to visit
his humble but highly-honoured mansion for?' I was scarce less
deranged than he was; and, through we both spoke the same
language, and were forced by circumstances into the same strange
and desperate confidence with each other, we really needed, for the
first half-hour, a rational interpreter of our exclamations, starts of
fear, and bursts of disclosure. At last our mutual terror acted
honestly between us, and we understood each other. The end of
the matter was, that, in less than an hour, I felt myself clad in a
comfortable garment, seated at a table amply spread, watched over
by my involuntary host, and watching him in turn with red wolfish
eyes, which glanced from his board to his person, as if I could, at a
moment's hint of danger from his treachery, have changed my meal,
and feasted on his life-blood. No such danger occurred, – my host
was more afraid of me than I had reason to be of him, and for many
causes. He was a Jew innate, an impostor, – a wretch, who, drawing
sustenance from the bosom of our holy mother the church, had
turned her nutriment to poison, and attempted to infuse that poison
into the lips of his son. I was but a fugitive from the Inquisition, –
a prisoner, who had a kind of instinctive and very venial dislike to
giving the Inquisitors the trouble of lighting the faggots for me,
which would be much better employed in consuming the adherent
to the law of Moses. In fact, impartiality considered, there was every
thing in my favour, and the Jew just acted as if he felt so, – but all
this I ascribed to his terrors of the Inquisition.

‘That night I slept, – I know not how or where. I had wild dreams
before I slept, if I did sleep; and after, – such visions, – such things,
passed in dread and stern reality before me. I have often in my
memory searched for the traces of the first night I passed under the
roof of the Jew, but can find nothing, – nothing except a conviction
of my utter insanity. It might not have been so, – I know not how it
was. I remember his lighting me up a narrow stair, and my asking
him, was he lighting me down the steps of the dungeons of the
Inquisition? – he throwing open a door, and my asking him, was it
the door of the torture-room? – his attempting to undress me, and
my exclaiming, ‘Do not bind me too tight, – I know I must suffer,
but be merciful;' – his throwing me on the bed, while I shrieked,
‘Well, you have bound me on the rack, then? – strain it hard, that I
may forget myself the sooner; but let your surgeon not be near to
watch my pulse, – let it cease to throb, and let me cease to suffer.' I
remember no more for many days, though I have struggled to do so,
and caught from time to time glimpses of thoughts better lost. Oh,
Sir, there are some criminals of the imagination, whom if we could
plunge into the oubliettes 302 of its magnificent but lightly-based
fabric, its lord would reign more happy.
*
‘Many days elapsed, indeed, before the Jew began to feel his
immunity somewhat dearly purchased, by the additional
maintenance of a troublesome, and, I fear, a deranged inmate. He
took the first opportunity that the recovery of my intellect offered,
of hinting this to me, and inquired mildly what I purposed to do,
and where I meant to go. This question for the first time opened to
my view that range of hopeless and interminable desolation that lay
before me, – the Inquisition had laid waste the whole track of life,
as with fire and sword. I had not a spot to stand on, a meal to earn,
a hand to grasp, a voice to greet, a roof to crouch under, in the
whole realm of Spain.

‘You are not to learn, Sir, that the power of the Inquisition, like
that of death, separates you, by its single touch, from all mortal
relations. From the momentits grasp has seized you, all human
hands unlock their hold of yours, – you have no longer father,
mother, sister, or child. The most devoted and affectionate of all
those relatives, who, in the natural intercourse of human life, would
have laid their hands under your feet to procure you a smoother
passage over its roughnesses, would be the first to grasp the faggot
that was to reduce you to ashes, if the Inquisition were to demand
the sacrifice. I knew all this; and I felt, besides, that, had I never
been a prisoner in the Inquisition, I was an isolated being, rejected
by father and mother, – the involuntary murderer of my brother, the
only being on earth who loved me, or whom I could love or profit
by, – that being who seemed to flash across my brief human
existence, to illuminate and to blast. The bolt had perished with the
victim. In Spain it was impossible for me to live without detection,
unless I plunged myself into an imprisonment as profound and
hopeless as that of the Inquisition. And, if a miracle were wrought
to convey me out of Spain, ignorant as I was of the language, the
habits, and the modes of obtaining subsistence, in that or any other
country, how could I support myself even for a day. Absolute famine
stared me in the face, and a sense of degradation accompanying my
consciousness of my own utter and desolate helplessness, was the
keenest shaft in the quiver, whose contents were lodged in my
heart. My consequence was actually lessened in my own eyes, by
ceasing to become the victim of persecution, by which I had suf-
fered so long. While people think it worth their while to torment us,
we are never without some dignity, though painful and imaginary. Even
in the Inquisition I belonged to somebody, – I was watched and
guarded; – now, I was the outcast of the whole earth, and I wept
with equal bitterness and depression at the hopeless vastness of the
desert I had to traverse.

‘The Jew, not at all disturbed by these feelings, went daily out for
intelligence, and returned one evening in such raptures, that I could
easily discover he had ascertained his own safety at least, if not
mine. He informed me that the current report in Madrid was, that I
had perished in the fall of the burning ruins on the night of the fire.
He added, that this report had received additional currency and
strength from the fact, that the bodies of those who had perished
by the fall of the arch, were, when discovered, so defaced by fire,
and so crushed by the massive fragments, as to be utterly
undistinguishable;– their remains had been collected, however, and
mine were supposed to be among the number. A mass had been
performed for them, and their cinders, occupying but a single coffin,*
were interred in the vaults of the Dominican church, while some of
the first families of Spain, in the deepest mourning, and their faces
veiled, testified their grief in silence for those whom they would
have shuddered to acknowledge their mortal relationship to, had
they been still living. Certainly a lump of cinders was no longer an
object even of religious hostility. My mother, he added, was among
the number of mourners, but with a veil so long and thick, and
attendance so few, that it would have been impossible to have
known the Duchess di Monçada, but for the whisper that her
appearance there had been enjoined for penance. He added, what
gave me more perfect satisfaction, that the holy office was very glad
to accredit the story of my death; they wished me to be believed
dead, and what the Inquisition wishes to be believed, is rarely
denied belief in Madrid. This signing my certificate of death, was to
me the best security for life. In the communicativeness of his joy,
which had expanded his heart, if not his hospitality, the Jew, as I
swallowed my bread and water, (for my stomach still loathed all
animal food), informed me that there was a procession to take place
that evening, the most solemn and superb ever witnessed in Madrid.
The holy office was to appear in all the pomp and plenitude of its
glory, accompanied by the standards of St Dominic and the cross,
while all the ecclesiastical orders in Madrid were to attend with
their appropriate insignia, invested by a strong military guard,
(which, for some reason or other, was judged necessary or proper),
and, attended by the whole populace of Madrid, was to proceed to
the principal church to humiliate themselves for the recent calamity
they had undergone, and implore the saints to be more personally
active in the event of a future conflagration.

‘The evening came on – the Jew left me; and, under an impres-
sion at once unaccountable and irresistible, I ascended to the
highest apartment in his house, and, with a beating heart, listened
for the toll of the bells that was to announce the commencement of
the ceremony. I had not long to wait. At the close of twilight, every
steeple in the city was vibrating with the tolls of their well–plied
bells. I was in an upper room of the house. There was but one
window; but, hiding myself behind the blind, which I withdrew
from time to time, I had a full view of the spectacle. The house of
the Jew looked out on an open space, through which the procession
was to pass, and which was already so filled, that I wondered how
the procession could ever make its way through such a wedged and
impenetrable mass. At last, I could distinguish a motion like that of
a distant power, giving a kind of indefinite impulse to the vast body
that rolled and blackened beneath me, like the ocean under the first
and far – felt agitations of the storm.

‘The crowd rocked and reeled, but did not seem to give way an
inch. The procession commenced. I could see it approach, marked as
it was by the crucifix, banner, and taper – (for they had reserved the
procession till a late hour, to give it the imposing effect of torch –
light) and I saw the multitude at a vast distance give way at once.
Then came on the stream of the procession, rushing, like a
magnificent river, between two banks of human bodies, who kept as
regular and strict distance, as if they had been ramparts of stone, –
the banners, and crucifixes, and tapers, appearing like the crests of
foam on advancing billows, sometimes rising, sometimes sinking. At
last they came on, and the whole grandeur of the procession burst
on my view, and nothing was ever more imposing, or more mag-
nificent. The habits of the ecclesiastics, the glare of the torches
struggling with the dying twilight, and seeming to say to heaven,
We have a sun though yours is set; – the solemn and resolute look of
the whole party, who trod as if their march were on the bodies of
kings, and looked as if they would have said, What is the sceptre to
the cross? – the black crucifix itself, trembling in the rear, attended
by the banner of St Dominick, with its awful inscription. – It was a
sight to convert all hearts, and I exulted I was a Catholic. Suddenly
a tumult seemed to arise among the crowd – I knew not from what
it could arise – all seemed so pleased and so elated.

‘I drew away the blind, and saw, by torch-light, among a crowd
of officials who clustered round the standard of St Dominick, the
figure of my companion. His story was well known. At first a faint
hiss was heard, then a wild and smothered howl. Then I heard
voices among the crowd repeat, in audible sounds, What is this for?
Why do they ask why the Inquisition has been half-burned? – why
the virgin has withdrawn her protection? – why the saints turn away
their faces from us? – when a parricide marches among the officials
of the Inquisition. Are the hands that have cut a father's throat fit to
support the banner of the cross?' These were the words but of a few
at first, but the whisper spread rapidly among the crowd; and fierce
looks were darted, and hands were clenched and raised, and some
stooped to the earth for stones. The procession went on, however,
and every one knelt to the crucifixes as they advanced, held aloft
by the priests. But the murmurs increased too, and the words,
‘parricide, profanation and victim,' resounded on every side, even
from those who knelt in the mire as the cross passed by. The
murmur increased – it could no longer be mistaken for that of
adoration. The foremost priests paused in terror ill concealed – and
this seemed the signal for the terrible scene that was about to
follow. An officer belonging to the guard at this time ventured to
intimate to the chief Inquisitor the danger that might be
apprehended, but was dismissed with the short and sullen answer,
‘Move on – the servants of Christ have nothing to fear.' The
procession attempted to proceed, but their progress was obstructed
by the multitude, who now seemed bent on some deadly purpose. A
few stones were thrown; but the moment the priests raised their
crucifixes, the multitude were on their knees again, still, however,
holding the stones in their hands. The military officers again
addressed the chief Inquisitor, and intreated his permission to
disperse the crowd. They received the same dull and stern answer,
‘The cross is sufficient for the protection of its servants – whatever
fears you may feel, I feel none.' Incensed at the reply, a young
officer sprung on his horse, which he had quitted from respect while
addressing the Suprema,303 and was in a moment levelled by the
blow of a stone that fractured his skull. He turned his blood –
swimming eyes on the Inquisitor, and died. The multitude raised a
wild shout, and pressed closer. Their intentions were now too plain.
They pressed close on that part of the procession among which their
victim was placed. Again, and in the most urgent terms, the officers
implored leave to disperse the crowd, or at least cover the retreat of
the obnoxious object to some neighbouring church, or even to the
walls of the Inquisition. And the wretched man himself, with loud
outcries, (as he saw the danger thickening around him), joined in
their petition. The Suprema, though looking pale, bated not a jot of
his pride. ‘These are my arms!' he exclaimed, pointing to the
crucifixes, ‘and their inscription is sv-iovzw-wica.304 I forbid a sword
to be drawn, or a musket to be levelled. On, in the name of God.'
And on they attempted to move, but the pressure now rendered it
impossible. The multitude, unrepressed by the military, became
ungovernable; the crosses reeled and rocked like standards in a
battle; the ecclesiastics, in confusion and terror, pressed on each
other. Amid that vast mass, every particle of which seemed in
motion, there was but one emphatic and discriminate movement –
that which bore a certain part of the crowd strait on to the spot
where their victim, though inclosed and inwrapt by all that is
formidable in earthly, and all that is awful in spiritual power –
sheltered by the crucifix and the sword – stood trembling to the
bottom of his soul. The Suprema saw his error too late, and now
called loudly on the military to advance, and disperse the crowd by
any means. They attempted to obey him; but by this time they were
mingled among the crowd themselves. All order had ceased; and
besides, there appeared a kind of indisposition to this service, from
the very first, among the military. They attempted to charge,
however; but, entangled as they were among the crowd, who clung
round their horses hoofs, it was impossible for them even to form,
and the first shower of stones threw them into total confusion. The
danger increased every moment, for one spirit now seemed to
animate the whole multitude. What had been the stifled growl of a
few, was now the audible yell of all – ‘Give him to us – we must
have him;' and they tossed and roared like a thousand waves
assailing a wreck. As the military retreated, a hundred priests
instanly closed round the unhappy man, and with generous despair
exposed themselves to the fury of the multitude. While the Suprema,
hastening to the dreadful spot, stood in the front of the priests, with
the cross uplifted, – his face was like that of the dead, but his eye
had not lost a single flash of its fire, nor his voice a stone of its
pride. It was in vain; the multitude proceeded calmly, and even
respectfully, (when not resisted), to remove all that obstructed their
progress; in doing so, they took every care of the persons of priests
whom they were compelled to remove, repeatedly asking their
pardon for the violence they were guilty of. And this tranquillity of
resolved vengeance was the most direful indication of its never
desisting till its purpose was accomplished. The last ring was broken
– the last resister overcome. Amid yells like those of a thousand
tigers, the victim was seized and dragged forth, grasping in both
hands fragments of the robes of those he had clung to in vain, and
holding them up in the impotence of despair.

‘The cry was hushed for a moment, as they felt him in their
talons, and gazed on him with thirsty eyes. Then it was renewed,
and the work of blood began. They dashed him to the earth – tore
him up again – flung him into the air – tossed him from hand to
hand, as a bull gores the howling mastiff with horns right and left.
Bloody, defaced, blackened with earth, and battered with stones, he
struggled and roared among them, till a loud cry announced the
hope of a termination to a scene alike horrible to humanity, and
disgraceful to civilization. The military, strongly reinforced, came
galloping on, and all the ecclesiastics, with torn habits, and broken
crucifixes, following fast in the rear, – all eager in the cause of
human nature – all on fire to prevent this base and barbarous
disgrace to the name of Christianity and of human nature.
‘Alas! this interference only hastened the horrible catastrophe.
There was but a shorter space for the multitude to work their
furious will. I saw, I felt, but I cannot describe, the last moments of
this horrible scene. Dragged from the mud and stones, they dashed a
mangled lump of flesh right against the door of the house where I
was. With his tongue hanging from his lacerated mouth, like that of
a baited bull; with one eye torn from the socket, and dangling on his
bloody cheek; with a fracture in every limb, and a wound for every
pore, he still howled for ‘life – life – life – mercy!' till a stone, aimed
by some pitying hand, struck him down. He fell, trodden in one
moment into sanguine and discoloured mud by a thousand feet. The
cavalry came on, charging with fury. The crowd, saturated with
cruelty and blood, gave way in grim silence. But they had not left a
joint of his little finger – a hair of his head – a slip of his skin. Had
Spain mortgaged all her reliques from Madrid to Monserrat, from
the Pyrennees to Gibraltar, she could not have recovered the paring
of a nail to canonize. The officer who headed the troop dashed his
horse's hoofs into a bloody formless mass, and demanded, Where
was the victim?' He was answered, ‘Beneath your horse's feet,'305
and they departed.

*

‘It is a fact, Sir, that while witnessing this horrible execution, I felt
all the effects vulgarly ascribed to fascination. I shuddered at the
first movement – the dull and deep whisper among the crowd. I
shrieked involuntarily when the first decisive movements began
among them; but when at last the human shapeless carrion was
dashed against the door, I echoed the wild shouts of the multitude
with a kind of savage instinct. I bounded – I clasped my hands for a
moment – then I echoed the screams of the thing that seemed no
longer to live, but still could scream; and I screamed aloud and
wildly for life – life – and mercy! One face was turned towards me
as I shrieked in unconscious tones. The glance, fixed on me for a
moment, was in a moment withdrawn. The flash of the well-known
eyes made no impression on me then. My existence was so purely
mechanical, that, without the least consciousness of my own danger,
(scarce less than that of the victim, had I been detected), I remained
uttering shout for shout, and scream for scream – offering worlds in
imagination to be able to remove from the window, yet feeling as if
every shriek I uttered was as a nail that fastened me to it – dropping
my eye-lids, and feeling as if a hand held them open, or cut them
away – forcing me to gaze on all that passed below, like Regulus,
with his lids cut off, compelled to gaze on the sun that withered up
his eye-balls306 – till sense, and sight, and soul, failed me, and I fell
grasping by the bars of the window, and mimicking, in my horrid
trance, the shouts of the multitude, and the yell of the devoted.307
I actually for a moment believed myself the object of their cruelty.
The drama of terror has the irresistible power of converting its
audience into its victims.

‘The Jew had kept apart from the tumult of the night. He had, I
suppose, been saying within himself, in the language of your
admirable poet,

‘Oh, Father Abraham, what these Christians are!'308

But when he returned at a late hour, he was struck with horror at
the state in which he found me. I was delirious, – raving, and all he
could say or do to soothe me, was in vain. My imagination had been
fearfully impressed, and the consternation of the poor Jew was, I
have been told, equally ludicrous and dismal. In his terror, he forgot
all the technical formality of the Christian names by which he had
uniformly signalized his household, since his residence in Madrid at
least. He called aloud on Manasseh-ben-Solomon his son, and
Rebekah his maid, to assist in holding me. ‘Oh, Father Abraham, my
ruin is certain, this maniac will discover all, and Manasseh-ben-
Solomon, my son, will die uncircumcised.'

‘These words operating on my delirium, I started up, and, grasp-
ing the Jew by the throat, arraigned him as a prisoner of the
Inquisition. The terrified wretch, falling on his knees, vociferated,
‘My cock, – my cock, – my cock! oh! I am undone!' Then, grasping
my knees, ‘I am no Jew, – my son, Manasseh-ben-Solomon, is a
Christian; you will not betray him, you will not betray me, –
me who have saved your life. Manasseh, – I mean Antonio, –
Rebekah, – no, Maria, help me to hold him. Oh God of Abraham,
my cock, and my sacrifice of expiation, and this maniac to
burst on the recesses of our privacy, to tear open the veil
of the tabernacle!' – ‘Shut the tabernacle,' said Rebekah,
the old domestic whom I have before mentioned; ‘yea, shut the
tabernacle, and close up the veils thereof, for behold there
be men knocking at the door, – men who are children of Belial,309
and they knock with staff and stone; and, verily, they are about to
break in the door, and demolish the carved work there of with axes
and hammers.' – ‘Thou liest,' said the Jew, in much perturbation:
‘there is no carved work thereabout, nor dare they break it down
with axes and hammers; peradventure it is but an assault of the
children of Belial, in their rioting and drunkenness. I pray thee,
Rebekah, to watch the door, and keep off the sons of Belial, even
the sons of the mighty of the sinful city – the city of Madrid,
while I remove this blaspheming carrion, who struggleth with me, –
yea, struggleth mightily,' (and struggle I did mightily). But, as
I struggled, the knocks at the door became louder and stronger; and,
as I was carried off, the Jew continued to repeat, ‘Set thy face
against them, Rebekah; yea, set thy face like a flint.' As he retired,
Rebekah exclaimed, ‘Behold I have set my back against them, for my
face now availeth not. My back is that which I will oppose, and ver-
ily I shall prevail.' – ‘I pray thee, Rebekah,' cried the Jew,
‘oppose thy FACE unto them, and verily that shall prevail. Try not
the adversary with thy back, but oppose thy face unto them; and
behold, if they are men, they shall flee, even though they were a
thousand, at the rebuke of one. I pray thee try thy face once more,
Rebekah, while I send this scape – goat into the wilderness. Surely
thy face is enough to drive away those who knocked by night at the
door of that house in Gibeah, in the matter of the wife of the
Benjamite.'310 The knocking all this time increased. ‘Behold my back
is broken,' cried Rebekah, giving up her watch and ward, ‘for, of
a verity, the weapons of the mighty do smite the lintels and door –
posts; and mine arms are not steel, neither are my ribs iron, and
behold I fail, – yea, I fail, and fall backwards into the hands of
the uncircumcised.' And so saying, she fell backwards as the door
gave way, and fell not, as she feared, into the hands of the
uncircumcised, but into those of two of her countrymen, who, it
appeared, had some extraordinary reason for this late visit and
forcible entrance.

‘The Jew, apprized who they were, quitted me, after securing the
door, and sat up the greater part of the night, in earnest con-
versation with his visitors. Whatever was their subject, it left traces
of the most intense anxiety on the countenance of the Jew the
next morning. He went out early, did not return till a late hour, and
then hastened to the room I occupied, and expressed the utmost
delight at finding me sane and composed. Candles were placed on
the table, Rebekah dismissed, the door secured, and the Jew, after
taking many uneasy turns about the narrow apartment, and often
clearing his throat, at length sat down, and ventured to entrust me
with the cause of his perturbation, in which, with the fatal con-
sciousness of the unhappy, I already began to feel I must have a
share. He told me, that though the report of my death, so
universally credited through Madrid, had at first set his mind at
ease, there was now a wild story, which, with all its falsehood and
impossibility, might, in its circulation, menace us with the most
fearful consequences. He asked me, was it possible I could have
been so imprudent as to expose myself to view on the day of that
horrible execution? and when I confessed that I had stood at a
window, and had involuntarily uttered cries that I feared might
have reached some ears, he wrung his hands, and a sweat of
consternation burst out on his pallid features. When he recovered
himself, he told me it was universally believed that my spectre had
appeared on that terrible occasion, – that I had been seen hovering
in the air, to witness the sufferings of the dying wretch, – and that
my voice had been heard summoning him to his eternal doom. He
added, that this story, possessing all the credibility of superstition,
was now repeated by a thousand mouths; and whatever contempt
might be attached to its absurdity, it would infallibly operate as a
hint to the restless vigilance, and unrelaxing industry of the holy
office, and might ultimately lead to my discovery. He therefore was
about to disclose to me a secret, the knowledge of which would
enable me to remain in perfect security even in the centre of
Madrid, until some means might be devised of effecting my escape,
and procuring me the means of subsistence in some Protestant
country, beyond the reach of the Inquisition.

‘As he was about to disclose this secret on which the safety of
both depended, and which I bent in speechless agony to hear, a
knock was heard at the door, very unlike the knocks of the
preceding night. It was single, solemn, peremptory, – and followed
by a demand to open the doors of the house in the name of the most
holy Inquisition. At these terrible words, the wretched Jew flung
himself on his knees, blew out the candles, called on the names of
the twelve patriarchs, and slipped a large rosary on his arm, in less
time than it is possible to conceive any human frame could go
through such a variety of movements. The knock was repeated, –
I stood paralyzed; but the Jew, springing on his feet, raised one
of the boards of the floor in a moment, and, with a motion be-
tween convulsion and instinct, pointed to me to descend. I did
so, and found myself in a moment in darkness and in safety.

‘I had descended but a few steps, on the last of which I stood
trembling, when the officers of the Inquisition entered the room,
and stalked over the very board that concealed me. I could hear
every word that passed. ‘Don Fernan,' said an officer to the Jew,
who re-entered with them, after respectfully opening the door, ‘why
were we not admitted sooner?' – ‘Holy Father,' said the trembling
Jew, ‘my only domestic, Maria, is old and deaf, the youth my son is
in his bed, and I was myself engaged in my devotions.' – ‘It seems
you can perform them in the dark,' said another, pointing to the
candles, which the Jew was re-lighting. – ‘When the eye of God is
on me, most reverend fathers, I am never in darkness.' – ‘The eye of
God is on you,' said the officer, sternly seating himself; ‘and so is
another eye, to which he has deputed the sleepless vigilance and
resistless penetration of his own, – the eye of the holy office. Don
Fernan di Nunez,' the name by which the Jew went, ‘you are not
ignorant of the indulgence extended by the church, to those who
have renounced the errors of that accursed and misbelieving race
from which you are descended, but you must be also aware of its
incessant vigilance being directed towards such individuals, from
the suspicion necessarily attached to their doubtful conversation,
and possible relapse. We know that the black blood of Grenada311
flowed in the tainted veins of your ancestry, and that not more than
four centuries have elapsed, since your forefathers trampled on that
cross before which you are now prostrate. You are an old man, Don
Fernan, but not an old Christian; and, under these circumstances, it
behoves the holy office to have a watchful scrutiny over your
conduct.'

‘The unfortunate Jew, invoking all the saints, protested he would
feel the strictest scrutiny with which the holy office might honour
him, as a ground of obligation and a matter of thanksgiving, –
renouncing at the same time the creed of his race in terms of such
exaggeration and vehemence, as made me tremble for his probable
sincerity in any creed, and his fidelity to me. The officers of the
Inquisition, taking little notice of his protestations, went on to
inform him of the object of their visit. They stated that a wild and
incredible tale of the spectre of a deceased prisoner of the
Inquisition having been seen hovering in the air near his house, had
suggested to the wisdom of the holy office, that the living individual
might be concealed within its walls.

‘I could not see the trepidation of the Jew, but I could feel the
vibration of the boards on which he stood communicated to the
steps that supported me. In a choaked and tremulous voice, he
implored the officers to search every apartment of his house, and to
raze it to the ground, and inter him under its dust, if aught were
found in it which a faithful and orthodox son of the church might
not harbour. ‘That shall doubtless be done,' said the officer, taking
him at his word with the utmost sang froid; ‘but, in the mean time,
suffer me to apprize you, Don Fernan, of the peril you incur, if at
any future time, however remote, it shall be discovered that you
harboured or aided in concealing a prisoner of the Inquisition, and
an enemy of the holy church, – the very first and lightest part of
that penalty will be your dwelling being razed to the ground.' The
Inquisitor raised his voice, and paused with emphatic deliberation
between every clause of the following sentences, measuring as it
were the effect of his blows on the increasing terror of his auditor.
‘You will be conveyed to our prison, under the suspected character
of a relapsed Jew. Your son will be committed to a convent, to
remove him from the pestilential influence of your presence; – and
your whole property shall be confiscated, to the last stone in your
walls, the last garment on your person, and the last denier in your
purse.

‘The poor Jew, who had marked the gradations of his fear by
groans more audible and prolonged at the end of every tremendous
denunciatory clause, at the mention of confiscation so total and
desolating, lost all self – possession, and, ejaculating – ‘Oh Father
Abraham, and all the holy prophets!' – fell, as I conjectured from the
sound, prostrate on the floor. I gave myself up for lost. Exclusive of
his pusillanimity, the words he had uttered were enough to betray
him to the officers of the Inquisition; and, without a moment's
hesitation between the danger of falling into their hands, and
plunging into the darkness of the recess into which I had descended,
I staggered down a few remaining steps, and attempted to feel my
way along a passage, in which they seemed to terminate.



CHAPTER XIII



There sat a spirit in the vault,
In shape, in hue, in lineaments, like life.

SOUTHEY'S THALABA312


'I am convinced, that, had the passage been as long and intricate
as any that ever an antiquarian pursued to discover the tomb of
Cheops in the Pyramids,313 I would have rushed on in the blindness
of my desperation, till famine or exhaustion had compelled me to
pause. But I had no such peril to encounter, – the floor of the
passage was smooth, and the walls were matted, and though I
proceeded in darkness, I proceeded in safety; and provided my
progress removed me far enough from the pursuit or discovery of
the Inquisition, I scarcely cared how it might terminate.

'Amid this temporary magnanimity of despair, this state of mind
which unites the extremes of courage and pusillanimity, I saw a
faint light. Faint it was, but it was distinct, – I saw clearly it
was light. Great God! what a revulsion in my blood and heart, in
all my physical and mental feelings, did this sun of my world of
darkness create! I venture to say, that my speed in approaching
it was in the proportion of one hundred steps to one, compared to
my crawling progress in the preceding darkness. As I approached,
I could discover that the light gleamed through the broad crevices
of a door, which, disjointed by subterranean damps, gave me as full
a view of the apartment within, as if it were opened to me by the
inmate. Through one of these crevices, before which I knelt in a
mixture of exhaustion and curiosity, I could reconnoitre the whole
of the interior.

'It was a large apartment, hung with dark-coloured baize within
four feet of the floor, and this intermediate part was thickly matted,
probably to intercept the subterranean damps. In the centre of the
room stood a table covered with black cloth; it supported an iron
lamp of an antique and singular form, by whose light I had been
directed, and was now enabled to descry furniture that appeared
sufficiently extraordinary. There were, amid maps and globes,
several instruments, of which my ignorance did not permit me then
to know the use, –some, I have since learned, were anatomical;
there was an electrifying machine, and a curious model of a rack in
ivory; there were few books, but several scrolls of parchment,
inscribed with large characters in red and ochre coloured ink; and
around the room were placed four skeletons, not in cases, but in a
kind of upright coffin, that gave their bony emptiness a kind of
ghastly and imperative prominence, as if they were the real and
rightful tenants of that singular apartment. Interspersed between
them were the stuffed figures of animals I knew not then the names
of, – an alligator, – some gigantic bones, which I took for those of
Samson,314 but which turned out to be fragments of those of the
Mammoth, – and antlers, which in my terror I believed to be those
of the devil, but afterwards learned to be those of an Elk. Then I saw
figures smaller, but not less horrible, – human and brute abortions,
in all their states of anomalous and deformed construction, not
preserved in spirits, but standing in the ghastly nakedness of their
white diminutive bones; these I conceived to be the attendant imps
of some infernal ceremony, which the grand wizard, who now burst
on my sight, was to preside over.

'At the end of the table sat an old man, wrapped in a long robe;
his head was covered with a black velvet cap, with a broad border
of furs, his spectacles were of such a size as almost to hide his face,
and he turned over some scrolls of parchment with an anxious and
trembling hand; then seizing a scull that lay on the table, and
grasping it in fingers hardly less bony, and not less yellow, seemed
to apostrophize it in the most earnest manner. All my personal fears
were lost in the thought of my being the involuntary witness of
some infernal orgie. I was still kneeling anrenet the door, when my long
suspended respiration burst forth in a groan, which reached the
figure seated at the table in a moment. Habitual vigilance supplied
all the defects of age on the part of the listener. It was but the
sensation of a moment to feel the door thrown open, my arm seized
by an arm powerful though withered by age, and myself, as I
thought, in the talons of a demon.

'The door was closed and bolted. An awful figure stood over me,
(for I had fallen on the floor), and thundered out, 'Who art thou,
and why art thou here?' I knew not what to answer, and gazed with
a fixed and speechless look on the skeletons and the other furniture
of this terrible vault. 'Hold,' said the voice, 'if thou art indeed
exhausted, and needest refreshment, drink of this cup, and thou
shalt be refreshed as with wine; verily, it shall come into thy bowels
as water, and as oil into thy bones,' – and as he spoke he offered to
me a cup with some liquid in it. I repelled him and his drink, which
I had not a doubt was some magical drug, with horror unutterable;
and losing all other fears in the overwhelming one of becoming a
slave of Satan, and a victim of one of his agents, as I believed this
extraordinary figure, I called on the name of the Saviour and the
saints, and, crossing myself at every sentence, exclaimed, 'No,
tempter, keep your infernal potions for the leprous lips of your
imps, or swallow them yourself. I have but this moment escaped
from the hands of the Inquisition, and a million times rather would I
return and yield myself their victim, than consent to become yours,
– your tender-mercies are the only cruelties I dread. Even in the
prison of the holy office, where the faggots appeared to be lit before
my eyes, and the chain already fastened round my body to bind it to
the stake, I was sustained by a power that enabled me to embrace
objects so terrible to nature, sooner than escape them at the price of
my salvation. The choice was offered me, and I made my election, –
and so would I do were it to be offered a thousand times, though the
last were at the stake, and the fire already kindling.'

Here the Spaniard paused in some agitation. In the enthusiasm of
his narration, he had in some degree disclosed that secret which he
had declared was incommunicable, except in confessing to a priest.
Melmoth, who, from the narrative of Stanton, had been prepared to
suspect something of this, did not think prudent to press him for a
farther disclosure, and waited in silence till his emotion had
subsided, without remark or question. Monçada at length resumed
his narrative.

'While I was speaking, the old man viewed me with a look of
calm surprise, that made me ashamed of my fears, even before I had
ceased to utter them. 'What!' said he at length, fixing apparently
on some expressions that struck him, 'art thou escaped from the arm
that dealeth its blow in darkness, even the arm of the Inquisition?
Art thou that Nazarene315 youth who sought refuge in the house of
our brother Solomon, the son of Hilkiah, who is called Fernan Nunez
by the idolaters in this land of his captivity? Verily I trusted thou
shouldst this night have eat of my bread, and drank of my cup, and
been unto me as a scribe, for our brother Solomon testified con-
cerning thee, saying, His pen is even as the pen of a ready
writer.'

'I gazed at him in astonishment. Some vague recollections of
Solomon's being about to disclose some safe and secret retreat
wandering over my mind; and, while trembling at the singular
apartment in which we were seated, and the employment in which
he seemed engaged, I yet felt a hope hover about my heart, which
his knowledge of my situation appeared to justify. 'Sit down,' said
he, observing with compassion that I was sinking alike under the
exhaustion of fatigue and the distraction of terror; 'sit down, and
eat a morsel of bread, and drink a cup of wine, and comfort thine
heart, for thou seemest to be as one who hath escaped from the
snare of the fowler, and from the dart of the hunter.' I obeyed him
involuntarily. I needed the refreshment he offered, and was about to
partake of it, when an irresistible feeling of repugnance and horror
overcame me; and, as I thrust away the food he offered me, I point-
ed to the objects around me as the cause of my reluctance. He
looked round for a moment, as doubting whether objects so familiar
to him, could be repulsive to a stranger, and then shaking his head,
'Thou art a fool,' said he, 'but thou art a Nazarene, and I pity thee;
verily, those who had the teaching of thy youth, not only have shut
the book of knowledge to thee, but have forgot to open it for
themselves. Were not thy masters, the Jesuits, masters also of the
healing art, and art thou not acquainted with the sight of its
ordinary implements? Eat, I pray thee, and be satisfied that none of
these will hurt thee. Yonder dead bones cannot weigh out or
withhold thy food; nor can they bind thy joints, or strain them with
iron, or rend them with steel, as would the living arms that were
stretched forth to seize thee as their prey. And, as the Lord of hosts
liveth, their prey wouldst thou have been, and a prey unto their iron
and steel, were it not for the shelter of the roof of Adonijah tonight.'

'I took some of the food he offered me, crossing myself at every
mouthful, and drank the wine, which the feverish thirst of terror
and anxiety made me swallow like water, but not without an
internal prayer that it might not be converted into some deleterious
and diabolical poison. The Jew Adonijah316 observed me with
increasing compassion and contempt. – 'What,' said he, 'appals
thee? Were I possessed of the powers the superstition of thy sect
ascribes to me, might I not make thee a banquet for fiends, instead
of offering thee food? Might I not bring from the caverns of the
earth the voices of those that 'peep and mutter,'317 instead of speaking
unto thee with the voice of man? Thou art in my power, yet have I
no power or will to hurt thee. And dost thou, who art escaped from
the dungeons of the Inquisition, look as one that feareth on the
things that thou seest around thee, the furniture of the cell of a
secluded leach?318 Within this apartment I have passed the term of
sixty years, and dost thou shudder to visit it for a moment? These be
the skeletons of bodies, but in the den thou hast escaped from were
the skeletons of perished souls. Here are relics of the wrecks or the
caprices of nature, but thou art come from where the cruelty of
man, permanent and persevering, unrelenting and unmitigated, hath
never failed to leave the proofs of its power in abortive intellects,
crippled frames, distorted creeds, and ossified hearts. Moreover,
there are around thee parchments and charts scrawled as it were
with the blood of man, but, were it even so, could a thousand such
volumes cause such terror to the human eye, as a page of the history
of thy prison, written as it is in blood, drawn, not from the frozen
veins of the dead, but from the bursting hearts of the living. Eat,
Nazarene, there is no poison in thy food, – drink, there is no drug in
thy cup. Darest thou promise thyself that in the prison of the
Inquisition, or even in the cells of the Jesuits? Eat and drink without
fear in the vault, even in the vault of Adonijah the Jew. If thou
daredst to have done so in the dwellings of the Nazarenes, I had
never beheld thee here. Hast thou fed?' he added, and I bowed.
'Hast thou drank of the cup I gave thee?' my torturing thirst
returned, and I gave him back the cup. He smiled, but the smile of
age, – the smile of lips over which more than an hundred years have
passed, has an expression more repulsive and hideous than can be
deemed; it is never the smile of pleasure, – it is a frown of the mouth,
and I shrunk before its grim wrinkles, as the Jew Adonijah added, 'If
thou hast eat and drank, it is time for thee to rest. Come to thy bed,
it may be harder than they have given thee in thy prison, but behold
it shall be safer. Come and rest thee there, it may be that the
adversary and the enemy shall not there find thee out.'

'I followed him through passages so devious and intricate, that,
bewildered as I was with the events of the night, they forced on
my memory the well-known fact, that in Madrid the Jews have sub-
terranean passages to each other's habitations, which have hith-
erto baffled all the industry of the Inquisition. I slept that night,
or rather day, (for the sun had risen), on a pallet laid on the floor
of a room, small, lofty, and matted half-way up the walls. One narrow
and grated window admitted the light of the sun, that arose after
that eventful night; and amid the sweet sound of bells, and the still
sweeter of human life, awake and in motion around me, I sunk into
a slumber that was unbroken even by a dream, till the day was
closing; or, in the language of Adonijah, 'till the shadows of the
evening were upon the face of all the earth.'319



CHAPTER XIV


Unde iratos deos timent, qui sic propitios merentur?320

SENECA


'When I awoke, he was standing by my pallet. 'Arise,' said he, 'eat
and drink, that thy strength may return unto thee.' He pointed to a
small table as he spoke, which was covered with food of the plainest
kind, and dressed with the utmost simplicity. Yet he seemed to think
an apology was necessary for the indulgence of this temperate fare.
'I myself,' said he, 'eat not the flesh of any animal, save on the new
moons and the feasts, yet the days of the years of my life have been
one hundred and seven; sixty of which have been passed in the
chamber where thou sawest me. Rarely do I ascend to the upper
chamber of this house, save on occasions like this, or peradventure
to pray, with my window open towards the east, for the turning
away wrath from Jacob, and the turning again the captivity of Zion.
Well saith the ethnic leach,

　　　　'Aer exclusus confert ad longevitatem.'321

Such hath been my life, as I tell thee. The light of heaven hath been
hidden from mine eyes, and the voice of man is as the voice of a
stranger in mine ears, save those of some of mine own nation, who
weep for the affliction of Israel; yet the silver cord is not loosed, nor
the golden bowl broken; and though mine eye be waxing dim, my
natural force is not abated.'322 (As he spoke, my eyes hung in
reverence on the hoary majesty of his patriarchal figure, and I felt as
if I beheld an embodied representation of the old law in all its stern
simplicity – the unbending grandeur, and primeval antiquity.) 'Hast
thou eaten, and art full? Arise, then, and follow me.'

'We descended to the vault, where I found the lamp was always
burning. And Adonijah, pointing to the parchments that lay on the
table, said, 'This is the matter wherein I need thy help; the
collection and transcription where of hath been the labour of more
than half a life, prolonged beyond the bounds allotted to mortality;
but,' pointing to his sunk and blood-shot eyes, 'those that look out
of the windows begin to be darkened, and I feel that I need help
from the quick hand and clear eye of youth. Wherefore, it being
certified unto me by our brother, that thou wert a youth who
couldst handle the pen of a scribe, and, moreover, wast in need of a
city of refuge, and a strong wall of defence, against the laying-in-
wait of thy brethren round about thee, I was willing that thou
shouldst come under my roof, and eat of such things as I set before
thee, and such as thy soul desireth, excepting only the abominable
things forbidden in the law of the prophet; and shouldst, moreover,
receive wages as an hired servant.'

'You will perhaps smile, Sir; but even in my wretched situation, I
felt a slight but painful flush tinge my cheek, at the thought of a
Christian, and a peer of Spain, becoming the amanuensis of a Jew
for hire. Adonijah continued, 'Then, when my task is completed,
then will I be gathered to my fathers, trusting surely in the Hope of
Israel, that mine eyes shall 'behold the King in his beauty, – they
shall see the land that is very far off.'323 And peradventure,' he added,
in a voice that grief rendered solemn, mellow, and tremulous,
'peradventure there shall I meet in bliss, those with whom I parted
in woe – even thou, Zachariah, the son of my loins, and thou, Leah,
the wife of my bosom;' apostrophizing two of the silent skeletons
that stood near. 'And in the presence of the God of our fathers, the
redeemed of Zion shall meet – and meet as those who are to part no
more for ever and ever.' At these words, he closed his eyes, lifted up
his hands, and appeared to be absorbed in mental prayer. Grief had
perhaps subdued my prejudices – it had certainly softened my heart
– and at this moment I half-believed that a Jew might find entrance
and adoption amid the family and fold of the blessed. This
sentiment operated on my human sympathies, and I inquired, with
unfeigned anxiety, after the fate of Solomon the Jew, whose
misfortune in harbouring me had exposed him to the visit of the
Inquisitors. 'Be at peace,' said Adonijah, waving his bony and
wrinkled hand, as if dismissing a subject below his present feelings,
'our brother Solomon is in no peril of death; neither shall his goods
be taken for a spoil. If our adversaries are mighty in power, so are
we mighty also to deal with them by our wealth or our wisdom. Thy
flight they never can trace, thy existence on the face of the earth
shall also be unknown to them, so thou wilt hearken to me, and
heed my words.'

'I could not speak, but my expression of mute and imploring
anxiety spoke for me. 'Thou didst use words,' said Adonijah, 'last
night, whereof, though I remember not all the purport, the sound
yet maketh mine ears to tingle; even mine, which have not vibrated
to such sounds for four times the space of thy youthful years. Thou
saidst thou wert beset by a power324 that tempted thee to renounce
the Most High, whom Jew and Christian alike profess to worship;
and that thou didst declare, that were the fires kindled around thee,
thou wouldst spit at the tempter, and trample on the offer, though
thy foot pressed the coal which the sons of Dominick325 were lighting
beneath its naked sole.' – 'I did,' I cried, 'I did – and I would – So
help me God in mine extremity.'

'Adonijah paused for a moment, as if considering whether this
were a burst of passion, or a proof of mental energy. He seemed at
last inclined to believe it the latter, though all men of far-advanced
age are apt to distrust any marks of emotion as a demonstration
rather of weakness than of sincerity. 'Then,' said he, after a long and
solemn pause, 'then thou shalt know the secret that hath been a
burthen to the soul of Adonijah, even as his hopeless solitude is a
burthen to the soul of him who traverseth the desert, none
accompanying him with step, or cheering him with voice. From my
youth upward, even until now, have I laboured, and behold the time
of my deliverance is at hand; yea, and shall be accomplished
speedily.

'In the days of my childhood, a rumour reached mine ears, even
mine, of a being sent abroad on earth to tempt Jew and Nazarene,
and even the disciples of Mohammed, whose name is accursed in
the mouth of our nation, with offers of deliverance at their utmost
need and extremity, so they would do that which my lips dare not
utter, even though there be no ear to receive it but thine. Thou
shudderest – well, then, thou art sincere, at least, in thy faith of
errors. I listened to the tale, and mine ears received it, even as the
soul of the thirsty drinketh in rivers of water, for my mind was full
of the vain fantasies of the Gentile fables, and I longed, in the
perverseness of my spirit, to see, yea, and to consort with, yea, and
to deal with, the evil one in his strength. Like our fathers in the
wilderness, I despised angel's food, and lusted after forbidden meats,
even the meats of the Egyptian sorcerers. And my presumption was
rebuked as thou seest: – childless, wifeless, friendless, at the last
period of an existence prolonged beyond the bounds of nature, am I
now left, and, save thee alone, without one to record its events. I
will not trouble thee now with the tale of my eventful life, farther
than to tell thee, that the skeletons thou tremblest to behold, were
once clothed in flesh far fairer than thine. They are those of my wife
and child, whose history thou must not now hear – but those of the
two others thou must both hear and relate.' And he pointed to the
two other skeletons opposite, in their upright cases. 'On my return
to my country, even Spain, if a Jew can be said to have a country, I
set myself down on this seat, and, lighted by this lamp, I took in my
hand the pen of a scribe, and vowed by a vow, that this lamp should
not expire, nor this seat be forsaken, nor this vault untenanted, until
that the record is written in a book, and sealed as with the king's
signet. But, behold, I was traced by those who are keen of scent, and
quick of pursuit, even the sons of Dominick. And they seized me,
and laid my feet fast in the bonds; but my writings they could not
read, because they were traced in a character unknown to this
idolatrous people. And behold, after a space they set me free,
finding no cause of offence in me; and they bade me depart, and
trouble them no more. Then vowed I a vow unto the God of Israel,
who had delivered me from their thraldom, that none but he who
could read these characters should ever transcribe them. Moreover, I
prayed, and said, O Lord God of Israel! who knowest that we are the
sheep of thy fold, and our enemies as wolves round about us, and as
lions who roar for their evening prey, grant, that a Nazarene
escaped from their hands, and fleeing unto us, even as a bird chased
from her nest, may put to shame the weapons of the mighty, and
laugh them to scorn. Grant also, Lord God of Jacob, that he may be
exposed to the snare of the enemy, even as those of whom I have
written, and that he may spit at it with his mouth, and spurn at it
with his feet, and trample on the ensnarer, even as they have
trampled; and then shall my soul, even mine, have peace at the last.
Thus I prayed – and my prayer was heard, for behold, thou art here.'

'As I heard these words, a horrid foreboding, like a nightmare of
the heart, hung heavily on me. I looked alternately at the withering
speaker, and the hopeless task. To bear about that horrible secret
inurned in my heart, was not that enough? but to be compelled to
scatter its ashes abroad, and to rake into the dust of others for the
same purpose of unhallowed exposure, revolted me beyond feeling
and utterance. As my eye fell listlessly on the manuscripts, I saw
they contained only the Spanish language written in the Greek
characters – a mode of writing that, I easily conceived, must have
been as unintelligible to the officers of the Inquisition, as the
Hieroglyphics of the Egyptian priests. Their ignorance, sheltered by
their pride, and that still more strongly fortified by the impenetrable
secresy attached to their most minute proceedings, made them
hesitate to entrust to any one the circumstance of their being in
possession of manuscript which they could not decypher. So they
returned the papers to Adonijah, and, in his own language, 'Behold,
he abode in safety.'326 But to me this was a task of horror
unspeakable. I felt myself as an added link to the chain, the end of
which, held by an invisible hand, was drawing me to perdition; and
I was now to become the recorder of my own condemnation.

'As I turned over the leaves with a trembling hand, the towering
form of Adonijah seemed dilated with preternatural emotion. 'And
what dost thou tremble at, child of the dust?' he exclaimed, 'if thou
hast been tempted, so have they – if they are at rest, so shalt thou
be. There is not a pang of soul or body thou hast undergone, or
canst undergo, that they have not suffered before thy birth was
dreamt of. Boy, thy hand trembles over pages it is unworthy to
touch, yet still I must employ thee, for I need thee. Miserable link of
necessity, that binds together minds so uncongenial! I would that
the ocean were my ink, and the rock my page, and mine arm, even
mine, the pen that should write thereon letters that should last like
those on the written mountains for ever and ever – even the mount
of Sinai, and those that still bear the record, 'Israel hath passed the
flood.'327 As he spoke, I again turned over the manuscripts. 'Does thy
hand tremble still?' said Adonijah; 'and dost thou still hesitate to
record the story of those whose destiny a link, wondrous, invisible,
and indissoluble, has bound to thine. Behold, there are those near
thee, who, though they have no longer a tongue, speak to thee with
that eloquence which is stronger than all the eloquence of living
tongues. Behold, there are those around thee, whose mute and
motionless arms of bone plead to thee as no arms of flesh ever
pleaded. Behold, there are those who, being speechless, yet speak –
who, being dead, are yet alive328 – who, though in the abyss of
eternity, are yet around thee, and call on thee, as with a mortal
voice. Hear them! – take the pen in thine hand, and write.' I took
the pen in my hand, but could not write a line. Adonijah, in a
transport of ecstasy, snatching a skeleton from its receptacle, placed
it before me. 'Tell him thy story thyself, peradventure he will
believe thee, and record it.' And supporting the skeleton with one
hand, he pointed with the other, as bleached and bony as that of the
dead, to the manuscript that lay before me.

'It was a night of storms in the world above us; and, far below
the surface of the earth as we were, the murmur of the winds,
sighing through the passages, came on my ear like the voices of the
departed, – like the pleadings of the dead. Involuntarily I fixed my
eye on the manuscript I was to copy, and never withdrew till I had
finished its extraordinary contents.'329


　　　　　　　　　Tale of the Indians


'There is an island in the Indian sea, not many leagues from the
mouth of the Hoogly,330 which, from the peculiarity of its situation
and internal circumstances, long remained unknown to Europeans,
and unvisited by the natives of the contiguous islands, except on
remarkable occasions. It is surrounded by shallows that render the
approach of any vessel of weight impracticable, and fortified by
rocks that threatened danger to the slight canoes of the natives, but
it was rendered still more formidable by the terrors with which
superstition had invested it. There was a tradition that the first
temple to the black goddess Seeva,331 had been erected there; and
her hideous idol, with its collar of human sculls, forked tongues
darting from its twenty serpent mouths, and seated on a matted coil
of adders, had there first received the bloody homage of the
mutilated limbs and immolated infants of her worshippers.

'The temple had been overthrown, and the island half depopulated,
by an earthquake, that agitated all the shores of India. It was
rebuilt, however, by the zeal of the worshippers, who again began
to re-visit the island, when a tufaun332 of fury unparalleled even
in those fierce latitudes, burst over the devoted spot. The pagoda
was burnt to ashes by the lightning; the inhabitants, their dwell-
ings, and their plantations, swept away as with the besom of de-
struction, and not a trace of humanity, cultivation, or life,
remained in the desolate isle. The devotees consulted their im-
agination for the cause of these calamities; and, while seated un-
der the shade of their cocoa-trees they told their long strings of
coloured beads, they ascribed it to the wrath of the goddess Seeva
at the increasing popularity of the worship of Juggernaut.333 They
asserted that her image had been seen ascending amid the blaze of
lightning that consumed her shrine and blasted her worshippers as
they clung to it for protection, and firmly believed she had
withdrawn to some happier isle, where she might enjoy her feast of
flesh, and draught of blood, unmolested by the worship of a rival
deity. So the island remained desolate, and without inhabitant for
years.

'The crews of European vessels, assured by natives that there was
neither animal, or vegetable, or water, to be found on its surface,
forbore to visit; and the Indian of other isles, as he passed it in his
canoe, threw a glance of melancholy fear at its desolation, and flung
something overboard to propitiate the wrath of Seeva.

'The Island, thus left to itself, became vigorously luxuriant, as
some neglected children improve in health and strength, while
pampered darlings the under excessive nurture. Flowers bloomed,
and foliage thickened, without a hand to pluck, a step to trace, or a
lip to taste them, when some fishermen, (who had been driven by a
strong current toward the isle, and worked with oar and sail in vain
to avoid its dreaded shore), after making a thousand prayers to
propitiate Seeva, were compelled to approach within an oar's length
of it; and, on their return in unexpected safety, reported they had
heard sounds so exquisite, that some other goddess, milder than
Seeva, must have fixed on that spot for her residence. The younger
fishermen added to this account, that they had beheld a female
figure of supernatural loveliness, glide and disappear amid the
foliage which now luxuriantly overshadowed the rocks; and, in the
spirit of Indian devotees, they hesitated not to call this delicious
vision an incarnated emanation of Vishnu, in a lovelier form than
ever he had appeared before, – at least far beyond that which he
assumed, when he made one of his avatars in the figure of a tiger.

'The inhabitants of the islands, as superstitious as they were
imaginative, deified the vision of the isles after their manner. The
old devotees, while invoking her, stuck close to the bloody rites of
Seeva and Haree,334 and muttered many a horrid vow over their
beads, which they took care to render effectual by striking sharp
reeds into their arms, and tinging every bead with blood as they
spoke. The young women rowed their light canoes as near as they
dared to the haunted isle, making vows to Camdeo,335 and sending
their paper vessels, lit with wax, and filled with flowers, towards its
coast, where they hoped their darling deity was about to fix his
residence. The young men also, at least those who were in love and
fond of music, rowed close to the island to solicit the god Krishnoo336
to sanctify it by his presence; and not knowing what to offer to the
deity, they sung their wild airs standing high on the prow of the
canoe, and at last threw a figure of wax, with a kind of lyre in its
hand, towards the shore of the desolate isle.

'For many a night these canoes might be seen glancing past each
other over the darkened sea, like shooting stars of the deep, with their
lighted paper lanthorns, and their offerings of flowers and fruits, left
by some trembling hand on the sands, or hung by a bolder one in
baskets of cane on the rocks; and still the simple islanders felt joy
and devotion united in this 'voluntary humility.'337 It was observed,
however, that the worshippers departed with very different
impressions of the object of their adoration. The women all clung to
their oars in breathless admiration of the sweet sounds that issued
from the isle; and when that ceased they departed, murmuring over
in their huts those 'notes angelical,' to which their own language
furnished no appropriate sounds. The men rested long on their oars,
to catch a glimpse of the form which, by the report of the fishermen,
wandered there; and, when disappointed, they rowed home sadly.

'Gradually the isle lost its bad character for terror; and in spite of
some old devotees, who told their blood-discoloured beads, and
talked of Seeva and Haree, and even held burning splinters of wood
to their scorched hands, and stuck sharp pieces of iron, which they
had purchased or stolen from the crews of European vessels, in the
most fleshy and sensitive parts of their bodies, – and, moreover,
talked of suspending themselves from trees with the head
downwards, till they were consumed by insects, or calcined by the
sun, or rendered delirious by their position, – in spite of all this,
which must have been very affecting, the young people went on
their own way, – the girls offering their wreaths to Camdeo, and the
youths invoking Krishnoo, till the devotees, in despair, vowed to
visit this accursed island, which had set every body mad, and find
out how the unknown deity was to be recognized and propitiated;
and whether flowers, and fruits, and love-vows, and the beatings of
young hearts, were to be substituted for the orthodox and legitimate
offering of nails grown into the hands till they appeared through
their backs, and setons338 of ropes inserted into the sides, on which
the religionist danced his dance of agony, till the ropes or his
patience failed. In a word, they were determined to find out what
this deity was, who demanded no suffering from her worshippers, –
and they fulfilled their resolution in a manner worthy of their
purpose.

'One hundred and forty beings, crippled by the austerities of their
religion, unable to manage sail or oar, embarked in a canoe to reach
what they called the accursed isle. The natives, intoxicated with the
belief of their sanctity, stripped themselves naked, to push their boat
through the surf, and then, making their salams, implored them to
use oars at least. The devotees, all too intent on their beads, and too
well satisfied of their importance in the eyes of their favourite
deities, to admit a doubt of their safety, set off in triumph, – and the
consequence may be easily conjectured. The boat soon filled and
sunk, and the crew perished without a single sigh of lamentation,
except that they had not feasted the alligators in the sacred waters
of the Ganges, or perished at least under the shadow of the domes of
the holy city of Benares, in either of which cases their salvation must
have been unquestionable.

'This circumstance, apparently so untoward, operated favourably
on the popularity of the new worship. The old system lost ground
every day. Hands, instead of being scorched over the fire, were
employed only in gathering flowers. Nails (with which it was the
custom of the devotees to lard their persons) actually fell in price;
and a man might sit at his ease on his hams with as safe a
conscience, and as fair a character, as if fourscore of them occupied
the interval between. On the other hand, fruits were every day
scattered on the shores of the favourite isle; flowers, too, blushed on
its rocks, in all the dazzling luxuriance of colouring with which the
Flora339 of the East delights to array herself. There was that brilliant
and superb lily, which, to this day, illustrates the comparison
between it and Solomon, who, in all his glory, was not arrayed like
one of them.340 There was the rose unfolding its 'paradise of
leaves,'341 and the scarlet blossom of the bombex,342 which an English
traveller has voluptuously described as banqueting the eye with 'its
mass of vegetable splendour' unparalleled. And the female votarists
at last began to imitate some of 'those sounds and sweet airs'343 that
every breeze seemed to waft to their ears, with increasing strength
of melody, as they floated in their canoes round this isle of
enchantment.

'At length one circumstance occurred that put its sanctity of
character, and that of its inmate, out of all doubt. A young Indian
who had in vain offered to his beloved the mystical bouquet, in
which the arrangement of the flowers is made to express love,
rowed his canoe to the island, to learn his fate from its supposed
inhabitant; and as he rowed, composed a song, which expressed that
his mistress despised him, as if he were a Paria,344 but that he would
love her though he were descended from the head of Brahma,345 –
that her skin was more polished than the marble steps by which you
descend to the tank of a Rajah, and her eyes brighter than any
whose glances were watched by presumptuous strangers through the
rents of the embroidered purdah346 of a Nawaub,347 – that she was
loftier in his eyes than the black pagoda of Juggernaut, and more
brilliant than the trident of the temple of Mahadeva,348 when it
sparkled in the dreams of the moon. And as both these objects were
visible to his eyes from the shore, as he rowed on in the soft and
glorious serenity of an Indian night, no wonder they found a place
in his verse. Finally, he promised, that if she was propitious to his
suit, he would build her a hut, raised four feet above the ground to
avoid the serpents; – that her dwelling should be overshadowed by
the boughs of the tamarind; and that while she slept, he would drive
the musquitoes from her with a fan, composed of the leaves of the
first flowers which she accepted as a testimony of his passion.

'It so happened, that the same night, the young female, whose
reserve had been the result of any thing but indifference, attended
by two of her companions, rowed her canoe to the same spot, with
the view of discovering whether the vows of her lover were sincere.
They arrived about the same time; and though it was now twilight,
and the superstition of these timid beings gave a darker tinge to the
shadows that surrounded them, they ventured to land; and, bearing
their baskets of flowers in trembling hands, advanced to hang them
on the ruins of the pagoda, amid which it was presumed the new
goddess had fixed her abode. They proceeded, not without
difficulty, through thickets of flowers that had sprung spontaneously
in the uncultivated soil – not without fear that a tiger might spring
on them at every step, till they recollected that those animals chose
generally the large jungles for their retreat, and seldom harboured
amid flowers. Still less was the alligator to be dreaded, amid the
narrow streams that they could cross without tinging349 their ancles
with its pure water. The tamarind, the cocoa, and the palm-tree,
shed their blossoms, and exhaled their odours, and waved their
leaves, over the head of the trembling votarist as she approached
the ruin of the pagoda. It had been a massive square building,
erected amid rocks, that, by a caprice of nature not uncommon in
the Indian isles, occupied its centre, and appeared the consequence
of some volcanic explosion. The earthquake that had overthrown it,
had mingled the rocks and ruins together in a shapeless and
deformed mass, which seemed to bear alike the traces of the
impotence of art and nature, when prostrated by the power that has
formed and can annihilate both. There were pillars, wrought with
singular characters, heaped amid stones that bore no impress but
that of some fearful and violent action of nature, that seemed to say,
Mortals, write your lines with the chisel, I write my hieroglyphics in
fire. There were the disjointed piles of stones carved into the form of
snakes, on which the hideous idol of Seeva had once been seated;
and close to them the rose was bursting through the earth which
occupied the fissures of the rock, as if nature preached a milder
theology, and deputed her darling flower as her missionary to her
children. The idol itself had fallen, and lay in fragments. The horrid
mouth was still visible, into which human hearts had been formerly
inserted. But now, the beautiful peacocks, with their rain-bow trains
and arched necks, were feeding their young amid the branches of
the tamarind that overhung the blackened fragments. The young
Indians advanced with diminished fear, for there was neither sight
or sound to inspire the fear that attends the approach to the
presence of a spiritual being – all was calm, still, and dark. Yet their
feet trod with involuntary lightness as they advanced to these ruins,
which combined the devastations of nature with those of the human
passions, perhaps more bloody and wild than the former. Near the
ruins there had formerly been a tank, as is usual, near the pagodas,
both for the purposes of refreshment and purification; but the steps
were now broken, and the water was stagnated. The young Indians,
however, took up a few drops, invoked the 'goddess of the isle,' and
approached the only remaining arch. The exterior front of this
building had been constructed of stones, but its interior had been
hollowed out of the rock; and its recesses resembled, in some
degree, those in the island of Elephanta.350 There were monstrous
figures carved in stone, some adhering to the rock, others detached
from it, all frowning in their shapeless and gigantic hideousness,
and giving to the eye of superstition the terrible representation of
'gods of stone.'

'Two of the young votarists, who were distinguished for their
courage, advanced and performed a kind of wild dance before the
ruins of the ancient gods, as they called them, and invoked (as they
might) the new resident of the isle to be propitious to the vows of
their companion, who advanced to hang her wreath of flowers
round the broken remains of an idol half-defaced and half-hidden
among the fragments of stone, but clustered over with that rich
vegetation which seems, in oriental countries, to announce the
eternal triumph of nature amid the ruins of art. Every year renews
the rose, but what year shall see a pyramid rebuilt? As the young
Indian hung her wreath on the shapeless stone, a voice murmured,
'There is a withered flower there.' – 'Yes – yes – there is,' answered
the votarist, 'and that withered flower is an emblem of my heart. I
have cherished many roses, but suffered one to wither that was the
sweetest to me of all the wreath. Wilt thou revive him for me,
unknown goddess, and my wreath shall no longer be a dishonour to
thy shrine?' – 'Wilt thou revive the rose by placing it in the warmth
of thy bosom,' said the young lover, appearing from behind the
fragments of rock and ruin that had sheltered him, and from which
he had uttered his oracular reply, and listened with delight to the
emblematical but intelligible language of his beloved. 'Wilt thou
revive the rose?' he asked, in the triumph of love, as he clasped her
to his bosom. The young Indian, yielding at once to love and
superstition, seemed half-melting in his embrace, when, in a
moment, she uttered a wild shriek, repelled him with all her
strength, and crouched in an uncouth posture of fear, while she
pointed with one quivering hand to a figure that appeared, at that
moment, in the perspective of that tumultuous and indefinite heap
of stone. The lover, unalarmed by the shriek of his mistress, was
advancing to catch her in his arms, when his eye fell on the object
that had struck hers, and he sunk on his face to the earth, in mute
adoration.

'The form was that of a female, but such as they had never before
beheld, for her skin was perfectly white, (at least in their eyes, who
had never seen any but the dark-red tint of the natives of the
Bengalese islands).351 Her drapery (as well as they could see)
consisted only of flowers, whose rich colours and fantastic grouping
harmonized well with the peacock's feathers twined among them,
and altogether composed a feathery fan of wild drapery, which, in
truth, beseemed an 'island goddess.' Her long hair, of a colour they
had never beheld before, pale auburn, flowed to her feet, and was
fantastically entwined with the flowers and the feathers that formed
her dress. On her head was a coronal of shells, of hue and lustre
unknown except in the Indian seas – the purple and the green vied
with the amethyst, and the emerald. On her white bare shoulder a
loxia352 was perched, and round her neck was hung a string of their
pearl-like eggs, so pure and pellucid, that the first sovereign in
Europe might have exchanged her richest necklace of pearls for
them. Her arms and feet were perfectly bare, and her step had a
goddess-like rapidity and lightness, that affected the imagination of
the Indians as much as the extraordinary colour of her skin and hair.
The young lovers sunk in awe before this vision as it passed before
their eyes. While they prostrated themselves, a delicious sound
trembled on their ears. The beautiful vision spoke to them, but it
was in a language they did not understand; and this confirming their
belief that it was the language of the gods, they prostrated
themselves to her again. At that moment, the loxia, springing from
her shoulder, came fluttering towards them. 'He is going to seek for
fire-flies to light his cell,'353 said the Indians to each other. But the
bird, who, with an intelligence peculiar to his species, understood
and adopted the predilection of the fair being he belonged to, for
the fresh flowers in which he saw her arrayed every day, darted at
the withered rose-bud in the wreath of the young Indian; and,
striking his slender beak through it, laid it at her feet. The omen was
interpreted auspiciously by the lovers, and, bending once more to
the earth, they rowed back to their island, but no longer in separate
canoes. The lover steered that of his mistress, while she sat beside
him in silence; and the young couple who accompanied them
chaunted verses in praise of the white goddess,354 and the island
sacred to her and to lovers.'



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