Fuimus, non sumus.
‘When Elinor arrived in Yorkshire, she found her aunt was dead. Elinor went to visit her grave. It was, in compliance with her last request, placed near the window of the independent meetinghouse, and bore for inscription her favourite text, ‘Those whom he foreknew, he also predestinated,’ &c. &c. Elinor stood by the grave some time, but could not shed a tear. This contrast of a life so rigid, and a death so hopeful, — this silence of humanity, and eloquence of the grave, — pierced through her heart, as it will through every heart that has indulged in the inebriation of human passion, and feels that the draught has been drawn from broken cisterns.
‘Her aunt’s death made Elinor’s life, if possible, more secluded, and her habits more monotonous than they would otherwise have been. She was very charitable to the cottagers in her neighbourhood; but except to visit their habitations, she never quitted her own.
‘Often she contemplated a small stream that flowed at the end of her garden. As she had lost all her sensibility of nature, another motive was assigned for this mute and dark contemplation; and her servant, much attached to her, watched her closely.
‘She was roused from this fearful state of stupefaction and despair, which those who have felt shudder at the attempt to describe, by a letter from Margaret. She had received several from her which lay unanswered, (no unusual thing in those days), but this she tore open, read with interest inconceivable, and prepared instantly to answer by action.
‘Margaret’s high spirits seemed to have sunk in her hour of danger. She hinted that that hour was rapidly approaching, and that she earnestly implored the presence of her affectionate kinswoman to soothe and sustain in the moment of her approaching peril. She added, that the manly and affectionate tenderness of John Sandal at this period, had touched her heart more deeply, if possible, than all the former testimonies of his affection — but that she could not bear his resignation of all his usual habits of rural amusement, and of the neighbouring society — that she in vain had chided him from her couch, where she lingered in pain and hope, and hoped that Elinor’s presence might induce him to yield to her request, as he must feel, on her arrival, the dearest companion of her youth was present — and that, at such a moment, a female companion was more suitable than even the gentlest and most affectionate of the other sex.
‘Elinor set out directly. The purity of her feelings had formed an impenetrable barrier between her heart and its object, — and she apprehended no more danger from the presence of one who was wedded, and wedded to her relative, than from that of her own brother.
‘She arrived at the Castle — Margaret’s hour of danger had begun — she had been very ill during the preceding period. The natural consequences of her situation had been aggravated by a feeling of dignified responsibility on the birth of an heir to the house of Mortimer — and this feeling had not contributed to render that situation more supportable.
‘Elinor bent over the bed of pain — pressed her cold lips to the burning lips of the sufferer — and prayed for her.
‘The first medical assistance in the country (then very rarely employed on such occasions) had been obtained at a vast expence. The widow Sandal, declining all attendance on the sufferer, paced through the adjacent apartments in agony unutterable and unuttered.
‘Two days and nights went on in hope and terror — the bell-ringers sat up in every church within ten miles round — the tenantry crowded round the Castle with honest heartfelt solicitude — the neighbouring nobility sent their messages of inquiry every hour. An accouchement in a noble family was then an event of importance.
‘The hour came — twins were born dead — and the young mother was fated to follow them within a few hours! While life yet remained, Margaret shewed the remains of the lofty spirit of the Mortimers. She sought with her cold hand that of her wretched husband and of the weeping Elinor. She joined them in an embrace which one of them at least understood, and prayed that their union might be eternal. She then begged to see the bodies of her infant sons — they were produced; and it was said that she uttered expressions, intimating that, had they not been the heirs of the Mortimer family — had not expectation been wound so high, and supported by all the hopes that life and youth could flatter her with, — she and they might yet have existed.
‘As she spoke, her voice grew feebler, and her eyes dim — their last light was turned on him she loved; and when sight was gone, she still felt his arms enfold her. The next moment they enfolded — nothing!
‘In the terrible spasms of masculine agony — the more intensely felt as they are more rarely indulged — the young widower dashed himself on the bed, which shook with his convulsive grief; and Elinor, losing all sense but that of a calamity so sudden and so terrible, echoed his deep and suffocating sobs, as it she whom they deplored had not been the only obstacle to her happiness.
‘Amid the voice of mourning that rung through the Castle from vault to tower in that day of trouble, none was loud like that of the widow Sandal — her wailings were shrieks, her grief was despair. Rushing through the rooms like one distracted, she tore her hair out by the roots, and imprecated the most fearful curses on her head. At length she approached the apartment where the corse lay. The servants, shocked at her distraction, would have withheld her from entering it, but could not. She burst into the room, cast one wild look on its inmates — the still corse and the dumb mourners — and then, flinging herself on her knees before her son, confessed the secret of her guilt, and developed to its foul base the foundation of that pile of iniquity and sorrow which had now reached its summit.
‘Her son listened to this horrible confession with fixed eye and features unmoved; and at its conclusion, when the wretched penitent implored the assistance of her son to raise her from her knees, he repelled her outstretched hands, and with a weak wild laugh, sunk back on the bed. He never could be removed from it till the corse to which he clung was borne away, and then the mourners hardly knew which to deplore — her who was deprived of the light of life, or him in whom the light of reason was extinguished for ever!
‘The wretched, guilty mother, (but for her fate no one can be solicitous), a few months after, on her dying bed, declared the secret of her crime to a minister of an independent congregation, who was induced, by the report of her despair, to visit her. She confessed that, being instigated by avarice, and still more by the desire of regaining her lost consequence in the family, and knowing the wealth and dignity her son would acquire, and in which she must participate, by his marriage with Margaret, she had, after using all the means of persuasion and intreaty, been driven, in despair at her disappointment, to fabricate a tale as false as it was horrible, which she related to her deluded son on the evening before his intended nuptials with Elinor. She had assured him he was not her son, but the offspring of the illicit commerce of her husband the preacher with the Puritan mother of Elinor, who had formerly been one of his congregation, and whose well-known and strongly-expressed admiration of his preaching had been once supposed extended to his person, — had caused her much jealous anxiety in the early years of their marriage, and was now made the basis of this horrible fiction. She added, that Margaret’s obvious attachment to her cousin had, in some degree, palliated her guilt to herself; but that, when she saw him quit her house in despair on the morning of his intended marriage, and rush he knew not whither, she was half tempted to recall him, and confess the truth. Her mind again became hardened, and she reflected that her secret was safe, as she had bound him by an oath, from respect to his father’s memory, and compassion to the guilty mother of Elinor, never to disclose the truth to her daughter.
‘The event had succeeded to her guilty wishes. — Sandal beheld Elinor with the eyes of a brother, and the image of Margaret easily found a place in his unoccupied affections. But, as often befals to the dealers in falsehood and obliquity, the apparent accomplishment of her hopes proved her ruin. In the event of the marriage of John and Margaret proving issueless, the estates and title went to the distant relative named in the will; and her son, deprived of reason by the calamities in which her arts had involved him, was by them also deprived of the wealth and rank to which they were meant to raise him, and reduced to the small pension obtained by his former services, — the poverty of the King, then himself a pensioner of Lewis XIV., forbidding the possibility of added remuneration. When the minister heard to the last the terrible confession of the dying penitent, in the awful language ascribed to Bishop Burnet when consulted by another criminal, — he bid her ‘almost despair,’ and departed.
‘Elinor has retired, with the helpless object of her unfading love and unceasing care, to her cottage in Yorkshire. There, in the language of that divine and blind old man, the fame of whose poetry has not yet reached this country, it is
‘Her delight to see him sitting in the house,’
and watch, like the father of the Jewish champion, the growth of that ‘God-given strength,’ that intellectual power, which, unlike Samson’s, will never return.
‘After an interval of two years, during which she had expended a large part of the capital of her fortune in obtaining the first medical advice for the patient, and ‘suffered many things of many physicians,’ she gave up all hope, — and, reflecting that the interest of her fortune thus diminished would be but sufficient to procure the comforts of life for herself and him whom she has resolved never to forsake, she sat down in patient misery with her melancholy companion, and added one more to the many proofs of woman’s heart, ‘unwearied in well-doing,’ without the intoxication of passion, the excitement of applause, or even the gratitude of the unconscious object.
‘Were this a life of calm privation, and pulseless apathy, her efforts would scarce have merit, and her sufferings hardly demand compassion; but it is one of pain incessant and immitigable. The first-born of her heart lies dead within it; but that heart is still alive with all its keenest sensibilities, its most vivid hopes, and its most exquisite sense of grief.
‘She sits beside him all day — she watches that eye whose light was life, and sees it fixed on her in glassy and unmeaning complacency — she dreams of that smile which burst on her soul like the morning sun over a landscape in spring, and sees that smile of vacancy which tries to convey satisfaction, but cannot give it the language of expression. Averting her head, she thinks of other days. A vision passes before her. — Lovely and glorious things, the hues of whose colouring are not of this world, and whose web is too fine to be woven in the loom of life, — rise to her eye like the illusions of enchantment. A strain of rich remembered music floats in her hearing — she dreams of the hero, the lover, the beloved, — him in whom were united all that could dazzle the eye, inebriate the imagination, and melt the heart. She sees him as he first appeared to her, — and the mirage of the desert present not a vision more delicious and deceptive — she bends to drink of that false fountain, and the stream disappears — she starts from her reverie, and hears the weak laugh of the sufferer, as he moves a little water in a shell, and imagines he sees the ocean in a storm!
‘She has one consolation. When a short interval of recollection returns, — when his speech becomes articulate, — he utters her name, not that of Margaret, and a beam of early hope dances on her heart as she hears it, but fades away as fast as the rare and wandering ray of intellect from the lost mind of the sufferer!
‘Unceasingly attentive to his health and his comforts, she walked out with him every evening, but led him through the most sequestered paths, to avoid those whose mockful persecution, or whose vacant pity, might be equally torturing to her feelings, or harassing to her still gentle and smiling companion.
‘It was at this period,’ said the stranger to Aliaga, ‘I first became acquainted with — I mean — at this time a stranger, who had taken up his abode near the hamlet where Elinor resided, was seen to watch the two figures as they passed slowly on their retired walk. Evening after evening he watched them. He knew the history of these two unhappy beings, and prepared himself to take advantage of it. It was impossible, considering their secluded mode of existence, to obtain an introduction. He tried to recommend himself by his occasional attentions to the invalid — he sometimes picked up the flowers that an unconscious hand flung into the stream, and listened, with a gracious smile, to the indistinct sounds in which the sufferer, who still retained all the graciousness of his perished mind, attempted to thank him.
‘Elinor felt grateful for these occasional attentions; but she was somewhat alarmed at the assiduity with which the stranger attended their melancholy walk every evening, — and, whether encouraged, neglected, or even repelled, still found the means of insinuating himself into companionship. Even the mournful dignity of Elinor’s demeanour, — her deep dejection, — her bows or brief replies, — were unavailing against the gentle but indefatigable importunity of the intruder.
‘By degrees he ventured to speak to her of her misfortunes, — and that topic is a sure key to the confidence of the unhappy. Elinor began to listen to him; — and, though somewhat amazed at the knowledge he displayed of every circumstance of her life, she could not but feel soothed by the tone of sympathy in which he spoke, and excited by the mysterious hints of hope which he sometimes suffered to escape him as if involuntarily. It was observed soon by the inmates of the hamlet, whom idleness and the want of any object of excitement had made curious, that Elinor and the stranger were inseparable in their evening walks.
‘It was about a fortnight after this observation was first made, that Elinor, unattended, drenched with rain, and her head uncovered, loudly and eagerly demanded admittance, at a late hour, at the house of a neighbouring clergyman. She was admitted, — and the surprise of her reverend host at this visit, equally unseasonable and unexpected, was exchanged for a deeper feeling of wonder and terror as she related the cause of it. He at first imagined (knowing her unhappy situation) that the constant presence of an insane person might have a contagious effect on the intellects of one so perseveringly exposed to that presence.
‘As Elinor, however, proceeded to disclose the awful proposal, and the scarcely less awful name of the unholy intruder, the clergyman betrayed considerable emotion; and, after a long pause, desired permission to accompany her on their next meeting. This was to be the following evening, for the stranger was unremitting in his attendance on her lonely walks.
‘It is necessary to mention, that this clergyman had been for some years abroad — that events had occurred to him in foreign countries, of which strange reports were spread, but on the subject of which he had been always profoundly silent — and that having but lately fixed his residence in the neighbourhood, he was equally a stranger to Elinor, and to the circumstances of her past life, and of her present situation.
‘It was now autumn, — the evenings were growing short, and the brief twilight was rapidly succeeded by night. On the dubious verge of both, the clergyman quitted his house, and went in the direction where Elinor told him she was accustomed to meet the stranger.
‘They were there before him; and in the shuddering and averted form of Elinor, and the stern but calm importunity of her companion, he read the terrible secret of their conference. Suddenly he advanced and stood before the stranger. They immediately recognised each other. An expression that was never before beheld there — an expression of fear — wandered over the features of the stranger! He paused for a moment, and then departed without uttering a word — nor was Elinor ever again molested by his presence.
‘It was some days before the clergyman recovered from the shock of this singular encounter sufficiently to see Elinor, and explain to her the cause of his deep and painful agitation.
‘He sent to announce to her when he was able to receive her, and appointed the night for the time of meeting, for he knew that during the day she never forsook the helpless object of her unalienated heart. The night arrived — imagine them seated in the antique study of the clergyman, whose shelves were filled with the ponderous volumes of ancient learning — the embers of a peat fire shed a dim and fitful light through the room, and the single candle that burned on a distant oaken stand, seemed to shed its light on that alone — not a ray fell on the figures of Elinor and her companion, as they sat in their massive chairs of carved-like figures in the richly-wrought nitches of some Catholic place of worship — ’
‘That is a most profane and abominable comparison,’ said Aliaga, starting from the doze in which he had frequently indulged during this long narrative.
‘But hear the result,’ said the pertinacious narrator. ‘The clergyman confessed to Elinor that he had been acquainted with an Irishman of the name of Melmoth, whose various erudition, profound intellect, and intense appetency for information, had interested him so deeply as to lead to a perfect intimacy between them. At the breaking out of the troubles in England, the clergyman had been compelled, with his father’s family, to seek refuge in Holland. There again he met Melmoth, who proposed to him a journey to Poland — the offer was accepted, and to Poland they went. The clergyman here told many extraordinary tales of Dr Dee, and of Albert Alasco, the Polish adventurer, who were their companions both in England and Poland — and he added, that he felt his companion Melmoth was irrevocably attached to the study of that art which is held in just abomination by all ‘who name the name of Christ.’ The power of the intellectual vessel was too great for the narrow seas where it was coasting — it longed to set out on a voyage of discovery — in other words, Melmoth attached himself to those impostors, or worse, who promised him the knowledge and the power of the future world — on conditions that are unutterable.’ A strange expression crossed his face as he spoke. He recovered himself, and added, ‘From that hour our intercourse ceased. I conceived of him as of one given up to diabolical delusions — to the power of the enemy.
‘I had not seen Melmoth for some years. I was preparing to quit Germany, when, on the eve of my departure, I received a message from a person who announced himself as my friend, and who, believing himself dying, wished for the attendance of a Protestant minister. We were then in the territories of a Catholic electoral bishop. I lost no time in attending the sick person. As I entered his room, conducted by a servant, who immediately closed the door and retired, I was astonished to see the room filled with an astrological apparatus, books and implements of a science I did not understand; in a corner there was a bed, near which there was neither priest or physician, relative or friend — on it lay extended the form of Melmoth. I approached, and attempted to address to him some words of consolation. He waved his hand to me to be silent — and I was so. The recollection of his former habits and pursuits, and the view of his present situation, had an effect that appalled more than it amazed me. ‘Come near,’ said Melmoth, speaking very faintly — ‘nearer. I am dying — how my life has been passed you know but too well. Mine was the great angelic sin — pride and intellectual glorying! It was the first mortal sin — a boundless aspiration after forbidden knowledge! I am now dying. I ask for no forms of religion — I wish not to hear words that have to me no meaning, or that I wish had none! Spare your look of horror. I sent for you to exact your solemn promise that you will conceal from every human being the fact of my death — let no man know that I died, or when, or where.’
‘He spoke with a distinctness of tone, and energy of manner, that convinced me he could not be in the state he described himself to be, and I said, ‘But I cannot believe you are dying — your intellects are clear, your voice is strong, your language is coherent, and but for the paleness of your face, and your lying extended on that bed, I could not even imagine you were ill.’ He answered, ‘Have you patience and courage to abide by the proof that what I say is true?’ I replied, that I doubtless had patience, and for the courage, I looked to that Being for whose name I had too much reverence to utter in his hearing. He acknowledged my forbearance by a ghastly smile which I understood too well, and pointed to a clock that stood at the foot of his bed. ‘Observe,’ said he, ‘the hour-hand is on eleven, and I am now sane, clear of speech, and apparently healthful — tarry but an hour, and you yourself will behold me dead!’
‘I remained by his bed-side — the eyes of both were fixed intently on the slow motion of the clock. From time to time he spoke, but his strength now appeared obviously declining. He repeatedly urged on me the necessity of profound secresy, its importance to myself, and yet he hinted at the possibility of our future meeting, I asked why he thought proper to confide to me a secret whose divulgement was so perilous, and which might have been so easily concealed? Unknowing whether he existed, or where, I must have been equally ignorant of the mode and place of his death. To this he returned no answer. As the hand of the clock approached the hour of twelve, his countenance changed — his eyes became dim — his speech inarticulate — his jaw dropped — his respiration ceased. I applied a glass to his lips — but there was not a breath to stain it. I felt his wrist but there was no pulse. I placed my hand on his heart — there was not the slightest vibration. In a few minutes the body was perfectly cold. I did not quit the room till nearly an hour after the body gave no signs of returning animation.
‘Unhappy circumstances detained me long abroad. I was in various parts of the Continent, and every where I was haunted with the report of Melmoth being still alive. To these reports I gave no credit, and returned to England in the full conviction of his being dead. Yet it was Melmoth who walked and spoke with you the last night of our meeting. My eyes never more faithfully attested the presence of living being. It was Melmoth himself, such as I beheld him many years ago, when my hairs were dark and my steps were firm. I am changed, but he is the same — time seems to have forborne to touch him from terror. By what means or power he is thus enabled to continue his posthumous and preternatural existence, it is impossible to conceive, unless the fearful report that every where followed his steps on the Continent, be indeed true.’
‘Elinor, impelled by terror and wild curiosity, inquired into that report which dreadful experience had anticipated the meaning of. ‘Seek no farther,’ said the minister, ‘you know already more than should ever have reached the human ear, or entered into the conception of the human mind. Enough that you have been enabled by Divine Power to repel the assaults of the evil one — the trial was terrible, but the result will be glorious. Should the foe persevere in his attempts, remember that he has been already repelled amid the horrors of the dungeon and of the scaffold, the screams of Bedlam and the flames of the Inquisition — he is yet to be subdued by a foe that he deemed of all others the least invincible — the withered energies of a broken heart. He has traversed the earth in search of victims, ‘Seeking whom he might devour,’ — and has found no prey, even where he might seek for it with all the cupidity of infernal expectation. Let it be your glory and crown of rejoicing, that even the feeblest of his adversaries has repulsed him with a power that will always annihilate his.’
‘Who is that faded form that supports with difficulty an emaciated invalid, and seems at every step to need the support she gives? — It is still Elinor tending John. Their path is the same, but the season is changed — and that change seems to her to have passed alike on the mental and physical world. It is a dreary evening in Autumn — the stream flows dark and turbid beside their path — the blast is groaning among the trees, and the dry discoloured leaves are sounding under their feet — their walk is uncheered by human converse, for one of them no longer thinks, and seldom speaks!
‘Suddenly he gives a sign that he wishes to be seated — it is complied with, and she sits beside him on the felled trunk of a tree. He declines his head on her bosom, and she feels with delighted amazement, a few tears streaming on it for the first time for years — a soft but conscious pressure of her hand, seems to her like the signal of reviving intelligence — with breathless hope she watches him as he slowly raises his head, and fixes his eyes — God of all consolation, there is intelligence in his glance! He thanks her with an unutterable look for all her care, her long and painful labour of love! His lips are open, but long unaccustomed to utter human sounds, the effort is made with difficulty — again that effort is repeated and fails — his strength is exhausted — his eyes close — his last gentle sigh is breathed on the bosom of faith and love — and Elinor soon after said to those who surrounded her bed, that she died happy, since he knew her once more! She gave one parting awful sign to the minister, which was understood and answered!
Cum mihi non tantum furesque fer?que su?t?,
Hunc vexare locum, cur? sunt atque labori;
Quantum carminibus qu? versant atque venenis,
Humanos animos.
HORACE
‘It is inconceivable to me,’ said Don Aliaga to himself, as he pursued his journey the next day — ‘it is inconceivable to me how this person forces himself on my company, harasses me with tales that have no more application to me than the legend of the Cid, and may be as apocryphal as the ballad of Roncesvalles — and now he has ridden by my side all day, and, as if to make amends for his former uninvited and unwelcome communicativeness, he has never once opened his lips.’
‘Senhor,’ said the stranger, then speaking for the first time, as if he read Aliaga’s thoughts — ‘I acknowledge myself in error for relating to you a narrative in which you must have felt there was little to interest you. Permit me to atone for it, by recounting to you a very brief one, in which I flatter myself you will be disposed to feel a very peculiar interest.’ — ‘You assure me it will be brief,’ said Aliaga. ‘Not only so, but the last I shall obtrude on your patience,’ replied the stranger. ‘On that condition,’ said Aliaga, ‘in God’s name, brother, proceed. And look you handle the matter discreetly, as you have said.’
‘There was,’ said the stranger, ‘a certain Spanish merchant, who set out prosperously in business; but, after a few years, finding his affairs assume an unfavourable aspect, and being tempted by an offer of partnership with a relative who was settled in the East Indies, had embarked for those countries with his wife and son, leaving behind him an infant daughter in Spain.’ — ‘That was exactly my case,’ said Aliaga, wholly unsuspicious of the tendency of this tale.
‘Two years of successful occupation restored him to opulence, and to the hope of vast and future accumulation. Thus encouraged, our Spanish merchant entertained ideas of settling in the East Indies, and sent over for his young daughter with her nurse, who embarked for the East Indies with the first opportunity, which was then very rare.’ — ‘This reminds me exactly of what occurred to myself,’ said Aliaga, whose faculties were somewhat obtuse.
‘The nurse and infant were supposed to have perished in a storm which wrecked the vessel on an isle near the mouth of a river, and in which the crew and passengers perished. It was said that the nurse and child alone escaped; that by some extraordinary chance they arrived at this isle, where the nurse died from fatigue and want of nourishment, and the child survived, and grew up a wild and beautiful daughter of nature, feeding on fruits, — and sleeping amid roses, — and drinking the pure element, — and inhaling the harmonies of heaven, — and repeating to herself the few Christian words her nurse had taught her, in answer to the melody of the birds that sung to her, and of the stream whose waves murmured in accordance to the pure and holy music of her unearthly heart.’ — ‘I never heard a word of this before,’ muttered Aliaga to himself. The stranger went on.
‘It was said that some vessel in distress arrived at the isle, — that the captain had rescued this lovely lonely being from the brutality of the sailors, — and, discovering from some remains of the Spanish tongue which she still spoke, and which he supposed must have been cultivated during the visits of some other wanderer to the isle, he undertook, like a man of honour, to conduct her to her parents, whose names she could tell, though not their residence, so acute and tenacious is the memory of infancy. He fulfilled his promise, and the pure and innocent being was restored to her family, who were then residing in the city of Benares.’ Aliaga, at these words, stared with a look of intelligence somewhat ghastly. He could not interrupt the stranger — he drew in his breath, and closed his teeth.
‘I have since heard,’ said the stranger, ‘that the family has returned to Spain, — that the beautiful inhabitant of the foreign isle is become the idol of your cavaliers of Madrid, — your loungers of the Prado, — your sacravienses, — your — by what other name of contempt shall I call them? But listen to me, — there is an eye fixed on her, and its fascination is more deadly than that fabled of the snake! — There is an arm extended to seize her, in whose grasp humanity withers! — That arm even now relaxes for a moment, — its fibres thrill with pity and horror, — it releases the victim for a moment, — it even beckons her father to her aid! — Don Francisco, do you understand me now? — Has this tale interest or application for you?’
‘He paused, but Aliaga, chilled with horror, was unable to answer him but by a feeble exclamation. ‘If it has,’ resumed the stranger, ‘lose not a moment to save your daughter!’ and, clapping spurs to his mule, he disappeared through a narrow passage among the rocks, apparently never intended to be trod by earthly traveller. Aliaga was not a man susceptible of strong impressions from nature; but, if he had been, the scene amid which this mysterious warning was uttered would have powerfully ministered to its effect. The time was evening, — a grey and misty twilight hung over every object; — the way lay through a rocky road, that wound among mountains, or rather stony hills, bleak and bare as those which the weary traveller through the western isle1 sees rising amid the moors, to which they form a contrast without giving a relief. Heavy rains had made deep gullies amid the hills, and here and there a mountain-stream brawled amid its stony channel, like a proud and noisy upstart, while the vast chasms that had been the beds of torrents which once swept through them in thunder, now stood gaping and ghastly like the deserted abodes of ruined nobility. Not a sound broke on the stillness, except the monotonous echo of the hoofs of the mules answered from the hollows of the hill, and the screams of the birds, which, after a few short circles in the damp and cloudy air, fled back to their retreats amid the cliffs.
1 Ireland, — forsan.
‘It is almost incredible, that after this warning, enforced as it was by the perfect acquaintance which the stranger displayed of Aliaga’s former life and family-circumstances, it should not have had the effect of making him hurry homewards immediately, particularly as it seems he thought it of sufficient importance to make it the subject of correspondence with his wife. So it was however.
‘At the moment of the stranger’s departure, it was his resolution not to lose a moment in hastening homewards; but at the next stage he arrived at, there were letters of business awaiting him. A mercantile correspondent gave him the information of the probable failure of a house in a distant part of Spain, where his speedy presence might be of vital consequence. There were also letters from Montilla, his intended son-in-law, informing him that the state of his father’s health was so precarious, it was impossible to leave him till his fate was decided. As the decisions of fate involved equally the wealth of the son, and the life of the father, Aliaga could not help thinking there was as much prudence as affection in this resolution.
‘After reading these letters, Aliaga’s mind began to flow in its usual channel. There is no breaking through the inveterate habitudes of a thorough-paced mercantile mind, ‘though one rose from the dead.’ Besides, by this time the mysterious image of the stranger’s presence and communications were fading fast from a mind not at all habituated to visionary impressions. He shook off the terrors of this visitation by the aid of time, and gave his courage the credit due to that aid. Thus we all deal with the illusions of the imagination, — with this difference only, that the impassioned recal them with the tear of regret, and the unimaginative with the blush of shame. Aliaga set out for the distant part of Spain where his presence was to save this tottering house in which he had an extensive concern, and wrote to Donna Clara, that it might be some months before he returned to the neighbourhood of Madrid.
Husband, husband, I’ve the ring
Thou gavest to-day to me;
And thou to me art ever wed,
As I am wed to thee!
LITTLE’S POEMS
‘The remainder of that dreadful night when Isidora disappeared, had been passed almost in despair by Donna Clara, who, amid all her rigour and chilling mediocrity, had still the feelings of a mother — and by Fra Jose, who, with all his selfish luxury and love of domination, had a heart where distress never knocked for admittance, that she did not find pity ready to open the door.
‘The distress of Donna Clara was aggravated by her fear of her husband, of whom she stood in great awe, and who, she dreaded, might reproach her with unpardonable negligence of her maternal authority.
‘In this night of distress, she was often tempted to call on her son for advice and assistance; but the recollection of his violent passions deterred her, and she sat in passive despair till day. Then, with an unaccountable impulse, she rose from her seat, and hurried to her daughter’s apartment, as if she imagined that the events of the preceding night were only a fearful and false illusion that would be dispersed by the approach of day.
‘It seemed, indeed, as if they were, for on the bed lay Isidora in a profound sleep, with the same pure and placid smile as when she was lulled into slumber by the melodies of nature, and the sound was prolonged in her dream by the whispered songs of the spirits of the Indian Ocean. Donna Clara uttered a shriek of surprise, that had the singular effect of rousing Fra Jose from a deep sleep into which he had fallen at the approach of day. Starting at the sound, the good-natured, pampered priest, tottered into the room, and saw, with incredulity that slowly yielded to frequent application to his obstinate and adhesive eye-lids, the form of Isidora extended in profound slumber.
‘Oh what an exquisite enjoyment!’ said the yawning priest, as he looked on the sleeping beauty without another emotion than that of the delight of an uninterrupted repose. — ‘Pray, don’t disturb her,’ he said, yawning himself out of the room — ‘after such a night as we all have had, sleep must be a very refreshing and laudable exercise; and so I commend you to the protection of the holy saints!’ — ‘Oh reverend Father! — Oh holy Father!’ cried Donna Clara clinging to him, ‘desert me not in this extremity — this has been the work of magic — of infernal spirits. See how profoundly she sleeps, though we are speaking, and it is now day-light.’ — ‘Daughter, you are much mistaken,’ answered the drowsy priest; ‘people can sleep soundly even in the day-time; and for proof send me, as I am now retiring to rest, a bottle of Foncarral or Valdepenas — not that I value the richest vintage of Spain from the Chacoli of Biscay to the Mataro of Catalonia,1 but I would never have it said that I slept in the day-time, but for sufficient reason.’ — ‘Holy Father!’ answered Donna Clara, ‘do you not think my daughter’s disappearance and intense slumber are the result of preternatural causes?’ — ‘Daughter,’ answered the priest, contracting his brows, ‘let me have some wine to slake the intolerable thirst caused by my anxiety for the welfare of your family, and let me meditate some hours afterwards on the measures best to be adopted, and then — when I awake, I will give you my opinion.’ — ‘Holy Father, you shall judge for me in every thing.’ — ‘It were not amiss, daughter,’ said the priest retiring, ‘if a few slices of ham, or some poignant sausages, accompanied the wine — it might, as it were, abate the deleterious effects of that abominable liquor, which I never drink but on emergencies like these.’ — ‘Holy Father, they shall be ordered,’ said the anxious mother — ‘but do you not think my daughter’s sleep is supernatural?’ — ‘Follow me to mine apartment, daughter,’ answered the priest, exchanging his cowl for a night-cap, which one of the numerous household obsequiously presented him, ‘and you will soon see that sleep is a natural effect of a natural cause. Your daughter has doubtless passed a very fatiguing night, and so have you, and so have I, though perhaps from very different causes; but all those causes dispose us to a profound repose. — I have no doubt of mine — fetch up the wine and sausages — I am very weary — Oh I am weak and worn with fasts and watching, and the labours of exhortation. My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth, and my jaws cling together, — perhaps a draught or two might dissolve their parching adhesion. But I do so hate wine — why the devil don’t you fetch up the bottle?’
1 Vide Dillon’s travels through Spain.
‘The attendant domestic, terrified by the tone of wrath in which the last words were uttered, hurried on with submissive expedition, and Fra Jose sat down at length in his apartment to ruminate on the calamities and perplexities of the family, till he was actually overcome by the subject, and exclaimed in a tone of despair, ‘Both bottles empty! Then it is useless to meditate further on this subject.’
‘He was roused at an earlier hour than he wished, by a message from Donna Clara, who, in the distress of a weak mind, accustomed always to factitious and external support, now felt as if every step she took without it, must lead to actual and instant perdition. Her fear of her husband, next to her superstitious fears, held the strongest power over her mind, and that morning she called Fra Jose to an early consultation of terror and inquietude. — Her great object was to conceal, if possible, the absence of her daughter on that eventful night; and finding that none of the domestics appeared conscious of it, and that amid the numerous household, only one aged servant was absent, of whose absence no one took notice amid the superfluous multitude of a Spanish establishment, her courage began to revive. It was raised still higher by a letter from Aliaga, announcing the necessity of his visiting a distant part of Spain, and of the marriage of his daughter with Montilla being deferred for some months — this sounded like reprieve in the ears of Donna Clara — she consulted with the priest, who answered in words of comfort, that if Donna Isidora’s short absence were known, it was but a slight evil, and if it were not known, it was none at all, — and he recommended to her, to ensure the secresy of the servants by means that he swore by his habit were infallible, as he had known them operate effectively among the servants of a far more powerful and extensive establishment. ‘Reverend Father,’ said Donna Clara, ‘I know of no establishment among the grandees of Spain more splendid than ours.’ — ‘But I do, daughter,’ said the priest, ‘and the head of that establishment is — the Pope; — but go now, and awake your daughter, who deserves to sleep till doomsday, as she seems totally to have forgotten the hour of breakfast. It is not for myself I speak, daughter, but I cannot bear to see the regularity of a magnificent household thus interrupted; for myself, a basin of chocolate, and a cluster of grapes, will be sufficient; and to allay the crudity of the grapes, a glass of Malaga. — Your glasses, by the bye, are the shallowest I ever drank out of — could you not find some means to get from Ildefonso1 glasses of the right make, with short shanks and ample bodies? Yours resemble those of Quichotte, all limbs and no trunk. I like one that resembles his squire, a spacious body and a shank that may be measured by my little finger.’ — ‘I will send to St Ildefonso this day,’ answered Donna Clara. — ‘Go and awake your daughter first,’ said the priest.
1 The celebrated manufactory for glass in Spain.
‘As he spoke, Isidora entered the room — the mother and the priest both stood amazed. Her countenance was as serene, her step as equal, and her mein as composed, as if she were totally unconscious of the terror and distress her disappearance the preceding night had caused. To the first short silence of amazement, succeeded a storm of interrogations from Donna Clara and Fra Jose in concert — why — where — wherefore — and what, and with whom and how — that was all they could articulate. They might as well have spared themselves the trouble, for neither that day nor many following, could the remonstrances, intreaties, or menaces of her mother, aided by the spiritual authority and more powerful anxiety of the priest, extort from her a word of explanation on the cause of her absence that awful night. When closely and sternly pressed, Isidora’s mind seemed to assume something of the wild but potent spirit of independence, which her early habits and feelings might have communicated to her. She had been her own teacher and mistress for seventeen years, and though naturally gentle and tractable, when imperious mediocrity attempted to tyrannize over her, she felt a sense of disdain which she expressed only by profound silence.
‘Fra Jose, incensed at her obstinacy, and trembling for the loss of his power over the family, threatened to exclude her from confession, unless she disclosed to him the secret of that night — ‘Then I will confess to God!’ said Isidora. Her mother’s importunity she found it more difficult to resist, for her feminine heart loved all that was feminine even in its most unattractive shape, and the persecution from that quarter was alike monotonous and unremitting.
‘There was a weak but harassing tenacity about Donna Clara, that is the general adjunct to the female character when it combines intellectual mediocrity with rigid principle. When she laid siege to a secret, the garrison might as well capitulate at once. — What she wanted in vigour and ability, she supplied by a minute and gnawing assiduity. She never ventured to carry the fort by storm, but her obstinacy blockaded it till it was forced to surrender. But here even her importunity failed. — Isidora remained respectfully, but resolutely silent; finding matters thus desperate, Donna Clara, who had a fine talent for keeping as well as discovering a secret, agreed with Fra Jose not to utter a syllable of the business to her father and brother. — ‘We will show,’ said Donna Clara, with a sagacious and self-approving nod, ‘that we can keep a secret as well as she.’ — ‘Right, daughter,’ said Fra Jose, ‘imitate her in the only point in which you can flatter yourself with the hope of resemblance.’
‘The secret was, however, soon disclosed. Some months had elapsed, and the visits of her husband began to give an habitual calm and confidence to the mind of Isidora. He imperceptibly was exchanging his ferocious misanthropy for a kind of pensive gloom. — It was like the dark, cold, but unterrific and comparatively soothing night, that succeeds to a day of storm and earthquake. The sufferers remember the terrors of the day, and the still darkness of the night feels to them like a shelter. Isidora gazed on her espoused with delight, when she saw no longer his withering frown, or more withering smile; and she felt the hope that the calm purity of female hearts always suggests, that its influence will one day float over the formless and the void, like the spirit that moved upon the face of the waters; and that the unbelieving husband may yet be saved by the believing wife.
‘These thoughts were her comfort, and it was well she had thoughts to comfort her, for facts are miserable allies when imagination fights its battle with despair. On one of those nights that she expected Melmoth, he found her employed in her usual hymn to the Virgin, which she accompanied on her lute. ‘Is it not rather late to sing your vesper hymn to the Virgin after midnight?’ said Melmoth with a ghastly smile. ‘Her ear is open at all times, I have been told,’ answered Isidora. — ‘If it is, then, love,’ said Melmoth, vaulting as usual through the casement, ‘add a stanza to your hymn in favour of me.’ — ‘Alas!’ said Isidora, dropping her lute, ‘you do not believe, love, in what the Holy Church requires.’ — ‘Yes, I do believe, when I listen to you.’ — ‘And only then?’ — ‘Sing again your hymn to the Virgin.’
‘Isidora complied, and watched the effect on the listener. He seemed affected — he motioned to her to repeat it. ‘My love,’ said Isidora, ‘is not this more like the repetition of a theatrical song called for by an audience, than a hymn which he who listens to loves his wife better for, because she loves her God.’ — ‘It is a shrewd question,’ said Melmoth, ‘but why am I in your imagination excluded from the love of God?’ — ‘Do you ever visit the church,’ answered the anxious Isidora. A profound silence. — ‘Do you ever receive the Holy Sacrament?’ — Melmoth did not utter a word. — ‘Have you ever, at my earnest solicitation, enabled me to announce to my anxious family the tie that united us?’ — No answer. — ‘And now — that — perhaps — I dare not utter what I feel! Oh! how shall I appear before eyes that watch me even now so closely? — what shall I say? — a wife without a husband — a mother without a father for her child, or one whom a fearful oath has bound her never to declare! Oh! Melmoth, pity me, — deliver me from this life of constraint, falsehood, and dissimulation. Claim me as your wedded wife in the face of my family, and in the face of ruin your wedded wife will follow — will cling to — will perish with you!’ Her arms clung round him, her cold but heart-wrung tears fell fast on his cheek, and the imploring arms of woman supplicating for deliverance in her hour of shame and terror, seldom are twined round us in vain. Melmoth felt the appeal — it was but for a moment. He caught the white arms extended towards him — he fixed an eager and fearful look of inquiry on his victim-consort, as he asked — ‘And is it so?’ The pale and shuddering wife shrunk from his arms at the question — her silence answered him. The agonies of nature throbbed audibly in his heart. He said to himself — it is mine — the fruit of affection — the first-born of the heart and of nature — mine — mine, — and whatever becomes of me, there shall yet be a human being on earth who traces me in its external form, and who will be taught to pray for its father, even when its prayer falls parched and hissing on the fires that burn for ever, like a wandering drop of dew on the burning sands of the desert!
‘From the period of this communication, Melmoth’s tenderness for his wife visibly increased.
‘Heaven only knows the source of that wild fondness with which he contemplated her, and in which was still mingled something of ferocity. His warm look seemed like the glow of a sultry summer day, whose heat announces a storm, and compels us by its burning oppression, to look to the storm almost for relief.
‘It is not impossible that he looked to some future object of his fearful experiment — and a being so perfectly in his power as his own child, might have appeared to him fatally fitted for his purpose — the quantum of misery, too, necessary to qualify the probationer, it was always in his own power to inflict. Whatever was his motive, he assumed as much tenderness as it was possible for him to assume, and spoke of the approaching event with the anxious interest of a human father.
‘Soothed by his altered manner, Isidora bore with silent sufferance the burden of her situation, with all its painful accompaniments of indisposition and dejection, aggravated by hourly fear and mysterious secresy. She hoped he would at length reward her by an open and honourable declaration, but this hope was expressed only in her patient smiles. The hour approached fast, and fearful and indefinite apprehensions began to overshadow her mind, relative to the fate of the infant about to be born under circumstances so mysterious.
‘At his next nightly visit, Melmoth found her in tears.
‘Alas!’ said she in answer to his abrupt inquiry, and brief attempt at consolation, ‘How many causes have I for tears — and how few have I shed? If you would have them wiped away, be assured it is only your hand can do it. I feel,’ she added, ‘that this event will be fatal to me — I know I shall not live to see my child — I demand from you the only promise that can support me even under this conviction’ — Melmoth interrupted her by the assurance, that these apprehensions were the inseparable concomitants of her situation, and that many mothers, surrounded by a numerous offspring, smiled as they recollected their fears that the birth of each would be fatal to them.
‘Isidora shook her head. ‘The presages,’ said she, ‘that visit me, are such as never visited mortality in vain. I have always believed, that as we approach the invisible world, its voice becomes more audible to us, and grief and pain are very eloquent interpreters between us and eternity — quite distinct from all corporeal suffering, even from all mental terror, is that deep and unutterable impression which is alike incommunicable and ineffaceable — it is as if heaven spoke to us alone, and told us to keep its secret, or divulge it on the condition of never being believed. Oh! Melmoth, do not give that fearful smile when I speak of heaven — soon I may be your only intercessor there.’ ‘My dear saint,’ said Melmoth, laughing and kneeling to her in mockery, ‘let me make early interest for your mediation — how many ducats will it cost me to get you canonized? — you will furnish me, I hope, with an authentic account of legitimate miracles — one is ashamed of the nonsense that is sent monthly to the Vatican.’ ‘Let your conversion be the first miracle on the list,’ said Isidora, with an energy that made Melmoth tremble — it was dark — but she felt that he trembled — she pursued her imagined triumph — ‘Melmoth,’ she exclaimed, ‘I have a right to demand one promise from you — for you I have sacrificed every thing — never was woman more devoted — never did woman give proofs of devotion like mine. I might have been the noble, honoured wife of one who would have laid his wealth and titles at my feet. In this my hour of danger and suffering, the first families in Spain would have been waiting round my door. Alone, unaided, unsustained, unconsoled, I must undergo the terrible struggle of nature — terrible to those whose beds are smoothed by the hands of affection, whose agonies are soothed by the presence of a mother — who hears the first feeble cry of her infant echoed by the joy of exulting noble relatives. Oh Melmoth! what must be mine! I must suffer in secresy and in silence! I must see my babe torn from me before I have even kissed it, — and the chrism-mantle will be one of that mysterious darkness which your fingers have woven! Yet grant me one thing — one thing!’ continued the suppliant, growing earnest in her prayer even to agony; ‘swear to me that my child shall be baptised according to the forms of the Catholic church, — that it shall be a Christian as far as those forms can make it, — and I shall feel that, if all my fearful presages are fulfilled, I shall leave behind me one who will pray for his father, and whose prayer may be accepted. Promise me, — swear to me,’ she added, in intenser agony, ‘that my child shall be a Christian! Alas! if my voice be not worthy to be heard in heaven, that of a cherub may! Christ himself suffered children to come unto him while on earth, and will he repel them in heaven? — Oh! no, — no! he will not repel yours!’
‘Melmoth listened to her with feelings that it is better to suppress than explain or expatiate on. Thus solemnly adjured, however, he promised that the child should be baptised; and added, with an expression which Isidora’s delight at this concession did not give her time to understand, that it should be a Christian as far as the rites and ceremonies of the Catholic church could make it one. While he added many a bitter hint of the inefficacy of any external rites — and the impotentiality of any hierarchy — and of the deadly and desperate impositions of priests under every dispensation — and exposed them with a spirit at once ludicrous and Satanic, — a spirit that mingled ridicule with horror, and seemed like a Harlequin in the infernal regions, flirting with the furies, Isidora still repeated her solemn request that her child, if it survived her, should be baptised. To this he assented; and added, with a sarcastic and appalling levity, — ‘And a Mahometan, if you should change your mind, — or any other mythology you please to adopt; — only send me word, — priests are easily obtained, and ceremonies cheaply purchased! Only let me know your future intentions, — when you know them yourself.’ — ‘I shall not be here to tell you,’ said Isidora, replying with profound conviction to this withering levity, like a cold winter day to the glow of a capricious summer one, that blends the sunshine and the lightning; — ‘Melmoth, I shall not be here then!’ And this energy of despair in a creature so young, so inexperienced, except in the vicissitudes of the heart, formed a strong contrast to the stony apathy of one who had traversed life from Dan to Beersheba, and found all barren, or — made it so.
‘At this moment, while Isidora wept the cold tears of despair, without daring to ask the hand of him she loved to dry them, the bells of a neighbouring convent, where they were performing a mass for the soul of a departed brother, suddenly rung out. Isidora seized that moment, when the very air was eloquent with the voice of religion, to impress its power on that mysterious being whose presence inspired her equally with terror and with love. ‘Listen, — listen!’ she cried. The sounds came slowly and stilly on, as if it was an involuntary expression of that profound sentiment that night always inspires, — the reverberating watch-word from sentinel to sentinel, when wakeful and reflecting minds have become the ‘watchers of the night.’1 The effect of these sounds was increased, by their catching from time to time the deep and thrilling chorus of the voices, — these voices more than harmonized, they were coincident with the toll of the bell, and seemed like them set in involuntary motion, — music played by invisible hands.
1 He called unto me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? — Watchman, what of the night? — ISAIAH.
‘Listen,’ repeated Isidora, ‘is there no truth in the voice that speaks to you in tones like these? Alas! if there be no truth in religion, there is none on earth! Passion itself evanishes into an illusion, unless it is hallowed by the consciousness of a God and of futurity. That sterility of the heart that forbids the growth of divine feeling, must be hostile also to every tender and generous sentiment. He who is without a God must be without a heart! Oh, my love, will you not, as you bend over my grave, wish my last slumbers to have been soothed by sounds like these, — wish that they may whisper peace to your own? Promise me, at least, that you will lead your child to my tomb-stone, — that you will suffer it to read the inscription that tells I died in the faith of Christ, and the hope of immortality. Its tears will be powerful pleaders to you not to deny it the consolation that faith has given me in hours of suffering, and the hopes with which it will illuminate my parting hour. Oh promise me this at least, that you will suffer your child to visit my grave — that is all. Do not interrupt or distract the impression by sophistry or levity, or by that wild and withering eloquence that flashes from your lips, not to enlighten but to blast. You will not weep, but you will be silent, — leave Heaven and nature free to their work. The voice of God will speak to its heart, and my spirit, as it witnesses the conflict, will tremble though in paradise, — and, even in heaven, will feel an added joy, when it beholds the victory won. Promise me, then, — swear to me!’ she added, with agonizing energy of tone and gesture. ‘Your child shall be a Christian!’ said Melmoth.
— Oh, spare me, Grimbald!
I will tempt hermits for thee in their cells,
And virgins in their dreams.
DRYDEN’S KING ARTHUR
‘It is a singular, but well-attested fact, that women who are compelled to undergo all the inconveniences and uneasiness of clandestine pregnancy, often fare better than those whose situation is watched over by tender and anxious relatives; and that concealed or illegitimate births are actually attended with less danger and suffering than those which have all the aid that skill and affection can give. So it appeared likely to fare with Isidora. The retirement in which her family lived — the temper of Donna Clara, as slow to suspect from want of penetration, as she was eager in pursuing an object once discovered, from the natural cupidity of a vacant mind — these circumstances, combined with the dress of the day, the enormous and enveloping fardingale, gave safety to her secret, at least till the arrival of its crisis. As this crisis approached, one may easily imagine the secret and trembling preparation — the important nurse, proud of the trust reposed in her — the confidential maid — the faithful and discreet medical attendant — to obtain all these Melmoth supplied her amply with money — a circumstance that would have surprised Isidora, as his appearance was always remarkably plain and private, if, at this moment of anxiety, any thought but that of the hour could have found room in her mind.
‘On the evening supposed to be that preceding the dreaded event, Melmoth had thrown an unusual degree of tenderness into his manner — he gazed on her frequently with anxious and silent fondness — he seemed to have something to communicate which he had not courage to disclose. Isidora, well versed in the language of the countenance, which is often, more than that of words, the language of the heart, intreated him to tell her what he looked. ‘Your father is returning,’ said Melmoth reluctantly. ‘He will certainly be here in a few days, perhaps in a few hours.’ Isidora heard him in silent horror. ‘My father!’ she cried — ‘I have never seen my father. — Oh, how shall I meet him now! And is my mother ignorant of this? — would she not have apprized me?’ — ‘She is ignorant at present; but she will not long be so.’ — ‘And from whence could you have obtained intelligence that she is ignorant of?’ Melmoth paused some time, — his features assumed a more contracted and gloomy character than they had done laterally — he answered with slow and stern reluctance — ‘Never again ask me that question — the intelligence that I can give you must be of more importance to you than the means by which I obtain it — enough for you that it is true.’ — ‘Pardon me, love,’ said Isidora; ‘it is probable that I may never again offend you — will you not, then, forgive my last offence?’
‘Melmoth seemed too intently occupied with his own thoughts to answer even her tears. He added, after a short and sullen pause, ‘Your betrothed bridegroom is coming with your father — Montilla’s father is dead — the arrangements are all concluded for your nuptials — your bridegroom is coming to wed the wife of another — with him comes your fiery, foolish brother, who has set out to meet his father and his future relative. There will be a feast prepared in the house on the occasion of your future nuptials — you may hear of a strange guest appearing at your festival — I will be there!’
‘Isidora stood stupified with horror. ‘Festival!’ she repeated — ‘a bridal festival! — and I already wedded to you, and about to become a mother!’
‘At this moment the trampling of many horsemen was heard as they approached the villa — the tumult of the domestics hurrying to admit and receive them, resounded through the apartments and Melmoth, with a gesture that seemed to Isidora rather like a menace than a farewell, instantly disappeared; and within an hour, Isidora knelt to the father she had never till then beheld — suffered herself to be saluted by Montilla — and accepted the embrace of her brother, who, in the petulance of his spirit, half rejected the chill and altered form that advanced to greet him.
‘Every thing at the family meeting was conducted in true Spanish formality. Aliaga kissed the cold hand of his withered wife — the numerous domestics exhibited a grave joy at the return of their master — Fra Jose assumed increased importance, and called for dinner in a louder tone. Montilla, the lover, a cold and quiet character, took things as they occurred.
‘Every thing lay hushed under a brief and treacherous calm. Isidora, who trembled at the approaching danger, felt her terrors on a sudden suspended. It was not so very near as she apprehended — and she bore with tolerable patience the daily mention of her approaching nuptials, while she was momently harassed by her confidential servants with hints of the impossibility of the event of which they were in expectation, being much longer delayed. Isidora heard, felt, endured all with courage — the grave congratulation of her father and mother — the self-complacent attentions of Montilla, sure of the bride and of her dower — the sullen compliance of the brother, who, unable to refuse his consent, was for ever hinting that his sister might have formed a higher connection. All these passed over her mind like a dream — the reality of her existence seemed internal, and she said to herself, — ‘Were I at the altar, were my hand locked in that of Montilla, Melmoth would rend me from him.’ A wild but deeply-fixed conviction — a wandering image of preternatural power, overshadowed her mind while she thought of Melmoth; — and this image, which had caused her so much terror and inquietude in her early hours of love, now formed her only resource against the hour of inconceivable suffering; as those unfortunate females in the Eastern Tales, whose beauty has attracted the fearful passion of some evil genie, are supposed to depend, at their nuptial hour, on the presence of the seducing spirit, to tear from the arms of the agonised parent, and the distracted bridegroom, the victim whom he has reserved for himself, and whose wild devotion to him gives a dignity to the union so unhallowed and unnatural.1
1 Vide the beautiful tale of Auheta the Princess of Egypt, and Maugraby the Sorcerer, in the Arabian Tales.
‘Aliaga’s heart expanded amid the approaching completion of the felicitous plans he had formed, and with his heart, his purse, which was its depositary, opened also, and he resolved to give a splendid fete in honour of his daughter’s nuptials. Isidora remembered Melmoth’s prediction of a fatal festival; and his words, ‘I will be there,’ gave her for a time a kind of trembling confidence. But as the preparations were carried on under her very eye, — as she was hourly consulted about the disposal of the ornaments, and the decorations of the apartments, — her resolution failed, and while she uttered a few incoherent words, her eye was glazed with horror.
‘The entertainment was to be a masked ball; and Isidora, who imagined that this might suggest to Melmoth some auspicious expedient for her escape, watched in vain for some hint of hope, — some allusion to the probability of this event facilitating her extrication from those snares of death that seemed compassing her about. He never uttered a word, and her dependence on him was at one moment confirmed, at another shaken to its foundation, by this terrible silence. In one of these latter moments, the anguish of which was increased beyond expression by a conviction that her hour of danger was not far distant, she exclaimed to Melmoth — ‘Take me — take me from this place! My existence is nothing — it is a vapour that soon must be exhaled — but my reason is threatened every moment! I cannot sustain the horrors to which I am exposed! All this day I have been dragged through rooms decorated for my impossible nuptials! — Oh, Melmoth, if you no longer love me, at least commiserate me! Save me from a situation of horror unspeakable! — have mercy on your child, if not on me! I have hung on your looks, — I have watched for a word of hope — you have not uttered a sound — you have not cast a glance of hope on me! I am wild! — I am reckless of all but the imminent and present horrors of tomorrow — you have talked of your power to approach, to enter these walls without suspicion or discovery — you boasted of that cloud of mystery in which you could envelope yourself. Oh! in this last moment of my extremity, wrap me in its tremendous folds, and let me escape in them, though they prove my shroud! — Think of the terrible night of our marriage! I followed you then in fear and confidence — your touch dissolved every earthly barrier — your steps trod an unknown path, yet I followed you! — Oh! If you really possess that mysterious and inscrutable power, which I dare not either question or believe, exert it for me in this terrible emergency — aid my escape — and though I feel I shall never live to thank you, the silent suppliant will remind you by its smiles of the tears that I now shed; and if they are shed in vain, its smile will have a bitter eloquence as it plays with the flowers on its mother’s grave!’
‘Melmoth, as she spoke, was profoundly silent, and deeply attentive. He said at last, ‘Do you then resign yourself to me?’ — ‘Alas! have I not?’ — ‘A question is not an answer. Will you, renouncing all other engagements, all other hopes, depend on me solely for your extrication from this fearful emergency?’ — ‘I will — I do!’ — ‘Will you promise, that if I render you the service you require, if I employ the power you say I have alluded to, you will be mine?’ — ‘Yours! — Alas! am I not yours already?’ — ‘You embrace my protection, then? You voluntarily seek the shelter of that power which I can promise? You yourself will me to employ that power in effecting your escape? — Speak — do I interpret your sentiments aright? — I am unable to exercise those powers you invest me with, unless you yourself require me to do so. I have waited — I have watched for the demand — it has been made — would that it never had!’ An expression of the fiercest agony corrugated his stern features as he spoke. — ‘But it may yet be withdrawn — reflect!’ — ‘And you will not then save me from shame and danger? Is this the proof of your love — is this the boast of your power?’ said Isidora, half frantic at this delay. ‘If I adjure you to pause — if I myself hesitate and tremble — it is to give time for the salutary whisper of your better angel.’ — ‘Oh! save me, and you shall be my angel!’ said Isidora, falling at his feet. Melmoth shook through his whole frame as he heard these words. He raised and soothed her, however, with promises of safety, though in a voice that seemed to announce despair — and then turning from her, burst into a passionate soliloquy. ‘Immortal Heaven! what is man? — A being with the ignorance, but not the instinct, of the feeblest animals! — They are like birds — when thy hand, O Thou whom I dare not call Father, is on them, they scream and quiver, though the gentle pressure is intended only to convey the wanderer back to his cage — while, to shun the light fear that scares their senses, they rush into the snare that is spread in their sight, and where their captivity is hopeless!’ As he spoke, hastily traversing the room, his foot struck against a chair on which a gorgeous dress was spread. ‘What is this?’ he exclaimed — ‘What ideot trumpery, what May-queen foolery is this?’ — ‘It is the habit I am to wear at the feast to-night,’ said Isidora — ‘My attendants are coming — I hear them at the door — oh, with what a throbbing heart I shall put on this glittering mockery! — But you will not desert me then?’ she added, with wild and breathless anxiety. ‘Fear not,’ said Melmoth, solemnly — ‘You have demanded my aid, and it shall be accorded. May your heart tremble no more when you throw off that habit, than now when you are about to put it on!’
‘The hour approached, and the guests were arriving. Isidora, arrayed in a splendid and fanciful garb, and rejoicing in the shelter which her mask afforded to the expression of her pale features, mingled among the groupe. She walked one measure with Montilla, and then declined dancing on the pretence of assisting her mother in receiving and entertaining her guests.
‘After a sumptuous banquet, dancing was renewed in the spacious hall, and Isidora followed the company thither with a beating heart. Twelve was the hour at which Melmoth had promised to meet her, and by the clock, which was placed over the door of the hall, she saw it wanted but a quarter to twelve. The hand moved on — it arrived at the hour — the clock struck! Isidora, whose eyes had been rivetted on its movements, now withdrew them in despair. At that moment she felt her arm gently touched, and one of the maskers, bending towards her, whispered, ‘I am here!’ and he added the sign which Melmoth and she had agreed on as the signal of their meeting. Isidora, unable to reply, could only return the sign. ‘Make haste,’ he added — ‘All is arranged for your flight — there is not a moment to be lost — I will leave you now, but meet me in a few moments in the western portico — the lamps are extinguished there, and the servants have neglected to relight them — be silent and be swift!’ He disappeared as he spoke, and Isidora, after a few moments, followed him. Though the portico was dark, a faint gleam from the splendidly illuminated rooms disclosed to her the figure of Melmoth. He drew her arm under his in silence, and proceeded to hurry her from the spot. ‘Stop, villain, stop!’ exclaimed the voice of her brother, who, followed by Montilla, sprung from the balcony — ‘Where do you drag my sister? — and you, degraded wretch, where are you about to fly, and with whom?’ Melmoth attempted to pass him, supporting Isidora with one arm, while the other was extended to repel his approach; but Fernan, drawing his sword, placed himself directly in their way, at the same time calling on Montilla to raise the household, and tear Isidora from his arms. ‘Off, fool — off!’ exclaimed Melmoth ‘Rush not on destruction! — I seek not your life — one victim of your house is enough — let us pass ere you perish!’ — ‘Boaster, prove your words!’ said Fernan, making a desperate thrust at him, which Melmoth coolly put by with his hand. ‘Draw, coward!’ cried Fernan, rendered furious by this action — ‘My next will be more successful!’ Melmoth slowly drew his sword. ‘Boy!’ said he in an awful voice — ‘If I turn this point against you, your life is not worth a moment’s purchase — be wise and let us pass.’ Fernan made no answer but by a fierce attack, which was instantly met by his antagonist.
‘The shrieks of Isidora had now reached the ears of the revellers, who rushed in crowds to the garden — the servants followed them with flambeaux snatched from the walls adorned for this ill-omened festival, and the scene of the combat was in a moment as light as day, and surrounded by a hundred spectators.
‘Part them — part them — save them!’ shrieked Isidora, writhing at the feet of her father and mother, who, with the rest, were gazing in stupid horror at the scene — ‘Save my brother — save my husband!’ The whole dreadful truth rushed on Donna Clara’s mind at these words, and casting a conscious look at the terrified priest, she fell to the ground. The combat was short as it was unequal, — in two moments Melmoth passed his sword twice through the body of Fernan, who sunk beside Isidora, and expired! There was a universal pause of horror for some moments — at length a cry of — ‘Seize the murderer!’ burst from every lip, and the crowd began to close around Melmoth. He attempted no defence. He retreated a few paces, and sheathing his sword, waved them back only with his arm; and this movement, that seemed to announce an internal power above all physical force, had the effect of nailing every spectator to the spot where he stood.
‘The light of the torches, which the trembling servants held up to gaze on him, fell full on his countenance, and the voices of a few shuddering speakers exclaimed, ‘MELMOTH THE WANDERER!’ — ‘I am — I am!’ said that unfortunate being — ‘and who now will oppose my passing — who will become my companion? — I seek not to injure now — but I will not be detained. Would that breathless fool had yielded to my bidding, not to my sword — there was but one human chord that vibrated in my heart — it is broken to-night, and for ever! I will never tempt woman more! Why should the whirlwind, that can shake mountains, and overwhelm cities with its breath, descend to scatter the leaves of the rose-bud?’ As he spoke, his eyes fell on the form of Isidora, which lay at his feet extended beside that of Fernan. He bent over it for a moment — a pulsation like returning life agitated her frame. He bent nearer — he whispered, unheard by the rest, — ‘Isadora, will you fly with me — this is the moment — every arm is paralyzed — every mind is frozen to its centre! — Isidora, rise and fly with me — this is your hour of safety!’ Isidora, who recognized the voice but not the speaker, raised herself for a moment — looked on Melmoth — cast a glance on the bleeding bosom of Fernan, and fell on it dyed in that blood. Melmoth started up — there was a slight movement of hostility among some of the guests — he turned one brief and withering glance on them — they stood every man his hand on his sword, without the power to draw them, and the very domestics held up the torches in their trembling hands, as if with involuntary awe they were lighting him out. So he passed on unmolested amid the groupe, till he reached the spot where Aliaga, stupified with horror, stood beside the bodies of his son and daughter. ‘Wretched old man!’ he exclaimed, looking on him as the unhappy father strained his glazing and dilated eyes to see who spoke to him, and at length with difficulty recognized the form of the stranger — the companion of his fearful journey some months past — ‘Wretched old man — you were warned — but you neglected the warning — I adjured you to save your daughter — I best knew her danger — you saved your gold — now estimate the value of the dross you grasped, and the precious ore you dropt! I stood between myself and her — I warned — I menaced — it was not for me to intreat. Wretched old man — see the result!’ — and he turned slowly to depart. An involuntary sound of execration and horror, half a howl and half a hiss, pursued his parting steps, and the priest, with a dignity that more became his profession than his character, exclaimed aloud, ‘Depart accursed, and trouble us not — go, cursing and to curse.’ — ‘I go conquering and to conquer,’ answered Melmoth with wild and fierce triumph — ‘wretches! your vices, your passions, and your weaknesses, make you my victims. Upbraid yourselves, and not me. Heroes in your guilt, but cowards in your despair, you would kneel at my feet for the terrible immunity with which I pass through you at this moment. — I go accursed of every human heart, yet untouched by one human hand!’ — As he retired slowly, the murmur of suppressed but instinctive and irrepressible horror and hatred burst from the groupe. He past on scowling at them like a lion on a pack of bayed hounds, and departed unmolested — unassayed — no weapon was drawn — no arm was lifted — the mark was on his brow, — and those who could read it knew that all human power was alike forceless and needless, — and those who could not succumbed in passive horror. Every sword was in its sheath as Melmoth quitted the garden. ‘Leave him to God!’ — was the universal exclamation. ‘You could not leave him in worse hands,’ exclaimed Fra Jose — ‘He will certainly be damned — and — that is some comfort to this afflicted family.
Nunc animum pietas, et materna nomina frangunt.
‘In less than half an hour, the superb apartments, the illuminated gardens of Aliaga, did not echo a footstep; all were gone, except a few who lingered, some from curiosity, some from humanity, to witness or condole with the sufferings of the wretched parents. The sumptuously decorated garden now presented a sight horrid from the contrasted figures and scenery. The domestics stood like statues, holding the torches still in their hands — Isidora lay beside the bloody corse of her brother, till an attempt was made to remove it, and then she clung to it with a strength that required strength to tear her from it — Aliaga, who had not uttered a word, and scarcely drawn a breath, sunk on his knees to curse his half-lifeless daughter — Donna Clara, who still retained a woman’s heart, lost all fear of her husband in this dreadful emergency, and, kneeling beside him, held his uplifted hands, and struggled hard for the suspension of the malediction — Fra Jose, the only one of the groupe who appeared to possess any power of recollection or of mental sanity, addressed repeatedly to Isidora the question, ‘Are you married, — and married to that fearful being?’ — ‘I am married!’ answered the victim, rising from beside the corse of her brother. ‘I am married!’ she added, glancing a look at her splendid habit, and displaying it with a frantic laugh. A loud knocking at the garden gate was heard at this moment. ‘I am married!’ shrieked Isidora, ‘and here comes the witness of my nuptials!’
‘As she spoke, some peasants from the neighbourhood, assisted by the domestics of Don Aliaga, brought in a corse, so altered from the fearful change that passes on the mortal frame, that the nearest relative could not have known it. Isidora recognized it in a moment for the body of the old domestic who had disappeared so mysteriously on the night of her frightful nuptials. The body had been discovered but that evening by the peasants; it was lacerated as by a fall from rocks, and so disfigured and decayed as to retain no resemblance to humanity. It was recognizable only by the livery of Aliaga, which, though much defaced, was still distinguishable by some peculiarities in the dress, that announced that those defaced garments covered the mortal remains of the old domestic. ‘There!’ cried Isidora with delirious energy — ‘There is the witness of my fatal marriage!’
‘Fra Jose hung over the illegible fragments of that whereon nature had once written — ‘This is a human being,’ and, turning his eyes on Isidora, with involuntary horror he exclaimed, ‘Your witness is dumb!’ As the wretched Isidora was dragged away by those who surrounded her, she felt the first throes of maternal suffering, and exclaimed, ‘Oh! there will be a living witness — if you permit it to live!’ Her words were soon realized; she was conveyed to her apartment, and in a few hours after, scarcely assisted and wholly unpitied by her attendants, gave birth to a daughter.
‘This event excited a sentiment in the family at once ludicrous and horrible. Aliaga, who had remained in a state of stupefaction since his son’s death, uttered but one exclamation — ‘Let the wife of the sorcerer, and their accursed offspring, be delivered into the hands of the merciful and holy tribunal, the Inquisition.’ He afterwards muttered something about his property being confiscated, but to this nobody paid attention. Donna Clara was almost distracted between compassion for her wretched daughter, and being grandmother to an infant demon, for such she deemed the child of ‘Melmoth the Wanderer’ must be — and Fra Jose, while he baptized the infant with trembling hands, almost expected a fearful sponsor to appear and blast the rite with his horrible negative to the appeal made in the name of all that is holy among Christians. The baptismal ceremony was performed, however, with an omission which the good-natured priest overlooked — there was no sponsor — the lowest domestic in the house declined with horror the proposal of being sponsor for the child of that terrible union. The wretched mother heard them from her bed of pain, and loved her infant better for its utter destitution.
‘A few hours put an end to the consternation of the family, on the score of religion at least. The officers of the Inquisition arrived, armed with all the powers of their tribunal, and strongly excited by the report, that the Wanderer of whom they had been long in search, had lately perpetrated an act that brought him within the sphere of their jurisdiction, by involving the life of the only being his solitary existence held alliance with. ‘We hold him by the cords of a man,’ said the chief inquisitor, speaking more from what he read than what he felt — ‘if he burst these cords he is more than man. He has a wife and child, and if there be human elements in him, if there be any thing mortal clinging to his heart, we shall wind round the roots of it, and extract it.’
‘It was not till after some weeks, that Isidora recovered her perfect recollection. When she did, she was in a prison, a pallet of straw was her bed, a crucifix and a death’s head the only furniture of her cell; the light struggled through a narrow grate, and struggled in vain, to cast one gleam on the squalid apartment that it visited and shrunk from. Isidora looked round her — she had light enough to see her child — she clasped it to her bosom, from which it had unconsciously drawn its feverish nourishment, and wept in extasy. ‘It is my own,’ she sobbed, ‘and only mine! It has no father — he is at the ends of the earth — he has left me alone — but I am not alone while you are left to me!’
‘She was left in solitary confinement for many days, undisturbed and unvisited. The persons in whose hands she was had strong reasons for this mode of treatment. They were desirous that she should recover perfect sanity of intellect previous to her examination, and they also wished to give her time to form that profound attachment to the innocent companion of her solitude, that might be a powerful engine in their hands in discovering those circumstances relative to Melmoth that had hitherto baffled all the power and penetration of the Inquisition itself. All reports agreed that the Wanderer had never before been known to make a woman the object of his temptation, or to entrust her with the terrible secret of his destiny;1 and the Inquisitors were heard to say to each other, ‘Now that we have got the Delilah in our hands, we shall soon have the Sampson.’
1 From this it should seem that they were unacquainted with the story of Elinor Mortimer.
‘It was on the night previous to her examination, (of which she was unapprized), that Isidora saw the door of her cell opened, and a figure appear at it, whom, amid the dreary obscurity that surrounded her, she recognized in a moment, — it was Fra Jose. After a long pause of mutual horror, she knelt in silence to receive his benediction, which he gave with feeling solemnity; and then the good monk, whose propensities, though somewhat ‘earthly and sensual,’ were never ‘devilish,’ after vainly drawing his cowl over his face to stifle his sobs, lifted up his voice and ‘wept bitterly.’
‘Isidora was silent, but her silence was not that of sullen apathy, or of conscience-seared impenitence. At length Fra Jose seated himself on the foot of the pallet, at some distance from the prisoner, who was also sitting, and bending her cheek, down which a cold tear slowly flowed, over her infant. ‘Daughter,’ said the monk, collecting himself, ‘it is to the indulgence of the holy office I owe this permission to visit you.’ — ‘I thank them,’ said Isidora, and her tears flowed fast and relievingly. ‘I am permitted also to tell you that your examination will take place to-morrow, — to adjure you to prepare for it, — and, if there be any thing which’ — ‘My examination!’ repeated Isidora with surprise, but evidently without terror, ‘on what subject am I then to be examined?’ — ‘On that of your inconceivable union with a being devoted and accursed.’ His voice was choaked with horror, and he added, ‘Daughter, are you then indeed the wife of — of — that being, whose name makes the flesh creep, and the hair stand on end?’ — ‘I am.’ — ‘Who were the witnesses of your marriage, and what hand dared to bind yours with that unholy and unnatural bond?’ — ‘There were no witnesses — we were wedded in darkness. I saw no form, but I thought I heard words uttered — I know I felt a hand place mine in Melmoth’s — its touch was as cold as that of the dead.’ — ‘Oh complicated and mysterious horror!’ said the priest, turning pale, and crossing himself with marks of unfeigned terror; he bowed his head on his arm for some time, and remained silent from unutterable emotion. ‘Father,’ said Isidora at length, ‘you knew the hermit who lived amid the ruins of the monastery near our house, — he was a priest also, — he was a holy man, it was he who united us!’ Her voice trembled. — ‘Wretched victim!’ groaned the priest, without raising his head, ‘you know not what you utter — that holy man is known to have died the very night preceding that of your dreadful union.’
‘Another pause of mute horror followed, which the priest at length broke. — ‘Unhappy daughter,’ said he in a composed and solemn voice, ‘I am indulged with permission to give you the benefit of the sacrament of confession, previous to your examination. I adjure you to unburden your soul to me, — will you?’ — ‘I will, my father.’ — ‘Will you answer me, as you would answer at the tribunal of God?’ — ‘Yes, — as I would answer at the tribunal of God.’ As she spake, she prostrated herself before the priest in the attitude of confession.
‘And you have now disclosed the whole burden of your spirit?’ — ‘I have, my father.’ The priest sat thoughtfully for a considerable time. He then put to her several singular questions relative to Melmoth, which she was wholly unable to answer. They seemed chiefly the result of those impressions of supernatural power and terror, which were every where associated with his image. ‘My father,’ said Isidora, when he had ceased, in a faultering voice, ‘My father, may I inquire about my unhappy parents?’ The priest shook his head, and remained silent. At length, affected by the agony with which she urged her inquiry, he reluctantly said she might guess the effect which the death of their son, and the imprisonment of their daughter in the Inquisition, must have on parents, who were no less eminent for their zeal for the Catholic faith, than for their parental affection. ‘Are they alive?’ said Isidora. — ‘Spare yourself the pain of further inquiries, daughter,’ said the priest, ‘and be assured, that if the answer was such as could give you comfort, it would not be withheld.’
‘At this moment a bell was heard to sound in a distant part of the structure. ‘That bell,’ said the priest, ‘announces that the hour of your examination approaches — farewell, and may the saints be with you.’ — ‘Stay, father, — stay one moment, — but one moment!’ cried Isidora, rushing franticly between him and the door. Fra Jose paused. Isidora sunk before him, and, hiding her face with her hands, exclaimed in a voice choaked with agony, ‘Father, do you think — that I am — lost for ever?’ — ‘Daughter,’ said the priest in heavy accents, and in a troubled and doubting spirit, ‘Daughter, — I have given you what comfort I could — press for no more, lest what I have given (with many struggles of conscience) may be withdrawn. Perhaps you are in a state on which I can form no judgment, and pronounce no sentence. May God be merciful to you, and may the holy tribunal judge you in its mercy also.’ — ‘Yet stay, father — stay one moment — only one moment — only one question more.’ As she spoke, she caught her pale and innocent companion from the pallet where it slept, and held it up to the priest. ‘Father, tell me, can this be the child of a demon? — can it be, this creature that smiles on me — that smiles on you, while you are mustering curses against it? — Oh, holy drops have sprinkled it from your own hand! — Father, you have spoke holy words over it. Father, let them tear me with their pincers, let them roast me on their flames, but will not my child escape — my innocent child, that smiles on you? — Holy father, dear father, look back on your child.’ And she crawled after him on her knees, holding up the miserable infant in her arms, whose weak cry and wasted frame, pleaded against the dungeon-life to which its infancy had been doomed.
‘Fra Jose melted at the appeal, and he was about to bestow many a kiss and many a prayer on the wretched babe, when the bell again was sounded, and hasting away, he had but time to exclaim, ‘My daughter, may God protect you!’ — ‘God protect me,’ said Isidora, clasping her infant to her bosom. The bell sounded again, and Isidora knew that the hour of her trial approached.
Fear not now the fever’s fire,
Fear not now the death-bed groan;
Pangs that torture, pains that tire
Bed-rid age with feeble moan.
MASON
‘The first examination of Isidora was conducted with the circumspective formality that has always been known to mark the proceedings of that tribunal. The second and the third were alike strict, penetrating and inoperative, and the holy office began to feel its highest functionaries were no match for the extraordinary prisoner who stood before them, who, combining the extremes of simplicity and magnanimity, uttered every thing that might criminate herself, but evaded with skill that baffled all the arts of inquisitorial examination, every question that referred to Melmoth.
‘In the course of the first examination, they hinted at the torture. Isidora, with something of the free and nature-taught dignity of her early existence, smiled as they spoke of it. An official whispered one of the inquisitors, as he observed the peculiar expression of her countenance, and the torture was mentioned no more.
‘A second — a third examination followed at long intervals — but it was observed, that every time the mode of examination was less severe, and the treatment of the prisoner more and more indulgent — her youth, her beauty, her profound simplicity of character and language, developed strongly on this singular emergency, and the affecting circumstance of her always appearing with her child in her arms, whose feeble cries she tried to hush, while she bent forward to hear and answer the questions addressed to her — all these seemed to have wrought powerfully on the minds of men not accustomed to yield to external impressions. There was also a docility, a submission, about this beautiful and unfortunate being — a contrite and bending spirit — a sense of wretchedness for the misfortunes of her family — a consciousness of her own, that touched the hearts even of inquisitors.
‘After repeated examinations, when nothing could be extorted from the prisoner, a skilful and profound artist in the school of mental anatomy, whispered to the inquisitor something about the infant whom she held in her arms. ‘She has defied the rack,’ was the answer. ‘Try her on that rack,’ was rejoined, and the hint was taken.
‘After the usual formalities were gone through, Isidora’s sentence was read to her. She was condemned, as a suspected heretic, to perpetual confinement in the prison of the Inquisition — her child was to be taken from her, and brought up in a convent, in order to —
‘Here the reading of the sentence was interrupted by the prisoner, who, uttering one dreadful shriek of maternal agony, louder than any other mode of torture had ever before extorted, fell prostrate on the floor. When she was restored to sensation, no authority or terror of the place or the judges, could prevent her pouring forth those wild and piercing supplications, which, from the energy with which they are uttered, appear to the speaker himself like commands, — that the latter part of her sentence might be remitted — the former appeared to make not the least impression on her — eternal solitude, passed in eternal darkness, seemed to give her neither fear or pain, but she wept, and pleaded, and raved, that she might not be separated from her infant.
‘The judges listened with fortified hearts, and in unbroken silence. When she found all was over, she rose from her posture of humiliation and agony — and there was something even of dignity about her as she demanded, in a calm and altered voice, that her child might not be removed from her till the following day. She had also self-possession enough to enforce her petition by the remark, that its life might be the sacrifice if it was too suddenly deprived of the nourishment it was accustomed to receive from her. To this request the judges acceded, and she was remanded to her cell.
‘The time elapsed. The person who brought her food departed without uttering a word; nor did she utter a word to him. It was about midnight that the door of her cell was unlocked, and two persons in official habits appeared at it. They seemed to pause, like the heralds at the tent of Achilles, and then, like them, forced themselves to enter. These men had haggard and livid faces — their attitudes were perfectly stony and automaton-like — their movements appeared the result of mere mechanism — yet these men were touched. The miserable light within hardly shewed the pallet on which the prisoner was seated; but a strong red light from the torch the attendant held, flared broadly on the arch of the door under which the figures appeared. They approached with a motion that seemed simultaneous and involuntary — and uttered together, in accents that seemed to issue from one mouth, ‘Deliver your child to us.’ In a voice as hoarse, dry, and natureless, the prisoner answered, ‘Take it!’
‘The men looked about the cell — it seemed as if they knew not where to find the offspring of humanity amid the cells of the Inquisition. The prisoner was silent and motionless during their search. It was not long — the narrow apartment, the scanty furniture, afforded little room for the investigation. When it was concluded, however, the prisoner, bursting into a wild laugh, exclaimed, ‘Where would you search for a child but in its mother’s bosom? Here — here it is — take it — take it!’ And she put it into their hands. ‘Oh what fools ye were to seek my child any where but on its mother’s bosom! It is your’s now!’ she shrieked in a voice that froze the officials. — ‘Take it — take it from me!’
‘The agents of the holy office advanced; and the technicality of their movements was somewhat suspended when Isidora placed in their hands the corse of her infant daughter. Around the throat of the miserable infant, born amid agony, and nursed in a dungeon, there was a black mark, which the officials made their use of in representing this extraordinary circumstance to the holy office. By some it was deemed as the sign impressed by the evil one at its birth — by others as the fearful effect of maternal despair.
‘It was determined that the prisoner should appear before them within four-and-twenty hours, and account for the death of her child.
‘Within less than half that number of hours, a mightier arm than that of the Inquisition was dealing with the prisoner — an arm that seemed to menace, but was indeed stretched out to save, and before whose touch the barriers of the dreaded Inquisition itself were as frail as the fortress of the spider who hung her web on its walls. Isidora was dying of a disease not the less mortal because it makes no appearance in an obituary — she was dying of that internal and incurable wound — a broken heart.
‘When the inquisitors were at last convinced that there was nothing more to be obtained by torture, bodily or mental torture, they suffered her to die unmolested, and granted her last request, that Fra Jose might be permitted to visit her.
‘It was midnight, but its approach was unknown in that place, where day and night are the same. A dim lamp was substituted for that weak and struggling beam that counterfeited day-light. The penitent was stretched on her bed of rest — the humane priest sat beside her; and if his presence gave no dignity to the scene, it at least softened it by the touches of humanity.
‘My father,’ said the dying Isidora, ‘you pronounced me forgiven.’ — ‘Yes, my daughter,’ said the priest, ‘you have assured me you are innocent of the death of your infant.’ — ‘You never could have believed me guilty,’ said Isidora, raising herself on her pallet at the appeal — ‘the consciousness of its existence alone would have kept me alive, even in my prison. Oh, my father, how was it possible it could live, buried with me in this dreadful place almost as soon as it respired? Even the morbid nourishment it received from me was dried up when my sentence was read. It moaned all night — towards morning its moans grew fainter, and I was glad — at last they ceased, and I was very — happy!’ But, as she talked of this fearful happiness, she wept.
‘My daughter, is your heart disengaged from that awful and disastrous tie that bound it to misfortune here, and to perdition hereafter?’ It was long before she could answer; at length she said in a broken voice, ‘My father, I have not now strength to search or to struggle with my heart. Death must very soon break every tie that was twined with it, and it is useless to anticipate my liberation; the effort would be agony — fruitless agony, for, while I live, I must love my destroyer! Alas! in being the enemy of mankind, was not his hostility to me inevitable and fatal? In rejecting his last terrible temptation — in resigning him to his destiny, and preferring submission to my own, I feel my triumph complete, and my salvation assured.’ — ‘Daughter, I do not comprehend you,’ — ‘Melmoth,’ said Isidora, with a strong effort, ‘Melmoth was here last night — within the walls of the Inquisition — within this very cell!’ The priest crossed himself with marks of the profoundest horror, and, as the wind swept hollowly through the long passage, almost expected the shaken door would burst open, and disclose the figure of the Wanderer.
‘My father, I have had many dreams,’ answered the penitent, shaking her head at a suggestion of the priest’s, ‘many — many wanderings, but this was no dream. I have dreamed of the garden-land where I beheld him first — I have dreamed of the nights when he stood at my casement, and trembled in sleep at the sound of my mother’s step — and I have had holy and hopeful visions, in which celestial forms appeared to me, and promised me his conversion — but this was no dream — I saw him last night. Father, he was here the whole night — he promised — he assured me — he adjured me to accept of liberation and safety, of life and of felicity. He told me, nor could I doubt him, that, by whatever means he effected his entrance, he could also effect my escape. He offered to live with me in that Indian isle — that paradise of ocean, far from human resort or human persecution. He offered to love me alone, and for ever — and then I listened to him. Oh, my father, I am very young, and life and love sounded sweetly in my ears, when I looked at my dungeon, and thought of dying on this floor of stone! But — when he whispered the terrible condition on which the fulfilment of his promise depended — when he told me that’ —
‘Her voice failed with her failing strength, and she could utter no more. ‘Daughter,’ said the priest, bending over her bed, ‘daughter, I adjure you, by the image represented on this cross I hold to your dying lips — by your hopes of that salvation which depends on the truth you utter to me, your priest and your friend — the conditions proposed by your tempter!’ ‘Promise me absolution for repeating the words, for I should wish that my last breath might not be exhaled in uttering — what I must.’ — ’Te absolvo,’ &c. said the priest, and bent his ear to catch the sounds. The moment they were uttered, he started as from the sting of a serpent, and, seating himself at the extremity of the cell, rocked in dumb horror. ‘My father, you promised me absolution,’ said the penitent, ‘Jam tibi dedi, moribunda,’ answered the priest, in the confusion of thoughts using the language appropriated to the service of religion. ‘Moribunda indeed!’ said the sufferer, falling back on her pallet, ‘Father, let me feel a human hand in mine as I part!’ — ‘Call upon God, daughter!’ said the priest, applying the crucifix to her cold lips. ‘I loved his religion,’ said the penitent, kissing it devoutly, ‘I loved it before I knew it, and God must have been my teacher, for I had no other! Oh!’ she exclaimed, with that deep conviction that must thrill every dying heart, and whose echo (would God) might pierce every living one — ‘Oh that I had loved none but God — how profound would have been my peace — how glorious my departure — now — his image pursues me even to the brink of the grave, into which I plunge to escape it!’
‘My daughter,’ said the priest, while the tears rolled fast down his cheeks — ‘my daughter, you are passing to bliss — the conflict was fierce and short, but the victory is sure — harps are tuned to a new song, even a song of welcome, and wreaths of palm are weaving for you in paradise!’
‘Paradise!’ uttered Isidora, with her last breath — ‘Will he be there!‘
Loud tolled the bell, the priests prayed well,
The tapers they all burned bright,
The monk her son, and her daughter the nun,
They told their beads all night!
* * * *
The second night ————
* * * *
The monk and the nun they told their beads
As fast as they could tell,
And aye the louder grew the noise,
The faster went the bell!
* * * *
The third night came ————
* * * *
The monk and the nun forgot their beads,
They fell to the ground dismayed,
There was not a single saint in heaven
Whom they did not call to their aid!
SOUTHEY
Mon?ada here concluded the tale of the Indian, — the victim of Melmoth’s passion, no less than of his destiny, both alike unhallowed and unutterable. And he announced his intention of disclosing to him the fates of the other victims, whose skeletons were preserved in the vault of the Jew Adonijah in Madrid. He added, that the circumstances relating to them, were of a character still darker and more awful than those he had recited, as they were the result of impressions made on masculine minds, without any excitement but that of looking into futurity. He mentioned, too, that the circumstances of his residence in the house of the Jew, his escape from it, and the reasons of his subsequent arrival in Ireland, were scarcely less extraordinary than any thing he had hitherto related. Young Melmoth, (whose name perhaps the reader has forgot), did ‘seriously incline’ to the purpose of having his dangerous curiosity further gratified, nor was he perhaps altogether without the wild hope of seeing the original of that portrait he had destroyed, burst from the walls and take up the fearful tale himself.
The narrative of the Spaniard had occupied many days; at their termination, young Melmoth signified to his guest that he was prepared to hear the sequel.
A night was fixed for the continuation of the recital. Young Melmoth and his guest met in the usual apartment — it was a dreary, stormy night — the rain that had fallen all day, seemed now to have yielded to the wind, that came in strong and sudden bursts, suddenly hushed, as if collecting strength for the tempest of the night. Mon?ada and Melmoth drew their chairs closer to the fire, looking at each other with the aspect of men who wish to inspire each other with courage to listen, and to tell, and are the more eager to inspire it, because neither feels it himself.
At length Mon?ada collected his voice and resolution to proceed, but as he went on, he perceived he could not fix his hearer’s attention, and he paused.
‘I thought,’ said Melmoth, answering his silence, ‘I thought I heard a noise — as of a person walking in the passage.’ ‘Hush! and listen,’ said Mon?ada, ‘I would not wish to be overheard.’ They paused and held their breath — the sound was renewed — it was evidently that of steps approaching the door, and then retiring from it. ‘We are watched,’ said Melmoth, half-rising from his chair, but at that moment the door opened, and a figure appeared at it, which Mon?ada recognized for the subject of his narrative, and his mysterious visitor in the prison of the Inquisition, and Melmoth for the original of the picture, and the being whose unaccountable appearance had filled him with consternation, as he sat beside his dying uncle’s bed.
The figure stood at the door for some time, and then advancing slowly till it gained the centre of the room, it remained there fixed for some time, but without looking at them. It then approached the table where they sat, in a slow but distinctly heard step, and stood before them as a living being. The profound horror that was equally felt by both, was differently expressed by each. Mon?ada crossed himself repeatedly, and attempted to utter many prayers. Melmoth, nailed to his chair, fixed his sightless eyes on the form that stood before him — it was indeed Melmoth the Wanderer — the same as he was in the past century — the same as he may be in centuries to come, should the fearful terms of his existence be renewed. His ‘natural force was not abated,’ but ‘his eye was dim,’ — that appalling and supernatural lustre of the visual organ, that beacon lit by an infernal fire, to tempt or to warn the adventurers of despair from that coast on which many struck, and some sunk — that portentous light was no longer visible — the form and figure were those of a living man, of the age indicated in the portrait which the young Melmoth had destroyed, but the eyes were as the eyes of the dead.
As the Wanderer advanced still nearer till his figure touched the table, Mon?ada and Melmoth started up in irrepressible horror, and stood in attitudes of defence, though conscious at the moment that all defence was hopeless against a being that withered and mocked at human power. The Wanderer waved his arm with an action that spoke defiance without hostility — and the strange and solemn accents of the only human voice that had respired mortal air beyond the period of mortal life, and never spoken but to the ear of guilt or suffering, and never uttered to that ear aught but despair, rolled slowly on their hearing like a peal of distant thunder.
‘Mortals — you are here to talk of my destiny, and of the events which it has involved. That destiny is accomplished, I believe, and with it terminate those events that have stimulated your wild and wretched curiosity. I am here to tell you of both! — I— I— of whom you speak, am here! — Who can tell so well of Melmoth the Wanderer as himself, now that he is about to resign that existence which has been the object of terror and wonder to the world? — Melmoth, you behold your ancestor — the being on whose portrait is inscribed the date of a century and a half, is before you. — Mon?ada, you see an acquaintance of a later date.’ — (A grim smile of recognition wandered over his features as he spoke). — ‘Fear nothing,’ he added, observing the agony and terror of his involuntary hearers — ‘What have you to fear?’ he continued, while a flash of derisive malignity once more lit up the sockets of his dead eyes — ‘You, Senhor, are armed with your beads — and you, Melmoth, are fortified by that vain and desperate inquisitiveness, which might, at a former period, have made you my victim,’ — (and his features underwent a short but horrible convulsion) — ‘but now makes you only my mockery.
‘Have you aught to quench my thirst?’ he added, seating himself. The senses of Mon?ada and his companion reeled in delirious terror, and the former, in a kind of wild confidence, filled a glass of water, and offered it to the Wanderer with a hand as steady, but somewhat colder, as he would have presented it to one who sat beside him in human companionship. The Wanderer raised it to his lips, and tasted a few drops, then replacing it on the table, said with a laugh, wild indeed, but no longer ferocious — ‘Have you seen,’ said he to Mon?ada and Melmoth, who gazed with dim and troubled sight on this vision, and wist not what to think — ‘Have you seen the fate of Don Juan, not as he is pantomimed on your paltry stage, but as he is represented in the real horrors of his destiny by the Spanish writer?1 There the spectre returns the hospitality of his inviter, and summons him in turn to a feast. — The banquet-hall is a church — he arrives — it is illuminated with a mysterious light — invisible hands hold lamps fed by no earthly substance, to light the apostate to his doom! — He enters the church, and is greeted by a numerous company — the spirits of those whom he has wronged and murdered, uprisen from their charnel, and swathed in shrouds, stand there to welcome him! — As he passes among them, they call on him in hollow sounds to pledge them in goblets of blood which they present to him — and beneath the altar, by which stands the spirit of him whom the parricide has murdered, the gulph of perdition is yawning to receive him! — Through such a band I must soon prepare to pass! — Isidora! thy form will be the last I must encounter — and — the most terrible! Now for the last drop I must taste of earth’s produce — the last that shall wet my mortal lips!’ He slowly finished the draught of water. Neither of his companions had the power to speak. He sat down in a posture of heavy musing, and neither ventured to interrupt him.
1 Vide the original play, of which there is a curious and very obsolete translation.
They kept silence till the morning was dawning, and a faint light streamed through the closed shutters. Then the Wanderer raised his heavy eyes, and fixed them on Melmoth. ‘Your ancestor has come home,’ he said; ‘his wanderings are over! — What has been told or believed of me is now of light avail to me. The secret of my destiny rests with myself. If all that fear has invented, and credulity believed of me be true, to what does it amount? That if my crimes have exceeded those of mortality, so will my punishment. I have been on earth a terror, but not an evil to its inhabitants. None can participate in my destiny but with his own consent — none have consented — none can be involved in its tremendous penalties, but by participation. I alone must sustain the penalty. If I have put forth my hand, and eaten of the fruit of the interdicted tree, am I not driven from the presence of God and the region of paradise, and sent to wander amid worlds of barrenness and curse for ever and ever?
‘It has been reported of me, that I obtained from the enemy of souls a range of existence beyond the period allotted to mortality — a power to pass over space without disturbance or delay, and visit remote regions with the swiftness of thought — to encounter tempests without the hope of their blasting me, and penetrate into dungeons, whose bolts were as flax and tow at my touch. It has been said that this power was accorded to me, that I might be enabled to tempt wretches in their fearful hour of extremity, with the promise of deliverance and immunity, on condition of their exchanging situations with me. If this be true, it bears attestation to a truth uttered by the lips of one I may not name, and echoed by every human heart in the habitable world.
‘No one has ever exchanged destinies with Melmoth the Wanderer. I have traversed the world in the search, and no one, to gain that world, would lose his own soul! — Not Stanton in his cell — nor you, Mon?ada, in the prison of the Inquisition — nor Walberg, who saw his children perishing with want — nor — another’ —
He paused, and though on the verge of his dark and doubtful voyage, he seemed to cast one look of bitter and retrospective anguish on the receding shore of life, and see, through the mists of memory, one form that stood there to bid him farewell. He rose — ‘Let me, if possible, obtain an hour’s repose. Aye, repose — sleep!’ he repeated, answering the silent astonishment of his hearers’ looks, ‘my existence is still human!’ — and a ghastly and derisive smile wandered over his features for the last time, as he spoke. How often had that smile frozen the blood of his victims! Melmoth and Mon?ada quitted the apartment; and the Wanderer, sinking back in his chair, slept profoundly. He slept, but what were the visions of his last earthly slumber?
The Wanderer’s Dream
He dreamed that he stood on the summit of a precipice, whose downward height no eye could have measured, but for the fearful waves of a fiery ocean that lashed, and blazed, and roared at its bottom, sending its burning spray far up, so as to drench the dreamer with its sulphurous rain. The whole glowing ocean below was alive — every billow bore an agonizing soul, that rose like a wreck or a putrid corse on the waves of earth’s oceans — uttered a shriek as it burst against that adamantine precipice — sunk — and rose again to repeat the tremendous experiment! Every billow of fire was thus instinct with immortal and agonizing existence, — each was freighted with a soul, that rose on the burning wave in torturing hope, burst on the rock in despair, added its eternal shriek to the roar of that fiery ocean, and sunk to rise again — in vain, and — for ever!
Suddenly the Wanderer felt himself flung half-way down the precipice. He stood, in his dream, tottering on a crag midway down the precipice — he looked upward, but the upper air (for there was no heaven) showed only blackness unshadowed and impenetrable — but, blacker than that blackness, he could distinguish a gigantic outstretched arm, that held him as in sport on the ridge of that infernal precipice, while another, that seemed in its motions to hold fearful and invisible conjunction with the arm that grasped him, as if both belonged to some being too vast and horrible even for the imagery of a dream to shape, pointed upwards to a dial-plate fixed on the top of that precipice, and which the flashes of that ocean of fire made fearfully conspicuous. He saw the mysterious single hand revolve — he saw it reach the appointed period of 150 years — (for in this mystic plate centuries were marked, not hours) — he shrieked in his dream, and, with that strong impulse often felt in sleep, burst from the arm that held him, to arrest the motion of the hand.
In the effort he fell, and falling grasped at aught that might save him. His fall seemed perpendicular — there was nought to save him — the rock was as smooth as ice — the ocean of fire broke at its foot! Suddenly a groupe of figures appeared, ascending as he fell. He grasped at them successively; — first Stanton — then Walberg — Elinor Mortimer — Isidora — Mon?ada — all passed him, — to each he seemed in his slumber to cling in order to break his fall — all ascended the precipice. He caught at each in his downward flight, but all forsook him and ascended.
His last despairing reverted glance was fixed on the clock of eternity — the upraised black arm seemed to push forward the hand — it arrived at its period — he fell — he sunk — he blazed — he shrieked! The burning waves boomed over his sinking head, and the clock of eternity rung out its awful chime — ‘Room for the soul of the Wanderer!’ — and the waves of the burning ocean answered, as they lashed the adamantine rock — ‘There is room for more!’ — The Wanderer awoke.
And in he came with eyes of flame,
The fiend to fetch the dead.
SOUTHEY’S Old Woman of Berkeley
Melmoth and Mon?ada did not dare to approach the door till about noon. They then knocked gently at the door, and finding the summons unanswered, they entered slowly and irresolutely. The apartment was in the same state in which they had left it the preceding night, or rather morning; it was dusky and silent, the shutters had not been opened, and the Wanderer still seemed sleeping in his chair.
At the sound of their approach he half-started up, and demanded what was the hour. They told him. ‘My hour is come,’ said the Wanderer, ‘it is an hour you must neither partake or witness — the clock of eternity is about to strike, but its knell must be unheard by mortal ears!’ As he spoke they approached nearer, and saw with horror the change the last few hours had wrought on him. The fearful lustre of his eyes had been deadened before their late interview, but now the lines of extreme age were visible in every feature. His hairs were as white as snow, his mouth had fallen in, the muscles of his face were relaxed and withered — he was the very image of hoary decrepid debility. He started himself at the impression which his appearance visibly made on the intruders. ‘You see what I feel,’ he exclaimed, ‘the hour then is come. I am summoned, and I must obey the summons — my master has other work for me! When a meteor blazes in your atmosphere — when a comet pursues its burning path towards the sun — look up, and perhaps you may think of the spirit condemned to guide the blazing and erratic orb.’
The spirits, that had risen to a kind of wild elation, as suddenly subsided, and he added, ‘Leave me, I must be alone for the few last hours of my mortal existence — if indeed they are to be the last.’ He spoke this with an inward shuddering, that was felt by his hearers. ‘In this apartment,’ he continued, ‘I first drew breath, in this I must perhaps resign it, — would — would I had never been born!
‘Men — retire — leave me alone. Whatever noises you hear in the course of the awful night that is approaching, come not near this apartment, at peril of your lives. Remember,’ raising his voice, which still retained all its powers, ‘remember your lives will be the forfeit of your desperate curiosity. For the same stake I risked more than life — and lost it! — Be warned — retire!’
They retired, and passed the remainder of that day without even thinking of food, from that intense and burning anxiety that seemed to prey on their very vitals. At night they retired, and though each lay down, it was without a thought of repose. Repose indeed would have been impossible. The sounds that soon after midnight began to issue from the apartment of the Wanderer, were at first of a description not to alarm, but they were soon exchanged for others of such indescribable horror, that Melmoth, though he had taken the precaution of dismissing the servants to sleep in the adjacent offices, began to fear that those sounds might reach them, and, restless himself from insupportable inquietude, rose and walked up and down the passage that led to that room of horror. As he was thus occupied, he thought he saw a figure at the lower end of the passage. So disturbed was his vision, that he did not at first recognize Mon?ada. Neither asked the other the reason of his being there — they walked up and down together silently.
In a short time the sounds became so terrible, that scarcely had the awful warning of the Wanderer power to withhold them from attempting to burst into the room. These noises were of the most mixed and indescribable kind. They could not distinguish whether they were the shrieks of supplication, or the yell of blasphemy — they hoped inwardly they might be the former.
Towards morning the sounds suddenly ceased — they were stilled as in a moment. The silence that succeeded seemed to them for a few moments more terrible than all that preceded. After consulting each other by a glance, they hastened together to the apartment. They entered — it was empty — not a vestige of its last inhabitant was to be traced within.
After looking around in fruitless amazement, they perceived a small door opposite to that by which they had entered. It communicated with a back staircase, and was open. As they approached it, they discovered the traces of footsteps that appeared to be those of a person who had been walking in damp sand or clay. These traces were exceedingly plain — they followed them to a door that opened on the garden — that door was open also. They traced the foot-marks distinctly through the narrow gravel walk, which was terminated by a broken fence, and opened on a heathy field which spread half-way up a rock whose summit overlooked the sea. The weather had been rainy, and they could trace the steps distinctly through that heathy field. They ascended the rock together.
Early as it was, the cottagers, who were poor fishermen residing on the shore, were all up, and assuring Melmoth and his companion that they had been disturbed and terrified the preceding night by sounds which they could not describe. It was singular that these men, accustomed by nature and habit alike to exaggeration and superstition, used not the language of either on this occasion.
There is an overwhelming mass of conviction that falls on the mind, that annihilates idiom and peculiarities, and crushes out truth from the heart. Melmoth waved back all who offered to accompany him to the precipice which over-hung the sea. Mon?ada alone followed him.
Through the furze that clothed this rock, almost to its summit, there was a kind of tract as if a person had dragged, or been dragged, his way through it — a down-trodden track, over which no footsteps but those of one impelled by force had ever passed. Melmoth and Mon?ada gained at last the summit of the rock. The ocean was beneath — the wide, waste, engulphing ocean! On a crag beneath them, something hung as floating to the blast. Melmoth clambered down and caught it. It was the handkerchief which the Wanderer had worn about his neck the preceding night — that was the last trace of the Wanderer!
Melmoth and Mon?ada exchanged looks of silent and unutterable horror, and returned slowly home.
The End