Melmoth the Wanderer

by Charles Maturin

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

  ‘Amid these displays of indulgence, I exhibited an ingratitude totally foreign from my character. I never read the books they furnished me with, – I neglected the flowers with which they filled my room, – and the superb organ they introduced into my apartment, I never touched, except to elicit some deep and melancholy chords from its keys. To those who urged me to employ my talents for painting and music, I still answered with the same apathetic monotony, ‘I am to be a monk.’ ‘But, my brother, the love of flowers, of music, of all that can be consecrated to God, is also worthy of the attention of man – you abuse the indulgence of the Superior.’ ‘Perhaps so.’ ‘You must, in gratitude to God, thank him for these lovely works of his creation;’ – the room was at this time filled with carnations and roses; – ‘you must also be grateful to him for the powers with which he has distinguished you in hymning his praises – your voice is the richest and most powerful in the church.’ ‘I don’t doubt it.’ ‘My brother, you answer at random.’ ‘Just as I feel – but don’t heed that.’ ‘Will you take a turn in the garden?’ ‘If you please.’ ‘Or will you seek a moment’s consolation from the Superior?’ ‘If you please.’ ‘But why do you speak with such apathy? are the odour of the flowers, and the consolations of your Superior, to be appreciated in the same breath?’ ‘I believe so.’ Why?’ ‘Because I am to be a monk.’ ‘Nay, brother, will you never utter any thing but that phrase, which carried no meaning with it but that of stupefaction or delirium?’ ‘Imagine me, then, stupefied, delirious – what you please – you know I must be a monk.’ At these words, which I suppose I uttered in a tone unlike that of the usual chaunt27 of monastic conversation, another interposed, and asked what I was uttering in so loud a key? ‘I am only saying,’ I replied, ‘that I must be a monk.’ ‘Thank God it is no worse,’ replied the querist, ‘your contumacy must long ago have wearied the Superior and the brethren – thank God it’s no worse.’ At these words I felt my passions resuscitated, – I exclaimed, ‘Worse! what have I to dread? – am I not to be a monk?’ From that evening, (I forget when it occurred), my liberty was abridged; I was no longer suffered to walk, to converse with the boarders or novices, – a separate table was spread for me in the refectory, – the seats near mine were left vacant at service, – yet still my cell was embellished with flowers and engravings, and exquisitely-wrought toys were left on my table. I did not perceive they were treating me as a lunatic, yet certainly my foolishly reiterated expressions might have justified them in doing so, – they had their own plans in concert with the Director, – my silence went for proof. The Director came often to visit me, and the hypocritical wretches would accompany him to my cell. I was generally (for want of other occupation) attending to my flowers, or gazing at the engravings, – and they would say, ‘You see he is as happy as he wishes to be – he wants for nothing – he is quite occupied in watching those roses.’ ‘No, I am not occupied,’ I returned, ‘it is occupation I want.’ Then they shrugged their shoulders, exchanged mysterious looks with the Director, and I was glad when they were gone, without reflecting on the mischief their absence threatened me with. At this moment, consultation after consultation was held at the palace de Monçada, whether I could be induced to shew sufficient intellect to enable me to pronounce the vows. It seems the reverend fathers were as anxious as their old enemies the Moors, to convert an idiot into a saint. There was now a party combined against me, that it would have required more than the might of man to resist. All was uproar from the palace de Monçada to the convent, and back again. I was mad, contumacious, heretical, idiotical, – any thing – every thing – that could appease the jealous agony of my parents, the cupidity of the monks, or the ambition of the ex-Jesuits, who laughed at the terror of all the rest, and watched intently over their own interests. Whether I was mad or not, they cared very little; to enroll a son of the first house of Spain among their converts, or to imprison him as a madman, or to exorcise him as a demoniac, was all the same to them. There was a coup de theatre to be exhibited, and provided they played first parts, they cared little about the catastrophe. Luckily, during all this uproar of imposture, fear, falsehood and misrepresentation, the Superior remained steady. He let the tumult go on, to aggrandize his importance; but he was resolved all the time that I should have sanity enough to enable me to take the vows. I knew nothing of all this, but was astonished at being summoned to the parlour on the last eve of my noviciate. I had performed my religious exercises with regularity, had received no rebukes from the master of the novices, and was totally unprepared for the scene that awaited me. In the parlour were assembled my father, mother, the Director, and some other persons whom I did not recognize. I advanced with a calm look, and equal step. I believe I was as much in possession of my reason as any one present. The Superior, taking my arm, led me round the room, saying, ‘You see –’ I interrupted him – ‘Sir, what is this intended for?’ He answered only by putting his finger on his lips, and then desired me to exhibit my drawings. I brought them, and offered them on one knee, first to my mother, and then to my father. They were sketches of monasteries and prisons. My mother averted her eyes – and my father said, pushing them away, ‘I have no taste in those things.’ ‘But you are fond of music doubtless,’ said the Superior; ‘you must hear his performance.’ There was a small organ in the room adjacent to the parlour; my mother was not admitted there, but my father followed to listen. Involuntarily I selected an air from the ‘Sacrifice of Jephtha.’28 My father was affected, and bid me cease. The Superior imagined this was not only a tribute to my tale
nt, but an acknowledgement of the power of his party, and he applauded without measure or judgement. Till that moment, I had never conceived I could be the object of a party in the convent. The Superior was determined to make me a Jesuit, and therefore was pledged for my sanity. The monks wished for an exorcism, an auto de fe,29 or some such bagatelle, to diversify the dreariness of monasticism, and therefore were anxious I should be, or appear, deranged or possessed. Their pious wishes, however, failed. I had appeared when summoned, behaved with scrupulous correctness, and the next day was appointed for my taking the vows.

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