Melmoth the Wanderer

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by Charles Maturin


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

  *

  ‘I shuddered, yet I still went on with my queries – I thought I could not know too much. I said, ‘But, my brother, the religious exercises in which you were constantly engaged, must have imperceptibly instilled something of their spirit into you? – is it not so? You must have passed from the forms of religion into its spirit ultimately? – is it not so, my brother? Speak on the faith of a dying man. May I have such a hope! I would undergo any thing – any thing, to obtain it.’ ‘There is no such hope,’ said the dying man, ‘deceive not yourself with it. The repetition of religious duties, without the feeling or spirit of religion, produces an incurable callosity of heart. There are not more irreligious people to be found on earth than those who are occupied always in its externals.42 I verily believe half our lay-brothers to be Atheists. I have heard and read something of those whom we call heretics. They have people to open their pews, (shocking profanation you will call it, to sell seats in the house of God, and you are right), they have people to ring bells when their dead are to be interred; and these wretches have no other indication of religion to give, but watching during the whole time of service, (in which their duties forbid them to partake), for the fees which they extort, and dropping upon their knees, ejaculating the names of Christ and God, amid the rattling of the pew-doors, which always operates on their associations, and makes them bound from their knees to gape for a hundredth part of the silver for which Judas sold his Saviour and himself. Then their bell-ringers – one would imagine death might humanize them. Oh! no such thing – they extort money in proportion to the depth of the grave. And the bell-ringer, the sexton and the survivors, fight sometimes a manual battle over the senseless remains, whose torpidity is the most potent and silent reproach to this unnatural conflict.’ I knew nothing of this, but I grasped at his former words, ‘You die, then, without hope or confidence?’ He was silent. ‘Yet you urged me by eloquence almost divine, by a miracle verified before my own eyes.’ He laughed. There is something very horrible in the laugh of a dying man: Hovering on the verge of both worlds, he seems to give the lie to both, and proclaim the enjoyments of one, and the hopes of another, alike an imposture. ‘I performed that miracle myself,’ he said with all the calmness, and, alas! something of the triumph of a deliberate impostor. ‘I knew the reservoir by which the fountain was supplied – by consent of the Superior it was drawn off in the course of the night. We worked hard at it, and laughed at your credulity every pump we drew.’ ‘But the tree –’ ‘I was in possession of some chemical secrets – I have not time to disclose them now – I scattered a certain fluid over the leaves of the poplar that night, and they appeared withered by the morning – go look at them a fortnight hence, and you will see them as green as ever.’ ‘And these are your dying words?’ ‘They are.’ ‘And why did you deceive me thus?’ He struggled a short time at this question, and then rising almost upright in his bed, exclaimed, ‘Because I was a monk, and wished for victims of my imposture to gratify my pride! and companions of my misery, to soothe its malignity!’ He was convulsed as he spoke, the natural mildness and calmness of his physiognomy were changed for something that I cannot describe – something at once derisive, triumphant and diabolical. I forgave him every thing in that horrible moment. I snatched a crucifix that lay by his bed – I offered it to his lips. He pushed it away. ‘If I wanted to have this farce acted, I should choose another actor. You know I might have the Superior and half the convent at my bed-side this moment if I pleased, with their tapers, their holy water, and their preparations for extreme unction, and all the masquerade of death, by which they try to dupe even the dying, and insult God even on the threshold of his own eternal mansion. I suffered you to sit beside me, because I thought, from your repugnance to the monastic life, you might be a willing hearer of its deceptions, and its despair.’

  ‘Deplorable as had been the image of that life to me before, this representation exceeded my imagination. I had viewed it as excluding all the enjoyments of life, and thought the prospect blasting; but now the other world was weighed in the balance, and found wanting. The genius of monasticism seemed to wield a two-edged sword, and to lift it between and against time and eternity. The blade bore a two-fold inscription – on the side next the world was written the word ‘suffer,’ – on that opposed to eternity, ‘despair.’ In the utter hopelessness of my soul, I still continued to question him for hope – him! while he was bereaving me of its very shadow, by every word he uttered. ‘But, must all be plunged in this abyss of darkness? Is there no light, no hope, no refuge, for the sufferer? May not some of us become reconciled to our situation – first patient of it, then attached to it? Finally, may we not (if our repugnance be invincible) make a merit of it with God, and offer to him the sacrifice of our earthly hopes and wishes, in the confidence of an ample and glorious equivalent? Even if we are unable to offer this sacrifice with the unction which would ensure its acceptance, still may we not hope it will not be wholly neglected? – that we may become tranquil, if not happy – resigned, if not content. Speak, tell me if this may be?’ ‘And you wish to extort deception from the lips of death – but you will fail. Hear your doom – Those who are possessed of what may be called the religious character, that is, those who are visionary, weak, morose and ascetic, may elevate themselves to a species of intoxication in the moments of devotion. They may, while clasping the images, work themselves into the delusion, that the dead stone thrills to their touch; that the figures move, assent to their petitions, and turn their lifeless eyes on them with an expression of benignity. They may, while kissing the crucifix,44 believe that they hear celestial voices pronouncing their pardon; that the Saviour of the world extends his arms to them, to invite them to beatitude; that all heaven is expanded to their view, and the harmonies of paradise are enriched to glorify their apotheosis. But this is a mere inebriation that the most ignorant physician could produce in his patients by certain medicines. The secret of this ecstatic swoon might be traced to an apothecary’s shop, or purchased at a cheaper rate. The inhabitants of the north of Europe procure this state of exaltati
on by the use of liquid fire – the Turks by opium – the Dervises by dancing – and Christian monks by spiritual pride operating on the exhaustion of a macerated frame. It is all intoxication, with this difference only, that the intoxication of men of this world produces always self-complacency – that of men of the other world, a complacency whose supposed source is derived from God. The intoxication is, therefore, more profound, more delusive, and more dangerous. But nature, violated by these excesses, exacts a most usurious interest for this illicit indulgence. She makes them pay for moments of rapture with hours of despair. Their precipitation from extasy to horror is almost instantaneous. In the course of a few moments, they pass from being the favourites of Heaven to becoming its outcasts. They doubt the truth of their raptures, – the truth of their vocation. They doubt every thing – the sincerity of their prayers, even the efficacy of the Saviour’s atonement, and the intercession of the blessed Virgin. They plunge from paradise to hell. They howl, they scream, they blaspheme. From the bottom of the infernal gulph in which they imagine themselves plunged, they bellow imprecations against their Creator – they denounce themselves as damned from all eternity for their sins, while their only sin is their inability to support preternatural excitement. The paroxysm ceases [and] they become the elect of God again in their own imaginations. And to those who interrogate them with regard to their late despair, they answer, That Satan was permitted to buffet them – that they were under the hidings of God’s face, &c. All saints, from Mahomet down to Francis Xavier,45 were only a compound of insanity, pride and self-imposition; – the latter would have been of less consequence, but that men always revenge their impositions on themselves, by imposing to the utmost on others.’

  ‘There is no more horrible state of mind than that in which we are forced by conviction to listen on, wishing every word to be false, and knowing every word to be true. Such was mine, but I tried to palliate it by saying, ‘It was never my ambition to be a saint; but is the lot of all, then, so deplorable?’ The monk, who appeared to rejoice in this opportunity to discharge the concentrated malignity of sixty years of suffering and hypocrisy, collected his dying voice to answer. He seemed as if he never could inflict enough, for what had been inflicted on himself. ‘Those who possess strong sensibility, without the religious character, are of all others the most unhappy, but their miseries are soonest terminated. They are harassed by trivial constraints, stupefied by monotonous devotion, exasperated by full insolence and bloated superiority. They struggle, they resist. Penance and punishment are applied. Their own violence justifies increased violence of treatment; and, at all events, it would be applied without this justification, for there is nothing that delights the pride of power, more than a victorious strife with the pride of intellect. The remainder is easily to be conceived by you, who have witnessed it. You saw the unfortunate youth who interfered about Paolo. He was lashed to madness. Tortured first to phrenzy, then to stupefaction, – he died! I was the secret, unsuspected adviser of the whole proceeding.’ ‘Monster!’ I exclaimed, for truth had made us equal now, and even precluded the language that humanity would dictate when uttered to a dying man. – ‘But why?’ – said he, with that calmness which had once attracted, and now revolted me, but which had at all times undisputed possession of his physiognomy; – ‘his sufferings were shorter, do you blame me for diminishing their duration?’ – There was something cold, ironical and jeering, even in the suavity of this man, that gave a certain force to his simplest observations. It seemed as if he had reserved the truth all his life, to utter it at his dying hour. ‘Such is the fate of those who possess strong sensibility; those who have less languish away in an imperceptible decline. They spend their time in watching a few flowers, in tending birds. They are punctual in their religious exercises, they receive neither blame or praise, – they melt away in torpor and ennui. They wish for death, as the preparation it might put the convent to might produce a short excitement, but they are disappointed, for their state forbids excitement, and they die as they have lived, – unexcited, unawakened. The tapers are lit, they do not see them, – the unction is applied, they do not feel it, – prayers are uttered, they cannot partake in them; – in fact, the whole drama is acted, but the principal performer is absent, – is gone. Others indulge themselves in perpetual reverie. They walk alone in the cloister, – in the garden. They feed themselves with the poison of delicious, innutritive illusion. They dream that an earthquake will shake the walls to atoms, that a volcano will burst forth in the centre of the garden. They imagine a revolution of government, – an attack of banditti, – any thing, however improbable. Then they take refuge in the possibility of a fire, (if a fire bursts out in a convent, the doors are thrown open, and ‘Sauve qui peut,’ is the word). At this thought they conceived the most ardent hope, – they could rush out, – they could precipitate themselves into the streets, into the country, – in fact, they would fly any where to escape. Then these hopes fail, – they begin to get nervous, morbid, restless. If they have interest, they are indulged with remission from their duties, and they remain in their cells, relaxed, – torpid, – idiotical; if they have not interest, they are forced to the punctual performance of their duties, and then idiotism comes on much sooner, as diseased horses, employed in a mill, become blind sooner than those who are suffered to wear out existence in ordinary labour. Some of them take refuge in religion, as they call it. They call for relief on the Superior, but what can the Superior do? He is but human too, and perhaps feels the despair that is devouring the wretches who supplicate him to deliver them from it. Then they prostrate themselves before the images of the saints, – they invoke, they sometimes revile them. They call for their intercession, deplore its inefficacy, and fly to some other, whose merits they imagine are higher in the sight of God. They supplicate for an interest in the intercession of Christ and the Virgin, as their last resort. That resort fails them too, – the Virgin herself is inexorable, though they wear out her pedestal with their knees, and her feet with their kisses. Then they go about the galleries all night, they rouse the sleepers. They knock at every door, – they cry, ‘Brother Saint Jerome, pray for me, – ‘Brother Saint Augustine, pray for me.’ Then the placard is seen fastened to the rails of the altar, ‘Dear brothers, pray for the wandering soul of a monk.’ The next day the placard bears this inscription, ‘The prayers of the community are implored for a monk who is in despair.’ Then they find human intercession as unavailing as divine, to procure them a remission of the sufferings which, while their profession continues to inflict on them, no power can reverse or mitigate. They crawl to their cells, – in a few days the toll of the bell is heard, and the brethren exclaim, ‘He died in the odour of sanctity,’46 and hasten to spread their snares for another victim.’ ‘And is this, then, monastic life?’ ‘It is, – there are but two exceptions, that of those who can every day renew, by the aid of imagination, the hope of escape, and who cherish that hope even on their dying bed; and those who, like me, diminish their misery by dividing it, and, like the spider, feel relieved of the poison that swells, and would burst them, by instilling a drop of it into every insect that toils, agonizes and perishes in their net, – like you.’ At these last words, a glare of malignity flashed on the features of the dying wretch, that appalled me. I retreated from his bed for a moment. I returned, I looked at him, – his eyes were closed, – his hands extended. I touched him, – raised him, – he was dead, – those were his last words. The expression of his features was the physiognomy of his soul, – they were calm and pale, but still a cold expression of derision lingered about the curve of his lips.

  ‘I rushed from the infirmary. I was at that time indulged, like all the other visitants of the sick, to go to the garden beyond the allotted hours perhaps to diminish the chance of infection. I was but too ready to avail myself of this permission. The garden, with its calm moon-light beauty, its innocence of heaven, its theology of the stars, was at once a reproach and a consolation to me. I tried to reflect
, to feel, – both efforts failed; and perhaps it is in this silence of the soul, this suspension of all the clamorous voices of the passions, that we are most ready to hear the voice of God. My imagination suddenly represented to me the august and ample vault above me as a church, – the images of the saints grew dim in my eyes as I gazed on the stars, and even the altar, over which the crucifixion of the Saviour of the world was represented, turned pale to the eye of the soul, as I gazed on the moon ‘walking in her brightness.’47 I fell on my knees. I knew not to whom I was about to pray, but I never felt so disposed to pray. I felt my habit touched at this moment. I at first trembled, from the idea of being detected in a forbidden act. I started up. A dark figure stood beside me, who said in indistinct and faultering tones, ‘Read this,’ and he thrust a paper into my hand; ‘I have worn it sewed into my habit for four days. I have watched you night and day. I had no opportunity but this, – you were in your cell, in the choir, or in the infirmary. Tear it in pieces, throw the fragments into the fountain, or swallow them, the moment you have read it. – Adieu. I have risked every thing for you,’ and he glided away. I recognized his figure as he departed; it was the porter of the convent. I well understood the risk he must have run in delivering this paper, for it was the regulation of the convent, that all letters, whether addressed to or written by boarders, novices, or monks, were first to be read by the Superior, and I never knew an instance of its infringement. The moon gave me sufficient light. I began to read, while a vague hope, that had neither object or basis, trembled at the bottom of my heart. The paper contained these words:

 

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