Melmoth the Wanderer 1820

by Charles Robert Maturin

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I never ate with appetite, because I knew, that with or without it, I must go to the refectory when the bell rung. I never lay down to rest in peace, because I knew the bell was to summon me in defiance of nature, whether it was disposed to prolong or shorten my repose. I never prayed, for my prayers were dictated to me. I never hoped, for my hopes were founded not on the truth of God, but on the promises and threatenings of man. My salvation hovered on the breath of a being as weak as myself, whose weakness I was nevertheless obliged to flatter, and struggle to obtain a gleam of the grace of God, through the dark distorted medium of the vices of man. It never reached me – I die without light, hope, faith, or consolation.” – He uttered these words with a calmness that was more terrific than the wildest convulsions of despair. I gasped for breath – “But, my brother, you were always punctual in your religious exercises.” “That was mechanism – will you not believe a dying man?” “But you urged me, in a long conversation, to embrace the monastic life; and your importunity must have been sincere, for it was
after my profession.” “It is natural for the miserable to wish for companions in their misery. This is very selfish, very misanthropic, you will say, but it is also very natural. You have yourself seen the cages suspended in the cells – are not the tame birds always employed to allure the wild ones? We were caged birds, can you blame us for the deception?” In these words I could not help recognizing that simplicity of profound corruption,* – 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. 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.”