CHAPTER XVI
Più non ho la dolce speranza.
Didone
‘Seven mornings and evenings Immalee paced the sands of her lonely isle, without seeing the stranger. She had still his promise to console her, that they should meet in the world of suffering; and this she repeated to herself as if it was full of hope and consolation. In this interval she tried to educate herself for her introduction into this world, and it was beautiful to see her attempting, from vegetable and animal analogies, to form some image of the incomprehensible destiny of man. In the shade she watched the withering flower. – “The blood that ran red through its veins yesterday is purple to-day, and will be black and dry to-morrow,” she said; “but it feels no pain – it dies patiently, – and the ranunculus and tulip near it are untouched by grief for their companion, or their colours would not be so resplendent. But can it be thus in the world that thinks? Could I see him wither and die, without withering and dying along with him. Oh no! when that flower fades, I will be the dew that falls over him!”
‘She attempted to enlarge her comprehension, by observing the animal world. A young loxia had fallen dead from its pendent nest; and Immalee, looking into the aperture which that intelligent bird forms at the lower extremity of the nest to secure it from birds of prey, perceived the old ones with fire-flies in their small beaks, their young one lying dead before them. At this sight Immalee burst into tears. – “Ah! you cannot weep,” she said, “what an advantage I have over you! You eat, though your young one, your own one, is dead; but could I ever drink of the milk of the cocoa, if he could no longer taste it? I begin to comprehend what he said – to think, then, is to suffer – and a world of thought must be a world of pain! But how delicious are these tears! Formerly I wept for pleasure – but there is a pain sweeter than pleasure, that I never felt till I beheld him. Oh! who would not think, to have the joy of tears?”
‘But Immalee did not occupy this interval solely in reflection; a new anxiety began to agitate her; and in the intervals of her meditation and her tears, she searched with avidity for the most glowing and fantastically wreathed shells to deck her arms and hair with. She changed her drapery of flowers every day, and never thought them fresh after the first hour; then she filled her largest shells with the most limpid water, and her hollow cocoa nuts with the most delicious figs, interspersed with roses, and arranged them picturesquely on the stone bench of the ruined pagoda. The time, however, passed over without the arrival of the stranger, and Immalee, on visiting her fairy banquet the next day, wept over the withered fruit, but dried her eyes, and hastened to replace them.
‘She was thus employed on the eighth morning, when she saw the stranger approach; and the wild and innocent delight with which she bounded towards him, excited in him for a moment a feeling of gloomy and reluctant compunction, which Immalee’s quick susceptibility traced in his pausing step and averted eye. She stood trembling in lovely and pleading diffidence, as if intreating pardon for an unconscious offence, and asking permission to approach by the very attitude in which she forbore it, while tears stood in her eyes ready to fall at another repelling motion. This sight “whetted his almost blunted purpose.” She must learn to suffer, to qualify her to become my pupil, he thought. “Immalee, you weep,” he added, approaching her. “Oh yes!” said Immalee, smiling like a spring morning through her tears; “you are to teach me to suffer, and I shall soon be very fit for your world – but I had rather weep for you, than smile on a thousand roses.” – “Immalee,” said the stranger, repelling the tenderness that melted him in spite of himself, “Immalee, I come to shew you something of the world of thought you are so anxious to inhabit, and of which you must soon become an inmate. Ascend this hill where the palm-trees are clustering, and you shall see a glimpse of part of it.” – “But I would like to see the whole, and all at once!” said Immalee, with the natural avidity of thirsty and unfed intellect, that believes it can swallow all things, and digest all things. “The whole, and all at once!” said her conductor, turning to smile at her as she bounded after him, breathless and glowing with newly excited feeling. “I doubt the part you will see to-night will be more than enough to satiate even your curiosity.” As he spoke he drew a tube from his vest, and bid her apply it to her sight. The Indian obeyed him; but, after gazing a moment, uttered the emphatic exclamation, “I am there! – or are they here?” and sunk on the earth in a frenzy of delight. She rose again in a moment, and eagerly seizing the telescope, applied it in a wrong direction, which disclosed merely the sea to her view, and exclaimed sadly, “Gone! – gone! – all that beautiful world lived and died in a moment – all that I love die so – my dearest roses live not half so long as those I neglect – you were absent for seven moons since I first saw you, and the beautiful world lived only a moment.”
‘The stranger again directed the telescope towards the shore of India, from which they were not far distant, and Immalee again exclaimed in rapture, “Alive and more beautiful than ever! – all living, thinking things! – their very walk thinks. No mute fishes, and senseless trees, but wonderful rocks,* on which they look with pride, as if they were the works of their own hands. Beautiful rocks! how I love the perfect straitness of your sides, and the crisped and flower-like knots of your decorated tops! Oh that flowers grew, and birds fluttered round you, and then I would prefer you even to the rocks under which I watch the setting sun! Oh what a world must that be where nothing is natural, and every thing beautiful! – thought must have done all that. But, how little every thing is! – thought should have made every thing larger – thought should be a god. But,” she added with quick intelligence and self-accusing diffidence, “perhaps I am wrong. Sometimes I have thought I could lay my hand on the top of a palm-tree, but when, after a long, long time, I came close to it, I could not have reached its lowest leaf were I ten times higher than I am. Perhaps your beautiful world may grow higher as I approach it.” – “Hold, Immalee,” said the stranger, taking the telescope from her hands, “to enjoy this sight you should understand it.” – “Oh yes!” said Immalee, with submissive anxiety, as the world of sense rapidly lost ground in her imagination against the new-found world of mind, – “yes – let me think.” – “Immalee, have you any religion?” said the visitor, as an indescribable feeling of pain made his pale brow still paler. Immalee, quick in understanding and sympathizing with physical feeling, darted away at these words, returned in a moment with a banyan leaf, with which she wiped the drops from his livid forehead; and then seating herself at his feet, in an attitude of profound but eager attention, repeated, “Religion! what is that? is it a new thought?” – “It is the consciousness of a Being superior to all worlds and their inhabitants, because he is the Maker of all, and will be their judge – of a Being whom we cannot see, but in whose power and presence we must believe, though invisible – of one who is every where unseen; always acting, though never in motion; hearing all things, but never heard.” Immalee interrupted with an air of distraction – “Hold! too many thoughts will kill me – let me pause. I have seen the shower that came to refresh the rose-tree beat it to the earth.” After an effort of solemn recollection, she added, “The voice of dreams told me something like that before I was born, but it is so long ago, – sometimes I have had thoughts within me like that voice. I have thought I loved the things around me too much, and that I should love things beyond me – flowers that could not fade, and a sun that never sets. I could have sprung, like a bird into the air, after such a thought – but there was no one to shew me that path upward.” And the young enthusiast lifted towards heaven eyes in which trembled the tears of ecstatic imaginings, and then turned their mute pleadings on the stranger.
‘“It is right,” he continued, “not only to have thoughts of this Being, but to express them by some outward acts. The inhabitants of the world you are about to see, call this, worship, – and they have adopted (a Satanic smile curled his lip as he spoke) very different modes; so different, that, in fact, ther
e is but one point in which they all agree – that of making their religion a torment; – the religion of some prompting them to torture themselves, and the religion of some prompting them to torture others. Though, as I observed, they all agree in this important point, yet unhappily they differ so much about the mode, that there has been much disturbance about it in the world that thinks.” – “In the world that thinks!” repeated Immalee, “Impossible! Surely they must know that a difference cannot be acceptable to Him who is One.” – “And have you then adopted no mode of expressing your thoughts of this Being, that is, of worshipping him?” said the stranger. – “I smile when the sun rises in its beauty, and I weep when I see the evening star rise,” said Immalee. – “And do you recoil at the inconsistencies of varied modes of worship, and yet you yourself employ smiles and tears in your address to the Deity?” – “I do, – for they are both the expressions of joy with me,” said the poor Indian; “the sun is as happy when he smiles through the rain-clouds, as when he burns in the mid-height of heaven, in the fierceness of his beauty; and I am happy whether I smile or I weep.” – “Those whom you are about to see,” said the stranger, offering her the telescope, “are as remote in their forms of worship as smiles from tears; but they are not, like you, equally happy in both.” Immalee applied her eye to the telescope, and exclaimed in rapture at what she saw. “What do you see?” said the stranger. Immalee described what she saw with many imperfect expressions, which, perhaps, may be rendered more intelligible by the explanatory words of the stranger.
‘“You see,” said he, “the coast of India, the shores of the world near you. – There is the black pagoda of Juggernaut, that enormous building on which your eye is first fixed. Beside it stands a Turkish mosque – you may distinguish it by a figure like that of the half-moon. It is the will of him who rules that world, that its inhabitants should worship him by that sign.* At a small distance you may see a low building with a trident on its summit – that is the temple of Maha-deva, one of the ancient goddesses of the country.” – “But the houses are nothing to me,” said Immalee, “shew me the living things that go there. The houses are not half so beautiful as the rocks on the shore, draperied all over with seaweeds and mosses, and shaded by the distant palm-tree and cocoa.” – “But those buildings,” said the tempter, “are indicative of the various modes of thinking of those who frequent them. If it is into their thoughts you wish to look, you must see them expressed by their actions. In their dealings with each other, men are generally deceitful, but in their dealings with their gods, they are tolerably sincere in the expression of the character they assign them in their imaginations. If that character be formidable, they express fear; if it be one of cruelty, they indicate it by the sufferings they inflict on themselves; if it be gloomy, the image of the god is faithfully reflected in the visage of the worshipper. Look and judge.”
‘Immalee looked and saw a vast sandy plain, with the dark pagoda of Juggernaut in the perspective. On this plain lay the bones of a thousand skeletons, bleaching in the burning and unmoistened air. A thousand human bodies, hardly more alive, and scarce less emaciated, were trailing their charred and blackened bodies over the sands, to perish under the shadow of the temple, hopeless of ever reaching that of its walls.
‘Multitudes of them dropt dead as they crawled. Multitudes still living, faintly waved their hands, to scare the vultures that hovered nearer and nearer at every swoop, and scooped the poor remnants of flesh from the living bones of the screaming victim, and retreated, with an answering scream of disappointment at the scanty and tasteless morsel they had torn away.
‘Many tried, in their false and fanatic zeal, to double their torments, by crawling through the sands on their hands and knees; but hands through the backs of which the nails had grown, and knees worn literally to the bone, struggled but feebly amid the sands and the skeletons, and the bodies that were soon to be skeletons, and the vultures that were to make them so.
Melmoth the Wanderer 1820 Page 39