Melmoth the Wanderer 1820

by Charles Robert Maturin

  “Excæcavit oculos corum ne viderent.”

  ‘“But why waste I my Latin and logic on thee, who art incapable of both? Mark me, I will use but one unanswerable argument, the which whoso gainsayeth is a – gainsayer – that’s all. The Inquisition at Goa knows the truth of what I have asserted, and who will dare deny it now?” – “Not I! – not I!” exclaimed Donna Clara; “nor, I am sure, will this stubborn boy. Son, I adjure you, make haste to believe what the reverend Father has told you.” – “I am believing as fast as I can,” answered Don Fernan, in the tone of one who is reluctantly swallowing a distasteful mess; “but my faith will be choaked if you don’t allow it time to swallow. As for digestion,” he muttered, “let that come when it pleases God.” – “Daughter,” said the priest, who well knew the mollia tempora fandi, and saw that the sullen and angry Fernan could not well bear more at present; “daughter, it is enough – we must lead with gentleness those whose steps find stumbling-blocks in the paths of grace. Pray with me, daughter, that your son’s eyes may yet be opened to the glory and felicity of his sister’s vocation to a state where the exhaust-less copiousness of divine benignity places the happy inmates above all those mean and mundane anxieties, those petty and local wants, which – Ah! – hem – verily I feel some of those wants myself at this moment. I am hoarse with speaking; and the intense heat of this night hath so exhausted my strength, that methinks the wing of a partridge would be no unseasonable refreshment.”

  ‘At a sign from Donna Clara, a salver with wine appeared, and a partridge that might have provoked the French prelate to renew his meal once more, spite of his horror of toujours perdrix.” “See, daughter, see how much I am exhausted in this distressing controversy – well may I say, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” – “Then you and the zeal of the house will soon be quit,” muttered Fernan as he retired. And drawing the folds of his mantle over his shoulder, he threw a glance of wonder at the happy facility with which the priest discussed the wings and breast of his favourite bird, – whispering alternately words of admonition to Donna Clara, and muttering something about the omission of pimento and lemon.

  ‘“Father,” said Don Fernan, stalking back from the door, and fronting the priest – “Father, I have a favour to ask of you.” – “Glad, were it in my power to comply with it,” said Father Jose, turning over the skeleton of the fowl; “but you see here is only the thigh, and that somewhat bare.” – “It is not of that I speak or think, reverend Father,” said Fernan, with a smile; “I have but to request, that you will not renew the subject of my sister’s vocation till the return of my father.” – “Certainly not, son, certainly not. Ah! you know the time to ask a favour – you know I never could refuse you at a moment like this, when my heart is warmed, and softened, and expanded, by – by – by the evidences of your contrition and humiliation, and all that your devout mother, and your zealous spiritual friend, could hope or wish for. In truth, it overcomes me – these tears – I do not often weep but on occasions like these, and then I weep abundantly, and am compelled to recruit my lack of moisture thus.” – “Fetch more wine,” said Donna Clara. – The order was obeyed. – “Good night, Father,” said Don Fernan. – “The saints watch round you, my son! Oh I am exhausted! – I sink in this struggle! The night is hot, and requires wine to slake my thirst – and wine is a provocative, and requires food to take away its deleterious and damnable qualities – and food, especially partridge, which is a hot and stimulative nutritive, requires drink again to absorb or neutralize its exciting qualities. Observe me, Donna Clara – I speak as to the learned. There is stimulation, and there is absorption; the causes of which are manifold, and the effects such as – I am not bound to tell you at present.” – “Reverend Father,” said the admiring Donna Clara, not guessing, in the least, from what source all this eloquence flowed, “I trespassed on your time merely to ask a favour also.” – “Ask and ‘tis granted,” said Father Jose, with a protrusion of his foot as proud as that of Sixtus himself. “It is merely to know, will not all the inhabitants of those accursed Indian isles be damned everlastingly?” – “Damned everlasting, and without doubt,” returned the priest. “Now my mind is easy,” rejoined the lady, “and I shall sleep in peace to-night.”

  ‘Sleep, however, did not visit her so soon as she expected, for an hour after she knocked at Father Jose’s door, repeating, “Damned to all eternity, Father, did you not say?” – “Be damned to all eternity!” said the priest, tossing on his feverish bed, and dreaming, in the intervals of his troubled sleep, of Don Fernan coming to confession with a drawn sword, and Donna Clara with a bottle of Xeres in her hand, which she swallowed at a draught, while his parched lips were gaping for a drop in vain, – and of the Inquisition being established in an island off the coast of Bengal, and a huge partridge seated with a cap on at the end of a table covered with black, as chief Inquisitor, – and various and monstrous chimeras, the abortive births of repletion and indigestion.

  ‘Donna Clara, catching only the last words, returned to her apartment with light step and gladdened heart, and, full of pious consolation, renewed her devotions before the image of the Virgin in her apartment, at each side of whose niche two wax tapers were burning, till the cool morning breeze made it possible for her to retire with some hope of rest.

  ‘Isidora, in her apartment, was equally sleepless; and she, too, had prostrated herself before the sacred image, but with different thoughts. Her feverish and dreamy existence, composed of wild and irreconcileable contrasts between the forms of the present, and the visions of the past, – the difference between all that she felt within, and all that she saw around her, – between the impassioned life of recollection, and the monotonous one of reality, – was becoming too much for a heart bursting with undirected sensibilities, and a head giddy from vicissitudes that would have deeply tried much firmer faculties.

  ‘She remained for some time repeating the usual number of ave’s, to which she added the litany of the Virgin, without any corresponding impulses of solace or illumination, till at length, feeling that her prayers were not the expressions of her heart, and dreading this heterodoxy of the heart more than the violation of the ritual, she ventured to address the image of the Virgin in language of her own.

  ‘“Mild and beautiful Spirit!” she cried, prostrating herself before the figure – “you whose lips alone have smiled on me since I reached your Christian land, – you whose countenance I have sometimes imagined to belong to those who dwelt in the stars of my own Indian sky, – hear me, and be not angry with me! Let me lose all feeling of my present existence, or all memory of the past! Why do my former thoughts return? They once made me happy, now they are thorns in my heart! Why do they retain their power since their nature is altered? I cannot be what I was – Oh, let me then no longer remember it! Let me, if possible, see, feel, and think as those around me do! Alas! I feel it is much easier to descend to their level than to raise them to mine. Time, constraint, and dullness, may do much for me, but what time could ever operate such a change on them! It would be like looking for the pearls at the bottom of the stagnant ponds which art has dug in their gardens. No, mother of the Deity! divine and mysterious woman, no! – they never shall see another throb of my burning heart. Let it consume in its own fires before a drop of their cold compassion extinguishes them! Mother divine! are not burning hearts, then, worthiest of thee? – and does not the love of nature assimilate itself to the love of God! True, we may love without religion, but can we be religious without love? Yet, mother divine! dry up my heart, since there is no longer a channel for its streams to flow through! – or turn all those streams into the river, narrow and cold, that holds its course on to eternity! Why should I think or feel, since life requires only duties that no feeling suggests, and apathy that no reflection disturbs? Here let me rest! – it is indeed the end of enjoyment, but it is also the end of suffering; and a thousand tears are a price too dear for the single smile which is sold for them in the commerce of l
ife. Alas! it is better to wander in perpetual sterility than to be tortured with the remembrance of flowers that have withered, and odours that have died for ever.” Then a gush of uncontroulable emotion overwhelming her, she again bowed before the Virgin. “Yes, help me to banish every image from my soul but his – his alone! Let my heart be like this lonely apartment, consecrated by the presence of one sole image, and illuminated only by that light which affection kindles before the object of its adoration, and worships it by for ever!”

  ‘In an agony of enthusiasm she continued to kneel before the image; and when she rose, the silence of her apartment, and the calm smile of the celestial figure, seemed at once a contrast and a reproach to this excess of morbid indulgence. That smile appeared to her like a frown. It is certain, that in agitation we can feel no solace from features that express only profound tranquillity. We would rather wish corresponding agitation, even hostility – any thing but a calm that neutralizes and absorbs us. It is the answer of the rock to the wave – we collect, foam, dash, and disperse ourselves against it, and retire broken, shattered, and murmuring to the echoes of our disappointment.

  ‘From the tranquil and hopeless aspect of the divinity, smiling on the misery it neither consoles or relieves, and intimating in that smile the profound and pulseless apathy of inaccessible elevation, coldly hinting that humanity must cease to be, before it can cease to suffer – from this the sufferer rushed for consolation to nature, whose ceaseless agitation seems to correspond with the vicissitudes of human destiny and the emotions of the human heart – whose alternation of storms and calms, – of clouds and sun-light, – of terrors and delights – seems to keep a land of mysterious measure of ineffable harmony with that instrument whose chords are doomed alternately to the thrill of agony and rapture, till the hand of death sweeps over all the strings, and silences them for ever. – With such a feeling, Isidora leaned against her casement, gasped for a breath of air, which the burning night did not grant, and thought how, on such a night in her Indian isle, she could plunge into the stream shaded by her beloved tamarind, or even venture amid the still and silvery waves of the ocean, laughing at the broken beams of the moonlight, as her light form dimpled the waters – snatching with smiling delight the brilliant, tortuous, and enamelled shells that seemed to woo her white footsteps as she turned to the shore. Now all was different. The duties of the bath had been performed, but with a parade of soaps, perfumes, and, above all, attendants, who, though of her own sex, gave Isidora an unspeakable degree of disgust at the operation. The sponges and odours sickened her unsophisticated senses, and the presence of another human being seemed to close up every pore.

  ‘She had felt no refreshment from the bath, or from her prayers – she sought it at her casement, but there also in vain. The moon was as bright as the sun of colder climates, and the heavens were all in a blaze with her light. She seemed like a gallant vessel ploughing the bright and trackless ocean alone, while a thousand stars burned in the wake of her quiet glory, like attendant vessels pursuing their course to undiscovered worlds, and pointing them out to the mortal eye that lingered on their course, and loved their light.

  ‘Such was the scene above, but what a contrast to the scene below! The glorious and unbounded light fell on an inclosure of stiff parterres, cropped myrtles and orange-trees in tubs, and quadrangular ponds, and bowers of trellis-work, and nature tortured a thousand ways, and indignant and repulsive under her tortures every way.

  ‘Isidora looked and wept. Tears had now become her language when alone – it was a language she dared not utter before her family. Suddenly she saw one of the moonlight alleys darkened by an approaching figure. It advanced – it uttered her name – the name she remembered and loved – the name of Immalee! “Ah!” she exclaimed, leaning from the casement, “is there then one who recognizes me by that name?” – “It is only by that name I can address you,” answered the voice of the stranger – “I have not yet the honour of being acquainted with the name your Christian friends have given you.” – “They call me Isidora, but do you still call me Immalee. But how is it,” she added in a trembling voice, – her fears for his safety overcoming all her sudden and innocent joy at his sight – “how is it that you are here? – here, where no human being is ever beheld but the inmates of the mansion? – how did you cross the garden wall? – how did you come from India? Oh! retire for your own safety! I am among those whom I cannot trust or love. My mother is severe – my brother is violent. Oh! how did you obtain entrance into the garden? – How is it,” she added in a broken voice, “that you risk so much to see one whom you have forgotten so long?” – “Fair Neophyte, beautiful Christian,” answered the stranger, with a diabolical sneer, “be it known to you that I regard bolts, and bars, and walls, as much as I did the breakers and rocks of your Indian isle – that I can go where, and retire when I please, without leave asked or taken of your brother’s mastiffs, or Toledos, or spring-guns, and in utter defiance of your mother’s advanced guard of duennas, armed in spectacles, and flanked with a double ammunition of rosaries, with beads as large as –” “Hush! – hush! – do not utter such impious sounds – I am taught to revere those holy things. But is it you? – and did I indeed see you last night, or was it a thought such as visits me in dreams, and wraps me again in visions of that beautiful and blessed isle where first I – Oh that I never had seen you!” – “Lovely Christian! be reconciled to your horrible destiny. You saw me last night – I crossed your path twice when you were sparkling among the brightest and most beautiful of all Madrid. It was me you saw – I rivetted your eye – I transfixed your slender frame as with a flash of lightning – you fell fainting and withered under my burning glance. It was me you saw – me, the disturber of your angelical existence in that isle of paradise – the hunter of your form and your steps, even amid the complicated and artificial tracks in which you have been concealed by the false forms of the existence you have embraced!” – “Embraced! – Oh no! they seized on me – they dragged me here – they made me a Christian. They told me all was for my salvation, for my happiness here and hereafter – and I trust it will, for I have been so miserable ever since, that I ought to be happy somewhere.” – “Happy,” repeated the stranger with his withering sneer – “and are you not happy now? The delicacy of your exquisite frame is no longer exposed to the rage of the elements – the fine and feminine luxury of your taste is solicited and indulged by a thousand inventions of art – your bed is of down – your chamber hung with tapestry. Whether the moon be bright or dark, six wax tapers burn in your chamber all night. Whether the skies be bright or cloudy, – whether the earth be clothed with flowers, or deformed with tempests, – the art of the limner has surrounded you with “a new heaven and a new earth”; and you may bask in suns that never set, while the heavens are dark to other eyes, – and luxuriate amid landscapes and flowers, while half your fellow-creatures are perishing amid snows and tempests!” (Such was the over-flowing acrimony of this being, that he could not speak of the beneficence of nature, or the luxuries of art, without interweaving something that seemed like a satire on, or a scorn of both.) “You also have intellectual beings to converse with instead of the chirpings of loxias, and the chatterings of monkeys.” – “I have not found the conversation I encounter much more intelligible or significant,” murmured Isidora, but the stranger did not appear to hear her. “You are surrounded by every thing that can flatter the senses, intoxicate the imagination, or expand the heart. All these indulgences must make you forget the voluptuous but unrefined liberty of your former existence.” – “The birds in my mother’s cages,” said Isidora, “are for ever pecking at their gilded bars, and trampling on the clear seeds and limpid water they are supplied with – would they not rather rest in the mossy trunk of a doddered oak, and drink of whatever stream they met, and be at liberty, at all the risk of poorer food and fouler drink – would they not rather do anything than break their bills against gilded wires?” – “Then you do not feel your ne
w existence in this Christian land so likely to surfeit you with delight as you once thought? For shame, Immalee – shame on your ingratitude and caprice! Do you remember when from your Indian isle you caught a glimpse of the Christian worship, and were entranced at the sight?” – “I remember all that ever passed in that isle. My life formerly was all anticipation, – now it is all retrospection. The life of the happy is all hopes, – that of the unfortunate all memory. Yes, I remember catching a glimpse of that religion so beautiful and pure; and when they brought me to a Christian land, I thought I should have found them all Christians.” – “And what did you find them, then, Immalee?” – “Only Catholics.” – “Are you aware of the danger of the words you utter? Do you know that in this country to hint a doubt of Catholicism and Christianity being the same, would consign you to the flames as a heretic incorrigible? Your mother, so lately known to you as a mother, would bind your hands when the covered litter came for its victim; and your father, though he has never yet beheld you, would buy with his last ducat the faggots that were to consume you to ashes; and all your relations in their gala robes would shout their hallelujahs to your dying screams of torture. Do you know that the Christianity of these countries is diametrically opposite to the Christianity of that world of which you caught a gleam, and which you may see recorded in the pages of your Bible, if you are permitted to read it?”