Melmoth the Wanderer

by Charles Maturin

  *

  The body was removed into another room, and the departure of the Englishman was not noticed till the company returned to the hall. They sat late together, conversing on this extraordinary circumstance, and finally agreed to remain in the house, lest the evil spirit (for they believed the Englishman no better) should take certain liberties with the corse by no means agreeable to a Catholic, particularly as he had manifestly died without the benefit of the last sacraments. Just as this laudable resolution was formed, they were roused by cries of horror and agony from the bridal-chamber, where the young pair had retired.

  They hurried to the door, but the father was first. They burst it open, and found the bride a corse in the arms of her husband.

  *

  He never recovered his reason; the family deserted the mansion rendered terrible by so many misfortunes. One apartment is still tenanted by the unhappy maniac; his were the cries you heard as you traversed the deserted rooms. He is for the most part silent during the day, but at midnight he always exclaims, in a voice frightfully piercing, and hardly human, ‘They are coming! they are coming!’ and relapses into profound silence.

  The funeral of Father Olavida was attended by an extraordinary circumstance. He was interred in a neighbouring convent; and the reputation of his sanctity, joined to the interest caused by his extraordinary death, collected vast numbers at the ceremony. His funeral sermon was preached by a monk of distinguished eloquence, appointed for the purpose. To render the effect of his discourse more powerful, the corse, extended on a bier, with its face uncovered, was placed in the aisle. The monk took his text from one of the prophets, – ‘Death is gone up into our palaces.’21 He expatiated on mortality, whose approach, whether abrupt or lingering, is alike awful to man. – He spoke of the vicissitudes of empires with much eloquence and learning, but his audience were not observed to be much affected. – He cited various passages from the lives of the saints, descriptive of the glories of martyrdom, and the heroism of those who had bled and blazed for Christ and his blessed mother, but they appeared still waiting for something to touch them more deeply. When he inveighed against the tyrants under whose bloody persecutions those holy men suffered, his hearers were roused for a moment, for it is always easier to excite a passion than a moral feeling. But when he spoke of the dead, and pointed with emphatic gesture to the corse, as it lay before them cold and motionless, every eye was fixed, and every ear became attentive. Even the lovers, who, under pretence of dipping their fingers into the holy water, were contriving to exchange amorous billets, forbore for one moment this interesting intercourse, to listen to the preacher.22 He dwelt with much energy on the virtues of the deceased, whom he declared to be a particular favourite of the Virgin; and enumerating the various losses that would be caused by his departure to the community to which he belonged, to society, and to religion at large; he at last worked up himself to a vehement expostulation with the Deity on the occasion. ‘Why hast thou,’ he exclaimed, ‘why hast though, Oh God! thus dealt with us? Why hast thou snatched from our sight this glorious saint, whose merits, if properly applied, doubtless would have been sufficient to atone for the apostacy of St Peter, the opposition of St Paul, (previous to his conversion), and even the treachery of Judas himself? Why hast thou, Oh God! snatched him from us?’ – and a deep and hollow voice from among the congregation answered, – ‘Because he deserved his fate.’ The murmurs of approbation with which the congregation honoured this apostrophe, half-drowned this extraordinary interruption; and though there was some little commotion in the immediate vicinity of the speaker, the rest of the audience continued to listen intently. ‘What,’ proceeded the preacher, pointing to the corse, ‘what hath laid thee there, servant of God?’ – ‘Pride, ignorance and fear,’ answered the same voice, in accents still more thrilling. The disturbance now became universal. The preacher paused, and a circle opening, disclosed the figure of a monk belonging to the convent, who stood among them.

  *

  After all the usual modes of admonition, exhortation and discipline had been employed, and the bishop of the diocese, who, under the report of these extraordinary circumstances, had visited the convent in person to obtain some explanation from the contumacious monk in vain, it was agreed, in a chapter extraordinary, to surrender him to the power of the Inquisition. He testified great horror when this determination was made known to him, – and offered to tell over and over again all that could relate of the cause of Father Olavida’s death. His humiliation, and repeated offers of confession, came too late. He was conveyed to the Inquisition. The proceedings of that tribunal are rarely disclosed, but there is a secret report (I cannot answer for its truth) of what he said and suffered there. On his first examination, he said he would relate all he could. He was told that was not enough, he must relate all he knew.23

  *

  ‘Why did you testify such horror at the funeral of Father Olavida?’ – ‘Every one testified horror and grief at the death of that venerable ecclesiastic, who died in the odour of sanctity. Had I done otherwise, it might have been reckoned a proof of my guilt.’ ‘Why did you interrupt the preacher with such extraordinary exclamations?’ – To this no answer. ‘Why do you refuse to explain the meaning of those exclamations?’ – No answer. ‘Why do you persist in this obstinate and dangerous silence? Look, I beseech you, brother, at the cross that is suspended against this wall,’ and the Inquisitor pointed to the large black crucifix at the back of the chair where he sat; ‘one drop of the blood shed there can purify you from all the sin you have ever committed; but all that blood, combined with the intercession of the Queen of Heaven, and the merits of all its martyrs, nay, even the absolution of the Pope, cannot deliver you from the curse of dying in unrepented sin.’ – ‘What sin, then, have I committed?’ ‘The greatest of all possible sins; you refuse answering the questions put to you at the tribunal of the most holy and merciful Inquisition; – you will not tell us what you know concerning the death of Father Olavida.’ – ‘I have told you that I believe he perished in consequence of his ignorance and presumption.’ ‘What proof can you produce of that?’ – ‘He sought the knowledge of a secret withheld from man.’ ‘What was that?’ – ‘The secret of discovering the presence or agency of the evil power.’ ‘Do you possess that secret?’ – After much agitation on the part of the prisoner, he said distinctly, but very faintiy, ‘My master forbids me to disclose it.’ ‘If your master were Jesus Christ, he would not forbid you to obey the commands, or answer the questions of the Inquisition.’ – ‘I am not sure of that.’ There was a general outcry of horror at these words. The examination then went on. ‘If you believed Olavida to be guilty of any pursuits or studies condemned by our mother the church, why did you not denounce him to the Inquisition?’ – ‘Because I believed him not likely to be injured by such pursuits; his mind was too weak, – he died in the struggle,’ said the prisoner with great emphasis. ‘You believe, then, it requires strength of mind to keep those abominable secrets, when examined as to their nature and tendency?’ – ‘No, I rather imagine strength of body.’ ‘We shall try that presently,’ said an Inquisitor, giving a signal for the torture.

  *

  The prisoner underwent the first and second applications with unshrinking courage, but on the infliction of the water-torture, which is indeed insupportable to humanity, either to suffer or relate, he exclaimed in the gasping interval, he would disclose every thing. He was released, refreshed, restored and the following day uttered the following remarkable confession

  *

  The old Spanish woman further confessed to Stanton, that

  *

  and that the Englishman certainly had been seen in the neighbourhood since; – seen, as she had heard that very night. ‘Great G—d!’ exclaimed Stanton, as he recollected the stranger whose demoniac laugh had so appalled him, while gazing on the lifeless bodies of the lovers, whom the lightning had struck and blasted.

  _________

  As the manuscript, af
ter a few blotted and illegible pages, became more distinct, Melmoth read on, perplexed and unsatisfied, not knowing what connexion this Spanish story could have with his ancestor, whom, however, he recognized under the title of the Englishman; and wondering how Stanton could have thought it worth his while to follow him to Ireland, write a long manuscript about an event that occurred in Spain, and leave it in the hands of his family, to ‘verify untrue things,’ in the language of Dogberry,24 – his wonder was diminished, though his curiosity was still more inflamed, by the perusal of the next lines, which he made out with some difficulty. It seems Stanton was now in England.

  *

  About the year 1677, Stanton was in London, his mind still full of his mysterious countryman. This constant subject of his contemplations had produced a visible change in his exterior, – his walk was what Sallust tells us of Catiline’s, – his were, too, the fædi oculi.25 He said to himself every moment, ‘If I could but trace that being, I will not call him man,’ – and the next moment he said, ‘and what if I could?’ In this state of mind, it is singular enough that he mixed constantly in public amusements, but it is true. When one fierce passion is devouring the soul, we feel more than ever the necessity of external excitement; and our dependence on the world for temporary relief increases in direct proportion to our contempt of the world and all its works. He went frequently to the theatres, then fashionable, when

  The fair sat panting at a courtier’s play,

  And not a mask went unimproved away26

  The London theatres then presented a spectacle which ought for ever to put to silence the foolish outcry against progressive deterioration of morals, – foolish even from the pen of Juvenal,27 and still more so from the lips of a modern Puritan. Vice is always nearly on an average: The only difference in life worth tracing, is that of manners, and there we have manifestly the advantage of our ancestors. Hypocrisy is said to be the homage that vice pays to virtue, – decorum is the outward expression of that homage; and if this be so, we must acknowledge that vice has latterly grown very humble indeed. There was, however, something splendid, ostentatious, and obtrusive, in the vices of Charles the Second’s reign.– A view of the theatres alone proved it, when Stanton was in the habit of visiting them. At the doors stood on one side the footmen of a fashionable nobleman, (with arms concealed under their liveries), surrounding the sedan of a popular actress, * whom they were to carry off vi et armis,28 as she entered it at the end of the play. At the other side waited the glass coach29 of a woman of fashion, who waited to take Kynaston30 (the Adonis of the day), in his female dress, to the park after the play was over, and exhibit him in all the luxurious splendour of effeminate beauty, (heightened by the theatrical dress), for which he was so distinguished.

  Plays being then performed at four o’clock, allowed ample time for the evening drive, and the midnight assignation, when the parties met by torch-light, masked, in St James’s park, and verified the title of Wycherly’s play, ‘Love in a Wood.’ The boxes, as Stanton looked round him, were filled with females, whose naked shoulders and bosoms, well testified in the paintings of Lely, and the pages of Grammont,31 might save modern puritanism many a vituperative groan and affected reminiscence. They had all taken the precaution to send some male relative, on the first night of a new play, to report whether it was fit for persons of ‘honour and reputation’ to appear at; but in spite of this precaution, at certain passages (which occurred about every second sentence) they were compelled to spread out their fans, or play with the still cherished love-lock, which Prynne33 himself had not been able to write down.

  The men in the boxes were composed of two distinct classes, the ‘men of wit and pleasure about town,’ distinguished by their Flanders lace cravats, soiled with snuff, their diamond rings, the pretended gift of a royal mistress, (n’importe whether the Duchess of Portsmouth or Nell Gwynne;34) their uncombed wigs, whose curls descended to their waists, and the loud and careless tone in which they abused Dryden, Lee and Otway, and quoted Sedley and Rochester;35 – the other class were the lovers, the gentle ‘squires of dames,’ equally conspicuous for their white fringed gloves, their obsequious bows, and their commencing every sentence addressed to a lady, with the profane exclamation of * ‘Oh Jesu!’, or the softer, but equally unmeaning one of ‘I beseech you, Madam,’ or, ‘Madam, I burn†’ One circumstance sufficiently extraordinary marked the manners of the day; females had not then found their proper level in life; they were alternately adored as goddesses, and assailed as prostitutes; and the man who, this moment, addressed his mistress in language borrowed from Orondates worshipping Cassandra,36 in the next accosted her with ribaldry that might put to the blush the piazzas of Covent Garden.‡:37

  The pit presented a more various spectacle. There were the critics armed cap-a-pee from Aristotle and Bossu;38 these men dined at twelve, dictated at a coffee-house till four, then called to the boy to brush their shoes, and strode to the theatre, where, till the curtain rose, they sat hushed in grim repose, and expecting their evening prey. There were the templars,42 spruce, pert and loquacious; and here and there a sober citizen, doffing his steeple-crowned hat, and hiding his little band under the folds of his huge puritanic cloke, while his eyes, declined with an expression half leering, half ejaculatory, towards a masked female, muffled in a hood and scarf, testified what had seduced him into these ‘tents of Kedar.’43 There were females, too, but all in vizard masks,44 which, though worn as well as aunt Dinah’s in Tristram Shandy,45 served to conceal them from the ‘young bubbles’ they were in quest of, and from all but the orange-women,46 who hailed them loudly as they passed the doors.* In the galleries were the happy souls who waited for the fulfilment of Dryden’s promise in one of his prologues;† no matter to them whether it were the ghost of Almanor’s mother in her dripping shroud,47 or that of Laius,48 who, according to the stage directions, rises in his chariot, armed with the ghosts of his three murdered attendants behind him, – a joke that did not escape I’Abbe le Blanc,‡ in his recipe for writing an English tragedy. Some, indeed, from time to time called out for the ‘burning of the Pope;’49 but though

  ‘Space was obedient to the boundless piece,

  Which oped in Mexico and closed in Greece,’

  it was not always possible to indulge them in this laudable amusement, as the scene of the popular plays was generally laid in Africa or Spain; Sir Robert Howard, Elkanah Settle, and John Dryden, all agreeing in their choice of Spanish and Moorish subjects for their principal plays.50 Among this joyous groupe were seated several women of fashion masked, enjoying in secrecy the licentiousness which they dared not openly patronize, and verifying Gay’s characteristic description, though it was written many years later,

  ‘Mobbed in the gallery Laura sits secure,

  And laughs at jests that turn the box demure.’51

  Stanton gazed on all this with the look of one who ‘could not be moved to smile at any thing.’ He turned to the stage, the play was Alexander,54 then acted as written by Lee, and the principal character was performed by Hart, whose god-like ardour in making love, is said almost to have compelled the audience to believe that they beheld the ‘son of Ammon.’55

  There were absurdities enough to offend a classical, or even a rational spectator. There were Grecian heroes with roses in their shoes, feathers in their hats, and wigs down to their waists; and Persian princesses in stiff stays and powdered hair. But the illusion of the scene was well sustained, for the heroines were rivals in real as well as theatrical life. It was that memorable night, when, according to the history of the veteran Betterton*56 Mrs Barry, who personated Roxana, had a greenroom squabble with Mrs Bowtell, the representative of Statira, about a veil, which the partiality of the property-man adjudged to the latter. Roxana suppressed her rage till the fifth act, when, stabbing Statira, she aimed the blow with such force as to pierce through her stays, and inflict a severe though not dangerous wound. Mrs Bowtell fainted, the performance was suspended, and, in the commotion
which this incident caused in the house, many of the audience rose, and Stanton among them.57 It was at this moment that, in a seat opposite to him, he discovered the object of his search for four years, – the Englishman whom he had met in the plains of Valentia, and whom he believed the same with the subject of the extraordinary narrative he had heard there.

  He was standing up. There was nothing particular or remarkable in his appearance, but the expression of his eyes could never be mistaken or forgotten. The heart of Stanton palpitated with violence, – a mist overspread his eyes, – a nameless and deadly sickness, accompanied with a creeping sensation in every pore, from which cold drops were gushing, announced the

  *

  Before he had well recovered, a strain of music, soft, solemn and delicious, breathed round him, audibly ascending from the ground, and increasing in sweetness and power till it seemed to fill the whole building. Under the sudden impulse of amazement and pleasure, he inquired of some around him from whence those exquisite sounds arose. But, by the manner in which he was answered, it was plain that those he addressed considered him insane; and, indeed, the remarkable change in his expression might well justify the suspicion. He then remembered that night in Spain, when the same sweet and mysterious sounds were heard only by the young bridegroom and bride, of whom the latter perished on that very night. ‘And am I then to be the next victim?’ thought Stanton; ‘and are those celestial sounds, that seem to prepare us for heaven, only intended to announce the presence of an incarnate fiend, who mocks the devoted with “airs from heaven,” while he prepares to surround them with “blasts from hell”?’58 It is very singular that at this moment, when his imagination had reached its highest pitch of elevation, – when the object he had pursued so long and fruitlessly, had in one moment become as it were tangible to the grasp both of mind and body, – when this spirit, with whom he had wrestled in darkness, was at last about to declare its name, that Stanton began to feel a kind of disappointment at the futility of his pursuits, like Bruce at discovering the course of the Nile, or Gibbon on concluding his History.59 The feeling which he had dwelt on so long, that he had actually converted it into a duty, was after all mere curiosity; but what passion is more insatiable, or more capable of giving a kind of romantic grandeur to all its wanderings and eccentricities? Curiosity is in one respect like love, it always compromises between the object and the feeling; and provided the latter possesses sufficient energy, no matter how contemptible the former may be. A child might have smiled at the agitation of Stanton, caused as it was by the accidental appearance of a stranger; but no man, in the full energy of his passions, was there, but must have trembled at the horrible agony of emotion with which he felt approaching, with sudden and irresistible velocity, the crisis of his destiny.