Melmoth the Wanderer

by Charles Maturin

  ‘I was seized, dragged away; and this violence, which always excited corresponding violence in me, realized all my father feared, and the Director wished for. I behaved just as a boy, scarce out of a fever, and still totally delirious, might be supposed to behave. In my apartment I tore down the hangings, and there was not a porcelain vase in the room that I did not dash at their heads. When they seized me, I bit their hands; when at length they were compelled to bind me, I gnawed the strings, and finally snapt them by a violent effort. In fact, I completely realized all the hopes of the Director. I was confined to my apartment for several days. During this time, I recovered the only powers that usually revive in a state of isolation, – those of inflexible resolution and profound dissimulation. I had soon exercise enough for both of them. On the twelfth day of my confinement, a servant appeared at the door of my apartment, and, bowing profoundly, announced, that if my health was recovered, my father wished to see me. I bowed in complete imitation of his mechanical movements, and followed him with the steps of a statue. I found my father, armed with the Director at his side. He advanced, and addressed me with an abruptness which proved that he forced himself to speak. He hurried over a few expressions of pleasure at my recovery, and then said, ‘Have you reflected on the subject of our last conversation?’ ‘I have reflected on it.’ – ‘I had time to do so.’ – ‘And you have employed that time well?’ – ‘I hope so.’ – ‘Then the result will be favourable to the hopes of your family, and the interests of the church.’ The last words chilled me a little, but I answered as I ought. In a few moments after the Director joined me, he spoke amicably and turned the conversation on neutral topics. I answered him, – what an effort did it cost me! – yet I answered him in all the bitterness of extorted politeness. All went on well, however. The family appeared gratified by my renovation. My father, harassed out, was content to procure peace on any terms. My mother, still weaker, from the struggles between her conscience and the suggestions of the Director, wept, and said she was happy. A month has now elapsed in profound but treacherous peace on all sides. They think me subdued, but

  *

  ‘In fact, the efforts of the Director’s power in the family would alone be sufficient to precipitate my determinations. He has placed you in a convent, but that is not enough for the persevering proselytism of the church. The palace of the Duke de Monçada is, under his influence, turned into a convent itself. My mother is almost a nun, her whole life is exhausted in imploring forgiveness for a crime for which the Director, to secure his own influence, orders her a new penance every hour. My father rushes from libertinism to austerity, – he vacillates between this world and the next; – in the bitterness of exasperated feeling, sometimes reproaches my mother, and then joins her in the severest penance. Must there not be something very wrong in the religion which thus substitutes external severities for internal amendment? I feel I am of an inquiring spirit, and if I could obtain a book they call the Bible, (which, though they say it contains the words of Jesus Christ, they never permit us to see) I think – but no matter. The very domestics have assumed the in ordine ad spiritualia51 character already. They converse in whispers – they cross themselves when the clock strikes – they dare to talk, even in my hearing, of the glory which will redound to God and the church, by the sacrifice my father may yet be induced to make of his family to its interests.

  ‘My fever has abated – I have not lost a moment in consulting your interests – I have heard that there is a possibility of your reclaiming your vows – that is, as I have been told, of declaring they were extorted under impressions of fraud and terror. Observe me, Alonzo, I would rather see you rot in a convent, than behold you stand forth as a living witness of our mother’s shame. But I am instructed that this reclamation of your vows may be carried on in a civil court: If this be practicable, you may yet be free, and I shall be happy. Do not hesitate for resources, I am able to supply them. If you do not fail in resolution, I have no doubt of our ultimate success. – Ours I term it, for I shall not know a moment’s peace till you are emancipated. With the half of my yearly allowance I have bribed one of the domestics, who is brother to the porter of the convent, to convey these lines to you. Answer me by the same channel, it is secret and secure. You must, I understand, furnish a memorial, to be put into the hands of an advocate. It must be strongly worded, – but remember, not a word of our unfortunate mother; – I blush to say this to her son. Procure paper by some means. If you find any difficulty, I will furnish you; but, to avoid suspicion, and too frequent recurrences to the porter, try to do it yourself. You conventual duties will furnish you with a pretext of writing out your confession, – I will undertake for its safe delivery. I commend you to the holy keeping of God, – not the God of monks and directors, but the God of nature and mercy. – I am your affectionate brother,

  JUAN DI MONÇADA.’

  ‘Such were the contents of the papers which I received in fragments, and from time to time, by the hands of the porter. I swallowed the first the moment I had read it, and the rest I found means to destroy unperceived as I received them, – my attendance on the infirmary entitling me to great indulgences.’

  At this part of the narrative, the Spaniard became so much agitated, though apparently more from emotion than fatigue, that Melmoth intreated him to suspend it for some days, and the exhausted narrator willingly complied.

  CHAPTER VI

  1

  HOMER

  When, after some days interval, the Spaniard attempted to describe his feelings on the receipt of his brother’s letter, the sudden resuscitation of heart, and hope, and existence, that followed its perusal, he trembled, – uttered some inarticulate sounds, – wept; – and his agitation appeared to Melmoth, with his uncontinental feelings, so violent, that he entreated him to spare the description of his feelings, and proceed with his narrative.

  ‘You are right,’ said the Spaniard, drying his tears, ‘joy is a convulsion, but grief is a habit, and to describe what we never can communicate, is as absurd as to talk of colours to the blind. I will hasten on, not to tell of my feelings, but of the results which they produced. A new world of hope was opened to me. I thought I saw liberty on the face of heaven when I walked in the garden. I laughed at the jar of the doors as they opened, and said to myself, ‘You shall soon expand to me for ever.’ I behaved with uncommon complacency to the community. But I did not, amid all this, neglect the most scrupulous precautions suggested by my brother. Am I confessing the strength or the weakness of my heart? In the midst of all the systematic dissimulation that I was prepared and eager to carry on, the only circumstance that gave me real compunction, was my being obliged to destroy the letters of that dear and generous youth who had risked every thing for my emancipation. In the mean time, I pursued my preparations with industry inconceivable to you, who have never been in a convent.

  ‘Lent was now begun, – all the community were preparing themselves for the great confession. They shut themselves up, – they prostrated themselves before the shrines of the saints, – they occupied themselves whole hours in taking minutes of their consciences, and magnifying the trivial defects of conventual discipline into offences in the eye of God, in order to give consequence to their penitence in the hearing of the confessor, – in fact, they would have been glad to accuse themselves of a crime, to escape from the monotony of a monastic conscience. There was a kind of silent bustle in the house, that very much favoured my purposes. Hour after hour I demanded paper for my confession. I obtained it, but my frequent demands excited suspicion, – they little knew what I was writing. Some said, for every thing excites inquiry in a convent, ‘He is writing the history of his family; he will discharge it into the ears of the confessor, along with the secrets of his own soul.’ Others said, ‘He has been in a state of alienation for some time, he is giving an account to God for it, – we shall never hear a word about it.’ Others, who were more judicious, said, ‘He is weary of the monastic life, he is writing an account of his
monotony and ennui, doubtless that must be very long;’ and the speakers yawned as they uttered these words, which gave a very strong attestation to what they said. The Superior watched me in silence. He was alarmed, and with reason. He consulted with some of the discreet brethren, whom I mentioned before, and the result was a restless vigilance on their part, to which I supplied an incessant fuel, by my absurd and perpetual demand for paper. Here, I acknowledge, I committed a great oversight. It was impossible for the most exaggerated conscience to charge itself, even in a convent, with crimes enough to fill all the paper I required. I was filling them all the time with their crimes, not my own. Another great mistake I made, was being wholly unprepared for the great confession when it came on. I received intimations of this as we walked in the garden, – I have before mentioned that I had assumed an amicability of habit toward them. They would say to me, ‘You have made ample preparations for the great confession.’ ‘I have prepared myself.’ ‘But we expect great edification from its results.’ ‘I trust you will receive it.’– I said no more, but I was very much disturbed at these hints. Others would say, ‘My brother, amid the multitudinous offences that burden your conscience, and which you have found necessary to employ quires of paper to record, would it not be a relief to you to open your mind to the Superior, and ask for a few previous moments of consolation and direction from him.’ To this I answered, ‘I thank you, and will consider of it.’– I was thinking all the time of something else.

  ‘It was a few nights before the time of the great confession, that I had to entrust the last packet of my memorial to the porter. Our meetings had been hitherto unsuspected. I had received and answered my brother’s communications, and our correspondence had been conducted with a secrecy unexampled in convents. But this last night, as I put my packet into the porter’s hand, I saw a change in his appearance that terrified me. He had been a comely, robust man, but now, even by the moon-light, I could perceive he was wasted to a shadow, – his hands trembled as he took the papers from me, – his voice faultered as he promised his usual secrecy. The change, which had been observed by the whole convent, had escaped me till that night; my mind had been too much occupied by my own situation. I noticed it then, however, and I said, ‘But what is the matter?’ ‘Can you then ask? I am withered to a spectre by the terrors of the office I have been bribed to. Do you know what I risk? – incarceration for life, or rather for death, – perhaps a denunciation to the Inquisition. Every line I deliver from you, or to you, seems a charge against my own soul, – I tremble when I meet you. I know that you have the sources of life and death, temporal and eternal, in your hands. The secret in which I am an agent should never be intrusted but to one, and you are another. As I sit in my place, I think every step in the cloister is advancing to summon me to the presence of the Superior. When I attend in the choir, amid the sounds of devotion your voice swells to accuse me. When I lie down at night, the evil spirit is beside my bed, reproaching me with perjury, and reclaiming his prey; – his emissaries surround me wherever I move, – I am beset by the tortures of hell. The saints from their shrines frown on me, – I see the painting of the traitor Judas on every side I turn to. When I sleep for a moment, I am awakened by my own cries. I exclaim, ‘Do not betray me, he has not yet violated his vows, I was but an agent, – I was bribed, – do not kindle those fires for me.’ I shudder, – I start up in a cold sweat. My rest, my appetite, are gone. Would to God you were out of this convent; – and O! would that I had never been instrumental to your release, then both of us might have escaped damnation to all eternity.’ I tried to pacify him, to assure him of his safety, but nothing could satisfy him but my solemn and sincere assurance that this was the last packet I would ever ask him to deliver. He departed tranquillized by this assurance; and I felt the dangers of my attempt multiplying around me every hour.