Chapter 3

Apparebat eidolon _senex_.

PLINY.

The manuscript was discoloured, obliterated, and mutilated beyond any
that had ever before exercised the patience of a reader. Michaelis
himself, scrutinizing into the pretended autograph of St Mark at Venice,
never had a harder time of it.--Melmoth could make out only a sentence
here and there. The writer, it appeared, was an Englishman of the name
of Stanton, who had travelled abroad shortly after the Restoration.
Travelling was not then attended with the facilities which modern
improvement has introduced, and scholars and literati, the intelligent,
the idle, and the curious, wandered over the Continent for years, like
_Tom Coryat_, though they had the modesty, on their return, to entitle
the result of their multiplied observations and labours only
“crudities.”

Stanton, about the year 1676, was in Spain; he was, like most of the
travellers of that age, a man of literature, intelligence, and
curiosity, but ignorant of the language of the country, and fighting his
way at times from convent to convent, in quest of what was called
“Hospitality,” that is, obtaining board and lodging on the condition of
holding a debate in Latin, on some point theological or metaphysical,
with any monk who would become the champion of the strife. Now, as the
theology was Catholic, and the metaphysics Aristotelian, Stanton
sometimes wished himself at the miserable Posada from whose filth and
famine he had been fighting his escape; but though his reverend
antagonists always denounced his creed, and comforted themselves, even
in defeat, with the assurance that he must be damned, on the double
score of his being a heretic and an Englishman, they were obliged to
confess that his Latin was good, and his logic unanswerable; and he was
allowed, in most cases, to sup and sleep in peace. This was not doomed
to be his fate on the night of the 17th August 1677, when he found
himself in the plains of Valencia, deserted by a cowardly guide, who had
been terrified by the sight of a cross erected as a memorial of a
murder, had slipped off his mule unperceived, crossing himself every
step he took on his retreat from the heretic, and left Stanton amid the
terrors of an approaching storm, and the dangers of an unknown country.
The sublime and yet softened beauty of the scenery around, had filled
the soul of Stanton with delight, and he enjoyed that delight as
Englishmen generally do, silently.

The magnificent remains of two dynasties that had passed away, the ruins
of Roman palaces, and of Moorish fortresses, were around and above
him;--the dark and heavy thunder-clouds that advanced slowly, seemed
like the shrouds of these spectres of departed greatness; they
approached, but did not yet overwhelm or conceal them, as if nature
herself was for once awed by the power of man; and far below, the lovely
valley of Valencia blushed and burned in all the glory of sunset, like a
bride receiving the last glowing kiss of the bridegroom before the
approach of night. Stanton gazed around. The difference between the
architecture of the Roman and Moorish ruins struck him. Among the former
are the remains of a theatre, and something like a public place; the
latter present only the remains of fortresses, embattled, castellated,
and fortified from top to bottom,--not a loop-hole for pleasure to get
in by,--the loop-holes were only for arrows; all denoted military power
and despotic subjugation _a l’outrance_. The contrast might have pleased
a philosopher, and he might have indulged in the reflection, that though
the ancient Greeks and Romans were savages, (as Dr Johnson says all
people who want a press must be, and he says truly), yet they were
wonderful savages for their time, for they alone have left _traces of
their taste for pleasure_ in the countries they conquered, in their
superb theatres, temples, (which were also dedicated to pleasure one way
or another), and baths, while other conquering bands of savages never
left any thing behind them but traces of their rage for power. So
thought Stanton, as he still saw strongly defined, though darkened by
the darkening clouds, the huge skeleton of a Roman amphitheatre, its
arched and gigantic colonnades now admitting a gleam of light, and now
commingling with the purple thunder-cloud; and now the solid and heavy
mass of a Moorish fortress, no light playing between its impermeable
walls,--the image of power, dark, isolated, impenetrable. Stanton forgot
his cowardly guide, his loneliness, his danger amid an approaching storm
and an inhospitable country, where his name and country would shut every
door against him, and every peal of thunder would be supposed justified
by the daring intrusion of a heretic in the dwelling of an _old
Christian_, as the Spanish Catholics absurdly term themselves, to mark
the distinction between them and the baptised Moors.--All this was
forgot in contemplating the glorious and awful scenery before
him,--light struggling with darkness,--and darkness menacing a light
still more terrible, and announcing its menace in the blue and livid
mass of cloud that hovered like a destroying angel in the air, its
arrows aimed, but their direction awfully indefinite. But he ceased to
forget these local and petty dangers, as the sublimity of romance would
term them, when he saw the first flash of the lightning, broad and red
as the banners of an insulting army whose motto is _Væ victis_, shatter
to atoms the remains of a Roman tower;--the rifted stones rolled down
the hill, and fell at the feet of Stanton. He stood appalled, and,
awaiting his summons from the Power in whose eye pyramids, palaces, and
the worms whose toil has formed them, and the worms who toil out their
existence under their shadow or their pressure, are perhaps all alike
contemptible, he stood collected, and for a moment felt that defiance of
danger which danger itself excites, and we love to encounter it as a
physical enemy, to bid it “do its worst,” and feel that its worst will
perhaps be ultimately its best for us. He stood and saw another flash
dart its bright, brief, and malignant glance over the ruins of ancient
power, and the luxuriance of recent fertility. Singular contrast! The
relics of art for ever decaying,--the productions of nature for ever
renewed.--(Alas! for what purpose are they renewed, better than to mock
at the perishable monuments which men try in vain to rival them by). The
pyramids themselves must perish, but the grass that grows between their
disjointed stones will be renewed from year to year. Stanton was
thinking thus, when all power of thought was suspended, by seeing two
persons bearing between them the body of a young, and apparently very
lovely girl, who had been struck dead by the lightning. Stanton
approached, and heard the voices of the bearers repeating, “There is
none who will mourn for her!” “There is none who will mourn for her!”
said other voices, as two more bore in their arms the blasted and
blackened figure of what had once been a man, comely and
graceful;--“there is not _one_ to mourn for her now!” They were lovers,
and he had been consumed by the flash that had destroyed her, while in
the act of endeavouring to defend her. As they were about to remove the
bodies, a person approached with a calmness of step and demeanour, as if
he were alone unconscious of danger, and incapable of fear; and after
looking on them for some time, burst into a laugh so loud, wild, and
protracted, that the peasants, starting with as much horror at the sound
as at that of the storm, hurried away, bearing the corse with them. Even
Stanton’s fears were subdued by his astonishment, and, turning to the
stranger, who remained standing on the same spot, he asked the reason of
such an outrage on humanity. The stranger, slowly turning round, and
disclosing a countenance which---- (Here the manuscript was illegible
for a few lines), said in English---- (A long hiatus followed here, and
the next passage that was legible, though it proved to be a continuation
of the narrative, was but a fragment). * * * * * *

The terrors of the night rendered Stanton a sturdy and unappeasable
applicant; and the shrill voice of the old woman, repeating, “no
heretic--no English--Mother of God protect us--avaunt Satan!”--combined
with the clatter of the wooden casement (peculiar to the houses in
Valentia) which she opened to discharge her volley of anathematization,
and shut again as the lightning glanced through the aperture, were
unable to repel his importunate request for admittance, in a night whose
terrors ought to soften all the miserable petty local passions into one
awful feeling of fear for the Power who caused it, and compassion for
those who were exposed to it.--But Stanton felt there was something more
than national bigotry in the exclamations of the old woman; there was a
peculiar and personal horror of the English.--And he was right; but this
did not diminish the eagerness of his * * * * * The house was handsome
and spacious, but the melancholy appearance of desertion * * * * * * * *
* * * --The benches were by the wall, but there were none to sit there;
the tables were spread in what had been the hall, but it seemed as if
none had gathered round them for many years;--the clock struck audibly,
there was no voice of mirth or of occupation to drown its sound; time
told his awful lesson to silence alone;--the hearths were black with
fuel long since consumed;--the family portraits looked as if they were
the only tenants of the mansion; they seemed to say, from their
mouldering frames, “there are none to gaze on us;” and the echo of the
steps of Stanton and his feeble guide, was the only sound audible
between the peals of thunder that rolled still awfully, but more
distantly,--every peal like the exhausted murmurs of a spent heart. As
they passed on, a shriek was heard. Stanton paused, and fearful images
of the dangers to which travellers on the Continent are exposed in
deserted and remote habitations, came into his mind. “Don’t heed it,”
said the old woman, lighting him on with a miserable lamp;--“it is only
he * * * * * * * * * * * The old woman having now satisfied herself, by
ocular demonstration, that her English guest, even if he was the devil,
had neither horn, hoof, or tail, that he could bear the sign of the
cross without changing his form, and that, when he spoke, not a puff of
sulphur came out of his mouth, began to take courage, and at length
commenced her story, which, weary and comfortless as Stanton was, * * *
* *

“Every obstacle was now removed; parents and relations at last gave up
all opposition, and the young pair were united. Never was there a
lovelier,--they seemed like angels who had only anticipated by a few
years their celestial and eternal union. The marriage was solemnized
with much pomp, and a few days after there was a feast in that very
wainscotted chamber which you paused to remark was so gloomy. It was
that night hung with rich tapestry, representing the exploits of the
Cid, particularly that of his burning a few Moors who refused to
renounce their accursed religion. They were represented beautifully
tortured, writhing and howling, and “Mahomet! Mahomet!” issuing out of
their mouths, as they called on him in their burning agonies;--you could
almost hear them scream. At the upper end of the room, under a splendid
estrade, over which was an image of the blessed Virgin, sat Donna
Isabella de Cardoza, mother to the bride, and near her Donna Ines, the
bride, on rich almohadas; the bridegroom sat opposite to her; and though
they never spoke to each other, their eyes, slowly raised, but suddenly
withdrawn, (those eyes that blushed), told to each other the delicious
secret of their happiness. Don Pedro de Cardoza had assembled a large
party in honour of his daughter’s nuptials; among them was an Englishman
of the name of _Melmoth_, a traveller; no one knew who had brought him
there. He sat silent like the rest, while the iced waters and the
sugared wafers were presented to the company. The night was intensely
hot, and the moon glowed like a sun over the ruins of Saguntum; the
embroidered blinds flapped heavily, as if the wind made an effort to
raise them in vain, and then desisted.

(Another defect in the manuscript occurred here, but it was soon
supplied).

* * * *

“The company were dispersed through various alleys of the garden; the
bridegroom and bride wandered through one where the delicious perfume of
the orange trees mingled itself with that of the myrtles in blow. On
their return to the hall, both of them asked, Had the company heard the
exquisite sounds that floated through the garden just before they
quitted it? No one had heard them. They expressed their surprise. The
Englishman had never quitted the hall; it was said he smiled with a most
particular and extraordinary expression as the remark was made. His
silence had been noticed before, but it was ascribed to his ignorance of
the Spanish language, an ignorance that Spaniards are not anxious either
to expose or remove by speaking to a stranger. The subject of the music
was not again reverted to till the guests were seated at supper, when
Donna Ines and her young husband, exchanging a smile of delighted
surprise, exclaimed they heard the same delicious sounds floating round
them. The guests listened, but no one else could hear it;--every one
felt there was something extraordinary in this. Hush! was uttered by
every voice almost at the same moment. A dead silence followed,--you
would think, from their intent looks, that they listened with their very
eyes. This deep silence, contrasted with the splendour of the feast, and
the light effused from torches held by the domestics, produced a
singular effect,--it seemed for some moments like an assembly of the
dead. The silence was interrupted, though the cause of wonder had not
ceased, by the entrance of Father Olavida, the Confessor of Donna
Isabella, who had been called away previous to the feast, to administer
extreme unction to a dying man in the neighbourhood. He was a priest of
uncommon sanctity, beloved in the family, and respected in the
neighbourhood, where he had displayed uncommon taste and talents for
exorcism;--in fact, this was the good Father’s _forte_, and he piqued
himself on it accordingly. The devil never fell into worse hands than
Father Olavida’s, for when he was so contumacious as to resist Latin,
and even the first verses of the Gospel of St John in Greek, which the
good Father never had recourse to but in cases of extreme stubbornness
and difficulty,--(here Stanton recollected the English story of the _Boy
of Bilson_, and blushed even in Spain for his countrymen),--then he
always applied to the Inquisition; and if the devils were ever so
obstinate before, they were always seen to fly out of the possessed,
just as, in the midst of their cries, (no doubt of blasphemy), they were
tied to the stake. Some held out even till the flames surrounded them;
but even the most stubborn must have been dislodged when the operation
was over, for the devil himself could no longer tenant a crisp and
glutinous lump of cinders. Thus Father Olavida’s fame spread far and
wide, and the Cardoza family had made uncommon interest to procure him
for a Confessor, and happily succeeded. The ceremony he had just been
performing, had cast a shade over the good Father’s countenance, but it
dispersed as he mingled among the guests, and was introduced to them.
Room was soon made for him, and he happened accidentally to be seated
opposite the Englishman. As the wine was presented to him, Father
Olavida, (who, as I observed, was a man of singular sanctity), prepared
to utter a short internal prayer. He hesitated,--trembled,--desisted;
and, putting down the wine, wiped the drops from his forehead with the
sleeve of his habit. Donna Isabella gave a sign to a domestic, and other
wine of a higher quality was offered to him. His lips moved, as if in
the effort to pronounce a benediction on it and the company, but the
effort again failed; and the change in his countenance was so
extraordinary, that it was perceived by all the guests. He felt the
sensation that his extraordinary appearance excited, and attempted to
remove it by again endeavouring to lift the cup to his lips. So strong
was the anxiety with which the company watched him, that the only sound
heard in that spacious and crowded hall, was the rustling of his habit,
as he attempted to lift the cup to his lips once more--in vain. The
guests sat in astonished silence. Father Olavida alone remained
standing; but at that moment the Englishman rose, and appeared
determined to fix Olavida’s regards by a gaze like that of fascination.
Olavida rocked, reeled, grasped the arm of a page, and at last, closing
his eyes for a moment, as if to escape the horrible fascination of that
unearthly glare, (the Englishman’s eyes were observed by all the guests,
from the moment of his entrance, to effuse a most fearful and
preternatural lustre), exclaimed, “Who is among us?--Who?--I cannot
utter a blessing while he is here. I cannot feel one. Where he treads,
the earth is parched!--Where he breathes, the air is fire!--Where he
feeds, the food is poison!--Where he turns, his glance is
lightning!--_Who is among us?_--_Who?_” repeated the priest in the agony
of adjuration, while his cowl fallen back, his few thin hairs around the
scalp instinct and alive with terrible emotion, his outspread arms
protruded from the sleeves of his habit, and extended towards the awful
stranger, suggested the idea of an inspired being in the dreadful
rapture of prophetic denunciation. He stood--still stood, and the
Englishman stood calmly opposite to him. There was an agitated
irregularity in the attitudes of those around them, which contrasted
strongly the fixed and stern postures of those two, who remained gazing
silently at each other. “Who knows him?” exclaimed Olavida, starting
apparently from a trance; “who knows him? who brought him here?”

The guests severally disclaimed all knowledge of the Englishman, and
each asked the other in whispers, “who _had_ brought him there?” Father
Olavida then pointed his arm to each of the company, and asked each
individually, “Do you know him?” “No! no! no!” was uttered with vehement
emphasis by every individual. “But I know him,” said Olavida, “by these
cold drops!” and he wiped them off;--“by these convulsed joints!” and he
attempted to sign the cross, but could not. He raised his voice, and
evidently speaking with increased difficulty,--“By this bread and wine,
which the faithful receive as the body and blood of Christ, but which
_his_ presence converts into matter as viperous as the suicide foam of
the dying Judas,--by all these--I know him, and command him to be
gone!--He is--he is----” and he bent forwards as he spoke, and gazed on
the Englishman with an expression which the mixture of rage, hatred, and
fear, rendered terrible. All the guests rose at these words,--the whole
company now presented two singular groupes, that of the amazed guests
all collected together, and repeating, “Who, what is he?” and that of
the Englishman, who stood unmoved, and Olavida, who dropped dead in the
attitude of pointing to him. * * * * * * * * * * * *

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.” 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. 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 thou, 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 he _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. * * * * * * * * * “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
faintly, “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, after 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 recognised 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,--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 “_fœdi oculi_.” 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 away.”

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, 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(1), whom they were
to carry off _vi et armis_, as she entered it at the end of the play. At
the other side waited the _glass coach_ of a woman of fashion, who
waited to take Kynaston (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 theatrical dress), for
which he was so distinguished.

(1) Mrs Marshall, the original Roxana in Lee’s Alexander, and the only
virtuous woman then on the stage. She was carried off in the manner
described, by Lord Orrery, who, finding all his solicitations
repelled, had recourse to a sham marriage performed by a servant in
the habit of a clergyman.

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, 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 Prynne 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); 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;--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 (2) “Oh Jesu!” or
the softer, but equally unmeaning one of “I beseech you, Madam,” or,
“Madam, I burn(3).” 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, in the next
accosted her with ribaldry that might put to the blush the piazzas of
Covent Garden(4).

(2) Vide Pope, (copying from Donne).

“Peace, fools, or Gonson will for Papists seize you,
If once he catch you at your Jesu, Jesu.”

(3) Vide the Old Bachelor, whose Araminta, wearied by the repetition
of these phrases, forbids her lover to address her in any sentence
commencing with them.

(4) Vide any old play you may have the patience to peruse; or, _instar
omnium_, read the courtly loves of Rodolphil and Melantha, Palamede
and Doratice, in Dryden’s Marriage a la Mode.

The pit presented a more various spectacle. There were the critics armed
cap-a-pee from Aristotle and Bossu; 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, 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.” There were females, too, but all in vizard
masks, which, though worn as well as aunt Dinah’s in Tristram Shandy,
served to conceal them from the “young bubbles” they were in quest of,
and from all but the orange-women, who hailed them loudly as they passed
the doors(5). In the galleries were the happy souls who waited for the
fulfilment of Dryden’s promise in one of his prologues(6); no matter to
them whether it were the ghost of Almanzor’s mother in her dripping
shroud, or that of Laius, 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 l’Abbe le Blanc(7), in his
recipe for writing an English tragedy. Some, indeed, from time to time
called out for the “burning of the Pope;” 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.
Among this joyous groupe were seated several women of fashion masked,
enjoying in secrecy the licentiousness which they dared not openly
patronise, 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.”

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,
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.”

(5) Vide Southern’s Oroonoko,--I mean the comic part.

(6) “A charm, a song, a murder, and a ghost.”

_Prologue to Œdipus._

(7) Vide Le Blanc’s Letters.

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(8), Mrs Barry, who personated Roxana, had a green-room
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.
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.

(8) Vide Betterton’s History of the Stage.

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’?” 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 source of the Nile, or Gibbon on concluding his History.
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.

When the play was over, he stood for some moments in the deserted
streets. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and he saw near him a
figure, whose shadow, projected half across the street, (there were no
flagged ways then, chains and posts were the only defence of the
foot-passenger), appeared to him of gigantic magnitude. He had been so
long accustomed to contend with these phantoms of the imagination, that
he took a kind of stubborn delight in subduing them. He walked up to the
object, and observing the shadow only was magnified, and the figure was
the ordinary height of man, he approached it, and discovered the very
object of his search,--the man whom he had seen for a moment in
Valentia, and, after a search of four years, recognised at the theatre.
* * * * * * * * * * *

“You were in quest of me?”--“I was.” “Have you any thing to inquire of
me?”--“Much.” “Speak, then.”--“This is no place.” “No place! poor
wretch, I am independent of time and place. Speak, if you have any thing
to ask or to learn?”--“I have many things to ask, but nothing to learn,
I hope, from you.” “You deceive yourself, but you will be undeceived
when next we meet.”--“And when shall that be?” said Stanton, grasping
his arm; “name your hour and your place.” “The hour shall be mid-day,”
answered the stranger, with a horrid and unintelligible smile; “and the
place shall be the bare walls of a mad-house, where you shall rise
rattling in your chains, and rustling from your straw, to greet me,--yet
still you shall have _the curse of sanity_, and of memory. My voice
shall ring in your ears till then, and the glance of these eyes shall be
reflected from every object, animate or inanimate, till you behold them
again.”--“Is it under circumstances so horrible we are to meet again?”
said Stanton, shrinking under the full-lighted blaze of those demon
eyes. “I never,” said the stranger, in an emphatic tone,--“I _never
desert my friends in misfortune_. When they are plunged in the lowest
abyss of human calamity, _they are sure to be visited by me_.” * * * * *

The narrative, when Melmoth was again able to trace its continuation,
described Stanton, some years after, plunged in a state the most
deplorable.

He had been always reckoned of a singular turn of mind, and the belief
of this, aggravated by his constant talk of Melmoth, his wild pursuit of
him, his strange behaviour at the theatre, and his dwelling on the
various particulars of their extraordinary meetings, with all the
intensity of the deepest conviction, (while he never could impress them
on any one’s conviction but his own), suggested to some prudent people
the idea that he was deranged. Their malignity probably took part with
their prudence. The selfish Frenchman(9) says, we feel a pleasure even
in the misfortunes of our friends,--_a plus forte_ in those of our
enemies; and as every one is an enemy to a man of genius of course, the
report of Stanton’s malady was propagated with infernal and successful
industry. Stanton’s next relative, a needy unprincipled man, watched the
report in its circulation, and saw the snares closing round his victim.
He waited on him one morning, accompanied by a person of a grave, though
somewhat repulsive appearance. Stanton was as usual abstracted and
restless, and, after a few moments conversation, he proposed a drive a
few miles out of London, which he said would revive and refresh him.
Stanton objected, on account of the difficulty of getting a hackney
coach, (for it is singular that at this period the number of private
equipages, though infinitely fewer than they are now, exceeded the
number of hired ones), and proposed going by water. This, however, did
not suit the kinsman’s views; and, after pretending to send for a
carriage, (which was in waiting at the end of the street), Stanton and
his companions entered it, and drove about two miles out of London.

(9) Rochefoucault.

The carriage then stopped. “Come, Cousin,” said the younger
Stanton,--“come and view a purchase I have made.” Stanton absently
alighted, and followed him across a small paved court; the other person
followed. “In troth, Cousin,” said Stanton, “your choice appears not to
have been discreetly made; your house has something of a gloomy
aspect.”--“Hold you content, Cousin,” replied the other; “I shall take
order that you like it better, when you have been some time a dweller
therein.” Some attendants of a mean appearance, and with most suspicious
visages, awaited them on their entrance, and they ascended a narrow
staircase, which led to a room meanly furnished. “Wait here,” said the
kinsman, to the man who accompanied them, “till I go for company to
divertise my cousin in his loneliness.” They were left alone. Stanton
took no notice of his companion, but as usual seized the first book near
him, and began to read. It was a volume in manuscript,--they were then
much more common than now.

The first lines struck him as indicating insanity in the writer. It was
a wild proposal (written apparently after the great fire of London) to
rebuild it with stone, and attempting to prove, on a calculation wild,
false, and yet sometimes plausible, that this could be done out of the
colossal fragments of Stonehenge, which the writer proposed to remove
for that purpose. Subjoined were several grotesque drawings of engines
designed to remove those massive blocks, and in a corner of the page was
a note,--“I would have drawn these more accurately, but was not allowed
_a knife_ to mend my pen.”

The next was entitled, “A modest proposal for the spreading of
Christianity in foreign parts, whereby it is hoped its entertainment
will become general all over the world.”--This modest proposal was, to
convert the Turkish ambassadors, (who had been in London a few years
before), by offering them their choice of being strangled on the spot,
or becoming Christians. Of course the writer reckoned on their embracing
the easier alternative, but even this was to be clogged with a heavy
condition,--namely, that they must be bound before a magistrate to
convert twenty mussulmans a day, on their return to Turkey. The rest of
the pamphlet was reasoned very much in the conclusive style of Captain
Bobadil,--these twenty will convert twenty more a piece, and these two
hundred converts, converting their due number in the same time, all
Turkey would be converted before the Grand Signior knew where he was.
Then comes the _coup d’eclat_,--one fine morning, every minaret in
Constantinople was to ring out with bells, instead of the cry of the
Muezzins; and the Imaum, coming out to see what was the matter, was to
be encountered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, _in pontificalibus_,
performing Cathedral service in the church of St Sophia, which was to
finish the business. Here an objection appeared to arise, which the
ingenuity of the writer had anticipated.--“It may be redargued,” saith
he, “by those who have more spleen than brain, that forasmuch as the
Archbishop preacheth in English, he will not thereby much edify the
Turkish folk, who do altogether hold in a vain gabble of their own.” But
this (to use his own language) he “evites,” by judiciously observing,
that where service was performed in an unknown tongue, the devotion of
the people was always observed to be much increased thereby; as, for
instance, in the church of Rome,--that St Augustine, with his monks,
advanced to meet King Ethelbert singing litanies, (in a language his
majesty could not possibly have understood), and converted him and his
whole court on the spot;--that the sybilline books * * * * * * * * _Cum
multis aliis._

Between the pages were cut most exquisitely in paper the likenesses of
some of these Turkish ambassadors; the hair of the beards, in
particular, was feathered with a delicacy of touch that seemed the work
of fairy fingers,--but the pages ended with a complaint of the operator,
that his _scissars had been taken from him_. However, he consoled
himself and the reader with the assurance, that he would that night
catch a moon-beam as it entered through the grating, and, when he had
whetted it on the iron knobs of his door, would do wonders with it. In
the next page was found a melancholy proof of powerful but prostrated
intellect. It contained some insane lines, ascribed to Lee the dramatic
poet, commencing,

“O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease,” &c.

There is no proof whatever that these miserable lines were really
written by Lee, except that the measure is the fashionable quatrain of
the period. It is singular that Stanton read on without suspicion of his
own danger, quite absorbed in _the album of a mad-house_, without ever
reflecting on the place where he was, and which such compositions too
manifestly designated.

It was after a long interval that he looked round, and perceived that
his companion was gone. Bells were unusual then. He proceeded to the
door,--it was fastened. He called aloud,--his voice was echoed in a
moment by many others, but in tones so wild and discordant, that he
desisted in involuntary terror. As the day advanced, and no one
approached, he tried the window, and then perceived for the first time
it was grated. It looked out on the narrow flagged yard, in which no
human being was; and if there had, from such a being no human feeling
could have been extracted.

Sickening with unspeakable horror, he sunk rather than sat down beside
the miserable window, and “wished for day.”

* * * *

At midnight he started from a doze, half a swoon, half a sleep, which
probably the hardness of his seat, and of the deal table on which he
leaned, had not contributed to prolong.

He was in complete darkness; the horror of his situation struck him at
once, and for a moment he was indeed almost qualified for an inmate of
that dreadful mansion. He felt his way to the door, shook it with
desperate strength, and uttered the most frightful cries, mixed with
expostulations and commands. His cries were in a moment echoed by a
hundred voices. In maniacs there is a peculiar malignity, accompanied by
an extraordinary acuteness of some of the senses, particularly in
distinguishing the voice of a stranger. The cries that he heard on every
side seemed like a wild and infernal yell of joy, that their mansion of
misery had obtained another tenant.

He paused, exhausted,--a quick and thundering step was heard in the
passage. The door was opened, and a man of savage appearance stood at
the entrance,--two more were seen indistinctly in the passage.--“Release
me, villain!” “Stop, my fine fellow, what’s all this noise for?” “Where
am I?” “Where you ought to be.” “Will you dare to detain me?” “Yes, and
a little more than that,” answered the ruffian, applying a loaded
horse-whip to his back and shoulders, till the patient soon fell to the
ground convulsed with rage and pain. “Now you see you are where you
ought to be,” repeated the ruffian, brandishing the horse-whip over him,
“and now take the advice of a friend, and make no more noise. The lads
are ready for you with the darbies, and they’ll clink them on in the
crack of this whip, unless you prefer another touch of it first.” They
then were advancing into the room as he spoke, with fetters in their
hands, (strait waistcoats being then little known or used), and shewed,
by their frightful countenances and gestures, no unwillingness to apply
them. Their harsh rattle on the stone pavement made Stanton’s blood run
cold; the effect, however, was useful. He had the presence of mind to
acknowledge his (supposed) miserable condition, to supplicate the
forbearance of the ruthless keeper, and promise complete submission to
his orders. This pacified the ruffian, and he retired.

Stanton collected all his resolution to encounter the horrible night; he
saw all that was before him, and summoned himself to meet it. After much
agitated deliberation, he conceived it best to continue the same
appearance of submission and tranquillity, hoping that thus he might in
time either propitiate the wretches in whose hands he was, or, by his
apparent inoffensiveness, procure such opportunities of indulgence, as
might perhaps ultimately facilitate his escape. He therefore determined
to conduct himself with the utmost tranquillity, and never to let his
voice be heard in the house; and he laid down several other resolutions
with a degree of prudence which he already shuddered to think might be
the cunning of incipient madness, or the beginning result of the horrid
habits of the place.

These resolutions were put to desperate trial that very night. Just next
to Stanton’s apartment were lodged two most uncongenial neighbours. One
of them was a puritanical weaver, who had been driven mad by a single
sermon from the celebrated Hugh Peters, and was sent to the mad-house as
full of election and reprobation as he could hold,--and fuller. He
regularly repeated over the _five points_ while day-light lasted, and
imagined himself preaching in a conventicle with distinguished success;
towards twilight his visions were more gloomy, and at midnight his
blasphemies became horrible. In the opposite cell was lodged a loyalist
tailor, who had been ruined by giving credit to the cavaliers and their
ladies,--(for at this time, and much later, down to the reign of Anne,
tailors were employed by females even _to make_ and _fit on their
stays_),--who had run mad with drink and loyalty on the burning of the
Rump, and ever since had made the cells of the mad-house echo with
fragments of the ill-fated Colonel Lovelace’s songs, scraps from
Cowley’s “Cutter of Coleman street,” and some curious specimens from Mrs
Aphra Behn’s plays, where the cavaliers are denominated the _heroicks_,
and Lady Lambert and Lady Desborough represented as going to meeting,
their large Bibles carried before them by their pages, and falling in
love with two banished cavaliers by the way.--“Tabitha, Tabitha,” cried
a voice half in exultation and half in derision; “thou shalt go with thy
hair curled, and thy breasts naked;”--and then added in an affected
voice,--“I could dance the Canaries once, spouse.” This never failed to
rouse the feelings, or rather operate on the instincts of the puritanic
weaver, who immediately answered, “Colonel Harrison shall come out of
the west, riding on a sky-coloured mule, which signifies
instruction(10).” “Ye lie, ye round-head son of a b----h,” roared the
cavalier tailor, “Colonel Harrison will be damned before he ever mounts
a sky-coloured mule;” and he concluded this pithy sentence with
fragments of anti-Oliverian songs.

“And may I live to see
Old Noll upon a tree,
And many such as he;
Confound him, confound him,
Diseases all around him.”

(10) Vide Cutter of Coleman street.

“Ye are honest gentlemen, I can play many tunes,” squeaked a poor mad
loyalist fiddler, who had been accustomed to play in the taverns to the
cavalier party, and just remembered the words of a similar minstrel
playing for Colonel Blunt in the committee. “Then play me the air to
“Rebellion is breaking up house,” exclaimed the tailor, dancing wildly
about his cell (as far as his chains allowed him) to an imaginary
measure. The weaver could contain no longer. “How long, Lord, how long,”
he exclaimed, “shall thine enemies insult thy sanctuary, in which I have
been placed an anointed teacher? even here, where I am placed to preach
to the souls in prison?--Open the flood-gates of thy power, and though
thy waves and storms go over me, let me testify in the midst of them,
even as he who spreadeth forth his hands to swim may raise one of them
to warn his companion that he is about to sink.--Sister Ruth, why dost
thou uncover thy bosom to discover my frailty?--Lord, let thine arm of
power be with us as it was when thou brakest the shield, the sword, and
the battle,--when thy foot was dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and
the tongue of thy dogs was red through the same.--Dip all thy garments
in blood, and let me weave thee fresh when thou art stained.--When shall
thy saints tread the wine-press of thy wrath? Blood! blood! the saints
call for it, earth gapes to swallow it, hell thirsts for it!--Sister
Ruth, I pray thee, conceal thy bosom, and be not as the vain women of
this generation.--Oh for a day like that, a day of the Lord of hosts,
when the towers fell!--Spare me in the battle, for I am not a mighty man
of war; leave me in the rear of the host, to curse, with the curse of
Meroz, those who come not to the help of the Lord against the
mighty,--even to curse this malignant tailor,--yea, curse him
bitterly.--Lord, I am in the tents of Kedar, my feet stumble on the dark
mountains,--I fall,--I fall!”--And the poor wretch, exhausted by his
delirious agonies, fell, and grovelled for some time in his straw. “Oh!
I have had a grievous fall,--Sister Ruth,--Oh Sister Ruth!--Rejoice not
against me, Oh mine enemy! though I fall, I shall rise again.” Whatever
satisfaction Sister Ruth might have derived from this assurance, if she
could have heard it, was enjoyed tenfold by the weaver, whose amorous
reminiscences were in a moment exchanged for war-like ones, borrowed
from a wretched and disarranged mass of intellectual rubbish. “The Lord
is a man of war,” he shouted.--“Look to Marston Moor!--Look to the city,
the proud city, full of pride and sin!--Look to the waves of the Severn,
as red with blood as the waves of the Red Sea!--There were the hoofs
broken by means of the prancings, the prancings of the mighty
ones.--Then, Lord, was thy triumph, and the triumph of thy saints, to
bind their kings in chains, and their nobles in links of iron.” The
malignant tailor burst out in his turn: “Thank the false Scots, and
their solemn league and covenant, and Carisbrook Castle, for that, ye
crop-eared Puritan,” he yelled. “If it had not been for them, I would
have taken measure of the king for a velvet cloak as high as the Tower
of London, and one flirt of its folds would have knocked the “copper
nose” into the Thames, and sent it a-drift to Hell.” “Ye lie, in your
teeth,” echoed the weaver; “and I will prove it unarmed, with my shuttle
against your needle, and smite you to the earth thereafter, as David
smote Goliath. It was _the man’s_ (such was the indecent language in
which Charles the First was spoken of by the Puritans)--it was the man’s
carnal, self-seeking, world-loving, prelatical hierarchy, that drove the
godly to seek the sweet word in season from their own pastors, who
righteously abominated the Popish garniture of lawn-sleeves, lewd
organs, and steeple houses. Sister Ruth, tempt me not with that calf’s
head, it is all streaming with blood;--drop it, I beseech thee, sister,
it is unmeet in a woman’s hand, though the brethren drink of it.--Woe be
unto thee, gainsayer, dost thou not see how flames envelope the accursed
city under his Arminian and Popish son?--London is on fire!--on fire!”
he yelled; “and the brands are lit by the half-papist, whole-arminian,
all-damned people thereof.--Fire!--fire!” The voice in which he shrieked
out the last words was powerfully horrible, but it was like the moan of
an infant, compared to the voice which took up and re-echoed the cry, in
a tone that made the building shake. It was the voice of a maniac, who
had lost her husband, children, subsistence, and finally her reason, in
the dreadful fire of London. The cry of fire never failed to operate
with terrible punctuality on her associations. She had been in a
disturbed sleep, and now started from it as suddenly as on that dreadful
night. It was Saturday night, too, and she was always observed to be
particularly violent on that night,--it was the terrible weekly festival
of insanity with her. She was awake, and busy in a moment escaping from
the flames; and she dramatized the whole scene with such hideous
fidelity, that Stanton’s resolution was far more in danger from her than
from the battle between his neighbours _Testimony_ and _Hothead_. She
began exclaiming she was suffocated by the smoke; then she sprung from
her bed, calling for a light, and appeared to be struck by the sudden
glare that burst through her casement.--“The last day,” she shrieked,
“The last day! The very heavens are on fire!”--“That will not come till
the Man of Sin be first destroyed,” cried the weaver; “thou ravest of
light and fire, and yet thou art in utter darkness.--I pity thee, poor
mad soul, I pity thee!” The maniac never heeded him; she appeared to be
scrambling up a stair-case to her children’s room. She exclaimed she was
scorched, singed, suffocated; her courage appeared to fail, and she
retreated. “But my children are there!” she cried in a voice of
unspeakable agony, as she seemed to make another effort; “here I
am--here I am come to save you.--Oh God! They are all blazing!--Take
this arm--no, not that, it is scorched and disabled--well, any arm--take
hold of my clothes--no, they are blazing too!--Well, take me all on fire
as I am!--And their hair, how it hisses!--Water, one drop of water for
my youngest--he is but an infant--for my youngest, and let me burn!” She
paused in horrid silence, to watch the fall of a blazing rafter that was
about to shatter the stair-case on which she stood.--“The roof has
fallen on my head!” she exclaimed. “The earth is weak, and all the
inhabitants thereof,” chaunted the weaver; “I bear up the pillars of
it.”

The maniac marked the destruction of the spot where she thought
she stood by one desperate bound, accompanied by a wild shriek, and
then calmly gazed on her infants as they rolled over the scorching
fragments, and sunk into the abyss of fire below. “There they
go,--one--two--three--all!” and her voice sunk into low mutterings, and
her convulsions into faint, cold shudderings, like the sobbings of a
spent storm, as she imagined herself to “stand in safety and despair,”
amid the thousand houseless wretches assembled in the suburbs of London
on the dreadful nights after the fire, without food, roof, or raiment,
all gazing on the burning ruins of their dwellings and their property.
She seemed to listen to their complaints, and even repeated some of them
very affectingly, but invariably answered them with the same words, “But
I have lost all my children--_all_!” It was remarkable, that when this
sufferer began to rave, all the others became silent. The cry of nature
hushed every other cry,--she was the only patient in the house who was
not mad from politics, religion, ebriety, or some perverted passion; and
terrifying as the out-break of her frenzy always was, Stanton used to
await it as a kind of relief from the dissonant, melancholy, and
ludicrous ravings of the others.

But the utmost efforts of his resolution began to sink under the
continued horrors of the place. The impression on his senses began to
defy the power of reason to resist them. He could not shut out these
frightful cries nightly repeated, nor the frightful sound of the whip
employed to still them. Hope began to fail him, as he observed, that the
submissive tranquillity (which he had imagined, by obtaining increased
indulgence, might contribute to his escape, or perhaps convince the
keeper of his sanity) was interpreted by the callous ruffian, who was
acquainted only with the varieties of _madness_, as a more refined
species of that cunning which he was well accustomed to watch and
baffle.

On his first discovery of his situation, he had determined to take the
utmost care of his health and intellect that the place allowed, as the
sole basis of his hope of deliverance. But as that hope declined, he
neglected the means of realizing it. He had at first risen early, walked
incessantly about his cell, and availed himself of every opportunity of
being in the open air. He took the strictest care of his person in point
of cleanliness, and with or without appetite, regularly forced down his
miserable meals; and all these efforts were even pleasant, as long as
hope prompted them. But now he began to relax them all. He passed half
the day in his wretched bed, in which he frequently took his meals,
declined shaving or changing his linen, and, when the sun shone into his
cell, turned from it on his straw with a sigh of heart-broken
despondency. Formerly, when the air breathed through his grating, he
used to say, “Blessed air of heaven, I shall breathe you once more in
freedom!--Reserve all your freshness for that delicious evening when I
shall inhale you, and be as free as you myself.” Now when he felt it, he
sighed and said nothing. The twitter of the sparrows, the pattering of
rain, or the moan of the wind, sounds that he used to sit up in his bed
to catch with delight, as reminding him of nature, were now unheeded.

He began at times to listen with sullen and horrible pleasure to the
cries of his miserable companions. He became squalid, listless, torpid,
and disgusting in his appearance. * * * * * * *

It was one of those dismal nights, that, as he tossed on his loathsome
bed,--more loathsome from the impossibility to quit it without feeling
more “unrest,”--he perceived the miserable light that burned in the
hearth was obscured by the intervention of some dark object. He turned
feebly towards the light, without curiosity, without excitement, but
with a wish to diversify the monotony of his misery, by observing the
slightest change made even accidentally in the dusky atmosphere of his
cell. Between him and the light stood the figure of Melmoth, just as he
had seen him from the first; the figure was the same; the expression of
the face was the same,--cold, stony, and rigid; the eyes, with their
infernal and dazzling lustre, were still the same.

Stanton’s ruling passion rushed on his soul; he felt this apparition
like a summons to a high and fearful encounter. He heard his heart beat
audibly, and could have exclaimed with Lee’s unfortunate heroine,--“It
pants as cowards do before a battle; Oh the great march has sounded!”

Melmoth approached him with that frightful calmness that mocks the
terror it excites. “My prophecy has been fulfilled;--you rise to meet me
rattling from your chains, and rustling from your straw--am I not a true
prophet?” Stanton was silent. “Is not your situation very
miserable?”--Still Stanton was silent; for he was beginning to believe
this an illusion of madness. He thought to himself, “How could he have
gained entrance here?”--“Would you not wish to be delivered from it?”
Stanton tossed on his straw, and its rustling seemed to answer the
question. “I have the power to deliver you from it.” Melmoth spoke very
slowly and very softly, and the melodious smoothness of his voice made a
frightful contrast to the stony rigour of his features, and the
fiend-like brilliancy of his eyes. “Who are you, and whence come you?”
said Stanton, in a tone that was meant to be interrogatory and
imperative, but which, from his habits of squalid debility, was at once
feeble and querulous. His intellects had become affected by the gloom of
his miserable habitation, as the wretched inmate of a similar mansion,
when produced before a medical examiner, was reported to be a complete
Albinos.--“His skin was bleached, his eyes turned white; he could not
bear the light; and, when exposed to it, he turned away with a mixture
of weakness and restlessness, more like the writhings of a sick infant
than the struggles of a man.”

Such was Stanton’s situation; he was enfeebled now, and the power of the
enemy seemed without a possibility of opposition from either his
intellectual or corporeal powers. * * * * * * * *

Of all their horrible dialogue, only these words were legible in the
manuscript, “You know me now.”--“I always knew you.”--“That is false;
you imagined you did, and that has been the cause of all the wild * * *
* * * * * * of the * * * * * of your finally being lodged in this
mansion of misery, where only I would seek, where only I can succour
you.” “You, demon!”--“Demon!--Harsh words!--Was it a demon or a human
being placed you here?--Listen to me, Stanton; nay, wrap not yourself in
that miserable blanket,--that cannot shut out my words. Believe me, were
you folded in thunder-clouds, you must hear _me_! Stanton, think of your
misery. These bare walls--what do they present to the intellect or to
the senses?--White-wash, diversified with the scrawls of charcoal or red
chalk, that your happy predecessors have left for you to trace over. You
have a taste for drawing,--I trust it will improve. And here’s a
grating, through which the sun squints on you like a step-dame, and the
breeze blows, as if it meant to tantalize you with a sigh from that
sweet mouth, whose kiss you must never enjoy. And where’s your
library,--intellectual man,--travelled man?” he repeated in a tone of
bitter derision; “where be your companions, your peaked men of
countries, as your favourite Shakespeare has it? You must be content
with the spider and the rat, to crawl and scratch round your flock-bed!
I have known prisoners in the Bastile to feed them for companions,--why
don’t you begin your task? I have known a spider to descend at the tap
of a finger, and a rat to come forth when the daily meal was brought, to
share it with his fellow-prisoner!--How delightful to have vermin for
your guests! Aye, and when the feast fails them, they make a meal of
their entertainer!--You shudder--Are you, then, the first prisoner who
has been devoured alive by the vermin that infested his
cell?--Delightful banquet, not “where you eat, but where you are eaten!”
Your guests, however, will give you one token of repentance while they
feed; there will be _gnashing of teeth_, and you shall hear it, and feel
it too perchance!--And then for meals--Oh you are daintily off!--The
soup that the cat has lapped; and (as her progeny has probably
contributed to the hell-broth) why not?---- Then your hours of solitude,
deliciously diversified by the yell of famine, the howl of madness, the
crash of whips, and the broken-hearted sob of those who, like you, are
supposed, or _driven_ mad by the crimes of others!--Stanton, do you
imagine your reason can possibly hold out amid such scenes?--Supposing
your reason was unimpaired, your health not destroyed,--suppose all
this, which is, after all, more than fair supposition can grant, guess
the effect of the continuance of these scenes on your senses alone. A
time will come, and soon, when, from mere habit, you will echo the
scream of every delirious wretch that harbours near you; then you will
pause, clasp your hands on your throbbing head, and listen with horrible
anxiety whether the scream proceeded from _you_ or _them_. The time will
come, when, from the want of occupation, the listless and horrible
vacancy of your hours, you will feel as anxious to hear those shrieks,
as you were at first terrified to hear them,--when you will watch for
the ravings of your next neighbour, as you would for a scene on the
stage. All humanity will be extinguished in you. The ravings of these
wretches will become at once your sport and your torture. You will watch
for the sounds, to mock them with the grimaces and bellowings of a
fiend. The mind has a power of accommodating itself to its situation,
that you will experience in its most frightful and deplorable efficacy.
Then comes the dreadful doubt of one’s own sanity, the terrible
announcer that _that_ doubt will soon become fear, and _that_ fear
certainty. Perhaps (still more dreadful) the _fear_ will at last become
a _hope_,--shut out from society, watched by a brutal keeper, writhing
with all the impotent agony of an incarcerated mind, without
communication and without sympathy, unable to exchange ideas but with
those whose ideas are only the hideous spectres of departed intellect,
or even to hear the welcome sound of the human voice, except to mistake
it for the howl of a fiend, and stop the ear desecrated by its
intrusion,--then at last your fear will become a more fearful hope; you
will wish to become one of them, to escape the agony of consciousness.
As those who have long leaned over a precipice, have at last felt a
desire to plunge below, to relieve the intolerable temptation of their
giddiness(11), you will hear them laugh amid their wildest paroxysms;
you will say, ‘Doubtless those wretches have some consolation, but I
have none; my sanity is my greatest curse in this abode of horrors. They
greedily devour their miserable meals, while I loathe mine. They sleep
sometimes soundly, while my sleep is--worse than their waking. They are
revived every morning by some delicious illusion of cunning madness,
soothing them with the hope of escaping, baffling or tormenting their
keeper; my sanity precludes all such hope. _I know I never can escape_,
and the preservation of my faculties is only an aggravation of my
sufferings. I have all their miseries,--I have none of their
consolations. They laugh,--I hear them; would I could laugh like them.’
You will try, and the very effort will be an invocation to the demon of
insanity to come and take full possession of you from that moment for
ever.

(11) A fact, related to me by a person who was near committing suicide
in a similar situation, to escape what he called “the excruciating
torture of giddiness.”

(There were other details, both of the menaces and temptations employed
by Melmoth, which are too horrible for insertion. One of them may serve
for an instance).

“You think that the intellectual power is something distinct from the
vitality of the soul, or, in other words, that if even your reason
should be destroyed, (which it nearly is), your soul might yet enjoy
beatitude in the full exercise of its enlarged and exalted faculties,
and all the clouds which obscured them be dispelled by the Sun of
Righteousness, in whose beams you hope to bask for ever and ever. Now,
without going into any metaphysical subtleties about the distinction
between mind and soul, experience must teach you, that there can be no
crime into which madmen would not, and do not precipitate themselves;
mischief is their occupation, malice their habit, murder their sport,
and blasphemy their delight. Whether a soul in this state can be in a
hopeful one, it is for you to judge; but it seems to me, that with the
loss of reason, (and reason cannot long be retained in this place), you
lose also the hope of immortality.--Listen,” said the tempter, pausing,
“listen to the wretch who is raving near you, and whose blasphemies
might make a demon start.--He was once an eminent puritanical preacher.
Half the day he imagines himself in a pulpit, denouncing damnation
against Papists, Arminians, and even Sub-lapsarians, (he being a
Supra-lapsarian himself). He foams, he writhes, he gnashes his teeth;
you would imagine him in the hell he was painting, and that the fire and
brimstone he is so lavish of, were actually exhaling from his jaws. At
night his _creed retaliates on him_; he believes himself one of the
reprobates he has been all day denouncing, and curses God for the very
decree he has all day been glorifying Him for.

“He, whom he has for twelve hours been vociferating “is the loveliest
among ten thousand,” becomes the object of demoniac hostility and
execration. He grapples with the iron posts of his bed, and says he is
rooting out the cross from the very foundations of Calvary; and it is
remarkable, that in proportion as his morning exercises are intense,
vivid, and eloquent, his nightly blasphemies are outrageous and
horrible.--Hark! Now he believes himself a demon; listen to his
diabolical eloquence of horror!”

Stanton listened, and shuddered * * * * * * “Escape--escape for your
life,” cried the tempter; “break forth into life, liberty, and sanity.
Your social happiness, your intellectual powers, your immortal
interests, perhaps, depend on the choice of this moment.--There is the
door, and the key is my hand. Choose--choose!”--“And how comes the key
in your hand? and what is the condition of my liberation?” said Stanton.
* * * * * * *

The explanation occupied several pages, which, to the torture of young
Melmoth, were wholly illegible. It seemed, however, to have been
rejected by Stanton with the utmost rage and horror, for Melmoth at last
made out,--“Begone, monster, demon!--begone to your native place. Even
this mansion of horror trembles to contain you; its walls sweat, and its
floors quiver, while you tread them.” * * * * * * * *

The conclusion of this extraordinary manuscript was in such a state,
that, in fifteen mouldy and crumbling pages, Melmoth could hardly make
out that number of lines. No antiquarian, unfolding with trembling hand
the calcined leaves of an Herculaneum manuscript, and hoping to discover
some lost lines of the Æneis in Virgil’s own autograph, or at least some
unutterable abomination of Petronius or Martial, happily elucidatory of
the mysteries of the Spintriæ, or the orgies of the Phallic worshippers,
ever pored with more luckless diligence, or shook a head of more
hopeless despondency over his task. He could but just make out what
tended rather to excite than assuage that feverish thirst of curiosity
which was consuming his inmost soul. The manuscript told no more of
Melmoth, but mentioned that Stanton was finally liberated from his
confinement,--that his pursuit of Melmoth was incessant and
indefatigable,--that he himself allowed it to be a species of
insanity,--that while he acknowledged it to be the master-passion, he
also felt it the master-torment of his life. He again visited the
Continent, returned to England,--pursued, inquired, traced, bribed, but
in vain. The being whom he had met thrice, under circumstances so
extraordinary, he was fated never to encounter again _in his life-time_.
At length, discovering that he had been born in Ireland, he resolved to
go there,--went, and found his pursuit again fruitless, and his
inquiries unanswered. The family knew nothing of him, or at least what
they knew or imagined, they prudently refused to disclose to a stranger,
and Stanton departed unsatisfied. It is remarkable, that he too, as
appeared from many half-obliterated pages of the manuscript, never
disclosed to mortal the particulars of their conversation in the
mad-house; and the slightest allusion to it threw him into fits of rage
and gloom equally singular and alarming. He left the manuscript,
however, in the hands of the family, possibly deeming, from their
incuriosity, their apparent indifference to their relative, or their
obvious inacquaintance with reading of any kind, manuscript or books,
his deposit would be safe. He seems, in fact, to have acted like men,
who, in distress at sea, intrust their letters and dispatches to a
bottle sealed, and commit it to the waves. The last lines of the
manuscript that were legible, were sufficiently extraordinary. * * * * *
*

“I have sought him every where.--The desire of meeting him once more, is
become as a burning fire within me,--it is the necessary condition of my
existence. I have vainly sought him at last in Ireland, of which I find
he is a native.--Perhaps our final meeting will be in * * * * * *

Such was the conclusion of the manuscript which Melmoth found in his
uncle’s closet. When he had finished it, he sunk down on the table near
which he had been reading it, his face hid in his folded arms, his
senses reeling, his mind in a mingled state of stupor and excitement.
After a few moments, he raised himself with an involuntary start, and
saw the picture gazing at him from its canvas. He was within ten inches
of it as he sat, and the proximity appeared increased by the strong
light that was accidentally thrown on it, and its being the only
representation of a human figure in the room. Melmoth felt for a moment
as if he were about to receive an explanation from its lips.

He gazed on it in return,--all was silent in the house,--they were alone
together. The illusion subsided at length; and as the mind rapidly
passes to opposite extremes, he remembered the injunction of his uncle
to destroy the portrait. He seized it;--his hand shook at first, but the
mouldering canvas appeared to assist him in the effort. He tore it from
the frame with a cry half terrific, half triumphant;--it fell at his
feet, and he shuddered as it fell. He expected to hear some fearful
sounds, some unimaginable breathings of prophetic horror, follow this
act of sacrilege, for such he felt it, to tear the portrait of his
ancestor from his native walls. He paused and listened:--“There was no
voice, nor any that answered;”--but as the wrinkled and torn canvas fell
to the floor, its undulations gave the portrait the appearance of
smiling. Melmoth felt horror indescribable at this transient and
imaginary resuscitation of the figure. He caught it up, rushed into the
next room, tore, cut, and hacked it in every direction, and eagerly
watched the fragments that burned like tinder in the turf-fire which had
been lit in his room. As Melmoth saw the last blaze, he threw himself
into bed, in hope of a deep and intense sleep. He had done what was
required of him, and felt exhausted both in mind and body; but his
slumber was not so sound as he had hoped for. The sullen light of the
turf-fire, burning but never blazing, disturbed him every moment. He
turned and turned, but still there was the same red light glaring on,
but not illuminating, the dusky furniture of the apartment. The wind was
high that night, and as the creaking door swung on its hinges, every
noise seemed like the sound of a hand struggling with the lock, or of a
foot pausing on the threshold. But (for Melmoth never could decide) was
it in a dream or not, that he saw the figure of his ancestor appear at
the door?--hesitatingly as he saw him at first on the night of his
uncle’s death,--saw him enter the room, approach his bed, and heard him
whisper, “You have burned me, then; but those are flames I can
survive.--I am alive,--I am beside you.” Melmoth started, sprung from
his bed,--it was broad day-light. He looked round,--there was no human
being in the room but himself. He felt a slight pain in the wrist of his
right arm. He looked at it, it was black and blue, as from the recent
gripe of a strong hand.