Melmoth the Wanderer (Unabridged). Charles Maturin

was private, and its date uncertain, that you should be announced as our legitimate offspring. For years your grandfather, incensed at our marriage, refused to see us, and we lived in retirement,–would that I had died there. A few days before his death he relented, and sent for us; it was no time to acknowledge the imposition practised on him, and you were introduced as the child of his son, and the heir of his honours. But from that hour I have never known a moment's peace. The lie I had dared to utter before God and the world, and to a dying parent,–the injustice done to your brother,–the violation of natural duties and of legal claims,–the convulsions of my conscience, that heavily upbraided me, not only with vice and perjury, but with sacrilege.' 'Sacrilege!' 'Yes; every hour you delay the assumption of the habit is a robbery of God. Before you were born, I devoted you to him, as the only expiation of my crime. While I yet bore you in my bosom without life, I dared to implore his foregiveness only on the condition of your future intercession for me as a minister of religion. I relied on your prayers before you could speak. I proposed to intrust my penitence to one, who, in becoming the child of God, had atoned for my offence in making him the child of sin. In imagination I knelt already at your confessional,–heard you, by the authority of the church, and the commission of Heaven, pronounce me forgiven. I saw you stand beside my dying bed,–I felt you press the cross to my cold lips, and point to that heaven where I hoped my vow had already secured a seat for you. Before your birth I had laboured to lift you to heaven, and my recompence is, that your obstinacy threatens to drag us both into the gulph of perdition. Oh! my child, if our prayers and intercessions are available to the delivery of the souls of our departed relatives from punishment, hear the adjuration of a living parent, who implores you not to seal her everlasting condemnation!' I was unable to answer, my mother saw it, and redoubled her efforts. 'My son, if I thought that my kneeling at your feet would soften your obduracy, I would prostrate myself before them this moment.' 'Oh! madam, the sight of such unnatural humiliation ought to kill me.' 'And yet you will not yield–the agony of this confession, the interests of my salvation and your own, nay, the preservation of my life, are of no weight with you.' She perceived that these words made me tremble, and repeated, 'Yes, my life; beyond the day that your inflexibility exposes me to infamy, I will not live. If you have resolution, I have resolution too; nor do I dread the result, for God will charge on your soul, not on mine, the crime an unnatural child has forced me to–and yet you will not yield.–Well, then, the prostration of my body is nothing to that prostration of soul you have already driven me to. I kneel to my own child for life and for salvation,' and she knelt to me. I attempted to raise her; she repelled me, and exclaimed, in a voice hoarse with despair, 'And you will not yield?' 'I do not say so.' 'And what, then, do you say?–raise me not, approach me not, till you answer me.' 'That I will think.' 'Think! you must decide.' 'I do, then, I do.' 'But how?' 'To be whatever you would have me.' As I uttered these words, my mother fell in a swoon at my feet. As I attempted to lift her up, scarce knowing if it was not a corse I held in my arms, I felt I never could have forgiven myself if she had been reduced to that situation by my refusing to comply with her last request.

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'I was overpowered with congratulations, blessings, and embraces. I received them with trembling hands, cold lips, a rocking brain, and a heart that felt turned to stone. Everything passed before me as in a dream. I saw the pageant move on, without a thought of who was to be the victim. I returned to the convent–I felt my destiny was fixed–I had no wish to avert or arrest it–I was like one who sees an enormous engine (whose operation is to crush him to atoms) put in motion, and, stupified with horror, gazes on it with a calmness that might be mistaken for that of one who was coolly analysing the complication of its machinery, and calculating the resistless crush of its blow. I have read of a wretched Jew,2 who, by the command of a Moorish emperor, was exposed in an area to the rage of a lion who had been purposely kept fasting for eight and forty hours. The horrible roar of the famished and infuriated animal made even the executioners tremble as they fastened the rope round the body of the screaming victim. Amid hopeless struggles, supplications for mercy, and shrieks of despair, he was bound, raised, and lowered into the area. At the moment he touched the ground, he fell prostrate, stupefied, annihilated. He uttered no cry–he did not draw a breath–he did not make an effort–he fell contracting his whole body into a ball, and lay as senseless as a lump of earth.–So it fared with me; my cries and struggles were over,–I had been flung into the area, and I lay there. I repeated to myself, 'I am to be a monk,' and there the debate ended. If they commended me for the performance of my exercises, or reproved me for my deficiency, I showed neither joy nor sorrow,–I said only, 'I am to be a monk.' If they urged me to take exercise in the garden of the convent, or reproved me for my excess in walking beyond the allotted hours, I still answered, 'I am to be a monk.' I was showed much indulgence in these wanderings. A son–the eldest son of the Duke de Monçada, taking the vows, was a glorious triumph for the ex-Jesuits, and they did not fail to make the most of it. They asked what books I would like to read,–I answered, 'what they pleased.' They saw I was fond of flowers, and vases of porcelain, filled with the most exquisite produce of their garden, (renewed every day), embellished my apartment. I was fond of music,–that they perceived from my involuntary joining in the choir. My voice was good, and my profound melancholy gave an expression to my tones, which these men, always on the watch to grasp at any thing that may aggrandize them, or delude their victims, assured me were like the tones of inspiration.

      'Amid these displays of indulgence, I exhibited an ingratitude totally foreign from my character. I never read the books they furnished me with,–I neglected the flowers with which they filled my room,–and the superb organ they introduced into my apartment, I never touched, except to elicit some deep and melancholy chords from its keys. To those who urged me to employ my talents for painting and music, I still answered with the same apathetic monotony, 'I am to be a monk.' 'But, my brother, the love of flowers, of music, of all that can be consecrated to God, is also worthy of the attention of man–you abuse the indulgence of the Superior.' 'Perhaps so.' 'You must, in gratitude to God, thank him for these lovely works of his creation;'–the room was at this time filled with carnations and roses;–'you must also be grateful to him for the powers with which he has distinguished you in hymning his praises–your voice is the richest and most powerful in the church.' 'I don't doubt it.' 'My brother, you answer at random.' 'Just as I feel–but don't heed that.' 'Will you take a turn in the garden?' 'If you please.' 'Or will you seek a moment's consolation from the Superior?' 'If you please.' 'But why do you speak with such apathy? are the odour of the flowers, and the consolations of your Superior, to be appreciated in the same breath?' 'I believe so.' 'Why?' 'Because I am to be a monk.' 'Nay, brother, will you never utter any thing but that phrase, which carries no meaning with it but that of stupefaction or delirium?' 'Imagine me, then, stupefied, delirious–what you please–you know I must be a monk.' At these words, which I suppose I uttered in a tone unlike that of the usual chaunt of monastic conversation, another interposed, and asked what I was uttering in so loud a key? 'I am only saying,' I replied, 'that I must be a monk.' 'Thank God it is no worse,' replied the querist, 'your contumacy must long ago have wearied the Superior and the brethren–thank God it's no worse.' At these words I felt my passions resuscitated,–I exclaimed, 'Worse! what have I to dread?–am I not to be a monk?' From that evening, (I forget when it occurred), my liberty was abridged; I was no longer suffered to walk, to converse with the boarders or novices,–a separate table was spread for me in the refectory,–the seats near mine were left vacant at service,–yet still my cell was embellished with flowers and engravings, and exquisitely-wrought toys were left on my table. I did not perceive they were treating me as a lunatic, yet certainly my foolishly reiterated expressions might have justified them in doing so,–they had their own plans in concert with the Director,–my silence went for proof. The Director came often to visit me, and the hypocritical wretches would accompany him to my cell. I was generally (for want of other occupation) attending to my flowers, or gazing at the engravings,–and they would say, 'You see he is as happy as he wishes to be–he wants for nothing–he is quite occupied in watching those roses.' 'No, I am not occupied,' I returned, 'it is occupation I want.' Then they shrugged their shoulders, exchanged mysterious looks with the Director, and I was glad when they were gone, without reflecting on the mischief their absence threatened me with. At this moment, consultation after consultation