 Melmoth the Wanderer Part 1 in the Lock and Key Library. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mary Schneider. The Lock and Key Library, edited by Julian Hawthorne. Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Matteran Part 1. Introduction. Balzac likens the hero of one of his short stories to Molière's Don Juan, Goth's Faust, Byron's Manfred, and Matteran's Melmoth. Great allegorical figures drawn by the greatest man of genius in Europe. But what is Melmoth? Why is he classed as a great allegorical figure? Exclaimed many a surprised reader. Few had perused, few know at this day, that terrible story of Melmoth the Wanderer, half-man, half-devil, who has bartered away his soul for the glory of power and knowledge, and repenting of his bargain tries again and again to persuade some desperate human to change places with him. Penetrates to the refuge of misery, the death chamber, even the madhouse, seeking one in such utter agony as to accept his help and take his curse, but ever fails. Why this extraordinary tale, told with wild and compelling sweep, has remained so deep an oblivion, appears immediately on a glance at the original. The author Charles Robert Matteran and needy eccentric Irish clergyman of 1780 to 1824 could cause intense suspense and horror, could read keenly into human motives, could teach an awful moral lesson in the guise of fascinating fiction, but he could not stick to a long story with simplicity. His dozens of shifting scenes, his fantastic coils of tales within tales, sadly perplexed the reader of Melmoth in the first version. It is hoped, however, that the present selection by its directness and the clearness of the story thread may please the modern reader better than the involved original and bring before a wider public some of the most gripping descriptions ever penned in English. In volume four of these stories comes a tale Melmoth reconciled, which Balzac himself wrote while under the spell of Matteran's great allegorical figure. Here the unhappy being succeeds in his purpose. The story takes place in mocking careless Paris, that branch establishment of hell. A cashier on the eve of embezzlement and detection cynically exceeds to Melmoth's terms and accepts his help with what unlooked for results the reader may see. Charles Robert Matteran. Melmoth the Wanderer. John Melmoth, student at Trinity College Dublin having journey to County Wicklow for attendance at the deathbed of his miserly uncle, finds the old man even in his last moments tortured by avarice and by suspicion of all around him. He whispers to John, I want a glass of wine. It would keep me alive for some hours, but there is not one I can trust to get it for me. They'd steal a bottle and ruin me. John was greatly shocked. Sir, for God's sake, let me get a glass of wine for you. Do you know where? said the old man with an expression in his face John could not understand. No, sir, you know I have been rather a stranger here, sir. Take this key, said old Melmoth, after a violent spasm. Take this key, there is wine in that closet, Madeira. I always told them there was nothing there, but they did not believe me, or I should not have been robbed as I have been. At one time I said it was whiskey, and then I fared worse than ever, for they drank twice as much of it. John took the key from his uncle's hand, the dying man pressed it as he did so, and John, interpreting this as a mark of kindness, returned the pressure. He was undeceived by the whisper that followed. John, my lad, don't drink any of that wine while you are there. Good God, said John, indignantly throwing the key on the bed. Then, recollecting that the miserable being before him was no object of resentment, he gave the promise required, and entered the closet, which no foot but that of old Melmoth had entered for nearly sixty years. He had some difficulty in finding out the wine, and indeed stayed long enough to justify his uncle's suspicions, but his mind was agitated and his hand unsteady. He could not but remark his uncle's extraordinary look, that had the ghastliness of fear super-added to that of death, as he gave him permission to enter his closet. He could not but see the looks of horror which the women exchanged as he approached it, and finally, when he was in it, his memory was malicious enough to suggest some faint traces of a story too horrible for imagination connected with it. He remembered in one moment, most distinctly, that no one but his uncle had ever been known to enter it for many years. Before he quitted it, he held up the dim light, and looked around him with a mixture of terror and curiosity. There was a great deal of decayed and useless lumber, such as might be supposed to be heaped up to rot in a miser's closet. But John's eyes were in a moment, and as if by magic, riveted on a portrait that hung on the wall, and appeared, even to his untaught eye, far superior to the tribe of family pictures that are left to molder on the walls of a family mansion. It represented a man of middle age. There was nothing remarkable in the costume, or in the countenance, but the eyes, John felt, were such as one feels they wished they had never seen, and feels they can never forget. Had he been acquainted with the poetry of Southie, he might have often exclaimed in his afterlife, only the eyes had life, they gleamed with demon light, quote from Thalaba. From an impulse equally resistless and painful, he approached the portrait, held the candle toward it, and could distinguish the words on the border of the painting. Anno 1646 John was neither timid by nature nor nervous by constitution, nor superstitious from habit. Yet he continued to gaze in stupid horror on this singular picture, till aroused by his uncle's cough he hurried into his room. The old man swallowed the wine. He appeared a little revived. It was long since he had tasted such a cordial. His heart appeared to expand to a momentary confidence. John, what did you see in that room? Nothing, sir. That's a lie. Everyone knows to cheat or to rob me. Sir, I don't want to do either. Well, what did you see that you took notice of? Only a picture, sir. A picture, sir. The original is still alive. John, though under the impression of his recent feelings, could not but look incredulous. John, what's British Uncle? John, they say I am dying of this and that, and one says it is for want of nourishment, and one says it is for want of medicine, but John. And his face looked hideously ghastly or fright, and he extended his meager arm toward the closet as if he was pointing to a living being. That man I have good reason to know is still alive. How is that possible, sir? said John involuntarily. The date on the picture is 1646. You have seen it. You have noticed it, said his uncle. He rocked and nodded on his bolster for a moment, then grasping John's hand with an unutterable look, he exclaimed, You will see him again. He is alive. Then, sinking back on his bolster, he fell into a kind of sleep or stupor, his eyes still open and fixed on John. The house was now perfectly silent, and John had time and space for reflection. More thoughts came crowding on him than he wished to welcome, but they would not be repulsed. He thought of his uncle's habits and character turned the matter over and over again in his mind, and he said to himself, The last man on earth to be superstitious, he never thought of anything but the price of stocks and the rate of exchange, and my college expenses that hung heavier in his heart than all, and such a man to die of a fright, a ridiculous fright, that a man living one hundred fifty years ago is alive still, and yet he is dying. John paused, for facts will confute the most stubborn logician. With all his hardness of mind and of heart he is dying of fright. I heard it in the kitchen. I have heard it from himself. He could not be deceived. If I had ever heard he was nervous or fanciful or superstitious, but a character so contrary to all these impressions, a man that, as poor Butler says in his remains of the antiquarian, would have sold Christ over again for the numerical piece of silver which Judas got for him. Such a man to die of fear, yet he is dying, said John, glancing his fearful eye on the contracted nostril, the glazed eye, the drooping jaw, the whole horrible apparatus of the facies' hypocratica displayed, and soon to cease its display. Old Melmouth at this moment seemed to be in a deep stupor. His eyes lost that little expression they had before, and his hands, that had convulsively been catching at the blankets, let go their short and quivering grasp, and lay extended on the bed like the claws of some bird that had died of hunger, so meagre, so yellow, so spread. John, accustomed to the sight of death, believed this to be only a sign that he was going to sleep, and urged by an impulse for which he did not attempt to account to himself, caught up the miserable light, and once more ventured into the forbidden room, the blue chamber of the dwelling. The motion roused the dying man. He sat boat upright in his bed. This John could not see, for he was now in the closet. But he heard the groan, or rather the choked and gurgling rattle of the throat, that announces the horrible conflict between muscular and mental convulsion. He started, turned away, but as he turned away he thought he saw the eyes of the portrait on which his own was fixed. Move, and hurried back to his uncle's bedside. Old Melmouth died in the course of that night, and died as he had lived in a kind of avaricious delirium. John could not have imagined a scene so horrible as his last hours presented. He cursed and blasphemed about three half-pence missing, as he said some weeks before, in an account of change with his groom, about hay to a starved horse that he kept. Then he grasped John's hand and asked him to give him the sacrament. If I send to the clergyman he will charge me something for it, which I cannot pay. I cannot, they say I am rich. Look at this blanket, but I would not mind that if I could save my soul. And raving, he added, indeed doctor, I am a very poor man. I never troubled a clergyman before, and all I want is that you will grant me two trifling requests. Very little matters in your way save my soul and make interest to get me a parish coffin. I have not enough left to bury me. I always told everyone I was poor, but the more I told them so the less they believed me. John greatly shocked, retired from the bedside, and sat down in a distant corner of the room. The women were again in the room which was very dark. Melmouth was silent from exhaustion, and there was a death-like pause for some time. At this point John saw the door open and a figure appear at it, who looked round the room and then quietly and deliberately retired. But not before John had discovered in his face the living original of the portrait. His first impulse was to utter an exclamation of terror, but his breath felt stopped. He was then rising to pursue the figure, but a moment's reflection checked him. What could be more absurd than to be alarmed or amazed at a resemblance between a living man and the portrait of a dead one? The likeness was doubtless strong enough to strike him even in that darkened room, but it was doubtless only a likeness, and though it might be imposing enough to terrify an old man of gloomy and retired habits and with a broken constitution, John resolved it should not produce the same effect on him. But while he was applauding himself for his resolution the door opened and the figure appeared at it, beckoning and nodding to him with a familiarity somewhat terrifying. John now started up, determined to pursue it, but the pursuit was stopped by the weak but shrill cries of his uncle who was struggling at once with the agonies of death and his housekeeper. The poor woman, anxious for her master's reputation and her own, was trying to put on him a clean shirt and nightcap, and Melmouth, who had just sensation enough to perceive they were taking something from him, continued exclaiming feebly, robbing me, robbing me in my last moments, robbing a dying man. John, won't you assist me? I shall die a beggar. They are taking my last shirt. I shall die a beggar. And the miser died. A few days after the funeral the will was opened before proper witnesses, and John was found to be left sole heir to his uncle's property, which, though originally moderate, had by his grasping habits and parsimonious life become very considerable. As the attorney who read the will concluded, he added, There are some words here at the corner of the parchment which do not appear to be part of the will, as they are neither in the form of a cotasoul, nor is the signature of the test-stater affixed to them. But to the best of my belief they are in the handwriting of the deceased. As he spoke he showed the lines to Melmouth, who immediately recognized his uncle's hand, that perpendicular and penurious hand, that seems determined to make the most of the very paper, thriftily abridging every word, and leaving scarce an atom of margin. And read, not without some emotion, the following words, I enjoined my nephew and heir, John Melmouth, to remove, destroy, or cause to be destroyed, the portrait inscribed J. Melmouth, 1646, hanging in my closet. I also enjoined him to search for a manuscript, which I think he will find in the third and lowest left-hand drawer of the mahogany chest standing under that portrait. It is among some papers of no value such as manuscript sermons and pamphlets on the improvement of Ireland and such stuff. He will distinguish it by its being tied round with a black tape and the paper being very moldy and discolored. He may read it if he will, I think he had better not. At all events I adjure him if there be any power in the adoration of a dying man to burn it. After reading this singular memorandum, the business of the meeting was again resumed, and his old Melmouth's will was very clear and legally worded, all was soon settled, the party dispersed, and John Melmouth was left alone. He resolutely entered the closet, shut the door, and proceeded to search for the manuscript. It was soon found for the directions of old Melmouth were forcibly written and strongly remembered. The manuscript, old, tattered and discolored, was taken from the very drawer in which it was mentioned to be laid. Melmouth's hands felt as cold as those of his dead uncle when he drew the blotted pages from their nook. He sat down to read, there was a dead silence through the house. Melmouth looked wistfully at the candles, snuffed them, and still thought they looked dim. Per chance he thought they burned blue, but such thought he kept to himself. Certain it is he often changed his posture and would have changed his chair had there been more than one in the apartment. He sang for a few moments into a fit of gloomy abstraction till the sound of the clock striking twelve made him start. It was the only sound he had heard for some hours and the sounds produced by inanimate things while all living beings around are as dead have at such an hour in effect indescribably awful. John looked at his manuscript with some reluctance, opened it, paused over the first lines, and as the wind's side round the desolate apartment and the rain patterned with a mournful sound against the dismantled window, wished, what did he wish for? He wished the sound of the wind less dismal and the dash of the rain less monotonous. He may be forgiven. It was past midnight and there was not a human being awake but himself within ten miles when he began to read. The manuscript was discolored, obliterated, and mutilated beyond any that had ever before exercised the patience of a reader. Michalis himself, scrutinizing into the pretended autograph of St. Mark of Venice, never had a harder time of it. Melmouth could make out only a sentence here and there. The writer it appeared was an Englishman of the name of Stanton who had traveled abroad shortly after the restoration. Traveling 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 Corvidt, though they had the modesty on their return, to entitle the result of their multiplied observations and labor's only crudities. Stanton, about the year 1676, was in Spain. He was, like most of the travelers 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 17 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 and perceived, 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 thunderclouds that advanced slowly seemed like the shrouds of the specters of departed greatness. They approached, but they 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 theater and something like a public place. The latter present only the remains of fortresses embattled, castellated, and fortified from top to bottom. Not a loophole for pleasure to get in by. The loopholes were only for arrows. All denoted military power and despotic subjugation are loutrons. 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 to press must be. 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 theaters, temples, which were also dedicated to pleasure one way or another, and baths, while other conquering bands of savages never left anything 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 amphitheater, its arched and gigantic colonnades now admitting a gleam of light, and now comingling with the purple thunderclut, 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 peel 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 termed themselves to mark the distinction between them and the baptized Moors. All this was forgotten, 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 turn them. When he saw the first flash of the lightning, broad and red is the banners of an insulting army whose motto is vey victous. 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 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 luxuriance of recent fertility. Singular contrast. The relics of art forever decay, the productions of nature forever 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 the two 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 endeavoring to defend her. As they were about to remove the bodies a person approached with the calmness of step and demeanor 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 corpses 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 accountants which, here the manuscript was illegible for a few lines, said in English along hiatus followed here in 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 protectus, avante Satan. Combined with the clatter of the wood casement peculiar to the houses in Valencia, which she opened to discharge her volley of anathemization and shut again as the lightning glanced through the aperture, were unable to repel his important request for admittance in a night whose terror 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 tenets of the mansion. They seemed to say from their moldering 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 peel, 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 travelers on the continent are exposed and deserted in remote habitations came into his mind. Don't hate it, said the old woman, lighting him on with a miserable lamp. It's 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, nor tail, that he could bear the sign of the cross without changing his form, and that when he spoke, not a puff of sulfur came out of his mouth, began to take courage, and at length commenced her story, as 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 wanes-coated chamber, which you paused to remark was so gloomy. It was that night, hung with rich tapestry, representing the exploits of the Sid, particularly that of his burning a few moors who refused to renounce their accursed religion. They were represented beautifully tortured, writhing and howling, and mal-met, mal-met, 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 astrade, over which was an image of the blessed virgin, sat Donna Isabella de Cardoza, mother to the bride, and near her Donna Inés, the bride, on rich almoharas. 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 Melmouth, 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 Sargantum. 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 bloom. On their return to the ball 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. Wendona Inés 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. Everyone 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 splendor 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 Dona Isabella, who had been called away previous to the feast to administer excre-munction to a dying man in the neighborhood. He was a priest of uncommon sanctity, beloved in the family and respected in the neighborhood where he had displayed uncommon taste and talents for excre-sism. In fact, this was the good father's forte and he peaked himself on it accordingly. The devil never fell into worse hands than Father Olavida's for when he was so contumatious 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 case of extreme stubbornness and difficulty. Here Stanton recollected the English story of the boy of Billson 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 attendant, a crisp and gluttonous 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 endeavoring 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 wrestling 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 luster. 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 adoration. While his cow will fall on 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 toward 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 with the fixed and stern postures of those two who remaining gazing silently at each other. Who knows him? exclaimed Olavita, 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 Olavita 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 Olavita, 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 vibrous 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 forward as he spoke 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 groups, that of the amazed guests all collected together and repeating, who, what is he? and that of the Englishman who stood unmoved and Olavita who dropped dead 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 in this extraordinary circumstance and finally agreed to remain in the house lest the evil spirit for they believe the Englishman know better could take certain liberties with the corpse 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 corpse 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 neighboring convent and the reputation of his sanctity joined to the interest caused by his extraordinary death collected vast numbers of 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 corpse extended on a beer with its face uncovered 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 a like 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 in 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 deeply when he invade against the tyrants under whose bloody persecution those holy men suffered his hearers were roused for a moment for it is always easier to excite a passion than a moral feeling when he spoke of the dead and pointed with emphatic gesture to the corpse as it lay before them cold and motionless every eye was fixed and every ear became attentive even the lovers who under pretense of dipping their fingers into the holy water were contriving to exchange amorous billets for bore for one moment this interesting intercourse to listen to the preacher he dwelt with much energy on the virtues of the deceased and he declared to be a particular favorite of the virgin and enumerating the various losses that could 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 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 apostasy 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 honored 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 corpse what hath laid thee there servant of God pride, ignorance and fear answered the same voice in accent 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 contumatious 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 Olavita'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 Olavita everybody testified horror and grief at the death of that venerable Ecclesiastic who died in the odor 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 did 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 absolution of the pope cannot deliver you from the curse of dying in unrepentant 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 Olavita I have told you that I believe that 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'm not sure of that there was a general outcry of horror at these words the examination then went on if you believed Olavita to be guilty on any pursuits or studies condemned by our mother the church why did you not denounce him in your position 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 these abominable secrets when examined as to their nature in 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 everything he was released refreshed restored and the following day uttered remarkable confession the old Spanish woman further confessed to Stanton that and the Englishman certainly had been seen in the neighborhood since seen as she had heard that very night great god exclaimed Stanton as he recollected the stranger whose demonic laugh had so appalled him while gazing on the lifeless bodies of the lovers whom the lightning had struck as the manuscript after a few blotted and illegible pages became more distinct Melmouth read on perplexed and unsatisfied not knowing what connection this Spanish story could have with his ancestor whom however he recognized under the title of the Englishman and wondering how Stanton could have thought it worth his while to follow him to Ireland write a long manuscript about an event that occurred in Spain and leave it in the hands of his family to verify untrue things in the language of dogberry 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 and of Melmouth the Wanderer Part 1 Melmouth the Wanderer Part 2 in the Lock and Key Library This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Mary Schneider The Lock and Key Library edited by Julian Hawthorne Melmouth the Wanderer Part 2 by Charles Robert Matteran About the year 1677 Stanton was in London his mind still full of his mysterious countrymen This constant subject of his contemplations had produced a visible change in his exterior His walk was what Salus tells us of Catilines His were, too, the fady ocular 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 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 when the fair sat panting at a courtier's play and not a mask went unimproved away It was that memorable night when, according to the history of the veteran Bederton, Mrs. Berry who personated Roxanna had a green room squabble with Mrs. Botel, the representative of Statira about a veil which the partiality of the property man adjudged to the latter and suppressed her rage till the fifth act when stabbing Statira she aimed the blow with such force as to pierce through her stays and inflicted a severe though not dangerous wound Mrs. Botel fainted the performance was suspended and in the commotion which this incident caused in the house many of the audience rose and stand 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 Valencia and whom he believed the same with the subject of the extraordinary narrative he had heard there He was standing up there was nothing particular or remarkable in his appearance but the expression of his eyes could never be mistaken or forgotten The heart of Stanton palpitated with violence endless and deadly sickness accompanied with 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 an 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 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 thoughts, Tanton and are those celestial sounds that seem to repair 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 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 given 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 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 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 defense of the foot passenger appear 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 a man he approached it and discovered the very object of his search the man whom he had seen for a moment in Valencia and after a search of four years recognized at the theater you were in quest of me I was have you anything 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 anything 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 midday answered the stranger with a horrid and unintelligible smile the place will be the bare walls of a madhouse 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 a glance of these eyes shall be reflected from every object animate and 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 in the belief of this aggravated by his constant talk of Melmoth his wild pursuit of him of his behavior 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 anyone'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 says we feel a pleasure even in the misfortunes of our friends we do fought in those of our enemies and as everyone 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 in appearance Stanton was as usual abstracted and restless and after a few moments conversation he proposed to 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 kinsmen'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 the carriage then stopped come cousin said the younger Stanton come and view a purchase I have made Stanton absently elided and followed him across a small paved court the other person followed in truth cousin said Stanton your choice appears not to have been discreetly made your house has somewhat of a gloomy aspect hold your content cousin replied the other I shall take order that you like it better when you have been some time a dweller therein some attendance of a mean appearance and with most suspicious visages awaited them on their entrance I ascended a narrow staircase which led to a room meanly furnished wait here said the kinsmen to the man who accompanied them till I go for company to divertize 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 stone hinge 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 heavy condition namely that they must be bound before magistrate to convert twenty Muslims 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 apiece and these two hundred converts converting their due number in the same time all Turkey would be converted before the grand senior knew where he was then came the coup d'etat one fine morning every minaret in Constantinople was to ring out the bells instead of the cry of the Musins and the Imam coming out to see as 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 sayeth he by those who have more spleen than brain that for as much as the Archbishop preacheth in English thereby much edify the Turkish folk who do altogether hold in a vain gavel 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 Albert singing litanies in a language his majesty could not possibly have understood and converted him and his whole court on the spot that the syllabine books Cum Maltes alias 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 the fairy fingers but the pages ended with a complaint of the operator that his scissors had been taken from him however he consoled himself and the reader with the assurance that he would that night catch a moonbeam as it entered through the grading and when he had whettled 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 oh that my lungs could bleed like buttered peas etc 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 madhouse without ever reflecting on the place where he was and with 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 graded it looked out on a 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 dose 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 the 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 this noise far where am I were you ought to be were 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 derbies and they'll clink them on in the crank 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 straight waistcoats being then little known or used and showing by their fearful 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 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 tranquility 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 determined to conduct himself with the utmost tranquility 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 shuttered 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 more uncongenial neighbors 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 madhouse as full of election and reprobation as he could hold and fuller he regularly repeated over the five points while daylight lasted and imagined himself preaching in a conventical with distinguished success toward twilight visions were more gloomy and at midnight his blasphemies became horrible in the opposite cell was lodged a loyalist Taylor 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 Taylor's 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 made the cells of the madhouse echo with fragments of the ill-fated Colonel Loveless's song scraps from Cowley's Cutter of Coleman Street and some curious specimens from Mrs. Afrabane's plays where the Cavaliers are denominated the heroics 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. The voice in which he shrieked out such 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 correct with terrible punctuality in 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 neighbor's testimony and hot-head. 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 staircase to her children's room. She exclaimed she was scorched, singed, suffocated. Her courage appeared to fail and she retreated. The 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 blazing. Take this arm. No, not that. It is scorched and disabled. Well, any arm. Take hold of the 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. And let me burn. She paused in horrid silence to watch the fall of a blazing rafter that was about to shatter the staircase on which she stood. The roof has fallen on my head. She exclaimed, The earth is weak and all the inhabitants thereof. Chanted 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 sobbing of a spent storm. As she imagined herself to stand in safety and despair among the thousand houseless riches 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 effectively, 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, abriety, or some perverted passion. And terrifying as the outbreak 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 of 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 tranquility 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. In 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 he turned from it on his straw with a sigh of heartbroken despondency. Formerly when the air breathed through its 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 the rain or the moan of the wind sounds that he used to sit up in his bed to catch with delight 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 in 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 toward 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 lights stood the figure of Melnoth just as he had seen him at 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 luster 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. Melnoth 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. Melnoth spoke very slowly and very softly and the melodious smoothness of his voice made a frightful contrast to the stony rigor 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 an erogatory and imperative, but which from his habits of squalid ability was at once feeble and querulous. His intellect 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 albino. 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 your finally being lodged in the mansion in 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 up my words. Believe me, where 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? Whitewash, diversified with the scrolls 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 grading through which the sun squints on you like 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 favorite Shakespeare has it. Must be content with the spider and the rat to crawl and scratch round your flock bed. I have known prisoners in the Bastille to feed them for companions. Why don't you begin your task? I have known a spider to descend 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. I, 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 mashing 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 brokenhearted 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. This is, after all, more than fair supposition can grant. Guess the effect of the countenance 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 harbors near you. Then you will pause, clasp your hands on your throbbing head and listen with receded 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 these shrieks as you were at first terrified to hear them. Then you will watch for the ravings of your next neighbor as you would for a scene on the stage. All humanity 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 friend. 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 specters of departed intellect or even to hear the welcome sound of the human voice accept 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 fell to desire to plunge below to relieve the intolerable temptation of their giddiness you will hear them laugh amid their wildest paroxysms you will say doubtless those riches have some consolation but I have none as 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 waking they are revived every morning by some delicious illusion of cunning madness soothing them with the hope of escape 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 misery I have none of their consolations they laugh I hear them what 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 forever there were other details both of the menaces and temptations employed by melmouth 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 the attitude 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 forever 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 mad men 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 a hopeful one it is for you to judge to me that with the loss of reason and reason can long be retained in this place you lose also the hope of immortality listen said the tempter pausing listen to the wretch who was raving near you at 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, Armenians and even sublapsarians he being a superlapsarian 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 draws 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 night blasphemies are outrageous and horrible arc now he believes himself a demon listen to his diabolical horror stand listened and shuttered 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 in my hand choose choose and how comes the key to your hand and what is the condition of my liberation said standen the explanation occupied several pages which to the torture of young melmouth were wholly illegible it seemed however to have been rejected by standen with the utmost rage and horror for melmouth at last made out be gone monster demon be gone 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 15 moldy and crumbling pages melmouth could hardly make out that number of lines no antiquarian unfolding with trembling hand the calcined leaves of a curculaneum manuscript and hoping to discover some lost lines of the Aeneas and Virgil's own autograph or at least some unutterable abomination of Petronius or Marshall happily elucidatory of the mysteries of the Spintrie or the orgies of the phallic worshippers ever poured with more luckless diligence or shook ahead of more hopeless despondency over his task he could but 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 melmouth but mentioned that Stanton was finally liberated from his confinement that his pursuit of melmouth 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 felt at 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 never fated to encounter again in his lifetime 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 has appeared from many half obliterated pages of the manuscript never disclosed to mortal the particulars of their conversation in the madhouse and the slightest allusion to it threw him into fits of rage and gloom singular and alarming he left the manuscript, however in the hands of the family possibly deeming from there in curiosity their apparent indifference to their relative or their obvious unacquaintance with reading of any kind manuscripts or books his deposit would be safe he seems in fact to have acted like men who in distress at sea entrust their letters and dispatches to a bottle, sealed remitted it to the waves the last lines of the manuscript that were legible were sufficiently extraordinary I have sought him everywhere 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 Melmouth found in his uncle's closet when he had finished it he sucked 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 two 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 Melmouth 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 illusions 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 hands 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 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 Melmouth felt horror indescribable at this transient and imaginary recitation 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 Melmouth 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 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 of a foot pausing on the threshold but for Melmouth 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 Melmouth started sprung from his bed it was broad daylight he looked around 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 a recent grip of a strong hand that is the end of Melmouth the wonderer