Immalee withheld her breath, as if she inhaled the abominable effluvia of this mass of putrefaction, which is said to desolate the shores near the temple of Juggernaut, like a pestilence. Close to this fearful scene, came on a pageant, whose splendour made a brilliant and terrible contrast to the loathsome and withering desolation of animal and intellectual life, amid which its pomp came towering, and sparkling, and trembling on. An enormous fabric, more resembling a moving palace than a triumphal car, supported the inshrined image of Juggernaut, and was dragged forward by the united strength of a thousand human bodies, priests, victims, brahmins, faqueers and all. In spite of this huge force, the impulse was so unequal, that the whole edifice rocked and tottered from time to time, and this singular union of instability and splendour, of trembling decadence and terrific glory, gave a faithful image of the meretricious exterior, and internal hollowness, of idolatrous religion. As the procession moved on, sparkling amid desolation, and triumphant amid death, multitudes rushed forward from time to time, to prostrate themselves under the wheels of the enormous machine, which crushed them to atoms in a moment, and passed on;  others cut themselves with knives and lancets after their manner, and not believing themselves worthy to perish beneath the wheels of the idols chariot, sought to propitiate him by dying the tracks of those wheels with their blood;  their relatives and friends shouted with delight as they saw the streams of blood dye the car and its line of progress, and hoped for an interest in these voluntary sacrifices, with as much energy, and perhaps as much reason, as the Catholic votarist does in the penance of St Bruno, or the exoculation of St Lucia, or the martyrdom of St Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, which, being interpreted, means the martyrdom of a single female named Undecimilla, which the Catholic legends read Undecim Mille. The procession went on, amid that mixture of rites that characterizes idolatry in all countries,  half resplendent, half horrible  appealing to nature while they rebel against her  mingling flowers with blood, and casting alternately a screaming infant, or a garland of roses, beneath the car of the idol. Such was the picture that presented to the strained, incredulous eyes of Immalee, those mingled features of magnificence and horror,  of joy and suffering,  of crushed flowers and mangled bodies,  of magnificence calling on torture for its triumph,  and the steam of blood and the incense of the rose, inhaled at once by the triumphant nostrils of an incarnate demon, who rode amid the wrecks of nature and the spoils of the heart! Immalee gazed on in horrid curiosity. She saw, by the aid of the telescope, a boy seated on the front of the moving temple, who perfected the praise of the loathsome idol, with all the outrageous lubricities of the Phallic worship. From the slightest consciousness of the meaning of this phenomenon, her unimaginable purity protected her as with a shield. It was in vain that the tempter plied her with questions, and hints of explanation, and offers of illustration. He found her chill, indifferent, and even incurious. He gnashed his teeth and gnawed his lip en parenthese.But when she saw mothers cast their infants under the wheels of the car, and then turn to watch the wild and wanton dance of the Almahs, and appear, by their open lips and clapped hands, to keep time to the sound of the silver bells that tinkled round their slight ankles, while their infants were writhing in their dying agony,  she dropt the telescope in horror, and exclaimed, The world that thinks does not feel. I never saw the rose kill the bud! But look again, said the tempter, to that square building of stone, round which a few stragglers are collected, and whose summit is surmounted by a trident,  that is the temple of Mahadeva, a goddess who possesses neither the power or the popularity of the great idol Juggernaut. Mark how her worshippers approach her. Immalee looked, and saw women offering flowers, fruits, and perfumes; and some young girls brought birds in cages, whom they set free; others, after making vows for the safety of some absent, sent a small and gaudy boat of paper, illuminated with wax, down the stream of an adjacent river, with injunctions never to sink till it reached him. Immalee smiled with pleasure at the rites of this harmless and elegant superstition. This is not the religion of torment, said she.  Look again, said the stranger. She did, and beheld those very women whose hands had been employed in liberating birds from their cages, suspending, on the branches of the trees which shadowed the temple of Mahadeva, baskets containing their newborn infants, who were left there to perish with hunger, or be devoured by the birds, while their mothers danced and sung in honour of the goddess. Others were occupied in conveying, apparently with the most zealous and tender watchfulness, their aged parents to the banks of the river, where, after assisting them to perform their ablutions, with all the intensity of filial and divine piety, they left them half immersed in the water, to be devoured by alligators, who did not suffer their wretched prey to linger in long expectation of their horrible death; while others were deposited in the jungles near the banks of the river, where they met with a fate as certain and as horrible, from the tigers who infested it, and whose yell soon hushed the feeble wail of their unresisting victims. Immalee sunk on the earth at this spectacle, and clasping both hands over her eyes, remained speechless with grief and horror. Look yet again, said the stranger, the rites of all religions are not so bloody. Once more she looked, and saw a Turkish mosque, towering in all the splendour that accompanied the first introduction of the religion of Mahomet among the Hindoos. It reared its gilded domes, and carved minarets, and crescented pinnacles, rich with all the profusion which the decorative imagination of Oriental architecture, at once light and luxuriant, gorgeous and aerial, delights to lavish on its favourite works. A group of stately Turks were approaching the mosque, at the call of the muezzin. Around the building arose neither tree nor shrub; it borrowed neither shade nor ornament from nature; it had none of those soft and graduating shades and hues, which seem to unite the works of God and the creature for the glory of the former, and calls on the inventive magnificence of art, and the spontaneous loveliness of nature, to magnify the Author of both; it stood the independent work and emblem of vigorous hands and proud minds, such as appeared to belong to those who now approached it as worshippers. Their finely featured and thoughtful countenances, their majestic habits, and lofty figures, formed an imposing contrast to the unintellectual expression, the crouching posture, and the half naked squalidness of some poor Hindoos, who, seated on their hams, were eating their mess of rice, as the stately Turks passed on to their devotions. Immalee viewed them with a feeling of awe and pleasure, and began to think there might be some good in the religion professed by these noblelooking beings. But, before they entered the mosque, they spurned and spit at the unoffending and terrified Hindoos; they struck them with the flats of their sabres, and, terming them dogs of idolaters, they cursed them in the name of God and the prophet. Immalee, revolted and indignant at the sight, though she could not hear the words that accompanied it, demanded the reason of it. Their religion, said the stranger, binds them to hate all who do not worship as they do.  Alas! said Immalee, weeping, is not that hatred which their religion teaches, a proof that theirs is the worst? But why, she added, her features illuminated with all the wild and sparkling intelligence of wonder, while flushed with recent fears, why do I not see among them some of those lovelier beings, whose habits differ from theirs, and whom you call women? Why do they not worship also; or have they a milder religion of their own?  That religion, replied the stranger, is not very favourable to those beings, of whom you are the loveliest; it teaches that men shall have different companions in the world of souls; nor does it clearly intimate that women shall ever arrive there. Hence you may see some of these excluded beings wandering amid those stones that designate the place of their dead, repeating prayers for the dead whom they dare not hope to join; and others, who are old and indigent, seated at the doors of the mosque, reading aloud passages from a book lying on their knees, (which they call the Koran), with the hope of soliciting alms, not of exciting devotion. At these desolating words, Immalee, who had in vain looked to any of these systems for that hope or solace which her pure spirit and vivid imagination alike thirsted for, felt a recoiling of the soul unutterable at religion thus painted to her, and exhibiting only a frightful picture of blood and cruelty, of the inversion of every principle of nature, and the disruption of every tie of the heart. She flung herself on the ground, and exclaiming, There is no God, if there be none but theirs! then, starting up as if to take a last view, in the desperate hope that all was an illusion, she discovered a small obscure building overshaded by palmtrees, and surmounted by a cross; and struck by the unobtrusive simplicity of its appearance, and the scanty number and peaceable demeanour of the few who were approaching it, she exclaimed, that this must be a new religion, and eagerly demanded its name and rites. The stranger evinced some uneasiness at the discovery she had made, and testified still more reluctance to answer the questions which it suggested; but they were pressed with such restless and coaxing importunity, and the beautiful being who urged them made such an artless transition from profound and meditative grief to childish, yet intelligent curiosity, that it was not in man, or more or less than man, to resist her. Her glowing features, as she turned them toward him, with an expression half impatient, half pleading, were indeed those of a stilled infant smiling through its tears.41 Perhaps, too, another cause might have operated on this prophet of curses, and made him utter a blessing where he meant malediction; but into this we dare not inquire, nor will it ever be fully known till the day when all secrets must be disclosed. However it was, he felt himself compelled to tell her it was a new religion, the religion of Christ, whose rites and worshippers she beheld. But what are the rites? asked Immalee. Do they murder their children, or their parents, to prove their love to God? Do they hang them on baskets to perish, or leave them on the banks of rivers to be devoured by fierce and hideous animals?  The religion they profess forbids that, said the stranger, with reluctant truth; it requires them to honour their parents, and to cherish their children.  But why do they not spurn from the entrance to their church those who do not think as they do?  Because their religion enjoins them to be mild, benevolent, and tolerant; and neither to reject or disdain those who have not attained its purer light.  But why is there no splendour or magnificence in their worship; nothing grand or attractive?  Because they know that God cannot be acceptably worshipped but by pure hearts and crimeless hands; and though their religion gives every hope to the penitent guilty, it flatters none with false promises of external devotion supplying the homage of the heart; or artificial and picturesque religion standing in the place of that single devotion to God, before whose throne, though the proudest temples erected to his honour crumble into dust, the heart burns on the altar still, an inextinguishable and acceptable victim. As he spoke, (perhaps constrained by a higher power), Immalee bowed her glowing face to the earth, and then raising it with the look of a newborn angel, exclaimed, Christ shall be my God, and I will be a Christian! Again she bowed in the deep prostration which indicates the united submission of soul, and body, and remained in this attitude of absorption so long, that, when she rose, she did not perceive the absence of her companion.  He fled murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night. Chapter 17 Why, I did say something about getting a licence from the Cadi. BLUE BEARD The visits of the stranger were interrupted for some time, and when he returned, it seemed as if their purpose was no longer the same. He no longer attempted to corrupt her principles, or sophisticate her understanding, or mystify her views of religion. On the latter subject he was quite silent, seemed to regret he had ever touched on it, and not all her restless avidity of knowledge, or caressing importunity of manner, could extract from him another syllable on the subject. He repayed her amply, however, by the rich, varied, and copious stores of a mind, furnished with matter apparently beyond the power of human experience to have collected, confined, as it is, within the limits of threescore years and ten. But this never struck Immalee; she took no note of time; and the tale of yesterday, or the record of past centuries, were synchronized in a mind to which facts and dates were alike unknown; and which was alike unacquainted with the graduating shades of manner, and the linked progress of events. They often sat on the shore of the isle in the evening, where Immalee always prepared a seat of moss for her visitor, and gazed together on the blue deep in silence; for Immalees newlyawaked intellect and heart felt that bankruptcy of language, which profound feeling will impress on the most cultivated intellect, and which, in her case, was increased alike by her innocence and her ignorance; and her visitor had perhaps reasons still stronger for his silence. This silence, however, was often broken. There was not a vessel that sailed in the distance which did not suggest an eager question from Immalee, and did not draw a slow and extorted reply from the stranger. His knowledge was immense, various, and profound, (but this was rather a subject of delight than of curiosity to his beautiful pupil); and from the Indian canoe, rowed by naked natives, to the splendid, and clumsy, and illmanaged vessels of the Rajahs, that floated like huge and gilded fish tumbling in uncouth and shapeless mirth on the wave, to the gallant and wellmanned vessels of Europe, that came on like the gods of ocean bringing fertility and knowledge, the discoveries of art, and the blessings of civilization, wherever their sails were unfurled and their anchors dropt,  he could tell her all,  describe the destination of every vessel,  the feelings, characters, and national habits of the manyminded inmates,  and enlarge her knowledge to a degree which books never could have done; for colloquial communication is always the most vivid and impressive medium, and lips have a prescriptive right to be the first intelligencers in instruction and in love. Perhaps this extraordinary being, with regard to whom the laws of mortality and the feelings of nature seemed to be alike suspended, felt a kind of sad and wild repose from the destiny that immitigably pursued him, in the society of Immalee. We know not, and can never tell, what sensations her innocent and helpless beauty inspired him with, but the result was, that he ceased to regard her as his victim; and, when seated beside her listening to her questions, or answering them, seemed to enjoy the few lucid intervals of his insane and morbid existence. Absent from her, he returned to the world to torture and to tempt in the madhouse where the Englishman Stanton was tossing on his straw   Hold! said Melmoth; what name have you mentioned?  Have patience with me, Senhor, said Monada, who did not like interruption; have patience, and you will find we are all beads strung on the same string. Why should we jar against each other? our union is indissoluble. He proceeded with the story of the unhappy Indian, as recorded in the parchments of Adonijah, which he had been compelled to copy, and of which he was anxious to impress every line and letter on his listener, to substantiate his own extraordinary story. When absent from her, his purpose was what I have described; but while present, that purpose seemed suspended; he gazed often on her with eyes whose wild and fierce lustre was quenched in a dew that he hastily wiped away, and gazed on her again. While he sat near her on the flowers she had collected for him,  while he looked on those timid and rosy lips that waited his signal to speak, like buds that did not dare to blow till the sun shone on them,  while he heard accents issue from those lips which he felt it would be as impossible to pervert as it would be to teach the nightingale blasphemy,  he sunk down beside her, passed his hand over his livid brow, and, wiping off some cold drops, thought for a moment he was not the Cain of the moral world, and that the brand was effaced,  at least for a moment. The habitual and impervious gloom of his soul soon returned. He felt again the gnawings of the worm that never dies, and the scorchings of the fire that is never to be quenched. He turned the fatal light of his dark eyes on the only being who never shrunk from their expression, for her innocence made her fearless. He looked intensely at her, while rage, despair, and pity, convulsed his heart; and as he beheld the confiding and conciliating smile with which this gentle being met a look that might have withered the heart of the boldest within him,  a Semele gazing in supplicating love on the lightnings that were to blast her,  one human drop dimmed their portentous lustre, as its softened rays fell on her. Turning fiercely away, he flung his view on the ocean, as if to find, in the sight of human life, some fuel for the fire that was consuming his vitals. The ocean, that lay calm and bright before them as a sea of jasper, never reflected two more different countenances, or sent more opposite feelings to two hearts. Over Immalees, it breathed that deep and delicious reverie, which those forms of nature that unite tranquillity and profundity diffuse over souls whose innocence gives them a right to an unmingled and exclusive enjoyment of nature. None but crimeless and unimpassioned minds ever truly enjoyed earth, ocean, and heaven. At our first transgression, nature expels us, as it did our first parents, from her paradise for ever. To the stranger the view was fraught with far different visions. He viewed it as a tiger views a forest abounding with prey; there might be the storm and the wreck; or, if the elements were obstinately calm, there might be the gaudy and gilded pleasure barge, in which a Rajah and the beautiful women of his haram were inhaling the sea breeze under canopies of silk and gold, overturned by the unskilfulness of their rowers, and their plunge, and struggle, and dying agony, amid the smile and beauty of the calm ocean, produce one of those contrasts in which his fierce spirit delighted. Or, were even this denied, he could watch the vessels as they floated by, and, from the skiff to the huge trader, be sure that every one bore its freight of woe and crime. There came on the European vessels full of the passions and crimes of another world,  of its sateless cupidity, remorseless cruelty, its intelligence, all awake and ministrant in the cause of its evil passions, and its very refinement operating as a stimulant to more inventive indulgence, and more systematized vice. He saw them approach to traffic for gold, and silver, and the souls of men;  to grasp, with breathless rapacity, the gems and precious produce of those luxuriant climates, and deny the inhabitants the rice that supported their inoffensive existence;  to discharge the load of their crimes, their lust and their avarice, and after ravaging the land, and plundering the natives, depart, leaving behind them famine, despair, and execration; and bearing with them back to Europe, blasted constitutions, inflamed passions, ulcerated hearts, and consciences that could not endure the extinction of a light in their sleeping apartment. Such were the objects for which he watched; and one evening, when solicited by Immalees incessant questions about the worlds to which the vessels were hastening, or to which they were returning, he gave her a description of the world, after his manner, in a spirit of mingled derision, malignity, and impatient bitterness at the innocence of her curiosity. There was a mixture of fiendish acrimony, biting irony, and fearful truth, in his wild sketch, which was often interrupted by the cries of astonishment, grief, and terror, from his hearer. They come, said he, pointing to the European vessels, from a world where the only study of the inhabitants is how to increase their own sufferings, and those of others, to the utmost possible degree; and, considering they have only had 4000 years practice at the task, it must be allowed they are tolerable proficients.  But is it possible?  You shall judge. In aid, doubtless, of this desirable object, they have been all originally gifted with imperfect constitutions and evil passions; and, not to be ungrateful, they pass their lives in contriving how to augment the infirmities of the one, and aggravate the acerbities of the other. They are not like you, Immalee, a being who breathes amid roses, and subsists only on the juices of fruits, and the lymph of the pure element. In order to render their thinking powers more gross, and their spirits more fiery, they devour animals, and torture from abused vegetables a drink, that, without quenching thirst, has the power of extinguishing reason, inflaming passion, and shortening life  the best result of all  for life under such circumstances owes its only felicity to the shortness of its duration. Immalee shuddered at the mention of animal food, as the most delicate European would at the mention of a cannibal feast; and while tears trembled in her beautiful eyes, she turned them wistfully on her peacocks with an expression that made the stranger smile. Some, said he, by way of consolation, have a taste by no means so sophisticated,  they content themselves at their need with the flesh of their fellowcreatures; and as human life is always miserable, and animal life never so, (except from elementary causes), one would imagine this the most humane and salutary way of at once gratifying the appetite, and diminishing the mass of human suffering. But as these people pique themselves on their ingenuity in aggravating the sufferings of their situation, they leave thousands of human beings yearly to perish by hunger and grief, and amuse themselves in feeding on animals, whom, by depriving of existence, they deprive of the only pleasure their condition has allotted them. When they have thus, by unnatural diet and outrageous stimulation, happily succeeded in corrupting infirmity into disease, and exasperating passion into madness, they proceed to exhibit the proofs of their success, with an expertness and consistency truly admirable. They do not, like you, Immalee, live in the lovely independence of nature  lying on the earth, and sleeping with all the eyes of heaven unveiled to watch you  treading the same grass till your light step feels a friend in every blade it presses  and conversing with flowers, till you feel yourself and them children of the united family of nature, whose mutual language of love you have almost learned to speak to each other  no, to effect their purpose, their food, which is of itself poison, must be rendered more fatal by the air they inhale; and therefore the more civilized crowd all together into a space which their own respiration, and the exhalation of their bodies, renders pestilential, and which gives a celerity inconceivable to the circulation of disease and mortality. Four thousand of them will live together in a space smaller than the last and lightest colonnade of your young banyantree, in order, doubtless, to increase the effects of foetid air, artificial heat, unnatural habits, and impracticable exercise. The result of these judicious precautions is just what may be guessed. The most trifling complaint becomes immediately infectious, and, during the ravages of the pestilence, which this habit generates, ten thousand lives aday are the customary sacrifice to the habit of living in cities.  But they die in the arms of those they love, said Immalee, whose tears flowed fast at this recital; and is not that better than even life in solitude,  as mine was before I beheld you? The stranger was too intent on his description to heed her. To these cities they resort nominally for security and protection, but really for the sole purpose to which their existence is devoted,  that of aggravating its miseries by every ingenuity of refinement. For example, those who live in uncontrasted and untantalized misery, can hardly feel it  suffering becomes their habit, and they feel no more jealousy of their situation than the bat, who clings in blind and famishing stupefaction to the cleft of a rock, feels of the situation of the butterfly, who drinks of the dew, and bathes in the bloom of every flower. But the people of the other worlds have invented, by means of living in cities, a new and singular mode of aggravating human wretchedness  that of contrasting it with the wild and wanton excess of superfluous and extravagant splendour. Here the stranger had incredible difficulty to make Immalee comprehend how there could be an unequal division of the means of existence; and when he had done his utmost to explain it to her, she continued to repeat, (her white finger on her scarlet lip, and her small foot beating the moss), in a kind of pouting inquietude, Why should some have more than they can eat, and others nothing to eat?  This, continued the stranger, is the most exquisite refinement on that art of torture which those beings are so expert in  to place misery by the side of opulence  to bid the wretch who dies for want feed on the sound of the splendid equipages which shake his hovel as they pass, but leave no relief behind  to bid the industrious, the ingenious, and the imaginative, starve, while bloated mediocrity pants from excess  to bid the dying sufferer feel that life might be prolonged by one drop of that exciting liquor, which, wasted, produces only sickness or madness in those whose lives it undermines;  to do this is their principal object, and it is fully attained. The sufferer through whose rags the wind of winter blows, like arrows lodging in every pore  whose tears freeze before they fall  whose soul is as dreary as the night under whose cope his restingplace must be  whose glued and clammy lips are unable to receive the food which famine, lying like a burning coal at his vitals, craves  and who, amid the horrors of a houseless winter, might prefer its desolation to that of the den that abuses the name of home  without food  without light  where the howlings of the storm are answered by the fiercer cries of hunger  and he must stumble to his murky and strawless nook over the bodies of his children, who have sunk on the floor, not for rest, but despair. Such a being, is he not sufficiently miserable? Immalees shudderings were her only answer, (though of many parts of his description she had a very imperfect idea). No, he is not enough so yet, pursued the stranger, pressing the picture on her; let his steps, that know not where they wander, conduct him to the gates of the affluent and the luxurious  let him feel that plenty and mirth are removed from him but by the interval of a wall, and yet more distant than if severed by worlds  let him feel that while his world is darkness and cold, the eyes of those within are aching with the blaze of light, and hands relaxed by artificial heat, are soliciting with fans the refreshment of a breeze  let him feel that every groan he utters is answered by a song or a laugh  and let him die on the steps of the mansion, while his last conscious pang is aggravated by the thought, that the price of the hundredth part of the luxuries that lie untasted before heedless beauty and sated epicurism, would have protracted his existence, while it poisons theirs  let him die of want on the threshold of a banquethall, and then admire with me the ingenuity that displays itself in this new combination of misery. The inventive activity of the people of the world, in the multiplication of calamity, is inexhaustibly fertile in resources. Not satisfied with diseases and famine, with sterility of the earth, and tempests of the air, they must have laws and marriages, and kings and taxgatherers, and wars and fetes, and every variety of artificial misery inconceivable to you. Immalee, overpowered by this torrent of words, to her unintelligible words, in vain asked a connected explanation of them. The demon of his superhuman misanthropy had now fully possessed him, and not even the tones of a voice as sweet as the strings of Davids harp, had power to expel the evil one. So he went on flinging about his firebrands and arrows, and then saying, Am I not in sport? These people,42 said he, have made unto themselves kings, that is, beings whom they voluntarily invest with the privilege of draining, by taxation, whatever wealth their vices have left to the rich, and whatever means of subsistence their want has left to the poor, till their extortion is cursed from the castle to the cottage  and this to support a few pampered favourites, who are harnessed by silken reins to the car, which they drag over the prostrate bodies of the multitude. Sometimes exhausted by the monotony of perpetual fruition, which has no parallel even in the monotony of suffering, (for the latter has at least the excitement of hope, which is for ever denied to the former), they amuse themselves by making war, that is, collecting the greatest number of human beings that can be bribed to the task, to cut the throats of a less, equal, or greater number of beings, bribed in the same manner for the same purpose. These creatures have not the least cause of enmity to each other  they do not know, they never beheld each other. Perhaps they might, under other circumstances, wish each other well, as far as human malignity would suffer them; but from the moment they are hired for legalized massacre, hatred is their duty, and murder their delight. The man who would feel reluctance to destroy the reptile that crawls in his path, will equip himself with metals fabricated for the purpose of destruction, and smile to see it stained with the blood of a being, whose existence and happiness he would have sacrificed his own to promote, under other circumstances. So strong is this habit of aggravating misery under artificial circumstances, that it has been known, when in a seafight a vessel has blown up, (here a long explanation was owed to Immalee, which may be spared the reader), the people of that world have plunged into the water to save, at the risk of their own lives, the lives of those with whom they were grappling amid fire and blood a moment before, and whom, though they would sacrifice to their passions, their pride refused to sacrifice to the elements.  Oh that is beautiful!  that is glorious! said Immalee, clasping her white hands; I could bear all you describe to see that sight! Her smile of innocent delight, her spontaneous burst of hightoned feeling, had the usual effect of adding a darker shade to the frown of the stranger, and a sterner curve to the repulsive contraction of his upper lip, which was never raised but to express hostility or contempt.


But what do the kings do? said Immalee, while they are making men kill each other for nothing?  You are ignorant, Immalee, said the stranger, very ignorant, or you would not have said it was for nothing.Some of them fight for ten inches of barren sand  some for the dominion of the salt wave  some for any thing  and some for nothing  but all for pay and poverty, and occasional excitement, and the love of action, and the love of change, and the dread of home, and the consciousness of evil passions, and the hope of death, and the admiration of the showy dress in which they are to perish. The best of the jest is, they contrive not only to reconcile themselves to these cruel and wicked absurdities, but to dignify them with the most imposing names their perverted language supplies  the names of fame, of glory, of recording memory, and admiring posterity. Thus a wretch whom want, idleness, or intemperance, drives to this reckless and heartwithering business,  who leaves his wife and children to the mercy of strangers, or to famish, (terms nearly synonimous), the moment he has assumed the blushing badge that privileges massacre, becomes, in the imagination of this intoxicated people, the defender of his country, entitled to her gratitude and to her praise. The idle stripling, who hates the cultivation of intellect, and despises the meanness of occupation, feels, perhaps, a taste for arraying his person in colours as gaudy as the parrots or the peacocks; and this effeminate propensity is baptised by the prostituted name of the love of glory  and this complication of motives borrowed from vanity and from vice, from the fear of distress, the wantonness of idleness, and the appetite for mischief, finds one convenient and sheltering appellation in the single sound  patriotism. And those beings who never knew one generous impulse, one independent feeling, ignorant of either the principles or the justice of the cause for which they contend, and wholly uninterested in the result, except so far as it involves the concerns of their own vanity, cupidity, and avarice, are, while living, hailed by the infatuated world as its benefactors, and when dead, canonized as its martyrs. He died in his countrys cause, is the epitaph inscribed by the rash hand of indiscriminating eulogy on the grave of ten thousand, who had ten thousand different motives for their choice and their fate,  who might have lived to be their countrys enemies if they had not happened to fall in her defence,  and whose love of their country, if fairly analysed, was, under its various forms of vanity, restlessness, the love of tumult, or the love of show  purely love of themselves. There let them rest  nothing but the wish to disabuse their idolaters, who prompt the sacrifice, and then applaud the victim they have made, could have tempted me to dwell thus long on beings as mischievous in their lives, as they are insignificant in their death. Another amusement of these people, so ingenious in multiplying the sufferings of their destiny, is what they call law. They pretend to find in this a security for their persons and their properties  with how much justice, their own felicitous experience must inform them! Of the security it gives to the latter, judge, Immalee, when I tell you, that you might spend your life in their courts, without being able to prove that those roses you have gathered and twined in your hair were your own  that you might starve for this days meal, while proving your right to a property which must incontestibly be yours, on the condition of your being able to fast on a few years, and survive to enjoy it  and that, finally, with the sentiments of all upright men, the opinions of the judges of the land, and the fullest conviction of your own conscience in your favour, you cannot obtain the possession of what you and all feel to be your own, while your antagonist can start an objection, purchase a fraud, or invent a lie. So pleadings go on, and years are wasted, and property consumed, and hearts broken,  and law triumphs. One of its most admirable triumphs is in that ingenuity by which it contrives to convert a difficulty into an impossibility, and punish a man for not doing what it has rendered impracticable for him to do. When he is unable to pay his debts, it deprives him of liberty and credit, to insure that inability still further; and while destitute alike of the means of subsistence, or the power of satisfying his creditors, he is enabled, by this righteous arrangement, to console himself, at least, with the reflection, that he can injure his creditor as much as he has suffered from him  that certain loss is the reward of immitigable cruelty  and that, while he famishes in prison, the page in which his debt is recorded rots away faster than his body; and the angel of death, with one obliterating sweep of his wing, cancels misery and debt, and presents, grinning in horrid triumph, the release of debtor and debt, signed by a hand that makes the judges tremble on their seats.  But they have religion, said the poor Indian, trembling at this horrible description; they have that religion which you shewed me  its mild and peaceful spirit  its quietness and resignation  no blood  no cruelty.  Yes,  true, said the stranger, with some reluctance, they have religion; for in their zeal for suffering, they feel the torments of one world not enough, unless aggravated by the terrors of another. They have such a religion, but what use have they made of it? Intent on their settled purpose of discovering misery wherever it could be traced, and inventing it where it could not, they have found, even in the pure pages of that book, which, they presume to say, contains their title to peace on earth, and happiness hereafter, a right to hate, plunder, and murder each other. Here they have been compelled to exercise an extraordinary share of perverted ingenuity. The book contains nothing but what is good, and evil must be the minds, and hard the labour of those evil minds, to extort a tinge from it to colour their pretensions withal. But mark, in pursuance of their great object, (the aggravation of general misery), mark how subtilly they have wrought. They call themselves by various names, to excite passions suitable to the names they bear. Thus some forbid the perusal of that book to their disciples, and others assert, that from the exclusive study of its pages alone, can the hope of salvation be learned or substantiated. It is singular, however, that with all their ingenuity, they have never been able to extract a subject of difference from the essential contents of that book, to which they all appeal  so they proceed after their manner. They never dare to dispute that it contains irresistible injunctions,  that those who believe in it should live in habits of peace, benevolence, and harmony,  that they should love each other in prosperity, and assist each other in adversity. They dare not deny that the spirit that book inculcates and inspires, is a spirit whose fruits are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, mildness, and truth. On these points they never presumed to differ.  They are too plain to be denied, so they contrive to make matter of difference out of the various habits they wear; and they cut each others throats for the love of God, on the important subject,43 whether their jackets should be red or white  or whether their priests should be arrayed in silk ribbons,44 or white linen,45 or black household garments46  or whether they should immerse their children in water, or sprinkle them with a few drops of it  or whether they should partake of the memorials of the death of him they all profess to love, standing or on their knees  or  But I weary you with this display of human wickedness and absurdity. One point is plain, they all agree that the language of the book is, Love one another, while they all translate that language, Hate one another. But as they can find neither materials or excuse from that book, they search for them in their own minds,  and there they are never at a loss, for human minds are inexhaustible in malignity and hostility; and when they borrow the name of that book to sanction them, the deification of their passions becomes a duty, and their worst impulses are hallowed and practised as virtues.  Are there no parents or children in these horrible worlds? said Immalee, turning her tearful eyes on this traducer of humanity; none that love each other as I loved the tree under which I was first conscious of existence, or the flowers that grew with me?  Parents?  children? said the stranger; Oh yes! There are fathers who instruct their sons   And his voice was lost  he struggled to recover it. After a long pause, he said, There are some kind parents among those sophisticated people.  And who are they? said Immalee, whose heart throbbed spontaneously at the mention of kindliness.  Those, said the stranger, with a withering smile, who murder their children at the hour of their birth, or, by medical art, dismiss them before they have seen the light; and, in so doing, they give the only credible evidence of parental affection. He ceased, and Immalee remained silent in melancholy meditation on what she had heard. The acrid and searing irony of his language had made no impression on one with whom speech was truth, and who could have no idea why a circuitous mode of conveying meaning could be adopted, when even a direct one was often attended with difficulty to herself. But she could understand, that he had spoken much of evil and of suffering, names unknown to her before she beheld him, and she turned on him a glance that seemed at once to thank and reproach him for her painful initiation into the mysteries of a new existence. She had, indeed, tasted of the tree of knowledge, and her eyes were opened, but its fruit was bitter to her taste, and her looks conveyed a kind of mild and melancholy gratitude, that would have wrung the heart for giving its first lesson of pain to the heart of a being so beautiful, so gentle, and so innocent. The stranger marked this blended expression, and exulted. He had distorted life thus to her imagination, perhaps with the purpose of terrifying her from a nearer view of it; perhaps in the wild hope of keeping her for ever in this solitude, where he might sometimes see her, and catch, from the atmosphere of purity that surrounded her, the only breeze that floated over the burning desert of his own existence. This hope was strengthened by the obvious impression his discourse had made on her. The sparkling intelligence,  the breathless curiosity,  the vivid gratitude of her former expression,  were all extinguished, and her down cast and thoughtful eyes were full of tears. Has my conversation wearied you, Immalee? said he.  It has grieved me, yet I wish to listen still, answered the Indian. I love to hear the murmur of the stream, though the crocodile may be beneath the waves.  Perhaps you wish to encounter the people of this world, so full of crime and misfortune.  I do, for it is the world you came from, and when you return to it all will be happy but me.  And is it, then, in my power to confer happiness? said her companion; is it for this purpose I wander among mankind? A mingled and indefinable expression of derision, malevolence, and despair, overspread his features, as he added, You do me too much honour, in devising for me an occupation so mild and so congenial to my spirit. Immalee, whose eyes were averted, did not see this expression, and she replied, I know not, but you have taught me the joy of grief; before I saw you I only smiled, but since I saw you, I weep, and my tears are delicious. Oh! they are far different from those I shed for the setting sun, or the faded rose! And yet I know not   And the poor Indian, oppressed by emotions she could neither understand or express, clasped her hands on her bosom, as if to hide the secret of its new palpitations, and, with the instinctive diffidence of her purity, signified the change of her feelings, by retiring a few steps from her companion, and casting on the earth eyes which could contain their tears no longer. The stranger appeared troubled,  an emotion new to himself agitated him for a moment,  then a smile of selfdisdain curled his lip, as if he reproached himself for the indulgence of human feeling even for a moment. Again his features relaxed, as he turned to the bending and averted form of Immalee, and he seemed like one conscious of agony of soul himself, yet inclined to sport with the agony of anothers . This union of inward despair and outward levity is not unnatural. Smiles are the legitimate offspring of happiness, but laughter is often the misbegotten child of madness, that mocks its parent to her face. With such an expression he turned towards her, and asked, But what is your meaning, Immalee?  A long pause followed this question, and at length the Indian answered, I know not, with that natural and delicious art which teaches the sex to disclose their meaning in words that seem to contradict it. I know not, means, I know too well. Her companion understood this, and enjoyed his anticipated triumph. And why do your tears flow, Immalee?  I know not, said the poor Indian, and her tears flowed faster at the question. At these words, or rather at these tears, the stranger forgot himself for a moment. He felt that melancholy triumph which the conqueror is unable to enjoy; that triumph which announces a victory over the weakness of others, obtained at the expence of a greater weakness in ourselves. A human feeling, in spite of him, pervaded his whole soul, as he said, in accents of involuntary softness, What would you have me do, Immalee? The difficulty of speaking a language that might be at once intelligible and reserved,  that might convey her wishes without betraying her heart,  and the unknown nature of her new emotions, made Immalee faulter long before she could answer, Stay with me,  return not to that world of evil and sorrow.  Here the flowers will always bloom, and the sun be as bright as on the first day I beheld you.  Why will you go back to the world to think and to be unhappy? The wild and discordant laugh of her companion, startled and silenced her. Poor girl, he exclaimed, with that mixture of bitterness and commiseration, that at once terrifies and humiliates; and is this the destiny I am to fulfil?  to listen to the chirping of birds, and watch the opening of buds? Is this to be my lot? and with another wild burst of unnatural laughter, he flung away the hand which Immalee had extended to him as she had finished her simple appeal.  Yes, doubtless, I am well fitted for such a fate, and such a partner. Tell me, he added, with still wilder fierceness, tell me from what line of my features,  from what accent of my voice,  from what sentiment of my discourse, have you extracted the foundation of a hope that insults me with the view of felicity? Immalee, who might have replied, I understand a fury in your words, but not your words, had yet sufficient aid from her maiden pride, and female penetration, to discover that she was rejected by the stranger; and a brief emotion of indignant grief struggled with the tenderness of her exposed and devoted heart. She paused a moment, and then checking her tears, said, in her firmest tones, Go, then, to your world,  since you wish to be unhappy  go!  Alas! it is not necessary to go there to be unhappy, for I must be so here. Go,  but take with you these roses, for they will all wither when you are gone!  take with you these shells, for I shall no longer love to wear them when you no longer see them! And as she spoke, with simple, but emphatic action, she untwined from her bosom and hair the shells and flowers with which they were adorned, and threw them at his feet; then turning to throw one glance of proud and melancholy grief at him, she was retiring. Stay, Immalee,  stay, and hear me for a moment, said the stranger; and he would, at that moment, have perhaps discovered the ineffable and forbidden secret of his destiny, but Immalee, in silence, which her look of profound grief made eloquent, shook sadly her averted head, and departed. Chapter 18 Miseram me omnia terrent, et maris sonitus, et scopuli, et solitudo, et sanctitudo Apollinis. LATIN PLAY Many days elapsed before the stranger revisited the isle. How he was occupied, or what feelings agitated him in the interval, it would be beyond human conjecture to discover. Perhaps he sometimes exulted in the misery he had inflicted,  perhaps he sometimes pitied it. His stormy mind was like an ocean that had swallowed a thousand wrecks of gallant ships, and now seemed to dally with the loss of a little slender skiff, that could hardly make way on its surface in the profoundest calm. Impelled, however, by malignity, or tenderness, or curiosity, or weariness of artificial life, so vividly contrasted by the unadulterated existence of Immalee, into whose pure elements nothing but flowers and fragrance, the sparkling of the heavens, and the odours of earth, had transfused their essence  or, possibly, by a motive more powerful than all,  his own will; which, never analysed, and hardly ever confessed to be the ruling principle of our actions, governs ninetenths of them.  He returned to the shore of the haunted isle, the name by which it was distinguished by those who knew not how to classify the new goddess who was supposed to inhabit it, and who were as much puzzled by this new specimen in their theology, as Linnus himself could have been by a nondescript in botany. Alas! the varieties in moral botany far exceed the wildest anomalies of those in the natural. However it was, the stranger returned to the isle. But he had to traverse many paths, where human foot but his had never been, and to rend away branches that seemed to tremble at a human touch, and to cross streams into which no foot but his had ever been dipped, before he could discover where Immalee had concealed herself. Concealment, however, was not in her thoughts. When he found her, she was leaning against a rock; the ocean was pouring its eternal murmur of waters at her feet; she had chosen the most desolate spot she could find;  there was neither flower or shrub near her;  the calcined rocks, the offspring of volcano  the restless roar of the sea, whose waves almost touched her small foot, that seemed by its heedless protrusion at once to court and neglect danger  these objects were all that surrounded her. The first time he had beheld her, she was embowered amid flowers and odours, amid all the glorious luxuries of vegetable and animal nature; the roses and the peacocks seemed emulous which should expand their leaves or their plumes, as a shade to that loveliness which seemed to hover between them, alternately borrowing the fragrance of the one, and the hues of the other. Now she stood as if deserted even by nature, whose child she was; the rock was her restingplace, and the ocean seemed the bed where she purposed to rest; she had no shells on her bosom, no roses in her hair  her character seemed to have changed with her feelings; she no longer loved all that is beautiful in nature; she seemed, by an anticipation of her destiny, to make alliance with all that is awful and ominous. She had begun to love the rocks and the ocean, the thunder of the wave, and the sterility of the sand,  awful objects, the incessant recurrence of whose very sound seems intended to remind us of grief and of eternity. Their restless monotony of repetition, corresponds with the beatings of a heart which asks its destiny from the phenomena of nature, and feels the answer is  Misery. Those who love may seek the luxuries of the garden, and inhale added intoxication from its perfumes, which seem the offerings of nature on that altar which is already erected and burning in the heart of the worshipper;  but let those who have loved seek the shores of the ocean, and they shall have their answer too. There was a sad and troubled air about her, as she stood so lonely, that seemed at once to express the conflict of her internal emotions, and to reflect the gloom and agitation of the physical objects around her; for nature was preparing for one of those awful convulsions  one of those abortive throes of desolation, that seems to announce a more perfect wrath to come; and while it blasts the vegetation, and burns up the soil of some visited portion, seems to proclaim in the murmur of its receding thunders, that it will return in that day, when the universe shall pass away as a scroll, and the elements melt with fervent heat, and return to fulfil the dreadful promise, which its partial and initiatory devastation has left incomplete. Is there a peal of thunder that does not mutter a menace, For me, the dissolution of the world is reserved, I depart, but I shall return? Is there a flash of lightning that does not say, visibly, if not audibly, Sinner, I cannot now penetrate the recesses of your soul; but how will you encounter my glare, when the hand of the judge is armed with me, and my penetrating glance displays you to the view of assembled worlds? The evening was very dark; heavy clouds, rolling on like the forces of an hostile army, obscured the horizon from east to west. There was a bright but ghastly blue in the heaven above, like that in the eye of the dying, where the last forces of life are collected, while its powers are rapidly forsaking the frame, and feeling their extinguishment must shortly be. There was not a breath of air to heave the ocean,  the trees drooped without a whisper to woo their branches or their buds,  the birds had retired, with that instinct which teaches them to avoid the fearful encounter of the elements, and nestled with cowering wings and drooping heads among their favourite trees. There was not a human sound in the isle; the very rivulet seemed to tremble at its own tinklings, and its small waves flowed as if a subterranean hand arrested and impeded their motion. Nature, in these grand and terrific operations, seems in some degree to assimilate herself to a parent, whose most fearful denunciations are preceded by an awful silence, or rather to a judge, whose final sentence is felt with less horror than the pause that intervenes before it is pronounced. Immalee gazed on the awful scene by which she was surrounded, without any emotion derived from physical causes. To her, light and darkness had hitherto been the same; she loved the sun for its lustre, and the lightning for its transitory brilliancy, and the ocean for its sonorous music, and the tempest for the agitation which it gave to the trees, under whose bending and welcoming shadow she danced, in time kept by the murmur of their leaves, that hung low, as if to crown their votarist. And she loved the night, when all was still, but what she was accustomed to call the music of a thousand streams, that made the stars rise from their beds, to sparkle and nod to that wild melody. Such she had been. Now, her eye was intently fixed on the declining light, and the approaching darkness,  that preternatural gloom, that seems to say to the brightest and most beautiful of the works of God, Give place to me, thou shall shine no more. The darkness increased, and the clouds collected like an army that had mustered its utmost force, and stood in obdured and collected strength against the struggling light of heaven. A broad, red, and dusky line of gloomy light, gathered round the horizon, like an usurper watching the throne of an abdicated sovereign, and expanding its portentous circle, sent forth alternately flashes of lightning, pale and red;  the murmur of the sea increased, and the arcades of the banyantree, that had struck its patriarchal root not five hundred paces from where Immalee stood, resounded the deep and almost unearthly murmur of the approaching storm through all its colonnades; the primeval trunk rocked and groaned, and the everlasting fibres seemed to withdraw their grasp from the earth, and quiver in air at the sound. Nature, with every voice she could inspire from earth, or air, or water, announced danger to her children. That was the moment the stranger chose to approach Immalee; of danger he was insensible, of fear he was unconscious; his miserable destiny had exempted him from both, but what had it left him? No hope  but that of plunging others into his own condemnation. No fear  but that his victim might escape him. Yet with all his diabolical heartlessness, he did feel some relentings of his human nature, as he beheld the young Indian; her cheek was pale, but her eye was fixed, and her figure, turned from him, (as if she preferred to encounter the tremendous rage of the storm), seemed to him to say, Let me fall into the hands of God, and not into those of man. This attitude, so unintentionally assumed by Immalee, and so little expressive of her real feelings, restored all the malignant energies of the strangers feelings; the former evil purposes of his heart, and the habitual character of his dark and fiendish pursuit, rushed back on him. Amid this contrasted scene of the convulsive rage of nature, and the passive helplessness of her unsheltered loveliness, he felt a glow of excitement, like that which pervaded him, when the fearful powers of his charmed life enabled him to penetrate the cells of a madhouse, or the dungeons of an Inquisition. He saw this pure being surrounded by the terrors of nature, and felt a wild and terrible conviction, that though the lightning might blast her in a moment, yet there was a bolt more burning and more fatal, which was wielded by his own hand, and which, if he could aim it aright, must transfix her very soul. Armed with all his malignity and all his power, he approached Immalee, armed only with her purity, and standing like the reflected beam of the last ray of light on whose extinction she was gazing. There was a contrast in her form and her situation, that might have touched any feelings but those of the wanderer. The light of her figure shining out amid the darkness that enveloped her,  its undulating softness rendered still softer to the eye by the rock against which it reclined,  its softness, brightness, and flexibility, presenting a kind of playful hostility to the tremendous aspect of nature overcharged with wrath and ruin. The stranger approached her unobserved; his steps were unheard amid the rush of the ocean, and the deep, portentous murmur of the elements; but, as he advanced, he heard sounds that perhaps operated on his feelings as the whispers of Eve to her flowers on the organs of the serpent. Both knew their power, and felt their time. Amid the fast approaching terrors of a storm, more terrible than any she had ever witnessed, the poor Indian, unconscious, or perhaps insensible of its dangers, was singing her wild song of desperation and love to the echoes of the advancing storm. Some words of this strain of despair and passion reached the ear of the stranger. They were thus The night is growing dark  but what is that to the darkness that his absence has cast on my soul? The lightnings are glancing round me  but what are they to the gleam of his eye when he parted from me in anger? I lived but in the light of his presence  why should I not die when that light is withdrawn? Anger of the clouds, what have I to fear from you? You may scorch me to dust, as I have seen you scorch the branches of the eternal trees  but the trunk still remained, and my heart will be his for ever. Roar on, terrible ocean! thy waves, which I cannot count, can never wash his image from my soul,  thou dashest a thousand waves against a rock, but the rock is unmoved  and so would be my heart amid the calamities of the world with which he threatens me,  whose dangers I never would have known but for him, and whose dangers for him I will encounter. She paused in her wild song, and then renewed it, regardless alike of the terrors of the elements, and the possible presence of one whose subtle and poisonous potency was more fatal than all the elements in their united wrath. When we first met, my bosom was covered with roses  now it is shaded with the dark leaves of the ocynum. When he saw me first, the living things all loved me  now I care not whether they love me or not  I have forgot to love them. When he came to the isle every night, I hoped the moon would be bright  now I care not whether she rises or sets, whether she is clouded or bright. Before he came, every thing loved me, and I had more things to love than I could reckon by the hairs of my head  now I feel I can love but one, and that one has deserted me. Since I have seen him all things have changed. The flowers have not the colours they once had  there is no music in the flow of the waters  the stars do not smile on me from heaven as they did,  and I myself begin to love the storm better than the calm. As she ended her melancholy strain, she turned from the spot where the increasing fury of the storm made it no longer possible for her to stand, and turning, met the gaze of the stranger fixed on her. A suffusion, the most rich and vivid, mantled over her from brow to bosom; she did not utter her usual exclamation of joy at his sight, but, with averted eyes and faultering step, followed him as he pointed her to seek shelter amid the ruins of the pagoda. They approached it in silence; and, amid the convulsions and fury of nature, it was singular to see two beings walk on together without exchanging a word of apprehension, or feeling a thought of danger,  the one armed by despair, the other by innocence. Immalee would rather have sought the shelter of her favourite banyantree, but the stranger tried to make her comprehend, that her danger would be much greater there than in the spot he pointed out to her. Danger! said the Indian, while a bright and wild smile irradiated her features; can there be danger when you are near me?  Is there, then, no danger in my presence?  few have met me without dreading, and without feeling it too! and his countenance, as he spoke, grew darker than the heaven at which he scowled. Immalee, he added, in a voice still deeper and more thrilling, from the unwonted operation of human emotion in its tones; Immalee, you cannot be weak enough to believe that I have power of controuling the elements? If I had, he continued, by the heaven that is frowning at me, the first exertion of my power should be to collect the most swift and deadly of the lightnings that are hissing around us, and transfix you where you stand!  Me? repeated the trembling Indian, her cheek growing paler at his words, and the voice in which they were uttered, than at the redoubling fury of the storm, amid whose pauses she scarce heard them.  Yes  you  you  lovely as you are, and innocent, and pure, before a fire more deadly consumes your existence, and drinks your heartblood  before you are longer exposed to a danger a thousand times more fatal than those with which the elements menace you  the danger of my accursed and miserable presence! Immalee, unconscious of his meaning, but trembling with impassioned grief at the agitation with which he spoke, approached him to soothe the emotion of which she knew neither the name or the cause. Through the fractures of the ruin the red and ragged lightnings disclosed, from time to time, a glimpse of her figure,  her dishevelled hair,  her pallid and appealing look,  her locked hands, and the imploring bend of her slight form, as if she was asking pardon for a crime of which she was unconscious,  and soliciting an interest in griefs not her own.


All around her wild, unearthly, and terrible,  the floor strewed with fragments of stone, and mounds of sand,  the vast masses of ruined architecture, whose formation seemed the work of no human hand, and whose destruction appeared the sport of demons,  the yawning fissures of the arched and ponderous roof, through which heaven darkened and blazed alternately with a gloom that wrapt every thing, or a light more fearful than that gloom.  All around her gave to her form, when it was momently visible, a relief so strong and so touching, that it might have immortalized the hand who had sketched her as the embodied presence of an angel who had descended to the regions of woe and wrath,  of darkness and of fire, on a message of reconciliation,  and descended in vain. The stranger threw on her, as she bent before him, one of those looks that, but her own, no mortal eye had yet encountered unappalled. Its expression seemed only to inspire a higher feeling of devotedness in the victim. Perhaps an involuntary sentiment of terror mingled itself with that expression, as this beautiful being sunk on her knees before her writhing and distracted enemy; and, by the silent supplication of her attitude, seemed to implore him to have mercy on himself. As the lightnings flashed around her,  as the earth trembled beneath her white and slender feet,  as the elements seemed all sworn to the destruction of every living thing, and marched on from heaven to the accomplishment of their purpose, with V victis written and legible to every eye, in the broad unfolded banners of that resplendent and sulphurous light that seemed to display the day of hell  the feelings of the devoted Indian seemed concentrated on the illchosen object of their idolatry alone. Her graduating attitudes beautifully, but painfully, expressed the submission of a female heart devoted to its object, to his frailties, his passions, and his very crimes. When subdued by the image of power, which the mind of man exercises over that of woman, that impulse becomes irresistibly humiliating. Immalee had at first bowed to conciliate her beloved, and her spirit had taught her frame that first inclination. In her next stage of suffering, she had sunk on her knees, and, remaining at a distance from him, she had trusted to this state of prostration to produce that effect on his heart which those who love always hope compassion may produce,  that illegitimate child of love, often more cherished than its parent. In her last efforts she clung to his hand  she pressed her pale lips to it, and was about to utter a few words  her voice failed her, but her fast dropping tears spoke to the hand which she held,  and its grasp, which for a moment convulsively returned hers, and then flung it away, answered her. The Indian remained prostrate and aghast. Immalee, said the stranger, in a struggling voice, Do you wish me to tell you the feelings with which my presence should inspire you?  No  no  no! said the Indian, applying her white and delicate hands to her ears, and then clasping them on her bosom; I feel them too much.  Hate me  curse me! said the stranger, not heeding her, and stamping till the reverberation of his steps on the hollow and loosened stones almost contended with the thunder; hate me, for I hate you  I hate all things that live  all things that are dead  I am myself hated and hateful!  Not by me, said the poor Indian, feeling, through the blindness of her tears, for his averted hand. Yes, by you, if you knew whose I am, and whom I serve. Immalee aroused her newlyexcited energies of heart and intellect to answer this appeal. Who you are, I know not  but I am yours.  Whom you serve, I know not  but him will I serve  I will be yours for ever. Forsake me if you will, but when I am dead, come back to this isle, and say to yourself, The roses have bloomed and faded  the streams have flowed and been dried up  the rocks have been removed from their places  and the lights of heaven have altered in their courses,  but there was one who never changed, and she is not here! As she spoke the enthusiasm of passion struggling with grief, she added, You have told me you possess the happy art of writing thought.  Do not write one thought on my grave, for one word traced by your hand would revive me. Do not weep, for one tear would make me live again, perhaps to draw a tear from you.  Immalee! said the stranger. The Indian looked up, and, with a mingled feeling of grief, amazement, and compunction, beheld him shed tears. The next moment he dashed them away with the hand of despair; and, grinding his teeth, burst into that wild shriek of bitter and convulsive laughter that announces the object of its derision is ourselves. Immalee, whose feelings were almost exhausted, trembled in silence at his feet. Hear me, wretched girl! he cried in tones that seemed alternately tremulous with malignity and compassion, with habitual hostility and involuntary softness; hear me! I know the secret sentiment you struggle with better than the innocent heart of which it is the inmate knows it. Suppress, banish, destroy it. Crush it as you would a young reptile before its growth had made it loathsome to the eye, and poisonous to existence!  I never crushed even a reptile in my life, answered Immalee, unconscious that this matteroffact answer was equally applicable in another sense. You love, then, said the stranger; but, after a long and ominous pause, do you know whom it is you love?  You! said the Indian, with that purity of truth that consecrates the impulse it yields to, and would blush more for the sophistications of art than the confidence of nature; you! You have taught me to think, to feel, and to weep.  And you love me for this? said her companion, with an expression half irony, half commiseration. Think, Immalee, for a moment, how unsuitable, how unworthy, is the object of the feelings you lavish on him. A being unattractive in his form, repulsive in his habits, separated from life and humanity by a gulph impassable; a disinherited child of nature, who goes about to curse or to tempt his more prosperous brethren; one who  what withholds me from disclosing all? At this moment a flash of such vivid and terrific brightness as no human sight could sustain, gleamed through the ruins, pouring through every fissure instant and intolerable light. Immalee, overcome by terror and emotion, remained on her knees, her hands closely clasped over her aching eyes. For a few moments that she remained thus, she thought she heard other sounds near her, and that the stranger was answering a voice that spoke to him. She heard him say, as the thunder rolled to a distance, This hour is mine, not thine  begone, and trouble me not. When she looked up again, all trace of human emotion was gone from his expression. The dry and burning eye of despair that he fixed on her, seemed never to have owned a tear; the hand with which he grasped her, seemed never to have felt the flow of blood, or the throb of a pulse; amid the intense and increasing heat of an atmosphere that appeared on fire, its touch was as cold as that of the dead. Mercy! cried the trembling Indian, as she in vain endeavoured to read a human feeling in those eyes of stone, to which her own tearful and appealing ones were uplifted  mercy! And while she uttered the word, she knew not what she deprecated or dreaded. The stranger answered not a word, relaxed not a muscle; it seemed as if he felt not with the hands that grasped her,  as if he saw her not with the eyes that glared fixedly and coldly on her. He bore, or rather dragged, her to the vast arch that had once been the entrance to the pagoda, but which, now shattered and ruinous, resembled more the gulphing yawn of a cavern that harbours the inmates of the desert, than a work wrought by the hands of man, and devoted to the worship of a deity. You have called for mercy, said her companion, in a voice that froze her blood even under the burning atmosphere, whose air she could scarce respire. You have cried for mercy, and mercy you shall have. Mercy has not been dealt to me, but I have courted my horrible destiny, and my reward is just and sure. Look forth, trembler  look forth,  I command thee! And he stamped with an air of authority and impatience that completed the terror of the delicate and impassioned being who shuddered in his grasp, and felt halfdead at his frown. In obedience to his command, she removed the long tresses of her auburn hair, which had vainly swept, in luxuriant and fruitless redundance, the rock on which the steps of him she adored had been fixed. With that mixture of the docility of the child, and the mild submission of woman, she attempted to comply with his demand, but her eyes, filled with tears, could not encounter the withering horrors of the scene before her. She wiped those brilliant eyes with hairs that were every day bathed in the pure and crystal lymph, and seemed, as she tried to gaze on the desolation, like some bright and shivering spirit, who, for its further purification, or perhaps for the enlargement of the knowledge necessary for its destination, is compelled to witness some evidence of the Almightys wrath, unintelligible in its first operations, but doubtless salutary in its final results. Thus looking and thus feeling, Immalee shudderingly approached the entrance of that building, which, blending the ruins of nature with those of art, seemed to announce the power of desolation over both, and to intimate that the primeval rock, untouched and unmodulated by human hands, and thrown upwards perhaps by some volcanic eruption, perhaps deposited there by some meteoric discharge, and the gigantic columns of stone, whose erection had been the work of two centuries,  were alike dust beneath the feet of that tremendous conqueror, whose victories alone are without noise and without resistance, and the progress of whose triumph is marked by tears instead of blood. Immalee, as she gazed around her, felt, for the first time, terror at the aspect of nature. Formerly, she had considered all its phenomena as equally splendid or terrific. And her childish, though active imagination, seemed to consecrate alike the sunlight and the storm, to the devotion of a heart, on whose pure altar the flowers and the fires of nature flung their undivided offering. But since she had seen the stranger, new emotions had pervaded her young heart. She learned to weep and to fear; and perhaps she saw, in the fearful aspect of the heavens, the developement of that mysterious terror, which always trembles at the bottom of the hearts of those who dare to love. How often does nature thus become an involuntary interpreter between us and our feelings! Is the murmur of the ocean without a meaning?  Is the roll of the thunder without a voice?  Is the blasted spot on which the rage of both has been exhausted without its lesson?  Do not they all tell us some mysterious secret, which we have in vain searched our hearts for?  Do we not find in them, an answer to those questions with which we are for ever importuning the mute oracle of our destiny?  Alas! how deceitful and inadequate we feel the language of man, after love and grief have made us acquainted with that of nature!  the only one, perhaps, capable of a corresponding sign for those emotions, under which all human expression faints. What a difference between words without meaning, and that meaning without words, which the sublime phenomena of nature, the rocks and the ocean, the moon and the twilight, convey to those who have ears to hear. How eloquent of truth is nature in her very silence! How fertile of reflections amid her profoundest desolations! But the desolation now presented to the eyes of Immalee, was that which is calculated to cause terror, not reflection. Earth and heaven, the sea and the dry land, seemed mingling together, and about to replunge into chaos. The ocean, deserting its eternal bed, dashed its waves, whose white surf gleamed through the darkness, far into the shores of the isle. They came on like the crests of a thousand warriors, plumed and tossing in their pride, and, like them, perishing in the moment of victory. There was a fearful inversion of the natural appearance of earth and sea, as if all the barriers of nature were broken, and all her laws reversed. The waves deserting their station, left, from time to time, the sands as dry as those of the desert; and the trees and shrubs tossed and heaved in ceaseless agitation, like the waves of a midnight storm. There was no light, but a livid grey that sickened the eye to behold, except when the bright red lightning burst out like the eye of a fiend, glancing over the work of ruin, and closing as it beheld it completed. Amid this scene stood two beings, one whose appealing loveliness seemed to have found favour with the elements even in their wrath, and one whose fearless and obdurate eye appeared to defy them. Immalee, he cried, is this a place or an hour to talk of love!  all nature is appalled  heaven is dark  the animals have hid themselves  and the very shrubs, as they wave and shrink, seem alive with terror.  It is an hour to implore protection, said the Indian, clinging to him timidly. Look up, said the stranger, while his own fixed and fearless eye seemed to return flash for flash to the baffled and insulted elements; Look up, and if you cannot resist the impulses of your heart, let me at least point out a fitter object for them. Love, he cried, extending his arm towards the dim and troubled sky, love the storm in its might of destruction  seek alliance with those swift and perilous travellers of the groaning air,  the meteor that rends, and the thunder that shakes it! Court, for sheltering tenderness, those masses of dense and rolling cloud,  the baseless mountains of heaven! Woo the kisses of the fiery lightnings, to quench themselves on your smouldering bosom! Seek all that is terrible in nature for your companions and your lover!  woo them to burn and blast you  perish in their fierce embrace, and you will be happier, far happier, than if you lived in mine! Lived!  Oh who can be mine and live! Hear me, Immalee! he cried, while he held her hands locked in his  while his eyes, rivetted on her, sent forth a light of intolerable lustre  while a new feeling of indefinite enthusiasm seemed for a moment to thrill his whole frame, and newmodulate the tone of his nature; Hear me! If you will be mine, it must be amid a scene like this for ever  amid fire and darkness  amid hatred and despair  amid   and his voice swelling to a demoniac shriek of rage and horror, and his arms extended, as if to grapple with the fearful objects of some imaginary struggle, he was rushing from the arch under which they stood, lost in the picture which his guilt and despair had drawn, and whose images he was for ever doomed to behold. The slender form that had clung to him was, by this sudden movement, prostrated at his feet; and, with a voice choaked with terror, yet with that perfect devotedness which never issued but from the heart and lip of woman, she answered his frightful questions with the simple demand, Will you be there?  Yes!  THERE I must be, and for ever! And will you, and dare you, be with me? And a kind of wild and terrible energy nerved his frame, and strengthened his voice, as he spoke and cowered over pale and prostrate loveliness, that seemed in profound and reckless humiliation to court its own destruction, as if a dove exposed its breast, without flight or struggle, to the beak of a vulture. Well, then, said the stranger, while a brief convulsion crossed his pale visage, amid thunder I wed thee  bride of perdition! mine shalt thou be for ever! Come, and let us attest our nuptials before the reeling altar of nature, with the lightnings of heaven for our bedlights, and the curse of nature for our marriagebenediction! The Indian shrieked in terror, not at his words, which she did not understand, but at the expression which accompanied them. Come, he repeated, while the darkness yet is witness to our ineffable and eternal union. Immalee, pale, terrified, but resolute, retreated from him. At this moment the storm, which had obscured the heavens and ravaged the earth, passed away with the rapidity common in those climates, where the visitation of an hour does its work of destruction unimpeded, and is instantly succeeded by the smiling lights and brilliant skies of which mortal curiosity in vain asks the question, Whether they gleam in triumph or in consolation over the mischief they witness? As the stranger spoke, the clouds passed away, carrying their diminished burden of wrath and terror where sufferings were to be inflicted, and terrors to be undergone, by the natives of other climes  and the bright moon burst forth with a glory unknown in European climes. The heavens were as blue as the waves of the ocean, which they seemed to reflect; and the stars burst forth with a kind of indignant and aggravated brilliancy, as if they resented the usurpation of the storm, and asserted the eternal predominance of nature over the casual influences of the storms that obscured her. Such, perhaps, will be the developement of the moral world. We shall be told why we suffered, and for what; but a bright and blessed lustre shall follow the storm, and all shall yet be light. The young Indian caught from this object an omen alike auspicious to her imagination and her heart. She burst from him  she rushed into the light of nature, whose glory seemed like the promise of redemption, gleaming amid the darkness of the fall. She pointed to the moon, that sun of the eastern nights, whose broad and brilliant light fell like a mantle of glory over rock and ruin, over tree and flower. Wed me by this light, cried Immalee, and I will be yours for ever! And her beautiful countenance reflected the full light of the glorious planet that rode bright through the cloudless heaven  and her white and naked arms, extended towards it, seemed like two pure attesting pledges of the union. Wed me by this light, she repeated, sinking on her knees, and I will be yours for ever! As she spoke, the stranger approached, moved with what feelings no mortal thought can discover. At that moment a trifling phenomenon interfered to alter her destiny. A darkened cloud at that moment covered the moon  it seemed as if the departed storm collected in wrathful haste the last dark fold of its tremendous drapery, and was about to pass away for ever. The eyes of the stranger flashed on Immalee the brightest rays of mingled fondness and ferocity. He pointed to the darkness,  WED ME BY THIS LIGHT! he exclaimed, and you shall be mine for ever and ever! Immalee, shuddering at the grasp in which he held her, and trying in vain to watch the expression of his countenance, yet felt enough of her danger to tear herself from him. Farewell for ever! exclaimed the stranger, as he rushed from her. Immalee, exhausted by emotion and terror, had fallen senseless on the sands that filled the path to the ruined pagoda. He returned  he raised her in his arms  her long dark hair streamed over them like the drooping banners of a defeated army  her arms sunk down as if declining the support they seemed to implore  her cold and colourless cheek rested on his shoulder. Is she dead? he murmured. Well, be it so  let her perish  let her be any thing but mine! He flung his senseless burden on the sands, and departed  nor did he ever revisit the island. Chapter 19 Que donne le monde aux siens plus souvent, Echo Vent. Que doisje vaincre ici, sans jamais relacher, Echo la chair. Qui fit le cause des maux, qui me sont survenus, Echo Venus. Que faut dire aprs dune telle infidelle, Echo Fi delle. MAGDALNIADE, by Father Pierre de St Louis. Three years had elapsed since the parting of Immalee and the stranger, when one evening the attention of some Spanish gentlemen, who were walking in a public place in Madrid, was arrested by a figure that passed them, habited in the dress of the country, (only without a sword), and walking very slowly. They stopt by a kind of simultaneous movement, and seemed to ask each other, with silent looks, what had been the cause of the impression this persons appearance had made on them. There was nothing remarkable in his figure,  his demeanour was quiet; it was the singular expression of his countenance which had struck them with a sensation they could neither define or account for. As they paused, the person returned alone, and walking slowly  and they again encountered that singular expression of the features, (the eyes particularly), which no human glance could meet unappalled. Accustomed to look on and converse with all things revolting to nature and to man,  for ever exploring the madhouse, the jail, or the Inquisition,  the den of famine, the dungeon of crime, or the deathbed of despair,  his eyes had acquired a light and a language of their own  a light that none could gaze on, and a language that few dare understand. As he passed slowly by them, they observed two others whose attention was apparently fixed on the same singular object, for they stood pointing after him, and speaking to each other with gestures of strong and obvious emotion. The curiosity of the groupe for once overcame the restraint of Spanish reserve, and approaching the two cavaliers, they inquired if the singular personage who had passed was not the subject of their conversation, and the cause of the emotion which appeared to accompany it. The others replied in the affirmative, and hinted at their knowledge of circumstances in the character and history of that extraordinary being that might justify even stronger marks of emotion at his presence. This hint operated still more strongly on their curiosity  the circle of listeners began to deepen. Some of them, it appeared, had, or pretended to have, some information relative to this extraordinary subject. And that kind of desultory conversation commenced, whose principal ingredients are a plentiful proportion of ignorance, curiosity, and fear, mingled with some small allowance of information and truth;  that conversation, vague, unsatisfactory, but not uninteresting, to which every speaker is welcome to contribute his share of baseless report,  wild conjecture,  anecdote the more incredible the better credited,  and conclusion the more falsely drawn the more likely to carry home conviction. The conversation passed very much in language incoherent as this But why, if he be what he is described, what he is known to be,  why is he not seized by order of government?  why is he not immured in the Inquisition?  He has been often in the prison of the holy office  oftener, perhaps, than the holy fathers wished, said another. But it is a wellknown fact, that whatever transpired on his examination, he was liberated almost immediately. Another added, That the stranger had been in almost every prison in Europe, but had always contrived either to defeat or defy the power in whose grasp he appeared to be inclosed,  and to be active in his purposes of mischief in the remotest parts of Europe at the moment he was supposed to be expiating them in others. Another demanded, If it was known to what country he belonged? and was answered, He is said to be a native of Ireland  (a country that no one knows, and which the natives are particularly reluctant to dwell in from various causes)  and his name is Melmoth. The Spaniard had great difficulty in expressing the theta, unpronounceable by continental lips. Another, who had an appearance of more intelligence than the rest, added the extraordinary fact of the strangers being seen in various and distant parts of the earth within a time in which no power merely human could be supposed to traverse them  that his marked and fearful habit was every where to seek out the most wretched, or the most profligate, of the community among which he flung himself  what was his object in seeking them was unknown.  It is well known, said a deeptoned voice, falling on the ears of the startled listeners like the toll of a strong but muffled bell,  it is well known both to him and them. It was now twilight, but the eyes of all could distinguish the figure of the stranger as he passed; and some even averred they could see the ominous lustre of those eyes which never rose on human destiny but as planets of woe. The groupe paused for some time to watch the retreat of the figure that had produced on them the effect of the torpedo. It departed slowly,  no one offered it molestation. I have heard, said one of the company, that a delicious music precedes the approach of this person when his destined victim,  the being whom he is permitted to tempt or to torture,  is about to appear or to approach him. I have heard a strange tale of such music being heard; and  Holy Mary be our guide! did you ever hear such sounds?  Where  what?   and the astonished listeners took off their hats, unclasped their mantles, opened their lips, and drew in their breath, in delicious ecstasy at the sounds that floated round them. No wonder, said a young gallant of the party, no wonder that such sounds harbinger the approach of a being so heavenly. She deals with the good spirits; and the blessed saints alone could send such music from above to welcome her. As he spoke, all eyes were turned to a figure, which, though moving among a groupe of brilliant and attractive females, appeared the only one among them on whom the eye could rest with pure and undivided light and love. She did not catch observation  observation caught her, and was proud of its prize. At the approach of a large party of females, there was all that anxious and flattering preparation among the cavaliers,  all that eager arrangement of capas, and hats, and plumes,  that characterized the manners of a nation still halffeudal, and always gallant and chivalrous. These preliminary movements were answered by corresponding ones on the part of the fair and fatal host approaching. The creaking of their large fans  the tremulous and purposelydelayed adjustment of their floating veils, whose partial concealment flattered the imagination beyond the most full and ostentatious disclosure of the charms they seemed jealous of  the folds of the mantilla, of whose graceful falls, and complicated manoeuvres, and coquettish undulations, the Spanish women know how to avail themselves so well  all these announced an attack, which the cavaliers, according to the modes of gallantry in that day (1683), were well prepared to meet and parry. But, amid the bright host that advanced against them, there was one whose arms were not artificial, and the effect of whose singular and simple attractions made a strong contrast to the studied arrangements of her associates. If her fan moved, it was only to collect air  if she arranged her veil, it was only to hide her face  if she adjusted her mantilla, it was but to hide that form, whose exquisite symmetry defied the voluminous drapery of even that day to conceal it. Men of the loosest gallantry fell back as she approached, with involuntary awe  the libertine who looked on her was halfconverted  the susceptible beheld her as one who realized that vision of imagination that must never be embodied here  and the unfortunate as one whose sight alone was consolation  the old, as they gazed on her, dreamt of their youth  and the young for the first time dreamt of love  the only love which deserves the name  that which purity alone can inspire, and perfect purity alone can reward. As she mingled among the gay groupes that filled the place, one might observe a certain air that distinguished her from every female there,  not by pretension to superiority, (of that her unequalled loveliness must have acquitted her, even to the vainest of the groupe), but by an untainted, unsophisticated character, diffusing itself over look and motion, and even thought  turning wildness into grace  giving an emphasis to a single exclamation, that made polished sentences sound trifling  for ever trespassing against etiquette with vivid and fearless enthusiasm, and apologizing the next moment with such timid and graceful repentance, that one doubted whether the offence or the apology were most delightful. She presented altogether a singular contrast to the measured tones, the mincing gait, and the organized uniformity of dress, and manner, and look, and feeling, of the females about her. The harness of art was upon every limb and feature from their birth, and its trappings concealed or crippled every movement which nature had designed for graceful. But in the movement of this young female, there was a bounding elasticity, a springiness, a luxuriant and conscious vitality, that made every action the expression of thought; and then, as she shrunk from the disclosure, made it the more exquisite interpreter of feeling. There was around her a mingled light of innocence and majesty, never united but in her sex. Men may long retain, and even confirm, the character of power which nature has stamped on their frames, but they very soon forfeit their claim to the expression of innocence. Amid the vivid and eccentric graces of a form that seemed like a comet in the world of beauty, bound by no laws, or by laws that she alone understood and obeyed, there was a shade of melancholy, that, to a superficial observer, seemed transitory and assumed, perhaps as a studied relief to the glowing colours of a picture so brilliant, but which, to other eyes, announced, that with all the energies of intellect occupied,  with all the instincts of sense excited,  the heart had as yet no inmate, and wanted one. The groupe who had been conversing about the stranger, felt their attention irresistibly attracted by this object; and the low murmur of their fearful whispers was converted into broken exclamations of delight and wonder, as the fair vision passed them. She had not long done so, when the stranger was seen slowly returning, seeming, as before, known to all, but knowing none. As the female party turned, they encountered him. His emphatic glance selected and centred in one alone. She saw him too, recognized him, and, uttering a wild shriek, fell on the earth senseless. The tumult occasioned by this accident, which so many witnessed, and none knew the cause of, for some moments drew off the attention of all from the stranger  all were occupied either in assisting or inquiring after the lady who had fainted. She was borne to her carriage by more assistants than she needed or wished for  and just as she was lifted into it, the voice of some one near her uttered the word Immalee! She recognized the voice, and turned, with a look of anguish and a feeble cry, towards the direction from which it proceeded. Those around her had heard the sound,  but as they did not understand its meaning, or know to whom it was addressed, they ascribed the ladys emotion to indisposition, and hastened to place her in her carriage. It drove away, but the stranger pursued its course with his eyes  the company dispersed, he remained alone  twilight faded into darkness  he appeared not to notice the change  a few still continued lingering at the extremity of the walk to mark him  they were wholly unmarked by him. One who remained the longest said, that he saw him use the action of one who wipes away a tear hastily. To his eyes the tear of penitence was denied for ever. Could this have been the tear of passion? If so, how much woe did it announce to its object! Chapter 20 Oh what was love made for, if tis not the same Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame! I know not, I ask not, what guilts in thine heart, I but know I must love thee, whatever thou art.