Melmoth the Wanderer empty. They follow Melmoth's tracks to the top of a cliff, and see his handkerchief on a crag below them. "Exchanging looks of silent and unutterable horror", they return home. Honoré de Balzac wrote a follow-up story ("Melmoth Reconciled") and considered Maturin's novel worthy of a place among Molière's "Don Juan", Goethe's "Faust" and Lord Byron's "Manfred" as one of the supreme icons of modern European literature. Oscar Wilde, during his travels after release from prison, called himself Sebastian Melmoth, deriving this pseudonym from the title character in his great-uncle's novel and from Saint Sebastian. Historian of English literature Walter
Melmoth the Wanderer Melmoth, a student in Dublin, visits his dying uncle. He finds a portrait of a mysterious ancestor called "Melmoth"; the portrait is dated 1646. At his uncle's funeral, John is told an old family story about a stranger called Stanton who arrived looking for 'Melmoth the Traveller' decades earlier. A manuscript left by Stanton describes his first finding Melmoth laughing at the sight of two lovers who have been struck by lightning, and hearing of a wedding at which Melmoth was an uninvited guest: the bride died and the bridegroom went mad. Stanton's search for Melmoth is deemed to be