Peace had fled the breast of the man of God! It had deserted him in
wilds, which the tumults of society had not reached; it had abandoned
him in shades, where the ravages of passion were unknown; and left him
exposed to affliction and remorse, in scenes, whose tranquil loveliness
resembled that heaven his faith had promised to his hope. He had brought
with him into deserts, the virtues and the prejudices which belong to
social life, in a certain stage of its progress; and in deserts, Nature,
reclaiming her rights, unopposed by the immediate influence of world,
now taught him to feel her power, through the medium of the most
omnipotent of her passions. Hitherto, forming his principles and
regulating his feelings, by an artificial standard of excellence, which
admitted of no application to the actual relations of life; governed by
doctrines, whose fundamental tenets militated against the intentions of
Providence, by doctrines, which created a fatal distinction between the
species, substituted a passive submission for an active exercise of
reason, and replaced a positive, with an ideal virtue--he resembled the
enthusiast of experimental philosophy, who shuts out the light and
breath of heaven, to inhale an artificial atmosphere, and to enjoy an
ideal existence.
But Nature had now breathed upon his feelings her vivifying spirit: and
as some pleasurable and local sensation, which, at first, quivers in the
lip, and mantles on the cheek, gradually diffuses itself through the
frame, and communicates a vibratory emotion to every nerve and fibre; so
the sentiment, which had, at first, imperceptibly stolen on his heart,
now mastered and absorbed his life. He now lived in a world of newly
connected and newly modified ideas; every sense and every feeling was
increased in its power and acuteness--thoughts passed more rapidly
through his mind, and he felt himself hurried away by new and powerful
emotions, which he sought not to oppose, and yet trembled to indulge. He
had not, indeed, relinquished a single principle of his moral
feeling--he had not yet vanquished a single prejudice of his monastic
education; to feel, was still with him to be weak--to love, a crime--and
to resist, perfection; but the doctrines which religion inculcated and
habit cherished, the vows which bigotry exacted, and prejudice observed;
while they scrupulously guarded the inviolable conduct of the priest,
had lost their influence over the passions of the man. And the painful
vibration, between the natural feeling and conscientious principle,
left him a prey to those internal and harassing conflicts, which rose
and increased, in proportion to the respective exercise and action of a
passionate impulse, and a rigid sense of duty.
Thus, among the privations of a week, peculiarly holy in his church, and
exclusively devoted to religious exercises, he imposed on himself the
most difficult of all restraints, that of abstaining from the society of
his dangerous Neophyte; but the restless impatience with which he
submitted to the severe and voluntary penance, enhanced every pleasure,
and exaggerated every enjoyment, he had relinquished. It more sweetly
melodized the voice he languished again to hear. It heightened the
lustre of those eyes he sighed again to meet; it endeared those innocent
attentions which habit had made so necessary to his happiness; and, by
rendering the Indian more dangerous to his imagination than to his
senses, invested her with that splendid, that touching ideal charm,
which love, operating upon genius, in the absence of its object, can
alone bestow.
Dearer to his heart, as she became more powerful to his imagination, her
idea grew upon his mind with a terrific influence, disputing with Heaven
his nightly vigil and daily meditation. It was in vain that he imposed
on himself the law not to behold, or to commune with her for six
tedious days: his steps, involuntarily faithful to his feelings, still
led him against his better reason to those places, in whose fragrant
shades she appeared to him a celestial visitant: sometimes he beheld her
at a distance at the confluence of the streams, engaged in the
idolatrous, but graceful rites of her half-resigned religion--and then
he believed himself commanded by duty to fly to her redemption, and to
rescue her from the ancient errors into which his absence again had
plunged her; till, suddenly distrusting the impulse which led him
towards her presence, he fled from the sight of the dangerous Heathen,
and almost wished, that infidelity could assume an appearance more
appropriate to its own deformity. Sometimes, when the ardour of the
meridian sun obliged her to seek the impervious shades of her
consecrated grove, he beheld her reclined on flowers, engaged in the
perusal of the religious fables of her poetic faith; and then a
recollection of a genius which shone bright and luminous even through
the errors which clouded its lustre, mingled itself with the actual
impression of her beauty; and he believed a communion with a mind so
pure, would counteract the influence, while it added to the charm, of a
form so lovely.
But when, from the summit of his rocks, when the moonlight silvered
their abrupt points, he beheld her, gliding like a pure and disembodied
spirit, through the shades of her native paradise, and, with a timid and
uncertain step, moving near the woody path which led to his grotto; her
countenance and person characterized by the solicitude of anxious
tenderness, and the sadness of disappointed hope; then she appeared to
him a creature loving as beloved; then he admitted the blessed
conviction, that he had inspired another with that feeling, which had
given to him a new sense of being; then he was tempted to throw himself
at her feet, and to avow the existence of that passion which he now
believed, with a mingled emotion of rapture and remorse, was shared and
returned by her who had inspired it. Yet still, habits of religious
restraint, even more, perhaps, than religion itself, checked the
dangerous impulse; and that ardent sentiment which resisted the force of
his reason and the influence of his faith, submitted to the dictates of
what might be deemed rather his prejudice than his principle. Shuddering
and trembling, he fled from her view, and sought, in the recollection of
the infidelity of the Brahminical Priestess, a resource against the
tenderness and the charms of the lovely woman. But when, at last, this
insupportable absence finally and irresistibly “urged a sweet return;”
when the stated exercises of devotion no longer opposed the more active
duties of conversion; then love, consecrated by the offices of religion,
pursued the object of its secret desire; and, the week of self-denial
past, the evening of the seventh day became, to him, the sabbath of the
heart. He left the cave of his solitude and his penance, and, with a
rapid but unequal step, proceeded towards the fatal stream, on whose
flowery shores the Priestess of Brahma still offered up her vesper
homage to the luminary, whose fading beam was reflected in the up-turned
eyes of its votarist.
As he approached the Priestess and the shrine, his heart throbbed with a
feverish wildness unknown to its former sober pulse. Pleasure, enhanced
by its recent privation; love, warming as it passed through the medium
of an ardent imagination; a consciousness of weakness, cherished by
self-distrust; and an apprehension of frailty proportioned to the
exaggerated force of the temptation--all mingled a sensation of
suffering with the sentiment of pleasure; and the visitation of
happiness, to a heart which had of late studiously avoided its
enjoyment, resembled that rapid return of health, which is so frequently
attended with pain to the exhausted organs; while conscience, awakened
by the excess of emotion, dictated a reserve and coldness to the studied
manners, to which the ardour of unpractised and impetuous feelings with
difficulty submitted. At last, through the branches of a spreading
palm-tree, he beheld, at a distance, the object who had thus agitated
and disturbed the calmest mind which Heaven’s grace had ever visited.
She was leaning on the ruins of a Brahminical altar, habited in her
sacerdotal vestments, which were rich but fantastic. Her brow was
crowned with consecrated flowers; her long dark hair floated on the
wind; and she appeared a splendid image of the religion she
professed--bright, wild, and illusory; captivating to the senses, fatal
to the reason, and powerful and tyrannic to both.
The Missionary paused and gazed--and advanced, and paused, again; till,
on a nearer approach, he observed that her eager look seemed to pursue
some receding object; that her cheek was flushed, and that her veil,
which had fallen over her bosom, heaved to its rapid palpitation. Never
before had he observed such disorder in her air, such emotion in her
countenance, while the abstraction of her mind was so profound, that she
perceived not his approach, till he stood before her: then she started
as from the involvement of some embarrassing dream; a soft and
unrepressed transport beamed in her eyes, which at once expressed joy,
surprise, and apprehension; and the changeful hues of her complexion
resembled the dissolving tints of an iris, as they melt and mingle into
each other, blending their pale and ruby rays till the vivid lustre
fades slowly away upon the colourless air. Pale and smiling as one who
was at the same time sad and pleased, she extended her hand to the
Missionary, and said, in a voice replete with tenderness and emotion,
“My father, thou art then come at last!” While, suddenly starting at the
faint rustling of the trees as the wind crept among their leaves, she
cast round an anxious and inquiring glance. The Missionary let fall her
hand, and, folding his own, he remained silent, and fixed on her a look
equally penetrating and melancholy; for the rapture of a re-union so
wished for, was now disturbed by doubts, whose object was vague, and
embittered by suspicions, whose existence was agony. Luxima, timid and
pensive, cast her eyes to the earth, as if unable to support the
piercing severity of his gaze; a transient blush mantled on her cheek,
and again left it colourless.
“Luxima,” said the Missionary, in emotion, “we meet not now, as we were
wont to meet, hailing each other with the smile of peace.” With eyes
which spoke the heart in every glance, and all the precious confidence
of innocence and truth, “I would say,” he continued, looking earnestly
on her, “that, since we parted, something of thy mind’s angelic calmness
was forfeited, or lost; something of thy bosom’s sunshine was shadowed,
or o’ercast.”
“But thou art here,” she returned, eagerly, “and all again is peace and
brightness.” The Missionary withdrew his eyes from her blushing and
eloquent countenance, and cast them on the earth. Her looks made too
dangerous a comment on the words her lips had uttered, which he felt
were too delightful, and feared were too evasive; which his heart led
him to believe, and his reason to distrust; and, seating himself beside
her on the bank where she now reposed, after a silent pause, which the
half-breathed sighs of the Indian only interrupted, he said, “Well! be
it so, my daughter; be still the guardian of thy bosom’s secret; pure it
must be, being thine. I have no right to wrench it from thee. If it be a
human feeling, belonging only to mortality, to hopes which this world
bounds, or thoughts which this life limits, I, who am not thy temporal,
but thy spiritual friend, can have no claim upon thy confidence. Oh, no!
believe me, Luxima, that, between thee and me, nothing can now, or ever
will, exist, but the sacred cause which first led me to thee.”
This he said with a vehemence but little corresponding to the character
he had assumed, and with an air so cold and so severe, that Luxima,
timid and afflicted, had no force to reply, and no power to restrain her
emotions. Drooping her head on her bosom, she wept. Touched by her
unresisting softness, moved by a sadness, his severity had caused, and
gazing with secret admiration on the grace and loveliness of her looks
and attitude, as she chased away the tears which fell on her bosom, with
her long hair, “Luxima,” he said, in a tone which struggled between his
secret emotion, and assumed coldness, “Luxima, why do you weep? I am not
used to see a woman’s tears, save when they fall from hearts which
penitence, or grief, has touched; but yours, Luxima--they fall in such
tender softness: dearest daughter, have I offended you?”
“’Tis true,” said Luxima, cheered by the increasing tenderness of his
manner, “thou art so grandly good, so awful in thy excellence, that,
little used to wisdom or to virtue so severe, I fear thee most, even
when most I----” She paused abruptly, and blushed; then raising her eyes
to his, a soft confidence seemed to grow upon their gaze, and, with that
fatal smile that so changed the character of her countenance, from the
sedate tranquillity of the Priestess to the bashful fondness of the
woman, she said, “Father, with us the divine wisdom is not personified,
as cold, severe, and rigid; but as the infant twin of love, floating in
gay simplicity in the perfumed dews which fill the crimson buds of young
camala-flowers[4].”
“Luxima,” he returned, seduced into softness by her tender air, “if I am
in look and word severe, such are my habits; but my heart, dear
daughter, at least I fear to thee, is too, too weak; and, when I see
thee sad, and am denied thy confidence----” He paused; and the
rainbow-look of Luxima changing as she spoke, she replied:
“I am, indeed, not quite so happy as I have been. Once my lip knew no
mystery, my heart no care, my brow no cloud; but, of late, I strive to
hide my thoughts even from myself. I oft am sad, and oft regret the
glorious death they robbed me of; for, oh! had I expired upon my
husband’s pyre, in celestial happiness with him I should have enjoyed
the bliss of Heaven while fourteen Indras reign.”
The Missionary started as she pronounced this rhapsody; a new pang
seized his heart, and made him feel as if the deadly drop, which lurks
beneath the adder’s fang, had been distilled into a vital artery: for
Luxima had loved, since Luxima lamented even that dreadful death
itself, which, in her own belief, would have united her eternally to the
object for whom her passion still seemed to survive.
“Luxima,” he said coldly, “till now I never knew you loved; but though
you had, a woe so idle and so causeless, as that you cherish for a
long-lost object, is sanctioned neither by sentiment nor duty, by reason
nor religion.”
“Had he lived,” said Luxima, with simplicity, “it would then have been
no sin to love.”
“Bound to a vestal life,” returned the Missionary, changing colour,
“like me devoted to eternal celibacy, can _you_ lament an object who
would have loved you with a _human passion_; with such a love as should
not even be dreamed of in a vestal’s thoughts?”
“He was my husband,” said Luxima, turning away her eyes, and sighing.
“Not by religion’s holy law,” replied the Missionary, in a hurried tone
of voice; “for forms idolatrous and wild but mock the sacred name; not
by the law of sentiment, for no endearing intercourse of heart and soul
blended your affections in one indissoluble union, for ye were almost
strangers to each other; he saw thee but in childhood, and not, as now,
a woman!--and so lovely!” He paused, and a deep scarlet suffused even
his brow.
“He was at least,” said Luxima, with mild firmness, “_my husband_
according to the law and the religion of my country.”
“But if you have abandoned that religion,” returned the Missionary, “the
ties it formed are broken, and with them should their memory decay.”
“Abandoned it!” repeated Luxima, shuddering, and raising her eyes to
heaven. “O Brahma!!”
“Luxima,” said the Missionary, sternly, “there is no medium; either thou
art a Pagan or a Christian; either I give thee up to thy idols, and
behold thee no more, or thou wilt believe and follow me.”
“Then I will believe and follow thee,” she replied quickly, yet
trembling as she spoke.
“O Luxima! would I could confide in that promise! for, through thee
alone, I count upon the redemption of thy nation.”
“Father,” she returned, “a miracle like _that_, can only be performed by
thee. Look as I have seen thee look--speak as I have heard thee
speak;--give to others that new sense of truth, which thou hast given to
me:--and then----”
“Luxima,” interrupted the Missionary, in great emotion; “you are misled,
my daughter; misled by the ardour of your gratitude, by an exaggerated
sense of powers which belong not to man, but to Heaven, whose agent he
is. The power of conversion rests not exclusively with me; in you it
might effect more miracles than I have ever manifested.”
Luxima waved her head incredulously. “Never,” said she, “shall I become
the partner of thy pious labours! and should I even appear as thy
proselyte, if I were not looked on with horror, I should at least be
considered with indifference.”
“With indifference!” he repeated, throwing his eyes over the perfect
loveliness of her form and countenance: “Luxima, is there on earth a
being so divested of all human feeling, as to behold, to hear thee with
indifference?”
“Art thou not such a one?” demanded Luxima, with a timid and trembling
anxiety of look and voice.
“I, Luxima!--I--” he faltered, and changed colour; then, after a
momentary pause, casting down his eyes, he resumed, “To be divested of
all faculty of sense, were it possible, would be a state of
organization so fatal and so imperfect, as to leave the being thus
formed equally without the wish and without the power of becoming
virtuous; for virtue, the purest, the most severe, and, O Luxima! by
much the most difficult to attain, is that virtue which consists in the
conquest over the impulses of a frail and perverse nature, by religion
and by reason. Thinkest thou then, dearest daughter, that it belongs to
_my_ nature, being man, to live divested of all human feeling, of all
human passion; to behold, with perfect insensibility, forms created to
delight; to listen with perfect indifference to sounds breathed to
enchant; and that when, upon thy cheek, the crimson hues of modesty and
pleasure mantle and mix their soft suffusion; when in thy eyes, rays of
languid light---- Luxima! Luxima!” he continued vehemently, and in
confusion, “I repeat to thee, that there can be no virtue where there is
no temptation; no merit, but in resistance; but in an entire subjection,
through religion, of those feelings which, by a sweet but dread
compulsion, drag us towards perdition. And, oh! if trial be indeed the
test of virtue, I at least may hope to find some favour in the sight of
Heaven, for my trials have not been few.” As he spoke, his whole frame
trembled with uncontrollable emotion, and the paleness of death
over-spread his face.
Luxima, moved by an agitation in one, who had hitherto appeared to her
eyes superior to human feeling, and to human weakness, was touched by an
emotion so accordant to the tender softness and ardent sensibility of
her own character; and timidly taking his hand, and looking with an
half-repressed fondness in his eyes, she said, “Art thou then also
human? Art thou not all-perfect by thy nature? I thought thee one
absorbed in views of heaven, resembling the pure spirit of some holy
Saneasse, when, having passed the troubled ocean of mortal existence, it
reaches the Paradise of Kylausum, and reposes in eternal beatitude, at
the foot of _Him_ who is clothed with the _fourteen worlds_[5].”
The Missionary withdrew his hand, and reposing on it his head, remained
for some time lost in thought; at last he said, “Luxima, have you then
among your people such men as you have now described; who, by a perfect
abstraction of mind, live divested of all human feeling, and who,
walking through life in a state of rigid self-denial, renounce all its
enjoyments, from a conviction of their vanity? Can a religion so false
as theirs produce an effect so perfect? And can the most powerful
sensations, the most tyrannic passions incident to the very constitution
of our natures, making an inseparable part of our structure, connected
and interwoven with all the powers of existence--can they submit and
bend to the influence of _opinion_; to an idea of excellence
originating in, and governed by, a fatal and fanatic superstition; but
worthy, from its purity and elevation, to be the offspring of that
_grace_, which comes alone from Heaven?”
Luxima replied, “It is written in the Vaides and Shastries, whose light
illuminates the earth, that ‘_the resignation of all pleasure is better
than its enjoyment_;’ and that he who resists the passions of his nature
shall be planted in the world of _daivers_, or pure spirits; there to
enjoy eternal bliss. And _one such_ person I once knew; who, having
abandoned all earthly attachments, and broken all earthly ties, lived
remote from man, absorbed in the contemplation of the _Divine Essence_:
never had his lip imbibed the refreshing beverage of the delicious
_caulor_, or the juice of newly-gathered fruits; never had he inhaled
the odour of morning blossoms, nor bathed in the cool wave which smiles
to the light of the night-flower-loving god; never had he pillowed his
sacred brow with the downy leaves of the _mashucca_, nor pressed the
hand of affection, nor listened to the voice of fondness; and his eye,
fixed on earth or raised to heaven, still met no objects but such as
tended to chasten his thoughts, or to elevate his soul;--till one day a
_holy woman_, devoted to the service of her religion, ascended the high
hill, where the hermit dwelt in peace. She came, with others, in faith
and sanctity, to ask his mediation with Heaven, according to the custom
of her nation. The woman departed edified from his presence, for she had
communed with him on the subject of the nine great luminaries, which
influence all human events;--but the soul of the hermit pursued her in
secret; _he_ whose infant hand grasps the lightning’s flash[6], the god
of the flowery bow, had touched the cold, pure thought of the recluse
with a beam of his celestial fire:--_he loved!_--but he loved a _vestal
priestess_, and therefore was forbidden all hope. The Faquir pined in
sadness, and sought to wash away his secret fault in the holiest wave
which purifies the erring soul from sin; and the _goddess_ of the _eight
virgins_ received him in her consecrated bosom[7]. Doubtless he is now
one of the _diavers_, the saints, who, by the voluntary sacrifice of
mortal life, obtain instant admittance to the heavenly regions.” Luxima
sighed as she concluded her little tale.
The Missionary echoed her sigh, and raising a look of sadness to her
pensive countenance, he demanded, “And knew the vestal priestess the
secret of the hermit’s love?”
“Not until he had passed into the world of spirits; and then a wandering
yogi, who had received his last words ere he plunged into the Ganges,
brought her, at his desire, a wreath of faded flowers[8]: the red rose
of passion was twined with the ocynum, the flower of despondency; and
the fragile mayhya, the emblem of mortality, drooped on the camalata,
the blossom of heaven. The faded wreath thus told the love and fate of
him who wove it.”
“And this fatal priestess, Luxima?” said the Missionary, with an
increased emotion, showing there was a nerve in his heart, which
vibrated in sympathy to the tale she told. Luxima made no reply to the
doubtful interrogatory; and the Missionary, raising his eyes to her
face, perceived it crimsoned with blushes, while her tearful eyes were
fixed on the earth. He started--grew pale; and, covering his face with
his hands, after a long silence, he said, “Luxima! thy Hermit was a
virtuous though a most misguided man; his temptation to error was
powerful; the virtue of resistance was his, and the crime of
self-destruction was the crime of his dark and inhuman superstition--terrific
and fatal superstition! in all its views injurious to society, and
pernicious to the moral nature of man, which thus offers a soothing but
impious alternative to the human suffering, and the human woe; which
thus, between infamy and an almost impossible resistance to a clear and
fatal temptation, offers a final resource beyond all which reason can
bestow, or time effect; beyond all, save that which religion proffereth;
and thus alluring the worn, the weary, and long-enduring life to its own
wished-for _immolation_, crowns and conceals the fatal act beneath a
host of bright illusions, and offers to the suicide rewards, which
should belong to him alone who dares to _live_ and _suffer_, who feels
and who resists; and who, though impelled by passion, or seduced by
sentiment, still restrains the wish, corrects the impulse, and rules and
breaks the stubborn feeling nature breathed into his soul when it was
first quickened, that, by this daily death, he might ensure that life
which is eternal. If, Luxima, there lived such a man, thus enduring and
thus resisting, would you not give him your applause?”
“I would give him my pity,” said Luxima, raising her hands and eyes in
great emotion.
The Missionary replied with a deep sigh, “You would do well, my
daughter; it is pity only he deserves.” Then, after a long pause, he
said firmly, “Luxima, I came hither this evening to commune with thee
upon that great subject, which should alone unite us; but the
mysterious emotion in which I found thee wrapt, distracted thoughts,
which are not yet, I fear, all Heaven’s; nor did thy little story,
dearest daughter, serve to tranquillize or sooth them; for, in the
mirror of another’s faults, man, weak and erring, may still expect to
see the sad reflection of his own. But now the dews of evening fall
heavily, the light declines, and it is time we part; and, O Luxima! so
long as we continue thus to meet, thus may we ever part, in the perfect
confidence of each other’s virtue, and each other’s truth.” He arose as
he spoke.
Luxima also arose; she moved a few paces, and then paused, and raised
her timid eyes to his, with look of one who languishes to repose some
confidence, yet who stands awed by the severity of the elected
confidant.
The Missionary, who now studiously avoided those eloquent looks of timid
fondness, whose modesty and sensibility so sweetly blended their lovely
expressions, withdrew his eyes, and fixed them on the rosary he had
taken from his breast, with the abstracted air of one wrapt in holy
meditation. Thus they walked on in silence, until they had reached the
vicinage of Luxima’s habitation. There, as was his custom, the
Missionary paused, and Luxima turning to him said, “Father, wilt thou
not bless me, ere we part?” The Missionary extended his pastoral hands
above her seraph head; the blessing was registered in his eyes, but he
spoke not, for his heart was full. Luxima withdrew, and he stood
pursuing, with admiring eyes, her perfect form, as she slowly ascended
to her pavilion: then turning away as she disappeared, he sighed
convulsively, as one who gives breath to emotion after a long and
painful struggle to suppress or to conceal it. His thoughts, unshackled
by the presence of her to whom they pointed, now flowed with rapidity
and in confusion; sometimes resting on the mysterious emotion he had
observed in the countenance and air of the ingenuous Indian; sometimes
on the suicide Hermit; and sometimes on himself, on his past life, his
former vows, and existing feelings; but these recollections, conjured
up to sooth and to confirm, served but to disquiet and to agitate; and
thus involved in cogitation, slow and lingering in his step, he
involuntarily paused as he reached the bank, whose elastic moss still
bore the impression of Luxima’s light form. He paused and gazed on the
altar of her worship; it was to him as some sad memorial, whose view
touches on the spring of painful recollection; and the pang which had
shot through his heart, when for a moment he had believed her, false as
the religion at whose mouldering shrine she stood, again revived its
painful sensation, like the memory of some terrific vision, which long
leaves its shade of horror upon the awakened mind, when the dream which
gave it has long passed away from the imagination. There is no love
where there is no cause for solicitude; and the first moment when hope
and fear slumber in the perfect consciousness of exclusive and
unalienable possession, is perhaps the first moment when the calm of
indifference dawns upon the declining ardour of passion. To the eye of
philosophy it would have been a curious analysis of the human heart, to
have observed the workings of a strong and solitary feeling, in a
character unsophisticated and unpractised; to have observed a passion,
neither cherished nor opposed by any external object, feeding on its own
vitals, and seeking instinctively to maintain its own vivacity, by
fancying doubts for which it had no cause, and forming suspicions for
which it had no subject. Still in search of some hidden reason for the
restless conflicts of his unhappy mind, the Missionary stood musing and
gazing on the spot where the mysterious emotion of Luxima had excited
that painful, suspicious, and indefinite sentiment, of whose nature and
tendency he was himself ignorant. He could fear no rival in that
consecrated solitude, which his presence alone violated; but he was
afflicted to believe that Luxima could muse, when he was not the subject
of her reverie; that Luxima could weep, when he caused not her tears to
flow; that Luxima could be moved, touched, agitated, and he not be the
sole, the powerful cause of her emotion. It is this exacting, tyrannic,
and exclusive principle which forms the generic character of a true and
unmixed passion: it is this feeling by which we seek and expect to
master and possess the whole existence of the object beloved, which
distinguishes a strong, ardent, and overwhelming sentiment, from those
faint modifications of the vital feeling, which serve rather to amuse
than to occupy life; to interest rather than absorb existence. It is
thus that love, operating upon genius, is assisted by the imagination,
which creates a thousand collateral causes of hope and fear, of
transport and despair; which, in moderate characters, find no existence,
and which, at once fatal and delightful, are the unalienable
inheritance of natural and exquisite sensibility, of a peculiar delicacy
of organization, and of those refined habits of thought and feeling to
which it gives birth.
While thus occupied, creating for himself ideal sources of pain and
pleasure, the twilight of evening was slowly illumined by the silver
rising of a cloudless moon; which threw upon the shining earth the
shadow of his lofty figure; it tinged with living light the crystal
bosom of the consecrated waters; it scattered its rays upon the
motionless foliage of the night-loving sephalica, and found a bright
reflection in some object which lay glittering amidst the fragments of
the ruined altar. When the heart is deeply involved, every sense allies
itself to its feelings, and the eye beholds no object, and the ear
receives no sound, which, in their first impression, awakens not the
master pulse of emotion. The Missionary saw, in the beaming fragment,
some ornament of the sacerdotal vestments of the Brahminical Priestess.
Considering it as more consecrated by her touch than by the purposes to
which it had been devoted, he stooped, and blushed as he did it, to
rescue and preserve it;--but it was no gem sacred to religious ornament;
it made no part of the insignia worn by the children of Brahma; it was
the _silver crescent_ of Islamism; it was the device of the disciples of
Mahomet; the ornament worn in the centre of the turban of the Mogul
officers; and deeply impressed on its silvery surface, obvious even to
a passing glance, and engraven in Arabic characters, was the name of the
heroic and imperial Prince Solyman Sheko.
The Missionary saw this, and saw no more; a tension in his brow, a sense
of suffocation, as though life were about to submit to annihilation; a
pulse feeble and almost still, limbs trembling, and eyes which no longer
received the light, left him no other voluntary power than to throw
himself on the earth; while the strong previous excitement produced, for
a few seconds, a general diminution of the vital action; and he lay as
though death had given peace to those feelings which nothing in life
could at the moment sooth or assuage. From this temporary suspension of
existence he was roused by the sound of horses’ feet: he startled; he
arose, and sprung forward in that direction whence the sound proceeded:
he perceived (himself unseen, amidst the trees) a person on horseback,
who, standing in his stirrup, and shading his eyes from the lustre of
the moonlight, cast round an anxious and inquiring glance, then
approached within the hallowed circle of the Brahminical altar.
The Missionary rushed from his concealment--the paleness of his
countenance rendered more livid by the moonlight which fell on it, and
by the dark relief of his black cowl and flowing robe. He stood, amidst
the ruins of the heathen shrine, resembling the spirit of some departed
minister of its idolatrous rites, the terrific guardian of the awful
site of ancient superstition. Whatever was the impression of his abrupt
and wild appearance, the effect was instantaneous: ere he had uttered a
sound, the stranger suddenly disappeared, as if borne on the wings of
the wind. The Missionary in vain pursued his flight. After having
followed the sounds of the horse’s feet, till a deathlike silence hung
upon their faded echo, the sole result of his observation was, that the
mysterious intruder had fled towards the Mogul camp, which still lay in
the plains of Sirinagur; and the sole inference to be drawn from the
singular adventure was, that Luxima was beloved by the son of the
imperial Daara--that Luxima was false--and that he was most deceived!
This conviction fell on him like a thunderbolt. Thoughts of a new and
gloomy aspect now rushed on each other, as if they had been accelerated
by the bursting of some barrier of the mind, which, till that moment,
had retained them in their natural course. He could not comprehend the
nature of those frightful sensations which quivered through his
frame--that deadly sickness of the soul with which the most dreadful of
all human passions first seizes on its victim. His mind’s fever infected
his whole frame--his head raged--his heart beat strongly; and all the
vital motions seemed hurried on, as if their harmony had been suddenly
destroyed by some fearful visitation of divine wrath. He threw himself
on the dewy earth, and felt something like a horrible enjoyment, in
giving himself up, without reservation, to pangs of love betrayed, of
faith violated, of a jealousy, whose fury rose in proportion to the
loveliness of its object, and to the force and ardour of the character
on which it operated. His memory, faithful only to the events which
aimed at his peace, gave back to his imagination Luxima in all her
bewitching tenderness, in all the seduction of her seeming innocence: he
felt the touch of her hand, he met the fondness of her look; his heart
kindled at her blush of love, and melted at her voice of passion. He
beheld her, bright and fresh, at the rising sun--tender and languid at
its setting; but by him these delights of a first and true love were now
only remembered to be resigned--these joys, which he had almost
purchased with the loss of heaven, could now no longer live for him.
Another would gaze upon her look, and meet her caress, and answer to her
tenderness; another would send his hopes forth, with the rising and the
setting sun: but for him there was no longer a morning, there was no
longer an evening! all was the sad gloom of endless night. In a mind,
however, such as his, to doubt one moment, was to decide the next--his
sole, his solitary, his tyrannic passion, becoming its own retribution,
would, he believed, accompany him to the grave; its object, he
determined to resign for ever. To strengthen him in his intention, he
opposed the holy calm, the sacred peace, the heavenly hopes and solemn
joys of his past and sinless life, to the sufferings, the conflicts, the
conscious self-debasement of his late and present existence. He
remembered that he was the minister of Heaven; devoted, by vows the most
awful and the most binding, to its cause alone; and that he had come
into perilous and distant regions, to preach its truths, not by precept
only, but by example, and to substitute, in the land of idolatry, the
religion of the Spirit, for that of the senses. He sought pertinaciously
to deceive himself, and to mistake the feelings which rose from the
pangs of jealousy, for the visitation of conscience, suddenly awakened
from its long and deathlike slumber, by the fatal consequences of that
intoxicating evil, which had so long entranced and “steeped it in
forgetfulness.” He sought to believe that his guardian angel had not yet
abandoned him, and that Heaven itself, by miraculous interposition, had
snatched him from an abyss of crime, towards which, an ardent and
unguarded zeal for its sacred cause had insensibly seduced him. Struck
by the conviction, he prayed fervently, and vowed solemnly; but his
prayers and his vows alike partook of the vehemence of those contending
passions by which he was moved and agitated. He wept upon the cross he
pressed to his lips--but his tears were not all the holy dew of pious
contrition; religion became debtor to the passions she opposed, and the
ardour of his devotion borrowed its warmth and energy from the
overflowing of those human feelings it sought to combat and to destroy.
At last his emotions, worn out by their own force and activity, subsided
into the torpor of extreme exhaustion. Throwing himself upon the earth,
encompassed by those deep shades of darkness which precede the twilight
dawn of day, he slept; but his slumber was broken and transient, and the
dreams it brought to his disordered imagination were harassing to his
spirits as the painful vigil which had preceded them; for the affliction
which is deep rooted in the heart, which presses upon the vital spring
of self-love, and disturbs the calm of conscientious principle, blasting
hope, rousing remorse, and annihilating happiness, sets at defiance the
soothing oblivion of sleep. Nature, thus opposed to herself, in vain
presents the balmy antidote to the suffering she has inflicted--and the
repose she offers, flies from the lids her unregulated feelings have
sullied with a tear.