How long I endured this suspension of the vital faculties I cannot
tell. The next impression on my sensorium, subsequent to those I have
described, was a sort of external twitching and violence that seemed
to persecute me. It was an importunity from which I felt desirous to
escape; I longed to be undisturbed and at rest. The intruder on my
quiet would not leave me; and I at length roused myself, as if to put
away my cause of molestation. My thoughts were all confounded and
obscure; I knew not where, I could scarcely be said to know who, I was.
A little more effort brought with it a further capacity of perception;
I saw before me, what was now the chief object of my mortal aversion,
the figure of Bethlem Gabor. It was some time longer, before I became
aware that he had been employed in taking up my apparently lifeless
corpse, placing it on a stone-bench in the side of the cave, and
chaining it to the wall. He observed the motions that indicated in me
returning life: he remarked the stare of my glassy and rayless eyes; he
now spoke with a stern and unpitying voice--“There is food; there is a
light; eat!” Having thus said, he left me.
What a cruel and remorseless treatment! He cared not for my life; he
disdained to make the slightest exertion to restore me; he left it to
chance whether I should revive or perish. The figure of a dying man
that I presented, did not make one fibre of his bosom bend or quiver.
I revived; I ate. By degrees I recovered from the deadly languor which
had invaded my senses. In about twelve hours longer Bethlem Gabor
returned with a new supply of sustenance. I was now strong enough to
be able to converse with him. I heard the heavy sound of opening locks
and removing bolts before he entered, and I summoned my faculties to
expostulate with him.
“Why am I here? What is the meaning of the unworthy way in which you
treat me?”
“It is,”--he regarded me with a truculent aspect, as if he would pierce
through my heart,--“because I hate you!”
“You hate me? Good God! is it possible? What evil have I done to you?
What good have I not done you? What supplies have I refused you? What
occasions have I neglected of studying your advantage, your interest,
and your honour? If thus your hatred is purchased, how shall that man
demean himself who is to purchase your love?”
“Oh, think not my hatred idle or capricious! Heaven knows, I would have
refrained from hating you if I had been able; I struggled against it
with all the energies of my soul. But you have committed towards me
the most mortal offences that man ever endured. There is an antipathy
between your nature and mine, that all the menstruums in the world
could never bring to coalesce.”
“Eternal Providence! and what is the source of this antipathy?”
“And do you profess ignorance? Have you not gone on day after day with
the full consciousness and will to torment me? Have I not warned you,
and expostulated with you times without number?”
“Of what have you warned me?”
“I hate mankind. I was not born to hate them. I have no native
obliquity of character. I have no diabolical maliciousness of
constitution. But they have forced me to hate them, and the debt of
abhorrence shall be amply paid.
“I loved as never mortal loved. No human heart was ever so devoted, and
centred, and enveloped in the kindly affections of family and parentage
as mine has been. Was not my wife, were not my children, murdered?
When I came home to feast my eyes and tranquillise my soul with the
sight of them, did I not find all waste and desolation? Did I not find
their bodies naked, pale, disfigured with wounds, plunged in blood, and
already putrid? This was the welcome I looked for! This was the object
I so speeded to see! No, never was a moment like that! My whole nature
was changed in an instant. My eyes were blasted and dried to horn. My
blood froze in my well stored veins. I have no longer delight but in
human misery.
“My revenge is not causeless; this was not the act of individuals. All
men, in the place of these murderers, would have done as they did.
They are in a league together. Human pity and forbearance never had a
harbour but in my breast; and I have now abjured them. With something
more of inwrought vigour and energy, I will become like to my brethren.
All men are excited by the same motives, urged by the same temptations,
influenced by the same inducements. Why should I attempt a futile
distinction, when nature had made none? All men bear the same figure; I
cannot view the human figure without a torture the most dreadful.”
“I always knew,” answered I, “your general hatred of mankind; but your
manners and your behaviour persuaded me that you exempted me from the
general censure.”
“I wished to do so; you made the attempt impossible. You told me, that
you had suffered the same misfortunes which I had; that you, by the
injustice and persecutions of men, had also lost your wife and your
children. I hailed you as a brother; in my heart I swore to you eternal
friendship; I said, we will carry on this holy warfare together. We
communicated to each other our mutual sorrows; with you, and you only,
I found moments of consolation.
“Soon I discovered my mistake. Instead of, like me, seeking occasions
of glorious mischief and vengeance, you took upon yourself to be the
benefactor and parent of mankind. What vocation had you to the task?
With the spirit of a slave who, the more he is beaten, becomes the
more servile and submissive, you remunerated injuries with benefits.
I found that there was not within you one atom of generous sentiment,
one honest glow of fervent indignation. Chicken-hearted wretch! poor,
soulless poltroon! to say the best of you, to your insensate heart it
was the same whether you were treated with reverence or scorn. I saw
you hunted, hooted at, and pursued by the people you fed; you held on
your course, and fed them still. I was compelled to witness or to hear
of your senseless liberalities every day I lived. Could I submit to
this torment, and not endeavour to remove it? I hate the man in whom
kindness produces no responsive affection, and injustice no swell, no
glow of resentment. I hated you the more, because, having suffered what
I had suffered, your feelings and conduct on the occasion have been the
reverse of mine. Your character, I thank God! is of all beings the most
opposite to that of Bethlem Gabor.
“At length you filled up the measure of the various thwartings with
which you daily insulted me. There was one native of Hungary between
whom and me there subsisted an open and eternal war. I relate in no
human ear the cause of my animosity to that man. Suffice it, that it
was deep, immeasurable, inexpiable. With a refinement of cruelty and
insult difficult to conceive, you chose that man for one of the objects
of your beneficence. Would I consent to see my name joined in pension
list with my mortal enemy? The injury you inflicted on me would have
been less if you had stabbed me to the heart. Less? That would have
been a blessing. I impose on myself the task of living for my revenge:
but never shall I deem that man my foe, who should rid me of all this
tumult of passions, and this insupportable load of existence together.
“You have heard my motives. You may wonder at, you may censure them:
but they are human. I have nothing further to say to you now: you have
no need to recur to expostulation; expostulation never moved the heart
of Bethlem Gabor. Hereafter you shall hear more!”
Thus speaking, he left me; and I must confess, with whatever disgrace
to my sagacity, he opened upon me a new world. I conceived not, till
now, the faintest suspicion of what had been labouring in his bosom.
Amidst all my experience of the varieties of human character, this was
a species that had never fallen under my observation before. What a
painful and mortifying occurrence is it in human life, when we have
lived with a man from day to day, when we have conversed with him
familiarly, and seen him in all the changes of circumstance, and when
we flatter ourselves we have penetrated all the recesses of his heart,
suddenly to start upon something portentous that brooded there, of
which to that moment we had not the lightest suspicion! I am not the
only individual to whom this event has occurred.
In a subsequent visit of Bethlem Gabor to my cell (for he only attended
me with provisions, he would intrust the secret of my confinement to
no other mortal), I intreated him to inform me with what intention
he retained me a prisoner, and to fix a price on my ransom. To this
overture he appeared to yield some degree of attention. He made no
explicit answer, but asked with an inquisitive and severe tone, in
what manner I imagined I could procure money in my dungeon?
“Let us agree upon the terms, and set me at large. You have never found
me deceitful, and you shall not find me deceitful now.”
“Do not hope I will consent to that. I ask you again, in what manner do
you imagine you can procure money in your dungeon?”
I reflected for a moment. Liberty is ineffably sweet; and whatever
followed, upon the present overture, I was determined not to neglect
the faintest prospect that led to a termination of my confinement.
“There is,” answered I, “in my mansion at Buda, a chest which, if it
can be brought to me hither, will enable me to supply your demands.
I have the key in my custody, and no key but my own will unlock the
treasure.”
“Give me the key!” replied Bethlem Gabor.
“No,” rejoined I, “it is in my custody; it is not upon my person: I
have taken care of that. No human hand shall touch it but my own.”
“And how can I cause this chest to be brought to you without risking
a discovery of your situation, or that I had a concern in your
disappearance?”
“Of that,” said I, “judge for yourself. I have made a proposition to
you, and I have done enough. I will have no share in the detail of its
execution.”
“Well,” said Bethlem Gabor, after having ruminated a moment, “the chest
you shall have; I undertake that. Describe it.”
I described the chest, and its situation in my house, with a minuteness
that made mistake impossible.
After a considerable time it was brought to me. It was too bulky and
ponderous to be introduced into my cell by a single arm. But Bethlem
Gabor, having first caused me unconsciously to swallow a powerful
opiate, found no difficulty, either to conceal my person in the dark
shadows of this ragged subterranean, or to cause some of his followers
to place the chest within my reach, believing that they placed it in
a vacant apartment. I awoke, and found it at hand. I was secure that
the lock was such a one as could not be forced; but I examined the
different surfaces, to see whether violence of any other sort had been
exercised on it. There were marks of damage, but not sufficiently
unequivocal to enable me to form a certain judgment on this point.
The chest contained, not gold, but the implements for making and
fashioning gold. Allowing for the distance from which it was brought,
they appeared to be pretty exactly in the state in which I left them.
I had never placed much confidence in this expedient for softening the
heart of Bethlem Gabor; but I perceived that it would serve at worst to
divert my thoughts, and, by exciting in me some share of expectation,
might call off my attention from the miseries of my present condition.
Embracing the occasions when I was most secure against the intrusion
of my jailor, I provided myself with the sum that had been previously
agreed on between us. My task being finished, I carefully displayed
the produce of my labour, against the next time Bethlem Gabor should
visit my cell. He viewed it with an air of sullen and gloomy triumph;
he removed it from the cave which was my habitation, to an apartment
of this subterraneous abode, little distant from my own. When he had
concluded this employment, it seemed to be a just inference, that he
was to give me my liberty. He did no such thing. Without uttering a
word, he closed the door of my cavern, locked it, and departed.
When Bethlem Gabor next entered my cell, I reproached him with this,
as with the breach of a solemn engagement. His first answer was an
infernal laugh, expressive of derision, hard-heartedness, and contempt.
By and by, however, he condescended to explain himself more fully.
“I made no engagement,” cried he. “You talked of a ransom, and
I suffered you to talk. I made you no answer; I gave you no
encouragement. Boy, I deceived you not! No; though my heart pants for
vengeance and for misery, I will never be guilty of treachery; I will
break no engagements; I am a knight and a soldier. You have given me
ten thousand ducats; what are ten thousand ducats to me? Do you think
I am uninformed of your secret? I opened your chest; I found no gold;
its contents were crucibles, minerals, chemical preparations, and
the tools of an artist. You are possessed of the grand arcanum, the
philosophers stone. If I had a doubt of it before, the transaction of
yesterday converted conjecture into certainty. And did you suppose,
idiot, driveller that you are, that I would take ten thousand ducats in
commutation for wealth inexhaustible? No; you are my prisoner, and may
choose, in this infallible dilemma, whether you will remain my slave,
to supply me daily resources as I shall daily think proper to demand,
or at once make over to me your whole mystery, and place me in this
respect on a level with yourself.”
It was now my part to be peremptory and firm.
“I refuse,” said I, “every part of your dilemma, and all that you can
propose to me. Do you talk of my remaining your slave, to supply you
with daily resources? Do you imagine that, shut up in this dungeon, I
will nevertheless labour for your gratification? Do you believe that
that gift, which I received as the instrument of my own happiness
and the benefit of mankind, shall be made the pledge of my perpetual
imprisonment?
“With regard to imparting to you the secret you suppose me to possess,
I answer without hesitation, that, dearly as I prize liberty, and
numerous as are the motives you may think I have to prize it, I will
not purchase my liberty at that rate. I would rather spend the days of
eternity in this cavern, than comply with your proposal. The gift of
the philosopher’s stone, the moment a man possesses it, purifies his
mind from sordid and ignoble inducements. The endowment which raises
him so much above his species, makes him glory in his superiority,
and cherish his innocence. He cannot, if he would, mingle in the low
passions and pursuits of the generality of mankind. For myself, I
value too much the verdict of my own heart, ever to allow myself to
be influenced in the main concerns of my existence by menaces and
compulsion. Beside, this gift I received for holy and beneficent
purposes; to such it is consecrated; and if I ever impart it, I must
select its depository with all the assiduity and penetration it is
practicable for me to exert. You I will henceforth benefit no more. You
hate me; my disapprobation of you is fixed and irrevocable. I weep
to think how much I have been deceived in you; I weep to think how
many high and heroic qualities in your breast are now converted into
malignity and venom.--You the possessor of the philosopher’s stone!
You tell me, the sole pursuit of the rest of your life is revenge
and human misery. What an image do you raise in my mind, if, with
such dispositions, you possessed the means which the acquisition of
riches inexhaustible would confer on you? And do you believe that any
consideration on earth could induce me to realise such an image?”
“As you please,” replied Bethlem Gabor indignantly. “I have nothing to
propose to you. Think you that, either as my enemy or my slave, and I
hold you for both, I would descend to negotiate with you? I simply told
you your situation. Yours be the consequences of your wilfulness and
folly!
“One mistake however that I see you make respecting my purposes, I will
remove. You seem to suppose that, if you were to communicate to me your
secret, I would then set you at liberty. No, by heavens! This cavern is
your abode for ever. You shall never go forth from it alive; and, when
you are dead, here your flesh shall moulder, and your skeleton shall
rest, as long as the world remains. Look round your walls! Enter fully
into possession of your final home! I know that to keep you here and
alive my prisoner, I must in a certain sense imprison myself. But at
that I do not murmur. I shall have the gratification of beholding my
foe, and seeing him daily wither in disappointment. You wish to be a
father to the human race; and I shall deem the scope of my misanthropy
almost satisfied, while, in your restraint, I image myself as making
the human race an orphan. Never shall Bethlem Gabor set at large a man
of your unnatural and gall-less disposition, and your powers for the
indulgence of that disposition.
“Sieur de Chatillon, I do not want your secret: it suffices that I know
you possess it. Have I not yourself in my keeping? It will be more joy
to me rudely to issue my commands, and to see you complying with them
in spite of the most heartfelt reluctance, than to possess the richest
gift on earth in the fullest independence. Think you Bethlem Gabor
incompetent to tame the tenant of this wretched cavern? Boy, you _are_
my prisoner; you _shall be_ my creature. I will humble you at my feet,
and teach you to implore my bounty for the most miserable pittance.
Look to it! You know your destiny! Do not provoke my fury, without a
foresight of the consequences!”
I will enter into little further detail of this my wretched
imprisonment in the wilds of Hungary. It was not destitute of its
varieties; and I could, if I pleased, fill a volume with the artifices
and the violence of my gloomy superintendent. I could fill volumes
with the detail of the multiplied expedients, the furious menaces, the
gigantic starts and rhapsodies of passion, by which he alternately
urged me to compliance and concession. But I will not. I will bring
to an end the history of Bethlem Gabor; and then, having detailed the
surprising events that immediately followed it, will close the page
of St. Leon’s history for ever. I stood like a rock. Shut out from
all other gratifications, I at least resolved to accumulate in my own
person all the energies of resistance. If I were to unfold the story, I
could command the reader’s astonishment, his admiration; but the object
of these papers is to record, not my merits, but my fate.
How different was my imprisonment in the cavern of the man-abhorring
palatine, from that which I had experienced in the dungeons of the
inquisition! There an inexorable apathy prevailed: my tyrants were
indifferent whether I died or lived; filled with the sense of their
religious elevation, they held on the even gravity of their course,
and counted my groans and my tears neither for remorse nor pleasure.
The variety I experienced in their dungeons was the growth of my own
thoughts: from without I encountered no interruption; it was not to
be ascribed to those who held me in durance, if my faculties were
not lethargied into death. Bethlem Gabor possessed no share of their
apathy; his malice was ever alive, his hatred ever ingenious and new
in its devices. He had a purpose to answer,--to extort from me the
supply of his necessities and projects. It was not so much perhaps that
he stood in need of this, as that he placed a pride in it, and had
fiercely resolved to show me that I was unreservedly his slave. His
animosity against me was so fixed and insatiable, that nothing that was
pain to me was indifferent to him. If at any time he saw me subsiding
into insensibility, he failed not to exert himself to sting me into
life again.
The consequence of this was somewhat different from what Bethlem Gabor
expected. Desponding as I was, weary of life, and almost finally
alienated from the all-coveted gift of the philosopher’s stone, if
he had left me to myself, I should very probably have sought in
insensibility relief from the torment of my own thoughts. But he
taught me a better lesson. Refusing me the indulgence of torpor, he
obliged me to string myself to resistance. He gave me a passion; he
gave me an object; he gave me comparative happiness. I was roused
to opposition; I was resolved that, placed, as I seemed to be, at
his mercy, I would yield him no atom of his desires. Thus employed,
I found in my employment pride. Perpetual occasion presented itself
for fortitude; and I gradually ascended to the sweets of consistency,
perseverance, and self-gratulation. I had for years been inured to
satisfy myself with a sparing stock of pleasures; and I was less at
a loss to expand and ramify those which I now possessed, than almost
any other man would have been in my situation. If my attendant train
of sensations was scanty, Bethlem Gabor took care to afford them a
perpetual supply of food and employment, and I was comparatively little
exposed to the pain of vacuity. When he saw that I was inflexible, and
that he could no longer gain from me the smallest compliance with his
will, he raged against me with terrifying fury. Was it a crime in me,
that this fury in my tyrant produced the operation of a sedative and
a cordial? There was no malignity in the joy it gave me. I had much
aversion for Bethlem Gabor, but no hatred. I took no pleasure in his
agonies, because they were agonies. My sympathies towards him now, I
confess, were small; but the joy I felt was because his fury told me,
was the unwilling evidence of my own value. I left him to assail the
mound I opposed to his desires as he pleased; it remained strong and
unaffected as the sea-beaten promontory.--From the inefficacy of his
efforts, I sometimes took occasion to remonstrate with my jailor, and
demand the restoration of my liberty; but Bethlem Gabor was not a man
whom arguments and expostulations like these could move. In spite of
himself however I commanded his wonder, if not his esteem. He regarded
the contrast as almost incredible, between the boy-aspect under which
he saw me, and the inflexibility and resources of my time-instructed
mind.
The contentment that I have here described in myself, was however a
creature of the imagination, the forced progeny of uncommon effort.
It was no natural state of the soul. My mind would sometimes wander
beyond the limits of my cavern, and remember that there were other
persons beside Bethlem Gabor and myself in the world. I recollected the
situation in which I had left my great project for the reviviscence
of Hungary, and rejoiced to remember that it was already in such
forwardness, as, I hoped, no longer to stand in absolute need of my
assistance. Yet what I had done was but a small portion, a dismembered
branch, of what I had meditated to do, and what every person of a
generous and enterprising mind, who had been in possession of the
philosopher’s stone, would have designed. Why was I thus stopped in the
commencement of a career so auspiciously begun, and to which an ardent
fancy, would prescribe no limits? Why was every power of the social
constitution, every caprice of the multitude, every insidious project
of the noble, thus instantly in arms against so liberal and grand an
undertaking? Nor could I help repining at the perverseness of my fate,
which had decreed that I should savour all the bitterness incidentally
resulting from my plan, and not be permitted so much as to taste the
applause and reward that ought to grow out of its completion. Thousands
of men were at this instant indebted to my generosity and exertions for
every blessing they enjoyed; and I was cast forth as the refuse of the
earth, pining under the alternate succession of solitude, negligence,
and malice, my very existence and the manner of it unknown, except
to one individual, who had, from the strangest and most unexpected
motives, sworn eternal hostility to me.
Bethlem Gabor had resolved that, so long as he lived, I should remain
a prisoner: when he died, if he continued my only jailor, the single
individual acquainted with the place of my confinement, the probable
issue was that I should perish with hunger. Twelve years before, I
should have contemplated this attitude and condition of existence with
indescribable horror. But within that time I had been better taught.
I had received an education, I thank them, in the dungeons of the
Spanish inquisition; and, if that be properly considered, it will not
be wondered at that I was superior to ordinary terrors. Early in my
present situation the presentiment had suggested itself to me that, by
some striking event, I should be rescued from my present confinement;
and, improbable as the suggestion was, it made an indelible impression
on my mind. I had originated in, or it had produced, a dream, the
scenes of which had appeared particularly luminous and vivid. I
imagined I saw a knight, cased complete in proof, enter my prison. A
smile of angelic kindness beamed on his countenance. He embraced me
with ardour; he made a sign to me to follow him. I felt that I had seen
him somewhere, that he had been my intimate friend. Yet all the efforts
I made in sleep, or afterwards when I was awake, were unavailing to
remove the mystery that hung upon his features. I rose to obey him;
the ground trembled under my feet like an earthquake. Presently, with
the incoherency usually attendant on a dream, the figure changed to
that of a female of unblemished grace and beauty; it unfolded a pair of
radiant wings; we ascended together in the air; I looked down, and saw
the castle of Bethlem Gabor a prey to devouring flames.--Here ended my
dream. I soon felt that I could reason myself out of all confidence in
the presages of this wild and incongruous vision. But I refused to do
it; my consolations were not so plenteous in this frightful solitude
as that I should willingly part with one so delicious. Reason, thus
applied, I contemplated as an abhorred intruder. It was, for a long
time, part of my occupation in every day to ruminate on this vision,
not with the sternness of a syllogist, but with the colouring of a
painter, and the rapture of a bard. From thus obstinately dwelling on
it in the day, it happened that it became again and again and again
my vision of the night. Slumbers like these were truly refreshing,
and armed and nerved me for the contentions of my tyrant. Sacred and
adorable power of fancy, that can thus purify and irradiate the damps
of a dungeon, and extract from midnight glooms and impervious darkness
perceptions more lovely and inspiriting than noontide splendour!