I’ll not wed Paris,--Romeo is my husband.
SHAKESPEARE.
“Isidora was so accustomed to the wild exclamations and (to her)
unintelligible allusions of her mysterious lover, that she felt no
unwonted alarm at his singular language, and abrupt departure. There was
nothing in either more menacing or formidable than she had often
witnessed; and she recollected, that after these paroxysms, he often
re-appeared in a mood comparatively tranquil. She felt sustained,
therefore, by this reflection,--and perhaps by that mysterious
conviction impressed on the hearts of those who love profoundly--that
passion must always be united with suffering; and she seemed to hear,
with a kind of melancholy submission to the fatality of love, that her
lot was to suffer from lips that were sure to verify the oracle. The
disappearance, therefore, of Melmoth, gave her less surprise than a
summons from her mother a few hours after, which was delivered in these
words: “Madonna Isidora, your lady-mother desires your presence in the
tapestried chamber--having received intelligence by a certain express,
which she deems fitting you should be acquainted withal.”
“Isidora had been in some degree prepared for extraordinary intelligence
by an extraordinary bustle in this grave and quiet household. She had
heard steps passing, and voices resounding, but
“She wist not what they were,”
and thought not of what they meant. She imagined that her mother might
have some communication to make about some intricate point of conscience
which Fra Jose had not discussed to her satisfaction, from which she
would make an instant transition to the levity visible in the mode in
which one attendant damsel arranged her hair, and the suspected sound of
a ghitarra under the window of another, and then fly off at a tangent to
inquire how the capons were fed, and why the eggs and Muscadine had not
been duly prepared for Fra Jose’s supper. Then would she fret about the
family clock not chiming synchronically with the bells of the
neighbouring church where she performed her devotions. And finally, she
fretted about every thing, from the fattening of the “pullen,” and the
preparation for the olio, up to the increasing feuds between the
Molinists and Jansenists, which had already visited Spain, and the
deadly dispute between the Dominican and Franciscan orders, relative to
the habit in which it was most effective to salvation for the dying body
of the sinner to be wrapped. So between her kitchen and her
oratory,--her prayers to the saints, and her scoldings to her
servants,--her devotion and her anger,--Donna Clara continued to keep
herself and domestics in a perpetual state of interesting occupation and
gentle excitement.
“Something of this Isidora expected on the summons, and she was,
therefore, surprised to see Donna Clara seated at her writing desk,--a
large and fairly written manuscript of a letter extended before
her,--and to hear words thereafter uttered thus: “Daughter, I have sent
for you, that you might with me partake of the pleasure these lines
should afford both; and that you may do so, I desire you to sit and hear
while they are read to you.”
“Donna Clara, as she uttered these words, was seated in a monstrous
high-backed chair, of which she actually seemed a part, so wooden was
her figure, so moveless her features, so lack-lustre her eyes.
“Isidora curtsied low, and sat on one of the cushions with which the
room was heaped,--while a spectacled duenna, enthroned on another
cushion at the right hand of Donna Clara, read, with sundry pauses and
some difficulty, the following letter, which Donna Clara had just
received from her husband, who had landed, not _at Ossuna_(23), but at a
real sea-port town in Spain, and was now on his way to join his family.
“DONNA CLARA,
“It is about a year since I received your letter advising me of the
recovery of our daughter, whom we believed lost with her nurse on
her voyage to India when an infant, to which I would sooner have
replied, were I not otherwise hindered by concerns of business.
“I would have you understand, that I rejoice not so much that I have
recovered a daughter, as that heaven hath regained a soul and a
subject, as it were, _e faucibus Draconis--e profundis
Barathri_--the which terms Fra Jose will make plain to your weaker
comprehension.
“I trust that, through the ministry of that devout servant of God
and the church, she is now become as complete a Catholic in all
points necessary, absolute, doubtful, or incomprehensible,--formal,
essential, venial, and indispensible, as becomes the daughter of an
old Christian such as I (though unworthy of that honour) boast
myself to be. Moreover, I expect to find her, as a Spanish maiden
should be, equipped and accomplished with all the virtues pertaining
to that character, especially those of discretion and reserve. The
which qualities, as I have always perceived to reside in you, so I
hope you have laboured to transfer to her,--a transfer by which the
receiver is enriched, and the giver not impoverished.
“Finally, as maidens should be rewarded for their chastity and
reserve by being joined in wedlock with a worthy husband, so it is
the duty of a careful father to provide such a one for his daughter,
that she do not pass her marriageable age, and sit in discontent and
squalidness at home, as one overlooked of the other sex. My fatherly
care, therefore, moving me, I shall bring with me one who is to be
her husband, Don Gregorio Montilla, of whose qualifications I have
not now leisure to speak, but whom I expect she will receive as
becomes the dutiful daughter, and you as the obedient wife, of
FRANCISCO DI ALIAGA.”
(23) Vide Don Quixote, Vol. II. Smollet’s Translation.
“You have heard your father’s letter, daughter,” said Donna Clara,
placing herself as in act to speak, “and doubtless sit silent in
expectation of hearing from me a rehearsal of the duties pertaining to
the state on which you are so soon to enter, and which, I take it, are
three; that is to say, obedience, silence, and thriftiness. And first of
the first, which, as I conceive, divides itself into thirteen
heads,”---- “Holy saints!” said the duenna under her breath, “how pale
Madonna Isidora grows!”--“First of the first,” continued Donna Clara,
clearing her throat, elevating her spectacles with one hand, and fixing
three demonstrative fingers of the other on a huge clasped volume,
containing the life of St Francis Xavier, that lay on the desk before
her,--“as touching the thirteen heads into which the first divides
itself, the eleven first, I take it, are the most profitable--the two
last I shall leave you to be instructed in by your husband. First,
then,”---- Here she was interrupted by a slight noise, which did not,
however, draw her attention, till she was startled by a scream from the
duenna, who exclaimed, “The Virgin be my protection! Madonna Isidora has
fainted!”
“Donna Clara lowered her spectacles, glanced at the figure of her
daughter, who had fallen from her cushion, and lay breathless on the
floor, and, after a short pause, replied, “She _has_ fainted. Raise
her.--Call for assistance, and apply some cold water, or bear her into
the open air. I fear I have lost the mark in the life of this holy
saint,” muttered Donna Clara when alone; “this comes of this foolish
business of love and marriage. I never loved in my life, thank the
saints!--and as to marriage, that is according to the will of God and of
our parents.”
“The unfortunate Isidora was lifted from the floor, conveyed into the
open air, whose breath had the same effect on her still elementary
existence, that water was said to have on that of the _ombre pez_,
(man-fish), of whom the popular traditions of Barcelona were at that
time, and still have been, rife.
“She recovered; and sending an apology to Donna Clara for her sudden
indisposition, intreated her attendants to leave her, as she wished to
be alone. Alone!--that is a word to which those who love annex but one
idea,--that of being in society with one who is their all. She wished in
this (to her) terrible emergency, to ask counsel of him whose image was
ever present to her, and whose voice she heard with the mind’s ear
distinctly even in absence.
“The crisis was indeed one calculated to try a female heart; and
Isidora’s, with its potency of feeling, opposed to utter destitution of
judgment and of experience,--its native habits of resolution and
self-direction, and its acquired ones of timidity and diffidence almost
to despondency,--became the victim of emotions, whose struggle seemed at
first to threaten her reason.
“Her former independent and instinctive existence revived in her heart
at some moments, and suggested to her resolutions wild and desperate,
but such as the most timid females have been known, under the pressure
of a fearful exigency, to purpose, and even to execute. Then the
constraint of her new habits,--the severity of her factitious
existence,--and the solemn power of her newly-learned but deeply-felt
religion,--made her renounce all thoughts of resistance or opposition,
as offences against heaven.
“Her former feelings, her new duties, beat in terrible conflict against
her heart; and, trembling at the isthmus on which she stood, she felt
it, under the influence of opposing tides, narrowing every moment under
her feet.
“This was a dreadful day to her. She had sufficient time for reflection,
but she had within her the conviction that reflection could be of no
use,--that the circumstances in which she was placed, not her own
thoughts, must decide for her,--and that, situated as she was, mental
power was no match for physical.
“There is not, perhaps, a more painful exercise of the mind than that of
treading, with weary and impatient pace, the entire round of thought,
and arriving at the same conclusion for ever; then setting out again
with increased speed and diminished strength, and again returning to the
very same spot--of sending out all our faculties on a voyage of
discovery, and seeing them all return empty, and watch the wrecks as
they drift helplessly along, and sink before the eye that hailed their
outward expedition with joy and confidence.
“All that day she thought how it was possible to liberate herself from
her situation, while the feeling that liberation was impossible clung to
the bottom of her heart; and this sensation of the energies of the soul
in all their strength, being in vain opposed to imbecillity and
mediocrity, when aided by circumstances, is one productive alike of
melancholy and of irritation. We feel, like prisoners in romance, bound
by threads to which the power of magic has given the force of adamant.
“To those whose minds incline them rather to observe, than to sympathize
with the varieties of human feeling, it would have been interesting to
watch the restless agony of Isidora, contrasted with the cold and serene
satisfaction of her mother, who employed the whole of the day in
composing, with the assistance of Fra Jose, what Juvenal calls “_verbosa
et grandis epistola_,” in answer to that of her husband; and to conceive
how two human beings, apparently of similarly-constructed organs, and
destined apparently to sympathize with each other, could draw from the
same fountain waters sweet and bitter.
“On her plea of continued indisposition, Isidora was excused from
appearing before her mother during the remainder of the day. The night
came on,--the night, which, by concealing the artificial objects and
manners which surrounded her, restored to her, in some degree, the
consciousness of her former existence, and gave her a sense of
independence she never felt by day. The absence of Melmoth increased her
anxiety. She began to apprehend that his departure was intended to be
final, and her heart sunk at the thought.
“To the mere reader of romance, it may seem incredible that a female of
Isidora’s energy and devotedness should feel anxiety or terror in a
situation so common to a heroine. She has only to stand proof against
all the importunities and authority of her family, and announce her
desperate resolution to share the destiny of a mysterious and
unacknowledged lover. All this sounds very plausible and interesting.
Romances have been written and read, whose interest arose from the noble
and impossible defiance of the heroine to all powers human and
superhuman alike. But neither the writers or readers seem ever to have
taken into account the thousand petty external causes that operate on
human agency with a force, if not more powerful, far more effective than
the grand internal motive which makes so grand a figure in romance, and
so rare and trivial a one in common life.
“Isidora would have died for him she loved. At the stake or the scaffold
she would have avowed her passion, and triumphed in perishing as its
victim. The mind can collect itself for one great effort, but it is
exhausted by the eternally-recurring necessity of domestic
conflicts,--victories by which she must lose, and defeats by which she
might gain the praise of perseverance, and feel such gain was loss. The
last single and terrible effort of the Jewish champion, in which he and
his enemies perished together, must have been a luxury compared to his
blind drudgery in his mill.
“Before Isidora lay that painful and perpetual struggle of fettered
strength with persecuting weakness, which, if the truth were told, would
divest half the heroines of romance of the power or wish to contend
against the difficulties that beset them. Her mansion was a prison--she
had no power (and if she possessed the power, would never have exercised
it) of obtaining an unpermitted or unobserved egress from the doors of
the house for one moment. Thus her escape was completely barred; and had
every door in the house been thrown open, she would have felt like a
bird on its first flight from the cage, without a spray that she dared
to rest on. Such was her prospect, even if she could effect her
escape--at home it was worse.
“The stern and cold tone of authority in which her father’s letter was
written, gave her but little hope that in her father she would find a
friend. Then the feeble and yet imperious mediocrity of her mother--the
selfish and arrogant temper of Fernan--the powerful influence and
incessant documentising of Fra Jose, whose good-nature was no match for
his love of authority--the daily domestic persecution--that vinegar that
would wear out any rock--the being compelled to listen day after day to
the same exhausting repetition of exhortation, chiding, reproach, and
menace, or seek refuge in her chamber, to waste the weary hours in
loneliness and tears--this strife maintained by one strong indeed in
purpose, but feeble in power, against so many all sworn to work their
will, and have their way--this perpetual conflict with evils so trivial
in the items, but so heavy in the amount, to those who have the debt to
pay daily and hourly,--was too much for the resolution of Isidora, and
she wept in hopeless despondency, as she felt that already her courage
shrunk from the encounter, and knew not what concessions might be
extorted from her increasing inability of resistance.
“Oh!” she cried, clasping her hands in the extremity of her distress,
“Oh that he were but here to direct, to counsel me!--that he were here
even no longer as my lover, but only as my adviser!”
“It is said that a certain power is always at hand to facilitate the
wishes that the individual forms for his own injury; and so it should
seem in the present instance,--for she had scarce uttered these words,
when the shadow of Melmoth was seen darkening the garden walk,--and the
next moment he was beneath the casement. As she saw him approach, she
uttered a cry of mingled joy and fear, which he hushed by making a
signal of silence with his hand, and then whispered, “I know it all!”
“Isidora was silent. She had nothing but her recent distress to
communicate,--and of that, it appeared, he was already apprized. She
waited, therefore, in mute anxiety for some words of counsel or of
comfort. “I know all!” continued Melmoth; “your father has landed in
Spain--he brings with him your destined husband. The fixed purpose of
your whole family, as obstinate as they are weak, it will be bootless in
you to resist; and this day fortnight will see you the bride of
Montilla.”--“I will first be the bride of the grave,” said Isidora, with
perfect and fearful calmness.
“At these words, Melmoth advanced and gazed on her more closely. Any
thing of intense and terrible resolution,--of feeling or action in
extremity,--made harmony with the powerful but disordered chords of his
soul. He required her to repeat the words--she did so, with quivering
lip, but unfaultering voice. He advanced still nearer to gaze on her as
she spoke. It was a beautiful and fearful sight to see her as she
stood;--her marble face--her moveless features--her eyes in which burned
the fixed and livid light of despair, like a lamp in a sepulchral
vault--the lips that half opened, and remaining unclosed, appeared as if
the speaker was unconscious of the words that had escaped them, or
rather, as if they had burst forth by involuntary and incontroulable
impulse;--so she stood, like a statue, at her casement, the moonlight
giving her white drapery the appearance of stone, and her wrought-up and
determined mind lending the same rigidity to her expression. Melmoth
himself felt confounded--appalled he could not feel. He retreated, and
then returning, demanded, “Is this your resolution, Isidora?--and have
you indeed resolution to”---- “To die!” answered Isidora, with the same
unaltered accent,--the same calm expression,--and seeming, as she spake,
capable of all she expressed; and this union, in the same slight and
tender form, of those eternal competitors, energy and fragility, beauty
and death, made every human pulse in Melmoth’s frame beat with a
throbbing unknown before. “Can you, then,” he said, with averted head,
and in a tone that seemed ashamed of its own softness--“Can you, then,
die for him you will not live for?”--“I have said I will die sooner than
be the bride of Montilla,” answered Isidora. “Of death I know nothing,
nor do I know much of life--but I would rather perish, than be the
perjured wife of the man I cannot love.”--“And why can you not love
him?” said Melmoth, toying with the heart he held in his hand, like a
mischievous boy with a bird, around whose leg he has fastened a
string.--“Because I can love but one. You were the first human being I
ever saw who could teach me language, and who taught me feeling. Your
image is for ever before me, present or absent, sleeping or waking. I
have seen fairer forms,--I have listened to softer voices,--I might have
met gentler hearts,--but the first, the indelible image, is written on
mine, and its characters will never be effaced till that heart is a clod
of the valley. I loved you not for comeliness,--I loved you not for gay
deportment, or fond language, or all that is said to be lovely in the
eye of woman,--I loved you because you were my _first_,--the sole
connecting link between the human world and my heart,--the being who
brought me acquainted with that wondrous instrument that lay unknown and
untouched within and me, whose chords, as long as they vibrate, will
disdain to obey any touch but that of their first mover--because your
image is mixed in my imagination with all the glories of nature--because
your voice, when I heard it first, was something in accordance with the
murmur of the ocean, and the music of the stars. And still its tones
recal the unimaginable blessedness of those scenes where first I heard
it,--and still I listen to it like an exile who hears the music of his
native country in a land that is very far off,--because nature and
passion, memory and hope, alike cling round your image; and amid the
light of my former existence, and the gloom of my present, there is but
one form that retains its reality and its power through light and shade.
I am like one who has traversed many climates, and looks but to one sun
as the light of all, whether bright or obscure. I have loved once--and
for ever!” Then, trembling at the words she uttered, she added, with
that sweet mixture of maiden pride and purity that redeems while it
pledges the hostage of the heart, “The feelings I have entrusted you
with may be abused, but never alienated.”--“And these are your _real_
feelings?” said Melmoth, pausing long, and moving his frame like one
agitated by deep and uneasy thoughts. “Real!” repeated Isidora, with
some transient glow on her cheek--“real! Can I utter any thing but what
is real? Can I so soon forget my existence?” Melmoth looked up once more
as she spoke--“If such is your resolution,--if such be your feelings
indeed,”---- “And they are!--they are!” exclaimed Isidora, her tears
bursting through the slender fingers, which, after extending towards
him, she clasped over her burning eyes. “Then look to the alternative
that awaits you!” said Melmoth slowly, bringing out the words with
difficulty, and, as it appeared, with some feeling for his victim; “a
union with the man you cannot love,--or the perpetual hostility, the
wearying, wasting, almost annihilating persecution of your family! Think
of days that”---- “Oh let me not think!” cried Isidora, wringing her
white and slender hands; “tell me--tell me what may be done to escape
them!”--“Now, in good troth,” answered Melmoth, knitting his brows with
a most cogitative wrinkle, while it was impossible to discover whether
his predominant expression was that of irony or profound and sincere
feeling--“I know not what resource you have unless you wed me.”--“Wed
you!” cried Isidora, retreating from the window--“Wed you!” and she
clasped her hands over her pale forehead;--and at this moment, when the
hope of her heart, the thread on which her existence was suspended, was
within her reach, she trembled to touch it. “Wed you!--but how is that
possible?”--“All things are possible to those who love,” said Melmoth,
with his sardonic smile, which was hid by the shades of the night. “And
you will wed me, then, by the rites of the church of which I am a
member?”--“Aye! or of any other!”--“Oh speak not so wildly!--say not
_aye_ in that horrible voice! Will you wed me as a Christian maiden
should be wed?--Will you love me as a Christian wife should be loved? My
former existence was like a dream,--but now I am awake. If I unite my
destiny to yours,--if I abandon my family, my country, my”---- “If you
do, how will you be the loser?--your family harasses and confines
you--your country would shout to see you at the stake, for you have some
heretical feelings about you, Isidora. And for the rest”---- “God!” said
the poor victim, clasping her hands, and looking upwards, “God, aid me
in this extremity!”--“If I am to wait here only as a witness to your
devotions,” said Melmoth with sullen asperity, “my stay will not be
long.”--“You cannot leave me, then, to struggle with fear and perplexity
alone! How is it possible for me to escape, even if”---- “By whatever
means I possess of entering this place and retiring unobserved,--by the
same you may effect your escape. If you have resolution, the effort will
cost you little,--if love,--nothing. Speak, shall I be here at this hour
to-morrow night, to conduct you to liberty and”---- Safety he would have
added, but his voice faultered. “_To-morrow night_,” said Isidora, after
a long pause, and in accents almost inarticulate. She closed the
casement as she spoke, and Melmoth slowly departed.
END OF THIRD VOLUME.
Transcriber’s Note:
The following is a list of corrections made to the original.
The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one.
CHILDREN.
CHILDREN.”
say to heaven, We have a sun though your’s is set;--the solemn and
say to heaven, We have a sun though yours is set;--the solemn and
the last garment on your person, and the last denier in your purse.
the last garment on your person, and the last denier in your purse.”
matted coil of adders, had there first recieved the bloody homage of the
matted coil of adders, had there first received the bloody homage of the
For many a night these canoes might be seen glancing past each other
“For many a night these canoes might be seen glancing past each other
regularity of these phœnomena, in the climate she inhabited, divested
regularity of these phænomena, in the climate she inhabited, divested
But to this question he could obtain no satisfactory answer; and it was
“But to this question he could obtain no satisfactory answer; and it was
smile at her as she bounded after him, breathles and glowing with newly
smile at her as she bounded after him, breathless and glowing with newly
torn away.”
torn away.
surmounted by a trident.--that is the temple of Maha-deva, a goddess who
surmounted by a trident,--that is the temple of Maha-deva, a goddess who
made such an an artless transition from profound and meditative grief to
made such an artless transition from profound and meditative grief to
Her glowing features, as she turned them toward him, with an expression
“Her glowing features, as she turned them toward him, with an expression
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XVII.
important subject(16), whether their iackets should be red or white--or
important subject(16), whether their jackets should be red or white--or
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
than that gloom.--All around her gave to her form, when it it was momently
than that gloom.--All around her gave to her form, when it was momently
The waves deserting their station, left, from time to time, the sands
“The waves deserting their station, left, from time to time, the sands
pale, terrified, but resolute, retreated from him.”
pale, terrified, but resolute, retreated from him.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XIX.
to welcome her. As he spoke, all eyes were turned to a figure, which,
to welcome her.” As he spoke, all eyes were turned to a figure, which,
At the approach of a large party of females, there was all that anxious
“At the approach of a large party of females, there was all that anxious
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XX.
“Excæcavit oculos eorum ne viderent.”
“Excæcavit oculos eorum ne viderent.
subsisted, when life itself was failing? On my passsage to this Christian
subsisted, when life itself was failing? On my passage to this Christian
first I ever heard, and which, when I cease to hear’---- “You will hear
first I ever heard, and which, when I cease to hear”---- “You will hear
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXII.
Molinists and Jausenists, which had already visited Spain, and the
Molinists and Jansenists, which had already visited Spain, and the