The festival was over;—the sounds of the song and dance had ceased, and I
was now left in those luxurious gardens, alone. Though so ardent and
active a votary of pleasure, I had, by nature, a disposition full of
melancholy;—an imagination that presented sad thoughts, even in the midst
of mirth and happiness, and threw the shadow of the future over the gayest
illusions of the present. Melancholy was, indeed, twin‐born in my soul
with Passion; and, not even in the fullest fervour of the latter, were
they separated. From the first moment that I was conscious of thought and
feeling, the same dark thread had run across the web; and images of death
and annihilation mingled themselves with the most smiling scenes through
which my career of enjoyment led me. My very passion for pleasure but
deepened these gloomy fancies. For, shut out, as I was by my creed, from a
future life, and having no hope beyond the narrow horizon of this, every
minute of delight assumed a mournful preciousness in my eyes, and
pleasure, like the flower of the cemetery, grew but more luxuriant from
the neighbourhood of death.
This very night my triumph, my happiness had seemed complete. I had been
the presiding genius of that voluptuous scene. Both my ambition and my
love of pleasure had drunk deep of the cup for which they thirsted. Looked
up to by the learned, and loved by the beautiful and the young, I had
seen, in every eye that met mine, either the acknowledgment of triumphs
already won, or the promise of others, still brighter, that awaited me.
Yet, even in the midst of all this, the same dark thoughts had presented
themselves;—the perishableness of myself and all around me every instant
recurred to my mind. Those hands I had prest—those eyes, in which I had
seen sparkling, a spirit of light and life that should never die—those
voices, that had talked of eternal love—all, all, I felt, were but a
mockery of the moment, and would leave nothing eternal but the silence of
their dust!
Oh, were it not for this sad voice,
Stealing amid our mirth to say,
That all, in which we most rejoice,
Ere night may be the earth‐worm’s prey;—
_But_ for this bitter—only this—
Full as the world is brimm’d with bliss,
And capable as feels my soul
Of draining to its depth the whole,
I should turn earth to heaven, and be,
If bliss made gods, a deity!
Such was the description I gave of my own feelings, in one of those wild,
passionate songs, to which this ferment of my spirits, between mirth and
melancholy, gave birth.
Seldom had my heart more fully abandoned itself to such vague sadness than
at the present moment, when, as I paced thoughtfully among the fading
lights and flowers of the banquet, the echo of my own step was all that
sounded, where so many gay forms had lately been revelling. The moon was
still up, the morning had not yet glimmered, and the calm glories of night
still rested on all around. Unconscious whither my pathway led, I wandered
along, till I, at length, found myself before that fair statue of Venus,
with which the chisel of Alcamenes had embellished our Garden;—that image
of deified woman, the only idol to which I had ever bent the knee. Leaning
against the pedestal, I raised my eyes to heaven, and fixing them sadly
and intently on the ever‐burning stars, as if I sought to read the
mournful secret in their light, asked, wherefore was it that Man alone
must perish, while they, less wonderful, less glorious than he, lived on
in light unchangeable and for ever!—“Oh, that there were some spell, some
talisman,” I exclaimed, “to make the spirit within us deathless as those
stars, and open to its desires a career like theirs, burning and boundless
throughout all time!”
While I gave myself up to this train of thought, that lassitude which
earthly pleasure, however sweet, leaves behind,—as if to show how earthly
it is,—came drowsily over me, and I sunk at the base of the statue to
sleep.
Even in sleep, however, my fancy was still busy; and a dream, so vivid as
to leave behind it the impression of reality, thus passed through my mind.
I thought myself transported to a wide desert plain, where nothing seemed
to breathe, or move, or live. The very sky above it looked pale and
extinct, giving the idea, not of darkness, but of light that had died;
and, had that region been the remains of some older world, left broken up
and sunless, it could not have looked more dead and desolate. The only
thing that bespoke life, in this melancholy waste, was a small moving
spark, that at first glimmered in the distance, but, at length, slowly
approached the spot where I stood. As it drew nearer, I could perceive
that its feeble gleam was from a taper in the hand of a pale venerable
man, who now stood, like a messenger from the grave, before me. After a
few moments of awful silence, during which he looked at me with a sadness
that thrilled my very soul, he said,—“Thou, who seekest eternal life, go
unto the shores of the dark Nile—go unto the shores of the dark Nile, and
thou wilt find the eternal life thou seekest!”
No sooner had he said these words than the death‐like hue of his cheek
brightened into a smile of more than human promise. The small torch that
he held sent forth a radiance, by which suddenly the whole surface of the
desert was illuminated, even to the far horizon’s edge, along whose line
were now seen gardens, palaces, and spires, all bright and golden, like
the architecture of the clouds at sunset. Sweet music, too, was heard
every where, floating around, and, from all sides, such varieties of
splendour poured, that, with the excess both of harmony and of light, I
woke.
That infidels should be superstitious is an anomaly neither unusual nor
strange. A belief in superhuman agency seems natural and necessary to the
mind; and, if not suffered to flow in the obvious channels, it will find a
vent in some other. Hence, many who have doubted the existence of a God,
have yet implicitly placed themselves under the patronage of Fate or the
stars. Much the same inconsistency I was conscious of in my own feelings.
Though rejecting all belief in a Divine Providence, I had yet a faith in
dreams, that all my philosophy could not conquer. Nor was experience
wanting to confirm me in my delusion; for, by some of those accidental
coincidences, which make the fortune of soothsayers and prophets, dreams,
more than once, had been to me
Oracles, truer far than oak,
Or dove, or tripod, ever spoke.
It was not wonderful, therefore, that the vision of that night, touching,
as it did, a chord so ready to vibrate, should have affected me with more
than ordinary power, and sunk deeper into my memory with every effort I
made to forget it. In vain did I mock at my own weakness;—such self‐
derision is seldom sincere. In vain did I pursue my accustomed pleasures.
Their zest was, as usual, for ever new; but still came the saddening
consciousness of mortality, and, with it, the recollection of this
visionary promise, to which my fancy, in defiance of my reason, still
clung.
Sometimes indulging in reveries, that were little else than a continuation
of my dream, I even contemplated the possible existence of some secret, by
which youth might be, if not perpetuated, at least prolonged, and that
dreadful vicinity of death, within whose circle love pines and pleasure
sickens, might be for a while averted. “Who knows,” I would ask, “but that
in Egypt, that land of wonders, where Mystery hath yet unfolded but half
her treasures,—where so many dark secrets of the antediluvian world still
remain, undeciphered, upon the pillars of Seth—who knows but some charm,
some amulet, may lie hid, whose discovery, as this phantom hath promised,
but waits my coming—some compound of the same pure atoms, that scintillate
in the eternal stars, and whose infusion into the frame of man might make
him, too, fadeless and immortal!”
Thus did I fondly speculate, in those rambling moods, when the life of
excitement which I led, acting upon a warm heart and vivid fancy, produced
an intoxication of spirit, during which I was not wholly myself. This
bewilderment, too, was not a little increased by the constant struggle
between my own natural feelings, and the cold, mortal creed of my sect, in
endeavouring to escape from whose deadening bondage I but broke loose into
the realms of romance and fantasy.
Even, however, in my calmest and soberest moments, that strange vision
perpetually haunted me. In vain were all my efforts to chase it from my
mind; and the deliberate conclusion to which I came at last, was, that
without, at least, a visit to Egypt, I could not rest, nor, till convinced
of my folly by disappointment, be reasonable. I, therefore, announced
without delay to my associates of the Garden, the intention which I had
formed to pay a visit to the land of Pyramids. To none of them did I dare
to confess the vague, visionary impulse that actuated me. Knowledge was
the object that I alleged, while Pleasure was that for which they gave me
credit. The interests of the School, it was apprehended, would suffer by
my absence; and there were some tenderer ties, which had still more to
fear from separation. But for the former inconvenience a temporary remedy
was provided; while the latter a skilful distribution of vows and sighs
alleviated. Being furnished with recommendatory letters to all parts of
Egypt, in the summer of the year 257, A.D. I set sail for Alexandria.