Melmoth the Wanderer quotes

… on his sharp elbow, and pushing away the housekeeper (who attempted to settle his nightcap, that had been shoved on one side in the struggle, and gave his haggard, dying face, a kind of grotesque fierceness), bellowed out in tones that made the company start—

“What the devil brought ye all here?”

The question scattered the whole party for a moment; but rallying instantly, they communed among themselves in whispers, and frequently using the sign of the cross, muttered “The devil—Christ save us, the devil in his mouth the first word he spoke.”

The question scattered the whole party for a moment; but rallying instantly, they communed among themselves in whispers, and frequently using the sign of the cross, muttered “The devil—Christ save us, the devil in his mouth the first word he spoke.”

“Aye,” roared the invalid, “and the devil in my eye the first sight I see.”

“Where—where?” cried the terrified housekeeper, clinging close to the invalid in her terror, and half-hiding herself in the blanket, which she snatched without mercy from his struggling and exposed limbs.

“Well, what did you see that you—you took notice of?”

“A picture, sir!⁠—the original is still alive.”

John, though under the impression of his recent feelings, could not but look incredulous.

… could decide) was it in a dream or not, that he saw the figure of his ancestor appear at the door?—hesitatingly as he saw him at first on the night of his uncle’s death—saw him enter the room, approach his bed, and heard him whisper,

“You have burned me, then; but those are flames I can survive.⁠—I am alive⁠—I am beside you.”

Melmoth started, sprung from his bed—it was broad daylight. He looked round—there was no human being in the room but himself. He felt a slight pain in the wrist of his right arm.

but those are flames I can survive.—I am alive—I am beside you.” Melmoth started, sprung from his bed—it was broad daylight. He looked round—there was no human being in the room but himself. He felt a slight pain in the wrist of his right arm.

He looked at it, it was black and blue, as from the recent grip of a strong hand.

The men partook eagerly of the excitement of enterprise and danger.

A storm without doors is, after all, better than a storm within; without we have something to struggle with, within we have only to suffer

;

wasn’t I right?” And as the storm increased, his voice was still heard, “wasn’t I right?” And when the cries of the perishing crew were distinctly wafted to their ears, he was still heard in the interval repeating, “But wasn’t I right?”

Singular sentiment of pride, that can erect its trophies amid the grave.

’Tis in this spirit we give advice to those who suffer from life, as well as from the elements; and when the heart of the victim breaks, console ourselves by exclaiming, “Didn’t I foretell it all? did I not tell you how it would be?”

they felt as if they were echoing that of the victims whose corses were in a few moments to be dashed against their feet, mangled and lifeless.

When the cry had ceased, Melmoth heard a laugh that chilled his blood.

It was from the figure that stood above him.

I laid hold of this with the grasp of a drowning man. But a drowning man never grasped a straw so weak as he who depends on the worldly feeling of another for the support of his own.

Pleasure is very selfish; and when selfishness pleads to selfishness for relief, it is like a bankrupt asking his fellow-prisoner to go bail for him.

This was my conviction at the moment, yet still I reflected (for suffering supplies the place of experience in youth, and they are most expert casuists who have graduated only in the school of misfortune), I reflected, that a taste for pleasure, while it renders …

Be that as it may, I passed a few days after his visit in a state of indescribable excitement. I had something to hope, and that is often better than something to enjoy.

The cup of hope always excites thirst, that of fruition disappoints or quenches it.

I took long walks in the garden alone. I framed imaginary conversations to myself. The boarders observed me, and said to each other, according to their instructions, “He is meditating on his vocation, he is supplicating for illuminating grace, let us not disturb him.”

Be that as it may, I passed a few days after his visit in a state of indescribable excitement.

I had something to hope, and that is often better than something to enjoy.

The cup of hope always excites thirst, that of fruition disappoints or quenches it. I took long walks in the garden alone. I framed imaginary conversations to myself.

Still I felt the most exquisite enjoyment in these reveries, and perhaps it was not diminished by the thought how I was deceiving my companions the whole time.

But dissimulation always teaches dissimulation; and the only question is, whether we shall be the masters of the art or its victims?

a question soon decided by our self-love.

I obeyed the summons. A black bandage, severe headache, and an unnatural paleness, were the only testimonies of my accident, as it was called; and the Director had suggested to her that this was the time to fix the impression.

How well religious persons understand the secret of making every event of the present world operate on the future, while they pretend to make the future predominate over the present.

Were I to outlive the age of man, I should never forget my interview with my mother. She was alone when I entered, and seated with her back to me. I knelt and kissed her hand.

“But why do you speak with such apathy? are the odour of the flowers, and the consolations of your Superior, to be appreciated in the same breath?”

“Because I am to be a monk.”

“Nay, brother, will you never utter anything but that phrase, which carries no meaning with it but that of stupefaction or delirium?”

I said to those who attended me that morning,

“You are arraying me for a victim, but I can turn the executioners into the victims if I please”

—and I laughed. The laugh terrified those who were about me—they retreated—they represented my state to the Superior. He came to my apartment.

The folds of his habit, refusing to announce his internal agitation, seemed as they were cut out of stone. His silence imperceptibly softened me—I blamed myself for my violence.

Thus men of the world command us by their passions, and men of the other world by the apparent suppression of them.

At last he said, “My son, you have revolted from God, resisted his Holy Spirit, profaned his sanctuary, and insulted his minister—in his name and my own I forgive you all.

and perhaps, in this state, I was best fitted for the monotonous existence to which I was doomed. It is certain that I performed all the conventual functions with a regularity that left nothing to be blamed, and an apathy that left nothing for praise.

My life was a sea without a tide.

The bell did not toll for service with more mechanical punctuality than I obeyed the summons.

On rising from my knees, I was embraced by half the community. Some of them actually shed tears, the source of whose fountain was surely not in their hearts.

Hypocritical joy insults only its dupe, but hypocritical grief degrades the professor.

That whole day was passed in a kind of revelry. Exercises were abridged—the refections embellished with confectionary—everyone had permission to go from cell to cell, without an order from the Superior.

He was desired to retire to his cell. He did so, but the monks were not satisfied with this examination. They had long suspected Fra Paolo of irregularity, and imagined they might extort the confession of it from this youth, whose humanity increased their suspicion.

The virtues of nature are always deemed vices in a convent.

Accordingly, he had hardly been in bed when they surrounded him. They told him they came by command of the Superior to enjoin him a further penance, unless he disclosed the secret of the interest he felt for Fra Paolo.

This is very selfish, very misanthropic, you will say, but it is also very natural. You have yourself seen the cages suspended in the cells—are not the tame birds always employed to allure the wild ones?

We were caged birds, can you blame us for the deception?

”

My conscience is dead, and can neither hear, utter, or echo a reproach. I was amazed—I struggled against my own conviction. I said, “But your regularity in religious exercises—”

“Did you never hear a bell toll?”

“But your voice was always the loudest and most distinct in the choir.”

“But your voice was always the loudest and most distinct in the choir.”

“Did you never hear an organ played?”

I shuddered, yet I still went on with my queries—I thought I could not know too much. I said, “But, my brother, the religious exercises in which you were constantly engaged, must have imperceptibly instilled something of their spirit into you?—is it not so?

He laughed.

There is something very horrible in the laugh of a dying man: Hovering on the verge of both worlds, he seems to give the lie to both, and proclaim the enjoyments of one, and the hopes of another, alike an imposture.

“I performed that miracle myself,” he said with all the calmness, and, alas! something of the triumph of a deliberate impostor. “I knew the reservoir by which the fountain was supplied—by consent of the Superior it was drawn off in the course of the night.

All saints, from Muhammad down to Francis Xavier, were only a compound of insanity, pride, and self-imposition;—the latter would have been of less consequence, but that men always revenge their imposition on themselves, by imposing to the utmost on others.”

There is no more horrible state of mind than that in which we are forced by conviction to listen on, wishing every word to be false, and knowing every word to be true.

Such was mine, but I tried to palliate it by saying, “It was never my ambition to be a saint; but is the lot of all, then, so deplorable?”

I felt as if every countenance was turned on me, and every tongue said in silence, “Thou art the man.” Often I wished that the storm I felt was gathering around me, would burst at once.

It is better to hear the thunder than to watch the cloud.

It did not burst, however, then. And when the duties of the day were over, I retired to my cell, and remained there, pensive, anxious, and irresolute.

I no longer struggled, for I knew escape was in vain, but I supplicated them at least to leave me a light; and I petitioned for this with as much earnestness as I could have done for my liberty.

Thus it is that misery always breaks down the mind into petty details.

We have not strength to comprehend the whole of our calamity. We feel not the mountain which is heaped on us, but the nearest grains press on and grind us.

and I petitioned for this with as much earnestness as I could have done for my liberty. Thus it is that misery always breaks down the mind into petty details. We have not strength to comprehend the whole of our calamity.

We feel not the mountain which is heaped on us, but the nearest grains press on and grind us.

I said, “In Christian mercy leave me a light, if it be but to defend myself against the reptiles that must swarm here.”

Recollect my frame worn out with famine, my mind worn out with persecution. I struggled with what I was conscious was delirium—but this consciousness aggravated its horror.

It is better to be mad at once, than to believe that all the world is sworn to think and make you be so, in spite of your own consciousness of your sanity.

The whispers this night were so horrible, so full of ineffable abominations, of—I cannot think of them—that they maddened my very ear. My senses seemed deranged along with my intellect.

These words, though uttered by a ragged demoniac (as they thought me), made them tremble.

Truth is rarely heard in convents, and therefore its language is equally emphatical and portentous.

The monks crossed themselves, and, as I left the apartment, repeated, “But how then—what if we prevented this mischief?”

and never did an audience long more for the drawing up of the curtain at a popular opera, than the religious and irreligious of Madrid did for the developement of the scene which was acting at the convent of the Ex-Jesuits.

In Catholic countries, sir, religion is the national drama; the priests are the principal performers, the populace the audience; and whether the piece concludes with a Don Giovanni plunging in flames, or the beatification of a saint, the applause and the enjoyment is the same.

I feared my destiny was to be the former. I knew nothing of the Bishop, and hoped nothing from his visit; but my hopes began to rise in proportion to the visible fears of the society.

Of the desolation of mind into which the rejection of my appeal plunged me, I can give no account, for I retain no distinguishing image.

All colours disappear in the night, and despair has no diary⁠—monotony is her essence and her curse.

Hours have I walked in the garden, without retaining a single impression but that of the sounds of my footsteps;—thought, feeling, passion, and all that employs them—life and futurity, extinct and swallowed up.

To features like his, frowns were a habit, and smiles a convulsion. He could produce nothing but a rictus Sardonicus, the terrors of which there is no describing.

It is very frightful to behold crime in its merriment⁠—its smile must be purchased by many groans.

My blood ran cold as I looked at him. I waited for the sound of his voice as a kind of relief.

He answered, “Follow me, and feel your way in darkness.” Dreadful sounds!—Those who tell us the whole of our calamity always appear malignant, for our hearts, or our imaginations, always flatter us that it is not so great as reality proves it to be.

Truth is told us by any mouth sooner than our own.

In darkness, total darkness, and on my hands and knees, for I could no longer stand, I followed him. This motion soon affected my head; I grew giddy first, then stupefied. I paused.

… will feel thus at their final sentence, when they know all that is to be suffered, and dare not disclose to each other that horrible truth which is no longer a secret, but which the profound silence of their despair would seem to make one.

The secret of silence is the only secret.

Words are a blasphemy against that taciturn and invisible God, whose presence enshrouds us in our last extremity. These moments that appeared to me endless, were soon to cease. My companion sprung up—he uttered a cry of joy. I imagined him deranged—he was not.

When he had finished his monstrous profanation of the holy sign, I fixed my eyes on him with an expression not to be mistaken. He saw it.

There is not so bitter a reproach on earth as silence, for it always seems to refer the guilty to their own hearts, whose eloquence seldom fails to fill up the pause very little to the satisfaction of the accused.

My look threw him into a rage, that I am now convinced not the most bitter upbraidings could have caused.

But your guilt is my exculpation, your sufferings are my triumph. I need not repent, I need not believe; if you suffer, I am saved—that is enough for me.

How glorious and easy it is to erect at once the trophy of our salvation, on the trampled and buried hopes of another’s!

How subtle and sublime that alchemy, that can convert the iron of another’s contumacy and impenitence into the precious gold of your own redemption! I have literally worked out my salvation by your fear and trembling.

I remember no more for many days, though I have struggled to do so, and caught from time to time glimpses of thoughts better lost.

Oh, sir, there are some criminals of the imagination, whom if we could plunge into the oubliettes of its magnificent but lightly-based fabric, its lord would reign more happy.

Many days elapsed, indeed, before the Jew began to feel his immunity somewhat dearly purchased, by the additional maintenance of a troublesome, and, I fear, a deranged inmate.

My consequence was actually lessened in my own eyes, by ceasing to become the victim of persecution, by which I had suffered so long.

While people think it worth their while to torment us, we are never without some dignity, though painful and imaginary.

Even in the Inquisition I belonged to somebody—I was watched and guarded;—now, I was the outcast of the whole earth, and I wept with equal bitterness and depression at the hopeless vastness of the desert I had to traverse.

I actually for a moment believed myself the object of their cruelty.

The drama of terror has the irresistible power of converting its audience into its victims.

The Jew had kept apart from the tumult of the night. He had, I suppose, been saying within himself, in the language of your admirable poet,

… to hang her wreath of flowers round the broken remains of an idol half-defaced and half-hidden among the fragments of stone, but clustered over with that rich vegetation which seems, in oriental countries, to announce the eternal triumph of nature amid the ruins of art.

Every year renews the rose, but what year shall see a pyramid rebuilt?

As the young Indian hung her wreath on the shapeless stone, a voice murmured, “There is a withered flower there.”

… who had been accustomed to them, as to the alternation of night and day—who could not remember the fearful impression of the first, and, above all, who had never heard any terror of them expressed by another—perhaps the primitive cause of fear in most minds.

Pain she had never felt⁠—of death she had no idea⁠—how, then, could she become acquainted with fear?

When a northwester, as it is termed, visited the island, with all its terrific accompaniments of midnight darkness, clouds of suffocating dust, and thunders like the trumpet of doom, she stood amid the leafy colonnades of the banyan-tree, ignorant of her danger, watching the cowering …

… a cataract—engulfed in the depths of the ocean—rising again to light on the swell of the enormous billows, as if she were heaved on the back of a whale—deafened with the roar—giddy with the rush—till terror and delight embraced in that fearful exercise of imagination.

So she lived like a flower amid sun and storm, blooming in the light, and bending to the shower, and drawing the elements of her sweet and wild existence from both.

And both seemed to mingle their influences kindly for her, as if she was a thing that nature loved, even in her angry mood, and gave a commission to the storm to nurture her, and to the deluge to spare the ark of her innocence, …

you cannot weep,” she said, “what an advantage I have over you! You eat, though your young one, your own one, is dead; but could I ever drink of the milk of the cocoa, if he could no longer taste it?

I begin to comprehend what he said⁠—to think, then, is to suffer⁠—and a world of thought must be a world of pain!

But how delicious are these tears! Formerly I wept for pleasure—but there is a pain sweeter than pleasure, that I never felt till I beheld him. Oh! who would not think, to have the joy of tears?”

“And have you then adopted no mode of expressing your thoughts of this Being, that is, of worshipping him?” said the stranger.

“I smile when the sun rises in its beauty, and I weep when I see the evening star rise,” said Immalee.

“And do you recoil at the inconsistencies of varied modes of worship, and yet you yourself employ smiles and tears in your address to the Deity?”

“And do you recoil at the inconsistencies of varied modes of worship, and yet you yourself employ smiles and tears in your address to the Deity?”

“I do⁠—for they are both the expressions of joy with me,” said the poor Indian; “the sun is as happy when he smiles through the rain-clouds, as when he burns in the mid-height of heaven, in the fierceness of his beauty; and I am happy whether I smile or I weep.”

“Those whom you are about to see,” said the stranger, offering her the telescope, “are as remote in their forms of worship as smiles from tears; but they are not, like you, equally happy in both.”

… dance of the Almahs, and appear, by their open lips and clapped hands, to keep time to the sound of the silver bells that tinkled round their slight ankles, while their infants were writhing in their dying agony—she dropped the telescope in horror, and exclaimed,

“The world that thinks does not feel. I never saw the rose kill the bud!”

“But look again,” said the tempter, “to that square building of stone, round which a few stragglers are collected, and whose summit is surmounted by a trident—that is the temple of Mahadeva, a goddess who possesses neither the power or the popularity of the great …

Immalee, revolted and indignant at the sight, though she could not hear the words that accompanied it, demanded the reason of it.

“Their religion,” said the stranger, “binds them to hate all who do not worship as they do.”

“Alas!” said Immalee, weeping, “is not that hatred which their religion teaches, a proof that theirs is the worst?

Over Immalee’s, it breathed that deep and delicious reverie, which those forms of nature that unite tranquillity and profundity diffuse over souls whose innocence gives them a right to an unmingled and exclusive enjoyment of nature.

None but crimeless and unimpassioned minds ever truly enjoyed earth, ocean, and heaven.

At our first transgression, nature expels us, as it did our first parents, from her paradise forever.

None but crimeless and unimpassioned minds ever truly enjoyed earth, ocean, and heaven.

At our first transgression, nature expels us, as it did our first parents, from her paradise forever.

To the stranger the view was fraught with far different visions. He viewed it as a tiger views a forest abounding with prey; there might be the storm and the wreck;

and when he had done his utmost to explain it to her, she continued to repeat (her white finger on her scarlet lip, and her small foot beating the moss), in a kind of pouting inquietude,

“Why should some have more than they can eat, and others nothing to eat?”

“This,” continued the stranger, “is the most exquisite refinement on that art of torture which those beings are so expert in—to place misery by the side of opulence—to bid the wretch who dies for want feed on the sound of the splendid equipages which shake …

… children in water, or sprinkle them with a few drops of it—or whether they should partake of the memorials of the death of him they all profess to love, standing or on their knees—or—But I weary you with this display of human wickedness and absurdity.

One point is plain, they all agree that the language of the book is, ‘Love one another,’ while they all translate that language, ‘Hate one another.’

But as they can find neither materials or excuse from that book, they search for them in their own minds—and there they are never at a loss, for human minds are inexhaustible in malignity and hostility;

This union of inward despair and outward levity is not unnatural.

Smiles are the legitimate offspring of happiness, but laughter is often the misbegotten child of madness, that mocks its parent to her face.

With such an expression he turned towards her, and asked, “But what is your meaning, Immalee?”

A long pause followed this question, and at length the Indian answered, “I know not,” with that natural and delicious art which teaches the sex to disclose their meaning in words that seem to contradict it.

“I know not,” means, “I know too well.”

Her companion understood this, and enjoyed his anticipated triumph. “And why do your tears flow, Immalee?”

“No—no—no!” said the Indian, applying her white and delicate hands to her ears, and then clasping them on her bosom; “I feel them too much.”

“Hate me⁠—curse me!” said the stranger, not heeding her, and stamping till the reverberation of his steps on the hollow and loosened stones almost contended with the thunder

; “hate me, for I hate you—I hate all things that live—all things that are dead—I am myself hated and hateful!”

Suppress, banish, destroy it. Crush it as you would a young reptile before its growth had made it loathsome to the eye, and poisonous to existence!”

“I never crushed even a reptile in my life,” answered Immalee, unconscious that this matter-of-fact answer was equally applicable in another sense.

“You love, then,” said the stranger; “but,” after a long and ominous pause, “do you know whom it is you love?”

… in which no power merely human could be supposed to traverse them—that his marked and fearful habit was everywhere to seek out the most wretched, or the most profligate, of the community among which he flung himself—what was his object in seeking them was unknown.

“It is well known,” said a deep-toned voice, falling on the ears of the startled listeners like the toll of a strong but muffled bell⁠—“it is well known both to him and them.”

It was now twilight, but the eyes of all could distinguish the figure of the stranger as he passed; and some even averred they could see the ominous lustre of those eyes which never rose on human destiny but as planets of woe.

“I remember all that ever passed in that isle. My life formerly was all anticipation—now it is all retrospection.

The life of the happy is all hopes⁠—that of the unfortunate all memory.

Yes, I remember catching a glimpse of that religion so beautiful and pure; and when they brought me to a Christian land, I thought I should have found them all Christians.”

“I remember all that ever passed in that isle.

My life formerly was all anticipation⁠—now it is all retrospection.

The life of the happy is all hopes—that of the unfortunate all memory. Yes, I remember catching a glimpse of that religion so beautiful and pure; and when they brought me to a Christian land, I thought I should have found them all Christians.”

“I understand you not,” said the pure and timid Isidora; “and if you would not terrify me to madness, laugh no more—no more, at least, in that fearful way!”

“I cannot weep,” said Melmoth, fixing on her his dry and burning eyes, strikingly visible in the moonlight; “the fountain of tears has been long dried up within me, like that of every other human blessing.”

“I can weep for both,” said Isidora, “if that be all.” And her tears flowed fast, as much from memory as from grief—and when those sources are united, God and the sufferer only know how fast and bitterly they fall.

His sarcastic levity bore a direct and fearful proportion to his despair. Perhaps this is also the case in circumstances and characters less atrocious.

A mirth which is not gaiety is often the mask which hides the convulsed and distorted features of agony

—and laughter, which never yet was the expression of rapture, has often been the only intelligible language of madness and misery. Ecstasy only smiles—despair laughs.

A mirth which is not gaiety is often the mask which hides the convulsed and distorted features of agony—and laughter, which never yet was the expression of rapture, has often been the only intelligible language of madness and misery.

Ecstasy only smiles⁠—despair laughs.

It seemed, too, as if no keenness of ironical insult, no menace of portentous darkness, had power to revolt the feelings, or alarm the apprehensions, of the devoted being to whom they were addressed.

In a still lower tone the answer was returned. Incredulous, and hoping that the answer had deceived her, she again repeated her petition. A withering monosyllable, not to be told, thundered in her ears—and she shrieked as she closed the casement.

Alas! the casement only shut out the form of the stranger⁠—not his image.

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.

“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. Anything of intense and terrible resolution—of feeling or action in extremity—made harmony with the powerful but disordered chords of his soul.

“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.

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?”

“Out on it, daughter!” interposed Doña Clara, who happened to overhear the question; “This is a vain and sinful pastime—the invention of the devil to delude the children of folly—hateful in the eyes of heaven and its saints—and abhorred and renounced by the faithful.”

“Then there are two Gods,” said Isidora sighing, “the God of smiles and happiness, and the God of groans and blood. Would I could serve the former!”

“I will take order you shall serve the latter, heathenish and profane that you are!” answered Doña Clara, as she hurried her from the assembly, shocked at the scandal which her words might have given.

“And do you then, indeed, believe in holy things?” asked Isidora. “Do you indeed?” she repeated anxiously.

“I believe in a God,” answered Melmoth, in a voice that froze her blood; “you have heard of those who believe and tremble⁠—such is he who speaks to you!”

Isidora’s acquaintance with the book from which he quoted, was too limited to permit her to understand the allusion. She knew, according to the religious education she had received, more of her breviary than her Bible;

and this sound she had longed to hear again, had now, amid the stillness of the night, a cadence so melancholy, that she almost wished it hushed again.

Thus always, to the unhappy, the very fulfilment of their morbid wishings becomes a source of disappointment, and the change they hoped for is desirable only as it gives them cause to long for another change.

In the morning they say, Would to God it were evening!—Evening comes—and in the evening they say, Would to God it were morning!

And as the stranger proceeded in his narrative, every pause, which emotion or weariness might cause, was meetly filled by the deep rushing of the rain that fell in torrents—the sighs of the wind—and now and then a faint, distant, but long-continued peal of thunder.

“It sounds,” said the stranger, raising his eyes from the manuscript, “like the chidings of the spirits, that their secrets are disclosed!”

In the evening the priest called, and found the family much more composed. The certainty of evil had given them a kind of courage.

Suspense is the only evil against which it is impossible to set up a defence

—and, like young mariners in an untried sea, they almost felt ready to welcome the storm, as a relief from the deadly and loathsome sickness of anxiety. The honest resentment, and encouraging manner of the priest, were a cordial to their ears and hearts.

… diminished stock, to divide the scantier meal, calculate how far it was possible to reduce the claims of nature to the level of their ebbing means, and smile when they talked of the morrow to each other, but weep when they thought of it alone.

There is a withering monotony in the diary of misery⁠—“one day telleth another.”

But there came at length a day, when the last coin was expended, the last meal devoured, the last resource exhausted, the last hope annihilated, and the friendly priest himself told them weeping, he had nothing to give them but his prayers.

Enemy of mankind!” the speaker continued—“Alas! how absurdly is that title bestowed on the great angelic chief—the morning star fallen from its sphere!

What enemy has man so deadly as himself?

If he would ask on whom he should bestow that title aright, let him smite his bosom, and his heart will answer—Bestow it here!”

… with that lambent glory, while it caused the paleness of her young cheek—that preyed on her heart, while it seemed to her imagination that she clasped a young cherub in her arms, like the unfortunate queen of Virgil—that fire was a secret even to herself.—

She knew she felt, but knew not what she felt.

When first admitted into the Castle, and treated with sufficient hauteur by her grandfather and his sister, who could not forget the mean descent and fanatic principles of her father’s family, she remembered, that, amid the appalling grandeur and austere reserve of her reception, her …

And Elinor, half-screaming, exclaimed, “Is this he whom I loved?” Thus her mind, vacillating between contrasts so strongly opposed, began to feel its moorings give way.

She drifted from rock to rock, and on every rock she struck a wreck.

Elinor relinquished her usual meetings with the family—she sat in her own apartment all the day, and most of the evening. It was a lonely turret projecting so far from the walls of the Castle, that there were windows, or rather casements, on three sides.

but she knew not which way to steer, or what gale to follow. She trembled and shrunk from her doubtful pilotage, and the rudder was left to the mercy of the winds and waves.

Slender mercy do those experience who commit themselves to the tempests of the mental world

—better if they had sunk at once amid the strife of the dark waters in their wild and wintry rage; there they would soon have arrived at the haven where they would be secure.

… that that lip had often given the war-word to beings athirst for human blood, and that the arm that enfolded her so tenderly had pointed the weapons of death with resistless and terrible aim against bosoms that beat with all the cords of human affection.

She loved her young kinsman, but she trembled in the arms of the hero.

John Sandal sat down by her, and in a few moments the melody of his tones, the gentle facility of his manner, the eyes that smiled when the lips were closed, and the lips whose smile was more eloquent in silence than the language of …

Ann held out to him her withered but still snow-white hand to kiss. Margaret presented hers also, like a heroine to a feudal knight; and Elinor turned aside, and wept in delicious agony.

When we set ourselves resolutely to discover perfection in a character, we are always sure to find it.

But Elinor needed little aid from the pencil of imagination to colour the object that had been stamped by an ineffaceable touch upon her heart. Her kinsman’s character and temper developed themselves slowly, or rather were developed by external and accidental causes;

and perhaps the conflict which she now undertook was the hardest of all. She had received her first religious impressions under the roof of her Puritanic aunt, and, true or false, they had been so vivid, that she was anxious to revive them.

When the heart is robbed of its firstborn, there is nothing it will not try to adopt.

Elinor remembered a very affecting scene that had occurred in her childhood, beneath the roof where she now resided.

How dreadful is the conflict of superior intellect and a burning heart, with the perfect mediocrity of the characters and circumstances they are generally doomed to live with!

The battering-rams play against wool-bags⁠—the lightnings glance on ice, hiss, and are extinguished.

The greater strength we exhibit, we feel we are more and more paralyzed by the weakness of our enemies—our very energy becomes our bitterest enemy, as it fights in vain against the impregnable fortress of total vacuity!

The veracity and dignity of Margaret’s character, were inviolable securities for the truth of what she uttered; and perhaps that was the very reason why Elinor tried to shrink most from the conviction.

In a morbid state of heart, we cannot bear truth⁠—the falsehood that intoxicates us for a moment, is worth more than the truth that would disenchant us for life.

—“I hate him because he tells me the truth,” is the language natural to the human mind, from the slave of power to the slave of passion.

That devotion of the eye and heart—of the language and the look, that cannot be mistaken—were all obviously directed to Margaret. Still Elinor lingered in the Castle, and said to herself, while every day she saw and felt what was passing, “Perhaps.”

That is the last word that quits the lips of those who love.

She saw with all her eyes—she felt to the bottom of her soul—the obviously increasing attachment of John Sandal and Margaret; yet still she dreamed of interposing obstacles—of an explanation.

She saw with all her eyes—she felt to the bottom of her soul—the obviously increasing attachment of John Sandal and Margaret; yet still she dreamed of interposing obstacles—of an explanation.

When passion is deprived of its proper aliment, there is no telling the food on which it will prey

—the impossibilities to which, like a famished garrison, it will look for its wretched sustenance.

She had trusted to nature, and to this scene of their first meeting, to act as an interpreter between them—and still even in despair she trusted to it.

Perhaps there is not a more agonizing moment than that in which we feel the aspect of nature give a perfect vitality to the associations of our hearts, while they lie buried in those in which we try in vain to revive them.

She was soon undeceived.

… which, while it speaks of consolation, forbids hope—with that smile which angels may be supposed to give on the last conflict of a sufferer who is casting off the garments of mortality in pain and hope—with such an expression he whom she loved regarded her.

From another world he might have cast such a glance on her⁠—and it sealed her doom in this forever.

As, unable to witness the agony of the wound he had inflicted but could not heal, he turned from her, the last light of day faded from the hills—the sun of both worlds set on her eye and soul—she sunk on the earth, and notes …

Were this a life of calm privation, and pulseless apathy, her efforts would scarce have merit, and her sufferings hardly demand compassion; but it is one of pain incessant and immitigable.

The firstborn of her heart lies dead within it; but that heart is still alive with all its keenest sensibilities, its most vivid hopes, and its most exquisite sense of grief.

She sits beside him all day—she watches that eye whose light was life, and sees it fixed on her in glassy and unmeaning complacency—she dreams of that smile which burst on her soul like the morning sun over a landscape in spring, and sees that …

“ ‘Come near,’ said Melmoth, speaking very faintly—‘nearer. I am dying—how my life has been passed you know but too well.

Mine was the great angelic sin⁠—pride and intellectual glorying!

It was the first mortal sin—a boundless aspiration after forbidden knowledge! I am now dying. I ask for no forms of religion—I wish not to hear words that have to me no meaning, or that I wish had none! Spare your look of horror.

… over every object;—the way lay through a rocky road, that wound among mountains, or rather stony hills, bleak and bare as those which the weary traveller through the western isle sees rising amid the moors, to which they form a contrast without giving a relief.

Heavy rains had made deep gullies amid the hills, and here and there a mountain-stream brawled amid its stony channel, like a proud and noisy upstart, while the vast chasms that had been the beds of torrents which once swept through them in thunder, now stood gaping and ghastly like the deserted abodes of ruined nobility.

Not a sound broke on the stillness, except the monotonous echo of the hoofs of the mules answered from the hollows of the hill, and the screams of the birds, which, after a few short circles in the damp and cloudy air, fled back to …

He shook off the terrors of this visitation by the aid of time, and gave his courage the credit due to that aid.

Thus we all deal with the illusions of the imagination⁠—with this difference only, that the impassioned recall them with the tear of regret, and the unimaginative with the blush of shame.

Aliaga set out for the distant part of Spain where his presence was to save this tottering house in which he had an extensive concern, and wrote to Doña Clara, that it might be some months before he returned to the neighbourhood of Madrid.

After reading these letters, Aliaga’s mind began to flow in its usual channel.

There is no breaking through the inveterate habitudes of a thorough-paced mercantile mind, “though one rose from the dead.”

Besides, by this time the mysterious image of the stranger’s presence and communications were fading fast from a mind not at all habituated to visionary impressions.

… the last words were uttered, hurried on with submissive expedition, and Fra Jose sat down at length in his apartment to ruminate on the calamities and perplexities of the family, till he was actually overcome by the subject, and exclaimed in a tone of despair,

“Both bottles empty! Then it is useless to meditate further on this subject.”

He was roused at an earlier hour than he wished, by a message from Doña Clara, who, in the distress of a weak mind, accustomed always to factitious and external support, now felt as if every step she took without it, must lead to actual …

There was a weak but harassing tenacity about Doña Clara, that is the general adjunct to the female character when it combines intellectual mediocrity with rigid principle.

When she laid siege to a secret, the garrison might as well capitulate at once.

—What she wanted in vigour and ability, she supplied by a minute and gnawing assiduity. She never ventured to carry the fort by storm, but her obstinacy blockaded it till it was forced to surrender.

Passion itself evanishes into an illusion, unless it is hallowed by the consciousness of a God and of futurity. That sterility of the heart that forbids the growth of divine feeling, must be hostile also to every tender and generous sentiment.

He who is without a God must be without a heart!

Oh, my love, will you not, as you bend over my grave, wish my last slumbers to have been soothed by sounds like these—wish that they may whisper peace to your own?