CHAPTER XIII.

There sat a spirit in the vaults
In shape^ in hue^ in lineaments^, like life.
Southey's Thalaba.
" X AM convinced, that, had the passage been as long and intricate as any that ever an antiquarian pursued to discover the tomb of Cheops in the Pyramids, I would have rushed on in the blindness of my des- peration, till famine or exhaustion had compelled me to pause. But I had no such peril to encounter, — the floor of the passage was smooth, and the walls were
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matted, and though I proceeded in dark- ness, I proceeded in safety ; and provided my progress removed me far enough from the pursuit or discovery of the Inquisition, I scarcely cared how it might terminate.
" Amid this temporary magnanimity of despair, this state of mind which unites the extremes of courage atid pusillani- mity, I saw a faint light. Faint it was, but it was distinct, — I saw clearly it was light. Great God ! what a revulsion in my blood and heart, in all my physical and mental feelings, did this sun of my world of darkness create ! I venture to say, that my speed in approaching it was in the proportion of one hundred steps to one, compared to my crawling progress in the preceding darkness. As I approached, I could discover that the light gleamed through the broad crevices of a door, which, disjointed by subterranean damps, gave me as full a view of the apart- ment within, as if it were opened to
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me by the inmate. Through one of these crevices, before which I knelt in a mixture of exhaustion and curiosity, I could reconnoitre the whole of the inte- rior.
" It was a large apartment, hung with dark-coloured baize within four feet of the floor, and this intermediate part was thick- ly matted, probably to intercept the sub- terranean damps. In the centre of the room stood a table covered with black cloth ; it supported an iron lamp of an an- tique and singular form, by whose light I Iiad been directed, and was now enabled to descry furniture that appeared sufficient- ly extraordinary. There were, amid maps and globes, several instruments, of which my ignorance did not permit me then to know the use, — some, I have since learn- ed, were anatomical ; there was an electri- fying machine, and a curious model of a rack in ivory ; there were few books, but several scrolls of parchment, inscribed with
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larcre characters in red and ochre- coloured ink; and around the room were placed four skeletons, not in cases, but in a kind of upright coffin, that gave their bony emptiness a kind of ghastly and impera- tive prominence, as if they were the real and rightful tenants of that singular apart- ment^ Interspersed between them were the stuffed figures of animals I knew not then the names of, — an alligator, — some gigantic bones, which I took for those of Sampson, but which turned out to be fragments of those of the ^lammoth, — and antlers, which in my terror I believed to be those of the devil, but afterwards learned to be those of an Elk. Then I saw figures smaller, but not less horrible, — human and brute abortions, in all their states of anomalous and deformed con- struction, not preserved in spirits, but standing in the ghastly nakedness of their white diminutive bones ; these I conceiv- ed to be the attendant imps of some infer-
SSLnofOU**
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nal ceremony, which the grand wizard, who now burst on my sight, was to pre- side over.
" i\t the end of the table sat an old man, wrapped in a long robe ; his head was covered with a black velvet cap, with a broad border of furs, his spectacles were of such a size as almost to hide his face, and he turned over some scrolls of parchment with an anxious and trembling hand ; then seizing a scull that lay on the table, and grasping it in fingers hardly less bony, and not less yellow, seemed to apostrophize it in the most earnest manner. All my personal fears were lost in the thought of my being the involuntary witness of some infernal orgie. I was still kneeling at the door, when my long susjDended respiration burst forth in a groan, which reached the fioure seated at the table in a moment. Habitual vigilance supplied all the defects of age on the part of the listener. It was but the sensation of a moment to feel the door thrown open, my arm seized by an
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arm powerful though withered by age, and myself, as I thought, in the talons of a demon.
" The door was closed and bolted. An awful figure stood over nie, (for I had fallen on the floor), and thundered out, " Who art thou, and why art thou here ?" I knew not what to answer, and gazed with a fixed and speechless look on the skeletons and the other furniture of this terrible vault. " Hold," said the voice, " if thou art indeed exhausted, and needest refreshment, drink of this cup, and thou shalt be refreshed as with w4ne ; verily, it shall come into thy bowels^ as water, and as oil into thy bones," — and as he spoke he offered to me a cup with some liquid in it. I repelled him and his drink, Avhich I had not a doubt was some magical drug, with horror unutterable; and losing all other fears in the overwhelming^ one of be- coming a slave of Satan, and a victim of one of his agents, as 1 believed this extra- ordinary figure, I called on the name of
54j MELMOTH :
the Saviour and the saints, and, cross- ing myself at every sentence, exclaimed, " No, tempter, keep your infernal potions for the leprous lips of your imps, or swal- low them yourself. I have but this moment escaped from the hands of the Inquisition, and a million times rather would I return and yield myself their vic- tim, than consent to become yours, — your tender-mercies are the only cruelties I dread. Even in the prison of the holy office, where the faggots appeared to be lit before my eyes, and the chain already fastened round my body to bind it to the stake, I was sustained by a power that en- abled me to embrace objects so terrible to nature, sooner than escape them at the price of my salvation. The choice was offered me, and I made my election, — and so would I do were it to be offered a thou- sand times, though the last were at the stake, and the fire already kindling."
Here the Spaniard paused in some agi- tation. In the enthusiasm of his narra-
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tion, he had in some degree disclosed that secret which he had declared was incom- municable, except in confessing to a priest. Melmoth, who, from the narrative of Stanton, had been prepared to suspect something of this, did not think prudent to press him for a farther disclosure, and waited in silence till his emotion had sub- sided, without remark or question. Mon- rada at length resumed his narrative.
" While I was speaking, the old man viewed me wdth a look of calm surprise, that made me ashamed of my fears, even before I had ceased to utter them. " What I" said he at length, fixing appa- rently on some expressions that struck him, " art thou escaped from the arm that dealeth its blow in darkness, even the arm of the Inquisition ? Art thou that Nazarene youth who sousht refufje in the house of our brother Solomon, the son of Hilkiah, w^ho is called Feman Nunez by the idolaters in this land of his captivity ? Verily 1 trusted thou shouldst this night
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have eat of my bread, and drank of my cup, and been unto me as a scribe, for our brother Solomon testified concerning thee, saying, His pen is even as the pen of a ready writer."
" I gazed at him in astonishment. Some vague recollections of Solomon's being a- bout to disclose some safe and secret re- treat wandered over my mind ; and, while trembling at the singular apartment in which we were seated, and the employ- ment in which he seemed engaged, I yet felt a hope hover about my heart, which his knowledge of my situation appeared to justify. " Sit down," said he, observing with compassion that I was sinking alike under the exhaustion of fatigue and the distraction of terror ; " sit down, and eat a morsel of bread, and drink a cup of wine, and comfort thine heart, for thou seem est to be as one who hath escaped from the snare of the fowler, and from the dart of the hunter." I obeyed him invo- luntarily. I needed the refreshment he
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offered, and was about to partake of it, when an irresistible feeling of re- pugnance and horror overcame me ; and, as J thrust away the food he offered me, I pointed to the objects around me as the cause of my reluctance. He looked round for a moment, as doubting whether ob- jects so familiar to him, could be repul- sive to a stranger, and then shaking his head, " Thou art a fool," said he, " but thou art a Nazarene, and 1 pity thee; verily, those who had the teaching of thy youth, not only have shut the book of knowledge to thee, but have forgot to open it for themselves. Were not thy masters, the Jesuits, masters also of the healing art, and art thou not acquainted with the sight of its ordinary implements ? Eat, I pray thee, and be satisfied that none of these wall hurt thee. Yonder dead bones cannot weigh out or withhold thy food ; nor can they bind thy joints, or strain them with iron, or rend them with steel," as would the living arms that were stretch-
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ed forth to seize thee as their prey. And, as the Lord of hosts liveth, their prey wouldst thou have been, and a prey unto their iron and steel, were it not for the shelter of the roof of Adonijah to-night."
" I took some of the food he offered me, crossing myself at every mouthful, and drank the wine, which the feverish thirst of terror and anxiety made me swallow like water, but not without an internal prayer that it might not be converted into some deleterious and diabolical poison. The Jew Adonijah observed me with increasing compassion and contempt. — *' What," said he, " appals thee ? Were I possessed of the powers the superstition of thy sect ascribes to me, might I not make thee a banquet for fiends, instead of offer- ing thee food ? Might I not bring from the caverns of the earth the voices of those that " peep and mutter," instead of speak- ing unto thee with the voice of man ? Thou art in my power, yet have I no power or will to hurt thee. And dost
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thou, who art escaped from the dun- geons of the Inquisition, look as one that feareth on the things that thou seest a- round thee, the furniture of the cell of a secluded leach ? Within this apart- ment I have passed the term of sixty years, and dost thou shudder to visit it for a moment ? These be the skeletons of bodies, but in the den thou hast escaped from were the skeletons of perished souls. Here are relics of the wrecks or the ca- prices of nature, but thou art come from where the cruelty of man, permanent and persevering, unrelenting and unmitigated, hath never failed to leave the proofs of its power in abortive intellects, crippled frames, distorted creeds, and ossified hearts. More- over, there are around thee parchments and charts scrawled as it were with the blood of man, but, were it even so, could a thousand such volumes cause such terror to the human eye, as a page of the history of thy prison, written as it is in blood.
Co MELMOTH :
drawn, not from the frozen veins of the dead, but from the bursting hearts of the living. Eat, Nazarene, there is no poi- son in thy food, — drink, there is no drug in thy cup. Darest thou promise thyself that in the prison of the Inquisition, or even in the cells of the Jesuits ? Eat and drink without fear in the vault, even in the vault of Adonijah the Jew. If thou daredst to have done so in the dwellings of the Nazarenes, I had never beheld thee here. Hast thou fed ?" he added, and I bowed. " Hast thou drank of the cup I gave thee ?" my torturing thirst returned, and I gave him back the cup. He smiled, but the smile of age, — the smile of lips over which more than an hundred years have passed, has an expression more repul- sive and hideous than can be deemed ; it is never the smile of pleasure, — it is a frown of the mouth, and I shrunk before its grim wrinkles, as the Jew Adonijah added, " If thou hast eat and drank, it is
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time for thee to rest. Come to thy bed, it may be harder than they have given thee in thy prison, but behold it shall be safer. Come and rest thee there, it may be that the adversary and the enemy shall not there find thee out."
" I followed him through passages so de- vious and intricate, that, bewildered as I was with the events of the night, they forced on my memory the well-known fact, that in Madrid the Jews have sub- terranean passages to each other's habita- tions, which have hitherto baffled all the industry of the Inquisition. I slept that night, or rather day, (for the sun had risen), on a pallet laid on the floor of a room, small, lofty, and matted halfway up the walls. One narrow and grated window admitted the light of the sun, that arose after that eventful night ; and amid the sweet sound of bells, and the still sweeter of human life, aw^ke and in motion around me, I sunk into a slumber
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that was unbroken even by a dream, till the day was closing ; or, in the language of Adonijah, " till the shadows of the evening were upon the face of all the earth."