CHAPTER XIV.

^' W-Tiy, I did say something about getting a licence
from the Cadi."
Blue Beard.
*' The visits of the stranger were inter- rupted for some time, and when he re- turned, it seemed as if their purpose was no longer the same. He no longer at- tempted to corrupt her principles, or so- phisticate her understanding, or mystify her views of religion. On the latter sub- ject he was quite silent, seemed to re- gret he had ever touched on it, and not
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all her restless avidity of knowledge, or caressing importunity of manner, could extract from him another syllable on the subject. He repayed her amply, how- ever, by the rich, varied, and copious stores of a mind, furnished with matter apparently beyond the power of human experience to have collected, confined, as it is, within the limits of threescore years and ten. But this never struck Immalee ; she took " no note of time ;" and the tale of yesterday, or the record of past cen- turies, were synchronized in a mind to which facts and dates were alike unknown ; and which was alike unacquainted with the graduating shades of manner, and the linked progress of events.
" They often sat on the shore of the isle in the evening, where Immalee always prepared a seat of moss for her visitor, and gazed together on the blue deep in silence ; for Immalee's newly-awaked intellect and heart felt that bankruptcy of language, which profound feeling will impress on the
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most cultivated intellect, and which, in her case, was increased alike by her inno- cence and her ignorance ; and her visitor had perhaps reasons still stronger for his silence. This silence, however, was often broken. There was not a vessel that sail- ed in the distance which did not suggest an eager question from Immalee, and did not draw a slow and extorted reply from the stranger. His knowledge was immense, various, and profound, (but this was rather a subject of delight than of curiosity to his beautiful pupil) ; and from the Indian ca- noe, rowed by naked natives, to the splendid, and clumsy, and ill-managed vessels of the Rajahs, that floated like huge and gilded fish tumbling in uncouth and shapeless mirth on the wave, to the gallant and well-manned vessels of Europe, that cameonlike the gods of ocean bringing fertility and knowledge, the discoveries of art, and the blessings of civilization, wherever their sails were un- furled and their anchors dropt, — he could tell her all, — describe the destination of
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every vessel, — the feelings, characters, and national habits of the many-minded in- mates,— and enlarge her knowledge to a degree which books never could have done ; for colloquial communication is always the most vivid and impressive medium, and lips have a prescriptive right to be the first intelligencers in instruction and in love.
" Perhaps this extraordinary being, with regard to whom the laws of mortality and the feelings of nature seemed to be alike suspended, felt a kind of sad and wild re- pose from the destiny that immitigably pursued him, in the society of Immalee. We know not, and can never tell, what sensations her innocent and helpless beauty inspired him with, but the result was, that he ceased to regard her as his victim ; and, when seated beside her listening to her questions, or answering them, seemed to enjoy the few lucid intervals of his insane and morbid existence. Absent from her, he returned to the world to torture and
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to tempt in the mad-house where the Englishman Stanton was tossing on his straw "
" Hold !" said Melmoth ; " what name have you mentioned ?" — " Have patience with me, Senhor," said Mon9ada, who did not like interruption ; " have patience, and you will find we are all beads strung on the same string. Why should we jar against each other? our union is indis- soluble." He proceeded with the story of the unhappy Indian, as recorded in the parchments of Adonijah, which he had been compelled to copy, and of which he was anxious to impress every line and let- ter on his listener, to substantiate his own extraordinary story.
"• When absent from her, his purpose was what I have described ; but while pre- sent, that purpose seemed suspended ; he gazed often on her with eyes whose wild and fierce lustre was quenched in a dew that he hastily wiped away, and gazed on her again. While he sat near her on the
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flowers she had collected for him, — while he looked on those timid and rosy lips that waited his signal to speak, like buds that did not dare to blow till the sun shone on them, — while he heard accents issue from those lips which he felt it would be as im- possible to pervert as it would be to teach the nightingale blasphemy,- -he sunk down beside her, passed his hand over his livid brow, and, wiping off some cold drops, thought for a moment he was not the Cain of the moral world, and that the brand was effaced, — at least for a moment. The habi- tual and impervious gloom of his soul soon returned. He felt again the gnawings of the worm that never dies, and the scorch- ings of the fire that is never to be quenched. He turned the fatal light of his dark eyes on the only being who never shrunk from their expression, for her innocence made her fearless. He looked intensely at her, while rage, despair, and pity, convulsed his heart ; and as he beheld the confiding and conciliating smile with which this gentle
G 2
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being met a look that might have withered the heart of the boldest within him, — a Semele gazing in supplicating love on the lightnings that were to blast her,— one hu- man drop dimmed their portentous lustre, as its softened rays fell on her. Turning fiercely away, he flung his view on the ocean, as if to find, in the sight of human life, some fuel for the fire that was consuming his vitals. The ocean, that lay calm and bright before them as a sea of jasper, never reflected two more different countenances, or sent more opposite feelings to two hearts. Over Immalee's, it breathed that deep and delicious reverie, which those forms of na- ture that unite tranquillity and profundity diffuse over souls whose innocence gives them a right to an unmingled and exclu- sive enjoyment of nature. None but crime- less 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 para- dise for ever.
" To the stranger the view was fraught
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with far different visions. He viewed it as a tiger views a forest abounding with prey ; there might be the storm and the wreck ; or, if the elements were obstinate- ly calm, there might be the gaudy and gilded pleasure barge, in which a Rajah and the beautiful women of his haram were inhaling the sea breeze under canopies of silk and gold, overturned by the unskil- fulness of their rowers, and their plunge, and struggle, and dying agony, amid the smile and beauty of the calm ocean, pro- duce one of those contrasts in which his fierce spirit delighted. Or, were even this denied, he could watch the vessels as they floated by, and, from the skiff to the huge trader, be sure that every one bore its freight of woe and crime. There came on the European vessels full of the passions and crimes of another world,— of its sateless cu- pidity, remorseless cruelty, its inteUigence, all awake and ministrant in the cause of its evil passions, and its very refinement operating as a stimulant to more inventive
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indulgence, and more systematized vice. He saw them approach to traffic for " gold, and silver, and the souls of men;" — ^to grasp, with breathless rapacity, the gems and precious produce of those luxuriant climates, and deny the inhabitants the rice that supported their inoffensive existence ; — to discharge the load of their crimes, their lust and their avarice, and after ravaging the land, and plundering the natives, de- part, leaving behind them famine, de- spair, and execration ; and bearing with them back to Europe, blasted constitu- tions, inflamed passions, ulcerated hearts, and consciences that could not endure the extinction of a light in their sleeping apartment.
" Such were the objects for which be watched ; and one evening, when solicited by Immalee's incessant questions about the worlds to which the vessels were has- tening, or to which they were returning, he gave her a description of the world, after his manner, in a spirit of mingled
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derision, malignity, and impatient bitter- ness at the innocence of her curiosity. There was a mixture of fiendish acrimony, biting irony, and fearful truth, in his wild sketch, which was often interrupted by the cries of astonishment, grief, and terror, from his hearer. " They come," said he, pointing to the European vessels, " from a world where the only study of the inhabi- tants is how to increase their cAvn suffer- ings, and those of others, to the utmost possible degree ; and, considering they have only had 4000 years practice at the task, it must be allowed they are tolerable proficients." — " But is it possible ?" — " You shall judge. In aid, doubtless, of this de- sirable object, they have been all originally gifted with imperfect constitutions and evil passions ; and, not to be ungrateful, they pass their lives in contriving how to augment the infirmities of the one, and aggravate the acerbities of the other. They are not like you, Immalee, a being who breathes amid roses, and subsists onlv
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on the juices of fruits, and the lymph of the pure element. In order to render their thinking powers more gross, and their spirits more fiery, they devour ani- mals, and torture from abused vegetables a drink, that, without quenching thirst, has the power of extinguishing reason, in- flaming passion, and shortening life — the best result of all — for life under such cir- cumstances owes its only felicity to the shortness of its duration."
" Immalee shuddered at the mention of animal food, as the most delicate Euro- pean would at the mention of a cannibal feast; and while tears trembled in her beautiful eyes, she turned them wistfully on her peacocks with an expression that made the stranger smile. " Some," said he, by way of consolation, " have a taste by no means so sophisticated, — they con- tent themselves at their need with the flesh of .their fellow-creatures ; and as human life is always miserable, and animal life never so, (except from elementary causes).
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one would imagine this the most humane and salutary way of at once gratifying the appetite, and diminishing the mass of hu- man suffering. But as these people pique themselves on their ingenuity in aggravat- ing the sufferings of their situation, they leave thousands of human beings yearly to perish by hunger and grief, and amuse themselves in feeding on animals, whom, by depriving of existence, they deprive of the only pleasure their condition has allot- ted them. When they have thus, by un- natural diet and outrageous stimulation, happily succeeded in corrupting infirmity into disease, and exasperating passion into madness, they proceed to exhibit the proofs of their success, with an expertness and consistency truly admirable. They do not, like you, Immalee, live in the lovely inde- pendence of nature — lying on the earth, and sleeping with all the eyes of heaven unveiled to watch you — treading the same grass till your light step feels a friend in every blade it presses — and conversing
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with flowers, till you feel yourself and them children of the united family of na- ture, whose mutual language of love you have almost learned to speak to each other — no, to effect their purpose, their food, which is of itself poison, must be rendered more fatal by the air they inhale; and therefore the more civilized crowd all to- gether into a space which their own re- spiration, and the exhalation of their bo- dies, renders pestilential, and which gives a celerity inconceivable to the circulation of disease and mortality. Four thousand of them will live together in a space small- er than the last and lightest colonnade of your young banyan-tree, in order, doubt- less, to increase the effects of foetid air, ar- tificial heat, unnatural habits, and imprac- ticable exercise. The result of these judi- cious precautions is just what may be guessed. The most trifling complaint be- comes immediately infectious, and, during the ravages of the pestilence, which this habit generates, ten thousand lives a-day
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are the customary sacrifice to the habit of living in cities." — " But they die in the arms of those they love," said Immalee, whose tears flowed fast at this recital; " and is not that better than even life in solitude, — as mine v^as before I beheld you?"
" The stranger was too intent on his description to heed her. " To these cities they resort nominally for security and pro- tection, but really for the sole purpose to which their existence is devoted, — that of aggravating its miseries by every ingenui- ty of refinement. For example, those who live in uncontrasted and untantalized mi- sery, can hardly feel it — suffering becomes their habit, and they feel no more jealousy of their situation than the bat, who clings in blind and famishing stupefaction to the cleft of a rock, feels of the situation of the butterfly, who drinks of the dew, and bathes in the bloom of every flower. But the people of the other worlds have in- vented, by means of living in cities, a new
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and singular mode of aggravating human wretchedness — that of contrasting it with the wild and wanton excess of superfluous and extravagant splendour."
" Here the stranger had incredible diffi- culty to make Immalee comprehend how there could be an unequal division of the means of existence; and when he had done his utmost to explain it to her, she conti- nued 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 opu- lence— to bid the wretch who dies for want feed on the sound of the splendid equipages which shake his Jiovel as they pass, but leave no relief behind — to bid the industrious, the ingenious, and the imaginative, starve, while bloated medio-
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crity pants from excess — to bid the dying sufferer feel that life might be prolonged by one drop of that exciting liquor, which, wasted, produces only sickness or madness in those whose lives it undermines; — to do this is their principal object, and it is fully attained. The sufferer through whose rags the wind of winter blows, like arrows lodging in every pore — whose tears freeze before they fall — whose soul is as dreary as the night under whose cope his resting- place must be — w^hose glued and clammy lips are unable to receive the food which famine, lying like a burning coal at his vi- tals, craves — and who, amid the horrors of a houseless winter, might prefer its deso- lation to that of the den that abuses the name of home — without food — without light — where the bowlings of the storm are answered by the fiercer cries of hun- ger— and he must stumble to his murky and strawless nook over the bodies of his children, who have sunk on the floor, not
#
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for rest, but despair. Such a being, is he not sufficiently miserable ?"
" Immalee's shudderings were her only answer, (though of many parts of his de- scription she had a very imperfect idea). " No, he is not enough so yet," pursued the stranger, pressing the picture on her ; ^* let his steps, that know not where they wander, conduct him to the gates of the affluent and the luxurious — let him feel that plenty and mirth are removed from him but by the interval of a wall, and yet more distant than if severed by worlds — let him feel that while his world is dark- ness and cold, the eyes of those within are aching with the blaze of light, and hands relaxed by artificial heat, are soliciting with fans the refreshment of a breeze — let him feel that every groan he utters is answered by a song or a laugh — and let him die on the steps of the mansion, while his last conscious pang is aggravated by the thought, that the price of the hundredth
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part of the luxuries that lie untasted be- fore heedless beauty and sated epicurism, would have protracted his existence, while it poisons theirs — let him die of want on the tlweshold of a banquet-hall, and then admire with me the ingenuity that dis- plays itself in this new combination of mi- sery. The inventive activity of the peo- ple of the world, in the multiplication of calamity, is inexhaustibly fertile in resour- ces, ^ot satisfied with diseases and fa- mine, with sterility of the earth, and tem- pests of the air, they must have laws and marriages, and kings and tax-gatherers, and wars and fetes, and every variety of artificial misery inconceivable to you."
" Immalee, overpowered by this torrent of words, to her unintelligible words, in vain asked a connected explanation of them. The demon of his superhuman misanthro- py had now fully possessed him, and not even the tones of a voice as sweet as the strings of David's harp, had power to ex-
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pel the evil one. So he went on flinging about his fire-brands and arrows, and then saying, " Am I not in sport ? These people *," said he, " have made unto themselves kings, that is, beings whom they voluntarily invest with the privilege of draining, by taxation, whatever wealth their vices have left to the rich, and whatever means of subsis- tence their want has left to the poor, till their extortion is cursed from the castle to the cottage — and this to support a few pampered favourites, who are harnessed by silken reins to the car, which they drag
* As, by a mode of criticism equally false and unjust, the worst sentiments of my worst characters, (from the ravings of Bertram to the blasphemies of Cardonneau), have been represented as my own, I must here trespass so far on the patience of the read- er a3 to assure him, that the sentiments ascribed to the stranger are diametrically opposite to mine, and that I have purposely put them into the mouth of an agent of the enemy of mankind.
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over the prostrate bodies of the multitude. Sometimes exhausted by the monotony of perpetual fruition, which has no parallel even in the monotony of suffering, (for the latter has at least the excitement of hope, which is for ever denied to the former), they amuse themselves by making vsrar, that is, collecting the greatest number of human beings that can be bribed to the task, to cut the throats of a less, equal, or greater number of beings, bribed in the same manner for the same pur- pose. These creatures have not the least cause of enmity to each other — they do not know, they never beheld each other. Perhaps they might, under other circum- stances, wish each other well, as far as hu- man malignity would suffer them; but from the moment they are hired for legal- ized massacre, hatred is their duty, and murder their delight. The man who would feel reluctance to destroy the rep- tile that crawls in his path, will equip him-
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self with metals fabricated for the purpose of destruction, and smile to see it stained with the blood of a being, whose existence and happiness he would have sacrificed his own to promote, under other circumstan- ces. So strong is this habit of aggravating misery under artificial circumstances, that it has been known, when in a sea-fight a vessel has blown up, (here a long explana- tion was owed to Immalee, which may be spared the reader), the people of that world have plunged into the water to save, at the risk of their own lives, the lives of those with whom they were grappling amid fire and blood a moment before, and whom, though they would sacrifice to their passions, their pride refused to sacrifice to the elements." — " Oh that is beautiful ! — that is glorious !" said Immalee, clasping her white hands ; " 1 could bear all you describe to see that sight !"
" Her smile of innocent delight, her spontaneous burst of high-toned feeling,
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had the usual effect of adding a darker shade to the frown of the stranger, and a sterner curve to the repulsive contraction of his upper lip, which was never raised but to express hostility or contempt.
" But what do the kings do ?" said Im- malee, " while they are making men kill each other for nothing ?" — " You are ig- norant, Immalee," said the stranger, " very ignorant, or you would not have said it was for nothing. Some of them fight for ten inches of barren sand — some for the dominion of the salt w^ave — some for any thing — and some for nothing — but all for pay and poverty, and occasional excitement, and the love of action, and the love of change, and the dread of liome, and the consciousness of evil passions, and the hope of death, and the admiration of the showy dress in which they are to perish. The best of the jest is, they contrive not only to reconcile themselves to these cruel and wicked absurdities, but to dignify them with the most imposing names their
VOL. IIL H
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perverted language supplies — the names of fame, of glory, of recording memory, and admiring posterity.
*' Thus a wretch whom want, idleness, or intemperance, drives to this reckless and heart-withering business, — who leaves his wife and children to the mercy of stran- gers, or to famish, (terms nearly synoni- mous), the moment he has assumed the blushing badge that privileges massacre, becomes, in the imagination of this intoxi- cated people, the defender of his country, entitled to her gratitude and to her praise. The idle stripling, who hates the cultiva- tion of intellect, and despises the meanness of occupation, feels, perhaps, a taste for ar- raying his person in colours as gaudy as the parrot's or the peacock's ; and this ef- feminate propensity is baptised by the prostituted name of the love of glory — and this complication of motives borrowed from vanity and from vice, from the fear of dis- tress, the wantonness of idleness, and the appetite for mischief, finds one convenient
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and sheltering appellation in the single sound — patriotism. And those beings who never knew one generous impulse, one in- dependent feeling, ignorant of either the principles or the justice of the cause for which they contend, and wholly uninte- rested in the result, except so far as it in- volves the concerns of their own vanity, cupidity, and avarice, are, while living, hailed by the infatuated world as its be- nefactors, and when dead, canonized as its martyrs. He died in his country's cause, is the epitaph inscribed by the rash hand of indiscriminating eulogy on the grave of ten thousand, who had ten thousand dif- ferent motives for their choice and their fate, — who might have lived to be their country's enemies if they had not happened to fall in her defence, — and whose love of their country, if fairly analysed, was, under its various forms of vanity, restlessness, the love of tumult, or the love of show — pure- ly love of themselves. There let them rest — nothing but the wish to disabuse
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their idolaters, who prompt the sacrifice, and then applaud the victim they have made, could have tempted me to dwell thus long on beings as mischievous in their lives, as they are insignificant in their death.
"*' Another amusement of these people, so ingenious in multiplying the sufferings of their destiny, is what they call law. They pretend to find in this a security for their persons and their properties — with how much justice, their own felicitous ex- perience must inform them ! Of the secu- rity it gives to the latter, judge, Immalee, %vhen I tell you, that you might spend your life in their courts, without being able to prove that those roses you have gathered and twined in your hair were your own — that you might starve for this day's meal, while proving your right to a property which must incontestihly be yours, on the condition of your being able to fast on a few years, and survive to 'enjoy it — and that, finally, with the sen-
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timents of all upright men, the opinions of the judges of the land, and the fullest con- viction of your own conscience in your fa- vour, you cannot obtain the possession of what you and all feel to be your own, while your antagonist can start an objec- tion, purchase a fraud, or invent a lie. So pleadings go on, and years are wasted, and property consumed, and hearts broken, — and law triumphs. One of its most admi- rable triumphs is in that ingenuity by which it contrives to convert a difficulty into an impossibility, and punish a man for not doing what it has rendered imprac- ticable for him to do.
" When he is unable to pay his debts, it deprives him of liberty and credit, to in- sure that inability still further ; and while destitute alike of the means of subsistence, or the power of satisfying his creditors, he is enabled, by this righteous arrangement, to console himself, at least, with the reflec- tion, that he can injure his creditor as much as he has suffered from him — that
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certain loss is the reward of immitigable cruelty — and that, while he famishes in prison, the page in which his debt is re- corded rots away faster than his body; and the angel of death, with one obliterating sweep of his wing, cancels misery and debt, and presents, grinning in horrid tri- umph, the release of debtor and debt, sign- ed by a hand that makes the judges trem- ble on their seats." — " But they have reli- gion," said the poor Indian, trembling at this horrible description ; " they have that religion which you shewed me — ^its mild and peaceful spirit — its quietness and re- signation— no blood — no cruelty." — " Yes, — ^true," said the stranger, with some re- luctance, " they have rehgion ; for in their zeal for suffering, they feel the torments of one world not enough, unless aggravat- ed by the terrors of another. They have such a religion, but what use have they made of it ? Intent on their settled pur- pose of discovering misery wherever it could be traced, and inventing it where it
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could not, they have found, even in the pure pages of tliat book, which, they pre- sume to say, contains their title to peace on earth, and happiness hereafter, a right to hate, plunder, and murder each other. Here they have been compelled to exercise an extraordinary share of perverted inge- nuity. The book contains nothing but what is good, and evil must be the minds, and hard the labour of those evil minds, to extort a tinge from it to colour their pre- tensions withal. But mark, in pursuance of their great object, (the aggravation of general misery), mark how subtilly they have wrought. They call themselves by various names, to excite passions suitable to the names they bear. Thus some for- bid the perusal of that book to their disci- ples, and others assert, that from the ex- clusive study of its pages alone, can the hope of salvation be learned or substantiat- ed. It is singular, however, that with all their ingenuity, they have never been able to extract a subject of difference from the
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essential contents of that book, to which they all appeal — so they proceed after their manner.
" They never dare to dispute that it
contains irresistible injunctions, that
those who believe in it should live in ha- bits of peace, benevolence, and harmony, — that they should love each other in pro- sperity, and assist each other in adversity. They dare not deny that the spirit that