I have promised, on your arrival at your new territory, all that
is mighty and magnificent,--all that is splendid and voluptuous--the
sovereign and the sensualist--the inebriated monarch and the pampered
slave--the bed of roses and the canopy of fire!”--“And is this the home
to which you invite me?”--“It is--it is. Come, and be mine!--myriads of
voices summon you--hear and obey them! Their voices thunder in the
echoes of mine--their fires flash from my eyes, and blaze in my heart. Hear me, Isidora, my beloved, hear me! I woo you in earnest, and for
ever! Oh how trivial are the ties by which mortal lovers are bound,
compared to those in which you and I shall be bound to eternity! Fear
not the want of a numerous and splendid society. I have enumerated
sovereigns, and pontiffs, and heroes,--and if you should condescend to
remember the trivial amusements of your present sejour, you will have
enough to revive its associations. You love music, and doubtless you
will have most of the musicians who have chromatized since the first
essays of Tubal Cain to Lully, who beat himself to death at one of his
own oratorios, or operas, I don’t know which. They will have a singular
accompaniment--the eternal roar of a sea of fire makes a profound bass
to the chorus of millions of singers in torture!”--“What is the meaning
of this horrible description?” said the trembling Isidora; “your words
are riddles to me. Do you jest with me for the sake of tormenting, or of
laughing at me?”--“Laughing!” repeated her wild visitor; “that is an
exquisite hint--_vive la bagatelle!_ Let us laugh for ever!--we shall
have enough to keep us in countenance. There will be all that ever have
dared to laugh on earth--the singers, the dancers, the gay, the
voluptuous, the brilliant, the beloved--all who have ever dared to
mistake their destiny, so far as to imagine that enjoyment was not a
crime, or that a smile was not an infringement of their duty as
sufferers. All such must expiate their error under circumstances which
will probably compel the most inveterate disciple of Democritus, the
most _inextinguishable laugher_ among them, to allow that _there_, at
least, ‘laughter is madness.’”--“I do not understand you,” said Isidora,
listening to him with that sinking of the heart which is produced by a
combined and painful feeling of ignorance and terror. “Not understand
me?” repeated Melmoth, with that sarcastic frigidity of countenance
which frightfully contrasted the burning intelligence of his eyes, that
seemed like the fires of a volcano bursting out amid masses of snow
heaped up to its very edge; “not understand me!--are you not, then, fond
of music?”--“I am.”--“Of dancing, too, my graceful, beautiful love?”--“I
_was_.”--“What is the meaning of the different emphasis you give to
those answers?”--“I love music--I must love it for ever--it is the
language of recollection. A single strain of it wafts me back to the
dreamy blessedness, the enchanted existence, of my own--own isle. Of
dancing I cannot say so much. I have _learnt_ dancing--but I _felt_
music. I shall never forget the hour when I heard it for the first time,
and imagined it was the language which Christians spoke to each other. I
have heard them speak a different language since.”--“Doubtless their
language is not always melody, particularly when they address each other
on controverted points in religion. Indeed, I can conceive nothing less
a-kin to harmony than the debate of a Dominican and Franciscan on the
respective efficacy of the cowl of the order, to ascertain the salvation
of him who happens to die in it. But have you no other reason for
_being_ fond of music, and for only _having been_ fond of dancing? Nay,
let me have ‘your most exquisite reason.’”

  (22) Alluding possibly to “Romeo and Juliet.”

“It seemed as if this unhappy being was impelled by his ineffable
destiny to deride the misery he inflicted, in proportion to its
bitterness. 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. Extacy 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. Her “most exquisite reasons,” demanded in a tone of
ruthless irony, were given in one whose exquisite and tender melody
seemed still to retain the modulation on which its first sounds had been
formed,--that of the song of birds, mingled with the murmur of waters. “I love music, because when I hear it I think of you. I have ceased to
love dancing, though I was at first intoxicated with it, because, when
dancing, I have sometimes forgot you. When I listen to music, your image
floats on every note,--I hear you in every sound. The most inarticulate
murmurs that I produce on my guitar (for I am very ignorant) are like a
spell of melody that raises a form indescribable--not you, but _my idea
of you_. In your presence, though that seems necessary to my existence,
I have never felt that exquisite delight that I have experienced in that
of your image, when music has called it up from the recesses of my
heart. Music seems to me like the voice of religion summoning to
remember and worship the God of my heart. Dancing appears like a
momentary apostasy, almost a profanation.”--“That, indeed, is a sweet
and subtle reason,” answered Melmoth, “and one that, of course, has but
one failure,--that of not being sufficiently flattering to the hearer. And so my image floats on the rich and tremulous waves of melody one
moment, like a god of the overflowing billows of music, triumphing in
their swells, and graceful even in their falls,--and the next moment
appears, like the dancing demon of your operas, grinning at you between
the brilliant movement of your fandangoes, and flinging the withering
foam of his black and convulsed lips into the cup where you pledge at
your banquetting. Well--dancing--music--let them go together! It seems
that my image is equally mischievous in both--in one you are tortured by
reminiscence, and in the other by remorse.