Stanton forgot
his cowardly guide, his loneliness, his danger amid an approaching storm
and an inhospitable country, where his name and country would shut every
door against him, and every peal of thunder would be supposed justified
by the daring intrusion of a heretic in the dwelling of an _old
Christian_, as the Spanish Catholics absurdly term themselves, to mark
the distinction between them and the baptised Moors.--All this was
forgot in contemplating the glorious and awful scenery before
him,--light struggling with darkness,--and darkness menacing a light
still more terrible, and announcing its menace in the blue and livid
mass of cloud that hovered like a destroying angel in the air, its
arrows aimed, but their direction awfully indefinite. But he ceased to
forget these local and petty dangers, as the sublimity of romance would
term them, when he saw the first flash of the lightning, broad and red
as the banners of an insulting army whose motto is _Væ victis_, shatter
to atoms the remains of a Roman tower;--the rifted stones rolled down
the hill, and fell at the feet of Stanton. He stood appalled, and,
awaiting his summons from the Power in whose eye pyramids, palaces, and
the worms whose toil has formed them, and the worms who toil out their
existence under their shadow or their pressure, are perhaps all alike
contemptible, he stood collected, and for a moment felt that defiance of
danger which danger itself excites, and we love to encounter it as a
physical enemy, to bid it “do its worst,” and feel that its worst will
perhaps be ultimately its best for us. He stood and saw another flash
dart its bright, brief, and malignant glance over the ruins of ancient
power, and the luxuriance of recent fertility. Singular contrast! The
relics of art for ever decaying,--the productions of nature for ever
renewed.--(Alas! for what purpose are they renewed, better than to mock
at the perishable monuments which men try in vain to rival them by). The
pyramids themselves must perish, but the grass that grows between their
disjointed stones will be renewed from year to year. Stanton was
thinking thus, when all power of thought was suspended, by seeing two
persons bearing between them the body of a young, and apparently very
lovely girl, who had been struck dead by the lightning. Stanton
approached, and heard the voices of the bearers repeating, “There is
none who will mourn for her!” “There is none who will mourn for her!”
said other voices, as two more bore in their arms the blasted and
blackened figure of what had once been a man, comely and
graceful;--“there is not _one_ to mourn for her now!” They were lovers,
and he had been consumed by the flash that had destroyed her, while in
the act of endeavouring to defend her. As they were about to remove the
bodies, a person approached with a calmness of step and demeanour, as if
he were alone unconscious of danger, and incapable of fear; and after
looking on them for some time, burst into a laugh so loud, wild, and
protracted, that the peasants, starting with as much horror at the sound
as at that of the storm, hurried away, bearing the corse with them. Even
Stanton’s fears were subdued by his astonishment, and, turning to the
stranger, who remained standing on the same spot, he asked the reason of
such an outrage on humanity. The stranger, slowly turning round, and
disclosing a countenance which---- (Here the manuscript was illegible
for a few lines), said in English---- (A long hiatus followed here, and
the next passage that was legible, though it proved to be a continuation
of the narrative, was but a fragment). * * * * * *

The terrors of the night rendered Stanton a sturdy and unappeasable
applicant; and the shrill voice of the old woman, repeating, “no
heretic--no English--Mother of God protect us--avaunt Satan!”--combined
with the clatter of the wooden casement (peculiar to the houses in
Valentia) which she opened to discharge her volley of anathematization,
and shut again as the lightning glanced through the aperture, were
unable to repel his importunate request for admittance, in a night whose
terrors ought to soften all the miserable petty local passions into one
awful feeling of fear for the Power who caused it, and compassion for
those who were exposed to it.--But Stanton felt there was something more
than national bigotry in the exclamations of the old woman; there was a
peculiar and personal horror of the English.--And he was right; but this
did not diminish the eagerness of his * * * * * The house was handsome
and spacious, but the melancholy appearance of desertion * * * * * * * *
* * * --The benches were by the wall, but there were none to sit there;
the tables were spread in what had been the hall, but it seemed as if
none had gathered round them for many years;--the clock struck audibly,
there was no voice of mirth or of occupation to drown its sound; time
told his awful lesson to silence alone;--the hearths were black with
fuel long since consumed;--the family portraits looked as if they were
the only tenants of the mansion; they seemed to say, from their
mouldering frames, “there are none to gaze on us;” and the echo of the
steps of Stanton and his feeble guide, was the only sound audible
between the peals of thunder that rolled still awfully, but more
distantly,--every peal like the exhausted murmurs of a spent heart. As
they passed on, a shriek was heard. Stanton paused, and fearful images
of the dangers to which travellers on the Continent are exposed in
deserted and remote habitations, came into his mind. “Don’t heed it,”
said the old woman, lighting him on with a miserable lamp;--“it is only
he * * * * * * * * * * * The old woman having now satisfied herself, by
ocular demonstration, that her English guest, even if he was the devil,
had neither horn, hoof, or tail, that he could bear the sign of the
cross without changing his form, and that, when he spoke, not a puff of
sulphur came out of his mouth, began to take courage, and at length
commenced her story, which, weary and comfortless as Stanton was, * * *
* *

“Every obstacle was now removed; parents and relations at last gave up
all opposition, and the young pair were united. Never was there a
lovelier,--they seemed like angels who had only anticipated by a few
years their celestial and eternal union. The marriage was solemnized
with much pomp, and a few days after there was a feast in that very
wainscotted chamber which you paused to remark was so gloomy. It was
that night hung with rich tapestry, representing the exploits of the
Cid, particularly that of his burning a few Moors who refused to
renounce their accursed religion. They were represented beautifully
tortured, writhing and howling, and “Mahomet! Mahomet!” issuing out of
their mouths, as they called on him in their burning agonies;--you could
almost hear them scream.