Whether the skies be bright or
cloudy,--whether the earth be clothed with flowers, deformed with
tempests,--the art of the limner has surrounded you with “a new heaven
and a new earth;” and you may bask in suns that never set, while the
heavens are dark to other eyes,--and luxuriate amid landscapes and
flowers, while half your fellow-creatures are perishing amid snows and
tempests!” (Such was the overflowing acrimony of this being, that he
could not speak of the beneficence of nature, or the luxuries of art,
without interweaving something that seemed like a satire on, or a scorn
of both.) “You also have intellectual beings to converse with instead of
the chirpings of loxias, and the chatterings of monkeys.”--“I have not
found the conversation I encounter much more intelligible or
significant,” murmured Isidora, but the stranger did not appear to hear
her. “You are surrounded by every thing that can flatter the senses,
intoxicate the imagination, or expand the heart. All these indulgences
must make you forget the voluptuous but unrefined liberty of your former
existence.”--“The birds in my mother’s cages,” said Isidora, “are for
ever pecking at their gilded bars, and trampling on the clear seeds and
limpid water they are supplied with--would they not rather rest in the
mossy trunk of a doddered oak, and drink of whatever stream they met,
and be at liberty, at all the risk of poorer food and fouler
drink--would they not rather do any thing than break their bills against
gilded wires?”--“Then you do not feel your new existence in this
Christian land so likely to surfeit you with delight as you once
thought? For shame, Immalee--shame on your ingratitude and caprice! Do
you remember when from your Indian isle you caught a glimpse of the
Christian worship, and were entranced at the sight?”--“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.”--“And what did you find them, then, Immalee?”--“Only
Catholics.”--“Are you aware of the danger of the words you utter? Do you
know that in this country to hint a doubt of Catholicism and
Christianity being the same, would consign you to the flames as a
heretic incorrigible? Your mother, so lately known to you as a mother,
would bind your hands when the covered litter came for its victim; and
your father, though he has never yet beheld you, would buy with his last
ducat the faggots that were to consume you to ashes; and all your
relations in their gala robes would shout their hallelujahs to your
dying screams of torture. Do you know that the Christianity of these
countries is diametrically opposite to the Christianity of that world of
which you caught a gleam, and which you may see recorded in the pages of
your Bible, if you are permitted to read it?”

“Isidora wept, and confessed she had not found Christianity what
she had at first believed it; but with her wild and eccentric
ingenuousness, she accused herself the next moment of her
confession,--and she added, “I am so ignorant in this new world,--I
have so much to learn,--my senses so often deceive me,--and my habits
and perceptions so different from what they ought to be--I mean from
what those around me are--that I should not speak or think but as I
am taught. Perhaps, after some years of instruction and suffering, I
may be able to discover that happiness cannot exist in this new world,
and Christianity is not so remote from Catholicism as it appears to
me now.”--“And have you not found yourself happy in this new world
of intelligence and luxury?” said Melmoth, in a tone of involuntary
softness. “I have at times.”--“What times?”--“When the weary day
was over, and my dreams bore me back to that island of enchantment. Sleep is to me like some bark rowed by visionary pilots, that wafts
me to shores of beauty and blessedness,--and all night long I revel
in my dreams with spirits. Again I live among flowers and odours--a
thousand voices sing to me from the brooks and the breezes--the air
is all alive and eloquent with invisible melodists--I walk amid a
breathing atmosphere, and living and loving inanimation--blossoms that
shed themselves beneath my steps--and streams that tremble to kiss my
feet, and then retire; and then return again, wasting themselves in
fondness before me, and touching me, as my lips press the holy images
they have taught me to worship here!”--“Does no other image ever visit
your dreams, Immalee?”--“I need not tell you,” said Isidora, with
that singular mixture of natural firmness, and partial obscuration of
intellect,--the combined result of her original and native character,
and extraordinary circumstances of her early existence--“I need not
tell you--you know you are with me every night!”--“Me?”--“Yes, you;
you are for ever in that canoe that bears me to the Indian isle--you
gaze on me, but your expression is so changed, that I dare not speak
to you--we fly over the seas in a moment, but you are for ever at the
helm, though you never land--the moment the paradise isle appears, you
disappear; and as we return, the ocean is all dark, and our course is
as dark and swift as the storm that sweeps them--you look at me, but
never speak--Oh yes! you are with me every night!”--“But, Immalee,
these are all dreams--idle dreams. _I_ row you over the Indian seas
from Spain!--this is all a vision of your imagination.”--“Is it a dream
that I see you now?” said Isidora--“is it a dream that I talk with
you?--Tell me, for my senses are bewildered; and it appears to me no
less strange, that you should be here in Spain, than that I should be
in my native island. Alas! in the life that I now lead, dreams have
become realities, and realities seem only like dreams. How is it you
are here, if indeed you are here?--how is it that you have wandered
so far to see me? How many oceans you must have crossed, how many
isles you must have seen, and none like that where I first beheld
you! But is it you indeed I behold? I thought I saw you last night,
but I had rather trust even my dreams than my senses. I believed you
only a visitor of that isle of visions, and a haunter of the visions
that recall it--but are you in truth a living being, and one whom
I may hope to behold in this land of cold realities and Christian
horrors?”--“Beautiful Immalee, or Isidora, or whatever other name
your Indian worshippers, or Christian god-fathers and god-mothers,
have called you by, I pray you listen to me, while I expound a few
mysteries to you.” And Melmoth, as he spoke, flung himself on a bed
of hyacinths and tulips that displayed their glowing flowers, and
sent up their odorous breath right under Isidora’s casement.