Between him and the light stood the figure of Melmoth, just as he
had seen him from the first; the figure was the same; the expression of
the face was the same,--cold, stony, and rigid; the eyes, with their
infernal and dazzling lustre, were still the same. Stanton’s ruling passion rushed on his soul; he felt this apparition
like a summons to a high and fearful encounter. He heard his heart beat
audibly, and could have exclaimed with Lee’s unfortunate heroine,--“It
pants as cowards do before a battle; Oh the great march has sounded!”

Melmoth approached him with that frightful calmness that mocks the
terror it excites. “My prophecy has been fulfilled;--you rise to meet me
rattling from your chains, and rustling from your straw--am I not a true
prophet?” Stanton was silent. “Is not your situation very
miserable?”--Still Stanton was silent; for he was beginning to believe
this an illusion of madness. He thought to himself, “How could he have
gained entrance here?”--“Would you not wish to be delivered from it?”
Stanton tossed on his straw, and its rustling seemed to answer the
question. “I have the power to deliver you from it.” Melmoth spoke very
slowly and very softly, and the melodious smoothness of his voice made a
frightful contrast to the stony rigour of his features, and the
fiend-like brilliancy of his eyes. “Who are you, and whence come you?”
said Stanton, in a tone that was meant to be interrogatory and
imperative, but which, from his habits of squalid debility, was at once
feeble and querulous. His intellects had become affected by the gloom of
his miserable habitation, as the wretched inmate of a similar mansion,
when produced before a medical examiner, was reported to be a complete
Albinos.--“His skin was bleached, his eyes turned white; he could not
bear the light; and, when exposed to it, he turned away with a mixture
of weakness and restlessness, more like the writhings of a sick infant
than the struggles of a man.”

Such was Stanton’s situation; he was enfeebled now, and the power of the
enemy seemed without a possibility of opposition from either his
intellectual or corporeal powers. * * * * * * * *

Of all their horrible dialogue, only these words were legible in the
manuscript, “You know me now.”--“I always knew you.”--“That is false;
you imagined you did, and that has been the cause of all the wild * * *
* * * * * * of the * * * * * of your finally being lodged in this
mansion of misery, where only I would seek, where only I can succour
you.” “You, demon!”--“Demon!--Harsh words!--Was it a demon or a human
being placed you here?--Listen to me, Stanton; nay, wrap not yourself in
that miserable blanket,--that cannot shut out my words. Believe me, were
you folded in thunder-clouds, you must hear _me_! Stanton, think of your
misery. These bare walls--what do they present to the intellect or to
the senses?--White-wash, diversified with the scrawls of charcoal or red
chalk, that your happy predecessors have left for you to trace over. You
have a taste for drawing,--I trust it will improve. And here’s a
grating, through which the sun squints on you like a step-dame, and the
breeze blows, as if it meant to tantalize you with a sigh from that
sweet mouth, whose kiss you must never enjoy. And where’s your
library,--intellectual man,--travelled man?” he repeated in a tone of
bitter derision; “where be your companions, your peaked men of
countries, as your favourite Shakespeare has it? You must be content
with the spider and the rat, to crawl and scratch round your flock-bed! I have known prisoners in the Bastile to feed them for companions,--why
don’t you begin your task? I have known a spider to descend at the tap
of a finger, and a rat to come forth when the daily meal was brought, to
share it with his fellow-prisoner!--How delightful to have vermin for
your guests! Aye, and when the feast fails them, they make a meal of
their entertainer!--You shudder--Are you, then, the first prisoner who
has been devoured alive by the vermin that infested his
cell?--Delightful banquet, not “where you eat, but where you are eaten!”
Your guests, however, will give you one token of repentance while they
feed; there will be _gnashing of teeth_, and you shall hear it, and feel
it too perchance!--And then for meals--Oh you are daintily off!--The
soup that the cat has lapped; and (as her progeny has probably
contributed to the hell-broth) why not?---- Then your hours of solitude,
deliciously diversified by the yell of famine, the howl of madness, the
crash of whips, and the broken-hearted sob of those who, like you, are
supposed, or _driven_ mad by the crimes of others!--Stanton, do you
imagine your reason can possibly hold out amid such scenes?--Supposing
your reason was unimpaired, your health not destroyed,--suppose all
this, which is, after all, more than fair supposition can grant, guess
the effect of the continuance of these scenes on your senses alone. A
time will come, and soon, when, from mere habit, you will echo the
scream of every delirious wretch that harbours near you; then you will
pause, clasp your hands on your throbbing head, and listen with horrible
anxiety whether the scream proceeded from _you_ or _them_. The time will
come, when, from the want of occupation, the listless and horrible
vacancy of your hours, you will feel as anxious to hear those shrieks,
as you were at first terrified to hear them,--when you will watch for
the ravings of your next neighbour, as you would for a scene on the
stage. All humanity will be extinguished in you. The ravings of these
wretches will become at once your sport and your torture. You will watch
for the sounds, to mock them with the grimaces and bellowings of a
fiend. The mind has a power of accommodating itself to its situation,
that you will experience in its most frightful and deplorable efficacy. Then comes the dreadful doubt of one’s own sanity, the terrible
announcer that _that_ doubt will soon become fear, and _that_ fear
certainty. Perhaps (still more dreadful) the _fear_ will at last become
a _hope_,--shut out from society, watched by a brutal keeper, writhing
with all the impotent agony of an incarcerated mind, without
communication and without sympathy, unable to exchange ideas but with
those whose ideas are only the hideous spectres of departed intellect,
or even to hear the welcome sound of the human voice, except to mistake
it for the howl of a fiend, and stop the ear desecrated by its
intrusion,--then at last your fear will become a more fearful hope; you
will wish to become one of them, to escape the agony of consciousness. As those who have long leaned over a precipice, have at last felt a
desire to plunge below, to relieve the intolerable temptation of their
giddiness(11), you will hear them laugh amid their wildest paroxysms;
you will say, ‘Doubtless those wretches have some consolation, but I
have none; my sanity is my greatest curse in this abode of horrors.