“This man might have been a better being under better circumstances; he
had at least a disdain of all that was mean in vice, with a wild avidity
for all that was atrocious. “Was it for this,” he continued, “that I
have sold myself to work their works of darkness,--that I have become in
this life as it were an apprentice to Satan, to take anticipated lessons
of torture,--that I have sealed those indentures here, which must be
fulfilled below? No, I despise--I loathe it all, the agents and the
system,--the men and their matters. But it is the creed of that system,
(and true or false it avails not,--some kind of creed is necessary, and
the falser perhaps the better, for falsehood at least flatters), that
the greatest criminal may expiate his offences, by vigilantly watching,
and severely punishing, those of the enemies of heaven. Every offender
may purchase his immunity, by consenting to become the executioner of
the offender whom he betrays and denounces. In the language of the laws
of another country, they may turn “king’s evidence,” and buy their own
lives at the price of another’s,--a bargain which every man is very
ready to make. But, in religious life, this kind of transfer, this
substitutional suffering, is adopted with an avidity indescribable. How
we love to punish those whom the church calls the enemies of God, while
conscious that, though our enmity against him is infinitely greater, we
become acceptable in his sight by tormenting those who may be less
guilty, but who are in our power! I hate you, not because I have any
natural or social cause to do so, but because the exhaustion of my
resentment on you, may diminish that of the Deity towards me. If I
persecute and torment the enemies of God, must I not be the friend of
God? Must not every pang I inflict on another, be recorded in the book
of the All-remembering, as an expurgation of at least one of the pangs
that await me hereafter? I have no religion, I believe in no God, I
repeat no creed, but I have that superstition of fear and of futurity,
that seeks its wild and hopeless mitigation in the sufferings of others
when our own are exhausted, or when (a much more common case) we are
unwilling to undergo them. I am convinced that my own crimes will be
obliterated, by whatever crimes of others I can promote or punish. Had I
not, then, every motive to urge you to crime? Had I not every motive to
watch and aggravate your punishment? Every coal of fire that I heaped on
your head, was removing one from that fire that burns for ever and ever
for mine. Every drop of water that I withheld from your burning tongue,
I expect will be repaid to me in slaking the fire and brimstone into
which I must one day be hurled. Every tear that I draw, every groan that
I extort, will, I am convinced, be repaid me in the remission of my
own!--guess what a price I set on yours, or those of any other victim. The man in ancient story trembled and paused over the scattered limbs of
his child, and failed in the pursuit,--the true penitent rushes over the
mangled members of nature and passion, collects them with a hand in
which there is no pulse, and a heart in which there is no feeling, and
holds them up them in the face of the Divinity as a peace-offering. Mine
is the best theology,--the theology of utter hostility to all beings
whose sufferings may mitigate mine. In this flattering theory, your
crimes become my virtues,--I need not any of my own. Guilty as I am of
the crime that outrages nature, your crimes (the crimes of those who
offend against the church) are of a much more heinous order. But your
guilt is my exculpation, your sufferings are my triumph. I need not
repent, I need not believe; if you suffer, I am saved,--that is enough
for me. How glorious and easy it is to erect at once the trophy of our
salvation, on the trampled and buried hopes of another’s! How subtle and
sublime that alchemy, that can convert the iron of another’s contumacy
and impenitence into the precious gold of your own redemption! I have
literally worked out _my_ salvation by _your_ fear and trembling. With
this hope I appeared to concur in the plan laid by your brother, every
feature of which was in its progress disclosed to the Superior. With
this hope I passed that wretched night and day in the dungeon with you,
for, to have effected our escape by day-light, would have startled
credulity as gross as even yours. But all the time I was feeling the
dagger I bore in my breast, and which I had received for a purpose amply
accomplished. As for you,--the Superior consented to your attempt to
escape, merely that he might have you more in his power. He and the
community were tired of you, they saw you would never make a monk,--your
appeal had brought disgrace on them, your presence was a reproach and a
burden to them. The sight of you was as thorns in their eyes,--they
judged you would make a better victim than a proselyte, and they judged
well. You are a much fitter inmate for your present abode than your
last, and from hence there is no danger of your escaping.”--“And where,
then, am I?”--“_You are in the prison of the Inquisition._”




CHAPTER XI. Oh! torture me no more, I will confess. HENRY THE SIXTH. You have betrayed her to her own reproof. COMEDY OF ERRORS. “And it was true,--I was a prisoner in the Inquisition. Great
emergencies certainly inspire us with the feelings they demand; and many
a man has braved a storm on the wide wild ocean, who would have shrunk
from its voice as it pealed down his chimney. I believe so it fared with
me,--the storm had risen, and I braced myself to meet it. I was in the
Inquisition, but I knew that my crime, heinous as it was, was not one
that came properly under the cognizance of the Inquisition. It was a
conventual fault of the highest class, but liable only to be punished by
the ecclesiastical power. The punishment of a monk who had dared to
escape from his convent, might be dreadful enough,--immurement, or death
perhaps, but still I was not legitimately a prisoner of the Inquisition. I had never, under all my trials, spoken a disrespectful word of the
holy Catholic church, or a doubtful one of our most holy faith,--I had
not dropped one heretical, obnoxious, or equivocal expression, relative
to a single point of duty, or article of faith. The preposterous charges
of sorcery and possession, brought against me in the convent, had been
completely disproved at the visitation of the Bishop. My aversion to the
monastic state was indeed sufficiently known and fatally proved, but
that was no subject for the investigation or penalties of the
Inquisition. I had nothing to fear from the Inquisition,--at least so I
said to myself in my prison, and I believed myself. The seventh day
after the recovery of my reason was fixed on for my examination, and of
this I received due notice, though I believe it is contrary to the usual
forms of the Inquisition to give this notice; and the examination took
place on the day and hour appointed.