I am wholly a
stranger in this country, and must have fared miserably but for the
shelter of your roof.”

Melmoth observed that he spoke with evident pain, and he confessed a few
moments afterwards, that though he had escaped without any serious
injury, he had been so bruised and lacerated, that he still breathed
with difficulty, and hardly possessed the use of his limbs. As he
concluded the account of his sufferings during the storm, the wreck, and
the subsequent struggle for life, he exclaimed in Spanish, “God! why did
the Jonah survive, and the mariners perish?” Melmoth, imagining he was
engaged in some devotional ejaculation, was going to retire, when the
Spaniard detained him. “Senhor, I understand your name is----” He
paused, shuddered, and with an effort that seemed like convulsion,
disgorged the name of Melmoth. “My name is Melmoth.” “Had you an
ancestor, a very remote one, who was--at a period perhaps beyond
family-tradition----It is useless to inquire,” said the Spaniard,
covering his face with both his hands, and groaning aloud. Melmoth
listened in mingled excitement and terror. “Perhaps, if you would
proceed, I could answer you--go on, Senhor.” “Had you,” said the
Spaniard, forcing himself to speak, abruptly and rapidly, “had you,
then, a relative who was, about one hundred and forty years ago, said to
be in Spain.” “I believe--yes, I fear--I had.” “It is enough,
Senhor--leave me--to-morrow perhaps--leave me now.” “It is impossible to
leave you now,” said Melmoth, catching him in his arms before he sunk on
the floor. He was not senseless, for his eyes were rolling with terrible
expression, and he attempted to articulate. They were alone. Melmoth,
unable to quit him, called aloud for water; and while attempting to open
his vest, and give him air, his hand encountered a miniature portrait
close to the heart of the stranger. As he touched it, his touch operated
on the patient with all the force of the most powerful restorative. He
grasped it with his own cold hand with a force like that of death, and
muttered in a hollow but thrilling voice, “What have you done?” He felt
eagerly the ribbon by which it was suspended, and, satisfied that his
terrible treasure was safe, turned his eyes with a fearful calmness of
expression on Melmoth, “You know all, then?”--“I know nothing,” said
Melmoth faultering. The Spaniard rose from the ground, to which he had
almost fallen, disengaged himself from the arms that supported him, and
eagerly, but staggeringly, hurrying towards the candles, (it was night),
held up the portrait full before Melmoth’s eye. It was a miniature
likeness of that extraordinary being. It was painted in a coarse and
unartist-like style, but so faithfully, that the pencil appeared rather
held by the mind than by the fingers. “Was he--was the original of this--your ancestor?--Are you his
descendant?--Are you the depository of that terrible secret which----”
He again fell to the ground convulsed, and Melmoth, for whose
debilitated state this scene was too much, was removed to his own
apartment. It was several days before he again saw his visitor; his manner was then
calm and collected, till he appeared to recollect the necessity of
making an apology for his agitation at their last meeting. He
began--hesitated--stopped; tried in vain to arrange his ideas, or rather
his language; but the effort so obviously renewed his agitation, that
Melmoth felt an exertion on his part necessary to avert its
consequences, and began most inauspiciously to inquire into the motive
of his voyage to Ireland. After a long pause, the Spaniard said, “That
motive, Senhor, a few days past I believed it was not in mortal power to
compel me to disclose. I deemed it incommunicable as it was incredible. I conceived myself to be alone on the earth, without sympathy and beyond
relief. It is singular that accident should have placed me within the
reach of the only being from whom I could expect either, and perhaps a
developement of those circumstances which have placed me in a situation
so extraordinary.” This exordium, delivered with a composed but
thrilling gravity, had an effect on Melmoth. He sat down and prepared to
listen, and the Spaniard began to speak; but after some hesitation, he
snatched the picture from his neck, and trampling on it with true
continental action, exclaimed, “Devil! devil! thou choakest me!” and
crushing the portrait, glass and all, under his feet, exclaimed, “Now I
am easier.”

The room in which they sat was a low, mean, wretchedly furnished
apartment; the evening was tempestuous, and as the windows and doors
rattled in the blast, Melmoth felt as if he listened to some herald of
“fate and fear.” A deep and sickening agitation shook his frame; and in
the long pause that preceded the narrative of the Spaniard, the beating
of his heart was audible to him. He rose, and attempted to arrest the
narration by a motion of his hand; but the Spaniard mistook this for the
anxiety of his impatience, and commenced his narrative, which, in mercy
to the reader, we shall give without the endless interruptions, and
queries, and anticipations of curiosity, and starts of terror, with
which it was broken by Melmoth. Tale of the Spaniard. “I am, Senhor, as you know, a native of Spain, but you are yet to learn
I am a descendant of one of its noblest houses,--a house of which she
might have been proud in her proudest day,--the house of Monçada. Of
this I was not myself conscious during the first years of my life; but
during those years, I remember experiencing the singular contrast of
being treated with the utmost tenderness, and kept in the most sordid
privacy. I lived in a wretched house in the suburbs of Madrid with an
old woman, whose affection for me appeared prompted as much by interest
as inclination. I was visited every week by a young cavalier and a
beautiful female; they caressed me, called me their beloved child, and
I, attached by the grace with which my young father’s _capa_ was folded,
and my mother’s veil adjusted, and by a certain air of indescribable
superiority over those by whom I was surrounded, eagerly returned their
caresses, and petitioned them to take me _home_ with them; at these
words they always wept, gave a valuable present to the woman I lived
with, whose attention was always redoubled by this expected stimulant,
and departed. “I observed their visits were always short, and paid late in the
evening; thus a shadow of mystery enveloped my infant days, and perhaps
gave its lasting and ineffaceable tinge to the pursuits, the character,
and the feelings of my present existence. A sudden change took
place;--one day I was visited, splendidly dressed, and carried in a
superb vehicle, whose motion made me giddy with novelty and surprise, to
a palace whose front appeared to me to reach the heavens.