Let my heart
be like this lonely apartment, consecrated by the presence of one sole
image, and illuminated only by that light which affection kindles before
the object of its adoration, and worships it by for ever!”

“In an agony of enthusiasm she continued to kneel before the image; and
when she rose, the silence of her apartment, and the calm smile of the
celestial figure, seemed at once a contrast and a reproach to this
excess of morbid indulgence. That smile appeared to her like a frown. It
is certain, that in agitation we can feel no solace from features that
express only profound tranquillity. We would rather wish corresponding
agitation, even hostility--any thing but a calm that neutralizes and
absorbs us. It is the answer of the rock to the wave--we collect, foam,
dash, and disperse ourselves against it, and retire broken, shattered,
and murmuring to the echoes of our disappointment. “From the tranquil and hopeless aspect of the divinity, smiling on the
misery it neither consoles or relieves, and intimating in that smile the
profound and pulseless apathy of inaccessible elevation, coldly hinting
that humanity must cease to be, before it can cease to suffer--from this
the sufferer rushed for consolation to nature, whose ceaseless agitation
seems to correspond with the vicissitudes of human destiny and the
emotions of the human heart--whose alternation of storms and calms,--of
clouds and sun-light,--of terrors and delights--seems to keep a kind of
mysterious measure of ineffable harmony with that instrument whose
chords are doomed alternately to the thrill of agony and rapture, till
the hand of death sweeps over all the strings, and silences them for
ever.--With such a feeling, Isidora leaned against her casement, gasped
for a breath of air, which the burning night did not grant, and thought
how, on such a night in her Indian isle, she could plunge into the
stream shaded by her beloved tamarind, or even venture amid the still
and silvery waves of the ocean, laughing at the broken beams of the
moonlight, as her light form dimpled the waters--snatching with smiling
delight the brilliant, tortuous, and enamelled shells that seemed to woo
her white footsteps as she turned to the shore. Now all was different. The duties of the bath had been performed, but with a parade of soaps,
perfumes, and, above all, attendants, who, though of her own sex, gave
Isidora an unspeakable degree of disgust at the operation. The sponges
and odours sickened her unsophisticated senses, and the presence of
another human being seemed to close up every pore. “She had felt no refreshment from the bath, or from her prayers--she
sought it at her casement, but there also in vain. The moon was as
bright as the sun of colder climates, and the heavens were all in a
blaze with her light. She seemed like a gallant vessel ploughing the
bright and trackless ocean alone, while a thousand stars burned in the
wake of her quiet glory, like attendant vessels pursuing their course to
undiscovered worlds, and pointing them out to the mortal eye that
lingered on their course, and loved their light. “Such was the scene above, but what a contrast to the scene below! The
glorious and unbounded light fell on an inclosure of stiff parterres,
cropped myrtles and orange-trees in tubs, and quadrangular ponds, and
bowers of trellis-work, and nature tortured a thousand ways, and
indignant and repulsive under her tortures every way. “Isidora looked and wept. Tears had now become her language when
alone--it was a language she dared not utter before her family. Suddenly
she saw one of the moonlight alleys darkened by an approaching figure. It advanced--it uttered her name--the name she remembered and loved--the
name of Immalee! “Ah!” she exclaimed, leaning from the casement, “is
there then one who recognizes me by that name?”--“It is only by that
name I can address you,” answered the voice of the stranger--“I have not
yet the honour of being acquainted with the name your Christian friends
have given you.”--“They call me Isidora, but do you still call me
Immalee. But how is it,” she added in a trembling voice,--her fears for
his safety overcoming all her sudden and innocent joy at his sight--“how
is it that you are here?--here, where no human being is ever beheld but
the inmates of the mansion--how did you cross the garden wall?--how did
you come from India? Oh! retire for your own safety! I am among those
whom I cannot trust or love. My mother is severe--my brother is violent. Oh! how did you obtain entrance into the garden?--How is it,” she added
in a broken voice, “that you risk so much to see one whom you have
forgotten so long?”--“Fair Neophyte, beautiful Christian,” answered the
stranger, with a diabolical sneer, “be it known to you that I regard
bolts, and bars, and walls, as much as I did the breakers and rocks of
your Indian isle--that I can go where, and retire when I please, without
leave asked or taken of your brother’s mastiffs, or Toledos, or
spring-guns, and in utter defiance of your mother’s advanced guard of
duennas, armed in spectacles, and flanked with a double ammunition of
rosaries, with beads as large as----” “Hush!--hush!--do not utter such
impious sounds--I am taught to revere those holy things. But is it
you?--and did I indeed see you last night, or was it a thought such as
visits me in dreams, and wraps me again in visions of that beautiful and
blessed isle where first I----Oh that I never had seen you!”--“Lovely
Christian! be reconciled to your horrible destiny. You saw me last
night--I crossed your path twice when you were sparkling among the
brightest and most beautiful of all Madrid. It was me you saw--I
rivetted your eye--I transfixed your slender frame as with a flash of
lightning--you fell fainting and withered under my burning glance. It
was me you saw--me, the disturber of your angelical existence in that
isle of paradise--the hunter of your form and your steps, even amid the
complicated and artificial tracks in which you have been concealed by
the false forms of the existence you have embraced!”--“Embraced!--Oh no! they seized on me--they dragged me here--they made me a Christian. They
told me all was for my salvation, for my happiness here and
hereafter--and I trust it will, for I have been so miserable ever since,
that I ought to be happy somewhere.”--“Happy,” repeated the stranger
with his withering sneer--“and are you not happy now? The delicacy of
your exquisite frame is no longer exposed to the rage of the
elements--the fine and feminine luxury of your taste is solicited and
indulged by a thousand inventions of art--your bed is of down--your
chamber hung with tapestry. Whether the moon be bright or dark, six wax
tapers burn in your chamber all night.