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    Transcriber’s Notes:

    Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
    possible, including inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and
    punctuation. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been
    made. They are listed at the end of the text. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. The motto for Chapter VI is misquoted from Iliad XXIII 72; it has
    been left as printed. MELMOTH
  THE
  WANDERER:
  A
  TALE. BY THE AUTHOR OF “BERTRAM,” &c.

  IN FOUR VOLUMES. VOL. II. EDINBURGH:
  PRINTED FOR ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY,
  AND HURST, ROBINSON, AND CO. CHEAPSIDE,
  LONDON. 1820. MELMOTH. CHAPTER VI. Τηλε μἐιργουσι ψυχαι ειδωλα καμοντων. HOMER. When, after some days interval, the Spaniard attempted to describe
his feelings on the receipt of his brother’s letter, the sudden
resuscitation of heart, and hope, and existence, that followed its
perusal, he trembled,--uttered some inarticulate sounds;--wept;--and
his agitation appeared to Melmoth, with _his uncontinental feelings_,
so violent, that he entreated him to spare the description of his
feelings, and proceed with his narrative. “You are right,” said the Spaniard, drying his tears, “joy is a
convulsion, but grief is a habit, and to describe what we never can
communicate, is as absurd as to talk of colours to the blind. I will
hasten on, not to tell of my feelings, but of the results which they
produced. A new world of hope was opened to me. I thought I saw liberty
on the face of heaven when I walked in the garden. I laughed at the jar
of the doors as they opened, and said to myself, “You shall soon expand
to me for ever.” I behaved with uncommon complacency to the community. But I did not, amid all this, neglect the most scrupulous precautions
suggested by my brother. Am I confessing the strength or the weakness of
my heart? In the midst of all the systematic dissimulation that I was
prepared and eager to carry on, the only circumstance that gave me real
compunction, was my being obliged to destroy the letters of that dear
and generous youth who had risked every thing for my emancipation. In
the mean time, I pursued my preparations with industry inconceivable to
you, who have never been in a convent. “Lent was now begun,--all the community were preparing themselves for
the great confession. They shut themselves up,--they prostrated
themselves before the shrines of the saints,--they occupied themselves
whole hours in taking minutes of their consciences, and magnifying the
trivial defects of conventual discipline into offences in the eye of
God, in order to give consequence to their penitence in the hearing of
the confessor,--in fact, they would have been glad to accuse themselves
of a crime, to escape from the monotony of a monastic conscience. There
was a kind of silent bustle in the house, that very much favoured my
purposes. Hour after hour I demanded paper for my confession. I obtained
it, but my frequent demands excited suspicion,--they little knew what I
was writing. Some said, for every thing excites inquiry in a convent,
“He is writing the history of his family; he will discharge it into the
ears of the confessor, along with the secrets of his own soul.” Others
said, “He has been in a state of _alienation_ for some time, he is
giving an account to God for it,--we shall never hear a word about it.”
Others, who were more judicious, said, “He is weary of the monastic
life, he is writing an account of his monotony and ennui, doubtless that
must be very long;” and the speakers yawned as they uttered these words,
which gave a very strong attestation to what they said. The Superior
watched me in silence. He was alarmed, and with reason. He consulted
with some of the _discreet_ brethren, whom I mentioned before, and the
result was a restless vigilance on their part, to which I supplied an
incessant fuel, by my absurd and perpetual demand for paper. Here, I
acknowledge, I committed a great oversight. It was impossible for the
most exaggerated conscience to charge itself, even in a convent, with
crimes enough to fill all the paper I required. I was filling them all
the time with _their_ crimes, not my own. Another great mistake I made,
was being wholly unprepared for the great confession when it came on. I
received intimations of this as we walked in the garden,--I have before
mentioned that I had assumed an amicability of habit toward them. They
would say to me, “You have made ample preparations for the great
confession.” “I have prepared myself.” “But we expect great edification
from its results.” “I trust you will receive it.”--I said no more, but I
was very much disturbed at these hints. Others would say, “My brother,
amid the multitudinous offences that burden your conscience, and which
you have found necessary to employ quires of paper to record, would it
not be a relief to you to open your mind to the Superior, and ask for a
few previous moments of consolation and direction from _him_.” To this I
answered, “I thank you, and will consider of it.”--I was thinking all
the time of something else. “It was a few nights before the time of the great confession, that I had
to entrust the last packet of my memorial to the porter. Our meetings
had been hitherto unsuspected. I had received and answered my brother’s
communications, and our correspondence had been conducted with a secrecy
unexampled in convents. But this last night, as I put my packet into the
porter’s hand, I saw a change in his appearance that terrified me. He
had been a comely, robust man, but now, even by the moon-light, I could
perceive he was wasted to a shadow,--his hands trembled as he took the
papers from me,--his voice faultered as he promised his usual secrecy. The change, which had been observed by the whole convent, had escaped me
till that night; my mind had been too much occupied by my own situation. I noticed it then, however, and I said, “But what is the matter?” “Can
you then ask? I am withered to a spectre by the terrors of the office I
have been bribed to. Do you know what I risk?--incarceration for life,
or rather for death,--perhaps a denunciation to the Inquisition. Every
line I deliver from you, or to you, seems a charge against my own
soul,--I tremble when I meet you. I know that you have the sources of
life and death, temporal and eternal, in your hands. The secret in which
I am an agent should never be intrusted but to _one_, and _you are
another_. As I sit in my place, I think every step in the cloister is
advancing to summon me to the presence of the Superior. When I attend in
the choir, amid the sounds of devotion your voice swells to accuse me.