I addressed the figure that
stood before me sometimes as Juan, and sometimes as the image of the
Trojan vision. At last the figure uttered, with a kind of querulous
shriek,--that _vox stridula_ which we hear only in dreams,

    “Proximus ardet Ucalegon,”

and I started up fully awake, in all the horrors of an expected
conflagration. “It is incredible, Sir, how the senses and the mind can operate thus,
during the apparent suspension of both; how sound can affect organs that
seem to be shut, and objects affect the sight, while its sense appears
to be closed,--can impress on its dreaming consciousness, images more
horribly vivid than even reality ever presented. I awoke with the idea
that flames were raging in contact with my eye-balls, and I saw only a
pale light, held by a paler hand--close to my eyes indeed, but withdrawn
the moment I awoke. The person who held it shrouded it for a moment, and
then advanced and flashed its full light on me, and along with it--the
person of my companion. The associations of our last meeting rushed on
me. I started up, and said, “Are we free, then?”--“Hush,--one of us is
free; but you must not speak so loud.”--“Well, I have heard that before,
but I cannot comprehend the necessity of this whispering secrecy. If I
am free, tell me so, and tell me whether Juan has survived that last
horrible moment,--my intellect is but just respiring. Tell me how Juan
fares.”--“Oh, sumptuously. No prince in all the land reposes under a
more gorgeous canopy,--marble pillars, waving banners, and nodding
plumes. He had music too, but he did not seem to heed it. He lay
stretched on velvet and gold, but he appeared insensible of all these
luxuries. There was a curl on his cold white lip, too, that seemed to
breathe ineffable scorn on all that was going on,--but he was proud
enough even in his life-time.”--“His life-time!” I shrieked; “then he
_is_ dead?”--“Can you doubt that, when you know who struck the blow? None of my victims ever gave me the trouble of a second.”--“You,--you?”
I swam for some moments in a sea of flames and blood. My frenzy
returned, and I remember only uttering curses that would have exhausted
divine vengeance in all its plenitude to fulfil. I might have continued
to rave till my reason was totally lost, but I was silenced and stunned
by his laugh bursting out amid my curses, and overwhelming them. “That laugh made me cease, and lift up my eyes to him, as if I expected
to see another being,--it was still the same. “And you dreamt,” he
cried, “in your temerity, you dreamt of setting the vigilance of a
convent at defiance? Two boys, one the fool of fear, and the other of
temerity, were fit antagonists for that stupendous system, whose roots
are in the bowels of the earth, and whose head is among the
stars,--_you_ escape from a convent! _you_ defy a power that has defied
sovereigns! A power whose influence is unlimited, indefinable, and
unknown, even to those who exercise it, as there are mansions so vast,
that their inmates, to their last hour, have never visited all the
apartments;--a power whose operation is like its motto,--one and
indivisible. The soul of the Vatican breathes in the humblest convent in
Spain,--and you, an insect perched on a wheel of this vast machine,
imagined you were able to arrest its progress, while its rotation was
hurrying on to crush you to atoms.” While he was uttering these words,
with a rapidity and energy inconceivable, (a rapidity that literally
made one word seem to devour another), I tried, with that effort of
intellect which seems like the gasping respiration of one whose breath
has long been forcibly suppressed or suspended, to comprehend and follow
him. The first thought that struck me was one not very improbable in my
situation, that he was not the person he appeared to be,--that it was
not the companion of my escape who now addressed me; and I summoned all
the remains of my intellect to ascertain this. A few questions must
determine this point, if I had breath to utter them. “Were you not the
agent in my escape? Were you not the man who---- What tempted you to
this step, in the defeat of which you appear to rejoice?”--“A
bribe.”--“And you have betrayed me, you say, and boast of your
treachery,--what tempted you to this?”--“A higher bribe. Your brother
gave gold, but the convent promised me salvation,--a business I was very
willing to commit to their hands, as I was totally incompetent to manage
it myself.”--“Salvation, for treachery and murder?”--“Treachery and
murder,--hard words. Now, to talk sense, was not yours the vilest
treachery? You reclaimed your vows,--you declared before God and man,
that the words you uttered before both were the babble of an infant;
then you seduced your brother from his duty to his and your
parents,--you connived at his intriguing against the peace and sanctity
of a monastic institution, and dare _you_ talk of treachery? And did you
not, with a callosity of conscience unexampled in one so young, accept,
nay, cling to an associate in your escape whom you knew you were
seducing from his vows,--from all that man reveres as holy, and all that
God (if there be a God) must regard as binding on man? You knew my
crime, you knew my atrocity, yet you brandished me as your banner of
defiance against the Almighty, though its inscription was, in glaring
characters,--impiety--parricide--irreligion. Torn as the banner was, it
still hung near the altar, till you dragged it away, to wrap yourself
from detection in its folds,--and _you_ talk of treachery?--there is not
a more traitorous wretch on earth than yourself. Suppose that I was all
that is vile and culpable, was it for you to double-dye the hue of my
crime in the crimson of your sacrilege and apostacy? And for murder, I
know I am a parricide. I cut my father’s throat, but he never felt the
blow,--nor did I,--I was intoxicated with wine, with passion, with
blood,--no matter which; but you, with cold deliberate blows, struck at
the hearts of father and mother. You killed by inches,--I murdered at a
blow,--which of us is the murderer?--And _you_ prate of treachery and
murder? I am as innocent as the child that is born this hour, compared
to you. Your father and mother have separated,--she is gone into a
convent, to hide her despair and shame at your unnatural conduct,--your
father is plunging successively into the abysses of voluptuousness and
penitence, wretched in both; your brother, in his desperate attempt to
liberate you, has perished,--you have scattered desolation over a whole
family,--you have stabbed the peace and heart of each of them, with a
hand that deliberated and paused on its blow, and then struck it
calmly,--and you dare to talk of treachery and murder? You are a
thousand times more culpable than I am, guilty as you think me.