I will encounter the starched ruffs, and
rustling manteaus, and whale-boned fardingales of the females, from your
good mother down to the oldest duenna who sits spectacled, and armed
with bobbin, on her inaccessible and untempted sopha; and the twirled
whiskers, plumed hats, and shouldered capas of all your male relatives. And I will drink chocolate, and strut among them; and when they refer me
to your mustachoed man of law, with his thread-bare cloke of black
velvet over his shoulder, his long quill in his hand, and his soul in
three sheets of wide-spread parchment, I will dower you in the most
ample territory ever settled on a bride.”--“Oh let it be, then, in that
land of music and sunshine where we first met! One spot where I might
set my foot amid its flowers, is worth all the cultivated earth of
Europe!” said Isidora.--“No!--it shall be in a territory with which your
bearded men of law are far better acquainted, and which even your pious
mother and proud family must acknowledge my claim to, when they shall
hear it asserted and explained. Perchance they may be joint-tenants with
_me_ there; and yet (strange to say!) they will never litigate my
exclusive title to possession.”--“I understand nothing of this,” said
Isidora; “but I feel I am transgressing the decorums of a Spanish female
and a Christian, in holding this conference with you any longer. If you
think as you once thought,--if you feel as _I_ must feel for
ever,--there needs not this discussion, which only perplexes and
terrifies. What have I to do with this territory of which you speak? That _you_ are its possessor, is its only value in my eyes!”--“What have
you to do with it?” repeated Melmoth; “Oh, you know not how much you may
have to do with it and me yet! In other cases, the possession of the
territory is the security for the man,--but here the man is the security
for the everlasting possession of the territory. Mine heirs must inherit
it for ever and ever, if they hold by my tenure. Listen to me, beautiful
Immalee, or Christian, or whatever other name you choose to be called
by! Nature, your first sponsor, baptized you with the dews of Indian
roses--your Christian sponsors, of course, spared not water, salt, or
oil, to wash away the stain of nature from your regenerated frame--and
your last sponsor, if you will submit to the rite, will anoint you with
a new chrism. But of that hereafter. Listen to me while I announce to
you the wealth, the population, the magnificence of that region to which
I will endower you. The rulers of the earth are there--all of them. There be the heroes, and the sovereigns, and the tyrants. There are
their riches, and pomp, and power--Oh what a glorious accumulation!--and
they have thrones, and crowns, and pedestals, and trophies of fire, that
burn for ever and ever, and the light of their glory blazes eternally. There are all you read of in story, your Alexanders and Cæsars, your
Ptolemies and Pharaohs. There be the princes of the East, the Nimrods,
the Belshazzars, and the Holoferneses of their day. There are the
princes of the North, the Odins, the Attilas, (named by your church the
scourge of God), the Alarics, and all those nameless and
name-undeserving barbarians, who, under various titles and claims,
ravaged and ruined the earth they came to conquer. There be the
sovereigns of the South, and East, and West, the Mahommedans, the
Caliphs, the Saracens, the Moors, with all their gorgeous pretensions
and ornaments--the crescent, the Koran, and the horse-tail--the trump,
the gong, and the atabal, (or to suit it to your Christianised ear,
lovely Neophyte!) ‘the noise of the captains, and the shoutings.’ There
be also those triple-crowned chieftains of the West, who hide their
shorn heads under a diadem, and for every hair they shave, demand the
life of a sovereign--who, pretending to humility, trample on
power--whose title is, Servant of servants--and whose claim and
recognizance is, Lord of lords. Oh! you will not lack company in that
bright region, for bright it will be!--and what matter whether its light
be borrowed from the gleam of sulphur, or the trembling light of the
moon, by which I see you look so pale?”--“I look pale!” said Isidora
gasping; “I _feel_ pale! I know not the meaning of your words, but I
know it must be horrible. Speak no more of that region, with its pride,
its wickedness, and its splendour! I am willing to follow you to
deserts, to solitudes, which human step never trod but yours, and where
mine shall trace, with sole fidelity, the print of yours. Amid
loneliness I was born; amid loneliness I could die. Let me but, wherever
I live, and whenever I die, be yours!--and for the place, it matters
not, let it be even”---- and she shivered involuntarily as she spoke;
“Let it be even”---- “Even--_where_?” asked Melmoth, while a wild
feeling of triumph in the devotedness of this unfortunate female, and of
horror at the destination which she was unconsciously imprecating on
herself, mingled in the question. “Even where you are to be,” answered
the devoted Isidora, “let me be there! and there I must be happy, as in
the isle of flowers and sun-light, where I first beheld you. Oh! there
are no flowers so balmy and roseate as those that once blew there! There
are no waters so musical, or breezes so fragrant, as those that I
listened to and inhaled, when I thought that they repeated to me the
echo of your steps, or the melody of your voice--that _human music_ the
first I ever heard, and which, when I cease to hear”---- “You will hear
much better!” interrupted Melmoth; “the voices of ten thousand--ten
millions of spirits--beings whose tones are immortal, without cessation,
without pause, without interval!”--“Oh that will be glorious!” said
Isidora, clasping her hands; “the only language I have learned in this
new world worth speaking, is the language of music. I caught some
imperfect sounds from birds in my first world, but in my second world
they taught me music; and the misery they have taught me, hardly makes a
balance against that new and delicious language.”--“But think,” rejoined
Melmoth, “if your taste for music be indeed so exquisite, how it will be
indulged, how it will be enlarged, in hearing those voices accompanied
and re-echoed by the thunders of ten thousand billows of fire, lashing
against rocks which eternal despair has turned into adamant! They talk
of the music of the spheres!--Dream of the music of those living orbs
turning on their axis of fire for ever and ever, and ever singing as
they shine, like your brethren the Christians, who had the honour to
illuminate Nero’s garden in Rome on a rejoicing night.”--“You make me
tremble!”--“Tremble!--a strange effect of fire. Fie! what a coyness is
this!