At
the first sound of steps in the passage, and blows on the door, the
victims uttered a shriek of terror. They imagined they were detected,
and that an incensed party of monks were breaking open the door. These
terrors were soon exchanged for others,--and worse,--as they heard the
door nailed up, and listened to our departing steps. They uttered
another shriek, but O how different was the accent of its despair!--they
knew their doom. * * * * * It was my penance (no,--my delight) to watch
at the door, under the pretence of precluding the possibility of their
escape, (of which they knew there was no possibility); but, in reality,
not only to inflict on me the indignity of being the convent gaoler, but
of teaching me that callosity of heart, and induration of nerve, and
stubbornness of eye, and apathy of ear, that were best suited to my
office. But they might have saved themselves the trouble,--I had them
all before ever I entered the convent. Had I been the Superior of the
community, I should have undertaken the office of watching the door. You
will call this cruelty, I call it curiosity,--that curiosity that brings
thousands to witness a tragedy, and makes the most delicate female feast
on groans and agonies. I had an advantage over them,--the groan, the
agony I feasted on, were real. I took my station at _the door_--that
door which, like that of Dante’s hell, might have borne the inscription,
“Here is no hope,”--with a face of mock penitence, and genuine--cordial
delectation. I could hear every word that transpired. For the first
hours they tried to comfort each other,--they suggested to each other
hopes of liberation,--and as my shadow, crossing the threshold, darkened
or restored the light, they said, “That is he;”--then, when this
occurred repeatedly, without any effect, they said, “No,--no, it is not
he,” and swallowed down the sick sob of despair, to hide it from each
other. Towards night a monk came to take my place, and to offer me food. I would not have quitted my place for worlds; but I talked to the monk
in his own language, and told him I would make a merit with God of my
sacrifices, and was resolved to remain there all night, with the
permission of the Superior. The monk was glad of having a substitute on
such easy terms, and I was glad of the food he left me, for I was hungry
now, but I reserved the appetite of my soul for richer luxuries. I heard
them talking within. While I was eating, I actually lived on the famine
that was devouring them, but of which they did not dare to say a word to
each other. They debated, deliberated, and, as misery grows ingenious in
its own defence, they at last assured each other that it was impossible
the Superior had locked them in there to perish by hunger. At these
words I could not help laughing. This laugh reached their ears, and they
became silent in a moment. All that night, however, I heard their
groans,--those groans of physical suffering, that laugh to scorn all the
sentimental sighs that are exhaled from the hearts of the most
intoxicated lovers that ever breathed. I heard them all that night. I
had read French romances, and all their unimaginable nonsense. Madame
Sevignè herself says she would have been tired of her daughter in a long
tete-a-tete journey, but clap me two lovers into a dungeon, without
food, light, or hope, and I will be damned (that I am already, by the
bye) if they do not grow sick of each other within the first twelve
hours. The second day hunger and darkness had their usual influence. They shrieked for liberation, and knocked loud and long at their dungeon
door. They exclaimed they were ready to submit to any punishment; and
the approach of the monks, which they would have dreaded so much the
preceding night, they now solicited on their knees. What a jest, after
all, are the most awful vicissitudes of human life!--they supplicated
now for what they would have sacrificed their souls to avert
four-and-twenty hours before. Then the agony of hunger increased, they
shrunk from the door, and grovelled apart from each other. _Apart!_--how
I watched that. They were rapidly becoming objects of hostility to each
other,--oh what a feast to me! They could not disguise from each other
the revolting circumstances of their mutual sufferings. It is one thing
for lovers to sit down to a feast magnificently spread, and another for
lovers to couch in darkness and famine,--to exchange that appetite which
cannot be supported without dainties and flattery, for that which would
barter a descended Venus for a morsel of food. The second night they
raved and groaned, (as occurred); and, amid their agonies, (I must do
justice to women, whom I hate as well as men), the man often accused the
female as the cause of all his sufferings, but the woman never,--never
reproached him. Her groans might indeed have reproached him bitterly,
but she never uttered a word that could have caused him pain. There was
a change which I well could mark, however, in their physical feelings. The first day they clung together, and every movement I felt was like
that of one person. The next the man alone struggled, and the woman
moaned in helplessness. The third night,--how shall I tell it?--but you
have bid me go on. All the horrible and loathsome excruciations of
famine had been undergone; the disunion of every tie of the heart, of
passion, of nature, had commenced. In the agonies of their famished
sickness they loathed each other,--they could have cursed each other, if
they had had breath to curse. It was on the fourth night that I heard
the shriek of the wretched female,--her lover, in the agony of hunger,
had fastened his teeth in her shoulder;--that bosom on which he had so
often luxuriated, became a meal to him now.” * * * * * “Monster! and you
laugh?”--“Yes, I laugh at all mankind, and the imposition they dare to
practise when they talk of hearts. I laugh at human passions and human
cares,--vice and virtue, religion and impiety; they are all the result
of petty localities, and artificial situation. One physical want, one
severe and abrupt lesson from the tintless and shrivelled lip of
necessity, is worth all the logic of the empty wretches who have
presumed to prate it, from Zeno down to Burgersdicius. Oh! it silences
in a second all the feeble sophistry of _conventional_ life, and
ascetitious passion. Here were a pair who would not have believed all
the world on their knees, even though angels had descended to join in
the attestation, that it was possible for them to exist without each
other. They had risked every thing, trampled on every thing human and
divine, to be in each others sight and arms. One hour of hunger
undeceived them.