Charles Robert Maturin

“ He evaded answering her on this point, but said, “Immalee, I come from a world wholly unlike that you inhabit, amid inanimate flowers, and unthinking birds. I come from a world where all, as I do, think and speak.” Immalee was speechless with wonder and delight for some time; at length she exclaimed, “Oh, how they must love each other! even I love my poor birds and flowers, and the trees that shade, and the waters that sing to me!” The stranger smiled. “In all that world, perhaps there is not another being beautiful and innocent as you. It is a world of suffering, guilt, and care.” ”

“ Woo the kisses of the fiery lightnings, to quench themselves on your smouldering bosom! Seek all that is terrible in nature for your companions and your lover!—woo them to burn and blast you—perish in their fierce embrace, and you will be happier, far happier, than if you lived in mine! Lived!—Oh who can be mine and live! Hear me, Immalee!” he cried, while he held her hands locked in his—while his eyes, rivetted on her, sent forth a light of intolerable lustre—while a new feeling of indefinite enthusiasm seemed for a moment to thrill his whole frame, and new-modulate the tone of his nature ”

“ A darkened cloud at that moment covered the moon—it seemed as if the departed storm collected in wrathful haste the last dark fold of its tremendous drapery, and was about to pass away for ever.
“The eyes of the stranger flashed on Immalee the brightest rays of mingled fondness and ferocity. He pointed to the darkness,—“Wed me by this light!” he exclaimed, “and you shall be mine for ever and ever!” Immalee, shuddering at the grasp in which he held her, and trying in vain to watch the expression of his countenance, yet felt enough of her danger to tear herself from him. “Farewell for ever!” ”

“ When I listen to music, your image floats on every note,—I hear you in every sound. The most inarticulate murmurs that I produce on my guitar (for I am very ignorant) are like a spell of melody that raises a form indescribable—not you, but my idea of you. In your presence, though that seems necessary to my existence, I have never felt that exquisite delight that I have experienced in that of your image, when music has called it up from the recesses of my heart. Music seems to me like the voice of religion summoning to remember and worship the God of my heart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The intense blue of the heavens, and the burning planet that stood in sole glory in their centre, might have vied with all that lavish and refulgent opulence of light in which nature arrays an Indian night. Below, too, there were flowers and fragrance; colours, like veiled beauty, mellowed, not hid; and dews that hung on every leaf, trembling and sparkling like the tears of spirits, that wept to take leave of the flowers.
“The breeze, indeed, though redolent of the breath of the orange blossom, the jasmine, and the rose, had not the rich and balmy odour that scents the Indian air by night. ”

“ Madonna Isidora has fainted!”
“Donna Clara lowered her spectacles, glanced at the figure of her daughter, who had fallen from her cushion, and lay breathless on the floor, and, after a short pause, replied, “She has fainted. Raise her.—Call for assistance, and apply some cold water, or bear her into the open air. I fear I have lost the mark in the life of this holy saint,” muttered Donna Clara when alone; “this comes of this foolish business of love and marriage. I never loved in my life, thank the saints!—and as to marriage, that is according to the will of God and of our parents.” ”

“ Well, if it must be so, happy man be his dole! And when shall the auspicious day, beautiful Immalee, still beautiful Isidora, in spite of your Christian name, (to which I have a most anti-catholic objection) —when shall that bright day dawn on your long slumbering eye-lashes, and waken them with kisses, and beams, and light, and love, and all the paraphernalia with which folly arrays misery previous to their union—that glittering and empoisoned drapery that well resembles what of old Dejanira sent to her husband—when shall the day of bliss be? ”

“ The rose is redder than I am—the palm-tree is taller than I am—and the wave is bluer than I am;—but they all change, and I never change. I have grown taller and stronger, though the rose fades every six moons; and the rock splits to let in the bats, when the earth shakes; and the waves fight in their anger till they turn grey, and far different from the beautiful colour they have when the moon comes dancing on them, and sending all the young, broken branches of her light to kiss my feet, as I stand on the soft sand. ”

“ The young Indian, yielding at once to love and superstition, seemed half-melting in his embrace, when, in a moment, she uttered a wild shriek, repelled him with all her strength, and crouched in an uncouth posture of fear, while she pointed with one quivering hand to a figure that appeared, at that moment, in the perspective of that tumultuous and indefinite heap of stone. The lover, unalarmed by the shriek of his mistress, was advancing to catch her in his arms, when his eye fell on the object that had struck hers, and he sunk on his face to the earth, in mute adoration. ”

“ I was so ill you would have pitied me—the clothes they put on me—the language they made me speak—the religion they made me believe—the country they brought me to—Oh you!—you alone!—the thought—the image of you, could alone have supported me! I loved, and to love is to live. Amid the disruption of every natural tie,—amid the loss of that delicious existence which seems a dream, and which still fills my dreams, and makes sleep a second existence,—I have thought of you—have dreamt of you—have loved you!”—“Loved me?—no being yet loved me but pledged me in tears.”—“And have I not wept?” ”

“ Immalee gazed on the awful scene by which she was surrounded, without any emotion derived from physical causes. To her, light and darkness had hitherto been the same; she loved the sun for its lustre, and the lightning for its transitory brilliancy, and the ocean for its sonorous music, and the tempest for the agitation which it gave to the trees, under whose bending and welcoming shadow she danced, in time kept by the murmur of their leaves, that hung low, as if to crown their votarist. ”

“ Melmoth looked up once more as she spoke—“If such is your resolution,—if such be your feelings indeed,”—— “And they are!—they are!” exclaimed Isidora, her tears bursting through the slender fingers, which, after extending towards him, she clasped over her burning eyes. “Then look to the alternative that awaits you!” said Melmoth slowly, bringing out the words with difficulty, and, as it appeared, with some feeling for his victim; “a union with the man you cannot love,—or the perpetual hostility, the wearying, wasting, almost annihilating persecution of your family! ”

“ For example, those who live in uncontrasted and untantalized misery, can hardly feel it—suffering becomes their habit, and they feel no more jealousy of their situation than the bat, who clings in blind and famishing stupefaction to the cleft of a rock, feels of the situation of the butterfly, who drinks of the dew, and bathes in the bloom of every flower. But the people of the other worlds have invented, by means of living in cities, a new and singular mode of aggravating human wretchedness—that of contrasting it with the wild and wanton excess of superfluous and extravagant splendour. ”

“ Seven mornings and evenings Immalee paced the sands of her lonely isle, without seeing the stranger. She had still his promise to console her, that they should meet in the world of suffering; and this she repeated to herself as if it was full of hope and consolation. In this interval she tried to educate herself for her introduction into this world, and it was beautiful to see her attempting, from vegetable and animal analogies, to form some image of the incomprehensible destiny of man. ”

“ How eloquent of truth is nature in her very silence! How fertile of reflections amid her profoundest desolations! But the desolation now presented to the eyes of Immalee, was that which is calculated to cause terror, not reflection. Earth and heaven, the sea and the dry land, seemed mingling together, and about to replunge into chaos. The ocean, deserting its eternal bed, dashed its waves, whose white surf gleamed through the darkness, far into the shores of the isle. ”

“ The multitude, unrepressed by the military, became ungovernable; the crosses reeled and rocked like standards in a battle; the ecclesiastics, in confusion and terror, pressed on each other. Amid that vast mass, every particle of which seemed in motion, there was but one emphatic and discriminate movement—that which bore a certain part of the crowd strait on to the spot where their victim, though inclosed and inwrapt by all that is formidable in earthly, and all that is awful in spiritual power—sheltered by the crucifix and the sword—stood trembling to the bottom of his soul. ”

“ And the poor Indian, oppressed by emotions she could neither understand or express, clasped her hands on her bosom, as if to hide the secret of its new palpitations, and, with the instinctive diffidence of her purity, signified the change of her feelings, by retiring a few steps from her companion, and casting on the earth eyes which could contain their tears no longer. The stranger appeared troubled,—an emotion new to himself agitated him for a moment,—then a smile of self-disdain curled his lip, as if he reproached himself for the indulgence of human feeling even for a moment. ”

“ As the stranger spoke, the clouds passed away, carrying their diminished burden of wrath and terror where sufferings were to be inflicted, and terrors to be undergone, by the natives of other climes—and the bright moon burst forth with a glory unknown in European climes. The heavens were as blue as the waves of the ocean, which they seemed to reflect; and the stars burst forth with a kind of indignant and aggravated brilliancy, as if they resented the usurpation of the storm, and asserted the eternal predominance of nature over the casual influences of the storms that obscured her. ”

“ No saint who ever viewed a miracle performed by himself with a holy and self-annihilating abstraction from seity, has perhaps felt a purer sentiment of perfect devotedness, than the female who, in her first hours of love, offers, at the feet of her worshipped one, the brilliant wreath of music, painting, and eloquence,—and only hopes, with an unuttered sigh, that the rose of love will not be unnoticed in the garland. ”

“ When subdued by the image of power, which the mind of man exercises over that of woman, that impulse becomes irresistibly humiliating. Immalee had at first bowed to conciliate her beloved, and her spirit had taught her frame that first inclination. In her next stage of suffering, she had sunk on her knees, and, remaining at a distance from him, she had trusted to this state of prostration to produce that effect on his heart which those who love always hope compassion may produce,—that illegitimate child of love, often more cherished than its parent. ”