Various

“ The sailor’s face flushed up with an ungovernable tide of crimson. He started to his feet and grasped his cudgel; but the next moment he fell back into his seat trembling convulsively, and with the countenance of death itself. He spoke not a single word. I pitied him from the bottom of my heart.
“My friend,” said Dupin, in a kind tone, “you are alarming yourself unnecessarily—you are indeed. We mean you no harm whatever. I pledge you the honor of a gentleman, and of a Frenchman, that we intend you no injury. I perfectly well know that you are innocent of the atrocities in the Rue Morgue. ”

“ Yet Margaret could not forget her preserver. In her waking or sleeping dreams his manly form was ever before her, looking as it did when he sprang from the copse to her rescue; and as often as the vision recurred to her memory she owned to herself that she had never seen anyone of such rare manly beauty. She strolled oftener than ever into the forest, and Ruth noticed—for are not all women quick to notice such things?—that whenever her theme of conversation was their unknown preserver, her mistress listened to her with more than common interest. ”

“ Their homely but joyous greetings went to Lorraine’s heart, and almost drew tears from his eyes, when he reflected how differently he had passed that threshold the last time. His uncle met him at the hall door, and falling into his arms, blessed him: while Isabel frankly extending her hand, greeted him as she would have done in their old and happy hours.
The dinner passed off, Isabel withdrew, and Lorraine was alone with his uncle.
“How you have altered, Henry,” said the old earl, “you left us a boy, and now your brow is that of a warrior. ”

“ A weary lot is that of hopeless poverty, when it relies on charity alone for food and warmth and raiment; but wearier still is the lot of those, who, amid privation and want, still struggle to keep themselves from the deep abyss of beggary, and strive with decent pride still to retain their foothold in a world which too often confounds misfortune with disgrace. It was amid cares, and troubles, and anxieties of every kind that Fanny Wilbank grew up to womanhood. To say that she was beautiful would convey but little idea of the gentleness, the delicacy, the loveliness of her countenance. ”

“ The loss of a friend may be compensated for, and the ruin of our fortunes can be borne without despair; but the hopelessness of a first love can never be ameliorated by aught on earth. Go where we will, the blight of the heart will continue with us. We can never forget. Hope will have dried up within us. We feel, like a stranger in a strange land, as an outcast on the world, beholding feelings in which we can take no part around us, and reminded daily of our misery by the happiness of others. Alas! for the one disappointed in a first love.
That night Isabel saw no more of her cousin. ”

“ Yet though loving as few love, even in the fervor of a first passion, Margaret was still ignorant of her lover’s name. Often would she be tortured by fears lest he might have already forfeited his life in the career of an outlaw, but as often would she quiet her alarm by reflecting how impossible that a mere freebooter should be so courteous and even refined. ”

“ Why had Lorraine, after tearing himself away from Isabel, determined to re-visit her? Alas! who can tell the workings of that master passion LOVE? How often do we resolve to see the face of some dear one no more, and how often do we return again and again to her presence, hoping even against hope, until we feel that the cup of bliss is too surely dashed from our lips forever. ”

“ Fanny has been so long accustomed to sacrifice her own inclinations, that she cannot be persuaded to any self-indulgence unless some duty be closely connected with it.’
“Fanny Wilbank still lives; the beauty of her noble countenance has faded beneath the touch of time, and many a thread of silver is mingled with her dark locks, yet is she the centre of a circle of loving and beloved friends, still the same, patient, tender, self-forgetting being, that she was in the day of her early adversity.” ”

“ Isabel felt her heart beat faster at the enquiry of her parent, but giving an evasive answer to his question, she took the note, and left the apartment. Little did Lord Deraine suspect the agony which had driven his young kinsman from his halls, or dream of the tears that Isabel shed that night over her ill-fated cousin’s epistle. It ran thus:
Dearest Isabel:—I know not whether to write to you; and yet why should I not? Are we not cousins—brought up under the same roof—taught to love each other from childhood—bound to one another by a thousand ties? Yet we cannot meet again as we have met! ”

“ But she knew she was right, and even William, when the first burst of grief had subsided, and he was able to reflect calmly upon all the circumstances, acknowledged within himself, that Fanny had judged wisely for both. He could appreciate the honest pride which forbade her to fill a husband’s home with her own helpless relatives, and he could well understand the disinterested affection which taught her to make her own heart the victim rather than heap heavier burdens upon one with whom the world had already dealt hardly. ”

“ As the victor knelt at her feet, what sudden feeling was it which shot through her bosom? Why did her cheek crimson, her breath come quick, her heart flutter wildly? And why, as the helmet was removed from lord Hastings, did she drop the crown with which she was to reward him, and with a half suppressed scream, faint away? Why! but that in the victor of the tourney she recognised her own outlaw lover.
The joy of the reviving maiden when she found her preserver bending over her, and conjuring her to speak to him once more and forgive his stratagem, we shall not attempt to describe. ”

“ The haggard and wasted form of Valeria was stretched on the bare floor. Her half-famished infant lay upon her breast. She breathed with difficulty. Her eyes were sunken, her complexion pallid and unearthly. Her features betrayed evidences of the most intense agony, both mental and physical.
But the most shocking part of the scene was the ghastly semblance of Da Vinci, as he sat by the bed-side of his dying wife. His hands were crossed—his knees drawn together; his elbows rested on a broken table; his hair fell in long and matted locks from his head ”

“ My mother had occasion to employ a sempstress, and Fanny Wilbank having been recommended to her, I was sent to make some enquiry of her previous to giving her the work. I was a giddy school-girl at the time, but I shall never forget the impression made upon me by the neatness of the apartment, the snowy whiteness of the bed-linen, and above all, by the extreme beauty of both the females. Mary’s disease did not in the least impair the bloom of her lovely countenance, and as she sat propped up in bed by pillows, she looked in far better health than her pale sister. ”

“ For many a long day the old servitors loved to recall his boyish deeds, and augur a glorious career for the young soldier. And often, as Isabel sat in her splendid chamber, while twilight deepened through the gorgeously curtained windows, her thoughts would wander away after her absent cousin, and taking the melancholy hue of the hour, she would indulge in mournful memories of the past, and sigh that she could make no return to Lorraine except what was all too cold for him,—her friendship. ”

“ Here, in an obscure lane, and surrounded by filth and poverty, I traced my way to the wretched tenement of Da Vinci and Valeria. A kind of involuntary sickness came over me as I ascended the stairs leading to the miserable loft in which they lodged. It proceeded not from remorse; it was not prompted by humanity; it was instinct conquering nature. With some hesitation I entered the apartment of the dying woman. A spectacle, which to any one but myself, would have appeared heart-rending, caused me to shudder for the immensity of my guilt. ”

“ Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your attention—that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this—let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes of murder as this. ”

“ Her lover was deeply moved by her passionate entreaties, and pressing her to his bosom, kissed the tears from her cheek, and soothed her agitation by those words of kind endearment which are so eloquent when coming from one we love. He seemed too about to speak; but if so, he was prevented by a sudden baying of hounds, mingled with loud and approaching shouts, and directly a couple of dogs, followed by three keepers dashed out of the neighboring copse. ”

“ Yet the warrior receives his meed of glory, while the woman who calmly surrenders the ‘life of life’ without the stimulus of fame or the hope of guerdon;—she who patiently lives on, ‘in helpless, hopeless, brokenness of heart,’ ministering meekly to others, while a wasting grief is eating into her very soul—goes down to the grave unnoticed and unknown—perhaps regarded as a cold and eccentric being by those who cannot fathom the pure depths of such a mind. ”

“ Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen—although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We admitted no visiters whomsoever. Indeed the locality of our retirement had been carefully kept a secret from my own former associates; and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris. We existed within ourselves alone. ”

“ If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly reflected upon the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone so far as to combine the ideas of a strength superhuman, an agility astounding, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations, and devoid of all distinct or intelligible syllabification. ”

“ It was then, with a heart bleeding over the severed ties of kindred, that Fanny first taught herself to reflect upon the necessity of a final sacrifice of her hopes of happiness. Her father was fast sinking under the infirmities of age, and Mary was now helplessly dependent on her for every comfort; how then could she indulge the vain dream of being able to study her own welfare. There was a bitter struggle in the heart of the poor girl ere she could bring herself to write a letter of renunciation to William. ”

“ You don’t mean to say that was Mary Wilbank?”
“It was, cousin Frank, and in the story of Fanny Wilbank, I have been relating to you the early life of one whom you have ever loved with filial tenderness—I mean your excellent step-mother.”
“She is the only mother I have ever known, cousin Grace, and you can tell me nothing good of her which I cannot readily believe; so if you take her for an example, I have no more to say against the existence of disinterestedness in this selfish world. It is only a pity there are so few like her.” ”

“ I wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts the blundering idea of motive engendered in the brains of the police, by that portion of the evidence which speaks of money delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times as remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder committed within three days upon the party receiving it,) happen to each and all of us every hour of our lives, without attracting even a momentary notice. ”

“ But the greatest involution of incident will not result in plot; which, properly defined, is that in which no part can be displaced without ruin to the whole. It may be described as a building so dependently constructed, that to change the position of a single brick is to overthrow the entire fabric. In this definition and description, we of course refer only to that infinite perfection which the true artist bears ever in mind—that unattainable goal to which his eyes are always directed, but of the possibility of attaining which he still endeavors, if wise, to cheat himself into the belief. ”

“ Yet all this has been done by women. Awaken but a woman’s feelings, arouse the hidden strength of her affections, and earth holds not a peril which she will not brave.”
“You are eloquent, cousin Grace, but you scarcely make out your own case; according to your own evidence woman must have a personal motive for action; her strength of character must be called forth by some individual affection, or to use a less gentle term, by some selfish impulse.”
“According to your way of viewing character, then, Frank, the noblest impulses of our nature arise from selfishness.” ”

“ But the predominant and most important failing of the author of “Devereux,” in point of style, is an absolute mania for metaphor—metaphor always running into allegory. Pure allegory is at all times an abomination—a remnant of antique barbarism—appealing only to our faculties of comparison, without even a remote interest for our reason, or for our fancy. Metaphor, its softened image, has indisputable force when sparingly and skilfully employed. Vigorous writers use it rarely indeed. Mr. Bulwer is all metaphor or all allegory—mixed metaphor and unsustained allegory—and nothing if neither. ”

“ But the voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are never found to tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs. Madmen are of some nation, and their language, however incoherent in its words, has always the coherence of syllabification. Besides, the hair of a madman is not such hair as I now hold in my hand. I disentangled this little tuft from among the tresses remaining upon the head of Madame L’Espanaye. ”

“ In some places the dark overshadowing trees completely obscured the light of day, and in others, the sunbeams struggling between the leaves gilded the greensward beneath. Such was the scene through which Margaret took her way, until she reached the open glade, where, of late, she had met her lover. ”

“ I am poor; my Ourang-Outang is of great value—to one in my circumstances a fortune of itself—why should I lose it through idle apprehensions of danger? Here it is within my grasp. It was found in the Bois de Boulogne—at a vast distance from the scene of that butchery. How can it ever be suspected that a brute beast should have done the deed? The police are at fault—they have failed to procure the slightest clew. Should they even trace the animal, it would be impossible to prove me cognizant of the murder, or to implicate me in guilt on account of that cognizance. ”

“ Father!—for Christian meekness and humanity, still compel me to call you by the endearing name—will you not soften your heart toward one, who, by all the laws of nature and of man, should be its solace and its idol; and whose last wish is that death should separate us in amity and mutual affection? ”