Recluse

“ I knew by the way True barked that some creature was there; and looking more narrowly, I observed some animals clinging to the lower branches, but so nearly did they resemble the bark to which they were holding, that had they not been pointed out to me I should have passed them by. The animals turned listless glances at us, and seemed in no way disposed to move.
“There,” observed the recluse, “are creatures in every way adapted to the mode of life which they are doomed to lead. Place them in any other, and they will be miserable. ”

“ Some recluse, preferring the absolute simplicity of nature, or perhaps wearied with the artificialities of society, had secluded himself here with the company of his only daughter. Proficient as a pathfinder, he had easily discovered some other way of provisioning his house from the settlements than by the ordinary trails past Collinson's or Skinner's, which would have betrayed his vicinity. But recluses are not usually accompanied by young daughters, whose relations with the world, not being as antagonistic, would make them uncertain companions. Why not a wife? ”

“ For a while she led at home the life of a recluse, speaking only to her confessor, and spending all her time in devotion and spiritual ecstasy. Her innate humanity and sound sense, however, led her gradually to return to her place in the family circle, and she began also to seek out and help the poor and the sick. ”

“ In the Recluse he records how he deliberately fought, and bent to other uses, a certain wild passionate delight he felt in danger, a struggle or victory over a foe, in short, some of the primitive instincts of a strong, healthy animal, feelings which few would regard as reprehensible. These natural instincts, this force and energy, good in themselves, Wordsworth did not crush, but deliberately turned into a higher channel. ”

“ He has the strength (and of course the limitations) of the recluse, who, though not afraid of the world, always stands at 97a slight angle to it, and, in conversation, he has sometimes devoted a sentence to this subject. ”

“ Richard the hermit to Dame Margaret the recluse of Anderby, also shows that in exceptional cases a recluse ate with men. The incident of the head of the recluse, in her convulsive sleep, falling at the window at which the hermit was reclining, and leaning partly upon him, [157] is explained by the theory that they were sitting in separate apartments, each close by this house window, which was open between them. As we have already seen, in the case of Sir Percival, a man might even sleep in the reclusorium; and so the Rule says, “let no man sleep within your walls” as a general rule ”

“ As I have already said, the Recluse loves you better than he does any creature in the colony. He knows all the plots and counterplots that are going on, and if you will surprise him with a visit to-night, he will divulge the whole affair to you."
"Why must it be to-night?"
"Because there is no time to be lost. To-morrow is the anniversary of the Restoration. There is to be a grand celebration during the day, and a ball at night; this opportunity is to be taken advantage of in some way or other by the desperate men alluded to. ”

“ As long as the sun shines the recluse may not even leave her couch, but occasionally an eclipse procures her a temporary release from her gaol. No man may approach her, for she must not be exposed to the temptation of looking at a male. ”

“ That women devotees often behaved very differently from what they ought is evident from these passages, for false recluses are likened unto foxes who live in holes and are thievish, ravenous and yelping, but ‘the true recluses are indeed birds of heaven, that fly aloft and sit on the green boughs singing merrily ”

“ The recluse witnesses what others perform by their aid with a kind of fear. It is as much out of his possibility, as the prowess of Coeur-de-Lion, or an Irishman's day's work on the railroad. 'Tis said, the present and the future are always rivals. Animal spirits constitute the power of the present, and their feats are like the structure of a pyramid. ”

“ So that the recluse should esteem himself to be condemned for his sins, and shut up in his solitary cell as in a prison, and unworthy, for his sins, of the society of men. There is a note, that this office shall serve for both sexes. On the day before the ceremony of inclusion, the Includendus—the person about to be inclosed—was to confess, and to fast that day on bread and water; and all that night he was to watch and pray, having his wax taper burning, in the monastery, [161] near his inclusorium. ”

“ What hast thou, or thine, todo with my waking thoughts?"
"Your waking thoughts, sir," said the second of Miss Vere's companions, with a sort of mock gravity, "are fixed, doubtless, upon wisdom; folly can only intrude on your sleeping moments."
"Over thine," retorted the Dwarf, more splenetically than became a philosopher, or hermit, "folly exercises an unlimited empire, asleep or awake."
"Lord bless us!" said the lady, "he's a prophet, sure enough."
"As surely," continued the Recluse, "as thou art a woman—a woman!—I should have said a lady—a fine lady. ”

“ The lives of the recluses have been severely criticised; they have, upon the faith of some shocking instances, been represented as full of wickedness and corruption; and yet in general the people loved them. ”

“ Such an instance of misery is, I hope, one of those extreme cases which seldom take place, and more seldom transpire. The common source of suffering among the Catholic recluses proceeds from a certain degree of religious melancholy, which, combined with such complaints as originate in perpetual confinement, affect more or less the greater number. ”

“ Truly, when I see one of these recluses sneaking out of his door in the morning, his brow furrowed with wrinkles, and staring at the sky as if it were a vault of blotting-paper, I often think to myself: It is going to rain soon; God will have to let down the curtain of clouds, so that that sour face will not irritate Him. They ought to take legal action against fellows like that on the ground that they are thwarters of merry parties and destroyers of harvest weather. ”

“ The Christian recluses were thus led to bury themselves in cells among the mountains and deserts, in dreary and uncomfortable caverns, in isolated retreats far from the habitation of men,--yea, among wild beasts, clothing themselves in their skins and eating their food, in order to commune with God more effectually, and propitiate His favor. ”

“ No less than twelve months was allowed them for their purification, some of them at least who were brought out of the country, that they might be very clean, and perfumed, v. 12. Even those who were the masterpieces of nature must yet have all this help from art to recommend them to a vain and carnal mind. 4. After the king had once taken them to his bed, they were made recluses ever after, except the king pleased at any time to send for them (v. 14) ; they were looked upon as secondary wives, were maintained by the king accordingly, and might not marry. ”

“ If you should wed, may a father's curse
⁠Be your swift and sure undoing.
“My curse shall feed on your fields of corn,
⁠On your roof-tree make its nesting,
Your wife shall wish your child unborn
⁠As he pines on her sore heart resting.”
Now when this cruel oath he said
⁠The youth did chide him, crying,
“Since I have neither field nor bed
⁠Your curse shall fall to dying. ”

“ If sorrow, and mourning, and sighing, and death itself, assail us from the afflictions both of soul and body, how shall they be removed, except by the cessation of their causes, that is to say, the afflictions of flesh and soul? ”

“ The rebellion of the son against the father, or of the vassal against his lord, is punished by blinding or death; the blasphemer or liar, taking the name of God or of the king in vain, is punished with the loss of his tongue ”

“ Look at him—ha! I see plague! She has invested his form, is incarnate in his flesh, has entwined herself with his being, and blinds his heaven-seeking eyes. Lie down, O man, on the flower-strown earth; give up all claim to your inheritance, all you can ever possess of it is the small cell which the dead require. ”

“ The "evil eye" is much dreaded, especially that of old women, whose glance suffices to poison food and drink. All disorders are attributed to sorcery, and in order to recover the patient spits three times in the face of every woman he meets, the cure being effected when he reaches the actual delinquent. ”

“ That night there were howlings and dreadful crying heard. The next morning Sir Hugh lay on the grass, thrown from the window by no mortal hand, and his face was stamped with horror unspeakable. And so it is in life, for thus by the impious act of trafficking with the Devil, this evil man brought a Curse upon his innocent family which abides even to this day. ”

“ Then there broke in my old and faithful servant, and the wind flapped down upon us from the sky. I heard his voice calling through the noise, his thin hands gesticulating in the air; and at his words I stood struck dumb and cold.
'No help!' he cried, 'no help! Nothing will avail now. The plague has taken the very servant on his errand,' he moaned; 'the plague! ”

“ Having no thought but for them, I lavished endearments on them and all the care their growing infirmities needed; for I had the grief of seeing that I had bequeathed them a very sad inheritance. The eruptions which had caused me so much suffering made their appearance very early on their little bodies; the eldest was quite covered with them. Many remedies were tried, but the root of the evil was never wholly destroyed. ”

“ He passed on with a shudder and an exorcism, for he believed it to be a temptation of the devil.262 But most terrible of all were the struggles of young and ardent men, through whose veins the hot blood of passion continually flowed, physically incapable of a life of celibacy, and with all that proneness to hallucination which a southern sun engenders, who were borne on the wave of enthusiasm to the desert life. In the arms of Syrian or African brides, whose soft eyes answered love with love, they might have sunk to rest, but in the lonely wilderness no peace could ever visit their souls. ”

“ This mysterious being remains invisible, even to his worshippers themselves, and although he is supposed to be mortal, his priests gather up his remains, and from these the god springs ever into new life. ”

“ To this god they offer bloody sacrifices of cocks and goats in shrines from which women and children are excluded. The "wise men" interpret to the vulgar the decrees of the deity, reading his will in the blood of the victims, in their last spasms, or the position of the dead bodies. ”

“ He went back to his college a changed man. The old gaiety had gone, and a bitter self-scorn had come which brought out something of the old Reckavile spirit. Women he shunned with horror, as the image of the one perfect woman he had known made the others seem hollow, and talkative beyond measure. ”

“ The speciality of the plague is a delight in the exposition of the relations between guilt and decrepitude; and I call the results of it literature "of the prison-house," because the thwarted habits of body and mind, which are the punishment of reckless crowding in cities, become, in the issue of that punishment, frightful subjects of exclusive interest to themselves ”

“ The Lepers.
“All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.”—Leviticus XIII. 46.
One The Magistrate sat in his office, deep in thought. Before him, on his desk, lay a pile of documents of foolscap size—clinical reports as to some forty odd natives in the district, who had been cursed by God with the most bitter of all curses—the disease of leprosy. ”

“ I heard a short, sharp cry behind me, a fall, and turning saw an awful face rushing upon me,—not human, not animal, but hellish, brown, seamed with red branching scars, red drops starting out upon it, and the lidless eyes ablaze. ”

“ For if the locusts did not appear till after the king had got in the hay for the supply of his own mews, and so only devoured the second crop of grass as it grew, this plague would fall upon the people alone, and not at all upon the king. ”

“ I knew that I stood upon the borders of the Middle State. Believing that more is to be gained by descriptions of the good and excellent than by exciting the horror of deformity, I forbear, in this introductory volume, to recount the terrors of the awful Hell of the vicious and the self-damned soul.
Suffice it that I beheld scenes of lust, insanity, debauchery, and all vileness, sufficiently dreadful to appal the stoutest heart of any sane one who dwells in the same awful phantasies, insanities and evils. ”

“ In many a house the watchmen, in their rounds, found a whole family of corpses, father, mother, and children, side by side, for a disorder called the plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. ”

“ If another man hath not slept with thee, and if thou be not defiled by forsaking thy husband’s bed, these most bitter waters, on which I have heaped curses, shall not hurt thee.
5:20. But if thou hast gone aside from thy husband, and art defiled, and hast lain with another man:
5:21. These curses shall light upon thee: The Lord make thee a curse, and an example for all among his people: may he make thy thigh to rot, and may thy belly swell and burst asunder. ”

“ To the contagionist, filled as he is with the dread of final causes, having no faith in destiny nor in the fixed will of God, and with none of the devil-may-care indifference which might stand him instead of creeds—to such one, every rag that shivers in the breeze of a plague-stricken city has this sort of sublimity. ”

“ But that is not the worst: as each member of our house succeeds to the ancestral rank and honours, he must seek an interview with 'The Curse,' as it has been styled for generations. And, in that interview, it is decided whether the spell is to be broken and the Curse depart from us for ever—or whether it is to continue its blighting influence, and hold yet another life in miserable thraldom.'
'And are you one of its thralls then, papa?' faltered Chlorine. ”