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Melmoth, after each had communicated his and her intelligence, without obtaining audience of the other. "Would you have me tell it to the bare walls?" inquired the lady in her shrillest tone. "Have I not just informed you that she has gone, fled, eloped? Her chamber is empty; and her bed has not been occupied." "Gone!" repeated the doctor.
"There are hidden wonders of rock and precipice and cave, in that dark forest," said Edward, pointing to the space between them and the river. "If it were earlier in the day, I should love to lead you there. Shall we try the adventure now, Ellen?" "Oh no!" she replied. "Let us delay no longer. I fear I must even now abide a rebuke from Mrs. Melmoth, which I have surely deserved.
Few had perused few know at this day the terrible story of Melmoth the Wanderer, half man, half devil, who has bartered away his soul for the glory of power and knowledge, and, repenting of his bargain, tries again and again to persuade some desperate human to change places with him penetrates to the refuge of misery, the death chamber, even the madhouse, seeking one in such utter agony as to accept his help, and take his curse but ever fails.
The manuscript told no more of Melmoth, but mentioned that Stanton was finally liberated from his confinement, that his pursuit of Melmoth was incessant and indefatigable, that he himself allowed it to be a species of insanity, that while he acknowledged it to be the master passion, he also felt it the master torment of his life.
"What have I done to you?" he said, in his prostrate helplessness, and he breathed hard like a stag at the water's edge. "What do you want of me?" "Look!" cried Melmoth. Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed.
Though these had been charred to cinder, and were very difficult to unroll and decipher, over 300 of them have been read. The translation which follows is adopted from the very free version of Melmoth, except in one or two places, where it differs much from the ordinary text. The letters are given entire, though some parts are rather specimens of style than good examples of description.
The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same sickening heat through him that an emetic produces. But it seemed impossible to Castanier that the Englishman should have guessed his crime. His inward qualms he attributed to the palpitation of the heart that, according to received ideas, was sure to follow at once on such a "turn" as the stranger had given him. "The devil take it; I am very stupid.
Castanier looked at the handwriting, noticing that it sloped from right to left in the Eastern fashion, and Melmoth disappeared so noiselessly that when Castanier looked up again an exclamation broke from him, partly because the man was no longer there, partly because he felt a strange painful sensation such as our imagination might take for an effect of poison.
His relation to the world without had been entirely changed with the expansion of his faculties. Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few moments over the fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above African desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas.
He looked at it, it was black and blue, as from the recent gripe of a strong hand. Balzac's tale, Melmoth Reconciled, in Vol. IV., furnishes a solution to the terrible problem which Maturin has stated in this story. Introduction to "A Mystery with a Moral" The next Mystery Story is like no other in these volumes.
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