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 Another Random Document on
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memory the well-known fact, that in Madrid the Jews have
subterranean passages to each other’s habitations, which have
hitherto baffled all the industry of the Inquisition. I slept that night,
or rather day, (for the sun had risen), on a pallet laid on the floor of
a room, small, lofty, and matted half-way up the walls. One narrow
and grated window admitted the light of the sun, that arose after
that eventful night; and amid the sweet sound of bells, and the still
sweeter of human life, awake and in motion around me, I sunk into
a slumber that was unbroken even by a dream, till the day was
closing; or, in the language of Adonijah, “till the shadows of the
evening were upon the face of all the earth.”
 CHAPTER XIV.

Unde iratos deos timent, qui sic propitios merentur?

Seneca.

“W hen I awoke, he was standing by my pallet. “Arise,” said he,

“eat and drink, that thy strength may return unto thee.” He pointed
to a small table as he spoke, which was covered with food of the
plainest kind, and dressed with the utmost simplicity. Yet he seemed
to think an apology was necessary for the indulgence of this
temperate fare. “I myself,” said he, “eat not the flesh of any animal,
save on the new moons and the feasts, yet the days of the years of
my life have been one hundred and seven; sixty of which have been
passed in the chamber where thou sawest me. Rarely do I ascend to
the upper chamber of this house, save on occasions like this, or
peradventure to pray, with my window open towards the east, for
the turning away wrath from Jacob, and the turning again the
captivity of Zion. Well saith the ethnic leach,

“Aer exclusus confert ad longevitatem.”

“Such hath been my life, as I tell thee. The light of heaven hath
been hidden from mine eyes, and the voice of man is as the voice of
a stranger in mine ears, save those of some of mine own nation,
who weep for the affliction of Israel; yet the silver cord is not loosed,
nor the golden bowl broken; and though mine eye be waxing dim,
my natural force is not abated.” (As he spoke, my eyes hung in
reverence on the hoary majesty of his patriarchal figure, and I felt as
if I beheld an embodied representation of the old law in all its stern
simplicity—the unbending grandeur, and primeval antiquity.) “Hast
thou eaten, and art full? Arise, then, and follow me.”
“We descended to the vault, where I found the lamp was always
burning. And Adonijah, pointing to the parchments that lay on the
table, said, “This is the matter wherein I need thy help; the
collection and transcription whereof hath been the labour of more
than half a life, prolonged beyond the bounds allotted to mortality;
but,” pointing to his sunk and blood-shot eyes, “those that look out
of the windows begin to be darkened, and I feel that I need help
from the quick hand and clear eye of youth. Wherefore, it being
certified unto me by our brother, that thou wert a youth who couldst
handle the pen of a scribe, and, moreover, wast in need of a city of
refuge, and a strong wall of defence, against the laying-in-wait of
thy brethren round about thee, I was willing that thou shouldst
come under my roof, and eat of such things as I set before thee,
and such as thy soul desireth, excepting only the abominable things
forbidden in the law of the prophet; and shouldst, moreover, receive
wages as an hired servant.”
“You will perhaps smile, Sir; but even in my wretched situation, I
felt a slight but painful flush tinge my cheek, at the thought of a
Christian, and a peer of Spain, becoming the amanuensis of a Jew
for hire. Adonijah continued, “Then, when my task is completed,
then will I be gathered to my fathers, trusting surely in the Hope of
Israel, that mine eyes shall “behold the King in his beauty,—they
shall see the land that is very far off.” And peradventure,” he added,
in a voice that grief rendered solemn, mellow, and tremulous,
“peradventure there shall I meet in bliss, those with whom I parted
in woe—even thou, Zachariah, the son of my loins, and thou, Leah,
the wife of my bosom;” apostrophizing two of the silent skeletons
that stood near. “And in the presence of the God of our fathers, the
redeemed of Zion shall meet—and meet as those who are to part no
more for ever and ever.” At these words, he closed his eyes, lifted up
his hands, and appeared to be absorbed in mental prayer. Grief had
perhaps subdued my prejudices—it had certainly softened my heart
—and at this moment I half-believed that a Jew might find entrance
and adoption amid the family and fold of the blessed. This sentiment
operated on my human sympathies, and I inquired, with unfeigned
anxiety, after the fate of Solomon the Jew, whose misfortune in
harbouring me had exposed him to the visit of the Inquisitors. “Be at
peace,” said Adonijah, waving his bony and wrinkled hand, as if
dismissing a subject below his present feelings, “our brother
Solomon is in no peril of death; neither shall his goods be taken for
a spoil. If our adversaries are mighty in power, so are we mighty also
to deal with them by our wealth or our wisdom. Thy flight they
never can trace, thy existence on the face of the earth shall also be
unknown to them, so thou wilt hearken to me, and heed my words.”
“I could not speak, but my expression of mute and imploring
anxiety spoke for me. “Thou didst use words,” said Adonijah, “last
night, whereof, though I remember not all the purport, the sound
yet maketh mine ears to tingle; even mine, which have not vibrated
to such sounds for four times the space of thy youthful years. Thou
saidst thou wert beset by a power that tempted thee to renounce
the Most High, whom Jew and Christian alike profess to worship;
and that thou didst declare, that were the fires kindled around thee,
thou wouldst spit at the tempter, and trample on the offer, though
thy foot pressed the coal which the sons of Dominick were lighting
beneath its naked sole.”—“I did,” I cried, “I did—and I would—So
help me God in mine extremity.”
“Adonijah paused for a moment, as if considering whether this
were a burst of passion, or a proof of mental energy. He seemed at
last inclined to believe it the latter, though all men of far-advanced
age are apt to distrust any marks of emotion as a demonstration
rather of weakness than of sincerity. “Then,” said he, after a long
and solemn pause, “then thou shalt know the secret that hath been
a burthen to the soul of Adonijah, even as his hopeless solitude is a
burthen to the soul of him who traverseth the desert, none
accompanying him with step, or cheering him with voice. From my
youth upward, even until now, have I laboured, and behold the time
of my deliverance is at hand; yea, and shall be accomplished
speedily.
“In the days of my childhood, a rumour reached mine ears, even
mine, of a being sent abroad on the earth to tempt Jew and
Nazarene, and even the disciples of Mohammed, whose name is
accursed in the mouth of our nation, with offers of deliverance at
their utmost need and extremity, so they would do that which my
lips dare not utter, even though there be no ear to receive it but
thine. Thou shudderest—well, then, thou art sincere, at least, in thy
faith of errors. I listened to the tale, and mine ears received it, even
as the soul of the thirsty drinketh in rivers of water, for my mind was
full of the vain fantasies of the Gentile fables, and I longed, in the
perverseness of my spirit, to see, yea, and to consort with, yea, and
to deal with, the evil one in his strength. Like our fathers in the
wilderness, I despised angel’s food, and lusted after forbidden
meats, even the meats of the Egyptian sorcerers. And my
presumption was rebuked as thou seest:—childless, wifeless,
friendless, at the last period of an existence prolonged beyond the
bounds of nature, am I now left, and, save thee alone, without one
to record its events. I will not trouble thee now with the tale of my
eventful life, farther than to tell thee, that the skeletons thou
tremblest to behold, were once clothed in flesh far fairer than thine.
They are those of my wife and child, whose history thou must not
now hear—but those of the two others thou must both hear and
relate.” And he pointed to the two other skeletons opposite, in their
upright cases. “On my return to my country, even Spain, if a Jew can
be said to have a country, I set myself down on this seat, and,
lighted by this lamp, I took in my hand the pen of a scribe, and
vowed by a vow, that this lamp should not expire, nor this seat be
forsaken, nor this vault untenanted, until that the record is written in
a book, and sealed as with the king’s signet. But, behold, I was
traced by those who are keen of scent, and quick of pursuit, even
the sons of Dominick. And they seized me, and laid my feet fast in
the bonds; but my writings they could not read, because they were
traced in a character unknown to this idolatrous people. And behold,
after a space they set me free, finding no cause of offence in me;
and they bade me depart, and trouble them no more. Then vowed I
a vow unto the God of Israel, who had delivered me from their
thraldom, that none but he who could read these characters should
ever transcribe them. Moreover, I prayed, and said, O Lord God of
Israel! who knowest that we are the sheep of thy fold, and our
enemies as wolves round about us, and as lions who roar for their
evening prey, grant, that a Nazarene escaped from their hands, and
fleeing unto us, even as a bird chased from her nest, may put to
shame the weapons of the mighty, and laugh them to scorn. Grant
also, Lord God of Jacob, that he may be exposed to the snare of the
enemy, even as those of whom I have written, and that he may spit
at it with his mouth, and spurn at it with his feet, and trample on the
ensnarer, even as they have trampled; and then shall my soul, even
mine, have peace at the last. Thus I prayed—and my prayer was
heard, for behold, thou art here.”
“As I heard these words, a horrid foreboding, like a night-mare of
the heart, hung heavily on me. I looked alternately at the withering
speaker, and the hopeless task. To bear about that horrible secret
inurned in my heart, was not that enough? but to be compelled to
scatter its ashes abroad, and to rake into the dust of others for the
same purpose of unhallowed exposure, revolted me beyond feeling
and utterance. As my eye fell listlessly on the manuscripts, I saw
they contained only the Spanish language written in the Greek
characters—a mode of writing that, I easily conceived, must have
been as unintelligible to the officers of the Inquisition, as the
Hieroglyphics of the Egyptian priests. Their ignorance, sheltered by
their pride, and that still more strongly fortified by the impenetrable
secresy attached to their most minute proceedings, made them
hesitate to entrust to any one the circumstance of their being in
possession of manuscript which they could not decypher. So they
returned the papers to Adonijah, and, in his own language, “Behold,
he abode in safety.” But to me this was a task of horror unspeakable.
I felt myself as an added link to the chain, the end of which, held by
an invisible hand, was drawing me to perdition; and I was now to
become the recorder of my own condemnation.
“As I turned over the leaves with a trembling hand, the towering
form of Adonijah seemed dilated with preternatural emotion. “And
what dost thou tremble at, child of the dust?” he exclaimed, “if thou
hast been tempted, so have they—if thou hast resisted, so have they
—if they are at rest, so shalt thou be. There is not a pang of soul or
body thou hast undergone, or canst undergo, that they have not
suffered before thy birth was dreamt of. Boy, thy hand trembles over
pages it is unworthy to touch, yet still I must employ thee, for I
need thee. Miserable link of necessity, that binds together minds so
uncongenial! I would that the ocean were my ink, and the rock my
page, and mine arm, even mine, the pen that should write thereon
letters that should last like those on the written mountains for ever
and ever—even the mount of Sinai, and those that still bear the
record, “Israel hath passed the flood(6).” As he spoke, I again turned
over the manuscripts. “Does thy hand tremble still?” said Adonijah;
“and dost thou still hesitate to record the story of those whose
destiny a link, wondrous, invisible, and indissoluble, has bound to
thine. Behold, there are those near thee, who, though they have no
longer a tongue, speak to thee with that eloquence which is stronger
than all the eloquence of living tongues. Behold, there are those
around thee, whose mute and motionless arms of bone plead to
thee as no arms of flesh ever pleaded. Behold, there are those who,
being speechless, yet speak—who, being dead, are yet alive—who,
though in the abyss of eternity, are yet around thee, and call on
thee, as with a mortal voice. Hear them!—take the pen in thine
hand, and write.” I took the pen in my hand, but could not write a
line. Adonijah, in a transport of ecstasy, snatching a skeleton from its
receptacle, placed it before me. “Tell him thy story thyself,
peradventure he will believe thee, and record it.” And supporting the
skeleton with one hand, he pointed with the other, as bleached and
bony as that of the dead, to the manuscript that lay before me.
“It was a night of storms in the world above us; and, far below
the surface of the earth as we were, the murmur of the winds,
sighing through the passages, came on my ear like the voices of the
departed,—like the pleadings of the dead. Involuntarily I fixed my
eye on the manuscript I was to copy, and never withdrew till I had
finished its extraordinary contents.
 Tale of the Indians.
“There is an island in the Indian sea, not many leagues from the
mouth of the Hoogly, which, from the peculiarity of its situation and
internal circumstances, long remained unknown to Europeans, and
unvisited by the natives of the contiguous islands, except on
remarkable occasions. It is surrounded by shallows that render the
approach of any vessel of weight impracticable, and fortified by
rocks that threatened danger to the slight canoes of the natives, but
it was rendered still more formidable by the terrors with which
superstition had invested it. There was a tradition that the first
temple to the black goddess Seeva(7), had been erected there; and
her hideous idol, with its collar of human sculls, forked tongues
darting from its twenty serpent mouths, and seated on a matted coil
of adders, had there first received the bloody homage of the
mutilated limbs and immolated infants of her worshippers.
“The temple had been overthrown, and the island half
depopulated, by an earthquake, that agitated all the shores of India.
It was rebuilt, however, by the zeal of the worshippers, who again
began to re-visit the island, when a tufaun of fury unparalleled even
in those fierce latitudes, burst over the devoted spot. The pagoda
was burnt to ashes by the lightning; the inhabitants, their dwellings,
and their plantations, swept away as with the besom of destruction,
and not a trace of humanity, cultivation, or life, remained in the
desolate isle. The devotees consulted their imagination for the cause
of these calamities; and, while seated under the shade of their
cocoa-trees they told their long strings of coloured beads, they
ascribed it to the wrath of the goddess Seeva at the increasing
popularity of the worship of Juggernaut. They asserted that her
image had been seen ascending amid the blaze of lightning that
consumed her shrine and blasted her worshippers as they clung to it
for protection, and firmly believed she had withdrawn to some
happier isle, where she might enjoy her feast of flesh, and draught
of blood, unmolested by the worship of a rival deity. So the island
remained desolate, and without inhabitant for years.
“The crews of European vessels, assured by the natives that
there was neither animal, or vegetable, or water, to be found on its
surface, forbore to visit; and the Indian of other isles, as he passed
it in his canoe, threw a glance of melancholy fear at its desolation,
and flung something overboard to propitiate the wrath of Seeva.
“The island, thus left to itself, became vigorously luxuriant, as
some neglected children improve in health and strength, while
pampered darlings die under excessive nurture. Flowers bloomed,
and foliage thickened, without a hand to pluck, a step to trace, or a
lip to taste them, when some fishermen, (who had been driven by a
strong current toward the isle, and worked with oar and sail in vain
to avoid its dreaded shore), after making a thousand prayers to
propitiate Seeva, were compelled to approach within an oar’s length
of it; and, on their return in unexpected safety, reported they had
heard sounds so exquisite, that some other goddess, milder than
Seeva, must have fixed on that spot for her residence. The younger
fishermen added to this account, that they had beheld a female
figure of supernatural loveliness, glide and disappear amid the
foliage which now luxuriantly overshadowed the rocks; and, in the
spirit of Indian devotees, they hesitated not to call this delicious
vision an incarnated emanation of Vishnu, in a lovelier form than
ever he had appeared before,—at least far beyond that which he
assumed, when he made one of his avatars in the figure of a tiger.
“The inhabitants of the islands, as superstitious as they were
imaginative, deified the vision of the isles after their manner. The old
devotees, while invoking her, stuck close to the bloody rites of Seeva
and Haree, and muttered many a horrid vow over their beads, which
they took care to render effectual by striking sharp reeds into their
arms, and tinging every bead with blood as they spoke. The young
women rowed their light canoes as near as they dared to the
haunted isle, making vows to Camdeo(8), and sending their paper
vessels, lit with wax, and filled with flowers, towards its coast, where
they hoped their darling deity was about to fix his residence. The
young men also, at least those who were in love and fond of music,
rowed close to the island to solicit the god Krishnoo(9) to sanctify it
by his presence; and not knowing what to offer to the deity, they
sung their wild airs standing high on the prow of the canoe, and at
last threw a figure of wax, with a kind of lyre in its hand, towards
the shore of the desolate isle.
“For many a night these canoes might be seen glancing past
each other over the darkened sea, like shooting stars of the deep,
with their lighted paper lanthorns, and their offerings of flowers and
fruits, left by some trembling hand on the sands, or hung by a
bolder one in baskets of cane on the rocks; and still the simple
islanders felt joy and devotion united in this “voluntary humility.” It
was observed, however, that the worshippers departed with very
different impressions of the object of their adoration. The women all
clung to their oars in breathless admiration of the sweet sounds that
issued from the isle; and when that ceased they departed,
murmuring over in their huts those “notes angelical,” to which their
own language furnished no appropriate sounds. The men rested
long on their oars, to catch a glimpse of the form which, by the
report of the fishermen, wandered there; and, when disappointed,
they rowed home sadly.
“Gradually the isle lost its bad character for terror; and in spite of
some old devotees, who told their blood-discoloured beads, and
talked of Seeva and Haree, and even held burning splinters of wood
to their scorched hands, and stuck sharp pieces of iron, which they
had purchased or stolen from the crews of European vessels, in the
most fleshy and sensitive parts of their bodies,—and, moreover,
talked of suspending themselves from trees with the head
downwards, till they were consumed by insects, or calcined by the
sun, or rendered delirious by their position,—in spite of all this,
which must have been very affecting, the young people went on
their own way,—the girls offering their wreaths to Camdeo, and the
youths invoking Krishnoo, till the devotees, in despair, vowed to visit
this accursed island, which had set every body mad, and find out
how the unknown deity was to be recognised and propitiated; and
whether flowers, and fruits, and love-vows, and the beatings of
young hearts, were to be substituted for the orthodox and legitimate
offering of nails grown into the hands till they appeared through
their backs, and setons of ropes inserted into the sides, on which the
religionist danced his dance of agony, till the ropes or his patience
failed. In a word, they were determined to find out what this deity
was, who demanded no suffering from her worshippers,—and they
fulfilled their resolution in a manner worthy of their purpose.
“One hundred and forty beings, crippled by the austerities of
their religion, unable to manage sail or oar, embarked in a canoe to
reach what they called the accursed isle. The natives, intoxicated
with the belief of their sanctity, stripped themselves naked, to push
their boat through the surf, and then, making their salams, implored
them to use oars at least. The devotees, all too intent on their
beads, and too well satisfied of their importance in the eyes of their
favourite deities, to admit a doubt of their safety, set off in triumph,
—and the consequence may be easily conjectured. The boat soon
filled and sunk, and the crew perished without a single sigh of
lamentation, except that they had not feasted the alligators in the
sacred waters of the Ganges, or perished at least under the shadow
of the domes of the holy city of Benares, in either of which cases
their salvation must have been unquestionable.
“This circumstance, apparently so untoward, operated favourably
on the popularity of the new worship. The old system lost ground
every day. Hands, instead of being scorched over the fire, were
employed only in gathering flowers. Nails (with which it was the
custom of the devotees to lard their persons) actually fell in price;
and a man might sit at his ease on his hams with as safe a
conscience, and as fair a character, as if fourscore of them occupied
the interval between. On the other hand, fruits were every day
scattered on the shores of the favourite isle; flowers, too, blushed on
its rocks, in all the dazzling luxuriance of colouring with which the
Flora of the East delights to array herself. There was that brilliant
and superb lily, which, to this day, illustrates the comparison
between it and Solomon, who, in all his glory, was not arrayed like
one of them. There was the rose unfolding its “paradise of leaves,”
and the scarlet blossom of the bombex, which an English traveller
has voluptuously described as banqueting the eye with “its mass of
vegetable splendour” unparalleled. And the female votarists at last
began to imitate some of “those sounds and sweet airs” that every
breeze seemed to waft to their ears, with increasing strength of
melody, as they floated in their canoes round this isle of
enchantment.
“At length one circumstance occurred that put its sanctity of
character, and that of its inmate, out of all doubt. A young Indian
who had in vain offered to his beloved the mystical bouquet, in
which the arrangement of the flowers is made to express love,
rowed his canoe to the island, to learn his fate from its supposed
inhabitant; and as he rowed, composed a song, which expressed
that his mistress despised him, as if he were a Paria, but that he
would love her though he were descended from the head of
Brahma;—that her skin was more polished than the marble steps by
which you descend to the tank of a Rajah, and her eyes brighter
than any whose glances were watched by presumptuous strangers
through the rents of the embroidered purdah(10) of a Nawaub;—that
she was loftier in his eyes than the black pagoda of Juggernaut, and
more brilliant than the trident of the temple of Maha-deva, when it
sparkled in the beams of the moon. And as both these objects were
visible to his eyes from the shore, as he rowed on in the soft and
glorious serenity of an Indian night, no wonder they found a place in
his verse. Finally, he promised, that if she was propitious to his suit,
he would build her a hut, raised four feet above the ground to avoid
the serpents;—that her dwelling should be overshadowed by the
boughs of the tamarind; and that while she slept, he would drive the
musquitoes from her with a fan, composed of the leaves of the first
flowers which she accepted as a testimony of his passion.
“It so happened, that the same night, the young female, whose
reserve had been the result of any thing but indifference, attended
by two of her companions, rowed her canoe to the same spot, with
the view of discovering whether the vows of her lover were sincere.
They arrived about the same time; and though it was now twilight,
and the superstition of these timid beings gave a darker tinge to the
shadows that surrounded them, they ventured to land; and, bearing
their baskets of flowers in trembling hands, advanced to hang them
on the ruins of the pagoda, amid which it was presumed the new
goddess had fixed her abode. They proceeded, not without difficulty,
through thickets of flowers that had sprung spontaneously in the
uncultivated soil—not without fear that a tiger might spring on them
at every step, till they recollected that those animals chose generally
the large jungles for their retreat, and seldom harboured amid
flowers. Still less was the alligator to be dreaded, amid the narrow
streams that they could cross without tinging their ancles with its
pure water. The tamarind, the cocoa, and the palm-tree, shed their
blossoms, and exhaled their odours, and waved their leaves, over
the head of the trembling votarist as she approached the ruin of the
pagoda. It had been a massive square building, erected amid rocks,
that, by a caprice of nature not uncommon in the Indian isles,
occupied its centre, and appeared the consequence of some volcanic
explosion. The earthquake that had overthrown it, had mingled the
rocks and ruins together in a shapeless and deformed mass, which
seemed to bear alike the traces of the impotence of art and nature,
when prostrated by the power that has formed and can annihilate
both. There were pillars, wrought with singular characters, heaped
amid stones that bore no impress but that of some fearful and
violent action of nature, that seemed to say, Mortals, write your lines
with the chisel, I write my hieroglyphics in fire. There were the
disjointed piles of stones carved into the form of snakes, on which
the hideous idol of Seeva had once been seated; and close to them
the rose was bursting through the earth which occupied the fissures
of the rock, as if nature preached a milder theology, and deputed
her darling flower as her missionary to her children. The idol itself
had fallen, and lay in fragments. The horrid mouth was still visible,
into which human hearts had been formerly inserted. But now, the
beautiful peacocks, with their rain-bow trains and arched necks,
were feeding their young amid the branches of the tamarind that
overhung the blackened fragments. The young Indians advanced
with diminished fear, for there was neither sight or sound to inspire
the fear that attends the approach to the presence of a spiritual
being—all was calm, still, and dark. Yet their feet trod with
involuntary lightness as they advanced to these ruins, which
combined the devastations of nature with those of the human
passions, perhaps more bloody and wild than the former. Near the
ruins there had formerly been a tank, as is usual, near the pagodas,
both for the purposes of refreshment and purification; but the steps
were now broken, and the water was stagnated. The young Indians,
however, took up a few drops, invoked the “goddess of the isle,” and
approached the only remaining arch. The exterior front of this
building had been constructed of stone, but its interior had been
hollowed out of the rock; and its recesses resembled, in some
degree, those in the island of Elephanta. There were monstrous
figures carved in stone, some adhering to the rock, others detached
from it, all frowning in their shapeless and gigantic hideousness, and
giving to the eye of superstition the terrible representation of “gods
of stone.”
“Two of the young votarists, who were distinguished for their
courage, advanced and performed a kind of wild dance before the
ruins of the ancient gods, as they called them, and invoked (as they
might) the new resident of the isle to be propitious to the vows of
their companion, who advanced to hang her wreath of flowers round
the broken remains of an idol half-defaced and half-hidden among
the fragments of stone, but clustered over with that rich vegetation
which seems, in oriental countries, to announce the eternal triumph
of nature amid the ruins of art. Every year renews the rose, but
what year shall see a pyramid rebuilt? As the young Indian hung her
wreath on the shapeless stone, a voice murmured, “There is a
withered flower there.”—“Yes—yes—there is,” answered the votarist,
“and that withered flower is an emblem of my heart. I have
cherished many roses, but suffered one to wither that was the
sweetest to me of all the wreath. Wilt thou revive him for me,
unknown goddess, and my wreath shall no longer be a dishonour to
thy shrine?”—“Wilt thou revive the rose by placing it in the warmth
of thy bosom,” said the young lover, appearing from behind the
fragments of rock and ruin that had sheltered him, and from which
he had uttered his oracular reply, and listened with delight to the
emblematical but intelligible language of his beloved. “Wilt thou
revive the rose?” he asked, in the triumph of love, as he clasped her
to his bosom. 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.
“The form was that of a female, but such as they had never
before beheld, for her skin was perfectly white, (at least in their
eyes, who had never seen any but the dark-red tint of the natives of
the Bengalese islands). Her drapery (as well as they could see)
consisted only of flowers, whose rich colours and fantastic grouping
harmonized well with the peacock’s feathers twined among them,
and altogether composed a feathery fan of wild drapery, which, in
truth, beseemed an “island goddess.” Her long hair, of a colour they
had never beheld before, pale auburn, flowed to her feet, and was
fantastically entwined with the flowers and the feathers that formed
her dress. On her head was a coronal of shells, of hue and lustre
unknown except in the Indian seas—the purple and the green vied
with the amethyst, and the emerald. On her white bare shoulder a
loxia was perched, and round her neck was hung a string of their
pearl—like eggs, so pure and pellucid, that the first sovereign in
Europe might have exchanged her richest necklace of pearls for
them. Her arms and feet were perfectly bare, and her step had a
goddess-like rapidity and lightness, that affected the imagination of
the Indians as much as the extraordinary colour of her skin and hair.
The young lovers sunk in awe before this vision as it passed before
their eyes. While they prostrated themselves, a delicious sound
trembled on their ears. The beautiful vision spoke to them, but it
was in a language they did not understand; and this confirming their
belief that it was the language of the gods, they prostrated
themselves to her again. At that moment, the loxia, springing from
her shoulder, came fluttering towards them. “He is going to seek for
fire-flies to light his cell(11),” said the Indians to each other. But the
bird, who, with an intelligence peculiar to his species, understood
and adopted the predilection of the fair being he belonged to, for the
fresh flowers in which he saw her arrayed every day, darted at the
withered rose-bud in the wreath of the young Indian; and, striking
his slender beak through it, laid it at her feet. The omen was
interpreted auspiciously by the lovers, and, bending once more to
the earth, they rowed back to their island, but no longer in separate
canoes. The lover steered that of his mistress, while she sat beside
him in silence; and the young people who accompanied them
chaunted verses in praise of the white goddess, and the island
sacred to her and to lovers.
 CHAPTER XV.

But tell me to what saint, I pray,

What martyr, or what angel bright,
Is dedicate this holy day,
Which brings you here so gaily dight?

Dost thou not, simple Palmer, know,

What every child can tell thee here?—
Nor saint nor angel claims this show,
But the bright season of the year.
Queen-Hoo Hall, by Strutt.

“T he sole and beautiful inmate of the isle, though disturbed at the

appearance of her worshippers, soon recovered her tranquillity. She
could not be conscious of fear, for nothing of that world in which she
lived had ever borne a hostile appearance to her. The sun and the
shade—the flowers and foliage—the tamarinds and figs that
prolonged her delightful existence—the water that she drank,
wondering at the beautiful being who seemed to drink whenever she
did—the peacocks, who spread out their rich and radiant plumage
the moment they beheld her—and the loxia, who perched on her
shoulder and hand as she walked, and answered her sweet voice
with imitative chirpings—all these were her friends, and she knew
none but these.
“The human forms that sometimes approached the island,
caused her a slight emotion; but it was rather that of curiosity than
alarm; and their gestures were so expressive of reverence and
mildness, their offerings of flowers, in which she delighted, so
acceptable, and their visits so silent and peaceful, that she saw them
without reluctance, and only wondered, as they rowed away, how
they could move on the water in safety; and how creatures so dark,
and with features so unattractive, happened to grow amid the
beautiful flowers they presented to her as the productions of their
abode. The elements might be supposed to have impressed her
imagination with some terrible ideas; but the periodical regularity of
these phænomena, in the climate she inhabited, divested them of
their terrors to one who had been accustomed to them, as to the
alternation of night and day—who could not remember the fearful
impression of the first, and, above all, who had never heard any
terror of them expressed by another,—perhaps the primitive cause
of fear in most minds. Pain she had never felt—of death she had no
idea—how, then, could she become acquainted with fear?
“When a north-wester, as it is termed, visited the island, with all
its terrific accompaniments of midnight darkness, clouds of
suffocating dust, and thunders like the trumpet of doom, she stood
amid the leafy colonnades of the banyan-tree, ignorant of her
danger, watching the cowering wings and drooping heads of the
birds, and the ludicrous terror of the monkies, as they skipt from
branch to branch with their young. When the lightning struck a tree,
she gazed as a child would on a fire-work played off for its
amusement; but the next day she wept, when she saw the leaves
would no longer grow on the blasted trunk. When the rains
descended in torrents, the ruins of the pagoda afforded her a
shelter; and she sat listening to the rushing of the mighty waters,
and the murmurs of the troubled deep, till her soul took its colour
from the sombrous and magnificent imagery around her, and she
believed herself precipitated to earth with the deluge—borne
downward, like a leaf, by a cataract—engulphed in the depths of the
ocean—rising again to light on the swell of the enormous billows, as
if she were heaved on the back of a whale—deafened with the roar
—giddy with the rush—till terror and delight embraced in that fearful
exercise of imagination. So she lived like a flower amid sun and
storm, blooming in the light, and bending to the shower, and
drawing the elements of her sweet and wild existence from both.
And both seemed to mingle their influences kindly for her, as if she
was a thing that nature loved, even in her angry mood, and gave a
commission to the storm to nurture her, and to the deluge to spare
the ark of her innocence, as it floated over the waters. This
existence of felicity, half physical, half imaginative, but neither
intellectual or impassioned, had continued till the seventeenth year
of this beautiful and mild being, when a circumstance occurred that
changed its hue for ever.
“On the evening of the day after the Indians had departed,
Immalee, for that was the name her votarists had given her, was
standing on the shore, when a being approached her unlike any she
had ever beheld. The colour of his face and hands resembled her
own more than those she was accustomed to see, but his garments,
(which were European), from their square uncouthness, their
shapelessness, and their disfiguring projection about the hips, (it
was the fashion of the year 1680), gave her a mixed sensation of
ridicule, disgust, and wonder, which her beautiful features could
express only by a smile—that smile, a native of the face from which
not even surprise could banish it.
“The stranger approached, and the beautiful vision approached
also, but not like an European female with low and graceful
bendings, still less like an Indian girl with her low salams, but like a
young fawn, all animation, timidity, confidence, and cowardice,
expressed in almost a single action. She sprung from the sands—ran
to her favourite tree;—returned again with her guard of peacocks,
who expanded their superb trains with a kind of instinctive motion,
as if they felt the danger that menaced their protectress, and,
clapping her hands with exultation, seemed to invite them to share
in the delight she felt in gazing at the new flower that had grown in
the sand.
“The stranger advanced, and, to Immalee’s utter astonishment,
addressed her in the language which she herself had retained some
words of since her infancy, and had endeavoured in vain to make her
peacocks, parrots, and loxias, answer her in corresponding sounds.
But her language, from want of practice, had become so limited,
that she was delighted to hear its most unmeaning sounds uttered
by human lips; and when he said, according to the form of the
times, “How do you, fair maid?” she answered, “God made me,”
from the words of the Christian Catechism that had been breathed
into her infant lip. “God never made a fairer creature,” replied the
stranger, grasping her hand, and fixing on her eyes that still burn in
the sockets of that arch-deceiver. “Oh yes!” answered Immalee, “he
made many things more beautiful. 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. I have tried to gather them every night,
but they all broke in my hand the moment I dipt it into water.”—“And
have you fared better with the stars?” said the stranger smiling.
—“No,” answered the innocent being, “the stars are the flowers of
heaven, and the rays of the moon the boughs and branches; but
though they are so bright, they only blossom in the night,—and I
love better the flowers that I can gather, and twine in my hair. When
I have been all night wooing a star, and it has listened and
descended, springing downwards like a peacock from its nest, it has
hid itself often afterwards playfully amid the mangoes and tamarinds
where it fell; and though I have searched for it till the moon looked
wan and weary of lighting me, I never could find it. But where do
you come from?—you are not scaly and voiceless like those who
grow in the waters, and show their strange shapes as I sit on the
shore at sun-set;—nor are you red and diminutive like those who
come over the waters to me from other worlds, in houses that can
live on the deep, and walk so swiftly, with their legs plunged in the
water. Where do you come from?—you are not so bright as the stars
that live in the blue sea above me, nor so deformed as those that
toss in the darker sea at my feet. Where did you grow, and how
came you here?—there is not a canoe on the sand; and though the
shells bear the fish that live in them so lightly over the waters, they
never would bear me. When I placed my foot on their scolloped
edge of crimson and purple, they sunk into the sand.”—“Beautiful
creature,” said the stranger, “I come from a world where there are
thousands like me.”—“That is impossible,” said Immalee, “for I live
here alone, and other worlds must be like this.”—“What I tell you is
true, however,” said the stranger. Immalee paused for a moment, as
if making the first effort of reflection—an exertion painful enough to
a being whose existence was composed of felicitous tacts and
unreflecting instincts—and then exclaimed, “We both must have
grown in the world of voices, for I know what you say better than
the chirp of the loxia, or the cry of the peacock. That must be a
delightful world where they all speak—what would I give that my
roses grew in the world of answers!”
“At this moment the stranger made certain signals of hunger,
which Immalee understood in a moment, and told him to follow her
to where the tamarind and the fig were shedding their fruit—where
the stream was so clear, you could count the purple shells in its bed
—and where she would scoop for him in the cocoa-shell the cool
waters that flowed beneath the shade of the mango. As they went,
she gave him all the information about herself that she could. She
told him that she was the daughter of a palm-tree, under whose
shade she had been first conscious of existence, but that her poor
father had been long withered and dead—that she was very old,
having seen many roses decay on their stalks; and though they were
succeeded by others, she did not love them so well as the first,
which were a great deal larger and brighter—that, in fact, every
thing had grown smaller latterly, for she was now able to reach to
the fruit which formerly she was compelled to wait for till it dropt on
the ground;—but that the water was grown taller, for once she was
forced to drink it on her hands and knees, and now she could scoop
it in a cocoa-shell. Finally, she added, she was much older than the
moon, for she had seen it waste away till it was dimmer than the
light of a fire-fly; and the moon that was lighting them now would
decline too, and its successor be so small, that she would never
again give it the name she had given to the first—Sun of the Night.
“But,” said her companion, “how are you able to speak a language
you never learned from your loxias and peacocks?”—“I will tell you,”
said Immalee, with an air of solemnity, which her beauty and
innocence made at once ludicrous and imposing, and in which she
betrayed a slight tendency to that wish to mystify that distinguishes
her delightful sex,—“there came a spirit to me from the world of
voices, and it whispered to me sounds that I never have forgotten,
long, long before I was born.”—“Really?” said the stranger. “Oh yes!
—long before I could gather a fig, or gather the water in my hand,
and that must be before I was born. When I was born, I was not so
high as the rose-bud, at which I tried to catch, now I am as near the
moon as the palm-tree—sometimes I catch her beams sooner than
he does, therefore I must be very old, and very high.” At these
words, the stranger, with an expression indescribable, leaned against
a tree. He viewed that lovely and helpless being, while he refused
the fruits and water she offered him, with a look, that, for the first
time, intimated compassion. The stranger feeling did not dwell long
in a mansion it was unused to. The expression was soon exchanged
for that half-ironical, half-diabolical glance Immalee could not
understand. “And you live here alone,” he said, “and you have lived
in this beautiful place without a companion?”—“Oh no!” said
Immalee, “I have a companion more beautiful than all the flowers in
the isle. There is not a rose-leaf that drops in the river so bright as
its cheek. My friend lives under the water, but its colours are so
bright. It kisses me too, but its lips are very cold; and when I kiss it,
it seems to dance, and its beauty is all broken into a thousand faces,
that come smiling at me like little stars. But, though my friend has a
thousand faces, and I have but one, still there is one thing that
troubles me. There is but one stream where it meets me, and that is
where are no shadows from the trees—and I never can catch it but
when the sun is bright. Then when I catch it in the stream, I kiss it
on my knees; but my friend has grown so tall, that sometimes I wish
it were smaller. Its lips spread so much wider, that I give it a
thousand kisses for one that I get.” “Is your friend male or female,”
said the stranger.—“What is that?” answered Immalee.—“I mean, of
what sex is your friend?”
“But to this question he could obtain no satisfactory answer; and
it was not till his return the next day, when he revisited the isle, that
he discovered Immalee’s friend was what he suspected. He found
this innocent and lovely being bending over a stream that reflected
her image, and wooing it with a thousand wild and graceful attitudes
of joyful fondness. The stranger gazed at her for some time, and
thoughts it would be difficult for man to penetrate into, threw their
varying expression over his features for a moment. It was the first of
his intended victims he had ever beheld with compunction. The joy,
too, with which Immalee received him, almost brought back human
feelings to a heart that had long renounced them; and, for a
moment, he experienced a sensation like that of his master when he
visited paradise,—pity for the flowers he resolved to wither for ever.
He looked at her as she fluttered round him with outspread arms
and dancing eyes; and sighed, while she welcomed him in tones of
such wild sweetness, as suited a being who had hitherto conversed
with nothing but the melody of birds and the murmur of waters.
With all her ignorance, however, she could not help testifying her
amazement at his arriving at the isle without any visible means of
conveyance. 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.” It was with much difficulty she was made to comprehend the
meaning of these words, but when she did, she exclaimed, “Oh, that
I could live in that world, for I would make every one happy!”—“But
you could not, Immalee,” said the stranger; “this world is of such
extent that it would take your whole life to traverse it, and, during
your progress, you never could be conversant with more than a
small number of sufferers at a time, and the evils they undergo are
in many instances such as you or no human power could relieve.” At
these words, Immalee burst into an agony of tears. “Weak, but
lovely being,” said the stranger, “could your tears heal the corrosions
of disease?—cool the burning throb of a cancered heart?—wash the
pale slime from the clinging lips of famine?—or, more than all,
quench the fire of forbidden passion?” Immalee paused aghast at
this enumeration, and could only faulter out, that wherever she
went, she would bring her flowers and sunshine among the healthy,
and they should all sit under the shade of her own tamarind. That
for disease and death, she had long been accustomed to see flowers
wither and die their beautiful death of nature. “And perhaps,” she
added, after a reflective pause, “as I have often known them to
retain their delicious odour even after they were faded, perhaps
what thinks may live too after the form has faded, and that is a
thought of joy.” Of passion, she said she knew nothing, and could
propose no remedy for an evil she was unconscious of. She had seen
flowers fade with the season, but could not imagine why the flower
should destroy itself. “But did you never trace a worm in the flower?”
said the stranger, with the sophistry of corruption. “Yes,” answered
Immalee, “but the worm was not the native of the flower; its own
leaves never could have hurt it.” This led to a discussion, which
Immalee’s impregnable innocence, though combined with ardent
curiosity and quick apprehension, rendered perfectly harmless to her.
Her playful and desultory answers,—her restless eccentricity of
imagination,—her keen and piercing, though ill-poised intellectual
weapons,—and, above all, her instinctive and unfailing tact in
matters of right and wrong, formed altogether an array that
discomfited and baffled the tempter more than if he had been
compelled to encounter half the wranglers of the European
academies of that day. In the logic of the schools he was well-
versed, but in this logic of the heart and of nature, he was
“ignorance itself.” It is said, that the “awless lion” crouches before “a
maid in the pride of her purity.” The tempter was departing gloomily,
when he saw tears start from the bright eyes of Immalee, and
caught a wild and dark omen from her innocent grief. “And you
weep, Immalee?” “Yes,” said the beautiful being, “I always weep
when I see the sun set in clouds; and will you, the sun of my heart,
set in darkness too? and will you not rise again? will you not?” and,
with the graceful confidence of pure innocence, she pressed her red
delicious lip to his hand as she spoke. “Will you not? I shall never
love my roses and peacocks if you do not return, for they cannot
speak to me as you do, nor can I give them one thought, but you
can give me many. Oh, I would like to have many thoughts about
the world that suffers, from which you came; and I believe you came
from it, for, till I saw you, I never felt a pain that was not pleasure;
but now, it is all pain when I think you will not return.”—“I will
return,” said the stranger, “beautiful Immalee, and will shew you, at
my return, a glimpse of that world from which I come, and in which
you will soon be an inmate.”—“But shall I see you there,” said
Immalee, “otherwise how shall I talk thoughts?”—“Oh yes,—oh
certainly.”—“But why do you repeat the same words twice; your
once would have been enough.”—“Well then, yes.”—“Then take this
rose from me, and let us inhale its odour together, as I say to my
friend in the fountain, when I bend to kiss it; but my friend
withdraws its rose before I have tasted it, and I leave mine on the
water. Will you not take my rose,” said the beautiful suppliant,
bending towards him. “I will,” said the stranger; and he took a
flower from the cluster Immalee held out to him. It was a withered
one. He snatched it, and hid it in his breast. “And will you go without
a canoe across that dark sea?” said Immalee.—“We shall meet
again, and meet in the world of suffering,” said the stranger.
—“Thank you,—oh, thank you,” repeated Immalee, as she saw him
plunge fearless amid the surf. The stranger answered only, “We shall
meet again.” Twice, as he parted, he threw a glance at the beautiful
and isolated being; a lingering of humanity trembled round his heart,
—but he tore the withered rose from his bosom, and to the waved
arm and angel-smile of Immalee, he answered, “We shall meet
again.”
 CHAPTER XVI.

Più non ho la dolce speranza.

Didone.

“S even 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. In the shade she watched the withering flower.
—“The blood that ran red through its veins yesterday is purple to-
day, and will be black and dry to-morrow,” she said; “but it feels no
pain—it dies patiently,—and the ranunculus and tulip near it are
untouched by grief for their companion, or their colours would not
be so resplendent. But can it be thus in the world that thinks? Could
I see him wither and die, without withering and dying along with
him. Oh no! when that flower fades, I will be the dew that falls over
him!”
“She attempted to enlarge her comprehension, by observing the
animal world. A young loxia had fallen dead from its pendent nest;
and Immalee, looking into the aperture which that intelligent bird
forms at the lower extremity of the nest to secure it from birds of
prey, perceived the old ones with fire-flies in their small beaks, their
young one lying dead before them. At this sight Immalee burst into
tears.—“Ah! you cannot weep,” she said, “what an advantage I have
over you! You eat, though your young one, your own one, is dead;
but could I ever drink of the milk of the cocoa, if he could no longer
taste it? I begin to comprehend what he said—to think, then, is to
suffer—and a world of thought must be a world of pain! But how
delicious are these tears! Formerly I wept for pleasure—but there is
a pain sweeter than pleasure, that I never felt till I beheld him. Oh!
who would not think, to have the joy of tears?”
“But Immalee did not occupy this interval solely in reflection; a
new anxiety began to agitate her; and in the intervals of her
meditation and her tears, she searched with avidity for the most
glowing and fantastically wreathed shells to deck her arms and hair
with. She changed her drapery of flowers every day, and never
thought them fresh after the first hour; then she filled her largest
shells with the most limpid water, and her hollow cocoa nuts with
the most delicious figs, interspersed with roses, and arranged them
picturesquely on the stone bench of the ruined pagoda. The time,
however, passed over without the arrival of the stranger, and
Immalee, on visiting her fairy banquet the next day, wept over the
withered fruit, but dried her eyes, and hastened to replace them.
“She was thus employed on the eighth morning, when she saw
the stranger approach; and the wild and innocent delight with which
she bounded towards him, excited in him for a moment a feeling of
gloomy and reluctant compunction, which Immalee’s quick
susceptibility traced in his pausing step and averted eye. She stood
trembling in lovely and pleading diffidence, as if intreating pardon
for an unconscious offence, and asking permission to approach by
the very attitude in which she forbore it, while tears stood in her
eyes ready to fall at another repelling motion. This sight “whetted
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