Melmoth the Wanderer

faces frightfully resembling that of their clay-coloured arms and feet. Then followed those who had on their black dresses the fuego revolto.26 Then followed⁠—I saw myself; and this horrid tracing of yourself in a dream⁠—this haunting of yourself by your own spectre, while you still live, is perhaps a curse almost equal to your crimes visiting you in the punishments of eternity. I saw myself in the garment of condemnation, the flames pointing upwards, while the demons painted on my dress were mocked by the demons who beset my feet, and hovered round my temples. The Jesuits on each side of me, urged me to consider the difference between these painted fires, and those which were about to enwrap my writhing soul for an eternity of ages. All the bells of Madrid seemed to be ringing in my ears. There was no light but a dull twilight, such as one always sees in his sleep (no man ever dreamed of sunlight);⁠—there was a dim and smoky blaze of torches in my eyes, whose flames were soon to be in my eyes. I saw the stage before me⁠—I was chained to the chair, amid the ringing of bells, the preaching of the Jesuits, and the shouts of the multitude. A splendid amphitheatre stood opposite⁠—the king and queen of Spain, and all the nobility and hierarchy of the land, were there to see us burn. Our thoughts in dreams wander; I had heard a story of an auto-da-fé, where a young Jewess, not sixteen, doomed to be burnt alive, had prostrated herself before the queen, and exclaimed, “Save me⁠—save me, do not let me burn, my only crime is believing in the God of my fathers;”⁠—the queen (I believe Elizabeth of France, wife of Philip) wept, but the procession went on. Something like this crossed my dream. I saw the supplicant rejected; the next moment the figure was that of my brother Juan, who clung to me, shrieking, “Save me, save me.” The next moment I was chained to my chair again⁠—the fires were lit, the bells rang out, the litanies were sung;⁠—my feet were scorched to a cinder⁠—my muscles cracked, my blood and marrow hissed, my flesh consumed like shrinking leather⁠—the bones of my legs hung two black withering and moveless sticks in the ascending blaze;⁠—it ascended, caught my hair⁠—I was crowned with fire⁠—my head was a ball of molten metal, my eyes flashed and melted in their sockets;⁠—I opened my mouth, it drank fire⁠—I closed it, the fire was within⁠—and still the bells rung on, and the crowd shouted, and the king and queen, and all the nobility and priesthood, looked on, and we burned, and burned!⁠—I was a cinder body and soul in my dream.

I awoke from it with the horrible exclamation⁠—ever shrieked, never heard⁠—of those wretches, when the fires are climbing fast and fell⁠—Misericordia por amor di Dios! My own screams awoke me⁠—I was in my prison, and beside me stood the tempter. With an impulse I could not resist⁠—an impulse borrowed from the horrors of my dream, I flung myself at his feet, and called on him to “save me.”

I know not, sir, nor is it a problem to be solved by human intellect, whether this inscrutable being had not the power to influence my dreams, and dictate to a tempting demon the images which had driven me to fling myself at his feet for hope and safety. However it was, he certainly took advantage of my agony, half-visionary, half-real as it was, and, while proving to me that he had the power of effecting my escape from the Inquisition, proposed to me that incommunicable condition which I am forbid to reveal, except in the act of confession.

(Here Melmoth could not forbear remembering the “incommunicable condition” proposed to Stanton in the madhouse⁠—he shuddered, and was silent. The Spaniard went on.)

At my next examination, the questions were more eager and earnest than ever, and I was more anxious to be heard than questioned; so, in spite of the eternal circumspection and formality of an inquisitorial examination, we soon came to understand each other. I had an object to gain, and they had nothing to lose by my gaining that object. I confessed, without hesitation, that I had received another visit from that most mysterious being, who could penetrate the recesses of the Inquisition, without either its leave or prevention (the judges trembled on their seats, as I uttered these words);⁠—that I was most willing to disclose all that had transpired at our last conference, but that I required to first confess to a priest, and receive absolution. This, though quite contrary to the rules of the Inquisition, was, on this extraordinary occasion, complied with. A black curtain was dropped before one of the recesses; I knelt down before a priest, and confided to him that tremendous secret, which, according to the rules of the Catholic church, can never be disclosed by the confessor but to the Pope. I do not understand how the business was managed, but I was called on to repeat the same confession before the Inquisitors. I repeated it word for word, saving only the words that my oath, and my consciousness of the holy secret of confession, forbade me to disclose. The sincerity of this confession, I thought, would have worked a miracle for me⁠—and so it did, but not the miracle that I expected. They required from me that incommunicable secret; I announced it was in the bosom of the priest to whom I had confessed. They whispered, and seemed to debate about the torture.

At this time, as may be supposed, I cast an anxious and miserable look round the apartment, where the large crucifix, thirteen feet high, stood bending above the seat of the Supreme. At this moment I saw a person seated at the table covered with black cloth, intensely busy as a secretary, or person employed in taking down the depositions of the