“Then you do not feel your new existence in this Christian land so likely to surfeit you with delight as you once thought? For shame, Immalee—shame on your ingratitude and caprice! Do you remember when from your Indian isle you caught a glimpse of the Christian worship, and were entranced at the sight?”
“I remember all that ever passed in that isle. My life formerly was all anticipation—now it is all retrospection. The life of the happy is all hopes—that of the unfortunate all memory. Yes, I remember catching a glimpse of that religion so beautiful and pure; and when they brought me to a Christian land, I thought I should have found them all Christians.”
“And what did you find them, then, Immalee?”
“Only Catholics.”
“Are you aware of the danger of the words you utter? Do you know that in this country to hint a doubt of Catholicism and Christianity being the same, would consign you to the flames as a heretic incorrigible? Your mother, so lately known to you as a mother, would bind your hands when the covered litter came for its victim; and your father, though he has never yet beheld you, would buy with his last ducat the faggots that were to consume you to ashes; and all your relations in their gala robes would shout their hallelujahs to your dying screams of torture. Do you know that the Christianity of these countries is diametrically opposite to the Christianity of that world of which you caught a gleam, and which you may see recorded in the pages of your Bible, if you are permitted to read it?”
Isidora wept, and confessed she had not found Christianity what she had at first believed it; but with her wild and eccentric ingenuousness, she accused herself the next moment of her confession—and she added, “I am so ignorant in this new world—I have so much to learn—my senses so often deceive me—and my habits and perceptions so different from what they ought to be—I mean from what those around me are—that I should not speak or think but as I am taught. Perhaps, after some years of instruction and suffering, I may be able to discover that happiness cannot exist in this new world, and Christianity is not so remote from Catholicism as it appears to me now.”
“And have you not found yourself happy in this new world of intelligence and luxury?” said Melmoth, in a tone of involuntary softness.
“I have at times.”
“What times?”
“When the weary day was over, and my dreams bore me back to that island of enchantment. Sleep is to me like some bark rowed by visionary pilots, that wafts me to shores of beauty and blessedness—and all night long I revel in my dreams with spirits. Again I live among flowers and odours—a thousand voices sing to me from the brooks and the breezes—the air is all alive and eloquent with invisible melodists—I walk amid a breathing atmosphere, and living and loving inanimation—blossoms that shed themselves beneath my steps—and streams that tremble to kiss my feet, and then retire; and then return again, wasting themselves in fondness before me, and touching me, as my lips press the holy images they have taught me to worship here!”
“Does no other image ever visit your dreams, Immalee?”
“I need not tell you,” said Isidora, with that singular mixture of natural firmness, and partial obscuration of intellect—the combined result of her original and native character, and extraordinary circumstances of her early existence—“I need not tell you—you know you are with me every night!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you; you are forever in that canoe that bears me to the Indian isle—you gaze on me, but your expression is so changed, that I dare not speak to you—we fly over the seas in a moment, but you are forever at the helm, though you never land—the moment the paradise isle appears, you disappear; and as we return, the ocean is all dark, and our course is as dark and swift as the storm that sweeps them—you look at me, but never speak—Oh yes! you are with me every night!”
“But, Immalee, these are all dreams—idle dreams. I row you over the Indian seas from Spain!—this is all a vision of your imagination.”
“Is it a dream that I see you now?” said Isidora—“is it a dream that I talk with you?—Tell me, for my senses are bewildered; and it appears to me no less strange, that you should be here in Spain, than that I should be in my native island. Alas! in the life that I now lead, dreams have become realities, and realities seem only like dreams. How is it you are here, if indeed you are here?—how is it that you have wandered so far to see me? How many oceans you must have crossed, how many isles you must have seen, and none like that where I first beheld you! But is it you indeed I behold? I thought I saw you last night, but I had rather trust even my dreams than my senses. I believed you only a visitor of that isle of visions, and a haunter of the visions that recall it—but are you in truth a living being, and one whom I may hope to behold in this land of cold realities and Christian horrors?”
“Beautiful Immalee, or Isidora, or whatever other name your Indian worshippers, or Christian godfathers and godmothers, have called you by, I pray you listen to me, while I expound a few mysteries to you.” And Melmoth, as he spoke, flung himself on a bed of hyacinths and tulips that displayed their glowing flowers, and sent up their odorous breath right under Isidora’s casement.
“Oh you will destroy my flowers!” cried she, while a reminiscence of her former picturesque existence, when flowers were the companions alike of her imagination and her pure heart, awoke her exclamation.
“It is my vocation—I pray you pardon me!”
