“Did I confess that?” echoed Melmoth; “It must have been reluctantly indeed. Beautiful Immalee! I am a convert to you;” and he stifled a Satanic laugh as he spoke; “to your new religion, and your beauty, and your Spanish birth and nomenclature, and everything that you would wish. I will incontinently wait on your pious mother, and angry brother, and all your relatives, testy, proud, and ridiculous as they may be. I will encounter the starched ruffs, and rustling manteaus, and whale-boned farthingales of the females, from your good mother down to the oldest duenna who sits spectacled, and armed with bobbin, on her inaccessible and untempted sofa; and the twirled whiskers, plumed hats, and shouldered capas of all your male relatives. And I will drink chocolate, and strut among them; and when they refer me to your mustachioed man of law, with his threadbare cloak of black velvet over his shoulder, his long quill in his hand, and his soul in three sheets of widespread parchment, I will dower you in the most ample territory ever settled on a bride.”
“Oh let it be, then, in that land of music and sunshine where we first met! One spot where I might set my foot amid its flowers, is worth all the cultivated earth of Europe!” said Isidora.
“No!—it shall be in a territory with which your bearded men of law are far better acquainted, and which even your pious mother and proud family must acknowledge my claim to, when they shall hear it asserted and explained. Perchance they may be joint-tenants with me there; and yet (strange to say!) they will never litigate my exclusive title to possession.”
“I understand nothing of this,” said Isidora; “but I feel I am transgressing the decorums of a Spanish female and a Christian, in holding this conference with you any longer. If you think as you once thought—if you feel as I must feel forever—there needs not this discussion, which only perplexes and terrifies. What have I to do with this territory of which you speak? That you are its possessor, is its only value in my eyes!”
“What have you to do with it?” repeated Melmoth; “Oh, you know not how much you may have to do with it and me yet! In other cases, the possession of the territory is the security for the man—but here the man is the security for the everlasting possession of the territory. Mine heirs must inherit it forever and ever, if they hold by my tenure. Listen to me, beautiful Immalee, or Christian, or whatever other name you choose to be called by! Nature, your first sponsor, baptized you with the dews of Indian roses—your Christian sponsors, of course, spared not water, salt, or oil, to wash away the stain of nature from your regenerated frame—and your last sponsor, if you will submit to the rite, will anoint you with a new chrism. But of that hereafter. Listen to me while I announce to you the wealth, the population, the magnificence of that region to which I will endower you. The rulers of the earth are there—all of them. There be the heroes, and the sovereigns, and the tyrants. There are their riches, and pomp, and power—Oh what a glorious accumulation!—and they have thrones, and crowns, and pedestals, and trophies of fire, that burn forever and ever, and the light of their glory blazes eternally. There are all you read of in story, your Alexanders and Caesars, your Ptolemies and Pharaohs. There be the princes of the East, the Nimrods, the Belshazzars, and the Holoferneses of their day. There are the princes of the North, the Odins, the Attilas (named by your church the scourge of God), the Alarics, and all those nameless and name-undeserving barbarians, who, under various titles and claims, ravaged and ruined the earth they came to conquer. There be the sovereigns of the South, and East, and West, the Muhammadans, the Caliphs, the Saracens, the Moors, with all their gorgeous pretensions and ornaments—the crescent, the Koran, and the horsetail—the trump, the gong, and the atabal (or to suit it to your Christianised ear, lovely Neophyte!) ‘the noise of the captains, and the shoutings.’ There be also those triple-crowned chieftains of the West, who hide their shorn heads under a diadem, and for every hair they shave, demand the life of a sovereign—who, pretending to humility, trample on power—whose title is, Servant of servants—and whose claim and recognizance is, Lord of lords. Oh! you will not lack company in that bright region, for bright it will be!—and what matter whether its light be borrowed from the gleam of sulphur, or the trembling light of the moon, by which I see you look so pale?”
“I look pale!” said Isidora gasping; “I feel pale! I know not the meaning of your words, but I know it must be horrible. Speak no more of that region, with its pride, its wickedness, and its splendour! I am willing to follow you to deserts, to solitudes, which human step never trod but yours, and where mine shall trace, with sole fidelity, the print of yours. Amid loneliness I was born; amid loneliness I could die. Let me but, wherever I live, and whenever I die, be yours!—and for the place, it matters not, let it be even”—and she shivered involuntarily as she spoke; “Let it be even—”
“Even—where?” asked Melmoth, while a wild feeling of triumph in the devotedness of this unfortunate female, and of horror at the destination which she was unconsciously imprecating on herself, mingled in the question.
“Even where you are to be,” answered the devoted Isidora, “let me be there! and there I must be happy, as in the isle of flowers and sunlight, where I first beheld you. Oh!
