“You will hear much better!” interrupted Melmoth; “the voices of ten thousand—ten millions of spirits—beings whose tones are immortal, without cessation, without pause, without interval!”
“Oh that will be glorious!” said Isidora, clasping her hands; “the only language I have learned in this new world worth speaking, is the language of music. I caught some imperfect sounds from birds in my first world, but in my second world they taught me music; and the misery they have taught me, hardly makes a balance against that new and delicious language.”
“But think,” rejoined Melmoth, “if your taste for music be indeed so exquisite, how it will be indulged, how it will be enlarged, in hearing those voices accompanied and reechoed by the thunders of ten thousand billows of fire, lashing against rocks which eternal despair has turned into adamant! They talk of the music of the spheres!—Dream of the music of those living orbs turning on their axis of fire forever and ever, and ever singing as they shine, like your brethren the Christians, who had the honour to illuminate Nero’s garden in Rome on a rejoicing night.”
“You make me tremble!”
“Tremble!—a strange effect of fire. Fie! what a coyness is this! I have promised, on your arrival at your new territory, all that is mighty and magnificent—all that is splendid and voluptuous—the sovereign and the sensualist—the inebriated monarch and the pampered slave—the bed of roses and the canopy of fire!”
“And is this the home to which you invite me?”
“It is—it is. Come, and be mine!—myriads of voices summon you—hear and obey them! Their voices thunder in the echoes of mine—their fires flash from my eyes, and blaze in my heart. Hear me, Isidora, my beloved, hear me! I woo you in earnest, and forever! Oh how trivial are the ties by which mortal lovers are bound, compared to those in which you and I shall be bound to eternity! Fear not the want of a numerous and splendid society. I have enumerated sovereigns, and pontiffs, and heroes—and if you should condescend to remember the trivial amusements of your present séjour, you will have enough to revive its associations. You love music, and doubtless you will have most of the musicians who have chromatized since the first essays of Tubal Cain to Lully, who beat himself to death at one of his own oratorios, or operas, I don’t know which. They will have a singular accompaniment—the eternal roar of a sea of fire makes a profound bass to the chorus of millions of singers in torture!”
“What is the meaning of this horrible description?” said the trembling Isidora; “your words are riddles to me. Do you jest with me for the sake of tormenting, or of laughing at me?”
“Laughing!” repeated her wild visitor; “that is an exquisite hint—vive la bagatelle! Let us laugh forever!—we shall have enough to keep us in countenance. There will be all that ever have dared to laugh on earth—the singers, the dancers, the gay, the voluptuous, the brilliant, the beloved—all who have ever dared to mistake their destiny, so far as to imagine that enjoyment was not a crime, or that a smile was not an infringement of their duty as sufferers. All such must expiate their error under circumstances which will probably compel the most inveterate disciple of Democritus, the most inextinguishable laugher among them, to allow that there, at least, ‘laughter is madness.’ ”
“I do not understand you,” said Isidora, listening to him with that sinking of the heart which is produced by a combined and painful feeling of ignorance and terror.
“Not understand me?” repeated Melmoth, with that sarcastic frigidity of countenance which frightfully contrasted the burning intelligence of his eyes, that seemed like the fires of a volcano bursting out amid masses of snow heaped up to its very edge; “not understand me!—are you not, then, fond of music?”
“I am.”
“Of dancing, too, my graceful, beautiful love?”
“I was.”
“What is the meaning of the different emphasis you give to those answers?”
“I love music—I must love it forever—it is the language of recollection. A single strain of it wafts me back to the dreamy blessedness, the enchanted existence, of my own—own isle. Of dancing I cannot say so much. I have learnt dancing—but I felt music. I shall never forget the hour when I heard it for the first time, and imagined it was the language which Christians spoke to each other. I have heard them speak a different language since.”
“Doubtless their language is not always melody, particularly when they address each other on controverted points in religion. Indeed, I can conceive nothing less akin to harmony than the debate of a Dominican and Franciscan on the respective efficacy of the cowl of the order, to ascertain the salvation of him who happens to die in it. But have you no other reason for being fond of music, and for only having been fond of dancing? Nay, let me have ‘your most exquisite reason.’ ”
It seemed as if this unhappy being was impelled by his ineffable destiny to deride the misery he inflicted, in proportion to its bitterness. His sarcastic levity bore a direct and fearful proportion to his despair. Perhaps this is also the case in circumstances and characters less atrocious. A mirth which is not gaiety is often the mask which hides the convulsed and distorted features of agony—and laughter, which never yet was the expression of rapture, has often been the only intelligible language of madness and misery. Ecstacy only smiles—despair laughs. It seemed, too, as if no keenness of ironical insult, no menace of portentous darkness, had power to revolt
