“I love music, because when I hear it I think of you. I have ceased to love dancing, though I was at first intoxicated with it, because, when dancing, I have sometimes forgot you. When I listen to music, your image floats on every note—I hear you in every sound. The most inarticulate murmurs that I produce on my guitar (for I am very ignorant) are like a spell of melody that raises a form indescribable—not you, but my idea of you. In your presence, though that seems necessary to my existence, I have never felt that exquisite delight that I have experienced in that of your image, when music has called it up from the recesses of my heart. Music seems to me like the voice of religion summoning to remember and worship the God of my heart. Dancing appears like a momentary apostasy, almost a profanation.”
“That, indeed, is a sweet and subtle reason,” answered Melmoth, “and one that, of course, has but one failure—that of not being sufficiently flattering to the hearer. And so my image floats on the rich and tremulous waves of melody one moment, like a god of the overflowing billows of music, triumphing in their swells, and graceful even in their falls—and the next moment appears, like the dancing demon of your operas, grinning at you between the brilliant movement of your fandangoes, and flinging the withering foam of his black and convulsed lips into the cup where you pledge at your banqueting. Well—dancing—music—let them go together! It seems that my image is equally mischievous in both—in one you are tortured by reminiscence, and in the other by remorse. Suppose that image is withdrawn from you forever—suppose that it were possible to break the tie that unites us, and whose vision has entered into the soul of both.”
“You may suppose it,” said Isidora, with maiden pride and tender grief blended in her voice; “and if you do, believe that I will try to suppose it too; the effort will not cost much—nothing but—my life!”
As Melmoth beheld this blessed and beautiful being, once so refined amid nature, and now so natural amid refinement, still possessing all the soft luxuriance of her first angelic nature, amid the artificial atmosphere where her sweets were uninhaled, and her brilliant tints doomed to wither unappreciated—where her pure and sublime devotedness of heart was doomed to beat like a wave against a rock—exhaust its murmurs—and expire;—As he felt this, and gazed on her, he cursed himself; and then, with the selfishness of hopeless misery, he felt that the curse might, by dividing it, be diminished.
“Isidora!” he whispered in the softest tones he could assume, approaching the casement, at which his pale and beautiful victim stood; “Isidora! will you then be mine?”
“What shall I say?” said Isidora; “if love requires the answer, I have said enough; if only vanity, I have said too much.”
“Vanity! beautiful trifler, you know not what you say; the accusing angel himself might blot out that article from the catalogue of my sins. It is one of my prohibited and impossible offences; it is an earthly feeling, and therefore one which I can neither participate or enjoy. Certain it is that I feel some share of human pride at this moment.”
“Pride! at what? Since I have known you, I have felt no pride but that of supreme devotedness—that self-annihilating pride which renders the victim prouder of its wreath, than the sacrificer of his office.”
“But I feel another pride,” answered Melmoth, and in a proud tone he spoke it—“a pride, which, like that of the storm that visited the ancient cities, whose destruction you may have read of, while it blasts, withers, and encrusts paintings, gems, music, and festivity, grasping them in its talons of annihilation, exclaims, Perish to all the world, perhaps beyond the period of its existence, but live to me in darkness and in corruption! Preserve all the exquisite modulation of your forms! all the indestructible brilliancy of your colouring!—but preserve it for me alone!—me, the single, pulseless, eyeless, heartless embracer of an unfertile bride—the brooder over the dark and unproductive nest of eternal sterility—the mountain whose lava of internal fire has stifled, and indurated, and enclosed forever, all that was the joy of earth, the felicity of life, and the hope of futurity!”
As he spoke, his expression was at once so convulsed and so derisive, so indicative of malignity and levity, so thrilling to the heart, while it withered every fibre it touched and wrung, that Isidora, with all her innocent and helpless devotedness, could not avoid shuddering before this fearful being, while, in trembling and unappeaseable solicitude, she demanded, “Will you then be mine? Or what am I to understand from your terrible words? Alas! my heart has never enveloped itself in mysteries—never has the light of its truth burst forth amid the thunderings and burnings in which you have issued the law of my destiny.”
“Will you then be mine, Isidora?”
“Consult my parents. Wed me by the rites, and in the face of the church, of which I am an unworthy member, and I will be yours forever.”
“Forever!” repeated Melmoth; “well-spoken, my bride. You will then be mine forever?—will you, Isidora?”
“Yes!—yes!—I have said so. But the sun is about to rise, I feel the increasing perfume of the orange blossoms, and the coolness of the morning air. Begone—I have stayed too long here—the domestics may be about, and observe you—begone, I implore you.”
“I go—but one word—for to me the rising of the sun, and the appearance of your domestics, and everything in heaven above, and earth beneath, is equally unimportant. Let the sun stay
