“Then I do love,” said Isidora; and she wept and trembled indeed at this terrible confession—“for I have forgot the ties they told me were natural—the country of which they said I was a native. I will renounce, if it must be so, parents—country—the habits which I have acquired—the thoughts which I have learnt—the religion which I—Oh no! my God! my Saviour!” she exclaimed, darting from the casement, and clinging to the crucifix—“No! I will never renounce you!—I will never renounce you!—you will not forsake me in the hour of death!—you will not desert me in the moment of trial!—you will not forsake me at this moment!”
By the wax-lights that burned in her apartment, Melmoth could see her prostrate before the sacred image. He could see that devotion of the heart which made it throb almost visibly in the white and palpitating bosom—the clasped hands that seemed imploring aid against that rebellious heart, whose beatings they vainly struggled to repress; and then, locked and upraised, asked forgiveness from heaven for their fruitless opposition. He could see the wild but profound devotion with which she clung to the crucifix—and he shuddered to behold it. He never gazed on that symbol—his eyes were immediately averted;—yet now he looked long and intently at her as she knelt before it. He seemed to suspend the diabolical instinct that governed his existence, and to view her for the pure pleasure of sight. Her prostrate figure—her rich robes that floated round her like drapery round an inviolate shrine—her locks of light streaming over her naked shoulders—her small white hands locked in agony of prayer—the purity of expression that seemed to identify the agent with the employment, and made one believe they saw not a suppliant, but the embodied spirit of supplication, and feel, that lips like those had never held communion with aught below heaven.—All this Melmoth beheld; and feeling that in this he could never participate, he turned away his head in stern and bitter agony—and the moonbeam that met his burning eye saw no tear there.
Had he looked a moment longer, he might have beheld a change in the expression of Isidora too flattering to his pride, if not to his heart. He might have marked all that profound and perilous absorption of the soul, when it is determined to penetrate the mysteries of love or of religion, and choose “whom it will serve”—that pause on the brink of an abyss, in which all its energies, its passions, and its powers, are to be immersed—that pause, while the balance is trembling (and we tremble with it) between God and man.
In a few moments, Isidora arose from before the cross. There was more composure, more elevation in her air. There was also that air of decision which an unreserved appeal to the Searcher of hearts never fails to communicate even to the weakest of those he has made.
Melmoth, returning to his station beneath the casement, looked on her for some time with a mixture of compassion and wonder—feelings that he hasted to repel, as he eagerly demanded, “What proof are you ready to give of that love I have described—of that which alone deserves the name?”
“Every proof,” answered Isidora firmly, “that the most devoted of the daughters of man can give—my heart and hand—my resolution to be yours amid mystery and grief—to follow you in exile and loneliness (if it must be) through the world!”
As she spoke, there was a light in her eye—a glow on her brow—an expansive and irradiated sublimity around her figure—that made it appear like the rare and glorious vision of the personified union of passion and purity—as if those eternal rivals had agreed to reconcile their claims, to meet on the confines of their respective dominions, and had selected the form of Isidora as the temple in which their league might be hallowed, and their union consummated—and never were the opposite divinities so deliciously lodged. They forgot their ancient feuds, and agreed to dwell there forever.
There was a grandeur, too, about her slender form, that seemed to announce that pride of purity—that confidence in external weakness, and internal energy—that conquest without armour—that victory over the victor, which makes the latter blush at his triumph, and compels him to bow to the standard of the besieged fortress at the moment of its surrender. She stood like a woman devoted, but not humiliated by her devotion—uniting tenderness with magnanimity—willing to sacrifice everything to her lover, but that which must lessen the value of the sacrifice in his eyes—willing to be the victim, but feeling worthy to be the priestess.
Melmoth gazed on her as she stood. One generous, one human feeling, throbbed in his veins, and thrilled in his heart. He saw her in her beauty—her devotedness—her pure and perfect innocence—her sole feeling for one who could not, by the fearful power of his unnatural existence, feel for mortal being. He turned aside, and did not weep; or if he did, wiped away his tears, as a fiend might do, with his burning talons, when he sees a new victim arrive for torture; and,
