Melmoth the Wanderer

divine instinct, into those of a monk’s habit.” And all this while my gait was disturbed, my countenance flushed, and often lifted to heaven, and my arms employed in hastily adjusting my cloak, that had fallen off my shoulder from my agitation, and whose disordered folds resembled anything but those of a monk’s habit. From that evening I began to perceive my danger, and to meditate how to avert it. I had no inclination for the monastic life; but after vespers, and the evening exercise in my own cell, I began to doubt if this very repugnance was not itself a sin. Silence and night deepened the impression, and I lay awake for many hours, supplicating God to enlighten me, to enable me not to oppose his will, but clearly to reveal that will to me; and if he was not pleased to call me to a monastic life, to support my resolution in undergoing everything that might be inflicted on me, sooner than profane that state by extorted vows and an alienated mind. That my prayers might be more effectual, I offered them up first in the name of the Virgin, then in that of the patron saint of the family, and then of the saint on whose eve I was born. I lay in great agitation till morning, and went to matins without having closed my eyes. I had, however, I felt, acquired resolution⁠—at least I thought so. Alas! I knew not what I had to encounter. I was like a man going to sea with a day’s provision, and imagining he is victualled for a voyage to the poles. I went through my exercises (as they were called) with uncommon assiduity that day; already I felt the necessity of imposition⁠—fatal lesson of monastic institutions. We dined at noon; and soon after my father’s carriage arrived, and I was permitted to go for an hour on the banks of the Manzanares. To my surprise my father was in the carriage, and though he welcomed me with a kind of embarrassment, I was delighted to meet him. He was a layman at least⁠—he might have a heart.

I was disappointed at the measured phrase he addressed me in, and this froze me at once into a rigid determination, to be as much on my guard with him, as I must be within the walls of the convent. The conversation began, “You like your convent, my son?”

“Very much,” (there was not a word of truth in my answer, but the fear of circumvention always teaches falsehood, and we have only to thank our instructors).

“The Superior is very fond of you.”

“He seems so.”

“The brethren are attentive to your studies, and capable of directing them, and appreciating your progress.”

“They seem so.”

“And the boarders⁠—they are sons of the first families in Spain, they appear all satisfied with their situation, and eager to embrace its advantages.”

“They seem so.”

“My dear son, why have you thrice answered me in the same monotonous, unmeaning phrase?”

“Because I thought it all seeming.”

“How, then, would you say that the devotion of those holy men, and the profound attention of their pupils, whose studies are alike beneficial to man, and redounding to the glory of the church to which they are dedicated⁠—”

“My dearest father⁠—I say nothing of them⁠—but I dare to speak of myself⁠—I can never be a monk⁠—if that is your object⁠—spurn me⁠—order your lackeys to drag me from this carriage⁠—leave me a beggar in the streets to cry ‘fire and water,’13⁠—but do not make me a monk.”

My father appeared stunned by this apostrophe. He did not utter a word. He had not expected such a premature developement of the secret which he imagined he had to disclose, not to hear disclosed. At this moment the carriage turned into the prado; a thousand magnificent equipages, with plumed horses, superb caparisons, and beautiful women bowing to the cavaliers, who stood for a moment on the footboard, and then bowed their adieus to the “ladies of their love,” passed before our eyes. I saw my father, at this moment, arrange his superb mantle, and the silk net in which his long black hair was bound, and give the signal to his lackeys to stop, that he might mingle among the crowd. I caught this moment⁠—I grasped his mantle.⁠—“Father, you find this world delightful then⁠—would you ask me to resign it⁠—me⁠—who am your child.”

“But you are too young for it, my son.”

“Oh, then, my father, I am surely much too young for another world, to which you would force me.”

“Force you, my child, my firstborn!” And these words he uttered with such tenderness, that I involuntarily kissed his hands, while his lips eagerly pressed my forehead. It was at this moment that I studied, with all the eagerness of hope, my father’s physiognomy, or what artists would call his “physique.”

He had been my parent before he was sixteen; his features were beautiful, his figure the most graceful and lover-like I ever beheld, and his early marriage had preserved him from all the evils of youthful excess, and spared the glow of feature, and elasticity of muscle, and grace of juvenility, so often withered by vice, almost before they have bloomed. He was now but twenty-eight, and looked ten years younger. He was evidently conscious of this, and as much alive to the enjoyments of youth, as if he were still in its spring. He was at the same moment rushing into all the luxuries of youthful enjoyment and voluptuous splendour, and dooming one, who was at least young enough to be his son, to the frozen and hopeless monotony of a cloister. I laid hold of this with the grasp of a drowning man. But a drowning man never grasped a straw so weak as he who depends on the worldly feeling of another for the support of his own.

Pleasure is very selfish; and when selfishness pleads to selfishness for relief, it is like a bankrupt asking his fellow-prisoner