Now, there are probably not many readers on whose conviction this defence has operated, and who have not felt that Maturin’s distinctions, as a contemporary critic[133] put it, ‘between his own convents and those of old are rather fanciful than real.’ The defence can, at the utmost, be applied to the first part of Alonzo’s stay in the convent, although even there we find, among the ‘petty torments,’ instances of monks being flogged to death; and it must also be admitted that this part is the most original. According as the torments grow decidedly serious, the points of contact with Godwin and Lewis become more conspicuous. As for the latter part of the story, it is unquestionably a perfect ‘romance of horror,’ with the horrors introduced solely for their own sake, only so much more powerful in execution than its forerunners, that one might be tempted to think it was Maturin’s wish to show how such a book ought to be written. In the art of suggestion, so important in tales of this character, Maturin here, as in Montorio, stands between Mrs. Radcliffe and Lewis, avoiding the excesses of both. His grasp on the subject-matter is always stronger than that of Mrs. Radcliffe, whose gentleness sometimes reduces her work to ‘a timid trifling with the world of phantoms and nameless terrors;’[134] while he seldom or never copies the coarseness of Lewis who, in fact, knows nothing of the art in question. This is particularly noticeable in Maturin’s treatment of the (very limited) supernatural element in Melmoth. He tells, no doubt, many frightful things and calls them by their names, but then there are also a great many circumstances which are said to be too horrible and unhallowed to relate. With sure artistic instinct Maturin forbears ever to expound the ‘incommunicable condition’ of Melmoth, whereas the surrender of their souls to the devil, made by Ambrosio and Matilda in The Monk, is laid down with a clearness and accuracy leaving nothing to be guessed. Another detail worthy of notice is the circumstance that the partly supernatural personality of the Wanderer makes an indelible impression upon those coming into contact with him, and marks them for life. Stanton, it will be remembered, knows no rest after having encountered Melmoth; his remaining days are spent in an indefatigable pursuit of him, the cause of which he could not even explain to himself; and a similar wish, it must be presumed, eventually drives Monçada to Ireland. Here may, indeed, be an influence from Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), where the hero, in never-allayed anxiety, pursues the monster which he has created from one end of the world to the other, in order to prevent him from doing more mischief—: the artistic effect is, at all events, incomparably greater than that attained in The Monk, where the ghosts and spooks are treated with ease and familiarity, and where a Spanish nobleman relates that he has encountered the Wandering Jew, with a burning cross on his forehead, almost as nonchalantly as he would tell that he has met his brother. With this general difference in style and execution, many external motives from The Monk are utilized in the Spaniard’s tale, as they were in Montorio. The most conspicuous here, again, is the introduction of ecclesiastical cruelty and monastical oppression; the case of Ildefonsa in Montorio which, as we have seen, was suggested by the story of Agnes de Medina in The Monk, is here applied to Alonzo, with a power leaving both those romances far behind. The Domina of Lewis and the Superior of Maturin represent the same type: both are narrow-minded, hypocritical and revengeful, and pride themselves on the strict order and discipline maintained in their convents. Both are, on important occasions, surrounded by four satellites, who obey their every sign, and who are employed to drag recalcitrant monks and nuns to the subterranean dungeons, which, in both tales, are swarming with nauseous reptiles. A reminiscence of very unpleasant character, from Lewis, is also the dismal end of the parricide; in The Monk the same fate overtakes the Domina, when her cruelty to the young nun becomes known. She, too, is about to take part in a religious procession, when suddenly she is made an object of the rage of the people. As in the case of the parricide, neither the solemnity of the occasion, nor the respect for the priests present, nor fear of the soldiers can protect the victim from the populace, which presses on like a storm and never rests until its vengeance is fulfilled. In The Monk the Domina tries to make some sort of resistance, but ‘at length a flint, aimed by some well-directing hand, struck her full upon the temple. She sank upon the ground bathed in blood, and in a few minutes terminated her miserable existence;’ Maturin tells that the man does not cease to howl for mercy ‘till a stone, aimed by some pitying hand, struck him down. He fell, trodden in one moment into sanguine and discoloured mud by a thousand feet.’ It is but just to Mrs. Radcliffe to observe that she never would have described scenes like these.

The latter part of the story, containing the scenes in and after the Inquisition, is clearly influenced by Godwin. Of the examinations and official proceedings very little is told. Monçada, like St. Leon, is bound by an oath which he considers sacred, not to reveal what takes place under the roof of the Holy Office—an oath rather convenient to the author. St. Leon is, in his cell, visited by a creature of the Inquisition—a similar figure appears in The Italian of Mrs. Radcliffe—who tries to ensnare him in his own answers, the like of whom Alonzo supposes Melmoth to be. Both are finally condemned to flames, from which they escape in manners so closely alike, that the incident itself must be considered one of Maturing most obvious borrowings, although his execution, here again, is so much superior to his model, that it well-nigh recalls Shakespeare’s way of treating his ‘loans.’ When St. Leon is marching in the procession of the autodafé, some confusion arises from a horse rearing violently. This irritates the other horses, and the bustle becomes such that St. Leon succeeds in absconding and, like Alonzo, rushes down a narrow lane. All this is told in a few lines. In Melmoth the confusion is caused by a fire—an expedient less original but more acceptable—of which there is a description long and truly magnificent. In the end of the lane St. Leon, like Alonzo, forces his entrance into the habitation of a Jew, whom he terrifies to become his involuntary host and concealer. But while there are, in Godwin, no very interesting intérieurs from the Jewish community, the corresponding passages in Melmoth, though fantastic, are depicted with a lively minuteness, and the sudden appearance of Alonzo even with humour, of which refreshing quality there is but this short flash in the Spaniard’s tale. The Jew, it has been mentioned, is on the point of converting his son, who has been brought up a Catholic, all implements being ready and the cock to be sacrificed on the occasion fastened at the leg of a table:

The description of the subterranean abode is still more successful and entirely Maturin’s own. The old sage is indeed like a ghost of the past, where he sits among dusty manuscripts and the skeletons of his family, deceased a generation ago; and the atmosphere in which the new tale commence is extremely suggestive:

Even the person and character of the Wanderer, such as he appears in this tale, is less original than elsewhere in the book. His discussions in Alonzo’s cell, which are rather overloaded with historical information, may have been suggested by a passage in The Monk, where it is said of the Wandering Jew, that ‘he named people who had ceased to exist for many centuries and yet with whom he appeared to have been personally acquainted.’ Alonzo is struck by the same peculiarity in Melmoth, who relates anecdotes which happened during the reign of monarchs belonging to by-gone ages: ‘These circumstances were trifling, and might be told by any one, but there was a minuteness and circumstantiality in his details, that perpetually forced on the mind the idea that he had himself seen what he described, and been conversant with the personages he spoke of.’ To the reader, unfortunately, some of these anecdotes appear not only trifling but ridiculous, and the mysterious grandeur in which Melmoth ought to be veiled, is here not quite successfully sustained. His rôle during the fire is more impressive, and presents a parallel to the apparition seen by John Melmoth the night when the Spanish vessel is wrecked:

A perfect ‘Gothic Romance’ as the Spaniard’s tale is in form, it is, fundamentally, a treatise against the omnipotence of the Catholic church, from which omnipotence all the evils and miseries directly arise. It is a protest against ‘a power whose influence is unlimited, indefinable, and unknown, even to those who exercise it, as there are mansions so vast, that their inmates, to their last hour, have never visited all the apartments;—a power whose operation is like its motto,—one and indivisible’—as it is a defence of another philosophy which values freedom, enjoyment of existence and natural affection. In this fight between theories the development of characters is, perhaps necessarily, neglected. Alonzo is but a vehicle by which the author gives vent to his own views; in himself he is impossible. It has already been pointed out that all the heroes of Maturin are very young, but the youth of Alonzo is a downright absurdity: he is not thirteen when his combat against monasticism commences; and even a precocious Spaniard could hardly, at that age, have conceived the idea of an improved Catholicism which he outlines on several occasions. For in all his vicissitudes he never ceases to be a good and sincere Catholic; it is not the religion, but its abuses, which Maturin—somewhat post festum, in 1820—is castigating.

The manuscript read by Monçada in the vault of the Jew commences with a narrative called the Tale of the Indians. In this tale—and only here—the Wanderer is the real hero and it is, so far, the central and most important part of the book. It has also been the most generally appreciated of all the tales in Melmoth and contains, indeed, passages of exquisite beauty, although as a composition it is broken and somewhat irregular. By way of contrast it is cleverly placed immediately after the Spaniard’s tale; the scene of action is removed from subterranean recesses and noxious vapours far away amid flowers and sunshine.

A small island in the Indian sea, where there has formerly stood a temple erected to the terrible goddess Seeva, has, after a series of earthquakes, become depopulated and totally deserted by the inhabitants of the mainland. Yet after some time it again has obtained the reputation of being the seat of a goddess, of an unknown and gentler character. Rumours of a vision seen there, lovely beyond description, spread among the natives, and young people get into the habit of offering fruits and flowers to the new goddess, who is supposed to be particularly well-disposed towards lovers. And inhabited the island really is. A small child, a girl, the sole survivor of the wreck of a Spanish vessel, has found refuge there and grows up a wild daughter of nature, as innocent as she is beautiful, as good as she is lovely. The flowers and birds are her friends; the shells are her toys; and the sense of fear is utterly unknown to her, there being nothing in her island which bears a hostile appearance. Until the great catastrophe there is not a cloud to disturb her paradisiacal existence. The catastrophe arrives in the person of Melmoth the Wanderer, who once chances to visit the deserted island and there finds Immalee—this is the name the natives have given their goddess. The few reminiscences of the Spanish language which she still retains are revived and developed in her intercourse with him, while her sentiments towards her visitor, at the same time, grow to an ardent attachment. When aware of this, Melmoth, with a generosity that does honour to an agent of the enemy, tears himself away and never revisits the island, nor do they meet again until Immalee has been discovered and taken back to her family in Spain.—

The idea of making the fanciful Indians worship Immalee as a deity was poetical enough, and it is finely told how two young lovers, who separately set out to the island with their offerings, find each other in the presence of the goddess, and return, happy, in the same canoe. The two are so fortunate as to get a sight of the mystical being:

This same idea, however, gave rise to some other passages which sadly jar against the idyllic tone, besides being very unnecessary. The worship of Immalee, it is told, is chiefly practised by the younger generation, by whom the ferocious rites of the old religion are, accordingly, forgotten, which circumstance does not fail to excite much anger and disapproval among the old devotees, who are aroused to opposition against the new order of things. This it would have been quite sufficient briefly to state; but the fact that there exist, or have existed, revolting and inhuman forms of religious exercise, seems to have been a cancer constantly preying on Maturin’s mind, nor could he ever say enough on the subject. The satire levelled in Women at the rigid and bigoted Calvinism was, no doubt, well in its place, and the indignation with which monasticism and Inquisition are treated in the present work, can yet be understood; but the idea of pursuing, with bitter irony, the old Indian religion prescribing lacerations and human sacrifices, the loathsome character of which nobody would have dreamt of defending, is nothing short of ridiculous. The Indian idyll, beautiful as it is, might have afforded some surprise to those acquainted with Maturin’s views in general. The never-ending conflict between the fantastical novelist and the clergyman of the established church asserts itself very curiously in the whole conception of Immalee and her life in the island. Maturin had, more than once, strongly expressed his opinion, that a mode of life away from the benefits of civilization cannot but have a brutalizing effect upon human nature; in one of his sermons there is the following passage:

Shortly after delivering this (not very brilliant) effusion, Maturin was himself one of ‘those writers.’ It is true that the story of Immalee is a work of pure imagination and that he does not exactly try to prove anything by it or to lay the case down as a doctrine; but all the same the fact remains that here a being, while living far from civilization and in absolute ignorance of religion, is represented as angelically good and deliciously happy, and that, after her entrance into a society where religion, may be in a corrupted form, pervades life in all its phases, she becomes most wretchedly miserable. Maturin, like most imaginative writers of the time, could not help once, at least, paying his tribute to the great ideal of a return to nature, so vigorously and eloquently put forth in the latter part of the previous century. Who the writers alluded to are it is, of course, not difficult to point out. Immalee’s spiritual parent is Rousseau, through the mediation of Bernardin de St. Pierre; she is a belated sister of Virginie who, before her, played with birds and flowers in exotic, Indian surroundings, depicted in glowing colours. Yet there can be no question of direct imitation. Immalee is original and romantic, she belongs as distinctly to the 19:th century as her prototype does to the 18:th. Maturin, as was his wont, made the case an extreme one; his heroine lives wholly by herself, taught and nurtured by nature alone, without a parent or philosopher to point out to her the benefits of such an education. And the character of Immalee, in all its fantasticalness, has infinitely more of ‘nature’ in it than there is in the tedious conventionalism of Virginie; nor is, after all, the one impossibility more improbable than the other. As Maturin did not create Immalee to advocate any theories, he was freer to endow her with those qualities that spring from das ewig weibliche. Her first encounter with the Wanderer—which takes place in the year of grace 1680—is most charmingly described:

With true feminine talkativeness she at once begins, in her imperfect language, to tell her visitor of her solitary life, her companions, and her innocent amusements. She tells that she is older than the moon, and never changes, although the roses fade; that she has often tried in vain to catch stars and moonbeams, and that she has a friend whose face meets hers in the stream when the sky is clear.

On this tabula rasa, then, is Melmoth to impress his peculiar views of the world and its conditions. It is stated that he regards her with compassion, which feeling he experiences for the first time in his life. His soul becomes the prey of contending passions, in the course of which is displayed what a critic[135] finely terms as ‘the naturalness and supernaturalness of it, the repulsion and attraction of it, the sublimity and devilry of it—not obviously balanced each to enhance each other, but as it were fused in the white heat of Maturin’s imagination;’ and as his human nature finally carries off the victory, the conviction is brought home to the reader that Melmoth himself deserves something of the compassion he bestows on Immalee. At first, indeed, he appears as a tempter, endeavouring to corrupt her mind and, above all, to incite in her a contempt for religion. He has a telescope by him which enables her distinctly to see the adjacent coast of India. She reviews some of the rites of the natives, the repulsiveness of which she does not understand. There is also a Turkish mosque which does not much appeal to her, but at last she perceives a half-hidden Christian church, whose meaning and tenets he is forced reluctantly to explain, whereupon she exclaims in exultation: ‘Christ shall be my God, and I will be a Christian!’ Understanding that her nature is incorruptible, Melmoth gives up regarding her as a victim. He leaves metaphysics alone and confines his discussions solely to the phenomena of this world. The European vessels that pass by the island furnish him with the opportunity of describing the effects of European civilization, and the kind of life led in European countries. The description is bitter, cynical and pessimistic; the darker sides of modern life—war, oppression, unjust laws, religious contests, unequal distribution of wealth—all is laid down in a language truly appalling, and wound up with the remark that, among human beings, the sole kind parents are those ‘who murder their children at the hour of their birth, or, by medical art dismiss them before they have seen the light; and, in so doing, they give the only creditable evidence of parental affection.’ By enfolding this sombre picture he tries to terrify her from wishing ever to see the world, and thus to keep her for himself, for in her society alone can he hope to forget his misery. She is the only oasis in the desert of his existence, the only human being on earth who does not instinctively shrink from him, and who is not frightened by the lustre of his eyes:

Yet the impression made upon Immalee by the conversations of Melmoth is very different from what he intended. She sheds tears and suffers with the sufferers, but nevertheless she is seized with a longing towards the world. She has tasted from the tree of knowledge, and her peace of mind is gone. At the same time she feels that the society of the stranger is far more to her than that of her mute companions; every time he leaves her she implores him to return, and he, on his part, cannot resist the temptation although he sees he is destroying her happiness. She loves; and the more he terrifies her with his wild laugh and impetuous speech which is incomprehensible to her, the stronger grows her love. Her idyll is at an end, and her former occupations interest her no longer. Now she begins to prefer ‘the rocks and the ocean, the thunder of the wave, and the sterility of the sands.’ This change fills Melmoth with rage, as the society of Immalee thus loses the character of a calm refuge where he may snatch a moment of rest, and one stormy night he even contemplates her again in the light of a victim. Yet the innocent belief of Immalee that she is sheltered when he is near her, once more appeals to his better feelings: he frightens her, indeed, into a state of unconsciousness, but then, with a supreme effort, leaves the island for ever.

These are the bare outlines of this singular courtship in the Indian island. In point of language it contains the most magnificent passages in Maturin’s production, and the characterization also stands very high. Powerful as is the picture of the passions and emotions of Melmoth, it is surpassed by the art with which Immalee’s development from a wild and thoughtless girl into a woman who loves, and suffers for her love, is traced. The delineation of feminine psychology, in which Maturin always excelled, is here as masterly as it was in the case of Eva in Women, and there is, in Immalee, an inner truth quite independent of her fantastical circumstances. The very idea of dissimulation being foreign to her, she does not think of concealing her feelings, and amid the effusions of Melmoth—which sometimes come to the verge of the melodramatic—she is all simplicity and nature. As she has never seen any other human being, she can not understand or even surmise the exceptional character of Melmoth, nor know that he is not, and cannot be, a lover in the ordinary sense of the word. She only feels that she is ready for any sacrifice for him, and her attachment appears unaltered when they next meet in Spain.—

To the passages in which Melmoth describes to Immalee the state of the world and the conditions of human life, there is this marginal note:

That Maturin had suffered much from this mode of criticism there is no doubt, and it was certainly a cautious thing to do to fix a note of this kind to a sentence like the following:

Yet this note cannot be taken quite literally, any more than those prefaces of Maturin where he depreciates his works. The discussions of Melmoth are introduced with the remark that ‘there was a mixture of fiendish acrimony, biting irony, and fearful truth, in his wild sketch, which was often interrupted by the cries of astonishment, grief, and terror, from his hearer.’ What there, accordingly, is of ‘fearful truth’ would, at least, seem to represent Maturin’s own views; and what Melmoth, for instance, says about religious wars, Maturin would doubtless have subscribed to at any time. The tone of latent conviction in many of these passages has been pointed out by a critic,[137] with the supposition that they were dictated by the disappointments and bitter experiences Maturin had met with in his life, and this may well be the case. From the literary point of view, however, the whole discourse is but an echo of the school of Rousseau, which Maturin was in the habit of condemning, but under whose influence the first part of the Tale of the Indians was written.[138] Sentences from the conversation of the old hermit in Paul et Virginie, like:

are distinctly recalled:

Apart from this, however, the tale is remarkably original as well as typically Maturineian. Among slight literary influences, a reminiscence from Ossian can be traced in a wild song of Immalee, after she has lost her peace:

Three years having elapsed, two persons in Madrid are, at the same time, exciting much interest and curiosity. One of them is a stranger of whom fearful rumours are abroad, although there is nothing extraordinary about him except the appalling lustre in his eyes; the other is a most beautiful female, who has recently turned up in Madrid as the new-found daughter of the merchant Aliaga and who lives in her father’s villa near the town. Once these two persons accidentally meet in the street, which accident is to have fatal consequences to all the members of the merchant’s family.

The household of Aliaga, who himself is absent on a voyage in the Indies, consists of his wife Donna Clara, his son Don Fernan, and the family confessor Fra Jose. Of these none is capable in the least of understanding Immalee—or Isidora, as she is now called—and she feels deeply unhappy in her new surroundings. Her unrestrained freedom of yore has been replaced by the strictest etiquette prescribing her duties to be ‘perfect obedience, profound submission, and unbroken silence, except when addressed to;’ and her warm and generous feelings are chilled by the cold and rigid Catholicism, very different from her own notions of religion. These latter are, indeed, considered to denote sheer madness after she once expresses the hope ‘that the heretics in the train of the English ambassador might not be everlastingly damned.’ Donna Clara is a woman of rigid mind and mediocrity of intellect, chiefly occupied in religious meditations of the narrowest kind. Her son is a selfish and brutal character from whom no kindness is to be expected. Isidora’s best friend is the priest, who, in contrast to his counterpart in the Spaniard’s tale, is described as a good and well-meaning person. Yet for the power of the church he, too, is prepared to sacrifice everything. Thus he, taking for pretext some superstitious rumours concerning the early life of Isidora, insists on her taking the veil, which scheme is indignantly opposed by Don Fernan, who calculates that the extraordinary beauty of his sister will be the means of the family forming, by marriage, a connection with the highest nobility of Spain. Before, however, either project has been realized, her meeting with Melmoth takes place, and he begins nightly to visit her under her casement.

These nocturnal meetings, which form the principal contents of the story, are quite worthy of the corresponding scenes in the first part. The present desolate state of Isidora is as convincingly described as her longing for the Indian island, to dream of which is her only happiness. The image of Melmoth is united to all that is dear to her, and she loves him as she loves the memories of bygone days:

In her artlessness she understands him as little as ever. At the renewal of their intercourse she feels an innocent desire—Maturin was too acute a psychologist to omit this circumstance—do dazzle him with her newly-acquired accomplishments, without being aware that the more unlike she is to everybody else, the more attractive she must be to him—that her sole attraction, in fact, lies in her being something new even in his worldwide experience. Seeing, however, that her accomplishments do not please him, she gives up every thought of herself:

The mental process which Melmoth undergoes is much the same as before. He approaches her with withering sarcasm and torments her with his diabolical laugh and terrible allusions, which she bears with gentleness and patience. She is still the only being who does not understand that he is to be feared, and in whose society—as described in the fine passage quoted above—he can obtain some rest and oblivion; and in these moments his human nature is again appealed to, and his better feelings prompt him once more to leave her. The only thing Isidora ever asks of him—from a sense of inborn dignity rather than acquired conventionality—is to discontinue his clandestine visits and appear before her family as her wooer. Once united to him by the rites of the Catholic church, she promises to follow him wherever it shall be. On one of these occasions Melmoth finds strength to take the decisive step:

Some time, however, after this disappearance of Melmoth, unexpected events again throw these ill-fated lovers together. Donna Clara receives a letter from her husband, who has landed in Spain and is slowly making his way homewards, to the effect that he intends to bring with him the destined bridegroom of Isidora, a Spanish nobleman called Montilla. Isidora learns this piece of news with great despair—but the same night Melmoth reappears beneath her balcony. Isidora assures him that she will be the bride of the grave rather than of Montilla, and that her love is unaltered; whereupon Melmoth, ‘bringing out the words with difficulty,’ proposes that she should be ready to wed him the following night. She consents, and the scheme is carried out in a scene which has been called one of the greatest in the book[139] and which indeed is saturated with the keenest suspense. The episode is typically ‘Gothic;’ it is like a ballad of Lenore in prose. In the darkness they set out and travel with supernatural rapidity towards a neighbouring mountain where, Melmoth informs Isidora, a holy hermit is dwelling near a ruinous monastery. Arriving at a mountain river they hear foot-steps pursuing them, and a figure is indistinctly seen approaching. After a short struggle the pursuer, whom Isidora, by his voice, recognizes to be an ancient domestic of the family, is flung into the river. The lovers continue their way and Isidora is dragged up into the ruins, where a hand places hers into that of Melmoth. Almost unconscious as she is from terror, she feels the hand to be cold as death; and afterwards it is discovered that the hermit really had died the previous night. This is one of the few supernatural incidents in the story that does not directly relate to the personality of Melmoth.—The same night Donna Clara and the priest sit brooding over a new letter from Aliaga, in which he hints at some terrible and mysterious tidings he has learned—it appears later that he has met Melmoth, who, beset by pangs of conscience, has warned him that his daughter is in danger. They are roused by a noise in the house, and discover that Isidora’s casement is open and her room empty. Her mother passes the night in frantic anxiety, but in the morning Isidora is found sleeping heavily in her bed. What has happened to her nothing can induce her to disclose, and Donna Clara and the priest prudently determine also to keep the matter secret. It takes Aliaga rather a long time to get home, in spite of the warning he has received. In the meantime Melmoth keeps on visiting his wife, but cannot be prevailed upon to appear before the family. Otherwise his tenderness towards Isidora increases, as there is evidence of her becoming a mother. The night before the event is expected to take place, Melmoth has the news that her father and Montilla will arrive that very day, and in the evening a great masquerade is to be held in honour of the betrothed. Melmoth promises to be there at midnight to take her away. The news appears to be true, and Isidora is forced to take part in the feast. The costume of the time fortunately conceals her altered figure, as the mask covers her pale and haggard countenance. When the clock strikes twelve Melmoth is beside her. They prepare to leave the assembly, but are detected by Don Fernan, who steps into their way. A fight ensues which ends with the death of Don Fernan, whereat the dreaded figure of Melmoth the Wanderer is disclosed to all the guests, some of whom recognize him with a terror unspeakable. Isidora throws herself upon the corpse of her brother, and Melmoth departs alone and unmolested, nobody daring to lift a hand against him. The house is rapidly deserted and its horrified inmates left alone. The same night Isidora is delivered of a daughter, and, on admitting that she is married to Melmoth, conveyed into the prison of the Inquisition. Her parents shortly afterwards die of grief, but the good priest is allowed to visit her, and to him she makes a full confession of her marriage. The Holy Office condemns her to lifelong imprisonment, but she dies, after having strangled her child when the officials have come to take it from her. Before expiring she yet confesses to Fra Jose that Melmoth has been with her in the prison and offered to effect her liberation on a fearful and unutterable condition. With her last strength she has rejected it, although her love for him is unabated.—

The end of the Tale of the Indians calls for a few remarks from a logical point of view—if logic is to be applied to a composition like this. It never becomes quite clear why Melmoth brings Isidora back to her home after their wedding, all the world being open to him; nor it is easy to understand why he should delay the second elopement until the house is full of guests and the disappearance of Isidora most difficult to bring about. As he, after the failure of this enterprise, completely loses his human character and only appears in that of the tempter, it might be inferred that Isidora’s last calamity is of his own contrivance; but this, again, is contradicted by what he says after the duel with Don Fernan: ‘Would that breathless fool had yielded to my bidding, not to my sword—there was but one human chord that vibrated in my heart—it is broken to-night, and for ever!’ Those critics that derided the clumsiness with which the schemes of Melmoth are, in general, executed, were not entirely wrong in this instance; the lack of plausibility in these incidents—the supernatural power of Melmoth once taken for granted—is here of a character injurious to the tale as a work of art.—In the descriptions of everyday life in Aliaga’s house Maturin does not give of his best, in spite of his having recourse to his humorous vein. The personages themselves are depicted in rather a conventional fashion, and the stupidity and narrow-mindedness of Donna Clara, and the confessor’s excessive fondness for food and drink, can bear no comparison with the humorous passages in Women. Only the characterization of Isidora is carried out with the same unfailing power to the very last.

The end of the Tale of the Indians, especially the unravelling of the plot, contains, no doubt, some hints from Goethe’s Faust.[140] The parallels are but details of secondary importance, yet too distinct to be quite overlooked. Margarete and Isidora are equally anxious about their respective lovers’ relations to church and religion, and propose the same questions to them. Margarete: