1821-1824.

Burns.

Maturin’s last period opens with a poetical enterprise which is bound up with a mystery exactly opposite to that appertaining to the publication of the Waterloo prize poem in 1815. In 1821 appeared a lengthy poem in blank verse, called The Universe, under the name of the Rev. C. R. Maturin, received—very undeservedly—with something like acclamation. The real authorship of the poem was, even at the time, claimed by Mr. James Wills, a name afterwards not quite—though nearly—unknown in the world of letters; but it was not until 1874 that the case was brought before the public. For the sake of the composition itself it would be unnecessary long to dwell upon the question, had not the controversy called forth the publication of a manuscript of Wills, which throws an interesting, if not entirely agreeable, light upon his acquaintance with Maturin and the circumstances connected with the origin of The Universe.

A correspondent in the Notes and Queries[154]—who was a great admirer of the poem—happened, in the year mentioned above, to allude to its disputed authorship and utter some doubts as to the statements of Wills. Against this view the surviving family of that writer energetically protested; two sons of Wills, referring to a note in the second edition of Lord John Russell’s biography of Moore,[155] and producing two or three utterances of some of their father’s friends who were initiated into the secret, put about the following statements concerning The Universe. Maturin was engaged by Colburn to compose for him a poem consisting of a thousand lines. The renumeration—500 pounds—was paid in advance; but, having spent it, Maturin found the fulfilment of his engagement to be encumbered with insurmountable difficulties. Being at a loss how to get on with the work, he was shown a poem of Wills, then a very young man. Maturin pathetically entreated him to lend it to him for use, promising, first, to let Colburn know of the transaction, and secondly, to reveal the real authorship after the publication; neither of which promises was kept, the poem being read and reviewed as a production of Maturin’s.

In the polemics in the Notes and Queries the Wills family—who also considered the Universe a work of uncommon merit—had the last word, and their assertions were, a little later, supported by the Dublin University Magazine,[156] whose editor had received a record in the handwriting of Wills, found between the covers of an old copy of the poem and sent to Dublin by Messrs. Chatto & Windus, the well-known London publishers. In this record, which the editor supposes to have been written for the benefit of Lord Russell before the publication of the second edition of his life of Moore, Wills relates that he had composed the poem in the years 1819 and 1820,[157] while residing at Bray, the then most fashionable watering-place in the neighbourhood of Dublin. He intended it to be a very great work which was to fill up all his life-time; but having written upwards of 800 lines, he made a new acquaintance of whose appearance he gives the following description:

In the course of the same day Wills was formally introduced to his opponent, who he had learnt, was Maturin. Their acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy. The fascinating personality of the novelist cast a strong spell over Wills, although he received the impression that Maturin was ‘a little too flattering’ and not quite sincere. When the transaction as to the poem was then proposed to him, Wills felt extreme reluctance, but at last yielded, overcome by Maturin’s persuasions and the consideration that Maturin’s family, to whom he had been introduced, would be ruined if the money had to be refunded to Colburn. The accomplishment of this great work is told by Wills with a naive open-heartedness, amusing indeed when regarded in the light of the controversy in Notes and Queries, where his sons seriously maintain that both Scott and Campbell considered The Universe the best thing produced by Maturin, and the other party as seriously declares it to contain passages equal to Milton:

The poem being completed and sent to the publisher, it became clear to Wills that Maturin was determined not to reveal the secret. It came out, however, ‘with a celerity truly surprising;’ the literary circles of Dublin were divided in two contesting parties, the one standing by Maturin, the other by Wills, and the matter was eagerly discussed in the drawing-rooms of Lady Morgan and the Mrs. Smith mentioned by Moore. The former was also deeply impressed by the production; when assured by Wills that Maturin never wrote a line of it, she answered, ‘well, then, you must do something very considerable to convince the world you could have written it.’ Nevertheless Wills seems to have succeeded in convincing Lady Morgan, for it was she who, according to him, communicated the particulars to Colburn. When Wills some time afterwards met the publisher in London, he presented Wills with all the remaining copies of the stock, hinting that the affair ‘had been injurious to Mr. Maturin in his relations with him as a publisher.’—

In connection with this version of Wills it is not out of place to quote a passage from an unpublished letter of Maturin to Sir Charles Morgan, dated 1821:

This seems to prove that the £ 500 was not paid in advance, and that Maturin had written a large part of some work agreed upon with Colburn, before he received anything for it. Whether the manuscript here referred to was published as a constituent part of The Universe it is hazardous to decide; if it was, Maturin had probably lost all interest in the poem and entreated Wills to complete it—the alternative being that the manuscript was deemed unfit, and Wills supplied all the materials. The poem itself gives little clue to the mystery. When speaking of The Universe, Wills more than once alludes to the ‘effective passages’ and the ‘filling up;’ but to a modern reader it is not easy to distinguish which is which, the whole being extraordinarily ineffective. The subject resolves itself into something that cannot possibly be firmly grasped. A contemporary critic[158] says not inappropriately: ‘Where in the name of criticism and common sense, could he begin with a subject that had no beginning, or finish with that which, being infinite and eternal, can have no end? He has followed no plan—he has given his fancy the rein. His flight is wild and discursive, but indicates a bearing in no particular direction. — — — His poem is not a whole: any man might as well have tried to cram the solar system into a cockle-shell as to produce a complete and finished poem on such a subject.’ The following passage belongs, in the critic’s opinion, to the happiest in the poem:

These lines are, as a matter of fact, neither better nor worse than any others of the two thousand of which this sorry production consists. There are no traces of the rugged beauty of Bertram and Fredolfo, and it is really difficult to imagine that Maturin had any part in the work. On the other hand it must be admitted that it is equally inferior to the poetry later produced by Wills.[159] The matter ought to have been taken very quietly by those whom it concerned, nor did it, to judge from the record of Wills, stop their friendly intercourse. It may lastly be mentioned that Maturin dedicated The Universe to his old antagonist Samuel Taylor Coleridge; which must have happened either in a fit of Christian forgiveness or of deliberate irony.

The picture which Wills draws of Maturin is, it will be observed, totally different from the description quoted in connection with his mode of composing Melmoth. It also differs from what other scanty records there are preserved of Maturin, which all agree that he was, at that time, beginning to lead a retired life and appear but little in society. His pecuniary embarrassments were extremely distressing; the profits he had reaped by Melmoth and The Universe had probably been swallowed up by the old debt he had contracted some time about 1815, besides which he undoubtedly was something of a spendthrift and unpractical in business-transactions. His home had undergone a melancholy change since the success of Bertram, as depicted by the writer in Douglas Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine 1846:

The gloominess of Maturin’s existence was brightened by the return of Lady Morgan to her native country in 1821, after an absence of several years abroad. The little governess who had earned her first laurels with The Wild Irish Girl was now transformed into one of the foremost literary celebrities of the day. In 1812 Miss Owenson had become the wife of Dr. Thomas Charles Morgan, physician to the Marquis of Abercorn, who had shortly before been ‘knighted by the viceroy—at a hint, it is said, from the doctor’s enterprising fiancée. She had, since then, published numerous novels, amongst others the Irish story O’Donnel (1814). Her greatest fame, however, was due to the extensive work on France (1817), the strongly liberal views of which had roused the fury of the Quarterly Review and caused the fierce contest of which Maturin also had borne his share of the brunt in the vehement attacks upon his best romances. From the rare and brief political utterances in Maturin’s works, sermons, and letters, it may be gathered that he rather inclined to toryism; but uninterested as he was in politics, his opinions did not in any way bias his regard for Lady Morgan, of whom he used to speak ‘in terms of the most extravagant admiration.’[160] Though the two were the only authors of repute residing in Dublin, there was no kind of jealousy between them. The character of Lady Morgan was broad-minded and generous, and her desire to help Maturin was sincere beyond any doubt. Her weekly réunions in Kildare Street, pleasantly described by her biographer,[161] were among the few relaxations Maturin allowed himself in his later years:

Among the domestic sorrows was the loss of a child, in 1821, immediately after its birth. When Lady Morgan called to inquire after Mrs. Maturin during her confinement, Maturin sent her this reply: ‘My angel is better, The Cherub is flown’—which words she noted down on a letter she received from him shortly afterwards.—That there were troubles also of another kind can be inferred from some lines in the above-mentioned letter to Sir Charles: ‘You terrify me by saying there is a prejudice against me amongst the Catholics; what have I done? I have never been a partizan—my voice was never heard at a meeting—I am not a public man in the least—what can I have done?’ Whatever this may have reference to, the answer obviously would have been, that he had written Melmoth. Although he had never meant to offend his Catholic townsmen, their resentment was not altogether inexplicable, and it is certainly curious that it should have come to him so unexpectedly. If the Methodists had not been favourably disposed towards him after the publication of Women, he now got the Catholics against him; but as it was only the errors of both creeds he had wished to attack, he must have suffered much from the feeling of having, perhaps, given personal offence.—Yet in all this dreariness there would occasionally be outbursts of the old eccentricity and the invincible desire sometimes to assume the rôle of a grand seigneur, which he, in his harmless way, imagined best to suit him. The following anecdote[162] has a characteristic ring about it:

That Maturin did not greatly care about the completion of The Universe is evident from the fact that he was, so early as 1821, engaged on a new play. In a note to Lady Morgan he mentions that it will be acted at Hawkins’—‘the profits will be far inferior to those of Covent Garden, but they will be something.’ Still the play was, later on, sent to Covent Garden, Sir Charles undertaking to use his influence with Kean who appears, from the very first, to have been unwilling to accept it. In a letter dated Dec. 16, 1822, Maturin writes to Sir Charles:

Whether there was an intervention on the part of Lady Morgan or not, the play was doomed never to see the light. It can hardly have been any other than the one to which Watts refers in his autobiographical notes:[163]

The only person who has been able to give an account of and publish some extracts from the play is the writer in the Irish Quarterly Review 1852. He states that a completed tragedy called The Siege of Salerno was found among Maturin’s manuscripts after his death, without explaining when and how he had an opportunity of seeing it. He states further that the plot bears, in conception, some resemblance to Byron’s Siege of Corinth—the hero in both works being, in fact, a renegade who leads Turkish forces against a Christian town. The passage quoted in the Irish Quarterly Review consists of a scene where Osmyn—the copy sent to Kean apparently bore the name of the hero—relates the story of his life. He has formerly been the prince of Salerno, the very town which he now attacks as a Turkish captain. He lived in happiness with his wife Matilda, when suddenly his enemy

invaded his country. Osmyn was thrown into the dungeon of his own castle, where he was kept for years. A time came when his prison walls were destroyed by a tempest—that is, an earthquake—and he gained his liberty. Being recognized by no one he wandered about in the streets and became witness of a procession where Matilda, now the wife of Manfred, was borne in solemn festival. In despair he left the country:

The story, we see, is rather improbable, and the deliverance of Osmyn from his prison belongs to the most hackneyed tricks of the older school of terror. The hero is, however, typically Maturineian. He is a kind of Bertram in Ottoman costume; the one returns as a robber-chief, the other as the leader of an infidel army, and the speech of Osmyn is a distinct echo from Maturing first play:

The writer in the Irish Quarterly Review assures his readers that the play ‘abounds in passages of great power and beauty;’ the extracts which he communicates, however, do not rise to the level of the best pages in Bertram or Fredolfo.—

One more tragedy contemplated by Maturin in his last years may yet be mentioned. A motive from the recent history of France had been suggested to him, to which he refers in a letter[164] of Oct. 20:th 1823:

The recipient of this letter is not known, nor anything else connected with the matter, with which all the biographers seem to be unacquainted. Among other unfulfilled projects is said[165] to have been a poem the scene of which was ‘to be laid in Ireland during the period of harps and minstrels;’ besides which Maturin wrote,[166] some time before his death, a short tale founded upon the family legend quoted in the first chapter of the present study.

A determination of Maturin ‘to devote himself more exclusively to the service of his calling’[167] led to the publication, in 1824, of Five Sermons on the Errors of the Roman Catholic Church. These controversial sermons were preached during the Lent of the same year before an audience unparalleled in number. ‘Never since Dean Kirwan’s time,’ it is stated in a contemporary memoir,[168] ‘were such crowds attracted to the Parish Church as during the delivery of these sermons; neither rain nor storm could subdue the anxiety of all classes and all persuasions to hear them.’ The sermons are explicitly said to be directed, not against Catholics, but Catholicism; Maturin endeavoured earnestly to avoid a tone of personal offensiveness, although it is much to be questioned whether he did not, in the following passage, underrate the attachment of the Irish Catholics to their faith:

The volume was received very favourably and reprinted in 1826.

In autumn 1824 appeared the last of Maturin’s lucubrations, a historical novel called The Albigenses. Though of imposing length—four volumes, together about 1500 pages—it was intended to be but the first series of a great trilogy, ‘illustrative,’ as stated in the preface, ‘of European feelings and manners in ancient times, in middle, and in modern.’ How the second and third parts had been planned is thus described:

There is little doubt that Maturin was induced to turn to the historical romance by the immense popularity of Scott, whose fame now stood at its zenith. He knew that this genre, at any rate, would not be objected to as obsolete or offensive to good feeling, as had been the case with his previous work. An outward success, moreover, was now more imperative than ever before, and everything could be hoped from the public rage for historical novels. This field of fiction was entirely new to Maturin; in The Lovers’ Tale only the general ‘atmosphere’ is historical—the incidents might have taken place in any age. The experiment, if praiseworthy, was decidedly hazardous; to outdo Mrs. Radcliffe and Lewis had been easy enough, but to enter into competition with the Author of Waverley was a serious matter for a writer whose powers lay in depicting what was passing before his own eyes, or else, what never could have happened at all. That most contemporary critics nevertheless hailed The Albigenses as Maturin’s best work only proves their partiality for the style in which it was written; of later judges even his greatest admirer admits that Maturin’s attempt to ‘marry history to fiction’ turned out a failure.[169]—

The action of the story commences in 1216, at a time when the forces of the Albigenses are threatening the castle of Courtenaye. The sect is alternately headed and abandoned by count Raymond of Toulouse, who, though Catholic himself, occasionally wishes to save his vassals from complete destruction. His present designs are unknown; he has travelled to Rome to seek reconciliation with the Pope, and is expected back at any hour. In the meantime the persecuted Albigenses live in great misery among the mountains of Languedoc. Their leader is an old and venerable pastor of the name of Pierre, whom the cruelty of the crusaders has deprived of sight. He is tended by his granddaughter Genevieve, as good and gentle a being as himself, and constantly exhorts his followers to mildness and forgiveness; in this he is fiercely opposed by a fraction of wild fanatics, represented, among others, by the deacon Mephibosheth, a man of ‘intolerant zeal, and intolerable pretentions,’ who subsequently turns renegade.—The lord of Courtenaye, a savage and cowardly cripple, who fears the vicinity of the Albigenses but is unable to defend himself, summons the chief crusaders to his aid. The summons is very willingly obeyed, and a great army of knights and crusaders is, at the opening of the tale, marching towards the castle. The most eminent leaders of the Catholic forces are count Simon de Montfort, the ‘champion of the church,’ a rude and powerful soldier—and the bishop of Toulouse, a vigorous-minded sceptic, who in everything pursues his own advantage and aims at the increase of his own influence, ‘a man of power and might, body and soul, whose strong mind clung to his strong frame like the human part of the centaur of old to the animal part, making but one between them.’ There is a great deal of jealousy between these two warriors, and their army is split with discord and mutual suspicion. The majority are for attacking the heretics at once and crushing them at a single blow, while others advise waiting till the result of count Raymond’s negotiations with the Pope is known. From a message brought to the bishop it appears that the court of Rome has sent a monk of uncommon sanctity to mediate between the two hostile armies; the mediator has already visited the Albigenses and is now on his way to the castle. This simple and honest monk, who is chosen by the Pope with a view to ‘diminish the power and mortify the ambition’ of the bishop of Toulouse, has been received with hostility by the zealous fraction among the Albigenses, and only after great exertions on the part of Pierre has the arrangement been brought about that they consent to hear an exhortation from the bishop, on a promise of safety. The day being fixed, the crusaders set out with pomp and splendour to the meeting-place. The bishop delivers a magnificent sermon, but without effect; the Albigeois preachers reply with spirit, and reconciliation is found impossible. They are to resort to arms the following day. The crusaders retire to the castle of Courtenaye; the night is spent in carousals, during which De Montfort proposes that he and the knights alone would ride the heretics down; the proposal is eagerly accepted, in spite of the warnings of an old knight called Sir Aymer de Chastelroi.—The Albigenses are prepared for the worst, but the same night count Raymond returns with a great army. Besides the political, he has a personal cause against the crusaders: the late lord Courtenaye, the brother of the present one, has once surprised his castle and slaughtered his wife and children, for which outrage he has sworn eternal vengeance. He now takes command of the Albigenses; it is decided to wait till the crusaders are enclosed in a valley, and then beset them from all sides. The stratagem is easily carried out, and the knights are completely defeated. De Montfort is wounded almost to death, while the bishop succeeds in making his way out of the ambuscade, and arrives at the castle with a few surviving knights. De Montfort also is afterwards brought to the castle, where he slowly recovers.—Count Raymond, understanding that his victory is entirely due to the temerity of the vanquished, commands the whole band of the Albigenses to set out for the kingdom of Arragon, whither, indeed, it is the bishop’s intention immediately to pursue them. De Montfort being disabled for a long time, the bishop assumes the title of the champion of the church and places himself at the head of the crusading army. His enterprise, however, meets various difficulties; the followers of the knights who have perished in the recent battle begin to desert, when no longer commanded by their individual leaders, besides which king Philip refuses to recognize the bishop as the champion of the Church, before the title is admitted by the Pope. Under these circumstances the bishop proceeds to lead his forces to his own castle in the city of Beaucaire. On the road he lights upon a veiled lady who travels with one single attendant and turns out to be no less a person than queen Ingelberg. King Philip, being violently in love with Agnes of Moravia, has deserted the queen and even planned against her life, for which reason she tries to escape to her brother the king of Denmark. The bishop at once resolves to carry her as a prisoner to his castle; he is anxious to preserve the life of the queen, in order to be able to annul the king’s adulterous marriage, should he deny him future aid.—The queen subsequently makes her escape and is reconciled to the king.—A new crusade is soon determined upon, and the bishop, with a great number of nobles and dignitaries whom he has won to his side, marches to Nismes, which is this time fixed as meeting-place for the Catholic leaders. Among these is prince Lewis, who is very desirous to take the lead, and hates the bishop as cordially as he hates De Montfort. The latter has not yet recovered his strength, but shows no inclination to resign his title, and thus the old discord again prevails in the crusading army:—The Albigenses have once more been abandoned by the vacillating count Raymond, but some others of the most potent lords of Languedoc have taken up arms in their cause, and entrenched themselves in Tarascon. The crusaders now march against that city, outside whose walls a long and furious battle is fought. De Montfort, weakened by his illness, falls; still the issue of the battle would be uncertain, should not count Raymond again arrive at the critical moment. The crusaders, indeed, seize the castle of Tarascon, but their army is defeated by count Raymond, who pitches his camp in the vicinity. The next day he makes a new attack and easily occupies the town. The Albigenses triumph once more.—

These two battles form the historical framework, around which is woven the romantic plot of the story, intricate and duly based on chivalry and love. The principal hero is a youthful knight called Sir Paladour de la Croix Sanglante, who, at the very end, is discovered to be the son of count Raymond of Toulouse. He has been saved at the general slaughter of the count’s family, is brought up in obscurity, but knighted by the king after a siege in which he has distinguished himself. The only person who knows of his descent is an old, half-crazy woman, who has seen better days. She was, in fact, once a rich and beautiful lady of the name of Marie de Mortemar; being accused of heresy, she was attacked by count Raymond, the late brother of the lord of Courtenaye, and the bishop of Toulouse, who ‘despoiled her of lands and power, and burnt her castles, and made of her people serfs, and misused her in such sort that she wandered a maniac for a time, and then was heard of no more.’ The ill-usage she has undergone has so changed her that she is recognized by no one, yet she pursues, with relentlessness and dexterity, a scheme of vengeance against her former persecutors. The late lord of Courtenaye, who afterwards became the enemy of count Raymond, is suspected to have been murdered at the instigation of his brother the present lord; but Marie de Mortemar is intent upon the destruction of the whole house of Courtenaye. This destruction is to be executed by the hand of Sir Paladour, whose fortunes she continually follows. When he is hastening, in the first chapter of the book, to join the crusading army, she guides him over a lake and directs him towards the castle of Courtenaye. She lives, for the most part, in the vaults of this castle, where she is, in association with a few other hags, occupied in all sorts of dark and necromantic pursuits, ostensibly in the service of the superstitious lord, but secretly meditating his ruin.—At the castle resides also lady Isabelle, the daughter of the late lord of Courtenaye; she and Paladour fall in love at first sight. He hardly dares to address her, though energetically urged thereto by the merry Sir Aymer de Chastelroi—but before long he has opportunity of rendering her an essential service. On arriving at the castle, count Simon de Montfort informs Isabelle that king Philip, whose ward she is, has promised her hand to a man whom she is very unwilling to accept. Her despair at last touches even De Montfort; he hints that there may be found a way of extricating her from the matter—namely, if some champion of hers can unhorse him, ‘or draw blood from between the joints of his harness.’ Paladour at once accepts the challenge, and really overthrows the dreaded warrior. After this he is regarded as the avowed champion of the lady Isabelle, and takes but little notice of his rivals, two very foolish knights called de Verac and de Semonville.—The great battle that ends so unfortunately for the crusaders is watched by Isabelle from an adjacent hill. When the defeat becomes evident she starts, with her maidens, at full speed for the castle. Suddenly she is accosted by a knight in black armour, who says he has a message from Sir Paladour, and offers to conduct the party by a secret path, the main road to the castle being intercepted by the heretics. While still speaking, the knight seizes her rein and gallops along. After a while they are joined by men in vizards, and the ride finally terminates at the coast of the Mediterranean. The frightened females are conveyed to a small isle where there stands the impregnable castle of a bold outlaw, the terror of all the neighbourhood.—Sir Paladour is among the knights who survive the battle; when told of the disappearance of Isabelle, he immediately sets out in quest of her. On a dark heath he meets his mysterious guide, the maniac woman, who informs him where Isabelle is taken and points out to him the distant tower of the outlaw’s castle. He follows the direction, and at the very moment he is approaching, a party of pilgrims passing along the coast is attacked by the robbers. Paladour rushes to their aid, but is severely wounded, and dragged to the castle as a prisoner.—Isabelle is, at first, treated with a kind of rude courtesy; the outlaw has seized her in hopes of a large ransom, but struck by her beauty he soon begins to make love to her, and, being rejected, assumes a threatening tone. As for Paladour, but little heed is taken of him, and he is left to recover from his wounds as best he can. He is much worried by a raging lycanthrope living in the vaults; once the latter assaults him while he is sleeping, and only by exerting his utmost strength can Paladour knock him down. In his last moments, however, the lycanthrope regains his reason and shows Paladour a secret passage leading to the terrace at the sea, from where he can hold converse with the lady. When it is discovered that he is the lover and champion of Isabelle, their situation becomes extremely precarious; but one night, when the terrace happens to be deserted, Isabelle and her maidens manage to descend from their window to the terrace. Here they are received by Paladour, and the whole party sets out in a boat. Their flight is soon discovered; the outlaw, pursuing them in another boat, reaches them as they touch the shore. At the moment when he is about to stab Paladour, a dark figure rushes between and plunges a dagger in the outlaw’s heart: it is again the maniac woman, Marie de Mortemar. Taking Paladour aside she reminds him of a vow he has made, as a child, to sacrifice the last survivor of his enemy’s race. Paladour is still ignorant who his enemies are, but the woman promises to let him know in due time. Without further adventure the party then arrives at the castle. The lord of Courtenaye is not delighted; his state and wealth depend on Isabelle’s continuing unmarried, and he has secretly hoped, that both she and her bridegroom would perish. He cannot avoid celebrating their nuptials with a grand feast, but contemplates all the time means for their destruction; calling the maniac woman to his presence he declares himself ready to enter an alliance with the devil, whom he, in his superstition, believes her able to conjure. She answers with mysterious threats, having decided in the bridal night to wreak her vengeance on the house of Courtenaye. The night comes, and as it grows late the lord retires into his secret chamber among the vaults, where the other hags are awaiting their leader. Through their imprudence the chamber catches fire, and the lord of Courtenaye who, in a fit of impatient rage, has thrown the key in a cauldron, perishes with his attendants. At the same time the news spreads in the castle that the bride has been murdered and the bridegroom has disappeared. The maniac has now informed Paladour that his destined victim is no other than his bride. He conceives that the only way of escaping the fulfilment of his vow is to stab himself; Isabelle, thinking him mad, tries to prevent him, and during the grapple the dagger is plunged into her breast. Paladour rushes away half-deranged and runs till he falls down exhausted, being then taken care of by the maniac, who at last relents towards him. She dresses up Isabelle—whose wound is not mortal—as a page and gives her to Paladour; in this capacity she follows him without daring to reveal herself so long as his reason is not quite restored.—Being indifferent to everything and seeking only death, he joins the count’s army as a mysterious ‘black knight,’ unknown to all. After the victory of Tarascon his relationship to count Raymond is discovered with the help of a monk; on the same occasion Isabelle reveals her identity, and they are happily re-united.—

The story, however, contains yet another love-intrigue. Paladour has a younger brother of the name of Sir Amirald, who also appears to have been saved from the massacre. He is brought up at the castle of Courtenaye and very badly used by its lord. When Paladour and Amirald meet in the crusading army, a close friendship springs up between them, and they find, to their wonder, that they bear a similar mark on the shoulder. Amirald has seen Genevieve, the granddaughter of the old Albigeois pastor, and fallen in love with her. Once when he is wandering in the vicinity of the castle, he is roused by cries for help; they proceed from Genevieve, whom two robbers are carrying away, deeming her ‘no unacceptable prize’ to the crusaders. Amirald overcomes the ruffians and accompanies Genevieve to the Albigenses. In the first great battle a stone from a sling smites him down; as the Albigenses move on, Genevieve stumbles over his body. She recognises her preserver and, perceiving there is life, removes him into a cave, with the reluctant assistance of an unsuccessful lover of hers, a young man called Amand. She then visits Amirald regularly and tends him till he is restored to health. When count Raymond commands the Albigenses to move still farther into the mountains, Amand demands her promise to abandon Amirald; on her refusing, he in jealousy informs the chiefs of the sect that Genevieve has saved the life of an enemy, with the result that she is banished from the community. Two men are sent to convey her to Toulouse, but, having lost their way, they both perish, and Genevieve herself is, in a senseless state, carried into a convent by some monks who chance to find her. Yet when she is discovered to be a heretic, she is instantly expelled. Pursuing her way alone, she is now seized by the same ruffians from whom Amirald had rescued her. They drag her into the abbey of Normoutier where she falls into the hands of the bishop of Toulouse and is taken with his party to Beaucaire. Here she is sumptuously clad and treated with mildness, the bishop’s intention being to make her his mistress; but she firmly resists his temptations. Subsequently she succeeds not only in escaping but in effecting the escape of the queen, whose life she saves at the risk of her own, thus earning her gratitude and protection. They travel onward with a party of knights who have been in quest of the queen in order to bring her back to the king, he being now willing to receive her as his spouse again. Among the knights is Amirald, who openly avows his love to Genevieve. He is commissioned to conduct her to Toulouse, but this time their journey is intercepted by the army of prince Lewis. He also is enraptured by the beauty of Genevieve and compells her to follow him to Nismes, where the new crusade is being prepared. Being told by Genevieve that she has saved the life of his mother, the prince promises to protect her from every injury, yet determines to keep her for himself and refuses to surrender her to Amirald. The bishop, however, who is filled with a deadly hatred against her, urges that she be delivered into the hands of justice, to be condemned to death as a heretic. When the prince tries to protect her a riot breaks out—the house where she is kept is burnt down, but at the last moment Amirald saves her and they escape to Tarascon where he, now turned an Albigeois, joins the army of the lords of Languedoc. In the battle of Tarascon, Amirald and Genevieve are among a party of Albigenses who remain captives in the town. All prisoners are, at the command of the bishop, to be burnt alive; they are already bound at the stake when the army of count Raymond rushes into Tarascon. Paladour, remembering the mark on their shoulders, immediately hastens to liberate his brother.—At the same time the bishop falls a victim to the vengeance of Marie de Mortemar. She has also been brought to the city as a prisoner, and being kept in custody in a solitary chamber near the chapel, she manages to poison the holy water a moment before the bishop celebrates the mass. He rushes into his room where he applies strong antidotes, all in vain. Suspecting the maniac he calls her to his presence; she reveals herself as Marie de Mortemar, declaring the aim of her life to be fulfilled: while the bishop is expiring, she throws herself out of the casement and is dashed to pieces.—The heroes and heroines live in happiness ever afterwards; ‘The difference of birth and creed was never known to disturb the affection that subsisted between the high-born Lady of Courtenaye and the humble bride of Amirald.’

Considering the inordinate length of The Albigenses, it must be admitted that the story is fairly well constructed, and the rich materials—although of little originality—not unskilfully arranged. In this respect there certainly can be detected a sort of improvement on Maturin’s earlier romances; but it is a very poor compensation for the loss of their peculiar charm in style and description. In The Albigenses there is hardly a page which could not have been written by somebody else; the personal note in the diction, the keenness of psychological insight, and the characteristic boldness of imagination which distinguished Women and Melmoth, and even The Milesian Chief, have completely disappeared. And this change, it is painful to observe, has been brought about by the attacks of injudicious reviewers, as clearly stated in the preface: