The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

Emilius was wrath to the bottom of his heart, and answered not a word. He had long given up all design of making his intended confession; nor did the thoughtless Roderick show the least wish to hear the secret which his melancholy friend had announced to him with such an air of solemnity. He sat carelessly in the arm-chair, playing with his mask, when he suddenly cried: 'Be so kind, Emilius, as to lend me your large cloak.'

'What for?' asked the other.

'I hear music in the church on the opposite side of the street,' answered Roderick, 'and this hour has hitherto escaped me every evening since we have been here. To-day it comes just as if called for. I can hide my dress under your cloak, which will also cover my mask and turban, and when it is over I can go straight to the ball.'

Emilius muttered between his teeth as he looked in the wardrobe for his cloak, then constraining himself to an ironical smile, gave it to Roderick, who was already on his legs. 'There is my Turkish dagger which I bought yesterday,' said the mask, as he wrapped himself up; 'put it by for me; it is a bad habit carrying about toys of cold steel: one can never tell what ill use may be made of them, should a quarrel arise, or any other knot which it is easier to cut than to untie. We meet again to-morrow; farewell; a pleasant evening to you.' He waited for no reply, but hastened down-stairs.

When Emilius was alone, he tried to forget his anger, and to fix his attention on the laughable side of his friend's behaviour. After a while his eyes rested upon the shining, finely-wrought dagger, and he said: 'What must be the feelings of a man who could thrust this sharp iron into the breast of an enemy! but oh, what must be those of one who could hurt a beloved object with it! He locked it up, then gently folded back the shutters of his window, and looked across the narrow street. But no light was there; all was dark in the opposite house; the dear form that dwelt in it, and that used about this time to show herself at her household occupations, seemed to be absent. 'Perhaps she is at the ball,' thought Emilius, little as it suited her retired way of life.

Suddenly, however, a light entered; the little girl whom his beloved unknown had about her, and with whom, during the day and evening, she busied herself in various ways, carried a candle through the room, and closed the window-shutters. An opening remained light, large enough for over-looking a part of the little chamber from the spot where Emilius stood; and there the happy youth would often bide till after midnight, fixed as though he had been charmed there. He was full of gladness when he saw her teaching the child to read, or instructing her in sewing and knitting. Upon inquiry he had learnt that the little girl was a poor orphan whom his fair maiden had charitably taken into the house to educate her. Emilius's friends could not conceive why he lived in this narrow street, in this comfortless lodging, why he was so little to be seen in society, or how he employed himself. Without employment, in solitude he was happy: only he felt angry with himself and his own timidity and shyness, which kept him from venturing to seek a nearer acquaintance with this fair being, notwithstanding the friendliness with which on many occasions she had greeted and thanked him. He knew not that she would often bend over him eyes no less love-sick than his own; nor boded what wishes were forming in her heart, of what an effort, of what a sacrifice she felt herself capable, so she might but attain to the possession of his love.

After walking a few times up and down the room, when the light had departed with the child, he suddenly resolved upon going to the ball, though it was so against his inclination and his nature; for it struck him that his Unknown might have made an exception to her quiet mode of life, in order for once to enjoy the world, and its gaieties. The streets were brilliantly lighted up, the snow crackled under his feet, carriages rolled by, and masks in every variety of dress whistled and chirped as they passed him. From many a house there sounded the dancing-music he so abhorred, and he could not bring himself to go the nearest way towards the ball-room, whither people from every direction were streaming and thronging. He walked round the old church, gazed at its lofty tower rising solemnly into the dark sky, and felt gladdened by the stillness and loneliness of the remote square. Within the recess of a large door-way, the varied sculptures of which he had always contemplated with pleasure, recollecting, while so engaged, the olden times and the arts which adorned them, he now again paused, to give himself up for a few moments to his thoughts. He had not stood long, before a figure drew his attention, which kept restlessly walking to and fro, and seemed to be waiting for somebody. By the light of a lamp that was burning before an image of the Virgin, he clearly distinguished its features as well as its strange garb. It was an old woman of the uttermost hideousness, which struck the eye the more from being brought out by its extravagant contrast with a scarlet bodice embroidered with gold; the gown she wore was dark, and the cap on her head shone likewise with gold. Emilius fancied at first it must be some tasteless mask that had strayed there by mistake; but he was soon convinced by the clear light that the old, brown, wrinkled face was one of Nature's ploughing, and no mimic exaggeration. Many minutes had not passed when there appeared two men, wrapped up in cloaks, who seemed to approach the spot with cautions footsteps, often looking about them, as if to observe whether anybody was following. The old woman walked up to them. 'Have you got the candles?' asked she hastily, and with a gruff voice. 'Here they are,' said one of the men; 'you know the price; let the matter be settled forthwith.' The old woman seemed to be giving him money, which he counted over beneath his cloak. 'I rely upon you,' she again began, 'that they are made exactly according to the prescription, at the right time and place, so that the work cannot fail.' 'Feel safe as to that,' returned the man, and walked rapidly away. The other, who remained behind, was a youth: he took the old woman by the hand, and said: 'Can it then be, Alexia, that such rites and forms of words, as those old stories, in which I never could put faith, tell us, can fetter the free will of man, and make love and hatred grow in the heart?' 'So it is,' answered the scarlet woman; 'but one and one must make two, and many a one must be added thereto, before such things come to pass. It is not these candles alone, moulded beneath the midnight darkness of the new moon, and drenched with human blood, it is not the muttering magical words and invocations alone, that can give you the mastery over the soul of another; much more than this belongs to such works; but it is all known to the initiated.' 'I rely on you then,' said the stranger. 'To-morrow after midnight I am at your service,' returned the old woman. 'You shall not be the first person that ever was dissatisfied with the tidings I brought him. To-night, as you have heard, I have some one else in hand, one whose senses and understanding our art shall twist about whichever way we choose, as easily as I twist this hair out of my head.' These last words she uttered with a half grin: they now separated, and withdrew in different directions.

Emilius came from the dark niche shuddering, and raised his looks upon the image of the Virgin with the Child. 'Before thine eyes, thou mild and blessed one,' said he, half aloud, 'are these miscreants daring to hold their market, and trafficking in their hellish drugs. But as thou embracest thy Child with thy love, even so doth the unseen Love hold us all in its protecting arms, and we feel their touch, and our poor hearts beat in joy and in trembling toward a greater heart that will never forsake us.'

Clouds were wandering along over the pinnacles of the tower and the steep roof of the church; the everlasting stars looked down from amongst them, sparkling with mild serenity; and Emilius turned his thoughts resolutely away from these nightly horrors, and thought upon the beauty of his Unknown. He again entered the living streets, and bent his steps toward the brightly illuminated ball-room, whence voices, and the rattling of carriages, and now and then, between the pauses, the clamorous music came sounding to his ears.

In the hall he was instantly lost amid the streaming throng; dancers sprang round him, masks shot by him to and fro, kettle-drums and trumpets deafened his ears, and it was unto him as though human life were nothing but a dream. He walked along the lines; his eye alone was watchful, seeking for those beloved eyes and that fair head with its brown locks, for the sight of which he yearned to-day even more intensely than at other times; and yet he inwardly reproached the adored being for enduring to plunge into and lose itself in such a stormy sea of confusion and folly. 'No,' said he to himself, 'no heart that loves can lay itself open to this waste hubbub of noise, in which every longing and every tear of love is scoffed and mocked at by the pealing laughter of wild trumpets. The whispering of trees, the murmuring of fountains, harp-tones, and gentle song gushing forth from an overflowing bosom, are the sounds in which love abides. But this is the very thundering and shouting of hell in the trance of its despair.'

He found not what he was seeking; for the belief that her beloved face might perchance be lying hid behind some odious mask was what he could not possibly bring himself to. Thrice already had he ranged up and down the hall, and had vainly passed in array every sitting and unmasked female, when the Spaniard joined him and said: 'I am glad that after all you are come. You seem to be looking for your friend.'

Emilius had quite forgotten him: he said, however, in some confusion: 'Indeed I wonder at not having met him here; his mask is easily known.'

'Can you guess what the strange fellow is about?' answered the young officer. 'He did not dance, or even remain half an hour in the ball-room; for he soon met with his friend Anderson, who is just come from the country. Their conversation fell upon literature. As Anderson had not yet seen the new poem, Roderick would not rest till they had opened one of the back rooms for him; and there he now is, sitting with his companion beside a solitary taper, and declaiming the whole poem to him, beginning with the invocation to the Muse.'

'It is just like him,' said Emilius; 'he is always the child of the moment. I have done all in my power, not even shunning some amicable quarrels, to break him of this habit of always living extempore, and playing away his whole being in impromptus, card after card, as it happens to turn up, without once looking through his hand. But these follies have taken such deep root in his heart, he would sooner part with his best friend than with them. That very same poem, of which he is so fond that he always carries a copy of it in his pocket, he was desirous of reading to me, and I had even urgently entreated him to do so; but we were scarcely over the first description of the moon, when, just as I was resigning myself to an enjoyment of its beauties, he suddenly jumped up, ran off, came back with the cook's apron round his waist, tore down the bell-rope in ringing to have the fire lighted, and insisted on dressing me some beef-steaks, for which I had not the least appetite, and of which he fancies himself the best cook in Europe, though, if he is lucky, he spoils them only nine times out of ten.'

The Spaniard laughed, and asked: 'Has he never been in love?'

'In his way,' replied Emilius very gravely; 'as if he were making game both of love and of himself, with a dozen women at a time, and, if you would believe his words, raving after every one of them; but ere a week passes over his head they are all sponged out of it together, and not even a blot of them remains.'

They parted in the crowd, and Emilius walked toward the remote apartment, whence already from afar he heard his friend's loud recitative. 'Ah, so you are here too,' cried Roderick, as he entered; 'that is just what it should be. I have got to the very passage at which we broke down the other day; seat yourself, and you may listen to the rest.'

'I am not in a humour for it now,' said Emilius; 'besides, the room and the hour do not seem to me altogether fitted for such an employment.'

'And why not?' answered Roderick. 'Time and place are made for us, and not we for time and place. Is not good poetry as good at one place as at another? Or would you prefer dancing? there is scarcity of men; and with the help of nothing more than a few hours' jumping and a pair of tired legs, you may lay strong siege to the hearts of as many grateful beauties as you please.'

'Good-bye!' cried the other, already in the door-way; 'I am going home.'

Roderick called after him: 'Only one word! I set off with this gentleman at daybreak to-morrow, to spend a few days in the country, but will look in upon you to take leave before we start. Should you be asleep, as is most likely, do not take the trouble of waking; for in a couple of days I shall be with you again.—The strangest being on earth!' he continued, turning to his new friend, 'so moping and fretful and gloomy, that he turns all his pleasures sour; or rather there is no such thing as pleasure for him. Instead of walking about with his fellow-creatures in broad daylight and enjoying himself, he gets down to the bottom of the well of his thoughts, for the sake of now and then having a glimpse of a star. Everything must be in the superlative for him; everything must be pure and noble and celestial; his heart must be always heaving and throbbing, even when he is standing before a puppet-show. He never laughs or cries, but can only smile and weep; and there is mighty little difference between his weeping and his smiling. When anything, be it what you will, falls short of his anticipations and preconceptions, which are always flying up out of reach and sight, he puts on a tragical face, and complains that it is a base and soulless world. At this moment, I doubt not, he is exacting, that under the masks of a Pantaloon and a Pulcinello there should be a heart glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should out moralise Hamlet upon the nothingness of sublunary things; and should it not be so, the dew will rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the whole scene with desponding contempt.'

'He must be melancholic then?' asked his hearer.

'Not that exactly,' answered Roderick. 'He has only been spoilt by his over-fond parents, and by himself. He has accustomed himself to let his heart ebb and flow as regularly as the sea, and if this motion ever chances to intermit, he cries out miracle! and would offer a prize to the genius that can satisfactorily explain so marvellous a phenomenon. He is the best fellow under the sun; but all my painstaking to break him of this perverseness is utterly vain and thrown away; and if I would not earn sorry thanks for my good intentions, I must even let him follow his own course.'

'He seems to need a physician,' remarked Anderson.

'It is one of his whims,' said Roderick, 'to entertain a supreme contempt for the whole medical art. He will have it that every disease is something different and distinct in every patient, that it can be brought under no class, and that it is absurd to think of healing it, either by attention to ancient practice or by what is called theory. Indeed he would much rather apply to an old woman, and make use of sympathetic cures. On the same principle, he despises all foresight, on whatever occasion, as well as everything like regularity, moderation, and common sense. The last above all he holds in especial abhorrence, as the antipodes and arch-enemy of all enthusiasm. From his very childhood he framed for himself an ideal of a noble character; and his highest aim is to render himself what he considers such, that is, a being who shows his superiority to all things earthy by his contempt for gold. Merely in order that he may not be suspected of being parsimonious, or giving unwillingly, or ever talking about money, he tosses it about him right and left by handfuls; with all his large income is for ever poor and distressed, and becomes the fool of everybody not endowed with precisely the same kind of magnanimity, which for himself he is determined that he will have. To be his friend is the undertaking of all undertakings; for he is so irritable, one need only cough or eat with one's knife, or even pick one's teeth, to offend him mortally.'

'Was he never in love?' asked his country friend.

'Whom should he love? whom could he love?' answered Roderick. 'He scorns all the daughters of earth; and were he ever to suspect that his beloved had not an angelical contempt for dress, or liked dancing as well as star-gazing, it would break his heart; still more appalling would it be, if she were ever so unfortunate as to sneeze.'

Meanwhile Emilius was again standing amid the throng; but suddenly there came over him that uneasiness, that shivering, which had already so often seized his heart when among a crowd in a state of similar excitement; it chased him out of the ball-room and house, down along the deserted streets; nor, till he reached his lonely chamber, did he recover himself and the quiet possession of his senses. The night-light was already kindled; he sent his servant to bed; everything in the opposite house was silent and dark; and he sat down to pour forth in verse the feelings which had been aroused by the ball.

Within the heart 'tis still;
Sleep each wild thought encages;
Now stirs a wicked will,
Would see how madness rages.
And cries, Wild Spirit, awake!
Loud cymbals catch the cry
And back its echoes shake;
And shouting peals of laughter,
The trumpet rushes after,
And cries, Wild Spirit, awake!
Amidst them flute tones fly,
Like arrows keen and numberless;
And with bloodhound yell
Pipes the onset swell;
And violins and violoncellos,
Creeking, clattering,
Shrieking and shattering;
And horns whence thunder bellows;
To leave the victim slumberless,
And drag forth prisoned madness,
And cruelly murder all quiet and innocent gladness.
What will be the end of this commotion?
Where the shore to this turmoiling ocean?
What seeks the tossing throng,
As it wheels and whirls along?
On! on! the lustres
Like hell-stars bicker:
Let us twine in closer clusters.
On! on! ever thicker and quicker!
How the silly things throb, throb amain!
Hence, all quiet!
Hither, riot!
Peal more proudly,
Squeal more loudly,
Ye cymbals, ye trumpets! Be-dull all pain,
Till it laugh again.

Thou becomest to me, beauty's daughter;
Smiles ripple over thy lips,
And o'er thine eyes blue water;
O let me breathe on thee,
Ere parted hence we flee.
Ere aught that light eclipse.
I know that beauty's flowers soon wither;