The Missionary: An Indian Tale; vol. II Read online

  CHAPTER IX.

  Peace had fled the breast of the man of God! It had deserted him inwilds, which the tumults of society had not reached; it had abandonedhim in shades, where the ravages of passion were unknown; and left himexposed to affliction and remorse, in scenes, whose tranquil lovelinessresembled that heaven his faith had promised to his hope. He had broughtwith him into deserts, the virtues and the prejudices which belong tosocial life, in a certain stage of its progress; and in deserts, Nature,reclaiming her rights, unopposed by the immediate influence of world,now taught him to feel her power, through the medium of the mostomnipotent of her passions. Hitherto, forming his principles andregulating his feelings, by an artificial standard of excellence, whichadmitted of no application to the actual relations of life; governed bydoctrines, whose fundamental tenets militated against the intentions ofProvidence, by doctrines, which created a fatal distinction between thespecies, substituted a passive submission for an active exercise ofreason, and replaced a positive, with an ideal virtue--he resembled theenthusiast of experimental philosophy, who shuts out the light andbreath of heaven, to inhale an artificial atmosphere, and to enjoy anideal existence.

  But Nature had now breathed upon his feelings her vivifying spirit: andas some pleasurable and local sensation, which, at first, quivers in thelip, and mantles on the cheek, gradually diffuses itself through theframe, and communicates a vibratory emotion to every nerve and fibre; sothe sentiment, which had, at first, imperceptibly stolen on his heart,now mastered and absorbed his life. He now lived in a world of newlyconnected and newly modified ideas; every sense and every feeling wasincreased in its power and acuteness--thoughts passed more rapidlythrough his mind, and he felt himself hurried away by new and powerfulemotions, which he sought not to oppose, and yet trembled to indulge. Hehad not, indeed, relinquished a single principle of his moralfeeling--he had not yet vanquished a single prejudice of his monasticeducation; to feel, was still with him to be weak--to love, a crime--andto resist, perfection; but the doctrines which religion inculcated andhabit cherished, the vows which bigotry exacted, and prejudice observed;while they scrupulously guarded the inviolable conduct of the priest,had lost their influence over the passions of the man. And the painfulvibration, between the natural feeling and conscientious principle,left him a prey to those internal and harassing conflicts, which roseand increased, in proportion to the respective exercise and action of apassionate impulse, and a rigid sense of duty.

  Thus, among the privations of a week, peculiarly holy in his church, andexclusively devoted to religious exercises, he imposed on himself themost difficult of all restraints, that of abstaining from the society ofhis dangerous Neophyte; but the restless impatience with which hesubmitted to the severe and voluntary penance, enhanced every pleasure,and exaggerated every enjoyment, he had relinquished. It more sweetlymelodized the voice he languished again to hear. It heightened thelustre of those eyes he sighed again to meet; it endeared those innocentattentions which habit had made so necessary to his happiness; and, byrendering the Indian more dangerous to his imagination than to hissenses, invested her with that splendid, that touching ideal charm,which love, operating upon genius, in the absence of its object, canalone bestow.

  Dearer to his heart, as she became more powerful to his imagination, heridea grew upon his mind with a terrific influence, disputing with Heavenhis nightly vigil and daily meditation. It was in vain that he imposedon himself the law not to behold, or to commune with her for sixtedious days: his steps, involuntarily faithful to his feelings, stillled him against his better reason to those places, in whose fragrantshades she appeared to him a celestial visitant: sometimes he beheld herat a distance at the confluence of the streams, engaged in theidolatrous, but graceful rites of her half-resigned religion--and thenhe believed himself commanded by duty to fly to her redemption, and torescue her from the ancient errors into which his absence again hadplunged her; till, suddenly distrusting the impulse which led himtowards her presence, he fled from the sight of the dangerous Heathen,and almost wished, that infidelity could assume an appearance moreappropriate to its own deformity. Sometimes, when the ardour of themeridian sun obliged her to seek the impervious shades of herconsecrated grove, he beheld her reclined on flowers, engaged in theperusal of the religious fables of her poetic faith; and then arecollection of a genius which shone bright and luminous even throughthe errors which clouded its lustre, mingled itself with the actualimpression of her beauty; and he believed a communion with a mind sopure, would counteract the influence, while it added to the charm, of aform so lovely.

  But when, from the summit of his rocks, when the moonlight silveredtheir abrupt points, he beheld her, gliding like a pure and disembodiedspirit, through the shades of her native paradise, and, with a timid anduncertain step, moving near the woody path which led to his grotto; hercountenance and person characterized by the solicitude of anxioustenderness, and the sadness of disappointed hope; then she appeared tohim a creature loving as beloved; then he admitted the blessedconviction, that he had inspired another with that feeling, which hadgiven to him a new sense of being; then he was tempted to throw himselfat her feet, and to avow the existence of that passion which he nowbelieved, with a mingled emotion of rapture and remorse, was shared andreturned by her who had inspired it. Yet still, habits of religiousrestraint, even more, perhaps, than religion itself, checked thedangerous impulse; and that ardent sentiment which resisted the force ofhis reason and the influence of his faith, submitted to the dictates ofwhat might be deemed rather his prejudice than his principle. Shudderingand trembling, he fled from her view, and sought, in the recollection ofthe infidelity of the Brahminical Priestess, a resource against thetenderness and the charms of the lovely woman. But when, at last, thisinsupportable absence finally and irresistibly “urged a sweet return;”when the stated exercises of devotion no longer opposed the more activeduties of conversion; then love, consecrated by the offices of religion,pursued the object of its secret desire; and, the week of self-denialpast, the evening of the seventh day became, to him, the sabbath of theheart. He left the cave of his solitude and his penance, and, with arapid but unequal step, proceeded towards the fatal stream, on whoseflowery shores the Priestess of Brahma still offered up her vesperhomage to the luminary, whose fading beam was reflected in the up-turnedeyes of its votarist.

  As he approached the Priestess and the shrine, his heart throbbed with afeverish wildness unknown to its former sober pulse. Pleasure, enhancedby its recent privation; love, warming as it passed through the mediumof an ardent imagination; a consciousness of weakness, cherished byself-distrust; and an apprehension of frailty proportioned to theexaggerated force of the temptation--all mingled a sensation ofsuffering with the sentiment of pleasure; and the visitation ofhappiness, to a heart which had of late studiously avoided itsenjoyment, resembled that rapid return of health, which is so frequentlyattended with pain to the exhausted organs; while conscience, awakenedby the excess of emotion, dictated a reserve and coldness to the studiedmanners, to which the ardour of unpractised and impetuous feelings withdifficulty submitted. At last, through the branches of a spreadingpalm-tree, he beheld, at a distance, the object who had thus agitatedand disturbed the calmest mind which Heaven’s grace had ever visited.She was leaning on the ruins of a Brahminical altar, habited in hersacerdotal vestments, which were rich but fantastic. Her brow wascrowned with consecrated flowers; her long dark hair floated on thewind; and she appeared a splendid image of the religion sheprofessed--bright, wild, and illusory; captivating to the senses, fatalto the reason, and powerful and tyrannic to both.

  The Missionary paused and gazed--and advanced, and paused, again; till,on a nearer approach, he observed that her eager look seemed to pursuesome receding object; that her cheek was flushed, and that her veil,which had fallen over her bosom, heaved to its rapid palpitation. Neverbefore had he observed such disorder in her air, such emotion in hercountenance, while the abstraction of her mind was so profound, that sheper
ceived not his approach, till he stood before her: then she startedas from the involvement of some embarrassing dream; a soft andunrepressed transport beamed in her eyes, which at once expressed joy,surprise, and apprehension; and the changeful hues of her complexionresembled the dissolving tints of an iris, as they melt and mingle intoeach other, blending their pale and ruby rays till the vivid lustrefades slowly away upon the colourless air. Pale and smiling as one whowas at the same time sad and pleased, she extended her hand to theMissionary, and said, in a voice replete with tenderness and emotion,“My father, thou art then come at last!” While, suddenly starting at thefaint rustling of the trees as the wind crept among their leaves, shecast round an anxious and inquiring glance. The Missionary let fall herhand, and, folding his own, he remained silent, and fixed on her a lookequally penetrating and melancholy; for the rapture of a re-union sowished for, was now disturbed by doubts, whose object was vague, andembittered by suspicions, whose existence was agony. Luxima, timid andpensive, cast her eyes to the earth, as if unable to support thepiercing severity of his gaze; a transient blush mantled on her cheek,and again left it colourless.

  “Luxima,” said the Missionary, in emotion, “we meet not now, as we werewont to meet, hailing each other with the smile of peace.” With eyeswhich spoke the heart in every glance, and all the precious confidenceof innocence and truth, “I would say,” he continued, looking earnestlyon her, “that, since we parted, something of thy mind’s angelic calmnesswas forfeited, or lost; something of thy bosom’s sunshine was shadowed,or o’ercast.”

  “But thou art here,” she returned, eagerly, “and all again is peace andbrightness.” The Missionary withdrew his eyes from her blushing andeloquent countenance, and cast them on the earth. Her looks made toodangerous a comment on the words her lips had uttered, which he feltwere too delightful, and feared were too evasive; which his heart ledhim to believe, and his reason to distrust; and, seating himself besideher on the bank where she now reposed, after a silent pause, which thehalf-breathed sighs of the Indian only interrupted, he said, “Well! beit so, my daughter; be still the guardian of thy bosom’s secret; pure itmust be, being thine. I have no right to wrench it from thee. If it be ahuman feeling, belonging only to mortality, to hopes which this worldbounds, or thoughts which this life limits, I, who am not thy temporal,but thy spiritual friend, can have no claim upon thy confidence. Oh, no!believe me, Luxima, that, between thee and me, nothing can now, or everwill, exist, but the sacred cause which first led me to thee.”

  This he said with a vehemence but little corresponding to the characterhe had assumed, and with an air so cold and so severe, that Luxima,timid and afflicted, had no force to reply, and no power to restrain heremotions. Drooping her head on her bosom, she wept. Touched by herunresisting softness, moved by a sadness, his severity had caused, andgazing with secret admiration on the grace and loveliness of her looksand attitude, as she chased away the tears which fell on her bosom, withher long hair, “Luxima,” he said, in a tone which struggled between hissecret emotion, and assumed coldness, “Luxima, why do you weep? I am notused to see a woman’s tears, save when they fall from hearts whichpenitence, or grief, has touched; but yours, Luxima--they fall in suchtender softness: dearest daughter, have I offended you?”

  “’Tis true,” said Luxima, cheered by the increasing tenderness of hismanner, “thou art so grandly good, so awful in thy excellence, that,little used to wisdom or to virtue so severe, I fear thee most, evenwhen most I----” She paused abruptly, and blushed; then raising her eyesto his, a soft confidence seemed to grow upon their gaze, and, with thatfatal smile that so changed the character of her countenance, from thesedate tranquillity of the Priestess to the bashful fondness of thewoman, she said, “Father, with us the divine wisdom is not personified,as cold, severe, and rigid; but as the infant twin of love, floating ingay simplicity in the perfumed dews which fill the crimson buds of youngcamala-flowers[4].”

  “Luxima,” he returned, seduced into softness by her tender air, “if I amin look and word severe, such are my habits; but my heart, deardaughter, at least I fear to thee, is too, too weak; and, when I seethee sad, and am denied thy confidence----” He paused; and therainbow-look of Luxima changing as she spoke, she replied:

  “I am, indeed, not quite so happy as I have been. Once my lip knew nomystery, my heart no care, my brow no cloud; but, of late, I strive tohide my thoughts even from myself. I oft am sad, and oft regret theglorious death they robbed me of; for, oh! had I expired upon myhusband’s pyre, in celestial happiness with him I should have enjoyedthe bliss of Heaven while fourteen Indras reign.”

  The Missionary started as she pronounced this rhapsody; a new pangseized his heart, and made him feel as if the deadly drop, which lurksbeneath the adder’s fang, had been distilled into a vital artery: forLuxima had loved, since Luxima lamented even that dreadful deathitself, which, in her own belief, would have united her eternally to theobject for whom her passion still seemed to survive.

  “Luxima,” he said coldly, “till now I never knew you loved; but thoughyou had, a woe so idle and so causeless, as that you cherish for along-lost object, is sanctioned neither by sentiment nor duty, by reasonnor religion.”

  “Had he lived,” said Luxima, with simplicity, “it would then have beenno sin to love.”

  “Bound to a vestal life,” returned the Missionary, changing colour,“like me devoted to eternal celibacy, can _you_ lament an object whowould have loved you with a _human passion_; with such a love as shouldnot even be dreamed of in a vestal’s thoughts?”

  “He was my husband,” said Luxima, turning away her eyes, and sighing.

  “Not by religion’s holy law,” replied the Missionary, in a hurried toneof voice; “for forms idolatrous and wild but mock the sacred name; notby the law of sentiment, for no endearing intercourse of heart and soulblended your affections in one indissoluble union, for ye were almoststrangers to each other; he saw thee but in childhood, and not, as now,a woman!--and so lovely!” He paused, and a deep scarlet suffused evenhis brow.

  “He was at least,” said Luxima, with mild firmness, “_my husband_according to the law and the religion of my country.”

  “But if you have abandoned that religion,” returned the Missionary, “theties it formed are broken, and with them should their memory decay.”

  “Abandoned it!” repeated Luxima, shuddering, and raising her eyes toheaven. “O Brahma!!”

  “Luxima,” said the Missionary, sternly, “there is no medium; either thouart a Pagan or a Christian; either I give thee up to thy idols, andbehold thee no more, or thou wilt believe and follow me.”

  “Then I will believe and follow thee,” she replied quickly, yettrembling as she spoke.

  “O Luxima! would I could confide in that promise! for, through theealone, I count upon the redemption of thy nation.”

  “Father,” she returned, “a miracle like _that_, can only be performed bythee. Look as I have seen thee look--speak as I have heard theespeak;--give to others that new sense of truth, which thou hast given tome:--and then----”

  “Luxima,” interrupted the Missionary, in great emotion; “you are misled,my daughter; misled by the ardour of your gratitude, by an exaggeratedsense of powers which belong not to man, but to Heaven, whose agent heis. The power of conversion rests not exclusively with me; in you itmight effect more miracles than I have ever manifested.”

  Luxima waved her head incredulously. “Never,” said she, “shall I becomethe partner of thy pious labours! and should I even appear as thyproselyte, if I were not looked on with horror, I should at least beconsidered with indifference.”

  “With indifference!” he repeated, throwing his eyes over the perfectloveliness of her form and countenance: “Luxima, is there on earth abeing so divested of all human feeling, as to behold, to hear thee withindifference?”

  “Art thou not such a one?” demanded Luxima, with a timid and tremblinganxiety of look and voice.

  “I, Luxima!--I--”
he faltered, and changed colour; then, after amomentary pause, casting down his eyes, he resumed, “To be divested ofall faculty of sense, were it possible, would be a state oforganization so fatal and so imperfect, as to leave the being thusformed equally without the wish and without the power of becomingvirtuous; for virtue, the purest, the most severe, and, O Luxima! bymuch the most difficult to attain, is that virtue which consists in theconquest over the impulses of a frail and perverse nature, by religionand by reason. Thinkest thou then, dearest daughter, that it belongs to_my_ nature, being man, to live divested of all human feeling, of allhuman passion; to behold, with perfect insensibility, forms created todelight; to listen with perfect indifference to sounds breathed toenchant; and that when, upon thy cheek, the crimson hues of modesty andpleasure mantle and mix their soft suffusion; when in thy eyes, rays oflanguid light---- Luxima! Luxima!” he continued vehemently, and inconfusion, “I repeat to thee, that there can be no virtue where there isno temptation; no merit, but in resistance; but in an entire subjection,through religion, of those feelings which, by a sweet but dreadcompulsion, drag us towards perdition. And, oh! if trial be indeed thetest of virtue, I at least may hope to find some favour in the sight ofHeaven, for my trials have not been few.” As he spoke, his whole frametrembled with uncontrollable emotion, and the paleness of deathover-spread his face.

  Luxima, moved by an agitation in one, who had hitherto appeared to hereyes superior to human feeling, and to human weakness, was touched by anemotion so accordant to the tender softness and ardent sensibility ofher own character; and timidly taking his hand, and looking with anhalf-repressed fondness in his eyes, she said, “Art thou then alsohuman? Art thou not all-perfect by thy nature? I thought thee oneabsorbed in views of heaven, resembling the pure spirit of some holySaneasse, when, having passed the troubled ocean of mortal existence, itreaches the Paradise of Kylausum, and reposes in eternal beatitude, atthe foot of _Him_ who is clothed with the _fourteen worlds_[5].”

  The Missionary withdrew his hand, and reposing on it his head, remainedfor some time lost in thought; at last he said, “Luxima, have you thenamong your people such men as you have now described; who, by a perfectabstraction of mind, live divested of all human feeling, and who,walking through life in a state of rigid self-denial, renounce all itsenjoyments, from a conviction of their vanity? Can a religion so falseas theirs produce an effect so perfect? And can the most powerfulsensations, the most tyrannic passions incident to the very constitutionof our natures, making an inseparable part of our structure, connectedand interwoven with all the powers of existence--can they submit andbend to the influence of _opinion_; to an idea of excellenceoriginating in, and governed by, a fatal and fanatic superstition; butworthy, from its purity and elevation, to be the offspring of that_grace_, which comes alone from Heaven?”

  Luxima replied, “It is written in the Vaides and Shastries, whose lightilluminates the earth, that ‘_the resignation of all pleasure is betterthan its enjoyment_;’ and that he who resists the passions of his natureshall be planted in the world of _daivers_, or pure spirits; there toenjoy eternal bliss. And _one such_ person I once knew; who, havingabandoned all earthly attachments, and broken all earthly ties, livedremote from man, absorbed in the contemplation of the _Divine Essence_:never had his lip imbibed the refreshing beverage of the delicious_caulor_, or the juice of newly-gathered fruits; never had he inhaledthe odour of morning blossoms, nor bathed in the cool wave which smilesto the light of the night-flower-loving god; never had he pillowed hissacred brow with the downy leaves of the _mashucca_, nor pressed thehand of affection, nor listened to the voice of fondness; and his eye,fixed on earth or raised to heaven, still met no objects but such astended to chasten his thoughts, or to elevate his soul;--till one day a_holy woman_, devoted to the service of her religion, ascended the highhill, where the hermit dwelt in peace. She came, with others, in faithand sanctity, to ask his mediation with Heaven, according to the customof her nation. The woman departed edified from his presence, for she hadcommuned with him on the subject of the nine great luminaries, whichinfluence all human events;--but the soul of the hermit pursued her insecret; _he_ whose infant hand grasps the lightning’s flash[6], the godof the flowery bow, had touched the cold, pure thought of the reclusewith a beam of his celestial fire:--_he loved!_--but he loved a _vestalpriestess_, and therefore was forbidden all hope. The Faquir pined insadness, and sought to wash away his secret fault in the holiest wavewhich purifies the erring soul from sin; and the _goddess_ of the _eightvirgins_ received him in her consecrated bosom[7]. Doubtless he is nowone of the _diavers_, the saints, who, by the voluntary sacrifice ofmortal life, obtain instant admittance to the heavenly regions.” Luximasighed as she concluded her little tale.

  The Missionary echoed her sigh, and raising a look of sadness to herpensive countenance, he demanded, “And knew the vestal priestess thesecret of the hermit’s love?”

  “Not until he had passed into the world of spirits; and then a wanderingyogi, who had received his last words ere he plunged into the Ganges,brought her, at his desire, a wreath of faded flowers[8]: the red roseof passion was twined with the ocynum, the flower of despondency; andthe fragile mayhya, the emblem of mortality, drooped on the camalata,the blossom of heaven. The faded wreath thus told the love and fate ofhim who wove it.”

  “And this fatal priestess, Luxima?” said the Missionary, with anincreased emotion, showing there was a nerve in his heart, whichvibrated in sympathy to the tale she told. Luxima made no reply to thedoubtful interrogatory; and the Missionary, raising his eyes to herface, perceived it crimsoned with blushes, while her tearful eyes werefixed on the earth. He started--grew pale; and, covering his face withhis hands, after a long silence, he said, “Luxima! thy Hermit was avirtuous though a most misguided man; his temptation to error waspowerful; the virtue of resistance was his, and the crime ofself-destruction was the crime of his dark and inhuman superstition--terrificand fatal superstition! in all its views injurious to society, andpernicious to the moral nature of man, which thus offers a soothing butimpious alternative to the human suffering, and the human woe; whichthus, between infamy and an almost impossible resistance to a clear andfatal temptation, offers a final resource beyond all which reason canbestow, or time effect; beyond all, save that which religion proffereth;and thus alluring the worn, the weary, and long-enduring life to its ownwished-for _immolation_, crowns and conceals the fatal act beneath ahost of bright illusions, and offers to the suicide rewards, whichshould belong to him alone who dares to _live_ and _suffer_, who feelsand who resists; and who, though impelled by passion, or seduced bysentiment, still restrains the wish, corrects the impulse, and rules andbreaks the stubborn feeling nature breathed into his soul when it wasfirst quickened, that, by this daily death, he might ensure that lifewhich is eternal. If, Luxima, there lived such a man, thus enduring andthus resisting, would you not give him your applause?”

  “I would give him my pity,” said Luxima, raising her hands and eyes ingreat emotion.

  The Missionary replied with a deep sigh, “You would do well, mydaughter; it is pity only he deserves.” Then, after a long pause, hesaid firmly, “Luxima, I came hither this evening to commune with theeupon that great subject, which should alone unite us; but themysterious emotion in which I found thee wrapt, distracted thoughts,which are not yet, I fear, all Heaven’s; nor did thy little story,dearest daughter, serve to tranquillize or sooth them; for, in themirror of another’s faults, man, weak and erring, may still expect tosee the sad reflection of his own. But now the dews of evening fallheavily, the light declines, and it is time we part; and, O Luxima! solong as we continue thus to meet, thus may we ever part, in the perfectconfidence of each other’s virtue, and each other’s truth.” He arose ashe spoke.

  Luxima also arose; she moved a few paces, and then paused, and raisedher timid eyes to his, with look of one who languishes to repose someconfidence, yet who stands awed by the severity of the electedconfidant.

  The Mi
ssionary, who now studiously avoided those eloquent looks of timidfondness, whose modesty and sensibility so sweetly blended their lovelyexpressions, withdrew his eyes, and fixed them on the rosary he hadtaken from his breast, with the abstracted air of one wrapt in holymeditation. Thus they walked on in silence, until they had reached thevicinage of Luxima’s habitation. There, as was his custom, theMissionary paused, and Luxima turning to him said, “Father, wilt thounot bless me, ere we part?” The Missionary extended his pastoral handsabove her seraph head; the blessing was registered in his eyes, but hespoke not, for his heart was full. Luxima withdrew, and he stoodpursuing, with admiring eyes, her perfect form, as she slowly ascendedto her pavilion: then turning away as she disappeared, he sighedconvulsively, as one who gives breath to emotion after a long andpainful struggle to suppress or to conceal it. His thoughts, unshackledby the presence of her to whom they pointed, now flowed with rapidityand in confusion; sometimes resting on the mysterious emotion he hadobserved in the countenance and air of the ingenuous Indian; sometimeson the suicide Hermit; and sometimes on himself, on his past life, hisformer vows, and existing feelings; but these recollections, conjuredup to sooth and to confirm, served but to disquiet and to agitate; andthus involved in cogitation, slow and lingering in his step, heinvoluntarily paused as he reached the bank, whose elastic moss stillbore the impression of Luxima’s light form. He paused and gazed on thealtar of her worship; it was to him as some sad memorial, whose viewtouches on the spring of painful recollection; and the pang which hadshot through his heart, when for a moment he had believed her, false asthe religion at whose mouldering shrine she stood, again revived itspainful sensation, like the memory of some terrific vision, which longleaves its shade of horror upon the awakened mind, when the dream whichgave it has long passed away from the imagination. There is no lovewhere there is no cause for solicitude; and the first moment when hopeand fear slumber in the perfect consciousness of exclusive andunalienable possession, is perhaps the first moment when the calm ofindifference dawns upon the declining ardour of passion. To the eye ofphilosophy it would have been a curious analysis of the human heart, tohave observed the workings of a strong and solitary feeling, in acharacter unsophisticated and unpractised; to have observed a passion,neither cherished nor opposed by any external object, feeding on its ownvitals, and seeking instinctively to maintain its own vivacity, byfancying doubts for which it had no cause, and forming suspicions forwhich it had no subject. Still in search of some hidden reason for therestless conflicts of his unhappy mind, the Missionary stood musing andgazing on the spot where the mysterious emotion of Luxima had excitedthat painful, suspicious, and indefinite sentiment, of whose nature andtendency he was himself ignorant. He could fear no rival in thatconsecrated solitude, which his presence alone violated; but he wasafflicted to believe that Luxima could muse, when he was not the subjectof her reverie; that Luxima could weep, when he caused not her tears toflow; that Luxima could be moved, touched, agitated, and he not be thesole, the powerful cause of her emotion. It is this exacting, tyrannic,and exclusive principle which forms the generic character of a true andunmixed passion: it is this feeling by which we seek and expect tomaster and possess the whole existence of the object beloved, whichdistinguishes a strong, ardent, and overwhelming sentiment, from thosefaint modifications of the vital feeling, which serve rather to amusethan to occupy life; to interest rather than absorb existence. It isthus that love, operating upon genius, is assisted by the imagination,which creates a thousand collateral causes of hope and fear, oftransport and despair; which, in moderate characters, find no existence,and which, at once fatal and delightful, are the unalienableinheritance of natural and exquisite sensibility, of a peculiar delicacyof organization, and of those refined habits of thought and feeling towhich it gives birth.

  While thus occupied, creating for himself ideal sources of pain andpleasure, the twilight of evening was slowly illumined by the silverrising of a cloudless moon; which threw upon the shining earth theshadow of his lofty figure; it tinged with living light the crystalbosom of the consecrated waters; it scattered its rays upon themotionless foliage of the night-loving sephalica, and found a brightreflection in some object which lay glittering amidst the fragments ofthe ruined altar. When the heart is deeply involved, every sense alliesitself to its feelings, and the eye beholds no object, and the earreceives no sound, which, in their first impression, awakens not themaster pulse of emotion. The Missionary saw, in the beaming fragment,some ornament of the sacerdotal vestments of the Brahminical Priestess.Considering it as more consecrated by her touch than by the purposes towhich it had been devoted, he stooped, and blushed as he did it, torescue and preserve it;--but it was no gem sacred to religious ornament;it made no part of the insignia worn by the children of Brahma; it wasthe _silver crescent_ of Islamism; it was the device of the disciples ofMahomet; the ornament worn in the centre of the turban of the Mogulofficers; and deeply impressed on its silvery surface, obvious even toa passing glance, and engraven in Arabic characters, was the name of theheroic and imperial Prince Solyman Sheko.

  The Missionary saw this, and saw no more; a tension in his brow, a senseof suffocation, as though life were about to submit to annihilation; apulse feeble and almost still, limbs trembling, and eyes which no longerreceived the light, left him no other voluntary power than to throwhimself on the earth; while the strong previous excitement produced, fora few seconds, a general diminution of the vital action; and he lay asthough death had given peace to those feelings which nothing in lifecould at the moment sooth or assuage. From this temporary suspension ofexistence he was roused by the sound of horses’ feet: he startled; hearose, and sprung forward in that direction whence the sound proceeded:he perceived (himself unseen, amidst the trees) a person on horseback,who, standing in his stirrup, and shading his eyes from the lustre ofthe moonlight, cast round an anxious and inquiring glance, thenapproached within the hallowed circle of the Brahminical altar.

  The Missionary rushed from his concealment--the paleness of hiscountenance rendered more livid by the moonlight which fell on it, andby the dark relief of his black cowl and flowing robe. He stood, amidstthe ruins of the heathen shrine, resembling the spirit of some departedminister of its idolatrous rites, the terrific guardian of the awfulsite of ancient superstition. Whatever was the impression of his abruptand wild appearance, the effect was instantaneous: ere he had uttered asound, the stranger suddenly disappeared, as if borne on the wings ofthe wind. The Missionary in vain pursued his flight. After havingfollowed the sounds of the horse’s feet, till a deathlike silence hungupon their faded echo, the sole result of his observation was, that themysterious intruder had fled towards the Mogul camp, which still lay inthe plains of Sirinagur; and the sole inference to be drawn from thesingular adventure was, that Luxima was beloved by the son of theimperial Daara--that Luxima was false--and that he was most deceived!This conviction fell on him like a thunderbolt. Thoughts of a new andgloomy aspect now rushed on each other, as if they had been acceleratedby the bursting of some barrier of the mind, which, till that moment,had retained them in their natural course. He could not comprehend thenature of those frightful sensations which quivered through hisframe--that deadly sickness of the soul with which the most dreadful ofall human passions first seizes on its victim. His mind’s fever infectedhis whole frame--his head raged--his heart beat strongly; and all thevital motions seemed hurried on, as if their harmony had been suddenlydestroyed by some fearful visitation of divine wrath. He threw himselfon the dewy earth, and felt something like a horrible enjoyment, ingiving himself up, without reservation, to pangs of love betrayed, offaith violated, of a jealousy, whose fury rose in proportion to theloveliness of its object, and to the force and ardour of the characteron which it operated. His memory, faithful only to the events whichaimed at his peace, gave back to his imagination Luxima in all herbewitching tenderness, in all the seduction of her seeming innocence: hefelt the touch of her hand, he met the fondness of her look; his heartki
ndled at her blush of love, and melted at her voice of passion. Hebeheld her, bright and fresh, at the rising sun--tender and languid atits setting; but by him these delights of a first and true love were nowonly remembered to be resigned--these joys, which he had almostpurchased with the loss of heaven, could now no longer live for him.Another would gaze upon her look, and meet her caress, and answer to hertenderness; another would send his hopes forth, with the rising and thesetting sun: but for him there was no longer a morning, there was nolonger an evening! all was the sad gloom of endless night. In a mind,however, such as his, to doubt one moment, was to decide the next--hissole, his solitary, his tyrannic passion, becoming its own retribution,would, he believed, accompany him to the grave; its object, hedetermined to resign for ever. To strengthen him in his intention, heopposed the holy calm, the sacred peace, the heavenly hopes and solemnjoys of his past and sinless life, to the sufferings, the conflicts, theconscious self-debasement of his late and present existence. Heremembered that he was the minister of Heaven; devoted, by vows the mostawful and the most binding, to its cause alone; and that he had comeinto perilous and distant regions, to preach its truths, not by preceptonly, but by example, and to substitute, in the land of idolatry, thereligion of the Spirit, for that of the senses. He sought pertinaciouslyto deceive himself, and to mistake the feelings which rose from thepangs of jealousy, for the visitation of conscience, suddenly awakenedfrom its long and deathlike slumber, by the fatal consequences of thatintoxicating evil, which had so long entranced and “steeped it inforgetfulness.” He sought to believe that his guardian angel had not yetabandoned him, and that Heaven itself, by miraculous interposition, hadsnatched him from an abyss of crime, towards which, an ardent andunguarded zeal for its sacred cause had insensibly seduced him. Struckby the conviction, he prayed fervently, and vowed solemnly; but hisprayers and his vows alike partook of the vehemence of those contendingpassions by which he was moved and agitated. He wept upon the cross hepressed to his lips--but his tears were not all the holy dew of piouscontrition; religion became debtor to the passions she opposed, and theardour of his devotion borrowed its warmth and energy from theoverflowing of those human feelings it sought to combat and to destroy.At last his emotions, worn out by their own force and activity, subsidedinto the torpor of extreme exhaustion. Throwing himself upon the earth,encompassed by those deep shades of darkness which precede the twilightdawn of day, he slept; but his slumber was broken and transient, and thedreams it brought to his disordered imagination were harassing to hisspirits as the painful vigil which had preceded them; for the afflictionwhich is deep rooted in the heart, which presses upon the vital springof self-love, and disturbs the calm of conscientious principle, blastinghope, rousing remorse, and annihilating happiness, sets at defiance thesoothing oblivion of sleep. Nature, thus opposed to herself, in vainpresents the balmy antidote to the suffering she has inflicted--and therepose she offers, flies from the lids her unregulated feelings havesullied with a tear.