it; and then, God! what curses he will heap upon my
head! Blessed Saint Francis, hear me! Lazarus, Lazarus,
speak for me ! "
Thus did the Hermit rave, while my flesh crept to hear him.
I stood by his bedside, and called on him, but he neither
heard nor saw me. Upon the ground, by the bed's head, as
if it had dropped from under the pillow, was a packet sealed
and directed to myself. I knew the handwriting at a glance,
even though the letters were blotted and irregular, and possi-
bly traced in the first moment that his present curse fell upon
the writer. I placed the packet in my bosom; the Hermit
saw not the motion; he lay back on the bed, seemingly in
utter exhaustion. I turned away, and hastened to the monas-
tery for assistance. As I hurried through the passage, the
Hermit's shrieks again broke upon me, with a fiercer vehe-
mence than before. I flew from them, as if they were sounds
from the abyss of Hades. I flew till, breathless, and half-
senseless myself, I fell down exhausted by the gate of the
monastery.
The two most skilled in physic of the brethren were imme-
diately summoned, and they lost not a moment in accompany-
ing me to the cavern. All that evening, until midnight, the
frenzy of the maniac seemed rather to increase than abate.
But at that hour, exactly indeed as the clock struck twelve,
he fell all at once into a deep sleep.
Then for the first time, but not till the weary brethren had
at this favourable symptom permitted themselves to return
for a brief interval to the monastery, to seek refreshment for
themselves and to bring down new medicines for the patient,
— then, for the first time, I rose from the Hermit's couch by
which I had hitherto kept watch, and repairing to the outer
chamber, took forth the packet superscribed with my name.
DEVEEEUX. 403
There, alone in tliat gray vault, and by the sepulchral light
of the single lamp, I read what follows : —
THE HERMIT'S MANUSCRIPT.
Morton Devereux, if ever this reach you, read it, shudder, and, what-
ever your afflictions, bless God that you are not as I am. Do you re-
member my prevailing characteristic as a boy ? No, you do not. You
â– will say " devotion ! " It was not I " Gentleness." It was not : it was
Jealousy! Now does the truth flash on you? Yes, that was the
disease that was in my blood, and in my heart, and through whose
ghastly medium every living object was beheld. Did I love you ? Yes,
I loved you, — ay, almost with a love equal to your own. I loved my
mother ; I loved Gerald ; I loved Montreuil. It was a part of my nature
to love, and I did not resist the impulse. You I loved better than all ;
but I was jealous of each. If my mother caressed you or Gerald, if you
opened your heart to either, it stung me to the quick. I it was who said
to my mother, " Caress him not, or I shall think you love him better
than me." I it was who widened, from my veriest childhood, the breach
between Gerald and yourself. I it was who gave to the childish reproach
a venom, and to the childish quarrel a barb. Was this love ? Yes, it
was love; but I could not endure that ye should love one another as
ye loved me. It delighted me when one confided to my ear a complaint
against the other, and said, " Aubrey, this blow could not have come
from thee ! "
IVIontreuil early perceived my bias of temper : he might have cor-
rected it and with ease. I was not evil in disposition ; I was insensible
of my own vice. Had its malignity been revealed to me, I should have
recoiled in horror. Montreuil had a vast power over me ; he could
mould me at his will. Montreuil, I repeat, might have saved me, and
thyself, and a third being, better and purer than either of us was, even
in our cradles. Montreuil did not : he had an object to serve, and he
sacrificed our whole house to it. He found me one day weeping over a
dog that I had killed. " Why did you destroy it ? " he said ; and I
answered, " Because it loved ^Morton better than me ! " And the priest
said, " Thou didst right, Aubrey ! " Yes, from that time he took ad-
vantage of my infirmity, and could rouse or calm all my passions in
proportion as he irritated or soothed it.
You know this man's object during the latter period of his residence
with us : it was the restoration of the House of Stuart. He was alter-
nately the spy and the agitator in that cause. Among more comprehen-
sive plans for eflfecting this object, was that of securing the heirs to the
great wealth and popular name of Sir William Devereux. This was
404 DEVEPwEUX.
only a minor mesh in the intricate web of his schemes ; but it is the
character of the man to take exactly the same pains, and pursue the
same laborious intrigues, for a small object as for a great one. His
first impression, on entering our house, was in favour of Gerald ; and I
believe he really likes him to this day better than either of us. Partly
your sarcasms, partly Gerald's disputes with you, partly my repre-
sentations, — for I was jealous even of the love of Montreuil, — prepos-
sessed him against you. He thought, too, that Gerald had more talent
to serve his purposes than yourself and more facility in being moulded
to them ; and he believed our uncle's partiality to you far from being
unalienable. I have said that, at the latter period of his residence with
us, he was an agent of the exiled cause. At the time I now speak of,
he had not entered into the great political scheme which engrossed him
afterwards. He was merely a restless and aspiring priest, whose whole
hope, object, ambition, was the advancement of his order. He knew
that whoever inherited, or whoever shared, my uncle's wealth, could,
under legitimate regulation, promote any end which the heads of that
order might select ; and he wished therefore to gain the mastery over
us all. Intrigue was essentially woven with his genius, and by intrigue
only did he ever seek to arrive at any end he had in view.^ He soon
obtained a mysterious and pervading power over Gerald and myself.
Tour temper at once irritated him, and made him despair of obtaining
an ascendant over one who, though he testified in childhood none of the
talents for which he has since been noted, testified, nevertheless, a
shrewd, penetrating, and sarcastic power of observation and detection.
You, therefore, he resolved to leave to the irregularities of your own
nature, confident that they would yield him the opportunity of detaching
your uncle from you and ultimately securing to Gerald his estates.
The trial at school first altered his intentions. He imagined that he
then saw in you powers which might be rendered availing to him : he
conquered his pride — a great feature in his character — and he resolved
to seek your affection. Your subsequent regularity of habits and suc-
cess in study confirmed him in his resolution ; and when he learned from
my uncle's own lips that the Devereux estates would devolve on you, he
thought that it would be easier to secure your affection to him than to
divert that affection which my uncle had conceived for you. At this
time, I repeat, he had no particular object in view; none, at least, beyond
that of obtaining for the interest of his order the direction of great
wealth and some political influence. Some time after — I know not
exactly when, but before we returned to take our permanent abode at
^ It will be observed that Aubrey frequently repeats former assertions;
this is one of the most customary traits of insanity. — Ed.
DEVEREUX. 405
Devereux Court — a share in the grand poUtical intrigue which was
then in so many branches carried on throughout England, and even
Europe, was confided to Montreuil.
In this I beUeve he was the servant of his order, rather than immedi-
ately of the exiled House ; and I have since heard that even at that day
he had aciiuired a great reputation among the professors of the former
You, Morton, he decoyed not into this scheme before he left England :
he had not acquired a sufficient influence over you to trust you with the
disclosure. To Gerald and myself he was more confidential. Gerald
eagerly embraced his projects through a spirit of enterprise ; I through
a spirit of awe and of religion Religion 1 Yes. — then, — long after,
— now, — when my heart was and is the home of all withering and evil
passions. Religion reigned, — reigns, over me a despot and a tyrant.
Its terrors haunt me at this hour ; they people the earth and the air
with shapes of ghastly menace I They — Heaven pardon me ! what
would my madness utter? Madness? — madness? Ay, that is the real
scourge, the real fire, the real torture, the real hell, of this fair earth !
Montreuil, then, by different pleas, won over Gerald and myself. He
left us, but engaged us in constant correspondence " Aubrey," he said,
before he departed, and when he saw that I was wounded by his appar-
ent cordiality towards you and Gerald — " Aubrey," he said, soothing
me on this point, " think not that I trust Gerald or the arrogant Morton
as I trust you. You have my real heart and my real trust. It is neces-
sary to the execution of this project, so important to the interests of
religion and so agreeable to the will of Heaven, that we should secure
all co-operators ; but they, your brothers, Aubrey, are the tools of that
mighty design ; you are its friend."' Thus it was that, at all times when
he irritated too sorely the vice of my nature, he flattered it into second-
ing his views; and thus, instead of conquering my evil passions, he con-
quered by them. Curses — No, no, no ! — I will be calm.
We returned to Devereux Court, and we grew from boyhood into
youth. I loved you then, Morton. Ah I what would I not give now
for one pure feeling, such as I felt in your love ? Do you remember the
day on which you had extorted from my uncle his consent to your leav-
ing us for the pleasures and pomps of London ? Do you remember the
evening of that day, when I came to seek you, and we sat down on a
little mound, and talked over your projects, and you spoke then to me
of my devotion and my purer and colder feelings ? ^lorton, at that
very moment my veins burned with passion I — at that very moment my
heart was feeding the vulture fated to live and prey within it forever I
Thrice did I resolve to confide in you, as we then sat together, and
thrice did my evil genius forbid it. You seemed, even in your affection
to me, so wholly engrossed with your own hopes ; you seemed so little to
406 DEVEREUX.
regret leaving me ; you stung, so often and so deeply, in our short con-
ference, that feeling which made me desire to monopolize all things in
those I loved, that I said inly, — " Why should I bare my heart to one
who can so little understand it ? " And so we turned home, and you
dreamed not of that which was then within me, and which was destined
to be your curse and mine
Not many weeks previous to that night, I had seen one whom to see
was to love ! Love ! — I tell you, Morton, that that word is expressive
of soft and fond emotion, and there should be another expressive of all
that is fierce and dark and unrelenting in the human heart I — all that
seems most like the deadliest and the blackest hate, and yet is not hate !
1 saw this being, and from that moment my real nature, which had slept
hitherto, awoke ! I remember well it was one evening in the beginning
of summer that I first saw her. She sat alone in the little garden beside
the cottage door, and I paused, and, unseen, looked over the slight fence
that separated us, and fed my eyes with a loveliness that I thought till
then only twilight or the stars could wear ! From that evening I came,
night after night, to watch her from the same spot ; and every time I
beheld her the poison entered deeper and deeper into my system. At
length I had an opportunity of being known to her, of speaking to her,
of hearing her speak, of touching the ground she had hallowed, of enter-
ing the home where she dwelt 1
I must explain : I said that both Gerald and myself corresponded
privately with Montreuil ; we were both bound over to secrecy with
regard to you ; and this, my temper and Gerald's coolness with you
rendered an easy obligation to both ; — I say my temper, for I loved to
think I had a secret not known to another ; and I carried this reserve
even to the degree of concealing from Gerald himself the greater part of
the correspondence between me and the Abbe. In his correspondence
with each of us, Montreuil acted with his usual skill ; to Gerald, as the
elder in years, the more prone to enterprise, and the manlier in aspect
and in character, was allotted whatever object was of real trust or im-
portance. Gerald it was who, under pretence of pursuing his accus-
tomed sports, conferred with the various agents of intrigue who from
time to time visited our coast ; and to me the Abbe gave words of
endearment and affected the language of more entire trust. " What-
ever," he would say, " in our present half mellowed projects, is ex])osed
to danger, but does not promise reward, I entrust to Gerald ; hereafter,
far higher employment, under far safer and surer auspices, will be
yours. We are the heads •• be ours the nobler occupation to plan ; and
let us leave to inferior natures the vain and perilous triumph to execute
what we design."
All this I readily assented to ; for, despite my acquiescence in Mon-
DEVEREUX. 407
treiiil's wishes, I loved not enterprise, or rather I hated whatever
roused nie from the dreamy and abstracted indolence which was most
dear to my temperament. Sometimes, however, with a <;reat show of
confidence, Montreuil would request me to execute some (juiet and un-
important commission ; and of this nature was one I received while I
was thus, unknown even to the object, steeping my soul in the first
intoxication of love. The plots then carried on by certain ecclesiastics
I need not say extended, in one linked chain, over the greater part of the
Continent. Spain, in especial, was the theatre of these intrigues; and
among the tools employed in executing them were some who, though
banished from that country, still, by the rank they had held in it, car-
ried a certain importance in their very names. Foremost of these was
the father of the woman I loved ; and foremost, in whatever promised
occupation to a restless mind, he was always certain to be.
Montreuil now commissioned me to seek out a certain Barnard (an
underling in those secret practices or services, for which he afterwards
suffered, and who was then in that part of the country), and to com-
municate to him some messages of which he was to be the bearer to this
Spaniard. A thouglit flashed upon me — Montreuil's letter mentioned,
accidentally, that the Spaniard had never hitherto seen Barnard : could
I not personate the latter, deliver the messages myself, and thus win
that introduction to the daughter which I so burningly desired, and
which, from the close reserve of the father's habits, I might not other-
wise effect? The plan was open to two objections: one, that I was
known personally in the town in the environs of which the Spaniard
lived, and he might therefore very soon discover who I really was ; the
other that I was not in possession of all the information which Barnard
might possess, and which the Spaniard might wish to learn ; but these
objections had not much weight with me. To the first, I said inly, " I
will oppose the most constant caution ; I will go always on foot and
alone ; I will never be seen in the town itself ; and even should the
Spaniard, who seems rarely to stir abroad, and who, possibly, does not
speak our language, — even should he learn by accident that Barnard
is only another name for Aubrey Devereux, it will not be before I have
gained my object ; nor, perhaps, before the time when I myself may
wish to acknowledge my identity." To the second objection I saw a yet
more ready answer. " I will acquaint Montreuil at once," I said, " with
my intention ; I will claim his connivance as a proof of his confidence,
and as an essay of my own genius of intrigue." I did so ; the priest,
perhaps delighted to involve me so deeply, and to find me so ardent in
his project, consented. Fortunately, as I before said, Barnard was an
underling, — young, unknown, and obscuj-e. My youth, therefore, was
not so great a foe to my assumed disguise as it might otherwise have
408 DEVEREUX.
been. Montreuil supplied all requisite information. I tried (for the
first time, with a beating heart and a tremulous voice) the imposition !
it succeeded ; I continued it. Yes, Morton, yes ! — pour forth upon
me your bitterest execration, in me, in your brother, in the brother so
dear to you, — in the brother whom you imagined so passionless, so
pure, so sinless, — behold that Barnard, the lover, the idolatrous lover
— the foe, the deadly foe, — of Isora d' Alvarez !
Here the manuscript was defaced for some pages by inco-
hereut and meaningless ravings. It seemed as if one of his
dark fits of frenzy had at that time come over the writer. At
length, in a more firm and clear character than that immedi-
ately preceding it, the manuscript continued as follows : —
I loved her, but even then it was with a fierce and ominous love
(ominous of what it became). Often in the still evenings, when we
stood together watching the sun set ; when my tongue trembled, but did
not dare to speak ; when all soft and sweet thoughts filled the heart and
glistened in the eye of that most sensitive and fairy being ; when my
own brow perhaps seemed to reflect the same emotions, — feelings
which I even shuddered to conceive raged within me. Had we stood
together in those moments upon the brink of a precipice, I could have
wound my arms around her and leaped with her into the abyss. Every-
thing but one nursed my passion ; nature, solitude, early dreams, all
kindled and fed that fire : Religion only combated it ; I knew it was a
crime to love any of earth's creatures as I loved. I used the scourge
and the fast ; ^ I wept hot, burning tears; I prayed, and the intensity
of my prayer appalled even myself, as it rose from my maddened heart,
in the depth and stillness of the lone night : but the flame burned higher
and more scorchingly from the opposition ; nay, it was the very knowl-
edge that my love was criminal that made it assume so fearful and dark
a shape. " Thou art the cause of my downfall from Heaven ! " I mut-
tered, when I looked upon Isora's calm face : " thou feelest it not, and
I could destroy thee and myself, — myself the criminal, thee the cause
of the crime ! "
It must have been that my eyes betrayed my feelings that Isora loved
me not, that she shrank from me even at the first : why else should I
not have called forth the same sentiments which she gave to you ? Was
^ I need not point out to the novel-reader how completely the character of
Aubrey has been stolen in a certain celebrated French romance. But the
writer I allude to is not so unmerciful as M. de Balzac, who has pillaged scenes
in " The Disowned " with a most gratifying politeness.
DEVEREUX. 409
not my form cast in a mould as fair as yours ? did not my voice whisper
in as sweet a tone ? did I not love her with as wild a love ? Why should
she not have loved me ? I was the first whom she beheld : she would
— ay, perhaps she would have loved me, if you had not come and
marred all. Curse yourself, then, that you were my rival ! curse yourself
that you made my heart as a furnace, and smote my brain with frenzy ;
curse — O sweet Virgin, forgive me ! — I know not, — I know not what
my tongue utters or my hand traces !
You came, then, Morton, you came ; you knew her ; you loved her ;
she loved you. 1 learned that you had gained admittance to the cottage,
and the moment I learned it, I looked on Isora, and felt my fate, as by
intuition : I saw at once that she was prepared to love you ; I saw the
very moment when that love kindled from conception into form ; I saw
— and at that moment my eyes reeled and my ears rang as with the
sound of a rushing sea, and I thought I felt a cord snap within my brain,
which has never been united again.
Once only, after your introduction to the cottage, did I think of con-
fiding to you my love and rivalship ; you remember one night when we
met by the castle cave, and when your kindness touched and softened
me despite of myself. The day after that night I sought you, with the
intention of communicating to you all ; and while I was yet struggling
with my embarrassment and the suffocating tide of my emotions, you
premeditated me by giving me your confidence. Engrossed by your
own feelings, you were not observant of mind ; and as you dwelt and
dilated upon your love for Isora, all emotions, save those of agony and
of fury, vanished from my breast. I did not answer you then at any
length, for I was too agitated to trust to prolix speech ; but by the next
day I had recovered myself, and I resolved, as far as I was able, to play
the hypocrite. " He cannot love her as I do !" I said ; " perhaps I
may, without disclosure of my rivalship and without sin in the attempt,
detach him from her by reason." Fraught with this idea, I collected
myself, sought you, remonstrated with you, represented the worldly folly
of your love, and uttered all that prudence preaches — in vain, when
it preaches against passion !
Let me be brief. I saw that I made no impression on you ; I stifled
my wrath ; I continued to visit and watch Isora. I timed my oppor-
tunities well : my constant knowledge of your motions allowed me to do
that ; besides, I represented to the Spaniard the necessity, through
political motives, of concealing myself from you; hence, we never en-
countered each other. One evening, Alvarez had gone out to meet one
of his countrymen and confederates. I found Isora alone, in the most
sequestered part of the garden ; her loveliness, and her exceeding gen-
tleness of manner, melted me. For the first time audibly my heart
410 DEVEREUX.
spoke out, and I told her of my idolatry. Idolatry ! ay, that is the only
word, since it signifies both worship and guilt ! She heard me timidly,
gently, coldly. She spoke ; and I found confirmed from her own lips
what my reason had before told me, — that there was no hope for me.
The iron that entered also roused my heart. " Enough ! " I cried
fiercely, " you love this Morton Devereux, and for him I am scorned."
Isora blushed and trembled, and all my senses fled from me. I scarcely
know in what words my rage and my despair clothed themselves ; but I
know that I divulged myself to her ; I know that I told her I was the
brother, the rival, the enemy of the man she loved, — I know that 1
uttered the fiercest and the wildest menaces and execrations, — I know
that my vehemence so overpowered and terrified her that her mind was
scarcely less clouded — less lost, rather — than my own. At that mo-
ment the sound of your horse's hoofs was heard. Isora's eyes bright-
ened and her mien grew firm. " He comes," she said, " and he will
protect me ! " " Hark ! " I said, sinking my voice, and, as my drawn
sword flashed in one hand, the other grasped her arm with a savage
force, — " hark, woman ! " I said, — and an oath of the blackest fury
accompanied my threats, — " swear that you will never divulge to
Morton Devereux who is his real rival, that you will never declare to
him nor to any, one else that the false Barnard and the true Aubrey
Devereux are the same, — swear this, or I swear [and I repeated, with
a solemn vehemence, that dread oath] that I will stay here ; that I will
confront my rival ; that, the moment he beholds me, I will plunge this
sword in his bosom ; and that, before I perish myself, I will hasten to
the town, and will utter there a secret which will send your father to
the gallows : now, your choice ? "
Morton, you have often praised, my uncle has often jested at, the
womanish softness of my face. There have been moments when I have
seen that face in the glass, and known it not, but started in wild affright,
and fancied that I beheld a demon ; perhaps in that moment this change
was over it. Slowly Isora gazed upon me ; slowly blanched into the
hues of death grew her cheek and lip ; slowly that lip uttered the oath
I enjoined. I released my gri])e, and she fell to the earth suddenly,
and stunned as if struck by lightning. I stayed not to look on what I
had done ; I heard your step advance ; I fled by a path that led from
the garden to the beach ; and 1 reached my home without retaining a