nish monasteries. Escaping through
a subterranean passage, he is guided by a parricide, who
incidentally tells him a loathsome story of two immured lovers.
His plan of flight is foiled, and he is borne off to the dungeons
of the Inquisition. Here the Wanderer, who has a miraculous power
to enter where he will, offers, on the ineffable condition, to
procure his freedom. Moncada repudiates the temptation, effects
his own escape during a great fire, and catches sight of the
stranger on the summit of a burning building. He takes refuge
with a Jew, but, to evade the vigilance of the Inquisitors,
disappears suddenly down an underground passage, where he finds
Adonijah, another Jew, who obligingly employs him as an
amanuensis, and sets him to copy a manuscript. This gives Maturin
the opportunity, for which he has been waiting, to introduce his
"Tale of the Indian." The story of Immalee, who is visited on her
desert island by the Wanderer in the guise of a lover as well as
a tempter, forms the most memorable part of _Melmoth_. In the
other stories the stranger has been a taciturn creature, relying
on the lustre of his eyes rather than on his powers of eloquence
to win over his victims. To Immalee he pours forth floods of
rhetoric on the sins and follies of mankind. Had she not been one
of Rousseau's children of nature, and so innocent alike of a
knowledge of Shakespeare and of the fault of impatience, she
would surely have exclaimed: "If thou hast news, I prithee
deliver them like a man of this world." When Immalee is
transported to Spain and reassumes her baptismal name of Isidora,
Melmoth follows her and their conversations are continued at dead
of night through the lattice. Here they discourse on the real
nature of love. At length the gloomy lover persuades Isidora to
marry him. Their midnight nuptials take place against a weird
background. By a narrow, precipitous path they approach the
ruined chapel, and are united by a hand "as cold as that of
death." Meanwhile, Don Francisco, Isidora's father, on his way
home, spends the night at an inn, where a stranger insists on
telling him "The Tale of Guzman." In this tale the tempter visits
a father whose family is starving, but who resists the lure of
wealth. Maturin portrays with extraordinary power the
deterioration in the character of an old man Walberg, through the
effects of poverty. At the close of the narration Don Francisco
falls into a deep slumber, but is sternly awake