Transcriber’s Notes: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. The motto for Chapter VI is misquoted from Iliad XXIII 72; it has been left as printed. MELMOTH THE WANDERER: A TALE. BY THE AUTHOR OF “BERTRAM,” &c. IN FOUR VOLUMES. VOL. II. EDINBURGH: PRINTED FOR ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, AND HURST, ROBINSON, AND CO. CHEAPSIDE, LONDON. 1820. MELMOTH. CHAPTER VI. Τηλε μἐιργουσι ψυχαι ειδωλα καμοντων. HOMER. When, after some days interval, the Spaniard attempted to describe his feelings on the receipt of his brother’s letter, the sudden resuscitation of heart, and hope, and existence, that followed its perusal, he trembled,--uttered some inarticulate sounds;--wept;--and his agitation appeared to Melmoth, with _his uncontinental feelings_, so violent, that he entreated him to spare the description of his feelings, and proceed with his narrative. “You are right,” said the Spaniard, drying his tears, “joy is a convulsion, but grief is a habit, and to describe what we never can communicate, is as absurd as to talk of colours to the blind. I will hasten on, not to tell of my feelings, but of the results which they produced. A new world of hope was opened to me. I thought I saw liberty on the face of heaven when I walked in the garden. I laughed at the jar of the doors as they opened, and said to myself, “You shall soon expand to me for ever.” I behaved with uncommon complacency to the community. But I did not, amid all this, neglect the most scrupulous precautions suggested by my brother. Am I confessing the strength or the weakness of my heart? In the midst of all the systematic dissimulation that I was prepared and eager to carry on, the only circumstance that gave me real compunction, was my being obliged to destroy the letters of that dear and generous youth who had risked every thing for my emancipation. In the mean time, I pursued my preparations with industry inconceivable to you, who have never been in a convent.