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Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers

T >> Thomas De Quincey >> Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers




It was just striking twelve o'clock as we entered the lane where the
carriage was drawn up. Rain, about the profoundest I had ever
witnessed, was falling. Though near to midsummer, the night had been
unusually dark to begin with, and from the increasing rain had become
much more so. We could see nothing; and at first we feared that some
mistake had occurred as to the station of the carriage--in which case
we might have sought for it vainly through the intricate labyrinth of
the streets in that quarter. I first descried it by the light of a
torch, reflected powerfully from the large eyes of the leaders. All was
ready. Horse-keepers were at the horses' heads. The postilions were
mounted; each door had the steps let down: Agnes was lifted in: Hannah
and I followed: Pierpoint mounted his horse; and at the word--Oh! how
strange a word!--'_All's right_,' the horses sprang off like leopards,
a manner ill-suited to the slippery pavement of a narrow street. At
that moment, but we valued it little indeed, we heard the prison-bell
ringing out loud and clear. Thrice within the first three minutes we
had to pull up suddenly, on the brink of formidable accidents, from the
dangerous speed we maintained, and which, nevertheless, the driver had
orders to maintain, as essential to our plan. All the stoppages and
hinderances of every kind along the road had been anticipated
previously, and met by contrivance, of one kind or other; and Pierpoint
was constantly a little ahead of us to attend to anything that had been
neglected. The consequence of these arrangements was--that no person
along the road could possibly have assisted to trace us by any thing in
our appearance: for we passed all objects at too flying a pace, and
through darkness too profound, to allow of any one feature in our
equipage being distinctly noticed. Ten miles out of town, a space which
we traversed in forty-four minutes, a second relay of horses was ready;
but we carried on the same postilions throughout. Six miles ahead of
this distance we had a second relay; and with this set of horses, after
pushing two miles further along the road, we crossed by a miserable
lane five miles long, scarcely even a bridge road, into another of the
great roads from the capital; and by thus crossing the country, we came
back upon the city at a point far distant from that at which we left
it. We had performed a distance of forty-two miles in three hours, and
lost a fourth hour upon the wretched five miles of cross-road. It was,
therefore, four o'clock, and broad daylight, when we drew near the
suburbs of the city; but a most happy accident now favored us; a fog
the most intense now prevailed; nobody could see an object six feet
distant; we alighted in an uninhabited new-built street, plunged into
the fog, thus confounding our traces to any observer. We then stepped
into a hackney-coach which had been stationed at a little distance.
Thence, according to our plan, we drove to a miserable quarter of the
town, whither the poor only and the wretched resorted; mounted a gloomy
dirty staircase, and, befriended by the fog, still growing thicker and
thicker, and by the early hour of the morning, reached a house
previously hired, which, if shocking to the eye and the imagination
from its squalid appearance and its gloom, still was a home--a
sanctuary--an asylum from treachery, from captivity, from persecution.
Here Pierpoint for the present quitted us: and once more Agnes, Hannah,
and I, the shattered members of a shattered family, were thus gathered
together in a house of our own.

Yes: once again, daughter of the hills, thou sleptst as heretofore in
my encircling arms; but not again in that peace which crowned thy
innocence in those days, and should have crowned it now. Through the
whole of our flying journey, in some circumstances at its outset
strikingly recalling to me that blessed one which followed our
marriage, Agnes slept away unconscious of our movements. She slept
through all that day and the following night; and I watched over her
with as much jealousy of all that might disturb her, as a mother
watches over her new-born baby; for I hoped, I fancied, that a long--
long rest, a rest, a halcyon calm, a deep, deep Sabbath of security,
might prove healing and medicinal. I thought wrong; her breathing
became more disturbed, and sleep was now haunted by dreams; all of us,
indeed, were agitated by dreams; the past pursued me, and the present,
for high rewards had been advertised by Government to those who traced
us; and though for the moment we were secure, because we never went
abroad, and could not have been naturally sought in such a
neighborhood, still that very circumstance would eventually operate
against us. At length, every night I dreamed of our insecurity under a
thousand forms; but more often by far my dreams turned upon our wrongs;
wrath moved me rather than fear. Every night, for the greater part, I
lay painfully and elaborately involved, by deep sense of wrong,

'--in long orations, which I pleaded
Before unjust tribunals.'
[Footnote: From a MS. poem of a great living Poet.]

And for poor Agnes, her also did the remembrance of mighty wrongs
occupy through vast worlds of sleep in the same way--though colored by
that tenderness which belonged to her gentler nature. One dream in
particular--a dream of sublime circumstances--she repeated to me so
movingly, with a pathos so thrilling, that by some profound sympathy it
transplanted itself to my own sleep, settled itself there, and is to
this hour a part of the fixed dream scenery which revolves at intervals
through my sleeping life. This it was:--She would hear a trumpet sound
--though perhaps as having been the prelude to the solemn entry of the
judges at a town which she had once visited in her childhood; other
preparations would follow, and at last all the solemnities of a great
trial would shape themselves and fall into settled images. The audience
was assembled, the judges were arrayed, the court was set. The prisoner
was cited. Inquest was made, witnesses were called; and false witnesses
came tumultuously to the bar. Then again a trumpet was heard, but the
trumpet of a mighty archangel; and then would roll away thick clouds
and vapors. Again the audience, but another audience, was assembled;
again the tribunal was established; again the court was set; but a
tribunal and a court--how different to her! _That_ had been
composed of men seeking indeed for truth, but themselves erring and
fallible creatures; the witnesses had been full of lies, the judges of
darkness. But here was a court composed of heavenly witnesses--here was
a righteous tribunal--and then at last a judge that could not be
deceived. The judge smote with his eye a person who sought to hide
himself in the crowd; the guilty man stepped forward; the poor prisoner
was called up to the presence of the mighty judge; suddenly the voice
of a little child was heard ascending before her. Then the trumpet
sounded once again; and then there were new heavens and a new earth;
and her tears and her agitation (for she had seen her little Francis)
awoke the poor palpitating dreamer.

* * * * *

Two months passed on: nothing could possibly be done materially to
raise the standard of those wretched accommodations which the house
offered. The dilapidated walls, the mouldering plaster, the blackened
mantel-pieces, the stained and polluted wainscots--what could be
attempted to hide or to repair all this by those who durst not venture
abroad? Yet whatever could be done, Hannah did; and, in the mean time,
very soon indeed my Agnes ceased to see or to be offended by these
objects. First of all her sight went from her; and nothing which
appealed to that sense could ever more offend her. It is to me the one
only consolation I have, that my presence and that of Hannah, with such
innocent frauds as we concerted together, made her latter days pass in
a heavenly calm, by persuading her that our security was absolute, and
that all search after us had ceased, under a belief on the part of
Government that we had gained the shelter of a foreign land. All this
was a delusion; but it was a delusion--blessed be Heaven! which lasted
exactly as long as her life, and was just commensurate with its
necessity. I hurry over the final circumstances.

There was fortunately now, even for me, no fear that the hand of any
policeman or emissary of justice could effectually disturb the latter
days of my wife; for, besides pistols always lying loaded in an inner
room, there happened to be a long narrow passage on entering the house,
which, by means of a blunderbuss, I could have swept effectually, and
cleared many times over; and I know what to do in a last extremity.
Just two months it was, to a day, since we had entered the house; and
it happened that the medical attendant upon Agnes, who awakened no
suspicion by his visits, had prescribed some opiate or anodyne which
had not come; being dark early, for it was now September, I had
ventured out to fetch it. In this I conceived there could be no danger.
On my return I saw a man examining the fastenings of the door. He made
no opposition to my entrance, nor seemed much to observe it--but I was
disturbed. Two hours after, both Hannah and I heard a noise about the
door, and voices in low conversation. It is remarkable that Agnes heard
this also--so quick had grown her hearing. She was agitated, but was
easily calmed; and at ten o'clock we were all in bed. The hand of Agnes
was in mine; so only she felt herself in security. She had been
restless for an hour, and talking at intervals in sleep. Once she
certainly wakened, for she pressed her lips to mine. Two minutes after,
I heard something in her breathing which did not please me. I rose
hastily--brought a light--raised her head--two long, long gentle
sighs, that scarcely moved the lips, were all that could be perceived.
At that moment, at that very moment, Hannah called out to me that the
door was surrounded. 'Open it!' I said; six men entered; Agnes it was
they sought; I pointed to the bed; they advanced, gazed, and walked
away in silence.

After this I wandered about, caring little for life or its affairs, and
roused only at times to think of vengeance upon all who had contributed
to lay waste my happiness. In this pursuit, however, I was confounded
as much by my own thoughts as by the difficulties of accomplishing my
purpose. To assault and murder either of the two principal agents in
this tragedy, what would it be, what other effect could it have, than
to invest them with the character of injured and suffering people, and
thus to attract a pity or a forgiveness at least to their persons which
never otherwise could have illustrated their deaths? I remembered,
indeed, the words of a sea-captain who had taken such vengeance as had
offered at the moment upon his bitter enemy and persecutor (a young
passenger on board his ship), who had informed against him at the
Custom-house on his arrival in port, and had thus effected the
confiscation of his ship, and the ruin of the captain's family. The
vengeance, and it was all that circumstances allowed, consisted in
coming behind the young man clandestinely and pushing him into the deep
waters of the dock, when, being unable to swim, he perished by
drowning. 'And the like,' said the captain, when musing on his trivial
vengeance, 'and the like happens to many an honest sailor.' Yes,
thought I, the captain was right. The momentary shock of a pistol-
bullet--what is it? Perhaps it may save the wretch after all from the
pangs of some lingering disease; and then again I shall have the
character of a murderer, if known to have shot him; he will with many
people have no such character, but at worst the character of a man too
harsh (they will say), and possibly mistaken in protecting his
property. And then, if not known as the man who shot him, where is the
shadow even of vengeance? Strange it seemed to me, and passing strange,
that I should be the person to urge arguments in behalf of letting this
man escape. For at one time I had as certainly, as inexorably, doomed
him as ever I took any resolution in my life. But the fact is, and I
began to see it upon closer view, it is not easy by any means to take
an adequate vengeance for any injury beyond a very trivial standard;
and that with common magnanimity one does not care to avenge. Whilst I
was in this mood of mind, still debating with myself whether I should
or should not contaminate my hands with the blood of this monster, and
still unable to shut my eyes upon one fact, viz. that my buried Agnes
could above all things have urged me to abstain from such acts of
violence, too evidently useless, listlessly and scarcely knowing what I
was in quest of, I strayed by accident into a church where a venerable
old man was preaching at the very moment I entered; he was either
delivering as a text, or repeating in the course of his sermon, these
words--'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' By some
accident also he fixed his eyes upon me at the moment; and this
concurrence with the subject then occupying my thoughts so much
impressed me, that I determined very seriously to review my half-formed
purposes of revenge; and well it was that I did so: for in that same
week an explosion of popular fury brought the life of this wretched
Barratt to a shocking termination, pretty much resembling the fate of
the De Witts in Holland. And the consequences to me were such, and so
full of all the consolation and indemnification which this world could
give me, that I have often shuddered since then at the narrow escape I
had had from myself intercepting this remarkable retribution. The
villain had again been attempting to play off the same hellish scheme
with a beautiful young rustic which had succeeded in the case of my
ill-fated Agnes. But the young woman in this instance had a high, and,
in fact, termagant spirit. Rustic as she was, she had been warned of
the character of the man; everybody, in fact, was familiar with the
recent tragedy. Either her lover or her brother happened to be waiting
for her outside the window. He saw in part the very tricks in the act
of perpetration by which some article or other, meant to be claimed as
stolen property, was conveyed into a parcel she had incautiously laid
down. He heard the charge against her made by Barratt, and seconded by
his creatures--heard her appeal--sprang to her aid--dragged the ruffian
into the street, when in less time than the tale could be told, and
before the police (though tolerably alert) could effectually interpose
for his rescue, the mob had so used or so abused the opportunity they
had long wished for, that he remained the mere disfigured wreck of what
had once been a man, rather than a creature with any resemblance to
humanity. I myself heard the uproar at a distance, and the shouts and
yells of savage exultation; they were sounds I shall never forget,
though I did not at that time know them for what they were, or
understood their meaning. The result, however, to me was something
beyond this, and worthy to have been purchased with my heart's blood.
Barratt still breathed; spite of his mutilations he could speak; he was
rational. One only thing he demanded--it was that his dying confession
might be taken. Two magistrates and a clergyman attended. He gave a
list of those whom he had trepanned, and had failed to trepan, by his
artifices and threats, into the sacrifice of their honor. He expired
before the record was closed, but not before he had placed my wife's
name in the latter list as the one whose injuries in his dying moments
most appalled him. This confession on the following day went into the
hands of the hostile minister, and my revenge was perfect.




THE SPANISH NUN.


Why is it that _Adventures_ are so generally repulsive to people of
meditative minds? It is for the same reason that any other want of law,
that any other anarchy is repulsive. Floating passively from action to
action, as helplessly as a withered leaf surrendered to the breath of
winds, the human spirit (out of which comes all grandeur of human
motions) is exhibited in mere _Adventures_, as either entirely laid
asleep, or as acting only by lower organs that regulate the _means_,
whilst the _ends_ are derived from alien sources, and are imperiously
predetermined. It is a case of exception, however, when even amongst
such adventures the agent reacts upon his own difficulties and
necessities by a temper of extraordinary courage, and a mind of
premature decision. Further strength arises to such an exception, if
the very moulding accidents of the life, if the very external coercions
are themselves unusually romantic. They may thus gain a separate
interest of their own. And, lastly, the whole is locked into validity
of interest, even for the psychological philosopher, by complete
authentication of its truth. In the case now brought before him, the
reader must not doubt; for no memoir exists, or personal biography,
that is so trebly authenticated by proofs and attestations direct and
collateral. From the archives of the Royal Marine at Seville, from the
autobiography or the heroine, from contemporary chronicles, and from
several official sources scattered in and out of Spain, some of them
ecclesiastical, the amplest proofs have been drawn, and may yet be
greatly extended, of the extraordinary events here recorded. M. de
Ferrer, a Spaniard of much research, and originally incredulous as to
the facts, published about seventeen years ago a selection from the
leading documents, accompanied by his _palinode_ as to their accuracy.
His materials have been since used for the basis of more than one
narrative, not inaccurate, in French, German and Spanish journals of
high authority. It is seldom the case that French writers err by
prolixity. They _have_ done so in this case. The present narrative,
which contains no sentence derived from any foreign one, has the great
advantage of close compression; my own pages, after equating the size,
being as 1 to 3 of the shortest continental form. In the mode of
narration, I am vain enough to flatter myself that the reader will find
little reason to hesitate between us. Mine at least, weary nobody;
which is more than can be always said for the continental versions.

On a night in the year 1592, (but which night is a secret liable to 365
answers,) a Spanish '_son of somebody_,' [Footnote: _i.e._ 'Hidalgo']
in the fortified town of St. Sebastian, received the disagreeable
intelligence from a nurse, that his wife had just presented him with a
daughter. No present that the poor misjudging lady could possibly have
made him was so entirely useless for any purpose of his. He had three
daughters already, which happened to be more by 2+1 than _his_
reckoning assumed as a reasonable allowance of daughters. A
supernumerary son might have been stowed away; but daughters in excess
were the very nuisance of Spain. He did, therefore, what in such cases
every proud and lazy Spanish gentleman was apt to do--he wrapped the
new little daughter, odious to his paternal eyes, in a pocket
handkerchief; and then, wrapping up his own throat with a good deal
more care, off he bolted to the neighboring convent of St. Sebastian,
not merely of that city, but also (amongst several convents) the one
dedicated to that saint. It is well that in this quarrelsome world we
quarrel furiously about tastes; since agreeing too closely about the
objects to be liked and appropriated would breed much more fighting
than is bred by disagreeing. That little human tadpole, which the old
toad of a father would not suffer to stay ten minutes in his house,
proved as welcome at the nunnery of St. Sebastian as she was odious
elsewhere. The superior of the convent was aunt, by the mother's side,
to the new-born stranger. She, therefore, kissed and blessed the little
lady. The poor nuns, who were never to have any babies of their own,
and were languishing for some amusement, perfectly doated on this
prospect of a wee pet. The superior thanked the hidalgo for his very
splendid present. The nuns thanked him each and all; until the old
crocodile actually began to cry and whimper sentimentally at what he
now perceived to be excess of munificence in himself. Munificence,
indeed, he remarked, was his foible next after parental tenderness.

What a luxury it is sometimes to a cynic that there go two words to a
bargain. In the convent of St. Sebastian all was gratitude; gratitude
(as aforesaid) to the hidalgo from all the convent for his present,
until at last the hidalgo began to express gratitude to _them_ for
their gratitude to _him_. Then came a rolling fire of thanks to
St. Sebastian; from the superior, for sending a future saint; from the
nuns, for sending such a love of a plaything; and, finally, from papa,
for sending such substantial board and well-bolted lodgings, 'from
which,' said the malicious old fellow, 'my pussy will never find her
way out to a thorny and dangerous world.' Won't she? I suspect, son of
somebody, that the next time you see 'pussy,' which may happen to be
also the last, will not be in a convent of any kind. At present, whilst
this general rendering of thanks was going on, one person only took no
part in them. That person was 'pussy,' whose little figure lay quietly
stretched out in the arms of a smiling young nun, with eyes nearly
shut, yet peering a little at the candles. Pussy said nothing. It's of
no great use to say much, when all the world is against you. But if St.
Sebastian had enabled her to speak out the whole truth, pussy
_would_ have said: 'So, Mr. Hidalgo, you have been engaging
lodgings for me; lodgings for life. Wait a little. We'll try that
question, when my claws are grown a little longer.'

Disappointment, therefore, was gathering ahead. But for the present
there was nothing of the kind. That noble old crocodile, papa, was not
in the least disappointed as regarded _his_ expectation of having
no anxiety to waste, and no money to pay, on account of his youngest
daughter. He insisted on his right to forget her; and in a week
_had_ forgotten her, never to think of her again but once. The
lady superior, as regarded _her_ demands, was equally content, and
through a course of several years; for, as often as she asked pussy if
she would be a saint, pussy replied that she would, if saints were
allowed plenty of sweetmeats. But least of all were the nuns
disappointed. Everything that they had fancied possible in a human
plaything fell short of what pussy realized in racketing, racing, and
eternal plots against the peace of the elder nuns. No fox ever kept a
hen-roost in such alarm as pussy kept the dormitory of the senior
sisters; whilst the younger ladies were run off their legs by the
eternal wiles, and had their chapel gravity discomposed, even in
chapel, by the eternal antics of this privileged little kitten.

The kitten had long ago received a baptismal name, which was Kitty;
this is Catharine, or Kate, or _Hispanice_ Catalina. It was a good
name, as it recalled her original name of pussy. And, by the way, she
had also an ancient and honorable surname, viz., _De Erauso_, which is
to this day a name rooted in Biscay. Her father, the _hidalgo_, was a
military officer in the Spanish service, and had little care whether
his kitten should turn out a wolf or a lamb, having made over the fee
simple of his own interest in the little Kate to St. Sebastian, 'to
have and to hold,' so long as Kate should keep her hold of this present
life. Kate had no apparent intention to let slip that hold, for she was
blooming as a rose-bush in June, tall and strong as a young cedar. Yet,
notwithstanding this robust health and the strength of the convent
walls, the time was drawing near when St. Sebastian's lease in Kate
must, in legal phrase, 'determine;' and any _chateaux en Espagne_, that
the Saint might have built on the cloisteral fidelity of his pet
Catalina, must suddenly give way in one hour, like many other vanities
in our own days of Spanish bonds and promises. After reaching her tenth
year, Catalina became thoughtful, and not very docile. At times she was
even headstrong and turbulent, so that the gentle sisterhood of St.
Sebastian, who had no other pet or plaything in the world, began to
weep in secret--fearing that they might have been rearing by mistake
some future tigress--for as to infancy, _that_, you know, is playful
and innocent even in the cubs of a tigress. But _there_ the ladies were
going too far. Catalina was impetuous and aspiring, but not cruel. She
was gentle, if people would let her be so. But woe to those that took
liberties with _her_! A female servant of the convent, in some
authority, one day, in passing up the aisle to matins, _wilfully_ gave
Kate a push; and in return, Kate, who never left her debts in arrear,
gave the servant for a keepsake a look which that servant carried with
her in fearful remembrance to her grave. It seemed as if Kate had
tropic blood in her veins, that continually called her away to the
tropics. It was all the fault of that 'blue rejoicing sky,' of those
purple Biscayan mountains, of that tumultuous ocean, which she beheld
daily from the nunnery gardens. Or, if only half of it was _their_
fault, the other half lay in those golden tales, streaming upwards even
into the sanctuaries of convents, like morning mists touched by
earliest sunlight, of kingdoms overshadowing a new world which had been
founded by her kinsmen with the simple aid of a horse and a lance. The
reader is to remember that this is no romance, or at least no fiction,
that he is reading; and it is proper to remind the reader of real
romances in Ariosto or our own Spenser, that such martial ladies as the
_Marfisa_, or _Bradamant_ of the first, and _Britomart_ of the other,
were really not the improbabilities that modern society imagines. Many
a stout man, as you will soon see, found that Kate, with a sabre in
hand, and well mounted, was but too serious a fact.

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