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    Transcriber’s Notes:

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  MELMOTH
  THE
  WANDERER:
  A
  TALE.

  BY THE AUTHOR OF “BERTRAM,” &c.

  IN FOUR VOLUMES.

  VOL. III.

  EDINBURGH:
  PRINTED FOR ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY,
  AND HURST, ROBINSON, AND CO. CHEAPSIDE,
  LONDON.

  1820.




MELMOTH.




CHAPTER XII.

    Juravi lingua, mentem injuratam gero.----
    Who brought you first acquainted with the devil?

    SHIRLEY’S ST PATRICK FOR IRELAND.


“I ran on till I had no longer breath or strength, (without perceiving
that I was in a dark passage), till I was stopt by a door. In falling
against it, I burst it open, and found myself in a low dark room. When I
raised myself, for I had fallen on my hands and knees, I looked round,
and saw something so singular, as to suspend even my personal anxiety
and terror for a moment.

“The room was very small; and I could perceive by the rents, that I had
not only broken open a door, but a large curtain which hung before it,
whose ample folds still afforded me concealment if I required it. There
was no one in the room, and I had time to study its singular furniture
at leisure.

“There was a table covered with cloth; on it were placed a vessel of a
singular construction, a book, into whose pages I looked, but could not
make out a single letter. I therefore wisely took it for a book of
magic, and closed it with a feeling of exculpatory horror. (It happened
to be a copy of the Hebrew Bible, marked with the Samaritan points).
There was a knife too; and a cock was fastened to the leg of the table,
whose loud crows announced his impatience of further constraint(1).

  (1) Quilibet postea paterfamilias, cum _gallo_ præ manibus, in medium
  primus prodit. * * * * * * * *

  Deinde expiationem aggreditur et capiti suo ter gallum allidit,
  singulosque ictus his vocibus prosequitur. Hic Gallus sit permutio pro
  me, &c. * * * * * * * Gallo deinde imponens manus, eum statim mactat,
  &c.

  Vide Buxtorf, as quoted in Dr Magee (Bishop of Raphoe’s) work on the
  atonement. Cumberland in his Observer, I think, mentions the discovery
  to have been reserved for the feast of the Passover. It is just as
  probable it was made on the day of expiation.

“I felt that this apparatus was somewhat singular--it looked like a
preparation for a sacrifice. I shuddered, and wrapt myself in the
volumes of the drapery which hung before the door my fall had broken
open. A dim lamp, suspended from the ceiling, discovered to me all these
objects, and enabled me to observe what followed almost immediately. A
man of middle age, but whose physiognomy had something peculiar in it,
even to the eye of a Spaniard, from the clustering darkness of his
eye-brows, his prominent nose, and a certain lustre in the balls of his
eyes, entered the room, knelt before the table, kissed the book that lay
on it, and read from it some sentences that were to precede, as I
imagined, some horrible sacrifice;--felt the edge of the knife, knelt
again, uttered some words which I did not understand, (as they were in
the language of that book), and then called aloud