第77章

On his first discovery of his situation, he had determined to take the utmost care of his health and intellect that the place allowed, as the sole basis of his hope of deliverance.But as that hope declined, he neglected the means of realizing it.He had at first risen early, walked incessantly about his cell, and availed himself of every opportunity of being in the open air.He took the strictest care of his person in point of cleanliness, and with or without appetite, regularly forced down his miserable meals; and all these efforts were even pleasant, as long as hope prompted them.But now he began to relax them all.He passed half the day in his wretched bed, in which he frequently took his meals, declined shaving or changing his linen, and, when the sun shone into his cell, he turned from it on his straw with a sigh of heartbroken despondency.Formerly, when the air breathed through his grating, he used to say, "Blessed air of heaven, I shall breathe you once more in freedom!--Reserve all your freshness for that delicious evening when I shall inhale you, and be as free as you myself." Now when he felt it, he sighed and said nothing.The twitter of the sparrows, the pattering of rain, or the moan of the wind, sounds that he used to sit up in his bed to catch with delight, as reminding him of nature, were now unheeded.

He began at times to listen with sullen and horrible pleasure to the cries of his miserable companions.He became squalid, listless, torpid, and disgusting in his appearance.

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It was one of those dismal nights, that, as he tossed on his loathsome bed,--more loathsome from the impossibility to quit it without feeling more "unrest,"--he perceived the miserable light that burned in the hearth was obscured by the intervention of some dark object.He turned feebly toward the light, without curiosity, without excitement, but with a wish to diversify the monotony of his misery, by observing the slightest change made even accidentally in the dusky atmosphere of his cell.Between him and the light stood the figure of Melmoth, just as he had seen him from the first; the figure was the same; the expression of the face was the same,--cold, stony, and rigid; the eyes, with their infernal and dazzling luster, were still the same.

Stanton's ruling passion rushed on his soul; he felt this apparition like a summons to a high and fearful encounter.He heard his heart beat audibly, and could have exclaimed with Lee's unfortunate heroine,--"It pants as cowards do before a battle; Oh the great march has sounded!"Melmoth approached him with that frightful calmness that mocks the terror it excites."My prophecy has been fulfilled;--you rise to meet me rattling from your chains, and rustling from your straw--am I not a true prophet?" Stanton was silent."Is not your situation very miserable?"--Still Stanton was silent; for he was beginning to believe this an illusion of madness.He thought to himself, "How could he have gained entrance here?"--"Would you not wish to be delivered from it?" Stanton tossed on his straw, and its rustling seemed to answer the question."I have the power to deliver you from it." Melmoth spoke very slowly and very softly, and the melodious smoothness of his voice made a frightful contrast to the stony rigor of his features, and the fiendlike brilliancy of his eyes."Who are you, and whence come you?" said Stanton, in a tone that was meant to be interrogatory and imperative, but which, from his habits of squalid debility, was at once feeble and querulous.

His intellect had become affected by the gloom of his miserable habitation, as the wretched inmate of a similar mansion, when produced before a medical examiner, was reported to be a complete Albino.--His skin was bleached, his eyes turned white; he could not bear the light; and, when exposed to it, he turned away with a mixture of weakness and restlessness, more like the writhings of a sick infant than the struggles of a man.

Such was Stanton's situation.He was enfeebled now, and the power of the enemy seemed without a possibility of opposition from either his intellectual or corporeal powers.

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Of all their horrible dialogue, only these words were legible in the manuscript, "You know me now."--"I always knew you."--"That is false; you imagined you did, and that has been the cause of all the wild.of the.....