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Title: The Missionary: An Indian Tale; vol. III

Author: Lady Morgan

Release date: April 19, 2015 [eBook #48744]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MISSIONARY: AN INDIAN TALE; VOL. III ***

                            THE MISSIONARY:

                            AN Indian Tale.

                           BY MISS OWENSON.

                    WITH A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR.

                           IN THREE VOLUMES.

                           _FOURTH EDITION._

                               VOL. III.

       _LONDON_: PRINTED FOR J. J. STOCKDALE, NO 41, PALL-MALL.

                                 1811.




                            THE MISSIONARY,

                                  &c.




CHAPTER XIII.


On the second day of their wandering, the deep shade of the forest
scenery, in which they had hitherto been involved, softened into a less
impervious gloom, the heights of the black rock of Bembhar rose on their
view, and the lovely and enchanting glen which reposes at its northern
base, and which is called the Valley of Floating Islands, burst upon
their glance. These phenomena, which appear on the bosom of the Behat,
are formed by the masses of rock, by the trees and shrubs which the
whirlwind tears from the summits of the surrounding mountains, and which
are thus borne away by the fury of the torrents, and plunged into the
tranquil waters beneath; these rude fragments, collected by time and
chance, cemented by the river Slime, and intermixed by creeping plants,
and parasite grasses, become small but lovely islets, covered with
flowers, sowed by the vagrant winds, and skirted by the leaves and
blossoms of the crimson lotos, the water-loving flower of Indian groves.
This scene, so luxuriant and yet so animating, where all was light, and
harmony, and odour, gave a new sensation to the nerves, and a new tone
to the feelings of the wanderers, and their spirits were fed with
balmier airs, and their eyes greeted with lovelier objects, than hope or
fancy had ever imaged to their minds.--Sometimes they stood together on
the edge of the silvery flood, watching the motion of the arbours which
floated on its bosom, or pursuing the twinings of the harmless green
serpent, which, shining amidst masses of kindred hues, raised gracefully
his brilliant crest above the edges of the river bank. Sometimes from
beneath the shade of umbrageous trees, they beheld the sacred animal of
India breaking the stubborn flood with his broad white breast, and
gaining the fragrant islet, where he reposed his heated limbs; his mild
countenance shaded by his crooked horns, crowned by the foliage in which
he had entangled them; thus reposing in tranquil majesty, he looked
like some river-deity of antient fable.

Flights of many-coloured perroquets, of lorys, and of peacocks,
reflected on the bosom of the river the bright and various tints of
their splendid plumage; while the cozel, the nightingale of Hindoo
bards, poured its song of love from the summit of the loftiest
_mergosa_, the eastern lilac. It was here they found the _Jama_, or rose
apple-tree, bearing ambrosial fruit--it was here that the sweet sumbal,
the spikenard of the antients, spread its tresses of dusky gold over the
clumps of granite, which sparkled like coloured gems amidst the saphire
of the mossy soil--it was here that, at the decline of a lovely day, the
wanderers reached the shade of a natural arbour, formed by the union of
a tamarind-tree with the branches of a _covidara_, whose purple and
rose-coloured blossoms mingled with the golden fruit which, to the
Indian palate, affords so delicious a refreshment.

It was Luxima who discovered this retreat so luxurious, and yet so
simple. The purity of the atmosphere, the brilliancy of the scene, had
given to her spirits a higher tone than usually distinguished their
languid character. Looking pure and light as the air she breathed, she
had bounded on before her companion, who, buried in profound reverie,
seemed at once more thoughtful and more tender than he had yet appeared
in look or manner. When he reached the arbour, he found Luxima seated
beneath its shade--her brow crowned with Indian feathers, and her
delicate fingers engaged in forming a wreath of odoriferous berries;
looking like the emblem of that lovely region, whose mild and delicious
climate had contributed to form the beauty of her person, the softness
of her character, and the ardour of her imagination. No thought of
future care contracted her brow, and the smile of peace and innocence
sat on her lips. Not so the Missionary: the morbid habit of watching his
own sensations had produced in him an hypochondriasm of conscience,
which embittered the most blameless moments of his life; his diseased
mind discovered a lurking crime in the most innocent enjoyments; and the
fear of offending Heaven, fastened his attention to objects which were
only dangerous, by not being immediately dismissed from his thoughts.
The moral economy of his nature suffered from the very means he took to
preserve it; and his danger arose less from his temptation, than from
the sensibility with which he watched its progress, and the efforts he
made to combat and to resist its influence. He now beheld Luxima more
lovely than he had ever seen her; she was gracefully occupied, and there
was something picturesque, something almost _fantastic_, in her
appearance, which gave the poignant charm of novelty to her air and
person. She was murmuring an Indian song, as he approached her. The
Missionary stood gazing on her for some moments in silence, then
suddenly averting his eyes, and seating himself near her, he said--“And
to what purpose, my dearest daughter, dost thou so industriously weave
those fragrant wreaths?”

“To hang upon the bower of thy repose,” she replied, “as a spell against
evil;--for dost thou not, on every side, perceive the _bacula_ plant, so
injurious to the nerves, and whose baneful influence the odour of these
berries can alone dispel?”[1]

“Alas!” he exclaimed, “in scenes so lovely and remote as those in which
we now wander, who could suspect that latent evil lurked? But the evil
which always exists, and that against which it is most difficult to
guard, exists within ourselves, Luxima.”

“Thou sayest it,” returned Luxima, “and therefore must it be true; and
yet, methinks, in us at least no evil can exist--look around thee,
Father; behold those hills which encompass us on every side, and which,
seeming to shut out the universe, exclude all the evil passions by which
it is agitated and disordered; and since absent from all human
intercourse, our feelings relate only to each other, surely in us at
least no evil _can_ exist.”

“Let us hope, let us trust there does not, Luxima,” said the Missionary,
in strong emotion; “and oh! my daughter, let us watch and pray that
there _may not_.”

“And here,” said Luxima with simplicity, and suspending her work, “where
all breathes of peace and innocence, against what are we to pray?”

“Even against _those thoughts_ which involuntarily start into the mind,
and which, though confined, and perhaps referring exclusively to each
other, may yet become fatal and seductive, may yet plunge us into error
beyond the mercy of Heaven to forgive!”

“But if one _sole_ thought occupies the existence!” said Luxima,
tenderly and with energy, “and if it is sanctified by the perfection of
its object!”

“But to what earthly object does perfection belong, Luxima?”

“To thee;” replied the Neophyte, blushing.

“It is the ardour of thy gratitude only,” said the Missionary with
vehemence, “which bestows on me, an epithet belonging alone to Heaven.
And lovely as is this purest of human sentiments, yet, _being human_, it
is liable to corruption, and may be carried to an excess fatal to us
both; for, oh! Luxima, were I to avail myself of this excess of
gratitude, this pure but unguarded tenderness, and in wilds solitary
and luxuriant as these, where happiness and security might mingle,
where, forgetting the world, and its opinions, abandoning alike _heaven_
and its _cause_!”--he paused abruptly--he trembled, and a deep groan
burst from a heart, agitated by all the conflicting emotions of a
sensitive conscience, and an imperious passion.

Luxima, moved by his agitation--tender, timid, yet always happy and
tranquilly blessed in the presence of him, the idol of her secret
thoughts, and fearing only those incidents which might impede the
innocent felicity of being near him--endeavoured to soothe his
perturbation, and, taking his hand in hers, and bending her head towards
him, she looked on his eyes with innocent fondness, and her sighs,
sweet as the incense of the evening, breathed on his burning cheek!
Then the sacred fillet of religion fell from his eyes; he threw
himself at her feet, and pressing her hands to his heart, he said
passionately--“Luxima, tell me, dost thou not belong exclusively to
Heaven? Recall to my wandering mind that sacred vow, by which I solemnly
devoted thee to its service, at the baptismal font! Oh! my daughter,
thou wouldst not destroy me? thou wouldst not arm Heaven against me,
Luxima?”

“I!” returned Luxima tenderly, “I destroy thee, who art dear to me as
heaven itself!”

“Oh! Luxima,” he exclaimed in emotion, “look not thus on me! tell me
not that I am dear to thee, or....” At that moment his rosary fell to
the earth, and lay at the feet of the Indian.

An incident so natural and so simple struck on the conscience of the
Missionary, as though the Minister of Divine wrath had blasted his gaze
with his accusing presence;--he grew pale and shuddered, his arms fell
back upon his breast;--overpowered by shame, and by self-abhorrence,
rushing from the bower, he plunged into the thickest shade of the grove;
there he threw himself on the earth; and that mind, once so high and
lofty in its own conscious triumph, was now again sunk and agonized by
the conviction of its own debasement. From this state of unsupportable
humiliation, he was awakened by the sound of horses’ feet; he raised his
eyes, and beheld approaching an Indian, who led a small Arabian horse,
laden with empty panniers: the Missionary hastily arose--and the
stranger, moved by the dignity of his form, and the disorder of his pale
and haggard countenance, gave him the _Salaam_; and invited him, with
the hospitable courtesy of his country, to repair to his cottage, which
lay at a little distance,--“Or perhaps,” he said, “you wish to overtake
the caravan, and--”

“To _overtake_ it!” interrupted the Missionary; “has it then long
passed?”

“It halts now,” returned the peasant; “on the other side of _Bembhar_,
I have been disposing of some _touz_[2] to a merchant of Tatta; if you
have no other mode of proceeding, you will scarcely overtake it on
foot.”

A new cause of suffering now occupied his mind.--Luxima, hitherto
cheered and supported by the lovely and enlivening scenes through which
she passed, by the smoothness of her path and the temperature of her
native climes, was yet wearied and exhausted by a journey performed in
a manner to which the delicacy of her frame was little adequate--but it
was now impossible she could proceed as she had hitherto done; in a few
hours the Eden which had cheated fatigue of its influence, would
disappear from their eyes; and, should the caravan have proceeded much
in advance, it was impossible that the delicate Indian could encounter
the horrors of the desart which lay on the southern side of Bembhar.

It was then that, believing Providence had sent the Indian in his path,
a new hope revived in his heart, a new resource was opened in his
mind:--he offered a part of what remained of the purse of rupees he had
brought with him from Lahore, for the Arabian horse. It was more than
its value, and the Indian gladly accepted his proposal, and, pointing
out to him the shortest way to _Bembhar_, and offering his good wishes
for the safety of his journey, he pursued his way to his cottage. As
soon as he had disappeared, Hilarion led the animal to the bower, where
Luxima still remained, involved in reveries so soft, and yet so
profound, that she observed not the approach of him who was their sole
and exclusive object.

“Luxima!” he said in a low and tremulous voice--Luxima started, and,
covered with blushes, she raised her languid eyes to his, and faintly
answered--“_Father!_”

“My daughter,” he said, “that Heaven, of whose favour I at least am so
unworthy, has mercifully extended its providential care to us. A
stranger, whom I met in the forest, has informed me, that the caravan
has passed the rock of Bembhar; but I have purchased from him this
animal, by which thou wilt be able to proceed!”

Luxima arose, and, drawing her veil over a face in which the lovely
confusion of a sensitive modesty and ardent tenderness still lingered,
she suffered the Missionary to place her on the gentle Arabian--and he
moving with long and rapid steps by her side, they again renewed their
pilgrimage.

Already the bloom and verdure of Cashmire appeared fading into the
approaching heights of the sterile Bembhar, and the travellers, silent
and thoughtful, ascended those acclivities, which seemed but to reflect
the smiling lustre of the scenes they left; no sound, even of nature,
disturbed the profound silence of scenes--so still and solemn, that they
resembled the primæval world, ere human existence had given animation to
its pathless wilds, or human passions had disturbed the calm of its mild
tranquillity! No sound was heard, save the jackall’s dismal yell, which
so often disturbs the impressive and serene beauty of Indian scenery.

But this death-like calm failed to communicate a correspondent influence
to the bosom of the solitary wanderers:--again together, in a boundless
solitude, they were yet silent, as though they feared a human accent
would destroy the impassioned mystery which existed between them; while
religion and penitence, and delicacy and self-distrust, enforced the
necessity of a reserve, to which both alike submitted with difficulty
but with fortitude. Solitude, with the object of a suppressed
tenderness, is always too dangerous! and that great passion which seeks
a desart, finds the proper region of its own empire. Thus, those
helpless and tender friends, in whom love and grace struggled with equal
sway, now eagerly looked forward to their restoration to society, which
would afford them that protection against themselves, which nature, in
her loveliest regions, had hitherto seemed to refuse them.

The travellers at last reached the summit of the _rock of Bembhar_; and,
ere they descended the wild and burning plains of Upper Lahore, the
Indian turned round to take a last view of her native Eden. The sun was
setting in all his majesty of light upon the valley; and villages, and
pagodas, and groves, and rivers, were brilliantly tinted with his
crimson rays. Luxima cast one look in that direction where lay the
district of Sirinaur--another towards Heaven--and then fixed her tearful
eyes on the Missionary, with an expression so eloquent and so ardent,
that they seemed to say, “Heaven and earth have I resigned for
thee!”--The Missionary met and returned her look, but dared not trust
his lips to speak; and, in the sympathy and intelligence of that silent
glance, the Indian found country, kindred, friends; or ceased for a
moment to remember she had lost them all.

Sad, silent, and gloomy, resembling the first pair, when they had
reached the boundary of their native paradise, they now descended the
southern declivities of Bembhar: the dews of Cashmire no longer embalmed
the evening air, and the heated vapours which arose from the plains
below, rendered the atmosphere insupportably intense.

As they reached the plains of Upper Lahore, a few dark shrubs and
blasted trees alone presented themselves in the hot and sandy soil; and
when a stalk of rosemary and lavender, or the scarlet tulip of the
desert, tempted the hand of the Missionary, for her to whom flowers were
always precious, they mouldered into dust at his touch!

Luxima endeavoured to stifle a sigh, as she beheld nature in this her
most awful and destructive aspect--and the Missionary, with a sad smile,
sought to cheer her drooping spirit, by pointing out to her the track of
the caravan, or the snowy summit of _Mount Alideck_, which arose like a
land-mark before them. Having paused for a short time, while the
Missionary ascended a rock, to perceive if the caravan was in
view--which if it had been, the light of a brilliant moon would have
discovered,--they proceeded during the night, in sadness and in gloom,
while the intense thirst produced by the ardour of the air had already
exhausted the juicy fruits with which the Missionary had supplied
himself for Luxima’s refreshment; at last the faint glimmering of the
stars was lost in the brighter lustre of the morning-planet; the
resplendent herald of day, riding in serene lustre through the heavens,
ushered in the vigorous sun, whose potent rays rapidly pervaded the
whole horizon.--The fugitives found themselves near a large and solitary
edifice; it was a _Choultry_, built for the shelter of travellers, and,
as an inscription indicated, “built by _Luxima_, the _Prophetess and
Bramachira of Cashmire_!”--At the sight of this object, the Indian
turned pale--all the glory and happiness of her past life rushed on the
recollection of the excommunicated Chancalas; and her guide, feeling in
all their force the sacrifices which she had made for him, silently and
tenderly chased away her tears, with her veil. As it was impossible to
proceed during the meridional ardours of the day, the wearied and
exhausted Indian sought shelter and repose beneath that roof which her
own charity had raised; and a cocoa-tree, planted on the edge of a tank
which she had excavated, afforded to her that refreshment, which she had
benevolently provided for others. Here, it was evident, the caravan had
lately halted; for the remains of some provisions, usually left by
Indian travellers for those who may succeed them, were visible, and the
track of wheels, of horses, and of camels’ feet, was every where
apparent. Revived and invigorated by an hour’s undisturbed repose, they
again re-commenced their route; still pursuing the track of the caravan,
while, in forms rendered indistinct by distance, they still fancied they
beheld the object of their pursuit. Scenes more varied than those
through which they had already journeyed, now presented themselves to
their view. Sometimes they passed through a ruined village, which the
flame of war had desolated; sometimes beneath the remains of a Mogul
fortress, whose mouldering arches presented the most picturesque
specimens of eastern military architecture; while from the marshy fosse,
which surrounded the majestic ruins, arose a bright blue flame, and
moving with velocity amidst its mouldering bastions, floating like
waves, or falling like sparks of fire, became suddenly extinct--Luxima
gazed upon this spectacle with fear and amazement, and, governed by the
superstition of her early education, saw, in a natural phenomenon, the
effects of a supernatural agency; trembling, she clung to her pastor and
her guide, and said, “It is the spirit of one who fell in the battle, or
who died in the defence of these ruins, and who, for some crime
unredeemed, is thus destined to wander till the time of expiation is
accomplished, and he return into some form on earth.”

The Missionary sought to release her mind from the bondage of imaginary
terrors, and at once to amuse her fancy, to enlighten her ideas, and to
elevate her soul; he explained to her, with ingenious simplicity, the
various and wonderful modes by which the Divine Spirit disposes of the
different powers of nature, still teaching her to feel “God in all, and
all in God.”

Luxima gazed on him with wonder while he spoke, and hung in silent
admiration on words she deemed inspired; yet when, as it sometimes
occurred, she beheld the rude altars raised, even in the most
unfrequented places to _Boom-Daivee_, the goddess of the earth[3]; or to
the Daivadergoel, the tutelar guardians of wilds and forests, her senses
acknowledged these images of her antient superstition, in spite of her
reason, and she involuntarily bowed before the objects of her habitual
devotion. Then the Missionary reproved her severely for the perpetual
vacillation of her undecided faith; but, disarming his severity by looks
and words of tenderness, she would fondly reply--“Oh! my Father! it is
not all devotion which bows my head and bends my knee before these well
remembered shrines of my antient faith! Alas! it is not all a pious
impulse, but a natural sympathy: for the genii to whom these altars are
raised, were once, as I was, happy and glorified; but they incurred the
wrath of _Shiven_,[4] by abandoning his laws; and, banished from their
native heaven, were doomed to wander in solitary wastes to expiate their
error:--but here, that sympathy ceases; for they found not, like me, a
compensation for the paradise they forfeited; _they_ found not on earth,
something which partook of heaven, and they knew not that perfect
communion, which images to the soul, in its transient probation through
time, the bliss which awaits it in eternity.”

It was by words like these, timidly and tenderly pronounced, that the
feelings of the spiritual guide were put to the most severe test; it was
words like these, which chilled his which increased the hidden
sentiment, manner, while they warmed his heart; and restrained the
external emotion, and which cherished and fed his passion, while they
awakened his self-distrust: but Luxima, at once his peril and his
salvation, counteracted by her innocence the effects of her tenderness,
and alternately awakened, excited or subdued, by that feminine display
of feeling and sentiment, which blended purity with ardour, and
elevation of soul with tenderness of heart. More sensitive than
reflecting, she was guided rather by an instinctive delicacy, than a
prudent reserve; in _her_, sentiment supplied the place of reason, and
she was the most virtuous, because she was the most affectionate of
women.

The evening again arose upon their wanderings, and they paused ere they
proceeded to encounter the pathless way through the gloom of night; they
paused near the edge of a spring, which afforded a delicious
refreshment; and, under the shadow of a lofty tamarind-tree, which,
blooming in solitary beauty, supplied at once both fruit and shade, and
seemed dropt in the midst of a lonesome waste, as a beacon to hope, as
an assurance of the providential care of _him_, who reared its head in
the desert for the relief of his creatures. Here the Missionary left
Luxima to take repose; and, having fastened the _Arabian_ to a
neighbouring rock, embossed with patches of vegetation, he proceeded
across some stoney acclivities which were covered by the caprice of
nature with massy clumps of the _bamboo tree_. When he had reached the
opposite side, he looked back to catch, as he was wont, a glimpse of
Luxima; but, for the first time since the commencement of their
pilgrimage, she was hidden from his view by the intervening foliage of
the plantation, trembling at the fancied dangers which might assail her
in his absence: he proceeded with a rapid step towards an eminence, in
the hope of ascertaining, from its summit, the path of the caravan, or
of discovering some human habitation, though but the hut of a _pariah_,
whose owner might guide their now uncertain steps. Turning his eyes
towards the still glowing West, he perceived a forest whose immense
trees marked their waving outline on saffron clouds, which hung
radiantly upon their gloom, tinging their dark branches with the yellow
lustre of declining light; he perceived also, that this awful and
magnificent forest was skirted by an illimitable jungle, through whose
long-entangled grass a broad path-way seemed to have been recently
formed, and, vision growing strong by exercise, the first confusion of
objects which had distracted his gaze, gradually subsiding into distinct
images, he perceived the blue smoke curling from a distant hut, which he
knew, from its desolate situation, to be the miserable residence of some
_Indian outcast_; he soon more distinctly observed some great body in
motion: at first it appeared compact and massive; by degrees broken and
irregular; and at last the form and usual pace of a troop of camels
were obvious to his far-stretched sight, by a deep red light which
suddenly illumined the whole firmament, and, throwing its extended beams
into the distant fore-ground, fell, with bright tints, upon every
object, and confirmed the Missionary in hopes, he almost trembled to
encourage, that the caravan at that moment moved before his eyes! But
the joy was yet imperfect; unshared by _her_, who was now identified
with all his hopes and all his fears; and descending the hill with the
rapidity of lightning, he suddenly perceived his steps impeded by a
phenomenon which at first seemed some sudden vision of the fancy, to
which the senses unresistingly submitted; for a brilliant circle of fire
gradually extending, forbid his advance, and had illuminated, by its
kindling light, the surrounding atmosphere! Recovering from the first
emotion of horror and consternation, his knowledge of the natural
history of the country soon informed him of the cause of the apparent
miracle[5], without reconciling him to its effects; he perceived that
the _bamboos_, violently agitated by a strong and sultry wind, which
suddenly arose from the South, and crept among their branches, had
produced a violent friction in their dry stalks, which emitted sparks of
fire, and which, when communicated to their leaves, produced on their
summits one extended blaze, which was now gradually descending to their
trunks. Though this extraordinary spectacle fulfilled, rather than
violated, a law of nature, the Missionary’s heart, struck by the
obstacle it opposed to his wishes and his views, and the terrors it held
out to his imagination, felt as if, by some interposition of Divine
wrath, he had been separated, for ever, from her who had thus armed
Heaven against him. Given up to a distraction which knew no bounds from
reason or religion, he accused the Eternal Judge, who, in making the
object of his error the cause of his retribution, had not proportioned
his punishment to his crime, and who had implicated in the vengeance
which bowed _him_ to the earth, a creature free and innocent of
voluntary error.--Yet, considering less his own sufferings, than the
probable and impending destruction of Luxima, thus exposed, alone, in
solitary deserts, to want! to the inclemency of treacherous elements! to
the fury of savage beasts! perhaps to men, scarce less savage! who might
refuse her that protection, their very presence rendered necessary--his
mind and feelings were roused, even to frenzy, by the frightful images
conjured up by a heart distracted for the safety of its sole object; and
the instinct of self-preservation, that strong and almost indestructible
instinct, submitted to the paramount influence of a _sentiment_; but
that sentiment before which nature stood checked, blended the united
passions of _love_ and _pity_, the best and dearest which fill the human
breast--and, resolved to risk his life for the salvation of hers,
dearer to him still than life,--he threw around him a rapid glance, in
the faint hope of discerning some object which might assist him in the
perilous enterprise he meditated, and enable him to encounter the rage
of those flames which opposed his return to the goal of his solicitude
and anxiety. It was then he perceived that the surrounding rocks were
covered with the entangled web of the _mountain flax_, the inconsumable
_amianthus_ of India.[6]

At this sight, the providential care of the Divinity, who every where
presents an _antidote_ to that evil which may eventually become the
bane of human preservation, smote his heart--and, raising his soul and
eyes in thankfulness to Heaven, he wrapped round his uncovered head, the
fibres of this singular and indestructible fossile, and, folding his
robe closely round his body, he plunged daringly forward, throwing aside
the branches of the burning trees, which flamed above his head, with the
iron point of his crosier, as he flew over the arid path, and looking as
he moved like the mighty _spirit_ of that _element_ to which the popular
superstition of the region he inhabited would have offered its
homage.[7] The fire had nearly exhausted itself in the direction in
which he moved, and soon left nothing but its smoking embers to impede
his course. Scorched, spent, and almost deprived of respiration, he
reached the opposite side of the plantation, and, with the recovery of
breath and strength, he flew towards the spot where he had left his
charge, whom every new peril, by adding anxiety to love, bound more
closely to his heart. He found her wrapt in profound slumber; the
moon-light, checquered by the branches of the tree through which it
fell, played on her face and bosom; but her figure was in deep shade,
from its position; and a disciple of her own faith would have worshipped
her, had he passed, and said, “’Tis the messenger of Heaven,[8] who
bears to earth the mandate of _Vishnoo_;” for it is thus the Indian
_Iris_ is sometimes mystically represented--nothing visible of its
beauty, but the countenance of a youthful seraph. Close to the brow of
the innocent slumberer lay, in many a mazy fold, a serpent of immense
size: his head, crested and high, rose erect; his scales of verdant gold
glittered to the moon-light, and his eyes bright and fierce were fixed
on the victim, whose first motion might prove the signal of her death.
These two objects, so singular in their association, were alone
conspicuous in the scene, which was elsewhere hid in the massive shadows
of the projecting branches. At the sight of this image, so beautiful
and so terrific, so awfully fine, so grandly dreadful, where loveliness
and death, and peace and destruction, were so closely blended, the
distracted and solitary spectator stood aghast!--A chill of horror
running through his veins, his joints relaxed; his limbs, transfixed and
faint, cold and powerless, fearing lest his very respiration might
accelerate the dreadful fate which thus hung over the sole object and
tie of his existence,--breathless, motionless,--he wore the perfect
semblance of that horrible suspense, which fills the awful interval
between impending death, and lingering life! Twice he raised his crosier
to hurl it at the serpent’s head; and twice his arm fell nerveless back,
while his shuddering heart doubted the certain aim of his trembling
hand,--and whether, in attempting to strike at the vigilant reptile, he
might not reach the bosom of his destined victim, and urge him to her
immediate destruction!--But, feelings so acute were not long to be
endured: cold drops fell from his brow, his inflamed eye had gazed
itself into dimness, increasing agony became madness,--and, unable to
resist the frenzy of his thronging emotions, he raised the pastoral
spear, and had nearly hurled it at the destroyer, when his arm was
checked by a sound which seemed to come from Heaven, breathing hope and
life upon his soul; for it operated with an immediate and magic
influence on the organs of the reptile, who suddenly drooped his crested
head, and, extending wide his circling folds, wound his mazy course, in
many an indented wave, towards that point, where some seeming impulse
of the “vocal aid” lured his nature from its prey.

Luxima slowly awakening from her sweet repose, to sounds too well
remembered, for it was the vesper hymn of the Indian huntsmen, raised
her head upon her arm, and threw wildly round her the look of one wrapt
in visionary trance--now resting her eye upon the Missionary, who stood
before her motionless, suspended between joy and horror, between fear
and transport--now upon the flaming circles which hung upon the burning
_bamboos_--and now on the receding serpent, whose tortuous train,
veering as he moved, still glistened brightly on the earth, till slowly
following the fainting sounds, his voluble and lengthening folds were
lost in the deep shade of a sombre thicket;--then the Indian raised her
hands and eyes to heaven in thankfulness to that Power who had
mercifully saved her from a dreadful death. The music ceased; nature had
reached the crisis of emotion in the breast of the Missionary: without
power to articulate or to move, he bent one knee to the earth; he raised
his folded hands to Heaven; but his eyes were turned on the object of
its protection: he sighed out her name, and Luxima was in a moment at
his side.




CHAPTER XIV.


The left arm of the Missionary had suffered from the flames; Luxima was
the first to perceive it: she applied to it the only remedy which nature
afforded them in a spot so desolate; and the ingenuity of love, and of
necessity, supplied the place of skill. She gathered from the
neighbouring spring, the oily _naptha_, whose volatile and subtil fluid
so frequently floats on the surface of Indian wells, and, steeping in it
the fragment of her veil, she bound it round the arm of her patient.
Thus engaged, the thoughts of the wanderers, by a natural association,
mutually reverted to their first interview in the grotto of
Congelations; when the rigid distinctions of prejudice first gave way to
an impulse of humanity, and the Priestess of Brahma, no less in fear
than pity, bound up the wound of him whom she then deemed it a sacrilege
to approach! The sympathy of the recollection was visible in the
disorder of their looks, which were studiously averted from each other;
and the Neophyte, endeavouring to turn the thoughts of her spiritual
guide from a subject she trembled to revert to, spoke of the danger
which he had recently incurred for her sake, and spoke of it with all
the fervour which characterized her eloquence.

The Missionary replied with the circumspect reserve of one who feared
to trust his feelings: he said, “That which I have done _for thee_, I
would have done for another, for it is the spirit of the religion I
profess, to sacrifice the selfish instinct of our nature to the
preservation of a fellow-creature whose danger claims our interference,
or whose happiness needs our protection.”

“Oh! Father,” she returned in emotion, “refer not to thy faith alone, a
sentiment inherent in thyself; let us be more just _to him_ who made us,
and believe, that there is in nature, a feeling of benevolence which
betrays the original intention of the Deity, to promote the happiness of
his creatures. If thou art prone to pity the wretched, and aid the
weak, it is because thou wast thyself created of those particles which,
at an infinite distance, constitute the Divine essence.”

The Missionary interrupted her by a look of reprehension; he knew such
was the doctrine, and such the phrase of the Brahmins, with respect to
those of their holy men who led a religious and sinless life: but he
felt, at the moment, how little claim he had to make any application of
it to himself.

“Thy religion, at least,” continued Luxima, with softness and timidity,
“forbids not the expression of _gratitude_. It is said in the Shaster,
that the first thought of Brahma, when created by the great Spirit, was
a sentiment of gratitude; he offered up thanks to the Author of his
existence, for the gift of life, and a reasonable soul: is then the
Christian doctrine less amiable than that I have abandoned? and, if
through thee, my life has been preserved, and my soul enlightened, must
I stifle in my heart, the gratitude thou hast awakened there?”

“Luxima” exclaimed the Missionary, with vehemence, “_all_ sentiments
merely of the heart are dangerous, and to be distrusted; whatever
soothes the passions, tends to cherish them,--whatever affords pleasure,
endangers virtue,--and even the love we bear to Heaven, we should try,
were it possible, to separate from the happiness which that love
confers Oh! Luxima, it is a dangerous habit,--the habit of enjoying any
earthly good, and until now--” he broke off suddenly, and sighed, then
added, “Thou talkest much of gratitude, Luxima; but wherefore? It was
for Heaven I sought thee--it is for Heaven I saved thee! It was not for
_thy_ sake, nor for mine, that I lured thee from the land of the
unbelieving, or that I would risk a thousand lives to save thine,--it is
for _his_ sake, whose servant I am. But, if _thou_ talkest of gratitude,
to whom is it due? _Art thou not here?_ in dreary deserts, encompassed
round by danger and by death: to follow me, thou art here,--thou, the
native of an earthly paradise,--the idol of a nation’s homage. Oh! I
should have left thy pure soul, all innocent as it was of voluntary
error, to return to its Creator, untried by the dangers, unassailed by
the tempting evils of passion and of life, virtuous in thy illusions,
pure from the errors and misfortunes of humanity, an inmate fit for the
Heaven which awaited thee.”

“Be that Heaven my witness,” returned Luxima, with devotion and
solemnity, “that I would not for the happiness I have abandoned, and the
glory I have lost, resign that desert, whose perilous solitudes I share
with thee. Oh! my father, and my friend, thou alone hast taught me to
know, that the paradise of woman is the creation of her heart; that it
is not the light or air of Heaven, though beaming brightness, and
breathing fragrance, nor all that is loveliest in nature’s scenes, which
form the _sphere_ of _her_ existence and enjoyment!--it is alone the
presence of _him she loves_: it is that mysterious sentiment of the
heart, which diffuses a finer sense of life through the whole being; and
which resembles, in its singleness and simplicity, the _primordial
idea_, which, in the religion of my fathers, is supposed to have
preceded _time_ and _worlds_, and from which all created good has
emanated.”

The Missionary arose, in disorder; he turned, for a moment, his eyes on
Luxima: the glow which mantled to her brow, the bashful confusion of her
look, the modesty with which she drew her veil over her downcast eyes,
spoke the involuntary error of one, whose ardent feelings had for a
moment over-ruled the circumspect reserve of a rigid virtue. He sighed
profoundly, and withdrew his glance. Luxima now also arose; and they
were both proceeding on in silence, when a rustling in the thicket was
distinctly heard, and the next moment a large but meagre dog sprang
forward, followed by an Indian, on whose dark and melancholy countenance
the light of the moon fell brightly; a scanty garment, woven of the
fibres of trees, partially concealed his slender and worn form; an
Indian pipe was suspended from his girdle; and he leaned, as he paused,
to gaze on the wanderers, upon a huntsman’s _spear_. But, scarcely had
he fixed his haggard eyes on the brow of Luxima, which still bore the
consecrated _mark of the tellertum_,[9] than he fell prostrate on the
earth, in token of reverential homage. Luxima shrieked, and hiding her
head in the bosom of the Missionary, exclaimed “Let us fly, or we are
lost! it is a _pariah_!”

The _unfortunate_, rising from the earth, and withdrawing a few paces,
said, in a timid and respectful accent:--“I am indeed of that wretched
cast, who live under the curse of Heaven--an outcast! an alien! I claim
no country, I _own no kindred_; but still I am human, and can pity in
others the suffering I myself endure: I ask not the daughter of Heaven,
who sprang from the head of Brahma, to repose beneath the roof of a
pariah; but I will conduct her to a spot less perilous than this, and I
will lay at her feet the pulp of the young cocoa-nut, which grows by the
side of my hut; and when the morning star dawns above yonder forest, I
will guide her steps to a path of safety, and teach her how to shun the
abode of the wild beast, and to avoid the nest of the serpent.”

To these humane offers, Luxima replied only by tears: an _outcast_
herself, the unconquerable prejudice and religious pride of the cast she
had forfeited, still operated with unabated influence on her mind, and
she shuddered when she beheld the Missionary stretch out his hands and
press in their grateful clasp those of the unfortunate and benevolent
_pariah_: he had been the saviour of the life of her he loved; for it
was the music of his sylvan reed, which had seduced the serpent from his
prey, and the point of his spear was still red with the blood of the
reptile he had destroyed.[10]

But for the first time, neither the example nor the persuasions of the
Missionary had any effect upon the mind of his neophyte. Suddenly
awakened to all the tyranny of habitual prejudice and superstitious
fear, she rejected the repose and safety to be found beneath the shadow
of a pariah’s _hut_, she rejected the fruit planted by a pariah’s hand;
and the pride of a Brahmin’s daughter, and the bigotry of a Brahmin
priestess, still governed the conduct of the excommunicated _chancalas_,
still over-ruled the reason of the Christian neophyte: accepting,
therefore, only the advice of the unhappy pariah, who directed them to a
woody path, by which they might soonest gain the caravan road, and who
taught them how to avoid whatever was most dangerous in these
unfrequented wilds, they again re-commenced their wanderings. The
Missionary, with difficulty guiding the Arabian through the intricacies
of the forest-path, remained silent and thoughtful; while Luxima,
fearing that she had displeased him by an unconquerable obstinacy, which
had its foundation in the earliest habits and feelings of her life,
sought to cheer his mind and amuse his attention by the repetition of
some of those mythological romances, which had formed a part of her
professional acquirements. But the Missionary, alive to dangers which in
his society _she_ felt not, and borne down by the recent disappointment
of his flattering hopes, of which _she_ was ignorant, gave not to her
brilliant and eloquent details, the wonted look of half-repressed
transport, the wonted reserved smile of tenderness and admiration; his
whole thoughts rested in a faint expectation of overtaking the caravan,
which moved slowly, and which had taken a more circuitous road than that
to which the pariah had directed him.

In the unfrequented wilds through which they now passed, no trace of
human life appeared, save that once, and at an immense distance, they
beheld the arms of some Indian troops glittering brightly to the
moon-beams; but the welcome spectacle passed away like a midnight
phantom; and, that again they observed a circle of glimmering fires,
before which the remote shadows of an elephant’s form seemed to pass.
Luxima, acquainted with the customs of her country, believed this
spectacle to belong to a hunting match of elephants; a diversion in
India truly royal. At last, having recovered the traces of the caravan,
which were deeply impressed on the soil, they found themselves on a wild
and marshy waste, skirted by the impenetrable forest, from whose gloom
they now emerged;--the earth trembled beneath their sinking feet, and
particles of light arising from putrescent substances, rose like meteors
before them; while frequently the high jungle grass, almost surmounting
the lofty figure of the Missionary, stubbornly resisted the efforts
which he made with his extended arms to clear a passage for the animal
on which Luxima was mounted;--the moon, suddenly absorbed in clouds,
left them with “_danger and with darkness compassed round_;”--while the
low and sullen murmurs of the elements foretold a rising storm.
Exhausted by heat and by fatigue, no longer able to perceive the track
of the caravan, the unfortunate wanderers sought only to avoid the
dreadful inclemency of the moment: sounds of horror mingled in the wild
expanse; the hiss of serpents, and the yell of ferocious animals which
instinctively sought shelter amidst the profound depths of the forest,
(whose mighty trees, bending their summits to the sweeping blast, rolled
like billows in deep and dying murmurs) all around bowed as in awful
reverence to the omnipotent voice of nature, thus pouring her accents of
terror in the deep roll of endless thunder; the crash of shattered
rocks, the groans of torn-up trees, and all those images of terror
which mark the _land-tempests_ in those mighty regions, where even
destruction wears an aspect of magnificence and sublimity, all struck
upon the soul of the fainting Indian, and left there an impression never
to be effaced. It was then that the religion which she had abandoned,
less from _conviction_ than from _love_, and the superstitious errors
which were still latent in her mind, resumed at this moment (to her, of
dreadful retribution) all their former influence; and she felt the wrath
of Heaven in every flash of lightning which darted round her head: for
the mind long devoted to an illusion interwoven with all its ideas,
however it may abandon its influence in the repose of safety, or the
blessings of enjoyment, still clings to it, as to a resource, in
suffering and in danger; and, contrite for the transient apostacy, adds
the energy of repentance to the zeal of returning faith.

The Missionary, who beheld remorse in the bosom of his proselyte
strengthening under the dangers which had awakened it, in vain
endeavoured to soothe and to support her; she shrank from his arms, and,
prostrate on the earth, invoked those deities whom she still believed to
have been the tutelar guardians of the days of her innocence and her
felicity; while he, still feeling only through her, stood near to shield
and to protect her: awed, but not subdued, he presented a fine image of
the majesty of man;--his brow fearlessly raised to meet the lightning’s
flash, a blasted tree in ruins at his feet, and while all lay desolate
and in destruction round him, looking like one whose spirit, unsubdued
by the mighty wreck of matter, defied that threatened annihilation,
which could not reach the immortality it was created to inherit!

The storm ceased in a tremendous crash of the elements, with all the
abrupt grandeur with which it had arisen; and a breathless calm,
scarcely less awful, succeeded to its violence; the clouds dispersed
from the face of the Heavens, and the moon, full and cloudless, rose in
the firmament: every thing urged the departure of the wanderers, for
danger, in various forms, surrounded them.--Luxima, alive to every
existing impression, was cheered even by the solemn calm, but nearly
exhausted and overcome by suffering and fatigue, the Missionary was
obliged to support her on the horse; and though she tried to smile, yet
her silent tears, and uncomplaining sufferings, relaxed the firmness of
his mind; he felt, that, were even her conversion perfected, which he
hourly discovered it was far from being, she would have purchased the
sacred truths of Christianity at the dearest price, and that Heaven
alone could compensate the unhappy and apostate Indian, who thus sought
it at the expence of every earthly good and human happiness.

At length the trees of the forest, on whose remotest skirts they
wandered, gradually disappeared; and, still following the track of the
caravan, which in the course of the night they had again recovered as
well as the moon’s declining light would permit, they crossed a hill,
where it seemed by its impressions on the soil recently to have passed:
they then descended into a boundless plain, dismal, wild, and waste. Ere
the sun had risen in all its fiercest glories above the horizon, they
found themselves surrounded by a desert: the guiding track indeed still
remained; but, in the illimitable waste, far as the eye could stretch
its view, no object which could cheer their hearts, or dispel their
fears, presented itself:--sky and earth alone appeared, alike awful,
and alike unvaried; the heavens, shrouded with a deep red gloom, spread
a boundless canopy to the view, like the concave roof of some
earth-embosomed mine, whose golden veins shine duskily in gloomy
splendour; and the sandy and burning soil, unvaried by a single tree or
shrub, reflected back the scorching ardour of the skies, and mingled its
brilliant surface with the distant horizon; both alike were terrific to
the fancy, and boundless to the eye; both alike struck horror on the
mind, and chased hope from the heart; alike denying all resource,
withholding all relief; while the disconsolate wanderers, as they trod
the burning waste, now turned their looks on the bleak perspective, now
tenderly and despairingly on each other. Convinced that to return or to
advance threatened alike destruction, thus they continued to wander in
the lonesome and desolate wild, enduring the intense heat of the ardent
day, the noxious blast of the chilly night, with no shelter from the
horrors of the clime but what a clump of naked rocks at intervals
afforded them; and when this rude asylum presented itself, the
Missionary spread his robe on the earth for Luxima--endeavouring to
soothe her to repose, only leaving her side to seek some spring, always
vainly sought, or to look for those hardy shrubs which even the desert
sometimes produces, and which frequently treasure in their flowers the
lingering dews of moister seasons; if he found them, it was mouldering
amidst the dry red sand of the soil. At last the delicate animal, which
had hitherto afforded them so much relief and aid, sunk beneath the
intemperature of the clime, and expired at their feet. Luxima was now
borne hopelessly along by the associate and the cause of her sufferings;
and they proceeded slowly and despairingly, their parched and burning
lips, their wearied and exhausted frames, scarcely permitting them to
speak without effort, or to move without pain. But it was for Luxima
only the Missionary suffered--he saw her whom he had found in the
possession of every enjoyment, now almost expiring beneath his eyes; her
lips of roses, scorched by the noxious blasts, and gust after gust of
burning vapour, drying up the vital springs of life; while she,
confounding in her mind her afflictions, and what she believed to be
their cause, offered up faint invocations to appease those powers, whom
love had induced her thus to provoke and to abandon.

It was in moments such as these, that the unfortunate Hilarion beheld
that hope frustrated, which had hitherto solaced him in all the
sufferings he had caused, and those he sustained; it was then that he
felt it was the heart of the woman he had seduced, and not the mind of
the heathen he had converted. At last, wholly overcome by the intense
heat and immoderate fatigue, by insupportable thirst and a long
privation of sustenance and sleep, Luxima was unable to proceed. The
Missionary bore her in his feeble clasp to the base of a rock, which
afforded them some shelter from the rays of the sun. He would have
spoken to her of the Heaven to which her soul seemed already taking its
flight; he would have assured her that his spirit would soon mingle with
hers, and that an eternal union awaited them: but, in a moment, when
love was strengthened by mutual suffering, and despair gave force to
passion, and when each at once only lived and died for the other, words
were poor vehicles to feelings so acute; and sighs, long and deep drawn,
were the only sounds which emotions so profound, so tender, and so
agonizing, would admit of: all was the silence of love unspeakable, and
the awful stillness of dissolution. But when over the beautiful
countenance which lay on his bosom, the Missionary beheld the sudden
convulsion of pain throw its dread distortion,--madness seized the brain
of the frantic lover, and he threw round a look wild and inquiring, but
looked in vain; all was still, hopeless, and desolate. At last,
something like a vapour appeared moving at a distance. He sprung
forward, and, ascending the point of a rock, discovered at a distance a
form which resembled that of a camel: faint as was the hope now
awakened, it spread new life through his whole being; he snatched the
dying Indian to his bosom; strength and velocity seemed a supernatural
gift communicated to his frame; he flew over the burning sand, he
approached the object of his wishes; hope with every step realizes the
blessed vision; human forms grew distinct on his eye, human sounds
vibrate on his ear--“She lives, she is saved!” he exclaims with a
frantic shriek, and falls lifeless beneath his precious burthen in the
midst of the multitude which forms the rear of the caravan. The caravan
had stopped in this place near a spring, accidentally discovered, and
the motley crowd which composed it, were all verging towards one point,
eagerly contending for a draught of muddy water; but the sudden and
extraordinary appearance of the now almost lifeless strangers, excited
an emotion in all who beheld them. The few Hindus who belonged to the
caravan shrank in horror from the unfortunate _Chancalas_, thus so
closely associated with a _frangui_, or impure; but those in whom
religious bigotry had no deadened the feelings of nature, beheld them
with equal pity and admiration. Every assistance which humanity could
devise was administered; and cordials, diluted with water, moistened
lips parched with a long consuming thirst, and recalled to frames nearly
exhausted, the fading powers of life. The Missionary, more overcome by
his anxiety for Luxima, and the sudden transition of his feelings from
despair to hope, than even by weakness, or personal suffering, was the
first to recover consciousness and strength, and love instinctively
claimed the first thought of reviving existence. In the transport of the
moment he forgot the crowd that was its witness; he flew to Luxima, and
shed tears of love and joy on the hands extended to him. He beheld the
vital hues revisiting that cheek which he had lately pressed in hopeless
agony, and saw the light of life beaming in those eyes whose lustre he
had so lately seen darkened by the shades of death. Again, too, the
voice of Luxima addresses him by the endearing epithet of “Father:” and
though the venerated title found no sanction in their looks or years,
yet many who beheld the scene of their re-union were touched by its
affecting tenderness; and a general interest was excited for persons so
noble, and so distinguished in their appearance, so interesting by their
sufferings and misfortunes, which were registered in their looks, and
attested by the singularity of their situations.




CHAPTER XV.


Luxima, restored to life, was still feeble and exhausted: but though
faded, she was still lovely; and, being immediately recognized as a
_Hindu_, that peculiar circumstance awakened curiosity and surmise.
Those of her own nation and religion still shrank from her in horror,
and declared her to be a _Chancalas_, or outcast; the Moslems who beheld
her, sought not to conceal their rude admiration, and recognized her at
once for a _Cashmirian_ by her complexion and her beauty; but the
persons who seemed to observe her with most scrutiny, were _two
Europeans_, whose features were concealed by hoods, worn apparently to
shade off the ardour of the sun. Luxima was permitted to share the
_mohaffah_ or litter of a female seik who was going with her husband, a
dealer in gems, to Tatta. The Missionary was suffered to ascend the back
of a camel, whose proprietor had expired the day before in the desert.
Having declared himself a Portuguese of distinction, a Christian
missionary, and shewed the briefs which testified his rank, he found no
difficulty in procuring such necessaries as were requisite for the rest
of their journey, until his arrival at Tatta should enable him to defray
the debt of obligation which he of necessity incurred.

But though he had declared the nature of the relation in which he stood
to his Neophyte to those immediately about him, yet he fancied, that
the fact was, received by some with suspicion, and by others with
incredulity. He was evidently considered the seducer of the fugitive
Indian; and neither his innocence nor his dignity could save him from a
profound mortification, new and insupportable to his proud and lofty
nature: yet, trembling to observe the admiration which Luxima inspired,
he still hovered near her in ceaseless disquietude and anxiety. The
caravan was composed of five hundred persons of various nations and
religions;--Mogul pilgrims, going from India to visit the tomb of their
prophet at Mecca; merchants from Thibet and China, carrying the produce
of their native climes, the Western coasts of Hindostan; Seiks, the
Swiss of the East, going to join the forces of rebelling Rajahs; and
faquirs and dervises, who rendered religion profitable by carrying for
sale in their girdles, spices, gold-dust, and musk. Luxima, obviously
abhorred by those of her own religion, closely observed by some, and
suspected by all, felt her situation equally through her sex and her
prejudices, and shrunk from the notice she unavoidably attracted in
shame and in confusion: it was now that her forfeiture of cast for the
first time appeared to the Missionary in all its horrors, and he no
longer wondered that so long as the prejudice existed, with which it is
connected, it should hold so tyrannic an influence over the Indian mind.
His tenderness increasing with his pity, and his jealousy of those who
attempted to approach, or to address her, giving a new force and
character to his passion, he seldom left the side of her _litter_: yet
he endeavoured to moderate the warmth of feelings it was now more than
ever necessary to conceal. That passion, dangerous in every situation,
was now no longer solitary as the wilds in which it sprang, but
connected with society, and exposed to its observation; and the reserve
with which he sought to temper its ardour, restored to it all that
mysterious delicacy, which constitutes, perhaps, its first, and perhaps
its best charm.

The caravan proceeded on its route, and, having passed the Desert,
crossed the _Setlege_, and entered the _Moultan_, it halted at one of
its usual stations, and the tents of the travellers were pitched on the
shores of the Indus: the perils of the past were no longer remembered,
and the safety of the present was ardently enjoyed; while the views and
interests of the motley multitude, no longer subdued by personal danger,
or impeded by personal suffering, again operated with their original
force and activity. The merchants bartered with the traders, who came
from the surrounding towns for the purpose; and the professors of the
various religions and sects preached their respective doctrines to those
whom they wished to convert, or to those who already believed, all but
the Christian Missionary! Occupied by feelings of a doubtful and
conflicting nature, sometimes hovering round the tent which Luxima
shared with the family of the Seik, sometimes buried in profound
thought, and wandering amidst the depths of a neighbouring forest, where
he sought to avoid the idle bustle of those among whom he was
adventitiously thrown; anxious, unquiet, and distrustful even of
himself, he was now lost to that evangelic peace of mind, to that sober
tranquillity of feeling, so indispensable to the exercise of his
mission. Though buried in a reserve which awed, while it distanced,
there was a majesty in his air, and a dignified softness in his manner,
which daily increased that popular interest in his favour, which his
first appearance had awakened: to this he was not insensible; for, still
ambitious of distinction as saint or as man, he beheld his influence
with a triumph natural to one, who, emulous of unrivalled superiority,
feels that he owes it not to extraneous circumstance, but to that proud
and indefeasible right of supreme eminence, with which nature has
endowed him. But he could not but particularly observe, that he was an
object of singular attention to the two European travellers, who,
wrapped in mystery, seemed to shun all intercourse, and avoid all
observation; and, though they crossed him in his solitary walks, pursued
him to the entrance of Luxima’s tent, and hung upon his every word and
action, yet so subtilely had they eluded his notice, that he had not yet
obtained an opportunity of either distinctly seeing their features, or
of addressing them; all he could learn was, that they had joined the
caravan from _Lahore_, with two other persons of the same dress and
description as themselves, who had proceeded with the advanced troop of
the caravan, and that they were known to be Europeans and Christians. It
was not till the caravan had entered the province of _Sindy_, that one
of them, who rode near the camel of the Missionary, seemed inclined to
address him; after some observations he said, “It is understood that you
are a Christian Missionary! but, while in this mighty multitude the
professor of each false religion appears anxious to advance his
doctrine, and to promulgate his creed, how is it that the _apostle of
Christianity_ is alone silent and indifferent on the subject of that
pure faith, to the promulgation of which he has devoted himself?”--

The Missionary threw a haughty look over the figure of the person who
thus interrogated him; but, with a sudden recollection, he endeavoured
to recall the humility of his religious character, and replied: “The
question is natural--and the silence to which you allude is not the
effect of weakened zeal, nor the result of abated enthusiasm, in the
sacred cause to which I have devoted myself--it is a silence which
arises from a consciousness that though I spoke with the tongues of
angels, it _would be here but as the sound of tinkling brass_; for
_truth_, which always prevails over unbiassed ignorance, has ever failed
in its effect upon bigoted error--and the dogma most difficult to
vanquish, is that which is guarded by self-interest.”

“You allude to the obstinate paganism of the Brahmins?”

“I allude to the power of the most powerful of all human superstitions;
a superstition which equally presides over the heavenly hope, and
directs the temporal concern; and which so intimately blends itself with
all the relations of human life, as equally to dictate a doctrinal
tenet, or a sumptuary law, to regulate alike the salvation of the soul,
and fix the habits of existence.”

“It is the peculiar character of the zeal of Christianity to rise in
proportion to the obstacles it encounters!”

“The zeal of Christianity should never forsake the mild spirit of its
fundamental principles; in the excess of its warmest enthusiasm, it
should be tempered by charity, guided by reason, and regulated by
possibility; forsaken by these, it ceases to be the zeal of religion,
and becomes the spirit of fanaticism, tending only to sever man from
man, and to multiply the artificial sources of aversion by which human
society is divided, and human happiness destroyed!”

“This temperance in doctrine, argues a freedom in opinion, and a languor
in zeal, which rather belongs to the character of the heathen
philosophy, than to the enthusiasm of Christian faith; had its disciples
been always thus moderate, thus languid, thus philosophically tolerant,
never would the cross have been raised upon the remotest shores of the
Eastern and Western oceans!”

“Too often has it been raised under the influence of a sentiment
diametrically opposite to the spirit of the doctrine of him who
_suffered on it_, and who came not to _destroy_, but to _save_ mankind.
Too often has it been raised by those whose minds were guided by an evil
and interested policy, fatal to the effects which it sought to
accomplish, and who lifted to Heaven, hands stained with the blood of
those, to whom they had been sent to preach the religion of peace, of
love, and of salvation; for even the zeal of religion, when animated by
human passions, may become fatal in its excess, and that daring
fanaticism, which gives force and activity to the courage of the man,
may render merciless and atrocious, the zeal of the bigot.”

“You disapprove then of that energy of conversion which either by art or
force secures or redeems the soul from the sin of idolatry?”

“_Force_ and _art_ may indeed effect profession, but cannot induce the
conviction of faith; for the individual perception of truth is not to be
effected by the belief of others, and an act of faith must be either an
act of private judgment, or of free will, which no human artifice, no
human authority can alter or controul.”

“You disapprove then of the zealous exertions of the Jesuits in the
cause of Christianity, and despair of their success?”

“I disapprove not of the zeal, but of the mediums by which it manifests
itself: I believe that the coercion and the artifice to which they
resort, frequently impel the Hindus to a resistance, which they perhaps
too often expiate by the loss of life and property, but seldom urge
them to the abjuration of a religion, the loss of whose privileges
deprives the wretched apostate of every human good! It is by a previous
cultivation of their moral powers, we may hope to influence their
religious belief; it is by teaching them to love us, that we can lead
them to listen to us; it is by inspiring them with respect for our
virtues, that we can give them a confidence in our doctrine: but this
has not always been the system adopted by European reformers, and the
religion we proffer them is seldom illustrated by its influence on our
own lives. We bring them a spiritual creed, which commands them to
forget the world, and we take from them temporal possessions, which
prove how much _we live for it_.”

“With such mildness in opinion, and such tolerance towards the
prejudices of others, you have doubtless succeeded in your mission,
where a zeal not more pure, but more ardent, would have failed?”

The Missionary changed colour at the observation, and replied--“The zeal
of the members of the congregation of the Mission can never be doubted,
since they voluntarily devote themselves to the cause of Christianity;
yet to effect a change in the religion of sixty millions of people,
whose doctrines[11] claim their authority from the records of the most
ancient nations,--whose faith is guarded by the pride of rank, the
interest of priesthood, by its own abstract nature, by local habits, and
confirmed prejudices; a faith which resisted the sword of Mahmoud and
the arms of Timur,--requires a power seldom vested in man, and which
time, a new order of things in India, and the Divine will, can alone, I
believe, accomplish.”

“You return then to the centre of your mission without any converts to
your exertion and your eloquence?”

“No fruit has been indeed gathered equal to the labour or the hope; for
I have made but one proselyte, who purchases the truths of Christianity
by the forfeiture of every earthly good!”

“A _Brahmin_ perhaps?

“A Brahmin’s daughter! the chief priestess of the pagoda of Sirinagar,
in Cashmire, a prophetess, and _Brachmachira_; whose conversion may
indeed be deemed a miracle!”

“Your neophyte is then that young and beautiful person we first beheld
lifeless _in your arms_, in the desert?”

“The same,” said the Missionary, again changing colour: “She has already
received the rites of baptism, and I am conveying her to _Goa_, there
her profession of some holy order may produce, by its example, a
salutary effect, which her conversion never could have done in Cashmire;
a place where the Brahminical bigotry has reached its zenith, and where
her forfeiture of cast would have rendered her an object of opprobrium
and aversion!”--As the Missionary spoke, he raised his eyes to the face
of the person he addressed; but it was still shaded by the hood of his
cloak, yet he met an eye so keen, so malignant in its glance, that,
could he have shrunk from any mortal look, he would have shrunk from
this. Struck by its singular expression, and by the certainty of having
before met it, he remained for many minutes endeavouring to collect his
thoughts, and, believing himself justified by the freedom of the
stranger’s inquiries, to question him as to his country and profession,
he turned round to address him: but the strangers had now both moved
away, and the Missionary then first observed, that he who had been
silent during this short dialogue, and whom he still held in view, was
employed in writing on a tablet, as though he noted down the heads of
the conversation. This circumstance appeared too strange not to excite
some curiosity, and much amazement. The person who addressed him spoke
in the Hindu dialect, as it was spoken at _Lahore_; but he believed it
possible, that he might have been some emissary from the Jesuits convent
there, on his way to the Inquisitorial college at Goa: this for a moment
disquieted him; for his mind, long divided by conflicting passions, had
lost its wonted self-possession and lofty independence: he had been
recently accustomed to suspect himself; and he now feared that his zeal,
relaxed by passion, had weakened that severity of principle which once
admitted of no innovation, and thought it not impossible that he might
have expressed his sentiments with a freedom which bigotry could easily
torture into an evidence of heresy itself. He again sought the two
strangers, but in vain; for they had joined the advanced troop of the
caravan; while a feeling, stronger than any they had excited, still
fixed him in the rear, near the mohaffah of Luxima.

The caravan now pursued its toilsome route through the rich and varying
district of _Scindi_; and the fresh and scented gales, which blew from
the Indian sea, revived the languid spirits of the drooping Neophyte;
and gave to her eye and cheek, the beam and glow of health and
loveliness. Not so the Missionary:--as he advanced towards the haunts of
civilized society, the ties by which he was bound to it, and its
influence and power over his opinions and conduct, which a fatal
passion, cherished in wilds and deserts, had banished from his mind, now
rushed to his recollection with an overwhelming force--he gloomily
anticipated the disappointment which awaited his return to Goa; the
triumph of his enemies, and the discomfiture of his friends; the
inferences which might be drawn from the sex and beauty of his solitary
Neophyte; and, above all, the eternal separation from the sole object,
that alone had taught him the supreme bliss, which the most profound and
precious feeling of nature can bestow,--a separation, imperiously
demanded by religion, by honour, and by the respect still due to his
character and holy profession. It was his intention to place her in a
house of Franciscan Sisters, an order whose purity and mildness was
suited to her gentle nature. But, when he remembered the youth and
loveliness he was about to entomb, the feelings and affections he was
about to sacrifice--the warm, the tender, the impassioned heart he
should devote to a cold and gloomy association, with rigid and
uncongenial spirits--when he beheld her in fancy ascending the altar
steps, resigning, by vows she scarcely understood, the brilliant
illusions of her own imposing and fanciful faith, and embracing
doctrines to which her mind was not yet familiarized, and against which
her strong rooted prejudices and ardent feelings still revolted,--when
he beheld her despoiled of those lovely and luxuriant tresses which had
so often received the homage of his silent admiration, and almost felt
his own hands tremble, as he placed on her brow the veil which concealed
her from him for ever,--when he caught the parting sigh,--when his
glance died under the expression of those dove-like eyes, which,
withdrawing their looks from the cross, would still throw their
lingering and languid light upon his receding form!--then, worked up to
a frenzy of love and of affection, by the image which his fancy and his
feelings had pictured to his heart, he eagerly sought her presence as
though the moment was already arrived, when he should lose her love for
ever; and he hung, in such despairing fondness round her, that Luxima,
touched by the expression of his countenance, sought to know the cause
of his agitation, and to soothe his spirits. The Missionary leaned over
the vehicle, in which she reposed, to catch the murmurings of her low
and tender voice.

“Thou art sad,” she said, “and melancholy hangs upon thy brow, now that
danger is over, and suffering almost forgotten. Is it only in the midst
of perils, which strike death upon weaker souls, that _thine_ rejoices?
for amidst the conflicts of varying elements, thou wast firm; in the
burning desert, thou wast unsubdued--Oh! how often has my fancy likened
thee to the great _vesanti_ plant, which, when it meets not the mighty
stem round which it is its nature to twine and flourish, droops not,
though forsaken, but assuming the form and structure of a towering tree,
betrays its aspiring origin, and points its lofty branches towards the
heavens, whose storms it dares and thus doth thou seem greatest, when
most exposed and firmest, when least supported. Oh! father,” she added,
with an ardour she had long suppressed, “didst thou feel as I feel, one
look of love would chase all sorrow from thy heart, and sadness from thy
brow.”

“But Luxima,” returned the Missionary, infected by her impassioned
tenderness, as if that were almost love’s last look, “if, when every tie
was drawn so closely round the heart, that both must break together--if
the fatal conciousness of being loved, have become so necessary to
existence, that life seems without it, a cold and dreary waste--if under
the influence of feelings such as these, the moment of an eternal
separation dawns in all its hopeless and insupportable misery on the
soul, then every look which love bestows, mingles sadness with
affection, and despair with bliss.” Luxima turned pale; and she raised
her tearful eyes to his face, not daring to inquire, but by look, how
far that dreadful moment was yet distant. The Missionary pointed out to
her a distant view of Tatta, whence they were to sail for Goa; and,
stifling the emotions of the lover, and the feelings of the man, he
endeavoured to rally back his fading zeal; he spoke to her only in the
language of the Missionary and the Priest; he spoke of resigning her to
_God alone_; of that perfect conversion which his absence even _more_
than his presence would effect!--he described to her the nature and
object of the life she was about to embrace,--its peace--its
sanctity--its exemptions from human trials, and human passions--and
above all, the eternal beatitude to which it led;--he spoke to her of
their separation, as inevitable,--and, concealing the struggles which
existed in his own mind, he sought only to soothe, to strengthen, and
to tranquillize hers. Luxima heard him in silence: she made neither
objections nor reply. He was struck by the sudden change which took
place in her countenance, when she learned how soon they were to part,
and how inevitable was their separation; it was a look resolute and
despairing,--as if she defied the destiny, cruel as it was, which seemed
to threaten her. At some distance from Tatta, the ardours of a vertical
sun obliged the caravan to halt, and seek a temporary shade amidst the
umbrageous foliage of a luxuriant grove, refreshed by innumerable
streams, flowing into the Indus.

Luxima left her mohaffah, and, supported by the Missionary, sought those
shades, which so strongly recalled to her remembrance, the lovely
groves of Cashmire,--and the recollections so sad, and yet so precious,
which rushed on her mind, were opposed by those feelings which swelled
in her bosom, when a distant view of Tatta recalled to her memory the
approach of that hour which was so soon to lead her to Goa, to the
destined altar of her immolation!--She reflected on the past--she
anticipated the future;--and, for the first time, the powerful emotions
of which she was capable, betrayed themselves with a violence almost
irreconcilable with her gentle and tender nature.--Convulsed with
long-stifled feelings, to which she now gave vent, she bathed the earth
whereon she had thrown herself, with tears; and, with an eloquence
dictated by love and by despair, she denied the existence of an
affection which could voluntarily resign its object;--she upbraided
equally her lover and herself; and, amidst expressions of reproach and
remorse, was still less penitent than tender,--still less lamented her
errors, than the approaching loss of him, for whom she had committed
them.

“Thou sayest that I am dear to thee,” she said; “and yet I am
sacrificed; and by him for whom I have abandoned all, I am now myself
abandoned.--Oh! give me back to my country, my peace, my fame; or suffer
me still to remain near thee, and I will rejoice in the loss of
all.--Thou sayest it is the law of thy religion that thou obeyest, when
thou shalt send me from thee:--but, if it is a virtue in thy religion to
stifle the best and purest feelings of the heart, that nature implants,
how shall I believe in, or adopt, its tenets?--I, whose nature, whose
faith itself, was love--how from thee shall I learn to subdue my
feelings, who first taught me to substitute a human, for a heavenly
passion?--Alas! I have but changed the object, the _devotion_ is still
the same; and thou art loved by the _outcast_, as the Priestess once
loved Heaven only.”

“Luxima,” returned the Missionary, distracted equally by his own
feelings and by hers, “let us from the sufferings we now endure, learn
the extent of the weakness and the errors which we thus, be it hoped, so
painfully expiate; for, it is by despair, such as now distracts us,
that Heaven punishes the unfortunate, who suffers a passionate and
exclusive sentiment to take possession of the heart, for a creature
frail and dependant as ourselves. Oh! my daughter, had we but listened
to the voice of religion, or of reason, as we have hearkened to our own
passions, the most insupportable of human afflictions could not now have
befallen us; and that pang by which we are agonized, at the brink of
eternal separation, would have been spared to those souls, which a
divine and imperishable object would then have solely occupied and
involved.”

“I, at least,” said Luxima, firmly, yet with wildness, “I shall not long
endure that pang:--Thinkest thou that I shall long survive _his_ loss
for whom I have sacrificed all? Oh! no; it was _thou_ I followed, and
not thy doctrines; for, pure and sublime as they may be, they yet came
darkly and confusedly to my soul: but the sentiments thy presence
awakened in my heart, were not opposed by any previous thought or
feelings of my life; they were true to all its natural impulses, and, if
not understood, they were _felt_ and _answered_; they mingled with my
whole being, and now, even now, form an imperishable part of my
existence.--Shudder not thus, but pity, and forgive me! nor think that,
weak as I am, I will deprive thee of thy triumph:--yes, thou shalt lead
to the Christian Temple, the descendant of Brahma! thou shalt offer up,
a sacrifice on the Christian altar, the first apostate, drawn from the
most illustrious of the Indian casts,--a Prophetess! who for thee
abandoned the homage of a Divinity,--a woman, who for thee resisted the
splendours of an empire.--And this I will tell to the Christians in the
midst of their temple, and their congregation--that they may know the
single solitary convert thy powers have made, is more than all the
proselytes thy brethen e’er brought to kiss the Cross: this I shall do
_less in faith_ than _love_; not for _my_ sake, but for _thine_.--Yet,
oh! be thou near me at the altar of sacrifice; let me cling to thee to
the last--for, stern and awful as thy religion is, its severity will not
refuse me that: yet, if it punish thee, even for pitying--”

“And, thinkest thou,” interrupted the Missionary wildly, “that it is
_punishment_ I fear, or that if the enjoyment of thy love, fatal and
dear as thou art, could be purchased by suffering that I would shrink
from its endurance? No! it is not torture the most acute I shun--it is
_crime that I abhor_--and, equal to to sustain all sufferings but those
of conscience, I now live only in dread of myself! For oh! Luxima, even
yet I might spare myself and thee a life so cold, so sad and dreary,
that conscious virtue and true religion only can support us through
it,--even yet, escaping from every eye, save Heaven’s, we might together
fly to the pathless wilds of these delicious regions, and live in sinful
bliss, the commoners of nature:--But, Luxima, the soul of him who
loves, and who resists thee, is formed of such a temper, that it can
taste no perfect joy in weakness or in crime. Pity then, and yet
respect, him who, loving thee and virtue equally, can ne’er know
happiness without nor with thee,--who, thus condemned to suffer, without
ceasing, submits not to his fate, but is overpowered by its tyranny, and
who, alike helpless and unresigned, opposes while he suffers, and
repines while he endures; knowing only the remorse of guilt without its
enjoyments, and expecting its retribution, without daring to deprecate
its weight.” Exhausted and overpowered, he fell prostrate on the earth;
cold damps hung on his brow, and burning tears fell from his inflamed
eyes.--Luxima, terrified by his emotion, faint and trembling, crept
timidly and tenderly towards him; and, pressing his hands, she murmured
soothingly, yet with firmness, “Since then we can both only live to
suffer or to err, to be miserable or to be guilty, wherefore should we
not die?”

The Missionary raised his eyes to her face, and its expression of
loveliness and love, though darkened by despair, rendered her more
enchanting in his eyes, than she had ever yet appeared: he felt her
tears on his hands, which she pressed alternately to her eyes and to her
lips; and this eloquent though silent expression of an affection so
pure, which he believed was to be the last proof of love he might ever
receive, overwhelmed him.

Silent and motionless, he withdrew not his hands from the clasp of hers;
he gazed on her with unrestrained feelings of love and pity, his whole
soul seeming to diffuse itself through his eyes, over her countenance
and figure. It was in this transient moment of high-wrought emotions,
that they were suddenly surrounded by a group of persons who sprang from
behind a rock. Luxima was torn from the arms, which but now protectingly
encircled her; and the Missionary was seized with a violence, that, in
the first moment of amazement and horror, deprived him of all presence
of mind. But the feeble plaints of Luxima, who was borne away in the
arms of one of the assailants, recalled to his bewildered mind a
consciousness of their mutual sufferings, and situations:--he struggled
with all the strength of frenzy in the strong grasp of the two persons
who held him;--he shook them from him as creatures of inferior force and
nature; and looked so powerful, in his uncurbed rage, that a third, who
stood armed before him, attempted not to arrest his flight, as he sprang
forward to the rescue of Luxima, who lay lifeless in the arms of the
person who was carrying her away; but in the next moment his own
encircled her: the person from whom he had torn her, seemed no less
bold, no less resolved than he; drawing a pistol from beneath his robe,
he pointed it to the Missionary’s breast; and exclaimed, “To resist, is
but to increase your crimes, and to endanger your life.” The Missionary
gently disengaged himself from Luxima, who sunk to the earth, and,
springing like a lion on his opponent, he seized his arm;--closely
entwined in bonds of mutual destruction, they wrestled for life and
death, with a strength almost supernatural,--at last, Hilarion wresting
the pistol from the hand of his adversary, flung him against a rock, at
whose base he lay apparently without life.--His three associates now
came to the scene of action--armed, and with looks that threatened to
avenge the fate of their companion; but the Missionary stood firm and
unappalled, his eye lowring defiance, and raising Luxima in one arm,
while with the other he pointed the pistol towards them, he said boldly,
“Whoe’er you be, and whatever may have tempted you to this desperate
outrage, I shall not spare the life of him who dares approach one single
step.”

The persons looked in consternation on each other; but one of them,
whose face was till now concealed, threw back his hood and robe, and
discovered on his breast, the Badge which distinguishes _the officers of
the Inquisition_![12] It was then, that the Missionary recognized in
the European traveller the Coadjutor whom he had disgraced and dismissed
from his appointment, during their voyage to India. Amazed, confounded,
but not subdued, he met, with an undaunted look, the keen, malignant,
and avengeful glance, which was now directed at him: “Knowest thou me?”
demanded the Inquisitor scoffingly, “who, now high in power in the
highest of all human tribunals, was once covered with shame and
opprobrium, by thy superior excellence! Where now are all the mighty
virtues of the _man without a fault_? where now are the wonders which
his zeal and genius promised? what are the fruits of his unrivalled
Mission? Behold him! supporting on his bosom, the victim of his
seductive arts!--his sacrilegious hand, pointing an instrument of death
at those who are engaged in the duties of that holy office, whose
censure he has incurred by dreadful heresies, by breach of solemn vows,
and by his heretical defamation of a sacred Order!”--While the
Inquisitor yet spoke, several persons from the Caravan had arrived on
the spot, to witness a scene so singular and so unexpected: Luxima too,
who had recovered her senses, still trembling and horror-struck, clung
to the bosom, which now so wildly heaved to the emotions of rage and
indignation.

Silent for many minutes, the Missionary stood gazing with a look of
proud defiance and ineffable contempt upon his avengeful enemy: “And
know _you_ not me?” he at last exclaimed, with a lofty scorn--“you knew
me once, supreme, where _you_ dared not _soar_!--Such as _I then was_,
such _I now am_; in every thing unchanged--and still, in every thing,
_your_ superior!--Grovelling and miserable _as you are_ even in your
unmerited elevation--this you _still_ feel;--speak, then; what are your
orders!--tremble not, but declare them!--It is the Count of Acugna, it
is the Apostolic _Nuncio_ of _India_, who commands you!”--Pale with
stifled rage, the Inquisitor drew from his bosom the brief, by which he
was empowered to call those before the Inquisitorial Court, whose
conduct and whose opinions should fall under the suspicions of those
emissaries, which it had deputed to visit the Christian establishments
in the interior of India.--The Missionary glanced his eye over the awful
instrument, and bowed low to the Red Cross imprinted at its head: the
Inquisitor then said, “Hilarion, of the Order of St. Francis, and member
of the Congregation of the Mission;--I arrest you in the name of the
Holy Office, and in presence of these its ministers, that you may answer
to such charges as I shall bring against you, before _the tribunal_ of
the Inquisition.” At these words, the Missionary turned pale!--nature
stood checked by religion!--passion submitted to opinion, and prejudice
governed those _feelings_, over which _reason_ had lost all sway. He let
fall the instrument of death, which he had held in his hand till now;
the voice of the Church had addressed him, and all the powerful force
of his religious habits returned upon his soul: he, who till now had
felt only as a _man_, remembered he was a _religious_; he who had long,
who had so recently, acknowledged the precious influence of human
feeling, now recalled to mind that he had vowed the sacrifice of _all_
human feeling to Heaven!--and he who had resisted oppression, and
avenged insult, now recollected, that by the religion he professed, he
was bound when one _cheek was smitten, to turn the other_.

The rage which had blazed in the eyes of the indignant, the blood which
had boiled in the veins of the brave, no longer flashed in the glance,
or crimsoned the cheek of the Christian Missionary; yet still it was--

     “Awe from above, that quelled his heart, nought else dismayed.”

The officers of the Inquisition now approached, to bind his arms, and to
lead him away; but Luxima, with a shriek of horror, threw herself
between them, ignorant of the nature of the danger which assailed her
lover and her friend, and believing it nothing less than death itself:
her wild and frenzied supplications, her beauty and affection, touched
the hearts of those who surrounded them. The Missionary had already
excited a powerful interest in his favour: the popular feeling is always
on the side of resistance against oppression--for men, however vicious
individually, are generally virtuous in the mass: his fellow-travellers,
therefore, boldly advanced, to rescue one, whose air and manner had
captivated their imaginations. The passions of a multitude know no
precise limit; the partisans of the Missionary only waited for the
orders of him whom they were about to avenge: they said, “Shall we throw
those men under the camels feet? or shall we bind them to those rocks,
and leave them to their fate?”

The Europeans shuddered, and turned pale!

The Missionary cast on them a glance of contempt and pity, and, looking
round him with an air at once dignified and grateful, he said, “My
friends, my heart is deeply touched by your generous sympathy; good and
brave men ever unite, of whatever region, or whatever faith they may
be: but I belong to a religion whose spirit it is to save, and not to
destroy; suffer then, these men to live; they are but the agents of a
higher power, whose scrutiny they challenge me to meet.--I go to appear
before that tribunal of that church, whose voice is my law, and from
which a Christian minister can make no appeal,--I trust I go to contend
_best_ with the _best_; prepared rather to suffer death myself, than to
cause the death of others.”

Then turning to the Inquisitor he said, pointing to Luxima, whom he
again supported in his arms, “Remember, that by a word I could have had
you mingled with the dust I tread on; but, as you prize that life I
have preserved, guard and protect this sacred, this consecrated
vestal!--_look at her!_--otherwise than pure and innocent, you dare not
believe her: know then, also, she is a Christian Neophyte, who has
received the Baptismal rites, and who is destined to set a bright
example to her idolatrous nation, and to become the future spouse of
God.”

Subdued and mortified, the officers of the Inquisition made no reply. He
whom the Missionary had wounded, now crawled towards the others--they
surrounded their unresisting prisoner, who bore along the feeble form of
the Indian: silent, and weeping, she was consigned to the mohaffah she
had before occupied; and, the Missionary having ascended the back of
his camel, the caravan was again in motion--two of the Inquisitors
remained with their prisoner--the other two had rode on before the
caravan to _Tatta_.




CHAPTER XVI.


It was night when the travellers reached the suburbs of the ancient city
of Tatta; the caravan had been lessened of its numbers during its
progress; those who remained, now dispersed in various directions: the
Inquisitors, instead of proceeding with their charge to a _Caravansera_,
carried him and the Neophyte to a small fortress which belonged to a
Spanish garrison; a guard of soldiers, headed by the two Inquisitors,
who had preceded the caravan, received them at its portals.

The Missionary guessed his fate,--dreadful as it was, he met it not
unprepared: he saw himself surrounded by an armed force; he knew that,
were he inclined to offer it, all resistance would be vain; and he
submitted, with all the grandeur of human dignity, with all the firmness
of religious fortitude, to a destiny now inevitable.

But Luxima still clung to him: the gloomy air of all around her, the
fierce looks of the soldiers, their arms glittering to the dusky light
of a solitary lamp, which hung suspended in the centre of a vast and
desolate guardroom; the black cowls and scowling countenances of the
Inquisitors, all struck terror on the timid soul of the Indian. She cast
round a fearful and terrified glance, and would then have sunk upon the
bosom of her sole protector and friend on earth, but, exposed as they
were to the observation of their persecutors, the Missionary, for her
sake even more than for his own, rejected the impulse of his feelings,
and, turning away his head to conceal the agony of his countenance, he
held her from him.--It was then that the heart of Luxima, sinking within
her bosom, seemed to have received its death wound;--she fixed her
closing eyes on him, who thus almost seemed to resign her to misery and
to suffering, unsupported and unpitied--but she wept not, and one of the
Inquisitors bore her away, unresisting, and almost lifeless, in his
arms. An exclamation of horror burst from the lips of the Missionary;
and, with an involuntary motion, he advanced a few steps to follow her;
betraying, in his wild and haggard looks, the feelings by which his soul
was torn. But the guards interposed--he could not even himself desire,
that she might remain with him; and the Inquisitor, fixing his eyes on
his agitated countenance, with a look of scoffing malignancy, said:
“Fear not for your concubine, she shall be taken care of.”--At these
words, a deep scarlet suffused the cheek of the Missionary; fire flashed
from his dark rolling eye, and he cast a look on his insulting
oppressor, so blasting in its glance, that he seemed to wither beneath
its terrific influence.--“Observe!” he said, with a voice of thunder, “I
repeat it to you, it is a Christian Neophyte, pure, spotless, and
unsullied, which you have now taken under your protection; look
therefore that you consider her as such, as you shall answer it to that
God, to whom she is about to consecrate her sinless life; as you shall
answer it to that Church, whose ministers you are.--Be this remembered
by you as priests; as _men_, forget not _she is a woman_!” Then, turning
to his guards, he said with haughtiness, “Lead on;”--as though he still
commanded, even in obeying; and he was immediately led to a tower in a
remote part of the fortress.

The members of the Inquisitorial Court, into whose power a singular
coincidence of circumstances had thrown the Missionary, were returning
from visiting the Christian institution at Lahore, of whose abuses and
disorders the grand Inquisitor had received secret intelligence, when
the chief of the party, who had been raised to his present dignity by
the low arts of cunning and duplicity, discovered in the supposed lover
of a fugitive Indian, that once infallible man, of whose rigid virtue,
and severe unbending justice, he had been the victim; conscious, that in
detecting and exposing the frailty of one who had “bought golden
opinions, from all sorts of persons,” he should, while he gratified his
own private vengeance, present a grateful victim to the Jesuits and
Dominicans, who equally hated the Franciscan, for his order, his
popularity, and his unrivalled genius,--he soon sought and found
sufficient grounds of accusation, to lay the basis of his future ruin.
With an artifice truly jesuitical, he drew the Missionary into a
conversation, which he obliged one of his brethren to listen to, and
note down; and, from the freedom of those religious opinions he had
induced the Missionary to discuss, and from the tender nature
of the ties which seemed to exist between him and his lovely
associate,--Heresy, and the seduction of a Neophyte, were the crimes to
be alleged against a man, whose disgrace was destined to be commensurate
to the splendour of his triumphs.

On the day following their arrival at Tatta, the Missionary was conveyed
on board a Spanish vessel, which lay in the Indus, and was bound for
Goa. On his way he passed the _litter_ which Luxima, he believed,
occupied; but it was closely covered. He shuddered, and for a moment
the heroism of virtue deserted him--he doubted not that she would be
conveyed in the same vessel with him to Goa; and, as he knew that
supplication would be fruitless, and that in humbling himself to
intreaty he would not effect the purpose for which he stooped, he made
no effort to obtain an interview with her: he believed too that the
insatiable desire of the Jesuits for conversion would render her safety
and preservation an object to them; and that she would owe to the
bigotry of their zeal, that mercy which she could not expect from the
suggestions of their humanity--but that he should never again behold
her, the object of his only love, the companion of his wandering, and
the partner of his sufferings, was an idea dictated by despair, from
which religion withdrew her light, and hope her solace. Placed in a
close and unwholesome confinement, it was in vain he sought to catch the
sound of Luxima’s voice; it was in vain he hazarded an inquiry relative
to her situation: silence and mystery still surrounded him; no beam
shone upon the darkness of his days; no answer was returned to his
inquiries; no pity was given to his sufferings; all was dreary hopeless
gloom! all was the loss of fame, the loss of love! of all that the high
ambition of piety had promised! of all that the exquisite feelings of
nature had bestowed!--Still pursued “by thoughts of lost happiness and
lasting shame,” and joined only in _equal ruin_ with her for whom he
had encountered misery and affliction, and on whose innocent head he
had heaped it,--he now saw that the sufferings of man resulted less from
the constitution of his nature, than from the obstinacy with which he
abandons the dictates of Providence, and devotes himself to those
illusions which the law of human reason, and the impulse of human
affection, equally oppose. He remembered the feelings with which the
Brahmin Priestess and the Christian Missionary had first mutually met;
he contrasted their first interview with their present situations, alike
as they now were _the victims of mistaken_ zeal; and he accused that
misconstruction of the laws of Providence, those false distinctions,
which superstition has erected between the species, as the source of
the severest sufferings to which mankind was condemned. For himself, he
had no hope: he knew the character of his judges, the sentiments they
bore in general to his order, and in particular to him; he knew the
influence of the tribunal at which they presided, he knew that those
whom they intended to destroy, no human power could preserve. But while
he accused himself of relaxation in his zeal, of negligence in his
mission, of suffering a guilty passion to subdue the force of his mind,
and the influence of his religion, he believed his enemies to be but the
blind agents of that Heaven, whose wrath he had justly provoked; for,
still bringing his new-born feelings to the test of his ancient
opinions, he continued to oppose religion to nature, and deemed himself
sunk in guilt, because he had not risen above humanity.

It was on a day bright and sunny as that on which the Apostolic Nuncio
left _Goa_ in all the triumph of superior and unrivalled excellence that
he returned to it a _prisoner_ and in _chains_. His enemies had
determined that his disgrace should be as striking and as public as his
triumph; that the idol of the people should be dashed before their eyes
from the shrine erected to his glory; and that envy and bigotry, under
the guise of religion and justice should gratify the insatiate spirit of
persecution and vengeance. Before the illustrious criminal was permitted
to land the intelligence of his return under circumstances so different
from those his departure had promised, and dark inuendos of the nature
and extent of his fault, were artfully circulated through _Goa_, till
the public mind, soured by the disappointments of its hopes and its
confidence, was prepared to receive the Nuncio with a contempt equal to
the admiration it formerly bestowed on him. At last a guard of Spanish
soldiers, accompanied by the officers of the Holy Office, were sent to
conduct him to the prison of the Inquisition. A multitude of persons had
assembled to see him pass; but they no longer beheld the same creature
whom they had last so loudly greeted with acclamations of reverential
homage, and on whose mild and majestic brow passion had impressed no
trace, whose commanding eye was brightened by holy joy, and whose life
of sinless purity was marked in the seraphic character of his inspired
countenance! His person was now almost as changed as his fate: it was
worn away by suffering, by fatigue, by internal conflicts, and faded by
its exposure to the varying clime; the experience of human frailty in
himself, and of human turpitude in others, marked his brow with traces
of distrust and disappointment;--his enthusiasm was fled! his zeal
subdued by the fatal consequences of its unsuccessful efforts! and love,
and affliction, and shame, and indignation, the opprobrium he endured,
and the innocence he could not establish; the injustice under which he
laboured, and the malignity he despised--all mingled their conflicts in
his soul, all shed over his air and look the sullen grandeur of a proud
despair, superior to complaint, and inaccessible to hope; yet “not all
_lost_ in _loss_ itself,” gleams of his mind’s untarnished glory still
brightened at intervals his look of gloom--and, still appearing little
less than “archangel ruined,” he proceeded, manacled, but lofty and
towering above the guards who surrounded him. An awful silence reigned
on every side; and even those who deemed him culpable, saw him so mighty
in _his fall_, that while they accused him of guilt, they believed him
superior to weakness; respecting while they condemned, and admiring
while they pitied him. As a member of the noble house of _Acugna_,
whatever were the charges brought against him, he could not fail to
excite interest in Goa, where the Portuguese were coalesced by a common
feeling of suffering under the oppression of the Spanish government:
but the terrors which surrounded the most dreadful of all human
tribunals; a tribunal which was seconded, in the hierarchy of Goa, by
all the influence of civil authority; its being invested with the power
of life and death, and superstitiously believed even with that of
salvation itself, awed the boldest heart, and alike silenced the
feelings of patriotism, and stilled the impulse of humanity! Not even a
murmur of resistance was heard; the accused and his guards passed
silently on to the prison of the Holy Office; they reached its gloomy
court; the portals closed upon the victim, and the light of hope was
shut out for ever!

No breath transpired of the dark mysterious deeds which passed within
the mansion of horror and superstition; and its awful investigations
were conducted with a secresy which baffled all inquiry:[13] the
impenetrable cloud which hung over the fate of the Missionary, could
only be cleared up when that dreaded day arrived, upon which the
dungeons of the Inquisition were to yield up their tenants to
punishment, to liberty, or--to death!

At this period a sullen gloom hung over the city of Goa, resembling the
brooding of a distant storm:--it was rumoured, that the power of the
Spanish government in Portugal and its colonies was on the point of
extinction, and it was known by many fatal symptoms, that the Indians
were ripe for insurrection. The arts used by the Dominicans and the
Jesuits for the conversion of the followers of Brahma, the evil
consequences which had arisen by forfeiture of cast, (for many families
had shared the ignominy heaped on the devoted head of the individual
apostate) with the coercive tyranny of the Spanish government, had
excited in the breasts of the mild, patient, and long-enduring Hindus, a
principle of resistance, which waited only for some strong and sudden
impulse to call it into action[14]; and it was observed that this
disposition had particularly betrayed itself on a recent and singular
occasion.

A woman who bore on her forehead the mark of a descendant of Bramah (the
sacred _tellertum_), and round her neck the sacrificial threads or
_dsandam_ of their tutelar god, was seen to enter a convent of
Dominican nuns, led by an officer of the Inquisition, and surrounded by
Dominican and _Jesuit priests_! The faded beauty of her perfect form,
her noble and distinguished air, the agony of her countenance, and the
silent tears which fell from her eyes when she turned them on those of
her own cast and country, who stood near the litter from which she
alighted, awakened a strong and powerful emotion in their feelings; and
it was not decreased, when a Cashmirian, who was present, declared that
the said apostate was Luxima, the Brahmachira and prophetess of
Cashmire. The person who industriously circulated this intelligence, was
the _pundit_ of Lahore, the preceptor of the Missionary. His restless
and unsettled spirit had led him to Goa: some imprudent and severe
observations which he had let fall against the Inquisitorial power, had
nearly proved his destruction, but his talents had extricated him; he
had engaged as secretary and interpreter to the Spanish Viceroy, and
obtained his favour and protection by those arts of conciliation, of
which he was so perfectly the master. His hatred of the Inquisition and
his love of intrigue and of commotion, which gave play to the finesse of
his genius, and the activity of his mind, led him to seize every
opportunity of exciting his compatriots to resist the European power in
Goa; and it was about this period that the arrival of Luxima furnished
him with an event favourable to his views. He had in vain sought to
attract her attention on her way to the Convent of the Dominicans; nor
until her arrival at its portal had he succeeded in catching her eye; he
then effected it by dropping his muntras at her feet. Absorbed as she
appeared to be, this little incident did not escape her attention: she
raised her tear-swollen eyes to his, with a look of sudden recognition,
for she had known him in the days of her glory; but the Cashmirian, with
an almost imperceptible motion of his finger across his lips, implying
silence, carelessly picked up his beads and passed on, as the doors of
the Christian sanctuary shut out from the eyes of the multitude the
priestess of Brahma.

It was on the eve of St. Jago de Compostello, that the usually tranquil
abode of the Dominican sisters exhibited a scene of general
consternation: the _Indian Catechuman_, committed to their pious care,
had mysteriously disappeared a few days after her reception into their
Order. Her conduct had not prepared them for an event so extraordinary
from her: either unable or unwilling to speak their language, they had
not once heard the sound of her voice, save that at sun-set she sung a
few low wild notes, through the bars of the casement of her cell, which
the younger nuns delighted to catch in the garden beneath, believing
that the day was not distant, when a voice so angelic would blend its
melody with the holy strains of the Christian choir; but she appeared in
every other respect docile, unresisting, and timid almost to wildness.
She had suffered them to exchange her Indian dress for the habit of a
novice of St. Dominick; she had unreluctantly accompanied them to their
church, and assisted at their devotions: her looks were indeed wandering
and wild, and seemingly always sent in search of some particular object;
but she made no inquiry, she uttered no complaint, and the secret
disorder of her mind was only visible in her countenance; which wore the
general expression of confirmed melancholy, the sadness of unutterable
affliction. A meekness so saintly, a gentleness so seraphic, excited
hopes in the breast of the abbess and the sisterhood, which were
suddenly destroyed by the miraculous disappearance of the Catechuman.
The convent grounds, the gardens of the Viceroy, which were only divided
from them by a low wall, were vainly searched; and no circumstance
attending her flight could be ascertained, but that she had escaped by
the casement of her cell; one of the bars of which had been removed from
the brick-work. The _Provincial_ of the Order having been made
acquainted with the event, which was placed to the account of _pagan
sorcery_, an order was issued from the Holy Office, offering a reward to
whoever should give up the _relapsed infidel_, and threatening death to
those who should conceal her; but week after week elapsed, and no one
came forward to claim the recompense, or to avert the punishment. The
pagan sorceress was no where to be heard of.[15]




CHAPTER XVII.


However a propensity to evil may be inherent in human nature, it is
impossible to conceive an idea of abstract wickedness, uninfluenced by
some powerful passion, and existing without any decided reference to
some object we wish to attain, or some obstacle we desire to vanquish.

The Pundit of Lahore had seen the Christian Missionary dragged in chains
to the dungeon of the Inquisition, and the Priestess of Cashmire
delivered up to the tyranny of a fanaticism no less dreadful in the
exercise of its power than that from which she had escaped. He
considered himself as the remote cause of their mutual sufferings:
equally incredulous as to the truth or influence of their respective
doctrines, when opposed to the feelings of nature, he had felt a kind of
triumph in putting their boasted infallibility to the test, which
deserted him the moment he discovered the fatal consequences which arose
from the success of his design. Unprincipled and corrupt to a certain
degree, when a dereliction from right favoured the views of his
interests, or established the justness of his opinions, (for the human
mind, whether it credulously bends to imposition, or boldly resists in
scepticism, can never wholly relinquish the intolerance of self-love,)
he was yet naturally humane and benevolent; and the moment he
discovered the fate which awaited the Missionary and his proselyte, he
determined to use every exertion to avert it.

Free at all times of admittance to the Viceroy’s gardens, he continued
to wander incessantly beneath the wall which divided them from the
grounds of the convent. He had caught a few notes of Luxima’s vesper
song, and recognized the air of an Indian hymn, sung upon certain
festivals by the priestesses of _Brahma_; he ventured therefore to scale
the wall, veiled by the obscurity of a dark night; and by means of a
ladder of ropes, he finally effected the escape of the Neophyte: he
conveyed her to his own lodging in a retired part of the city, and gave
her up to the care of a Jewess, who lived with him, and who, though
outwardly professing Christianity from fear and policy, hated equally
the Christians and the Pagans; love, however, secured her fealty to her
protector, to whom she was ardently devoted; and pity secured her
fidelity to the trust he had committed to her care; for the unfortunate
Indian was now alike condemned by the religion of truth and the
superstition of error--driven with shame and obloquy from the altar of
Brahma, her life had become forfeit by the laws of the Inquisition as a
relapsed Christian.[16] It was from the order issued from the Holy
Office that the Pundit learned the latter circumstances. It was from
the lips of the apostate that he learned she had forfeited cast,
according to all the awful rites of Braminical excommunication. It was
therefore impossible to restore her to her own cast, and difficult to
preserve her from the power of her new religion; and he found with
regret and dismay, that the efforts he had made to save her, might but
ultimately tend to her destruction;--he now considered that his life was
involved in hers, and that his own preservation depended upon her
concealment. His first thought was to remove her from Goa: but the
disorder of her mind had fallen upon her constitution, and she was
seized with the _mordechi_[17]--that disease so melancholy, and so
dangerous, in those burning climes, where exercise, the sole preventive,
is impossible. The ill success of his endeavours hitherto, the
impossibility of gaining admittance into the interior of the Santa Casa,
destroyed the hopes and checked the intentions of the Pundit, which
pointed to the liberation of the Missionary; and the mystery which hung
over the fate of a man for whom all Goa was interested, no human power
could fathom. But the festival upon which the next _auto da fè_ was to
be celebrated was fast approaching; and the result of those trials, the
accused had sustained at the _messa di santo officio_, could at that
period only be ascertained.

The day had already passed, upon which the ministers of the
Inquisition, preceded by their banners, marched from the palace of the
Holy Office to the _Campo Santo_, or place of execution, and there by
sound of trumpet proclaimed the day and hour on which the _solemn act_
of faith was to be celebrated.

That awful day at length arrived--its dawn, that beamed so fearfully to
many, was ushered in by the deep toll of the great bell of the
Cathedral; a multitude of persons, of every age and sex, Christians,
Pagans, Jews, and Mussulmen, filled the streets, and occupied the roofs,
the balconies and windows of the houses, to see the procession pass
through the principal parts of the city. The awful ceremony at length
commenced--the procession was led by the Dominicans, bearing before
them a white cross; the scarlet standard of the Inquisition, on which
the image of the founder was represented armed with a sword, preceded a
band of the _familiars of the Holy Office_, dressed in black robes, the
last of whom bore a green cross, covered with black crape; six penitents
of the _San Benito_ who had escaped death, and were to be sent to the
galleys, each conducted by a familiar, bearing the standard of St.
Andrew, succeeded, and were followed by the penitents of the _Fuego
Revolto_, habited in grey scapulars, painted with reversed flames; then
followed some persons bearing the effigies of those who had died in
prison, and whose bones were also borne in coffins; the victims
condemned to death appeared the last of the awful train; they were
preceded by the _Alcaid_ of the Inquisition, each accompanied on either
side by two officers of the Holy Office, and followed by an officiating
priest: a corps of _Halberdeens_, or guards of the Inquisition, closed
the procession. In this order it reached the church of St. Dominick,
destined for the celebration of _the act of faith_. On either side of
the great altar, which was covered with black cloth, were erected two
thrones; that on the right was occupied by the Grand Inquisitor; that on
the left by the Viceroy and his court: each person having assumed the
place destined for him, two Dominicans ascended a pulpit, and read
aloud, alternately, the sentences of the guilty, the nature of their
crimes, and the species of punishment to which they were condemned.
While this awful ceremony took place, each unfortunate, as his sentence
was pronounced, was led to the foot of the altar by the Alcaid, where he
knelt to receive it. Last of this melancholy band, appeared the
_Apostolic Nuncio of India_. Hitherto no torture had forced from him a
confession of crimes of which he was guiltless; but the power of his
enemies had prevailed, and his innocence was not proof against the
testimony of his interested accusers. Summoned to approach the altar, he
advanced with the dignity of a self-devoted martyr to receive his
sentence; firm alike in look and motion, as though created thing “nought
valued he or shunned,” he knew his doom to be irrevocable, and met it
unappalled.

Man was now to him an atom, and earth a speck! the collective force of
his mind was directed to _one sole_ object, but that object
was--_eternity!_ The struggle between the mortal and immortal being was
over; passion no longer gave to his imagination the vision of its
disappointed desires, nor love the seductive images of its frail
enjoyment: the ambition of religious zeal, and the blandishments of
tender emotion, no longer influenced a soul which was, in so short a
space of time, to be summoned before the tribunal of its God.

Less awed than aweful, he stood at the foot of the judgment seat of his
earthly umpire, and heard unshrinking and unmoved his accusation
publicly pronounced; but when to the sin of heresy, and breach of
monastic vow, was added the _seduction of a Neophyte_, then _nature_ for
a moment asserted her rights, and claimed the revival of her almost
extinguished power--his spirit again descended to earth, his heart with
a resistless impulsion opened to the influence of human feeling! to the
recollection of human ties! and Luxima, even at the altar’s feet, rushed
to his memory in all her loveliness, and all her affliction; innocent
and persecuted, abandoned and despairing: then, the firmness of his look
and mind alike deserted him--his countenance became convulsed--his frame
shook--an agonizing solicitude for the hapless cause of his death
disputed with Heaven the last thoughts of his life--and his head dropped
upon the missal on which his hand was spread according to the form of
the ceremony:--but when closely following the enumeration of his crimes,
he heard pronounced the aweful sentence of a dreadful and _an immediate
death_, then the inspired fortitude of the martyr re-called the
wandering feelings of the man, steadied the vibration of nerves, which
love, for the last time, had taught to thrill, strengthened the weakness
of the fainting heart, and restored to the troubled spirit the soothing
peace of holy resignation and religious hope.

The fate of those condemned to the flames was at last announced--the
officers of the secular tribunal came forward to seize the victims of a
cruel and inexorable bigotry; and the procession increased by the
Viceroy, and the Grand Inquisitor, with their respective courts,
proceeded to the place of execution.--It was a square, one side of which
opened to the sea; the three others were composed of the houses of the
Spanish grandees, before which a covered platform was erected, for the
_Grand Inquisitor_ and the Viceroy; in the centre of the square, three
piles of faggots were erected, at a certain distance from each other,
one of which was already slowly kindling; the air was still, and
breathed the balmy softness of an eastern evening; the sun, something
shorn of his beams, was setting in mild glory, and threw a saffron hue
on the luxuriant woods which skirt the beautiful bay of Goa--not a
ripple disturbed the bosom of the deep; every thing in the natural scene
declared the beneficent intentions of the Deity, every thing in the
human spectacle declared the perversion of man from the decrees of his
Creator. It was on such an evening as this, that the Indian Priestess
witnessed the dreadful act of her excommunication; the heavens smiled
then, as now; and man, the minister of error, was then, as now, cruel
and unjust,--substituting malevolence for mercy, and the horrors of a
fanatical superstition for the blessed peace and loving kindness of true
religion.

The secular judges had already taken their seats on the platform; the
Grand Inquisitor and the Viceroy had placed themselves beneath their
respective canopies; the persons who composed the procession were ranged
according to their offices and orders,--all but the three unhappy
persons condemned to death; they alone were led into the centre of the
square, each accompanied by a familiar of the Inquisition, and a
confessor. The condemned consisted of two relapsed Indians, and _the
Apostolic Nuncio_ of _India_. The pile designed for him, was
distinguished by a _standard_[18] on which, as was the custom in such
cases, an inscription was written, intimating, “that he was to be burnt
as a _convicted Heretic who refused to confess his crime_!”

The timid Indians, who, in the zeal and enthusiasm of their own
religion, might have joyously and voluntarily sought the death, they
now met with horror, hung back, shuddering and weeping in agony and
despair, endeavouring to defer their inevitable sufferings by uttering
incoherent prayers and useless supplications to the priests who attended
them. The Christian Missionary, who it was intended should suffer first,
alone walked firmly up to the pile, and while the martyr light flashed
on his countenance, he read unmoved the inscription imprinted on the
standard of death; which was so soon to wave over his ashes--then,
withdrawing a little on one side, he knelt at the feet of his confessor;
the last appeal from earth to heaven was now made; he arose with a
serene look; the officers of the bow-string advanced to lead him towards
the pile: the silence which belongs to death, reigned on every side;
thousands of persons were present; yet the melancholy breeze that swept,
at intervals, over the ocean, and died away in sighs, was distinctly
heard. Nature was touched on the master-spring of emotion, and betrayed
in the looks of the multitude, feelings of horror, of pity, and of
admiration, which the bigoted vigilance of an inhuman zeal would in vain
have sought to suppress.

In this aweful interval, while the presiding officers of death were
preparing to bind their victim to the stake, a form scarcely human,
darting with the velocity of lightning through the multitude, reached
the foot of the pile, and stood before it, in a grand and aspiring
attitude; the deep red flame of the slowly kindling fire shone through
a transparent drapery which flowed in loose folds from the bosom of the
seeming vision, and tinged with golden hues, those long dishevelled
tresses, which streamed like the rays of a meteor on the air;--thus
bright and aerial as it stood, it looked like a spirit sent from Heaven
in the aweful moment of dissolution to cheer and to convey to the
regions of the blessed, the soul which would soon arise, pure from the
ordeal of earthly suffering.

The sudden appearance of the singular phantom struck the imagination of
the credulous and awed multitude with superstitious wonder.--Even the
ministers of death stood for a moment, suspended in the execution of
their dreadful office. The Christians fixed their eyes upon the
_cross_, which glittered on a bosom whose beauty scarcely seemed of
mortal mould, and deemed themselves the witnesses of a miracle, wrought
for the salvation of a persecuted martyr, whose innocence was asserted
by the firmness and fortitude with which he met a dreadful death.

The Hindoos gazed upon the sacred impress of _Brahma_, marked on the
brow of his consecrated offspring; and beheld the fancied _herald_ of
the tenth _Avater_, announcing vengeance to the enemies of their
religion. The condemned victim, still confined in the grasp of the
officers of the bow-string, with eyes starting from their sockets, saw
only the _unfortunate_ he had made--the creature he adored--his
disciple!--his mistress!--the Pagan priestess--the Christian
Neophyte--his still lovely, though much changed Luxima. A cry of despair
escaped from his bursting heart; and in the madness of the moment, he
uttered aloud her name. Luxima, whose eyes and hands had been hitherto
raised to Heaven, while she murmured the _Gayatra_, pronounced by the
Indian women before their voluntary immolation, now looked wildly round
her, and, catching a glimpse of the Missionary’s figure, through the
waving of the flames, behind which he struggled in the hands of his
guards, she shrieked, and in a voice scarcely human, exclaimed, “My
beloved, I come!--_Brahma_ receive and eternally unite our
spirits!”--She sprang upon the pile: the fire, which had only kindled in
that point where she stood, caught the light drapery of her robe--a
dreadful death assailed her--the multitude shouted in horrid frenzy--the
Missionary rushed forward--no force opposed to it, could resist the
energy of madness, which nerved his powerful arm--he snatched the victim
from a fate he sought not himself to avoid--he held her to his
heart--the flames of her robe were extinguished in his close
embrace;--he looked round him with a dignified and triumphant air--the
officers of the Inquisition, called on by their superiors, who now
descended from the platforms, sprang forward to seize him:--for a
moment, the timid multitude were _still_ as the pause of a brooding
storm.--Luxima clung round the neck of her deliverer--the Missionary,
with a supernatural strength, warded off the efforts of those who would
have torn her from him--the hand of fanaticism, impatient for its
victim, aimed a dagger at his heart; its point was received in the bosom
of the Indian;--she shrieked,--and called upon “Brahma!”--Brahma!
Brahma! was re-echoed on every side. A sudden impulse was given to
feelings long suppressed:--the timid spirits of the Hindoos rallied to
an event which touched their hearts, and roused them from their lethargy
of despair;--the sufferings, the oppression they had so long endured,
seemed now epitomized before their eyes, in the person of their
celebrated and distinguished Prophetess--they believed it was their god
who addressed them from her lips--they rushed forward with a hideous
cry, to rescue his priestess--and to avenge the long slighted cause of
their religion, and their freedom;--they fell with fury on the
Christians, they rushed upon the cowardly guards of the Inquisition, who
let fall their arms, and fled in dismay.

Their religious enthusiasm kindling their human passions, their rage
became at once inflamed and sanctified by their superstitious zeal. Some
seized the prostrate arms of the fugitives, others dealt round a rapid
destruction by fire; they scattered the blazing faggots, and, snatching
the burning brands from the pile, they set on fire the light materials
of which the balconies, the verandahs, and platforms were composed, till
all appeared one horrid and entire conflagration. The Spanish soldiers
now came rushing down from the garrison upon the insurgents,--the
native troops, almost in the same moment, joined their compatriots--the
engagement became fierce and general--a promiscuous carnage ensued--the
Spaniards fought as mercenaries, with skill and coolness; the Indians as
enthusiasts, for their religion and their liberty, with an uncurbed
impetuosity; the conflict was long and unequal; the Hindoos were
defeated; but the Christians purchased the victory of the day by losses
which almost rendered their conquest a defeat.




CONCLUSION.


In the multitude who witnessed the aweful ceremony of the _auto da fè_,
in the church of St. Dominick, stood the Pundit of Lahore; and he heard
with horror the sentence of death pronounced against the Christian
Missionary. Considering himself as the remote cause of his destruction,
he was overwhelmed by compassion and remorse--aware of the ripeness of
the Indians to a revolt, he determined on exciting them to a rescue of
their compatriots at the place of execution; he knew them prompt to
receive every impression which came through the medium of their senses,
and connected with the popular prejudices of their religion; when he
beheld them following, with sullen looks, the slow march of the
procession, to witness the execution of their countrymen, whom they
conceived by their obstinate abjuration of the Christian religion to
have been seduced from their ancient faith, his hopes strengthened, he
moved rapidly among them, exciting the pity of some, the horror of
others, and a principle of resistance in all: but it was to an
unforeseen accident that he owed the success of his hazardous efforts.

Of the disorder by which Luxima had been attacked, a slight delirium
only remained; her health was restored, but her mind was wandering and
unsettled; the most affecting species of mental derangement had seized
her imagination--the melancholy insanity of sorrow: she wept no tears,
she heaved no sighs--she sat still and motionless, sometimes murmuring a
Braminical hymn, sometimes a Christian prayer--sometimes talking of her
grandsire, sometimes of her lover--alternately gazing on the muntras she
had received from one, and the cross that had been given her by the
other.

On the day of the _auto da fè_, she sat, as was her custom since her
recovery, behind the gauze blind of the casement of the little apartment
in which she was confined; she beheld the procession moving beneath it
with a fixed and vacant eye, until a form presented itself before her,
which struck like light from heaven on her darkened mind; she beheld the
friend of her soul; love and reason returned together; intelligence
revived to the influence of affection--she felt, and thought, and
acted--whatever were his fate, she resolved to share it:--she was alone,
her door was not fastened, she passed it unobserved, she darted through
the little vestibule which opened to the street; the procession had
turned into another, but the street was still crowded--so much so, that
even her singular appearance was unobserved; terrified and bewildered,
she flew down an avenue that led to the sea, either because it was empty
and silent, or that her reason was again lost, and she was unconscious
whither she went, till chance brought her into the “square of
execution!”--she saw the smoke of the piles rising above the heads of
the multitude--in every thing she beheld, she saw a spectacle similar to
that which the self-immolation of the Brahmin women presents:--the
images thus presented to her disordered mind, produced a natural
illusion--she believed the hour of her sacrifice and her triumph was
arrived, that she was on the point of being united in heaven to him whom
she had alone loved on earth; and when she heard her name pronounced by
his well-known voice, she rushed to the pile in all the enthusiasm of
love and of devotion. The effect produced by this singular event was
such as, under the existing feelings of the multitude, might have been
expected. During the whole of the tumult, the Pundit did not for a
moment lose sight of the Missionary, who, still clasping Luxima in his
arms, was struggling with her through the ranks of destruction; the
Pundit approaching him, seized his arm, and, while all was uproar and
confusion, dragged him towards the shore, near to which a boat, driven
in by the tide, lay undulating; assisting him to enter, and to place
Luxima within it, he put the only oar it contained into his hands;
driving it from the shore, he himself returned to the scene of action.

The Missionary, wounded in his right arm, with difficulty managed the
little bark; yet he instinctively plied the oar, and put out from the
land, without any particular object in the effort--his thoughts were
wild, his feelings were tumultuous--he was stunned, he was bewildered by
the nature and rapidity of the events which had occurred. He saw the
receding shore covered with smoke; he saw the flames ascending to
Heaven, which were to have consumed him; he heard the discharge of
firearms, and the shouts of horror and destruction: but the ocean was
calm; the horizon was bathed in hues of living light, and the horrors he
had escaped, gradually faded into distance, and sunk into silence. He
steered the boat towards the rocky peninsula which is crowned by the
fortress of Alguarda; he saw the crimson flag of the Inquisition hoisted
from its ramparts--he saw a party of soldiers descending the rocks to
gain a watch-tower, placed at the extremity of the peninsula, which
guards the mouth of the bay:--here, remote as was the place, there was
for him no asylum, no safety; he changed his course, and put out again
to sea--twilight was deepening the shadows of evening; his little bark
was no longer discernible from the land; he threw down the oar, he
raised Luxima in his arms--her eye met his--she smiled languidly on
him--he held her to his heart, and life and death were alike
forgotten--but Luxima returned not the pressure of his embrace, she had
swooned; and as he threw back her tresses, to permit the air to visit
her face more freely, he perceived that they were _steeped in blood_! He
now first discovered that the poignard he had escaped, had been received
in the bosom of the Indian: distracted, he endeavoured to bind the wound
with the scapular which had made a part of his death dress; but though
he thus stopped for the time the effusion of blood, he could not recall
her senses. He looked round him wildly, but there was no prospect of
relief; he seized her in his arms, and turned his eyes on the deep,
resolved to seek with her eternal repose in its bosom--he approached
the edge of the boat--“To what purpose,” he said, “do I struggle to
protract, for a few hours, a miserable existence? Death we cannot
escape, whatever way we turn--its horrors we may--O God! am I then
obliged to add to the sum of my frailties and my sins the crimes of
suicide and murder?” He gazed passionately on Luxima, and added,
“Destroy thee, my beloved! while yet I feel the vital throb of that
heart which has so long beaten only for me--oh, no! The Providence which
has hitherto miraculously preserved us, may still make us the object of
its care.”--He laid Luxima gently down in the boat, and, looking round
him, perceived that the moon, which was now rising, threw its light on a
peninsula of rocks, which projected from the main land to a
considerable distance into the sea--it was the light of heaven that
guided him--he seized the oar, and plying it with all the strength he
could yet collect, he soon reached the rocks, and perceived a cavern
that seemed to open to receive and shelter them.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Pundit of Lahore was among the few who escaped from the destruction
he had himself excited. Pursued by a Spanish soldier, he had fled
towards the shore, and, acquainted with all the windings of the rocks,
their deep recesses and defiles, he had eluded the vigilance of the
Spaniard, and reached a cavern, which held out a prospect of temporary
safety, till his strength should be sufficiently recruited to permit him
to continue his flight towards a port, where some Bengal vessels were
stationed, which might afford him concealment, and convey him to a
distant part of India: as he approached the cavern, he looked round it
cautiously, and by the light of the moon, with which it was illuminated,
he perceived that it was already occupied--for kneeling on the earth,
the _Apostolic Nuncio_ of India, supported on his bosom the dying
_Priestess of Cashmire_. The Pundit rushed forward; “Fear not,” he said,
“be cheered, be comforted, all may yet go well: here we are safe for the
present, and when we are able to proceed, some Bengalese merchantmen who
lie at a little port at a short distance from hence, will give us
conveyance to a settlement, where the power of Spain or of the
Inquisition cannot reach us.”

The presence, the words of the Pundit were balm to the harassed spirits
of the Missionary; a faint hope beamed on his sinking heart, and he
urged him to procure some fresh water among the rocks, the only
refreshment for the suffering Indian, which the desolate and savage
place afforded. The Pundit, having sought for a large shell to contain
the water, flew in search of it; and the Missionary remained gazing upon
Luxima, who lay motionless in his arms. The presence of the Pundit
suddenly recalled to his memory the first scene of his mission; and he
again beheld in fancy the youthful priestess of mystic love, borne
triumphantly along amidst an idolizing multitude; he cast his eyes upon
the object that lay faint and speechless in his arms; and the brilliant
vision of his memory faded away, nor left upon his imagination one trace
of its former lustre or its beauty; for the image which succeeded, was
such as the _genius_ of Despair could only pourtray in its darkest mood
of gloomy creation.

In a rude and lonesome cavern, faintly lighted up by the rays of the
moon, and echoing to the moaning murmurs of the ocean’s tide, lay _that
Luxima_, who once, like the delicious shade of her native region, seemed
created only for bliss, and formed only for delight; those eyes, in
whose glance the spirit of devotion, and the enthusiasm of tenderness,
mingled their brilliancy and their softness, were now dim and beamless;
and that bosom, where love lay enthroned beneath the vestal’s veil, was
stained with the lifeblood which issued from its almost exhausted veins.
Motionless, and breathing with difficulty, and with pain, she lay in his
arms, with no faculty but that of suffering, with no sensibility but
that of pain:--he had found her like a remote and brilliant planet,
shining in lone and distant glory, illuminating, by her rays, a sphere
of harmony and peace; but she had for him deserted her _orbit_, and her
light was now nearly extinguished for ever.

When the Pundit returned, he moistened her lips with water, and chafed
her temples and her hands with the pungent herbs the surrounding rocks
supplied; and when the vital hues of life again faintly revisited her
cheek, the Missionary, as he gazed on the symptoms of returning
existence, gave himself up to feelings of suspense and anxiety, to which
despondency was almost preferable, and pressing those lips in death,
which in life he would have deemed it the risk of salvation to touch,
his soul almost mingled with that pure spirit, which seemed ready to
escape with every low-drawn sigh; and his heart offered up its silent
prayer to Heaven, that thus they might unite, and thus seek together
mercy and forgiveness at its throne. _Luxima_ revived, raised her eyes
to those which were bent in agony and fondness over her, and on her look
of suffering, and smile of sadness, beamed the ardour of a soul whose
warm, tender, and imperishable feelings were still triumphant over even
pain and death.

“Luxima!” exclaimed the Missionary, in a melancholy transport, and
pressing her to a heart which a feeble hope cheered and re-animated,
“_Luxima_, my beloved! wilt thou not struggle with death? wilt thou not
save me from the horror of knowing, that it is _for me thou_ diest? and
that what remains of my wretched existence, has been purchased at the
expence of thine? Oh! if _love_, which has led thee to death, can recall
or attach thee to life, still live, even though thou livest _for my
destruction_.” A faint glow flushed the face of the Indian, her smile
brightened, and she clung still closer to the bosom, whose throb now
replied to the palpitation of her own.

“Yes,” exclaimed the Missionary, answering the eloquence of her languid
and tender looks, “yes, dearest, and most unfortunate, our destinies are
now inseparably united! Together we have loved, together we have
resisted, together we have erred, and together we have suffered; lost
alike to the glory and the fame, which our virtues, and the conquest of
our passions, once obtained for us; alike condemned by our religions and
our countries, there now remains nothing on _earth_ for us, but each
other!--Already have we met the horrors of death, without its repose;
and the life for which thou hast offered the precious purchase of thine
own, must _now belong alone to thee_.”

Luxima raised herself in his arms, and grasping his hands, and fixing on
him her languid eyes, she articulated in a deep and tremulous voice,
“_Father!_” but, faint from bodily exhaustion and mental emotion, she
again sunk in silence on his bosom! At the plaintive sound of this
touching and well-remembered epithet, the Missionary shuddered, and the
blood froze round his sinking heart; again he heard the voice of the
proselyte, as in the shades of Cashmire he had once heard it, when pure,
and free from the taint of human frailty, he had addressed her only in
the spiritual language of an holy mission, and she had heard him with a
soul ignorant of human passion, and opening to receive that sacred
truth, to whose cause he had proved so faithless: the religion he had
offended, the zeal he had abandoned, the principles, the habits of
feeling, and of thinking, he had relinquished, all rushed in this awful
moment on his mind, and tore his conscience with penitence, and with
remorse; he saw before his eyes the retribution of his error in the
sufferings of its innocent cause; he sought to redeem what was yet
redeemable of his fault, to recall to his wandering soul the duties of
the minister of Heaven, and to put from his guilty thoughts the feelings
of the impassioned man! He sought to withdraw his attention from the
perishable woman, and to direct his efforts to the salvation of the
immortal spirit; but when again he turned his eyes on the Indian, he
perceived that hers were ardently fixed on the rosary of her idolatrous
creed, to which she pressed with devotion her cold and quivering lips,
while the crucifix which lay on her bosom was steeped in the blood she
had shed to preserve him.

This affecting combination of images so opposite and so eloquent in
their singular but natural association, struck on his heart with a force
which his reason and his zeal had no power to resist:--and the words
which religion, awakened to its duty, sent to his lips, died away in
sounds inarticulate, from the mingled emotions of horror and compassion,
of gratitude and love--and, wringing his hands, while cold drops hung
upon his brow, he exclaimed in a tone of deep and passionate affliction,
“Luxima, Luxima! are we then to be _eternally disunited_?”

Luxima replied only by a look of love, whose fond expression was the
next moment lost in the convulsive distortions of pain. Much enfeebled
by the sudden pang, a faintness, which resembled the sad torpor of
death, hung upon her frame and features; yet her eyes were still fixed
with a gaze so motionless and ardent, on the sole object of her dying
thought, that her look seemed the last look of life and love, when both
inseparably united dissolve and expire together. “Luxima,” exclaimed the
Missionary wildly, “Luxima, thou wilt not die! Thou wilt not leave me
alone on earth to bear thy innocent blood upon my head, and thy
insupportable loss for ever in my heart!--to wear out life in shame and
desolation--my hope entombed with thee--my sorrows lonely and
unparticipated--my misery keen and eternal!--Oh! no, fatal creature!
sole cause of all I have ever known of bliss or suffering, of happiness
or of despair, thou hast bound me to thee by dreadful ties; by bonds,
sealed with thy blood, indissoluble and everlasting! And if thy hour is
come, mine also is arrived, for triumphing over the fate which would
divide us; we shall _die_, as we dared _not live_--together!”

Exhausted by the force and vehemence of an emotion which had now reached
its crisis--enervated by tenderness, subdued by grief, and equally
vanquished by bodily anguish, and by the still surviving conflicts of
feeling and opinion--he sunk overpowered on the earth; and Luxima, held
up by the sympathizing Pundit, seemed to acquire force from the weakness
of her unfortunate friend, and to return from the grasp of death, that
she might restore him to life. Endeavouring to support his head in her
feeble arms, and pressing her cold cheek to his, she sought to raise and
cheer his subdued spirit, by words of hope and consolation. At the sound
of her plaintive voice, at the pressure of her soft cheek, the creeping
blood quickened its circulation in his veins, and a faint sensation of
pleasure thrilled on his exhausted nerves; he raised his head, and fixed
his eyes on her face with one of those looks of passionate fondness,
tempered by fear, and darkened by remorse, with which he had so
frequently, in happier days, contemplated that exquisite loveliness
which had first stolen between him and Heaven. Luxima still too well
understood that look, which had so often given birth to emotions, which
even approaching death had not quite annihilated; and with renovated
strength (the illusory herald of dissolution) she exclaimed--“Soul of my
life! the God whom thou adorest, did doubtless save thee from a dreadful
death, that thou mightest live for others, and still he commands thee to
bear the painful burthen of existence: yet, oh! if for others thou
_wilt not live_, live at least for _Luxima!_ and be thy beneficence to
her nation, the redemption of those faults of which for thy sake she has
been guilty!--Thy brethren will not dare to take a life, which God
himself has miraculously preserved--and when _I_ am no more, thou shalt
preach, not to the Brahmins only, but to the Christians, that the sword
of destruction, which has been this day raised between the followers of
thy faith and of mine, may be for ever sheathed! Thou wilt appear among
them as a spirit of peace, teaching mercy, and inspiring love; thou wilt
soothe away, by acts of tenderness, and words of kindness, the stubborn
prejudice which separates the mild and patient Hindu from his species;
and thou wilt check the Christian’s zeal, and bid him follow the sacred
lesson of the God he serves, who, for years beyond the Christian era,
has extended his merciful indulgence to the errors of the Hindu’s mind,
and bounteously lavished on his native soil those wondrous blessings
which first tempted the Christians to seek our happier regions. But
should thy eloquence and thy example fail, tell them my story! tell them
how I have suffered, and how even thou hast failed:--thou, for whom I
forfeited my cast, my country, and my life; for ’tis too true, that
still _more loving_ than enlightened, my ancient habits of belief clung
to my mind, thou to my _heart_: still I lived thy seeming proselyte,
that I might _still live thine_; and now _I die_ as Brahmin women _die_,
a _Hindu_ in my feelings and my faith--dying for him I loved, and
believing as my fathers have believed.”

Exhausted and faint, she drooped her head on her bosom--and the
Missionary, stiffened with horror, his human and religious feelings
alike torn and wounded, hung over her, motionless and silent. The
Pundit, dropping tears of compassion on the chilling hands he chafed,
now administered some water to the parched lips of the dying Indian, on
whose brow, the light of the moon shone resplendently. Somewhat revived
by the refreshment, she turned on him her languid but grateful eyes, and
slowly recognizing his person, a faint blush, like the first doubtful
colouring of the dawn, suffused the paleness of her cheek; she continued
to gaze earnestly on him for some moments, and a few tears, the last
she ever shed, fell from her closing eyes,--and though the springs of
life were nearly exhausted, yet her fading spirits rallied to the
recollection of _home!_ of _friends!_ of _kindred!_ and of _country!_
which the presence of a sympathizing compatriot thus painfully and
tenderly awakened--then, after a convulsive struggle between life and
death, whose shadows were gathering on her countenance, she said in a
voice scarcely audible, and in great emotion--“I owe thee much, let me
owe thee more--thou seest before thee Luxima! the Prophetess and
Brachmachira of Cashmire!--and thou wast haply sent by the interposition
of Providence to receive her last words, and to be the testimony to her
people of her innocence; and when thou shalt return to the blessed
paradise of her nativity, thou wilt say--‘that having gathered _a dark
spotted flower in the garden of love_, she expiates her error by the
loss of her life; that her disobedience to the forms of her religion and
the laws of her country, was punished by days of suffering, and by an
untimely death; yet that her _soul_ was pure from sin, as, when clothed
in transcendent brightness, she outshone, in faith, in _virtue_, all
women of her nation!’”

This remembrance of her former glory, deepened the hues of her
complexion, and illumined a transient ray of triumph in her almost
beamless eyes: then pausing for a moment, she fixed her glance on the
image of her tutelar god, which she still held in her hand--the idol,
wearing the form of infant beauty, was symbolic of that religious
mystic love, to which she had _once_ devoted herself! she held it for a
moment to her lips, and to her heart--then, presenting it to the
Cashmirian, she added, “Take it, and bear it back to him, from whom I
received it, on the day of my consecration, in the _temple of
Serinagur!_ to him! the aged grandsire whom I abandoned!--dear and
venerable!--should he still survive the loss and shame of her, his child
and his disciple! should he still deign to acknowledge as _his_
offspring the outcast whom he cursed--the Chancalas whom--” the words
died away upon her quivering lips, “Brahma!” she faintly exclaimed,
“Brahma!” and, grasping the hands of the Missionary, alternately
directed her looks to him and to Heaven; but he replied not to the last
glance of life and love. He had sunk beneath the acuteness of his
feelings; and the Indian, believing that his spirit had fled before her
own to the realms of eternal peace, and there awaited to receive her,
bowed her head, and expired in the blissful illusion, with a smile of
love and a ray of religious joy shedding their mingled lustre on her
slowly closing eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

       *       *       *       *       *

The guards, who by order of the Inquisition were sent in pursuit of the
fugitives, reached the cavern of their retreat three days after that of
the insurrection; but here they found only a pile partly consumed, and
the ashes of such aromatic plants as the interstices of the surrounding
rocks afforded, which the Hindus usually burn with the bodies of their
deceased friends, at the funeral pyre; they continued therefore their
search farther along the shore; it was long, persevering and fruitless.
The Apostolic Nuncio of India was _never heard of more_.

Time rolled on, and the majestic order of nature, uninterrupted in its
harmonious course, finely contrasted the rapid vicissitudes of human
events, and the countless changes in human institutions! In the short
space of _twenty_ years, the mighty had fallen, and the lowly were
elevated; the lash of oppression had passed alternately from the grasp
of the persecutor to the hand of the persecuted; the slave had seized
the sceptre, and the tyrant had submitted to the chain. Portugal,
resuming her independence, carried the standard of her triumph even to
the remote shores of the Indian ocean, and, knowing no ally but that of
_compatriot unanimity_, resisted by her single and unassisted force, the
combined powers of a mighty state, the intrigues of a wily cabinet, and
the arms of a successful potentate.[19] While _Freedom_ thus unfurled
her spotless banner in a remote corner of the West, she lay mangled and
in chains, at the foot of victorious tyranny in the East. _Aurengzebe_
had waded through carnage and destruction to the throne of India--he had
seized a sceptre stained with a brother’s blood, and wore the diadem,
torn from a parent’s brow! worthy to represent the most powerful and
despotic dynasty of the earth, his genius and his fortunes resembled the
regions he governed, mingling sublimity with destruction; splendour with
peril;--and combining, in their mighty scale, the great extremes of
good and evil. Led by a love of pleasure, or allured by a natural
curiosity, he resolved on visiting the most remote and most delicious
province of his empire, where his ancestors had so often sought repose
from the toils of war, and fatigue of government; and where, _twenty
years_ before, his own heroic and unfortunate nephew, Solymon Sheko, had
sought asylum and resource against his growing power and fatal
influence. He left _Delhi_ for Cashmire, during an interval of general
prosperity and peace, and performed his expedition with all the pomp of
eastern magnificence.[20]

In the immense and motley multitude which composed his suite, there was
an European _Philosopher_, who, highly distinguished by the countenance
and protection of the emperor, had been led, by philosophical curiosity
and tasteful research, to visit a country, which, more celebrated than
known, had not yet attracted the observation of genius, or the inquiry
of science. He found the natural beauty of the vale of _Cashmire_, far
exceeding the description of its scenes which lived in the songs of the
Indian bards, and its mineral and botanic productions curious, and
worthy of the admiration and notice of the naturalist; and in a spot
which might be deemed the region of natural phenomena, he discovered
more than _one_ object to which a moral interest was attached. Yet to
_one object only_ did the _interest of sentiment_ peculiarly belong; it
was a sparry cavern, among the hills of Serinagur, called, by the
_natives_ of the valley, the “_Grotto of congelations_!”[21] They
pointed it out to strangers as a place constructed by magic, which for
many years had been the residence of a recluse! a stranger, who had
appeared suddenly among them, who had been rarely seen, and more rarely
addressed, who led a lonely and an innocent life, equally avoided and
avoiding, who lived unmolested, awakening no interest, and exciting no
persecution--“he was,” they said, “a wild and melancholy man! whose
religion was unknown, but who prayed at the confluence of rivers, at the
rising and the setting of the sun; living on the produce of the soil, he
needed no assistance, nor sought any intercourse; and his life, thus
slowly wearing away, gradually faded into death.”

A _goalo_, or Indian shepherd, who missed him for several mornings at
his wonted place of matinal devotion, was led by curiosity or by
compassion to visit his grotto. He found him dead, at the foot of an
altar which he had himself raised to the deity of his secret worship,
and fixed in the attitude of one who died in the act of prayer. Beside
him lay a small urn, formed of the sparry congelations of the grotto--on
opening it, it was only found to contain some ashes, a cross stained
with blood, and the dsandum of an Indian Brahmin. On the lucid surface
of the _urn_ were carved some characters which formed the name of
“_Luxima!_”--It was the name of an _outcast_, and had long been
condemned to oblivion by the crime of its owner. The Indians shuddered
when they pronounced it! and it was believed that the _Recluse_ who
lived so long and so unknown among them, was the same, who once, and in
days long passed, had seduced, from the altar of the god she served, the
most celebrated of their religious women, when he had visited their
remote and lovely valley in the character of

                       _A Christian Missionary_.

                               THE END.

       *       *       *       *       *

                                NOTICE.

The circumstance of these volumes, being founded on the History of the
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attention of his Readers to

                              THE HISTORY

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                             INQUISITIONS,

                          _FROM THEIR ORIGIN_

                                TO THE

                             Present Time;

                               Including

                        THE SECRET TRANSACTIONS

                               OF THOSE

                           Horrid Tribunals.

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                              FOOTNOTES:

 [1] The odour of this flower produces violent head-aches.

 [2] Une laine, ou plutôt un poil, qu’on nomme _touz_, se prend sur les
 poitrines des chèvres sauvages des montagnes de Cashmire.--_Bernier._

 It is of this wool the Cashmirian shawls are formed.

 [3] See Kindersley’s History of the Hindu Mythology.

 [4] “C’est dans le _Shasta_ que l’on trouve ’histoire de la Chute des
 Anges.”--_Essai sur les Mœurs des Nations. P. 2, T. 2._

 [5] This singular spectacle frequently presents itself to the eye of
 the traveller in the hilly parts of the Carnatic, as well as in Upper
 India, particularly about the _Ghauts_, which are covered with the
 bamboo tree.

 [6] One of the varieties of the _asbestos_, which when long exposed to
 air, dissolves into a downy matter, unassailable by common fire.

 [7] _Augne-Baugauvin_, the God of Fire, and one of the eight keepers
 of the world.

 [8] Saindovoer.

 [9] The _tellertum_ is a mark which is at once an ornament and an
 indication of cast and religious profession.

 [10] According to the _Abbé_ Guy on, there is in India a species of
 serpent, which even in the pursuit of its prey is to be lulled into a
 profound slumber by the sounds of _musical instruments_. The Indian
 serpent-hunters frequently make use of this artifice, that they may
 destroy them with greater facility.

 [11] “Notwithstanding the labours of the Missionaries for upwards of
 two hundred years, out of perhaps one hundred millions of _Hindus_,
 there are not twelve thousand _Christians_, and those are almost all
 entirely _chancalas_, or _outcasts_.”--_Sketches of the History of the
 Religion, Learning, and Manners of the Hindus, p. 48._

 [12] “They all wear (the Familiares de Santo Officio), as a mark of
 creditable distinction, a gold medal, upon which are engraven the Arms
 of the Inquisition.”

      _Stockdale’s History of the Inquisitions._


 [13] The people also dare not speak of this Inquisition, but with the
 utmost respect and reverence; and if by accident the slightest word
 should escape one, which concerned it ever so little, it would be
 necessary immediately to accuse and inform against one’s self. People
 are frequently confined to the prison for one, two, or three years,
 without knowing the reason, and are visited only by officers of the
 Inquisition, and never suffered to behold any other person.--_History
 of the Inquisition by Stockdale_, p. 213.

 [14] An insurrection of a fatal consequence took place in _Vellore_
 so late as 1806, and a mutiny at Nundydrag and Benglore, occurred
 about the same period: both were supposed to have originated in the
 religious bigotry of the natives, suddenly kindled by the supposed
 threatened violation of their faith from the Christian settlers.

 [15] The Pagans and Moors of Goa are not subject to the Inquisition
 till they have been baptized. A disgusting and absurd cruelty is
 displayed in its treatment of those unfortunate Indians who are
 accused of magic and sorcery, and, as guilty of such offences, are
 committed to the flames.--_See Hist. of the Inquisition, p. 243._

 [16] The Inquisition, which punishes with death relapsed Christians,
 never inflicts any capital punishment on those who have not received
 the rites of baptism.--_History of the Inquisition, p. 214._

 [17] A species of delirious fever.

 [18] “Morreo queimado por hereje convitto negativo.”

 [19] Revolution of Portugal.

 [20] Historical.

 [21] Monsieur de Bernier laments, in his interesting account of his
 journey to Cashmire which he performed in the suite of Aurengzebe,
 that circumstances prevented him visiting the grotto of congelations,
 of which so many strange tales were related by the natives of the
 valley.







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