so I ran into the street, and hastily accosted him.
What I said to him I know not, for my words were wild and ambiguous; but he promised that he would dine with me the following day, although his manners were even more reserved than when I spoke to him at the Museum.
Our instincts ought ever to be attended to; the brute creation follow nothing else, and they commit no sin. The first time I saw this stranger, he was looking at an inscription at Athens, and I felt a secret desire to get from his presence; but he entangled me with his talk, his knowledge of everything around, his high bearing, his intelligent eyes, and his superb Spanish cloak.
Again we were seated at the same table, and I again requested him to remove his mantle.
"Not yet," he said significantly; "but after the cloth is removed I will, if you still wish it, take off this upper clothing."
Oh how sarcastically were these words pronounced! My heart beat violently; I could not eat, and became abstracted and melancholy; not a word was said respecting my request to him, nor did he ask me why I sought him. He ate in silence, and seemed to have forgotten he was not alone.
When the table was cleared, the stranger coolly took a book from under his cloak, and began to read; whilst I, pondering on all I had ever known of him, began to feel the most burning desire to see this man once without his cloak, and was determined to do my utmost to effect it.
"The cloth is now removed, signor," said I, "and you promised then you would take off that everlasting garment."
"It displeases you, then?" retorted my companion. "Is it not unsafe to penetrate below the exterior of all things? Is not the surface ever the most safe? Is not the outer clothing of nature ever the most beautiful to the eye? What deformity dwells in mines, in caverns, at the bottom of the ocean! Nature wears a cloak as beautiful as mine: do you wish also to strip off her covering as well as mine?"
"At this moment, signor," said I gloomily, "I was not thinking of Nature at all, but of the strangeness of your ever wearing that cloak."
"Was it for this you came from England, Sir Theodore?" inquired the marquis, "and sought me at Naples? The knowledge, I should deem, could never compensate you for the loss of your cousin's society so many days."
"It was not for this I sought you, noble marquis," I replied, piqued at his irony; "but, when a man ever wears a cloak, it must be for some purpose."
"Granted," slowly said my companion; "I have such purpose."
"Which you promised to unfold!" I exclaimed, with pertinacity. "Is it still your pleasure so to do?"
"It is necessary first that we should have no intruders," he answered, with a tone that froze me to the heart. Oh, how cutting, how sarcastic did it sound in my ears!
"No person will enter this apartment save my faithful servant, Hubert; therefore – "
"I promised to enlighten the master, and not the servant. If you insist on this strange request, the door must be securely locked; there must be no chance of interruption."
"Oh, what a fuss," I thought, "about a mantle! Why, he must be mad too! How can he cure me of an evil he has himself? Lock the door, forsooth, because he takes off his cloak! But I must humour him, I suppose, or he will find an excuse for breach of promise." As I thought this, I walked to the door, locked it, and, placing the key upon the table, merely said, "Now, signor, your promise?"
"Would it not be prudent, young gentleman," he observed, laying his finger on my sleeve, "that you should speak of your request, – that one that brought you hither, and which I should conceive of more importance than the satisfying an idle curiosity, – would it not be wiser of you to mention this previously to my taking off my cloak."
"Oh, what importance he attaches to so trifling a thing!" thought I; "but, after all, the man is right; I had better attend to the most essential, nor was I wise to couple two requests together."
"Signor Marquis," said I, "have you any cure for insanity?"
"I cured your father," was the answer, "and this your mother knows. He in return did me a service; he presented me with – this excellent cloak."
I was more puzzled than ever; I had never before heard that my poor father had unsettled reason, but many circumstances made me now believe it. I fancied too that my youngest sister gave indications of the same disorder; she was growing melancholy and reserved. "Oh, heavens!" thought I, "there will be more work for this man to do; I had better invite him at once to England, and make him physician in ordinary to our family."
"I have an engagement at nine," said the stranger; "have you any other inquiries to make?"
"But, if you cured my father, Signor Marquis," I observed, "how is it that I have inherited the disease? Should not the cure have eradicated it for ever from him and his posterity?"
"Is it not enough that I prevented the display of such a malady during his life? that I drove away the cloud that obscured his day, so that the sun of reason shone brightly on him until his death? What had I to do with future generations? with a race of men then unborn? I performed my contract, and he was satisfied. Shall the son be more difficult to please than the father?"
I interrupted him, "Oh, mysterious man! canst thou not cure the root of this disease? stop its fatal progress? prevent the seed from partaking of the nature of the plant?"
"Young man!" solemnly returned the marquis, "was not thy first progenitor, the man who resided in Paradise, mad– essentially mad? and has not his disease been carried on, in spite of all physicians, down, down to the present hour? It is woven into man's very nature; the warp and woof of which he is composed. I can check its open manifestation in a single individual; but the evil will only be dammed up during his time, to give it an increased impetus and power to those who follow him. Art thou not an instance of this fact? Hast thou not been madder than thy father?"
I groaned aloud. I remembered my own wild delusions, my sudden bursts of passion. I even began to think that madness ruled me at that very hour; that all I saw and heard was the coinage of a distempered brain.
At length I said, dejectedly, unknowing that I spoke aloud, "Then I must never marry; my children will become worse than myself. Farewell then – "
"Or rather," interrupted the cloaked stranger, "farewell to human marriages altogether, if those who marry must be free from madness. Why, 'tis the very sign they are so, their wishing to rivet fetters on themselves; but, no matter. What have I to do with all the freaks and frenzied institutions of such a set of driveling idiots?"
"Art thou not a man?"
"Thou shalt judge for thyself, thou insect of an hour!" and he unclasped his cloak, and stood erect before me. Coiled around him like a large boa-constrictor, reaching to his very throat, – But I sicken as I write! The remembrance of that moment, how shall it be effaced? Time deadens thousands of recollections, but has never weakened the impression made upon me at that appalling moment!
The immense mass that wound its lengthy fibres round him, like a cable of a ship, now became sensibly animated by life! I beheld it move, and writhe, and unfold itself! I heard its extremity drop upon the floor! I saw it extend itself, and creep along! More – more still descended; fewer coils were round him! He turned himself to facilitate its descent; and, when the enormous whole encircled him, still undulating on the ground, that being looked towards me with one of those smiles, that Satan might be supposed to use.
"Behold!"
