not be influenced by the behaviour of his confederates. The hint was adopted. The Indian, being questioned apart, confessed the whole transaction in full detail, from beginning to end; and the governor, (who in his own mind had entertained great doubts of my being guilty,— not merely from personal acquaintance with my character, but from the facts, that the murder was connected with robbery, and that I had defended the dead from being disfigured, which I had scarcely done, if I were the assassin,) immediately sent for the father of Beatriz, and signed him an order for my release. As any particulars respecting the martyrdom of that persecuted Saint, Malachi-Joseph, must be interesting to the devout reader, I will add ;-that the Indian who threw him to the crocodiles declared, that when, provoked by his admonitions, he stabbed the poor preacher, the latter merely exclaimed, "Sancta Maria, ora pro no. bis! Sancta Dei Genitrix, ora pro nobis !"—which, though he knew not its meaning, yet, being familiar to him as part of the prayers and confessions he detested, enraged him so much that he cast himself upon his victim, and finished him by strangulation, while the miserable worm, as the obstructed breath struggled through the grasped throat, muttered strange, uncouth sounds,—which the Indian described so well, by imitation, that there can remain no doubt of their being, "O blessed sinner!—fly from the wrath -! Strike while the Singular force of habit! that even the garment of hypocrisy, though at first tight and embarrassing, may fit by use the person of its wearer like a second skin, and become so necessary to his comfort, that even in death he will not part with it! CHAPTER X. Good night, good Doctor. Macbeth. Ir were not well to hasten through my life at Cumana, without devoting one little chapter to the man, to whom, above all others, I was certainly indebted for my happiness with Beatriz,-I mean Harry Smith, "quo nos medico amicoque usi sumus." Notwithstanding his aversion, affected or real, from the society of the softer sex, the Doctor honoured my nuptials with his portly presence. I had never seen him in better spirits; but, towards the close of the evening, just before he took his leave, he approached me with a strange solemnity of manner, and requested a few minutes' private conversation. I withdrew with him to another room. "So, Jeremy, you are indeed married?" said the Doctor, with a most rueful visage, and holding both my hands in both his own. Certainly; I trust I am. Don't you wish me joy, Harry?" "Joy? Hum! I would,-heartily,-if you had buried a wife; I wont, as you have married one. Γυναῖκα θάπτειν κρεῖσσὸν ἐστιν ἢ γαμεῖν.” "Tenderly cooed, most mournful widower! Why, man, have your eyes shrunk into the bottomless pit of your stomach, that you cannot see there's as great pleasure in marrying such a girl as Beatriz as in burying such a giantess as Susan? Susan,- a cow-girl of Brobdignag! Beatriz,- an angel!" "Angel! 'Gad, Jerry, if you give her wings, she may return the favour by presenting you with horns,-and then what a couple of beasts you will have made of yourselves! Faith, you may have a race of children equal to the fabulous griffins!-But don't look so grave, man,― your wife is an angel, if you so like her to be,and as handsome a one, by my soul, as Mohammed ever put into his Paradise; but you know what the Severians, and followers of Andronicus say"Mulierem supra opus Dei, infra autem ab umbilico diaboli.”* "Rail on, I see how it is with you, Smith,— you harnessed yourself abreast with a raw country-wench, as ugly as an Ogress, and in temper like the devil, or Xantippe, (which is much the same,) and now, you are jealous of my happiness, because I am linked with a fine, sensible, heroic girl, as beautiful as a Houri, and who loves me to distraction." "Heroic, egad! You'll find, soon, that a woman can't have heroism without being something of the Amazon: and as for your beauty, and love! wait a few months, my Adonis, the fire that burns so fiercely must soon come to ashes, and then your furnace is likely to go to some other hearth to be replenished. Take care of that beau. ty, Jerry. You have already been a scabbard for it; yesterday, for the same bauble, you thought you should swing like a sign, between two posts; in the next elegant transformation, we shall have you butting like a ram.- O! a woman is the devil any way! pulchram duxeris, habebis xow:" and - hum! deformen, habebis Tov." 66 "Si "Si Come, come, Smith,- this is going too far.- But, no matter, you are privileged. No one that knows you * EPIPHAN. adv. Hæreses-citante Scherzero. † And, by transposition, I suppose, the devil is a woman any way. The monks, at least, would appear to have thought so; for, in an illuminated MS., which I have in my possession, where the holy men have painted the devil tempting a father of the church, (St Anthony, perhaps,) while they have furnished the former with horns, wings, tail, and the other regalia of satanic majesty, they have added the mammary distinctions of a female, generously developed, and tipped, (or nippled, ut ita dicam,) most temptingly with gold.By the by, the rounded visage of the saint wears a most relenting expression, (while his bible seems about to change its owner,) whether at the sight of the paps, or their gilding, I leave to those to say, who are better versed than I am in the secrets of papistry. can expect any thing decent out of your mouth. And as for the modesty which might teach you to conceal your thoughts, any one that sees you will swear you want it,— your face is too red to blush, and, if you wished to hide yourself, your belly wouldn't let you." "Bravo, Jerry! you take a joke the right way. O, you'll make a passive husband! Here, dear,-place them here,-right on the forehead, love. Ha, ha, ha!" "Well, Smith, you have had your jest; I must leave you, now." "No, no, Levis,--not so soon. I have not told you yet half the good things I know of matrimony." "But you forget, it will not do to leave the company so long. That soul of etiquette, my upright father-in-law, would never forgive me such a breach of politeness.Come, Smith, you must excuse me. I am just married, remember, and a young wife, in spite of your jests, is better company than an old friend." "And it is because you are just married that I have you here. No, no, you shall not leave me till I have preached my sermon,-which I mean you to repeat to yourself, to-night, by way of curtain-lecture,-the only soliloquy of the kind you are likely henceforth to have, until you are a widower; for we all know on which side of the bed curtain-lectures originate." It was in vain I tried to escape. The Doctor thrust, (or rather, forced) his huge fingers through the buttonholes of my coat, and held me before him, till he had run through a satire on the sex, a thousand times more abusive than the 6th of Juvenal, and scarcely more decent,and embellished with innumerable quotations from authors I had never before heard of;* for the Doctor was blessed *As it may amuse the reader, I subjoin a few of these quotations. Epiphanius says of the followers of Lucius," Conjugium ut opus et præceptum diaboli damnarunt," (Hæres. xliii.); of Saturnilu, "Matrimonium contrahere et generare ex Satana dixit," (Ibid. tom. ii. lib. i.); of Tatian,— “Matrimonium atque mulierem diaboli inventionem et opus dixit,” (Ibid. xlvi.); and in Theodoret we have," Hydroparastate matrimonium scortationem atque diaVOL. II. 27 with a memory of high-pressure power, and a library, on whose shelves the modern volumes figured among the vellum-covered tomes, something as the planets do among the fixed stars, or a ruby in its setting,- I mean, in number and appearance, not in value. When, however, I was permanently settled as a married man, that is to say, when the ceremonies of visits, &c. &c. &c. (no trifling matters in Cumana-) were over, and I sat on my own sofa, in my own house, with my own, dear little Beatriz, the happy mistress of it and me, the misogamist seemed to change his sentiments. Almost every day he passed an hour or two with me and my bride, towards whom he manifested an affection like that of an elder brother for a favourite sister,—a warmth of feeling, that surprised as well as pleased me, since, till then, I had never known the doctor to evince the least fondness for any thing but good eating and good reading. Once, when I rallied him on this phenomenon, he gaily answered, "Ah, ha, Jerry! Falstaff after Mistress Ford? What did I tell you about handsome wives? 'Si bolicam conjunctionem appellârunt," (Hæret. Fab. Lib. i.)—Vide Scherzerum, (Syst. Theol.-Locus xxvii. De Conjugio), who cites these fathers and heretics just as I have given them, with many more equally ludicrous.- One would say these grave theologians must have had sad experience. The truth is, it is with men satirists, (I speak now of Dr. Smith, and his heathen authors,) and women satirized, as with the man and the lion-were the minds and occupations of the two sexes to suffer an interchange for a time, the males would have the worst of it, and I believe, upon my soul, with justice.-The best and the worst that can be said of dear woman is this; Τερπνὸν κακὸν πέφυκεν ἀνθρώποις γυνή. There are men The satire is meant for her; but it turns, I think, on us. "Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, (the case, indeed, with all men); but to us, that are troubled with certain quantities of taste and imagination, women certainly prove a xaxov,-for they play the very devil with us. Heaven knows how many hours I have wasted in my devotions at the altar of beauty! hours I would now recall, (perhaps to spend them in the same way,); but, then, I was twenty,-now, I am sixty, and have the xaxov without its qualifying adjective. |