Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

My wound was severe, but not dangerous; and though it kept me many weeks a prisoner in my chamber, an excellent constitution, and the oppor tune aid of an English chirurgeon, soon restored to me the use of the shattered limb. I remained concealed, as on the former occasion, in the Monastery. In the course of this dreadful interval, however→→→ dreadful, I say, to one who had led a restless, and, sometimes, as chance decided, a robber's or a pirate's life-my mind, thrown entirely on its own resources, yet possessing an unquenchable craving for variety of scene, and novelty of indulgence, became morbid, irritable, fierce, like a besieged garrison, which, deprived of all foreign supplies, and compelled to subsist on the means which it had previously stored up within itself, must soon either be relieved from the beleaguering force, or surrender to the enemy at discretion. Activity and freedom would have dispelled the dark thoughts which now obtained complete possession of my mind, and might perhaps have charmed to rest the purposes of revenge, which my distempered fancy brooded over in the day, and which filled my troubled dreams during the watches of the night.

How fearful is solitude to a wounded spirit! There the barb of the arrow festers, and the venom rankles in the wound; there the mind communes with the murkiest thoughts, and is familiarized to the most unhallowed imaginings; there the Evil One is busiest with his temptations, awakening

those fiercer passions which stifle the voice of conscience, and impel to the commission of deeds, which make the prosperous, vulgar, common-place herd of mankind "hold up their hands and wonder who could do them." When you weigh calmly the injustice I had suffered, the humiliations to which I had been forced to submit, and the narrow escape I had just made from assassination, with all the attendant circumstances, so powerfully calculated to work upon a mind ardent, energetic, and restless, you will not wonder much, that, in my solitary musings, revenge!-revenge !-sweet revenge, was ever present to my thoughts; and that emotion will be lessened when I confess to you a part of my creed, which you may condemn if you please, because the cowardly world will condemn it.

I hold it manly, generous, noble, to forgive an injury; mean, cowardly, despicable, to brook a premeditated insult. This is the doctrine taught by unsophisticated nature, which implanted in the breast of man the stormy passions of resentment and revenge, that fear might restrain those who would prove deaf to the calls of duty, or the dictates of conscience. Society and laws, where they exist, may protect our property; but every man is the guardian of his own honour. The midnight thief, the open robber, or the public functionary who plunders in virtue of his office, may despoil us of the former, and the loss may be borne and perhaps repaired; but the villain who spits in my face, or

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

plucks me by the beard, or gives me the lie in my throat, or seduces my wife, or corrupts my friend, inflicts ›upon me evils more dreadful than death itself, evils which nothing can repair, and blood only can expiate. Revenge, which is justice in its wild state, untrammelled by rule, is therefore the only resource of him, who, branded with unmerited ignominy, and writhing under the degradation of self-scorn, yields to the strong impulse of nature, and exacts atonement, where he cannot look for compensation. And that I now interpret rightly the natural feelings of the human heart, every man may be convinced, who observes the workings of his mind. There is an unspeakable pleasure in gratified revenge, which men of weak and wavering minds can never taste; they suffer the gnawing of the craying appetite, but feel not the stormy delight that results from the perpetration of a desperate deed, prompted by an inexpiable insult. What does this fact teach us? Has nature annexed her fiercest transports of pleasure to a passion which is never to be indulged? The brave and the dastardly equally acknowledge its influence; but the brave man strikes, the dastardly suffers. Is revenge criminal because the coward only tastes it by stealth, or deals his blow by proxy? I have observed the workings of this passion in minds of feeble texture; they are incapable of that intuitive decision-that sudden spring from purpose to action-which suffers not the exaltation of passion to slide into the meanness

1

of calculation, nor the proud but dark resolution of an energetic spirit to be quenched by the misgivings, scruples, and fears, which, while they lessen not the atrocity, detract from the dignity of crime. Nor is this all. Fear, and its consequence, indecision, compromise the safety of him whom they enslave. He reluctantly and hesitatingly obeys his passion;

[ocr errors]

remorse, coming upon him by anticipation, arrays an army of horrors before his imagination; he allows the moment of action to elude him;

My

at length he winds up his courage for the meditated deed, which he attempts just after its performance has become impossible; and for his failure, he is branded with all the guilt, and more than all the execration, heaped on the more daring and successful perpetrators of crime. For such a mean, crouching, trembling villain, who is wicked enough to devise a crime, but not bold enough to perpetrate it, the gallows is the appropriate reward. character had no such infirmity. I had learned by experience, that danger, formidable at a distance, lessens as you approach it; that the most desperate actions are always the most successful. How many hundred battles have been won by acts of fortunate uncalculating temerity, which, if but so much as hinted at in the cool hour of counsel and deliberation, would have been repulsed as monstrous or impossible!

Actuated by such sentiments, my invention was ever on the rack to devise some means by which I

[ocr errors]

might destroy my enemy. "Let me but see," said I to myself, "the blood of this accursed. Disdar spring from the stroke of my trusty handjar, and I shall give death a hearty welcome, come in what shape it may. From this moment I dismiss all further thoughts of the Voivode; he is but a paltry villain, who will meet a fitting doom from other hands; be it now my aim to reach the heart of his protector and accomplice, who, to gratify an inglorious wretch, could coolly command the destruction of his ancient companion in arms. What price would I shrink from paying for the pleasure of revelling in the death-struggles of this triple traitor, who could deliberately trample upon the laws of honour, hospitality, and humanity!" But I tortured my mind to no purpose. Knowing well he was obnoxious to the people, the Disdar never ventured abroad, unless well armed and well attended; never in his rides took any bye-roads, or unfrequented paths; never afforded me a chance of sending a ball on a message of affection to his heart. What was to be done? Fear, which creates suspicion, produces activity. The wily Moslemin had his spies everywhere. To seek the aid of others was, therefore, to endanger my own life without accelerating the purpose for which I exposed it.

[ocr errors]

In this state I spent many weeks; and no tongue can tell, no fancy can picture, the agony I endured in that brief interval, living, breathing, movingthinking, speaking, dreaming only of revenge. I

« AnteriorContinuar »