University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XVIII.

Little now remains to be told of the unfortunate
Monaldi. He was taken home by his friends,
and every means used to restore his reason; but
without effect. He would remain for days together,
fixed in one spot, with his eyes bent on the
ground, and without speaking, or appearing conscious
of what was passing about him. Whilst in
this state nothing could rouse him but the voice of
his wife, which never failed to bring on a paroxysm
of raving, when he would sometimes fancy himself
Fialto, then Maldura, but more often that he was
one among the dead, and that Rosalia had come
to upbraid him; for he had in some way or other
connected her image with a spirit.

This was a bitter aggravation to Rosalia's
wretchedness, since, by forcing her to avoid him,
it deprived her of her last melancholy pleasure,
that of administering to his comforts. Her struggle
was long and severe, before she could bring

herself to quit him; she at last, however, consented
to remove to her father's. But nothing could
prevail with her to forbear visiting the house, where
she would often pass entire days, sometimes sitting
in an adjoining room, and listening to his footsteps,
or wandering to and fro, and hanging with fondness
over every spot and object with which she
could associate his slightest word or look. Oh,
woman, when thy heart is pure, and thy love true,
what is there in nature to match thee! Though
he whom thou lovest become maimed, wasted by
disease, or blanked by madness, yet wilt thou cling
to him, and see in the ruin only that image which
he first left in thy heart.

It was after one of the longest of these paroxysms,
that Monaldi was one day seen to go into
his painting-room. This unusual circumstance
was immediately caught at as a symptom of returning
reason; and the hopes of his friends were
raised on finding, a few days after, that he was at
work on a picture. But his impenetrable silence,
and the deep gloom which still hung about him,
soon shewed, that, if he had recovered at all, it
was only in part; for though his look was no longer
vacant, nor his actions without purpose, he yet
moved and looked as if he noticed nothing. What
he was employed on no one knew, for, without

speaking, he once discovered so much distress at
the intrusion of a servant, that no one after dared
enter his room. In this mood did Monaldi pass
month after month, regularly shut up, and occupied
as if in his perfect senses. At length, after
a fit of weeping, that seemed to fill the whole
house with wailing, he one day came out of his
room, and desired that his father-in-law might be
sent for. Though the order was rational, there
was still something so frightful in his expression,
that the servants at first all drew back; nor was it
till they recollected its coherence that any one prepared
to obey him.

With a beating heart, and eyes lighted up with
hope, Landi instantly followed the messenger.
Monaldi met him at the door.

“You know me then?” said the Advocate.

Monaldi spoke not a word, but led him in silence
to his painting-room.

He watched Landi's countenance. “You feel
it?” said he, “though only a picture — I have
known the original. What is there, I have seen.”
As he said this, his lips quivered and his knees
smote each other.

Monaldi's insanity could no longer be doubted,
and Landi turned from the picture with a hopeless
sigh.

“Nay, speak not,” said Monaldi, thinking he
was about to reply: “my time is measured; for
my work on earth is done — and I must burthen
it no longer. Landi — thou art reputed wise.
Yes, amongst the living thou art so. But what is
thy wisdom with the dead? Folly! Your earthly
philosophy teaches that the Prince of evil is
hideous. And you think to serve the world by it.
Miserable folly! Men flee from what is frightful.
So would they from sin, did it take the shape you
have given it. But I — I have seen it, face to
face — enthroned in the majesty of hell. Look!
That is the form in which he whom men call
Satan appears to the living. Ay, 't is with that
deadly beauty he wins your souls. But the evil
mind, which you now see mixed with it, transpires
not on earth, when he tempts you; 't is only in
hell that his victims behold, and hate it — when
too late. Look to it then, you of earth — you, to
whom I leave this warning — look to it.”

The wild mixture of reason and madness in
this speech, and the extraordinary work before
him, so confounded Landi that it was several
minutes before he became sufficiently collected
to perceive that Monaldi had disappeared. His
last words then occurred to him, and though obscure,
he yet understood enough to be alarmed,

and set off immediately in search of him. But in
vain.

From that day nothing was heard of Monaldi
till more than a year after; when, he was accidentally
discovered at the cottage of a lone woman
among the mountains of Abruzzo; but as neither
menace nor entreaty could prevail on him to return
home, his friends were compelled to humor him, and
to content themselves with making his situation as
comfortable as the nature of his abode admitted.

Of Rosalia [continues the manuscript] little
more need be said. Her affliction is still unabated;
for time, which wears away all grief for
the dead, has no power with her who is at once
both wife and widow. Monaldi is never out of
her thoughts; and, her only consolation being that
of feeling herself near him, she has become a
boarder at a convent in his neighborhood.

Maldura's fate may be told in a few words.
He became a brother of this convent soon after
his last interview with Monaldi, and died about
two years ago; if not lamented, at least pitied for
his sufferings, and respected for his penitence. It
was at his instance that the picture just mentioned
was procured for the convent. He wished to
have it near him, he said, that he might never forget
what a mind he had blasted.

So died Maldura; from whose miserable life
may be learned this useful lesson: that without
virtue, the love of praise is a curse; that distinction
is the consequence — not the object, of a
great mind; that it cannot be made so without
the desire of supplanting; and that envy, jealousy,
or any similar feeling — whatever the pursuit —
may always be regarded by those who have them,
as sure warnings that the true love of excellence
is not in them — without which nothing great and
permanent ever was produced.

The career of his accomplice was sooner ended,
and, if less painful, it was still less enviable; for,
though Fialto had always laid the unction of minor
villany to his soul when he compared himself with
Maldura, he was, for many reasons, of a character
more hopeless. If ambition hardens the heart,
sensuality kills it. The natural and social feelings
of the ambitious man, nay, also the conscience,
may all indeed be lost in selfish insulation; yet
there are causes which sometimes revive them —
such as time, disappointment, or even the attainment
of his object — whether it be power or revenge;
when they often react, as in Maldura's
case, by repentance. But there is little hope of
these in the course of the libertine; to whom
failure supplies excitement, and success adds

habit, which time only confirms; and it must be
so; for it being the nature of his vices to identify
the affections with the senses, the whole heart
becomes animal, thence a pander to the body, till
its baser functions are wasted; nor stopping even
then, but, in the restlessness of habit sending at
last its prurient desires to the brain, and mocking
the wretched remnant of the man to the very
grave. The old age of a confirmed libertine is
therefore seldom better than a loathsome phantasmagoria
of a vicious youth. The Count Fialto
was saved at least this second childhood of sin.
He had embarked soon after quitting Rome, with
the poor Nun, and his ill-got wealth, on board a
small vessel bound for Marseilles. The vessel was
never more heard of; but the bodies of the Count
and his companion were found by some fishermen,
washed up, about three weeks after, on the island
of Gorgona.