Then why indulge in them? There can be no necessity for a gentleman's running up his own staircase as you did-unless, like the Poor Gentleman in the comedy, he mistakes his friend for a bailiff. » No?-My dear fellow, you are quite mistaken-but that is your happiness: You have not my cursed speculative imagination-nor my tenacious, inveterate memory-and you will never die a martyr, as I shall, to a Diabolical Suggestion. » "A what? » A prompting from the Devil. » Why I hope not. I am no methodist, to have the Old Gentleman at my ear and my elbow. But I beg pardon-you have perhaps joined the sect-or maybe the Swedenborgians, who believe in an intercourse with good and evil spirits. » <«< Neither. It is not necessary to be a follower of the Count or of Whitfield, to be subject to such infernal influence. You. remember the study I had engaged in just before you went abroad? » Yes-of the German language. And you were learning it with your accustomed gluttony as if you wanted to get from the tip to the root of the tongue in a single week.» Ah, I had better have taken to the Chinese! My mastery of the Teutonic language was the source of my misfortune. You are familiar, of course, with the German Romances? «You know, then, the prominent part which is played by the Devil in their most popular stories. More prominent even than in Paradise Lost, where Satan figures, not in the ascendant, but as the rebellious antagonist of a still mightier Power, and the divine scheme of Human Redemption moves parallel with the diabolical plot for human Perdition. In the German Romances, on the contrary, the Fiend possesses the earth, and reigns as absolutely as any Lord Paramount of the feudal ages. Nay, his sway extends beyond this world to the world to come, and he has power over life and death, not only the temporary, but the eternal. The legitimate Governor of the Universe has been deposed, and there is a frightful Interregnum-Anarchy succeeds to Order-and the blind ran dom decrees of Chance supersede the ordinances of a sciential Providence. Immortal souls are lost by the turn of a die or a card, or saved by some practical subterfuge or verbal evasion. Fraud and Violence alone are triumphant. Justice is blind and Mercy is deaf-the innocent bosom receives the bullet that was moulded with unholy rites; and the maiden, whose studies never extended beyond her prayer-book, is involved in the fate of the ambitious student who bartered his salvation for interdicted knowledge. In short, you seem to recognise that dreary fiction of the atheist-a World without a God. Such is the German Diablerie! » «Not at all. Look even at the Faust. Youth and Innocence-personified in poor Margaret-have no chance. She has no fair field; and assuredly no favour. The fight is too unequal. She has to contend single-handed against Man and Mephistophiles, the witchcraft of human love and the sorcery of Satanic hatred. The Prince of Hell in person, acts supernaturally against her--but Heaven is passive, and works no miracle in her behalf. There is no help on earth-no pity in the skies-the guardian spirits, and ministers of grace supposed to hover round, and to succour oppressed innocence, keep far aloof-the weak is abandoned to the strong-and the too tender and trusting nature is burdened through a sheer diabolical juggle with the unnatural murder of a Mother. The trial is beyond Humanity. The seductions of Faust are backed by the artifices of the subtle Spirit that overcame Eve; and Margaret falls as she needs must under such fearful oddsand seemingly unwatched by that providential eye which marks the fall of a sparrow. There is indeed the final chorus from Heaven, that 'She is saved!' but was any mind ever satisfiedwere you ever satisfied with that tardy exhibition of the Divine Justice-just as Poetical Justice is propitiated at the end of some wretched melodramatic novel, wherein at the twelfth hour the long persecuted heroine is unexpectedly promoted to a state of happiness ever after? » " Well-there is some show of truth and reason in your criticism-but, pour revenir à nos moutons-what has either Faust or the Freyschutz to do with your scampering up stairs? » ་་ Every thing. After learning German, my first use of the acquisition was to go through all their Romances, and consequently a regular course of Diablerie-from the Arch Demon who inhabited Pandemonium, to the Imp that lived in a bottle-from the scholar who bartered his soul, to the fellow who sold his own shadow. The consequence I might have foreseen. My head became stuffed with men in black, and black dogs-with unholy compacts, and games of chance. dreamt of Walpurgis Revels and the Wolf's Glen-Zamiel glared on me with his fiery eyes by night; and the smooth voice of Mephistophiles kept whispering in my ear by day. 1 « Wherever my thoughts wandered, there was the foul Fiend straddling across their path, like Bunyan's Apollyon,-ready to play with me for my immortal soul at cards or dice--to strike infernal bargains, and to execute unholy contracts to be signed with blood and sealed with sulphur. In a word, I was completely be-Devilled. » But the stairs-the running up stairs?» The result of my too intimate acquaintance with so much folly and profanity-a kind of bet. S'death! I'm ashamed to mention it!-a sort of wager that came into my head one day-a diabolical suggestion of course-that the Fiend might have me body and soul, in default of my reaching the top of the stairs before counting a certain number! » " What! a wager with the Devil! » Yes-the infernal suggestion-for it was an infernal suggestion--was whispered to me at the stair-foot; and as if my salvation had really depended on the issue, I was up the whole flight in an instant. The next moment sufficed to convince me of the absurdity, not to say sinfulness, of the act; but what defence is our deliberate reason against such sudden impulses? Before reflection could come into play, the thing was done and over. Nor was that the end. You remember my irresistible prompting to kiss the red, rugged hand of poor Sally? » « Well, there was the same mental process. You know how " much our ideas are the slaves of association-and especially they are so in a tenacious mind like mine, in which the most trivial fancies obtain a permanent record. To find myself near any stairs was enough therefore to revive the diabolical hint the mere sight of a banister set me off, in fact before the month was out I had raced again, again, and again, not only up my own flight, but up those of half my friends and acquaintances." It was impossible to help laughing at this description. The picture of a gentleman scampering up people's stairs, with the agility of a lamplighter, was, as I said in my apology, so very comical. Humph! Not if you knock down your own servant with the tray, or frighten an old rich aunt into hysterics-both of which I have performed within the last week, «But you might perhaps break yourself D «Never! it's impossible! As I said before, the mere sight of the banisters is enough. Besides, from practice, the thing has become a habit, and the mental prompting is backed by a bodily impulse. No;, and he shook his head very gravely, « I shall never leave it off-except by death. And with my state of health, to run full speed up a long flight,-there are six-and-twenty stairs, and two sharp turns-under penalty of eternal perdition, before one could count a score― » Why, surely you do not believe in the validity of such a wager? " ་་ "Heaven alone knows, seplied Horace, very solemnly, who, if he had not been made positively superstitious by his German reading, and his familiarity with the supernatural, had at least learned to regard the abstract evil principle as a real and active personage. I have tried over and over again to argue myself into your opinion. But all my reasoning and casuistry are of no avail against a sort of vague misgiving; and, as the forfeit is too awful to be risked on a doubt, I always take care, as far as in me lies, to secure the stake by winning the wager-that is to say, by getting to the top before I can count twenty. » You might secure it by slow counting." VOL. II. 70 As if that would retard his! No, my dear fellow, there is no cheating him! To tell the truth I shudder at times to think what may happen to me-a fall-a sprain-the encounter of other people on the stairs--a loose rod-the cat or dog-which by the by, shall be sent away I looked again, full in Horace's face; but he was as grave as a Judge, and evidently in sad, sober earnest : as indeed appeared the next minute, when he went off into one of his fits of abstraction, but continued to himself. From what he muttered it was plain that he was in the predicament of the people described by Coleridge as possessed by their own ideas. Some of his expressions even impressed me with a doubt of his perfect sanity-whether he was not under the influence of a kind of monomania. However, I tried to laugh and reason him out of his wager, but the attempt was futile, and I took my leave. " " n God bless you, my dear fellow?" and the tears filled his eyes as he energetically squeezed my hand, it is the last time you will see me; mark my words. However, it may affect me hereafter, that Diabolical Suggestion has done for me hereand will hurry me to my grave!» Poor Horace! His prediction was too true. On calling upon him a month afterwards, I found that he had let and removed from his old residence: but one of his servants had remained with the new tenants, and was able to give me some particulars of her ex-master. His health had suddenly broken-his complaint declaring itself to be a decided organic affection of the heart, and he had suffered from violent palpitations and spasms in the chest. The doctors had ordered change of air and scene and about a fortnight before, he had gone into the country, somewhere in Sussex, where he was living in a cottage, that as she significantly added, was - all on one floor. » But alas! she was incorrect in her statement. He was living nowhere; for that very morning he had gone to call on the clergyman of the parish, and after a flight-which made the footman believe that he had admitted a madman, dropped dead on the last top step of the drawing-room stairs! (MONTHLY MAGAZINE.) |