The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
comfort; all so much the more commendable in you, since you are a
stranger, and not of my religion. I give you my thanks and my blessing;
they are all I have to give; and I shall not cease to pray the good God,
who is no respecter of persons, to reward you for your goodness, and to
grant you his grace.
“‘But, my dear lady, I am a priest; I am also an old man, and have not
many days to tarry here. Let me speak to you in all sincerity and
freedom.’
“Do so, my father, said I, as my eyes filled with tears.
“‘You are still young and beautiful,’ said he; ‘you have naturally a
kind and warm heart, an enthusiastic disposition, and a sincere love of
truth and justice. But, my dear child, your education has been sadly
neglected, and you have been trained to walk in a path that leadeth
where you would not go. You have fallen among evil counsellors and evil
doers, and you are entangled in the meshes of the adversary of souls.
This cause, to which you give your heart, soul, and body, is not what
you think it. You sought liberty, you have found slavery; you sought
love, and you have found only hatred; you sought virtue,
disinterestedness, fidelity,—you have found only vice, selfishness, and
treachery; you sought peace and social regeneration,—you have found only
strife, war, murder, assassination, confusion, anarchy, and oppression.
For yourself personally, the only peaceful days you have known for years
have been during the last few weeks; and your present peace is disturbed
by a mysterious dread, that I need not name or explain to you.
“‘Ask yourself, my child, and answer to yourself, honestly, if you have
not been deceived, and been acting under a fatal delusion. Ask yourself
if it was not a terrible mistake you committed, when you took Satan for
the principle of good, and the Christian’s God for the principle of
evil.’
“But, _padre mio_, what shall I do? I have a suspicion that what you say
is true. I have been a proud, vain, rash, wicked woman. But what shall I
do? I am bound in chains; I am damned.
“‘Damned, not yet, my child. As long as there is life, there is hope.
Those chains must be broken.’
“But they are too strong for me.
“‘True, true, my child, but not too strong for the Lion of the tribe of
Judah. You must be assisted——’
“At that moment the door was burst open; a gang of ruffians rushed in,
and fell upon the aged monk. The old man gave me one look, made rapidly
the sign of the cross over my head, as I had dropped on my knees to
implore them not to harm him. I might as well have pleaded to my marble
jambs. They threw him down. He rose upon his knees, folded his hands
across his breast, and with a bright, celestial expression, exclaimed, O
God, pardon them, and lay not this sin to their charge, for they know
not what they do,—when the leader of the gang plunged a dagger to his
heart. His blood flowed out into my face, and over my dress. After a
minute, they took up the body, and removed it and themselves from my
house. Though protected, to some extent, by our American character, we
did not think it prudent to remain longer in Rome, under the Republic;
and the next day we started for Paris, where we rejoined you.”
“But you never told me of the fate of that old monk before.”
“True, why should I? I could not, before we had separated, have spoken
of him to you without arousing your indignation, and inducing you to
send me again on some of those terrible secret missions on which you had
so often sent me, and which I so abhorred. But I can speak calmly now,
and without fear; and let me beg you to ask yourself the question the
old monk urged me to ask myself. Truth is truth, let it be spoken by
whom it may; and there is no reason why we should not follow good
advice, because given by a monk, even if monks have been all our
lifetime the object of our wrath, or of our derision.”
“Priscilla, I have asked myself that question; but it is of no use. I
have pledged myself, body and soul, and sworn that, come what might, I
would never repent.”
“But that oath was unlawful, and cannot bind. He who has your pledge is
a deceiver, had no right to ask it, has no right to hold it.”
“But I cannot free myself from these chains of death and hell which bind
me.”
“Such as you have been, such as I fear you are, I am told seldom find
mercy; but the deliverance is not impossible. I, worse than you, have
found it.”
“That is not so certain. You are free, only because I, in a sudden fit
of despair, freed you. But I have but to will, and you are as completely
in my power as ever.”
“That I doubt. Except when you called me to emancipate me, you have
exerted no power over me, since the good old priest was received into
our house in Rome.”
“That is owing to my forbearance.”
“Will you swear that? Will you swear that, within twenty-four hours
after you had declared me free, you did not use all your art to enthrall
me again? Did you not call again and again, within a month, at my house,
for that very purpose?”
“But you avoided me, and I could not so much as touch the hem of your
robe.”
“Very true, for I feared you, and I dare not defy you even now; but I
feel very certain that, under the protection of a name at which even
devils must bow, I am safe from all your arts.”
As she said that I rose, walked once or twice across the room, came up
before her, took her hand unresistingly, and placed my hand on her head.
I trembled. I was struck dumb, for I perceived at once that I had no
power there; and, though I evoked them, no spirits came to my aid. But
before I had let go her hand, her husband came into the room, saw us,
feared what I might do, drew his dagger, and before Priscilla could stop
him, or offer a word of explanation, aimed a blow at my heart. Priscilla
attempted to avert it, and so far succeeded, as to change somewhat its
direction. It penetrated, however, the chest, reached the lungs, and
inflicted a wound which, though it is apparently healed, and I seem to
myself to be suffering only from pulmonary consumption, which wastes me
away slowly but surely, my surgeon tells me will yet prove the occasion
of my death.
The moment James, a man of peace, and not at all given to striking, had
struck the blow, he was filled with terror at what he had done. I
assured him, for I retained my presence of mind, which I never yet lost
in any case in my life, that so far as I was concerned, he need not
blame himself, for I deserved the blow, and had long foreseen that
sooner or later his hand must deal it; but, had he delayed a moment, he
would have found it unnecessary, that his wife was safe from my
annoyances, and proof against any art I possessed. Priscilla, as soon as
she recovered from her fright, rather than swoon, told him as much; and
we both did all in our power to reassure and console him. But the matter
must not be bruited abroad, and he must conceal it for his and
Priscilla’s sake. It was concluded that I must remain for the present in
their house. James did what he could to stanch my wound, aided me to
remove to another room, and sent immediately for a surgeon whom we both
knew and could trust. For several weeks I lay at their house, nursed
with great care and tenderness, till I was able to be removed to my own
house. It was rumored that I had been stabbed in the street, but such
things not being rare in our cities, it excited very little remark; and
suspicion, though it fell on the secret societies known to exist, fell
upon no individual in particular, and no pains were taken to ferret out
the supposed assassin. The fact was noted in the journals, and was
instantly forgotten.
CHAPTER XVIII.
RELIGIOUS MONOMANIA.
I had no sooner been removed to my own house, than my old acquaintances
and friends came to see me. Mr. Cotton, the stern but well-meaning old
Puritan, who had infinitely more mind and heart than Young America, that
has learned to laugh at him, had indeed died during my absence abroad.
Mr. Winslow and the others whom I have already introduced, remained.
Poor Jack had recovered, not his former gayety, but his health and
tranquillity, and was entirely freed from the vision which had haunted
him, and which I have no reason to believe was any thing more than a
simple hallucination, occasioned by a powerful shock to his nerves,
producing a diseased state of the imagination. He had returned to
Boston, given up mesmerism, confined himself to the law, and had
prospered in his profession. When he heard of the accident which had
befallen me, he came immediately to see me, and to render me such
assistance as his warm heart prompted. He is still my chief nurse, and
declares that he will not leave me as long as my life lasts. I have
remembered him in my will, and bequeathed him the bulk of my estate,
though he knows it not,—a poor compensation for the blight I brought
upon his early hopes.
Mr. Merton, returning to the city about the time of my being wounded,
lost no time, after my removal to my own house, in renewing our former
acquaintance. Mr. Winslow, and Mr. Sowerby, and Leila and her admirer,
who had become husband and wife, and a sober and sensible couple, were
frequently in the sick man’s room. Nobody deserted me; and never in my
life have I had occasion to complain of ingratitude, or the loss of a
friend. The world is bad enough, but after all not so bad as sometimes
represented. I have always been treated infinitely better than my
deserts; and I have found good sense, warm hearts, and noble virtues,
where least I expected them. I have reproaches only for myself. I have
done a world of wrong, and no good; and yet I have found myself, from my
childhood, surrounded by generous and disinterested affection. People,
speaking generally, are far better individually than they are
collectively; and many private virtues may be found, even in bands of
revolutionists, robbers, and assassins,—virtues which do not rise above
the natural order indeed, and have no promise of reward in heaven, but
which nevertheless are virtues. My observation has taught me to distrust
the censorious, those who rail in good set terms at all mankind or
womankind, although no man living was ever further than I am from
believing in the sinlessness of the race, or from joining in the modern
worship of woman, prompted too often by an innate pruriency unconscious
of itself.
As I became able to bear conversation, and to take part in it
occasionally, mesmerism and the Spirit-Manifestations were a frequent
topic of discourse. Jack sturdily maintained that it was all humbug.
There were indeed strange things, some phenomena which he could not
explain, but he set his face against the whole movement, had no belief
in it, and would have nothing to do with it. There was, though he might
be unable to detect it, some cheat or trickery at the bottom.
Mr. Winslow held fast to his belief in the connection between mesmerism
and all the marvellous, prodigious, or miraculous facts recorded in
history. He accepted those facts substantially as related, but did not
accept their usual explanation. The miracles of sacred history, and the
marvellous facts of profane history, were to be explained on natural
principles, by the mesmeric agent, or by whatever other name we might
call it.
Mr. Merton argued that, if the phenomena usually called Satanic,
obsession, possession, witchcraft, black magic, ghosts or apparitions,
clairvoyance and second sight, could be explained without resort to the
supernatural, the other class of facts, the miracles of sacred history,
could be also explained without the supposition of the special
intervention of Divine power. He thought, if we could account for the
former without Satan, we could for the latter without the supernatural