Reddens laudes Domino;
Qui estis in convivio,
Plaudite cum cantico. — — —
A fine chapter is also one describing a night at the castle of Courtenaye before the first battle. A frightful tempest is raging, and most of the guests have retired; at last only a few of the chief crusaders are sitting in the dimly illuminated hall, passing their time in telling ghost-stories. Sir Aymer, in his humorous way, relates an adventure which happened to his uncle, whereupon De Montfort tells a very dismal one which happened to himself, as he once beheld the ghosts of a large congregation of Albigenses whom he had slaughtered some ten years before. The right note is here struck by simple means, and the uncomfortable sensations of the superstitious company are skilfully transferred to the reader.—Scenes like these are, no doubt, filled with the real spirit of the time in question; but as a historical novel in the usual sense of the word The Albigenses has no great claims to distinction. The historical facts which underlie the plot are but meagre, and, moreover, treated with considerable freedom. Imagination often makes up for accurate information. Even one of those critics[173] who admired The Albigenses as a romance, thinks the author deficient in a ‘minute and extensive acquaintance with the antiquities of the middle ages,’ declaring his descriptions to be of a cast that ‘may be executed by any one moderately read in Froissart, and tolerably conversant with the less recondite sources of information contained in the common English and German romances.’
The picture of the merry life led in the abbey of Normoutier strikes one by its perfect novelty in Maturin’s work, nor are there, in The Albigenses, any instances of ecclesiastical cruelty or monastic oppression; the monks are, upon the whole, no worse than other people. Nevertheless the Radcliffe school reappears in some of the adventures of the heroines, especially in the escape of Isabelle from the clutches of the outlaw, and that of Genevieve from the palace of the bishop of Toulouse. The secret passages, happily detected at the right moment, the inevitable subterranean vaults and concealed doors have their origin in that style of fiction which Maturin now had disavowed. The design of Marie de Mortemar to have her vengeance on the last survivor of the house of Courtenaye executed by the hand of Sir Paladour, leads back to the idea upon which Montorio is founded. Otherwise The Albigenses is but too clearly modelled on Scott; most of the characters have their prototypes in the Waverley novels, and a great many of the situations likewise bear a resemblance to the same distinguished patterns. Quentin Durward, Old Mortality (1817), Ivanhoe (1820), The Monastery (1820) and others are constantly called to mind, all the comparisons being to the disadvantage of The Albigenses. To mention some of the most conspicuous likenesses, count Simon de Montfort has a counterpart in duke Charles of Burgundy in Quentin Durward; both are men of a fierce and uncontrollable temper and unrefined habits, accustomed only to consult their own will and pleasure. Duke Charles has the same message to Isabelle of Croye as De Montfort to Isabelle of Courtenaye, namely, of a marriage which appears to be against the inclinations of the heroines, and the language of these powerful lords, when contradicted, is very offensive to a young lady of rank. Duke Charles threatens to drag the lady to the altar with his own hands, contemptuously speaking of her ‘baby face,’ while De Montfort, in the corresponding scene, flies out against Isabelle, calling her a ‘gaudy, delicate, disdainful toy.’ At last the matter is, in both cases, referred to the skill and valour of the champions of the fair ones.—The capture of Isabelle by the outlaw resembles much the seizure of Rowena, in Ivanhoe, by Reginald Front-de-Boef. Both prisoners are, as a token of respect, shown into the best rooms; ‘the apartment to which the Lady Rowena had been introduced was fitted up with some rude attempts at ornament and magnificence, and her being placed there might be considered as a peculiar mark of respect not offered to the other prisoners. — — — The tapestry hung down from the walls in many places, and in others was tarnished and faded under the effects of the sun, or tattered and decayed by age.’ Maturin’s description of the chamber of Isabelle is exactly similar: ‘It was to this apartment the lady Isabelle ascended, and it was evident that it had been furnished with a kind of rude and hasty splendour. Tapestry was hung on the walls by wooden pegs stuck between the interstices of the stones, but in many places those walls of ragged stone were totally bare.’ Then the ladies are the object of love-making by persons odious to them, while their real lovers lie prisoners in the same castles. Rebecca, in Ivanhoe, obviously served as a model to Genevieve. Their goodness and mildness is the same, and the one, being the daughter of a Jew, as well as the other being a heretic, is in a defenceless and dangerous position. The speech of the templar to Rebecca, when he persuades her to fly with him to the Orient and become a partner in his bold plans has, no doubt, influenced the speech which the bishop makes to Genevieve, quoted above:
The Templar loses, as thou hast said, his social rights, his power of free agency, but he becomes a member and a limb of a mighty body, before which thrones already tremble,—even as the single drop of rain which mixes with the sea becomes an individual part of that resistless ocean, which undermines rocks and engulfs royal armadas. Such a swelling flood is that powerful league. Of this mighty Order I am no mean member, but already one of the Chief Commanders, and may well aspire one day to hold the batoon of Grand Master. The poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon the necks of kings—a hempsandall’d monk can do that. Our mailed step shall ascend their throne—our gauntlet shall wrench the sceptre from their gripe. — — —
The likeness of the bishop to the templar is, however, but slight; the latter is a fantast, with nothing of the cold deliberateness of the former.—In the abbot of Normoutier critics believed they recognized the prior of Jorvault. Neither is, indeed, over-eager in discharging his sacerdotal duties, yet the prior is a man of the world, while the abbot is a coarse boar and never would have wit enough to compose a letter like that sent by the prior to the templar—however heartily he would approve of the contents.—Sir Ezzelin de Verac would scarcely have been born but for the existence of Sir Piercie Shafton in The Monastery; but of all imitations in The Albigenses he is the least successful. His only interest is the state of his wardrobe, and his only accomplishment to dress fashionably, while Sir Piercie—one of the most delightful creations of Scott—is a master also of other arts, knowing how to recite poetry and play lute and viol-de-gamba. The ‘euphuistic’ conversation of Sir Piercie is feebly copied by Sir Ezzelin; the epithets which the former bestows on Halbert Glendinning—‘Good goatbearded apostle! Good fellow! Good selvaggio!’—are echoed in the terms of address of the latter to an Albigeois whose prisoner he once happens to be: ‘Good villagio! kind rustic!’ and so on.—
A very characteristic figure in the romantic literature of the time is, finally, Marie de Mortemar. A personage of this kind had once before, through the influence of Scott, occupied Maturin’s imagination; the old Irishwoman in Women, as we have seen, was pronounced to be drawn after Meg Merrilies, and the same observation was made by critics[174] about Marie de Mortemar: ‘—an old woman, who is a sorceress, a conspirator, a preserver, and a perpetual meddler; such are the sins for which the maker of Meg Merrilies has to answer.’ The type certainly was, if not actually invented, at least made fashionable by Scott. His old women appear as champions of some great cause which they with might and main try to advance, or else endeavour to revenge personal injuries to which they have been subjected and which have reduced them to their pitiable state. Marie de Mortemar belongs to the latter class, possessing, however, all the strength and energy of the former. With Meg Merrilies she has but little in common, except the miraculous skill with which she pursues her aim; she guides the ways of Paladour much as Meg guides young Bertram, never resting till punishment has reached the guilty. Magdalena Greame, in The Abbot (1820) has devoted her life to Queen Mary and the Catholic faith, and as mysteriously and unflinchingly conducts the adventures of her kinsman Roland, whom she has chosen to be a promoter of her schemes. Yet another meddler is Norna in The Pirate (1822). She, like Marie de Mortemar, has been ill-used in her youth and partially lost her reason; and although she is not revengeful and her meddling is only for the good, she has the same gift of omnipresence and omniscience which appeals to the superstition of her neighbours and which has been acquired in a way suggested, perhaps, by the Radcliffe heroes: ‘It was one branch of various arts by which Norna endeavoured to maintain her pretensions to supernatural powers, that she made herself familiarly and practically acquainted with all the secret passes and recesses, whether natural or artificial, which she could hear of, whether by tradition or otherwise, and was, by such knowledge, often enabled to perform feats which were otherwise unaccountable.’ Marie de Mortemar, it is needless to say, is perfectly acquainted with the caves and the rocks, the high-ways and by-ways of all Languedoc.—The other variation of this character is personified by Ulrica in Ivanhoe: a deeply-wronged woman, a prisoner, who once ‘was free, was happy, was honoured, loved, and was beloved’ while yet being ‘the daughter of the noble Thane of Torquilstone, before whose frown a thousand vassals trembled’—just as her counterpart in The Albigenses was ‘a noble, beautiful lady, heiress of Mortemar.’ As the prototype of Ulrica we may perhaps regard Queen Margaret in Shakespeare’s Richard III, who walks about, a ghost of her former self, cursing the murderer of her son and her husband:
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?—