With nought that loved me, and with nought to love
I stood upon the desert earth alone—
I stood and wondered at my desolation—
For I had spurned at every tie for him,
And hardly could I beg from injured hearts
The kindness that my desperate passion scorned—
And in that deep and utter agony,
Though then, than ever most unfit to die,
I fell upon my knees, and prayed for death.
The character of Aldobrand, little as he appears, is drawn with peculiar skill. He is an excellent man and has brought about the ruin of Bertram out of disinterested zeal for state and sovereign; in private life he is kindness itself and greatly revered by all, not least by his wife. It might seem as if the author had unnecessarily hazarded the sublime element in Bertram by making his enemy a man of worth; but where, then, would be the guilt in knocking down a rascal? Considering the character Bertram is intended to support, Aldobrand could hardly be otherwise, and he is, in all his respectability, somehow made clearly to display a total want of those brilliant and interesting traits the absence of which is his only disadvantage by the side of the hero.—Other characters to speak of there are not in the play. It is incomprehensible how Charles Nodier[80] could ascribe so important a part to the prior: ‘cependant c’est le Prieur qui est le héros de la tragédie, et son calme sublime contraste avec le désordre et les passions des corsaires, comme l’immobilité de ses antique murailles avec l’agitation des flots, domaine inconstant de ce peuple désespéré.’ The prior really presents an extraordinarily sorry figure. His calmness—which asserts itself only when action is required; in words he is as tempestuous as Bertram—is most akin to inertness, not to say imbecility. He is from the first initiated into Bertram’s vindictive designs against Aldobrand—who is a great friend of his—and does nothing to prevent them except talking in a way which gives vent to his fantastic admiration for Bertram, very unnatural in a person of his character and situation. His high-flown comments upon the hero are, throughout the play, nothing short of ridiculous, which they by no means are meant to be. It was, however, quite in keeping with the romantic spirit to introduce the convent into the turbulent scenes as an asylum of peace, inhabited by good and holy men—in contradiction to the Gothic Romance, where a convent usually is described as a nest of all sorts of devilry. This is the only instance in Maturin’s work where the milder view prevails; he was, in Melmoth, soon to return to the terrific style again with a force seldom equalled in literature.