Chapter Five.
We left the poor madman, Antonio Zeppa, wandering aimlessly up into the mountains of Sugar-loaf Island. Whether it was the loss of his beloved Orley alone that had turned his brain, or that loss coupled with the injury to his head, we cannot tell, but certain it is that the outward and visible violence of his great sorrow seemed to depart from him after he had entered the rugged defiles of the mountain range. His mental malady appeared to take the form of simple indifference and inactivity. Sometimes he muttered to himself as he went slowly and wearily along, but generally he was silent with his chin sunk upon his breast as he gazed upon the ground with lack-lustre eyes.
At other times he started and looked around him with a sharp, inquiring, almost timid, glance; but the gleam of memory—if such it was—soon passed away, and his handsome face resumed the gentle, almost childish, look which had settled down on it. But never again did he give vent to the heart-broken cries and wails which had marked the first stage of his derangement.
The mutterings to which we have referred were seldom coherent; but the disjointed utterances sufficed to indicate the natural character of the man. As the ruling passion is said to become dominant in death, so, in this death of reason which appeared to have passed upon Zeppa, love of his wife and child and the natives of Ratinga, as well as profound reverence and love to his God, became conspicuous in the broken sentences that occasionally dropped from his lips.
At first he had been like some grand instrument thrown wildly out of tune and swept by a reckless hand. Now he resembled the same instrument with the framework shattered, the strings hanging loose, and the music of discord as well as harmony gone for ever.
Oh it was sad, inexpressibly sad, to see the grand and good man—the image of himself, yet not himself, with bowed head and bent form, the very personification of humility—wandering forth on that lonely island of the southern seas!
After quitting the shore he continued slowly to ascend the mountain until he gained the summit. Here, seating himself on a rock, he lifted his eyes and looked slowly around him.
It was a glorious sight that met his unintelligent gaze. On the side which he had ascended, the mountain sloped abruptly into the sea, yet its precipices were not forbidding or gloomy, for they were clothed with the luxuriant and lovely vegetation of those favoured regions.
The rocks were fringed with grasses and wild flowers; the cliffs were softened by palmated leaves and gorgeous shrubs. Wild fruits in abundance grew on every side; in short, the land presented the appearance of a terrestrial paradise.
On the other side of the range similar, but softer, scenery rolled away for several miles in easy slopes, until it terminated in a plain, the farther end of which was bounded by the white sands of the shore.