My words produced no effect upon him, and indeed I knew that he was in a condition that entirely excluded external aid to his revolving thoughts. He was in the pit of dejection, which lies on the far side of the elevation of factitious excitement—a place of darkness, where the scorpions of conscience sting to madness, and every thought that rises in the gloomy, bewildered mind appears like a ghost that walks at midnight over open graves and bones of the dead. To some, these spectres have spoken in such a way as to rouse the dormant principles of energetic amendment, that lie beyond the reach of precept, or even that of conscience; but to the greater part of mankind this place of wailing and gnashing of teeth yields nothing but an agony that only tends to make them climb again the delusive mount from which they had fallen, though only again to be precipitated into the dreadful abode where, in the end, they must die. I knew that words had no effect upon my patient. I rose accordingly, and left him to the unmitigated horrors of his situation, in the expectation that he might be one of the few that derive from it good. I had no fear of his falling again, immediately, into another fit; for the period of nausea was only begun, and he was safe in the keeping of a rebelling stomach, whatever he might be in that of burning conscience.
He remained, as his housekeeper told me, in that state of depression for two days, often recurring to the monument of his folly, the destroyed Scripture-piece; weeping over it, and ejaculating wild professions of amendment, clenched by oaths in which the blessed name of God was made the guarantee of the strength of a resolution which the demon of his vice was standing with glaring eyes ready to overturn. I have no faith in outspoken resolves of wordy declamation: not sure of ourselves, we fortify our weak resolutions through the ear and the eye, by spoken and written adjurations, and promises of amendment. After the medicine of dejection had wrought its utmost effect, I waited upon him. He was arrayed in melancholy and gloom: but the agony of the lowest pit was gone, and he stood on a dangerous middle place, between a temporary fulfilment of his resolutions and a relapse. With a patient of this sort I never continue a system of argumentation and disputation. I am satisfied it does injury; for it reaches the moral sore only to irritate it, and an argument surmounted, or sworn resolution vanquished, is a triumph and a pabulum to the spirit of the foe greater than years of domination. I told him, what he confessed frankly, that he stood, for a day or two, on the dangerous ground from which he had so often fallen, and requested him authoritatively, as if I had assumed the reins of his judgment which he had thrown over the back of his passions, to begin instantly another painting, and try once more the American weed. Command sometimes, persuasion never, succeeds with a drunkard. He set about stretching his canvas, and put on the first coat of the foundation of his picture. I told him I would call again in a week; but that, as it was not a part of my profession to reclaim drunkards, I would discontinue my efforts in his behalf, if I found that, at the end of that time, he had swerved from his resolution. The sense of degradation in the mind of these lost votaries of intemperance, while it inclines the unhappy individuals often to resign themselves to the command (from which, however, they often break) of those they respect, responds keenly to the manifestations of disregard and loss of esteem with which they are visited in consequence of their failing. He felt strongly the manner of my treatment, and I thought and observed even tears working for vent from his still bloodshot eyes.
"You, and all good men, have a privilege to despise him who has not the approval of his own conscience," he said. "I could bear your persuasive reproof; but the thought that I have rendered myself unworthy of the trouble of one I esteem, to save me from the ruin I have madly prepared for myself, sends me to that deep pit of despair, from which I have even now struggled to get free. You saved me from death; and I was no sooner cured than I plunged headlong again into the gulf from which my disease was derived. I have made myself an ingrate, and a beggar; spurned your advice, and destroyed the work from which I expected honour and reward. I see myself as through a microscope, and you have diminished me still farther. Heaven help me!"
"You have powers within you, sir," replied I, with affected sternness, "through the medium of which you might have surveyed yourself as through the telescope; and your size would not have been greater than that potential moral magnitude to which you might long ere now have arrived, and which is still within your own power. I exhort not—I leave you to yourself.—In te omne recumbit."
"I know it, I know it," he cried, with a swelling throat. "My ruin or my salvation lies within my own breast. For ten years I have resolved, and re-resolved; and it is only three days since I destroyed that picture, and rose with fiery eyes and a burning heart to survey the consequences of my vice. O God! where is this to end? You saw what I suffered when extended on that bed, racked with pain; my brain on fire; my intellect overturned; my muscles twisted by spasms; my eyes and ears tortured by imaginary sights and sounds; with conscience in the back-ground, waiting till reason should bring to the avenging angel its victim. In that every mortal on earth might have found a lesson, but a drunkard. I found none. The very fire of my fever filled my soul with a thirst which precipitated me again deeper than ever in my old sin. I have got my senses again; and my bloodshot eyes have surveyed, and shall survey, that sad monument of my vice and folly—that child of my dreams, with which my pregnant fancy travailed with a delightful pain; and to which my fond hopes of honour, wealth, and happiness were directed—now, alas! dead—killed by my rebellious hand. From that dead body I have extracted a virtue which, with the powers of the amulet, shall guard me more effectually than the lesson of my bodily agony from further destruction. Believe me, sir. Aid me once again. If I fail this time, discard me for ever."
As he finished, he hung his head over the chair, and covered his face with his hands, to hide from me his agonised face. I told him that it was my intention to try what effect the destroyed picture would have upon him.
"You have made a fair beginning," said I. "Persevere—keep to the new picture to-morrow and to-morrow. I shall call in a week."
"You shall find me at work, and an altered man," he said; and a blush came over his face, as he tried to open some subject to me of a delicate nature. "I—I have for some time thought," he continued, "that the way in which I live—a bachelor, with few domestic enjoyments—has a part of the blame of this horrid vice that has taken possession of my soul. Had I a wife, my sensibilities would be fed, my ennui relieved, my home made comfortable, and my ardour for my profession keeping my mind in the delightful bondage of fancy, I might thus satisfy all the cravings of my feelings, and be independent of the liquid fire and the envenomed weed."
"You are a perfect Æsculapius," replied I. "Had I lectured to you for a week from the manual of Galen, I could not have suggested a better medicine; but, mark you, I know not if you have properly described the manner of its operation. A wife will do all for you that you have described; but there is a greater virtue in her; and that is, that she ought to produce in you a salutary terror of making her unhappy. This is a part of love—and I know no greater conservative element of the pure passion. If you fall again into your old habits, you will render an innocent individual miserable; and that thought ought to make you fly the poison as if it were distilled from the herbs of Medea or Circe."
"Oh, I feel it, I feel it," he replied; "and am thankful to you for the suggestion. Like Pygmalion, I fell in love with a face that I sculptured last year. Every line I chiselled was engraven on my heart, and I have dreamed of her ever since. She is herself an artist, and paints beautifully. Our sympathies are kindred; and, though I never declared my passion, from a fear that my bad reputation for inebriety may have reached her, I have looked it, and have reason to think that I may succeed."