The document relates a
startling story of a mysterious Englishman who appears at a
Spanish wedding with disastrous consequences, and reappears
before Stanton in a madhouse offering release on dreadful
conditions. After reading it, John Melmoth decides to burn the
family portrait. He is visited by a sinister form, who proves
that he is no figment of the imagination by leaving black and
blue marks on his relative's wrist. The next night a ship is
wrecked in a storm. The Wanderer appears, and mocks the victims
with fiendish mirth. The sole survivor, Don Alonzo Moncada,
unfolds his story to John Melmoth. The son of a great duke, he
has been forced to become a monk to save his mother's honour. He
dwells with the excruciating detail in which Maturin is inclined
to revel, on the horrors of Spanish monasteries. Escaping through
a subterranean passage, he is guided by a parricide, who
incidentally tells him a loathsome story of two immured lovers.
His plan of flight is foiled, and he is borne off to the dungeons
of the Inquisition. Here the Wanderer, who has a miraculous power
to enter where he will, offers, on the ineffable condition, to
procure his freedom. Moncada repudiates the temptation, effects
his own escape during a great fire, and catches sight of the
stranger on the summit of a burning building.
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