He proceeds to tell him a
tale in which he will feel a peculiar interest, that of Isidora,
his own daughter, and finally urges him to hasten to her rescue.
Don Francisco wanders by easy stages to Madrid, and, on his
arrival, marries Isidora against her will to Montilla. Melmoth,
according to promise, appears at the wedding. The bridegroom is
slain. Isidora, with Melmoth's child, ends her days in the
dungeons of the Inquisition, murmuring: "Paradise! will he be
there?" So far as one may judge from the close of the story, it
seems not.
Moncada and John Melmoth, whom we left, at the beginning of the
romance, in Ireland, are revisited by the Wanderer, whose time on
earth has at last run out. He confesses his failure: "I have
traversed the world in the search, and no one to gain that world,
would lose his own soul." His words remind us of the text of the
sermon which suggested to Maturin the idea of the romance. Like
the companions of Dr. Faustus, Melmoth and Moncada hear terrible
sounds from the room of the Wanderer in the last throes of agony.
The next morning the room is empty; but, following a track to the
sea-cliffs, they see, on a crag beneath, the kerchief the
Wanderer had worn about his neck. "Melmoth and Moncada exchanged
looks of silent and unutterable horror, and returned slowly
home.
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