Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin

Miseram me omnia terrent, et maris sonitus, et scopuli, et solitudo, et sanctitudo Apollinis. / - Latin Play

Many days elapsed before the stranger revisited the isle. How he was occupied, or what feelings agitated him in the interval, it would be beyond human conjecture to discover. Perhaps he sometimes exulted in the misery he had inflicted -- perhaps he sometimes pitied it. His stormy mind was like an ocean that had swallowed a thousand wrecks of gallant ships, and now seemed to dally with the loss of a little slender skiff, that could hardly make way on its surface in the profoundest calm. Impelled, however, by malignity, or tenderness, or curiosity, or weariness of artificial life, so vividly contrasted by the unadulterated existence of Immalee, into whose pure elements nothing but flowers and fragrance, the sparkling of the heavens, and the odours of earth, had transfused their essence -- or, possibly, by a motive more powerful than all -- his own will; which, never analysed, and hardly ever confessed to be the ruling principle of our actions, governs nine-tenths of them.