Read "Melmoth the Wanderer" by Charles Maturin online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I'll not wed Paris -- Romeo is my husband. / - Shakespeare
Isidora was so accustomed to the wild exclamations and (to her) unintelligible allusions of her mysterious lover, that she felt no unwonted alarm at his singular language, and abrupt departure. There was nothing in either more menacing or formidable than she had often witnessed; and she recollected, that after these paroxysms, he often reappeared in a mood comparatively tranquil. She felt sustained, therefore, by this reflection -- and perhaps by that mysterious conviction impressed on the hearts of those who love profoundly -- that passion must always be united with suffering; and she seemed to hear, with a kind of melancholy submission to the fatality of love, that her lot was to suffer from lips that were sure to verify the oracle. The disappearance, therefore, of Melmoth, gave her less surprise than a summons from her mother a few hours after, which was delivered in these words: "Madonna Isidora, your lady-mother desires your presence in the tapestried chamber -- having received intelligence by a certain express, which she deems fitting you should be acquainted withal."