The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 187: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“Winns eae ae eee im 174 THE MYSTt RIES. tosses in his miserable garret whence famine repels even the advance of that number which costs nothing,-—when the lean, pining, perishing needlewoman snuffs her solitary candle and sighs over the work which she dares not lay aside until she shall have pushed her heart-breaking toils farther and still into the cold, cold night, when the burglar steals abroed, with pistols and crape-mask, skeleton-keys and dark lantern, to do his dangerous, desperate work,—when music resounds through the saloons of rank, wealth, and fashion, and the roseate floods of lazury gush forth from the joints in gilded shut- ters and between the folds of velvet curtains,— when in attics, and cellara, and on the steps of etreet-doors, and in the entrances of courts, and under the dry arches of bridges and coal-wharfs, are gathered those wretched outcasts of society and those innumerable beings whom monopoly in all its detestable shapes excludes from the great community of labour,—and when, too, murder bares its red right hand and mingles its voice of terror with the dull moaning of the night-wind, —at this hour was it that the monster-man en- tered one of the churchyards in the north-western suburb of London. He was clad in that rough saflor-garb which he wore when last we beheld him at his diabo- lical work;—and beneath his jacket he carried the implement that was so necessary to him in his nocturnal occupetion. On entering the churchyard he paused—he leant against the gate over which he had just clambered—and dropping the shovel from under his rough coat, he covered his countenance with his bands and groaned aloud in mortal agony. “O God! what have I done that I should thus be made the sport of an infernal hallucination— the victim of a horrible nightmare? But is it true—Oh! is it true that like a jackal I tear open the graves of the dead, and like a vampyre I prey upon them? Yes— it isno dream—no delusion : "tis a hideous, horrible, damnable reality ~andeven now—now—I feel the accursed influence creeping over me! Oh! it comes—it comes, slow and chilling at first, like the gradual coiling of a slimy snake around the limbs ;~and now it seems to burn on the surface of my flesh and tingle in my veins, as the sensation gaing upon me! Oh! spareme—spere me!" exclaimed the wretched man, throwing up his arms in despair: “spare me— spare me!” he cried, in a rending voice, as he stretched out his hands towards the moon that shone like a crescent of silver. “ But what can I do ?—how can I combat against my destiny ? It is my fate which I am obeying: like Cain am I stricken—like Judas am I doomed— likethe Wan- dering Jew am I cursed! And yet what evil have J done? Cain murdered his brother Abel: never, never have I shed a drop of human blood atall! Judas betrayed his Redeemer for thirty pieces of silver: but never did I wrong a friend! The Wandering Jew struck Christ when fainting beneath the weight of His cross as Ho bore it to Mount Calvary: but I never disavowed my Sa- viour—never forgot to pray to him night and morning! Wherefore, then, am I doomed ?— wherefore am I fated ?—wherefore am I cursed ? Oh! it is not God who bas fastened his ban upon me: it isthe world that has made me an outcast ! Iam not the victim of heaven's wrath—bat of society's injustice: Iam not s ocsacrifice to the vengeance of Providence—but to the tyranny of Man! I asked for work—and the demand waa vain: I sought to eat the bread of industry—but starvation made its gaunt home beneath my roof. I was torn away by rathless tyrants from all whom I loved and held dear: and God only knows all that I have since endured—ell that I have since become! The thought drives me med —mad—mad! Wife, where art thou? In the cold, silent grave repose thy remains. Ohildren, where are yo? Oh! that some kind spirit would waft the answer to mine ears: for I have sought ye everywhere, my poor children—my beloved babes—and I can find ye not! No wonder, then, that I am mad—furiously mad—insanely, r- bidly, raving mad !” And as the miserable wretch yelled forth these last words, he tore his hair—beat his breast vio- lently—and dashed his open palms with sil bis might against his forehead as if he sought to breek in the wall of hie brain. There were houses near enough for him to have been overheard; but perhaps the inmates slept soundly—or peradventure those whom the cries disturbed might have deemed them to emanate from the tipsy folly of some drankard reeling home. The bat swept over the head of the monster- man—the owl hooted from the belfry of the church—and the raven croaked from the adjacent tree. Then all was still—all was silent :—end the unhappy being leant against the gate— statue-like—motionless. Suddenly the influence which he had already felt creeping over him,—that indomitable, irre- sistible influence which the monster-man re- garded as his fate - his doom—the that urged him on to the accomplishment of a fearful destiny,—this mysterious and scarcely compre- hensible influence it was which now seized upon him as if it were an enormous hand of iron that clutched him—made him spring with an abrupt start from his reverie of profoundly absorbing woe—and endowed him with all the horrible vitality which was to concentrate its energies to the accomplishment of an infernal task. With a yell of despair—for the miserable being felt and comprehended all the power and all the tendency of that influence which he could not re- sist, revolting and loathsome though it were,—he picked up his spade—sprang on to the nearest tomb—and thence began to pase from monument to monument and stone to stone in the same way ~ as op a former occasion. Frequently he stopped and listened : sometimes he lay down upon the flat stone of tumular ma- sonry—and then his attention would be breathless as hie terror was appalling. The perspiration would break out all over him; bathed in the sweat of his anguish, his limbs would neverthe- less quiver and tremble as if with an icy chillinese. His hair would stand on end—his eyes would glare with the light of frenzy through the silver flood which the moon eent forth to fill the atmosphere. But when the cause of alarm—or perbaps, in some instances, the fancied cause—had how sudden would prove the relief experie y the uvhappy wretch! The breath would come freely again all in a moment—the limbs would recover their power—the blood would circulate naturally —and the perspiration would seem to evaporate ce A SS eee (COU DOO (CO