there was the same red light glaring on, but not illuminating, the dusky furniture of the apartment.  The wind was high that night, and as the creaking door swung on its hinges, every noise seemed like the sound of a hand struggling with the lock, or of a foot pausing on the threshold.  But (for Melmoth never could decide) was it in a dream or not, that he saw the figure of his ancestor appear at the door?—­hesitatingly as he saw him at first on the night of his uncle’s death,—­saw him enter the room, approach his bed, and heard him whisper, “You have burned me, then; but those are flames I can survive.—­I am alive,—­I am beside you.”  Melmoth started, sprung from his bed,—­it was broad daylight.  He looked round,—­there was no human being in the room but himself.  He felt a slight pain in the wrist of his right arm.  He looked at it, it was black and blue, as from the recent gripe of a strong hand.

Balzac’s tale, Melmoth Reconciled, in Vol.  IV., furnishes a solution to the terrible problem which Maturin has stated in this story.—­Editor’s note.

Introduction to “A Mystery with a Moral”

The next Mystery Story is like no other in these volumes.  The editor’s defense lies in the plea that Laurence Sterne is not like other writers of English.  He is certainly one of the very greatest.  Yet nowadays he is generally unknown.  His rollicking frankness, his audacious unconventionality, are enough to account for the neglect.  Even the easy mannered England of 1760 opened its eyes in horror when “Tristram Shandy” appeared.  “A most unclerical clergyman,” the public pronounced the rector of Sutton and prebendary of York.

Besides, his style was rambling to the last degree.  Plot concerned him least of all authors of fiction.

For instance, it is more than doubtful that the whimsical parson really intended a moral to be read into the adventures of his “Sentimental Journey” that follow in these pages.  He used to declare that he never intended anything—­he never knew whither his pen was leading—­the rash implement, once in hand, was likely to fly with him from Yorkshire to Italy—­or to Paris—­or across the road to Uncle Toby’s; and what could the helpless author do but improve each occasion?

So here is one such “occasion” thus “improved” by disjointed sequels—­heedless, one would say, and yet glittering with the unreturnable thrust of subtle wit, or softening with simple emotion, like a thousand immortal passages of this random philosopher.

Even the slightest turns of Sterne’s pen bear inspiration.  No less a critic than the severe Hazlitt was satisfied that “his works consist only of brilliant passages.”

And because the editors of the present volumes found added to “The Mystery” not only a “Solution” but an “Application” of worldly wisdom, and a “Contrast” in Sterne’s best vein of quiet happiness—­ they have felt emboldened to ascribe the passage “A Mystery with a Moral.”