I lov'd her and--destroy'd her--

WITCH

With thy hand?

MANFRED

Not with my hand, but heart, which broke her heart.
It gaz'd on mine, and withered. I have shed
Blood, but not hers, and yet her blood was shed;--
I saw, and could not stanch it.

There is in this little scene, perhaps, the deepest pathos ever
expressed; but it is not of its beauty that I am treating; my object
in noticing it here is, that it may be considered in connection with
that where Manfred appears with his insatiate thirst of knowledge,
and manacled with guilt. It indicates that his sister, Astarte, had
been self-sacrificed in the pursuit of their magical knowledge.
Human sacrifices were supposed to be among the initiate propitiations
of the demons that have their purposes in magic--as well as compacts
signed with the blood of the self-sold. There was also a dark
Egyptian art, of which the knowledge and the efficacy could only be
obtained by the novitiate's procuring a voluntary victim--the dearest
object to himself and to whom he also was the dearest; {241} and the
primary spring of Byron's tragedy lies, I conceive, in a sacrifice of
that kind having been performed, without obtaining that happiness
which the votary expected would be found in the knowledge and power
purchased at such a price. His sister was sacrificed in vain. The
manner of the sacrifice is not divulged, but it is darkly intimated
to have been done amid the perturbations of something horrible.

Night after night for years
He hath pursued long vigils in this tower
Without a witness.--I have been within it--
So have we all been ofttimes; but from it,
Or its contents, it were impossible
To draw conclusions absolute of aught
His studies tend to.--To be sure there is
One chamber where none enter--. . .
Count Manfred was, as now, within his tower:
How occupied--we know not--but with him,
The sole companion of his wanderings
And watchings--her--whom of all earthly things
That liv'd, the only thing he seem'd to love.

With admirable taste, and its thrilling augmentation of the horror,
the poet leaves the deed which was done in that unapproachable
chamber undivulged, while we are darkly taught, that within it lie
the relics or the ashes of the "one without a tomb."

CHAPTER XXXIII

State of Byron in Switzerland--He goes to Venice--The fourth Canto of
"Childe Harold"--Rumination on his own Condition--Beppo--Lament of
Tasso--Curious Example of Byron's m