136
THE
STAR
IN THE WEST
Can you not see ? I am cut off from
God !
Loathsome bull -men
in their corruption linked
Whisper
lewd fancies in my ear.
Great fish ,
Monstrous and flat, with vile malignant eyes ,
And crawling
beetles
of gigantic
strength
,
Crushed , mangled , moving , are about me . Go !
Go ! do not touch
the carcass of myself
That
is abased , defiled , abominable .'
Then Ulric enters , evidently now totally
mad ;
the
fearful
power
of his Neronic
lust
has
reft asunder
the last thread of his sanity ;
in his hand he carries
a
razor , first
he
slays
Madeline ,
and
then ,
at
his
mother's bidding , himself :
A blood-gr
vapour and
a scorpion steam
To poison the unrighteous life of God ! 2
Thus
does this fearful tragedy end .
Gruesome with
lust and cruelty , Ulric , a horrible perversion , overcome
by
the
violence of his desires ,
a
second
Amnon ,
a
second
de Sade .
His ideal once at least partially pure ,
broke , as the truth burst
on his ear , into a wild and
fearful nightmare ; and in his brutal fury we find that
perhaps the Sadism of to-day is but an Avatar of those
past days , when our progenitors , like
some
still
ex
isting
savages
, carried
on their courtship
with
club
and
spear, and
solemnized
their marriage with
rape
and ravishment .
Still one
more
phase
of perverse love remains for
us to study ; the curious
lust of man for woman
as
depicted in “ Jezebel,” a curious manifestation of what
is known
as Masochism , which after the
death
of the
object of
its
fascination
,
grows almost into the vam
pire desire
of
necrophilia
.
In
"
A
Saint's Damnation
,"
which
is
included under the
same
cover
,
we see the
1
The Mother's Tragedy
,
vol
.
i,
p
.
165
.
2
Ibid
.