Chapter 11

CHAPTER XI.

It was in the evening of a summer’s day in the latter end of the year fifteen hundred and forty-four, that a stranger arrived at my habitation. He was feeble, emaciated, and pale, his forehead full of wrinkles, and his hair and beard as white as snow. Care was written in his face; it was easy to perceive that he had suffered much from distress of mind; yet his eye was still quick and lively, with a strong expression of suspiciousness and anxiety. His garb, which externally consisted of nothing more than a robe of russet brown, with a girdle of the same, was coarse, threadbare, and ragged. He supported his tottering steps with a staff; and, having lost his foreteeth, his speech was indistinct and difficult to be comprehended. His wretched appearance excited my compassion, at the same time that I could easily discern, beneath all its disadvantages, that he was no common beggar or rustic. Ruined and squalid as he appeared, I thought I could perceive traces in his countenance of what had formerly been daring enterprise, profound meditation, and generous humanity.

I saw that he was much fatigued, and I invited him to rest himself upon the bench before the door. I set before him bread and wine, and he partook of both. I asked him his name and his country. He told me that he was a Venetian, and that his name, as nearly as I could collect, was signor Francesco Zampieri. He seemed however averse to speaking, and he requested me to suffer him to pass the night in my habitation. There was nothing singular in the request, a hospitality of this sort being the practice of the neighborhood; and humanity would have prompted my compliance, if I had not been still more strongly urged by an undefinable curiosity that began to spring up in my bosom. I prepared for him a camp-bed in a summer-house at the end of my garden. As soon as it was ready, he desired to be left alone, that he might seek in rest some relief from the fatigue he had undergone.

He retired early; and therefore, soon after daybreak the next morning, I waited on him to inquire how he had rested. He led me out into the fields; the morning was genial and exhilarating. We proceeded, till we came to a retired spot which had frequently been the scene of my solitary meditations, and there seated ourselves upon a bank. We had been mutually silent during the walk. As soon as we were seated, the stranger began: “You are, I understand, a Frenchman, and your name the count de St. Leon?” I bowed assent.

“St. Leon,” said he, “there is something in your countenance and manner that prepossesses me in your favor. The only thing I have left to do in the world is to die; and what I seek at present, is a friend who will take care that I shall be suffered to die in peace. Shall I trust you? Will you be that friend to me?”

I was astonished at this way of commencing his confidence in me; but I did not hesitate to promise that he should not find me deficient in any thing that became a man of humanity and honor.

“You do not, I think, live alone? You have a wife and children.”

“I have.”

“Yet none of them were at home when I arrived last night. You brought yourself to the summer-house every thing that was necessary for my accommodation.”

“I did so. But I have a wife to whom I have been married seventeen years, and with whom I have no reserves. I told her of your arrival; I spoke of your appearance; I mentioned your name.”

“It is no matter. She has not seen me. My name is not Zampieri; I am no Venetian.”

“Who are you then?”

“That you shall never know. It makes no part of the confidence I design to repose in you. My name shall be buried with me in the grave; nor shall any one who has hitherto known me, know how, at what time, or on what spot of earth, I shall terminate my existence. The cloud of oblivion shall shelter me from all human curiosity. What I require of you is that you pledge your honor, and the faith of a man, that you will never reveal to your wife, your children, or any human being, what you may hereafter know of me, and that no particular that relates to my history shall be disclosed, till at least one hundred years after my decease.”

“Upon these conditions I am sorry that I must decline your confidence. My wife is a part of myself; for the last six years at least I have had no thought in which she has not participated; and these have been the most tranquil and happy years of my life. My heart was formed by nature for social ties; habit has confirmed their propensity; and I will not now consent to any thing that shall infringe on the happiness of my soul.”

While I spoke, I could perceive that my companion grew disturbed and angry. At length, turning towards me a look of ineffable contempt, he replied—

“Feeble and effeminate mortal! You are neither a knight nor a Frenchman! Or rather, having been both, you have forgotten in inglorious obscurity every thing worthy of either! Was ever gallant action achieved by him who was incapable of separating himself from a woman? Was ever a great discovery prosecuted, or an important benefit conferred upon the human race, by him who was incapable of standing, and thinking, and feeling, alone? Under the usurping and dishonored name of virtue, you have sunk into a slavery baser than that of the enchantress Alcina. In vain might honor, worth, and immortal renown proffer their favors to him who has made himself the basest of all sublunary things—the puppet of a woman, the plaything of her pleasure, wasting an inglorious life in the gratification of her wishes and the performance of her commands!”

I felt that I was not wholly unmoved at this expostulation. The stranger touched upon the first and foremost passions of my soul; passions the operation of which had long been suspended, but which were by no means extinguished in my bosom. He proceeded:—

“But it is well! Years have passed over my head in vain, and I have not learned to distinguish a man of honor from a slave. This is only one additional sorrow to those in which my life has been spent. I have wandered through every region of the earth, and have found only disappointment. I have entered the courts of princes; I have accompanied the march of armies; I have pined in the putridity of dungeons. I have tasted every vicissitude of splendor and meanness; five times have I been led to the scaffold, and with difficulty escaped a public execution. Hated by mankind, hunted from the face of the earth, pursued by every atrocious calumny, without a country, without a roof, without a friend; the addition that can be made to such misfortunes scarcely deserves a thought.”

While he spoke, curiosity, resistless curiosity, presented itself as a new motive, in aid of the sense of shame which the stranger had just before kindled in my bosom. His manner was inconceivably impressive; his voice, though inarticulate from age, had an irresistible melody and volume of sound, which awed, while it won, the heart. His front appeared open, large, and commanding; and, though he complained, his complaints seemed to be those of conscious dignity and innocence. He went on:—

“Farewell, St. Leon! I go, and you shall see me and hear of me no more. You will repent, when it is too late, the folly of this day’s determination. I appear mean and insignificant in your eyes. You think my secrets beneath your curiosity, and my benefits not worth your acceptance. Know that my benefits are such as kings would barter their thrones to purchase, and that my wealth exceeds the wealth of empires. You are degraded from the rank you once held among mankind; your children are destined to live in the inglorious condition of peasants. This day you might have redeemed all your misfortunes, and raised yourself to a station more illustrious than that to which you were born. Farewell! Destiny has marked out you and yours for obscurity and oblivion, and you do well to reject magnificence and distinction when they proffer themselves for your acceptance.”

“Stop,” cried I, “mysterious stranger! Grant me a moment’s leisure to reflect and determine.”

He had risen to depart, with a gesture of resolution and contempt. At my exclamation he paused, and again turned himself towards me. My soul was in tumults.

“Answer me, most ambiguous and impenetrable of mortals! What is thy story? and what the secrets, the disclosure of which is pregnant with consequences so extraordinary?”

“Do you recollect the conditions upon which only the disclosure can be made?”

“What can I say? Shall I determine to part with that which for years has constituted the only consolation of my life? Shall I suppress the curiosity which now torments me, and reject the boon you pretend to have the power to confer?”

“I grant you the interval for reflection you demand. I refuse to place further confidence in you, till you have maturely examined yourself, and roused all the energies of your spirit to encounter the task you undertake.”

“One word more. You know not, indeed you know not, what a woman you exclude from your confidence. She is more worthy of it than I am. Referring to my own experience and knowledge of the world, I can safely pronounce her the first of her sex, perhaps the first of human beings. Indulge me in this; include her in your confidence; and I am content.”

“Be silent! I have made my determination; do you make yours! Know I would not if I could, and cannot if I would, repose the secrets that press upon me in more than a single bosom. It was upon this condition I received the communication; upon this condition only can I impart it. I am resolved; to die is the election of my soul—a consummation for which I impatiently wait. Having determined therefore to withdraw myself from the powers committed to me, I am at liberty to impart them; upon the same condition, and no other, you may one day, if you desire it, seek the relief of confidence.”

Having thus spoken, the stranger rose from his seat. It was yet early morning, nor was it likely we should meet any one in our walk. He however employed the precaution of causing me to explore the path, and to see that we should return uninterrupted. We came back to the summer-house. The window-shutters were still closed; the stranger determined they should remain so. When I had come to him as soon as I rose, I had found the door secured; nor had he admitted me, till he recognized my voice, and had ascertained that I was alone. These precautions scarcely excited my attention at the time; but, after the conversation that had just passed, they returned distinctly to my memory.

The remainder of the day which had been opened by this extraordinary scene was passed by me in great anxiety. I ruminated with unceasing wonder and perturbation upon the words of the stranger. Shall I shut upon myself the gate of knowledge and information? Is it not the part of a feeble and effeminate mind to refuse instruction, because he is not at liberty to communicate that instruction to another—to a wife? The stranger professes to be able to raise me to the utmost height of wealth and distinction. Shall I refuse the gift, which in a former instance I forfeited, but for which, though contemplated as at an impracticable distance, my whole soul longs? If there is any thing dishonorable connected with the participation of this wealth, I shall still be at liberty to refuse it. There can be no crime in hearing what this man has to communicate. I shall still, and always, be master of myself; nor can I have any thing personally to fear from a man so feeble, so decrepit, so emaciated. Yet what can be the gifts worthy of acceptance of a man who, while he possesses them, is tired of life, and desires to die? or what the wealth of him who bears about him every external symptom of poverty and desolation?

The conversation I had just held revived in my mind the true feeling of my present situation. The wounds of my soul had been lulled into temporary insensibility; but they were in a state in which the slightest accident was capable of making them bleed afresh, and with all their former violence. I had rather steeled my mind to endure what seemed unavoidable, than reconciled myself to my fate. The youthful passions of my soul, which my early years had written there in characters so deep, were by no means effaced. I could not contemplate the splendor of rank with an impartial eye. I could not think of the alternative of distinction or obscurity for my children with indifference. But, most of all, the moment I had experienced for them of hunger, and impending destruction by famine, had produced an indelible impression. It had destroyed all romance, I had almost said all dignity, in my mind for ever. It had snapped, as by the touch of a red-hot iron, all the finer and more etherialized sinews of my frame. It had planted the sordid love of gold in my heart, there, by its baneful vegetation, to poison every nobler and more salubrious feeling.

When I returned to the house, Marguerite inquired of me respecting the stranger, but my answers were short and embarrassed. She seemed to wonder that he did not come into the house, and partake of some refreshment in the midst of my family. She asked, whether he were indisposed? and whether he did not stand in need of some assistance that she might afford him? Perceiving however that I was desirous of saying as little as possible respecting him, she presently became silent. I could see that she was hurt at my incommunicativeness, yet I could not prevail upon myself to enter into an explanation of the causes of my taciturnity. Ours was a family of love; and I could observe that the children sympathized with their mother, and secretly were surprised at and lamented my reserve. There would have been little in this, in perhaps any other family than ours. But the last six years had been spent by us in such primeval simplicity, that scarcely one of us had a thought but what was known to the rest. Marguerite cherished my frankness and unreserve with peculiar zeal; she remembered with bitterness of soul the periods in which I fostered conceptions only proper to myself—periods of dreadful calamity, or of rooted melancholy and sadness. She could not help regarding the silence into which for the present occasion I relapsed, as a portent of evil augury. Charles, who was now sixteen years of age, recollected the period of our ruined fortunes when he had been alone with me at Paris, and partook of his mother’s feelings.

A trifling circumstance, at this time occasioned by the little Marguerite, now eight years of age, rendered the restraint under which I labored more memorable and striking. She had left a little book of fairy tales, in which she had been reading the day before, in the summer-house. At first she did not recollect what was become of it, and employed herself in searching for it with great assiduity. Of a sudden however she remembered where she had read in it last; and, exclaiming with exultation, “It is in the summer-house!” sprang forward to fetch it. I detained her, and told her there was a sick gentleman there that she would disturb! “Then, dear Julia!” rejoined she, “be so good as to get it for me; you are so quiet and careful, you never disturb any body.”

“My love,” answered I, “nobody must get it for you. The gentleman chooses to be alone, and will not let any body come to him. You shall have it after dinner.”

“Ah, but, papa, I want it now. I put it away, just where the naughty giant had shut up the gentleman in the dungeon, who came to take away the lady. I was obliged to put it away then, because mama called me to go to bed; but I want so to know what will become of them, you cannot think.”

“Well, dear Marguerite, I am sorry you must wait; but you must learn to have patience.”

“Do you know, papa, I walked in the garden before breakfast: and so, not thinking of any thing, I came to the summer-house; and I tried to open the door, but I could not. I found it was locked. So I thought Julia was there; and I knocked, and called Julia, but nobody answered. So then I knew Julia was not there, for I was sure she would have opened the door. So I climbed upon the stump of the pear-tree, and tried to look in at the window; but the shutters were shut, and I could not get to see over the top of them. And I walked all round the summer-house, and all the shutters were shut. Papa, I wish you would not let a man get into the summer-house, who shuts all the shutters, and locks the door. You always used to let me go into every room I liked; and, do you know, I think none but bad people lock and bolt themselves up so. It puts mind of the giants with their drawbridges and their pitfalls; I shall be quite afraid of this frightful old man.”

This prattle of the child was nothing; yet it increased the embarrassment of my situation, and made the peculiarity of the case more conspicuous. Finding her pertinacious in insisting upon a topic that was disagreeable to me, her mother called her from me, and put her upon some occupation that served to divert her attention. I felt like a person that was guilty of some crime; and this consideration and kindness of my wife, when I seemed to myself to deserve her reproach, had not the power to calm my uneasiness.

These little occurrences appeared like the beginning of a separation of interests, and estrangement of hearts. I tasked myself severely. I summoned the whole force of my mind, that I might strictly consider what it was in which I was about to engage. If this slight and casual hint of a secret is felt by both Marguerite and myself with so much uneasiness and embarrassment, what will be our situation, if I go on to accept the stranger’s confidence, and become the depository of an arcanum so important as he represents his to be? He declares himself able to bestow upon me the highest opulence; what will be the feelings of my wife and children when they see my condition suddenly changed from its present humble appearance to splendor and wealth, without being able to assign the source of this extraordinary accession?

It is difficult to conceive a family picture more enviable that than to which I was now continually present, and of which I formed a part. We had been happy on the banks of the Garonne, and we had pictured to ourselves a plan of happiness immediately on our arrival in the city of Constance. But these were little and imperfect, compared with what I now enjoyed. In the first situation my children were infants, and in the second the eldest was but ten years of age. The mother was now thirty-five; and she had lost, in my eyes at least, none of her personal attractions. Her intellectual accomplishments were much greater than ever. Her understanding was matured, her judgment decided, her experience more comprehensive. As she had a greater compass of materials to work upon, her fancy was more playful, her conversation richer, and her reflections more amusing and profound. The matron character she had acquired, had had no other effect on her feelings, than to render them more deep, more true and magnetical. Her disposition was more entirely affectionate than it had been even in the first year of our cohabitation. Her attachment to her children was exemplary, and her vigilance uninterrupted; and, for myself, she was accustomed, in all that related to our mutual love, to enter into my sentiments and inclinations with so just a tone of equality and kindness, that we seemed to be two bodies animated by a single soul. If the mother were improved, the children were still more improved. In their early years we are attached to our offspring, merely because they are ours, and in a way that has led superficial speculators to consider the attachment, less as the necessary operation of a sensible and conscious mind, than as a wise provision of nature for the perpetuation of the species. But as they grow up, the case is different. Our partiality is then confirmed or diminished by qualities visible to an impartial bystander as really as to ourselves. They then cease to be merely the objects of our solicitude, and become our companions, the partners of our sentiments, and the counselors of our undertakings. Such at least was my case at the present period. Charles, who was now sixteen, was manly beyond his years; while the native fire of his disposition was tempered by adversity, by an humble situation, and by the ardor of filial and fraternal affection. Julia, who was two years younger, became daily more interesting by the mildness of her disposition and the tenderness of her sensibility. Louisa was only twelve; but, as she was extremely notable, and had an uncommonly quick and accurate spirit of imitation, she rendered herself exceedingly useful to her mother. Marguerite, the plaything and amusement of the family, had, as I have said, just completed the eighth year of her age.

One exquisite source of gratification, when it is not a source of uneasiness, to speak from my own experience, which a parent finds in the society of his children, is their individuality. They are not puppets, moved with wires, and to be played on at will. Almost from the hour of their birth they have a will of their own, to be consulted and negotiated with. We may say to them, as Adam to the general mother of mankind, “But now, thou wert flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone; and, even now, thou standest before me vested in the prerogatives of sentiment and reason; a living being, to be regarded with attention and deference; to be courted, not compelled; susceptible of the various catalog of human passions; capable of resentment and gratitude, of indignation and love, of perverseness and submission. It is because thou art thus formed that I love thee. I cannot be interested about objects inanimate or brute. I require a somewhat that shall exercise my judgment, and awaken my moral feelings. It is necessary to me to approve myself, and be approved by another. I rejoice to stand before you, at once the defendant and the judge. I rejoice in the restraint to which your independent character subjects me, and it will be my pride to cultivate that independence in your mind. I would negotiate for your affections and confidence, and not be loved by you, but in proportion as I shall have done something to deserve it. I could not congratulate myself upon your correspondence to my wishes, if it had not been in your power to withhold it.”

While I indulge this vein of reflection, I seem again to see my family, as they surrounded me in the year fifteen hundred and forty-four; Marguerite the partner of my life, Charles the brother of my cares, the blooming Julia, the sage Louisa, and the playful cadette of the family. How richly furnished, how cheerful, how heart-reviving, appeared to me the apartment in which they were assembled! I dwell upon the image with fond affection and lingering delight. Where are they now? How has all this happiness been maliciously undermined, and irrevocably destroyed! To look back on it, it seems like the idle fabric of a dream. I awake, and find myself alone! Were there really such persons? Where are they dispersed? Whither are they gone? Oh, miserable solitude and desertion, to which I have so long been condemned! I see nothing around me but speechless walls, or human faces that say as little to my heart as the walls themselves! How palsied is my soul! How withered my affections!—But I will not anticipate.