CHAPTER XII.

I carried food to the stranger as occasion required in the course of the day. He seemed indisposed to speak, and we exchanged scarcely more than two or three words. The next morning was the implied time to which the question of his confidence was deferred, and I went to him with the full resolution of refusing it. Whether it were that he discerned this resolution in my countenance, or that, in the interval that elapsed, he had formed a meaner opinion of my character, and thought me unfit for the purposes he intended I should answer, certain it is that he anticipated me. At the same time he magnified the importance of the gifts he had to communicate. He expressed himself astonished at the precipitateness of his yesterday’s conduct. It was not till after much trial and long probation that he could choose himself a confidant. I was not at present fit for the character, nor perhaps ever should be. The talent he possessed was one upon which the fate of nations and of the human species might be made to depend. God had given it for the best and highest purposes; and the vessel in which it was deposited must be purified from the alloy of human frailty. It might be abused and applied to the most atrocious designs. It might blind the understanding of the wisest, and corrupt the integrity of the noblest. It might overturn kingdoms, and change the whole order of human society into anarchy and barbarism. It might render its possessor the universal plague or the universal tyrant of mankind.

“Go, St. Leon!” added the stranger, “you are not qualified for so important a trust. You are not yet purged of imbecility and weakness. Though you have passed through much, and had considerable experience, you are yet a child. I had heard your history, and expected to find you a different man. Go; and learn to know yourself for what you are, frivolous and insignificant, worthy to have been born a peasant, and not fitted to adorn the rolls of chivalry, or the rank to which you were destined!”

There was something so impressive in the rebuke and contempt of this venerable sage, that made it impossible to contend with them. Never was there a man more singular, and in whom were united greater apparent contradictions. Observe him in a quiet and unanimated moment, you might almost take him for a common beggar; a poor, miserable wretch, in whom life lingered, and insensate stupidity reigned. But when his soul was touched in any of those points on which it was most alive, he rose at once, and appeared a giant. His voice was the voice of thunder; and, rolling in a rich and sublime swell, it arrested and stilled, while it withered all the nerves of the soul. His eye-beam sat upon your countenance, and seemed to look through you. You wished to escape from its penetrating power, but you had not the strength to move. I began to feel as if it were some mysterious and superior being in human form, and not a mortal, with whom I was concerned.

What a strange and contradictory being is man! I had gone to the summer-house this morning, with a firm resolution to refuse the gifts and the communication of the stranger. I felt as if lightened from a burden which the whole preceding day had oppressed me, while I formed this resolution: I was cheerful, and conscious of rectitude and strength of mind. How cheaply we prize a gift which we imagine to be already in our power! With what philosophical indifference do we turn it on every side, depreciate its worth, magnify its disadvantages, and then pique ourselves upon the sobriety and justice of the estimate we have made! Thus it was with me in the present transaction; but when I had received the check of the stranger, and saw the proposed benefit removed to a vast and uncertain distance, then it resumed all its charms; then the contrast of wealth and poverty flashed full upon my soul. Before, I had questioned the reality of the stranger’s pretensions, and considered whether he might not be an artful impostor; but now all was clearness and certainty: the advantages of wealth passed in full review before my roused imagination. I saw horses, palaces, and their furniture; I saw the splendor of exhibition and the trains of attendants,—objects which had been for ever dear to my puerile imagination; I contemplated the honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, which are so apt to attend upon wealth, when disbursed with a moderate degree of dignity and munificence. When I compared this with my present poverty and desertion, the meanness of our appearance, our daily labors, the danger that an untoward accident might sink us in the deepest distress, and the hopelessness that my son or his posterity should ever rise to that honor and distinction to which they had once been destined, the effect was too powerful.

Another feeling came still further in aid of this: it was the humiliating impression which the stranger had left upon my mind: this seemed to be his great art, if in reality his conduct is to be imputed to art. There is no enemy to virtue so fatal as a sense of degradation. Self-applause is our principal support in every liberal and elevated act of virtue. If this ally can be turned against us; if we can be made to ascribe baseness, effeminacy, want of spirit and adventure, to our virtuous resolutions; we shall then indeed feel ourselves shaken. This was precisely my situation: the figure I made in my own eyes was mean; I was impatient of my degradation; I believed that I had shown myself uxorious and effeminate, at a time that must have roused in me the spirit of a man, if there had been a spark of manly spirit latent in my breast. This impatience co-operated with the temptations of the stranger, and made me anxious to possess what he offered to my acceptance.

I reasoned thus with myself: what excites my scruples is simply the idea of having one single secret from my wife and family. This scruple is created by the singular and unprecedented confidence in which we have been accustomed to live. Other men have their secrets: nor do they find their domestic tranquility broken by that circumstance. The merchant does not call his wife into consultation upon his ventures; the statesman does not unfold to her his policy and his projects; the warrior does not take her advice upon the plan of his campaign; the poet does not concert with her his flights and his episodes. To other men the domestic scene is the relaxation of their cares; when they enter it, they dismiss the business of the day, and call another cause. I only have concentrated in it the whole of my existence. By this means I have extinguished in myself the true energy of the human character. A man can never be respectable in the eyes of the world or in his own, except so far as he stands by himself and is truly independent. He may have friends; he may have domestic connections; but he must not in these connections lose his individuality. Nothing truly great was ever achieved, that was not executed or planned in solitary seclusion.

But if these reasons are sufficient to prove that the plan I have lately pursued is fundamentally wrong, how much more will the importance of what is proposed by the stranger plead my excuse for deviating from it? How bitterly have I lamented the degradation of my family! Shall I not seize this opportunity of re-installing them in their hereditary honors? I deemed the ruin I had brought upon them irreparable; shall I not embrace the occasion of atoning for my fault? No man despises wealth, who fully understands the advantages it confers. Does it not confer the means of cultivating our powers? Does it not open to us the career of honor, which is shut against the unknown and obscure? Does it not conciliate the prepossessions of mankind, and gain for us an indulgent and liberal construction? Does it not inspire us with graceful confidence, and animate us to generous adventure? The poor man is denied every advantage of education, and wears out his life in labor and ignorance. From offices of trust, from opportunities of distinction, he is ignominiously thrust aside; and though he should sacrifice his life for the public cause, he dies unhonored and unknown. If by any accident he comes into possession of those qualities which, when discerned and acknowledged, command the applause of mankind, who will listen to him? His appearance is mean; and the fastidious auditor turns from him ere half his words are uttered. He has no equipage and attendants, no one to blow the trumpet before him and proclaim his rank; how can he propose any thing that shall be worthy of attention? Aware of the prepossession of mankind in this respect, he is alarmed and overwhelmed with confusion before he opens his lips. Filled with the conscience of his worth, he anticipates the unmerited contempt that is prepared to oppress him, and his very heart dies within him. Add to these circumstances, the constitution of our nature, the various pleasures of which it is adapted to partake, and how many of these pleasures it is in the power of wealth to procure. Yes; an object like this will sufficiently apologize for me to those for whose sake alone it was estimable in my sight. It is, indeed, nothing but our poverty and the lowness of our station that have thus produced in us an habitual and unreserved communication of sentiments. Wealth would, to a certain degree, destroy our contact, and take off the wonder that we had each our thoughts that were not put into the common stock.

These considerations decided my choice. I was not indeed without some variations of mind, and some compunction of heart for the resolution I had espoused. The longer the stranger remained with me, the more evident it was that there was something mysterious between us; and the unreserved affection and union that had lately reigned under my roof suffered materially the effects of it. The stranger had been led to my cottage, in the first instance, by the entire solitude in which it was placed. There was nothing about which he was so solicitous as concealment; the most atrocious criminal could not be more alarmed at the idea of being discovered. I was unable to account for this; but I was now too anxious for his stay and the promised reward, not to be alert in gratifying all his wishes. The most inviolable secrecy, therefore, was enjoined to the whole family; and the younger branches of it, particularly the little Marguerite, it was necessary to keep almost immured, to prevent the danger of their reporting any thing out of the house, that might be displeasing to the stranger and fatal to my expectations. Upon the whole my situation was eminently an uneasy one. No experiment can be more precarious than that of a half-confidence; and nothing but the sincere affection that was entertained for me could have rendered it successful in this instance. My family felt that they were trusted by me only in points where it was impossible to avoid it, and that I was not therefore properly entitled to their cooperation; I was conscious of ingratitude in making them no return for their fidelity. They kept my secret because they were solicitous to oblige me, not from any conviction that they were conferring on me a benefit; but, on the contrary, suspecting that the object as to which they were blindly assisting me would prove injurious to me as well as to themselves.

The health of the stranger visibly declined; but this was a circumstance which he evidently regarded with complacency. It was the only source of consolation of which he appeared susceptible; his mind was torn with painful remembrances, and agitated with terrible forebodings. He abhorred solitude, and yet found no consolation in society. I could not be much with him; my duty to my family, who were principally supported by my labor, was a call too imperious to be neglected. Even when I was with him, he commonly testified no desire for conversation. “Stay with me,” he was accustomed to say; “give me as much of your time as you can; but do not talk.” Upon these occasions he would sit sometimes with his arms folded, and with the most melancholy expression imaginable. He would then knit his brows, wring his hands with a sadness that might have excited pity in the hardest breast, or, with both hands closed, the one clasping the other, strike himself impatiently on the forehead. At other times he would rise from his seat, pace the room with hurried and unquiet steps, and then again throw himself on his couch in the greatest agitation. His features were often convulsed with agony. Often have I wiped away the sweat, which would suddenly burst out in large drops on his forehead. At those seasons he would continually mutter words to himself, the sense of which it was impossible for me to collect. I could perceive however that he often repeated the names of Clara!—Henry!—a wife!—a friend! a friend!——and then he would groan as if his heart were bursting. Sometimes, in the midst of these recollections, he would pass the back of his hand over his eyes; and then, looking at it, shaking his head, and biting his under lip, exclaim with a piteous accent, “Dry!—dry!—all the moisture of my frame is perished!” Then, as if recovering himself, he would cry with a startled and terrified voice, “Who is there? St. Leon? Come to me! Let me feel that there is a human being near me! I often call for you; but I find myself alone, deserted, friendless!—friendless!”

At times when his recollection was more complete, he would say, “I know I tire you! Why should I tire you? What gratification can it be to me to occasion emotions of disgust?” Upon these occasions I endeavored to soothe him, and assured him I found pleasure in administering to his relief. But he replied, “No, no: do not flatter me! It is long since I have heard the voice of flattery! I never loved it! No; I know I am precluded from ever exciting friendship or sympathy! Why am I not dead? Why do I live, a burden to myself, useful to none? My secret I could almost resolve should die with me; but you have earned, and you shall receive it.”

The stranger was not always in this state of extreme anguish, nor always indisposed to converse. He had lucid intervals; and could beguile the sorrow of his heart with social communication. We sometimes talked of various sciences and branches of learning; he appeared to be well informed in them all. His observations were ingenious; his language copious; his illustrations fanciful and picturesque; his manner bold and penetrating. It was easy to observe in him the marks of a vigorous and masculine genius. Sometimes we discussed the events at that time going on in the world. When we discoursed of events that had passed, and persons that had died, more than a century before, the stranger often spoke of them in a manner as if he had been an eye-witness, and directly acquainted with the objects of our discourse. This I ascribed to the vividness of his conceptions, and the animation of his language. He however often checked himself in this peculiarity, and always carefully avoided what could lead to any thing personal to himself. I described to him the scenes of my youth, and related my subsequent history; he on his part was invincibly silent on every circumstance of his country, his family, and his adventures.

The longer I was acquainted with him, the more my curiosity grew. I was restless and impatient to learn something respecting a man who thus wrapped himself up in mystery and reserve. Often I threw out, as it were, a line by which to fathom his secret. I talked of various countries, I mentioned different kinds of calamities and even of crimes, that by some incidental allusion I might discover at unawares his country, his connections, or the nature of his story. When any thing that offered seemed to lead to the desired point, I doubled my questions, and endeavored to construct them with the skill of a crafty litigant in a court of justice. There were some subjects, the very mention of which gave him uneasiness, and upon which he immediately silenced me; but these were not of themselves enough to afford me a clue, or to furnish materials out of which for me to construct the history of the stranger. He did not always perceive the drift of my questions and snares; but, when he did, he generally became loud, resentful, and furious. There was nothing else that so completely roused his indignation.

“St. Leon!” said he to me one day, “silence this inquisitive temper of yours; check your rash and rude curiosity. The only secret I have that can be of any importance to you, you shall one day know. But my country, my family, my adventures, I have once told you, and I tell you again, you shall never know. That knowledge can be of moment to no one, and it shall never be disclosed. When this heart ceases to beat, that tale shall cease to have a place on the face of the earth. Why should my distresses and disgraces be published to any one? Is it not enough that they have lacerated my bosom, that they have deprived me of friends, that they have visited me with every adversity and every anguish, that they have bowed me down to the earth, that they have made thought, and remembrance, and life itself, a burden too heavy to be borne? Your present injudicious conduct, if persisted in, will have the effect of driving me from your roof, of turning me once more upon the world, upon that world that I hate, upon that world whose bruises and ill treatment I feel in every fiber of my frame; of exposing me again to fresh persecutions, and causing me to perish miserably in a dungeon, or die upon a scaffold. Spare me, my generous host; I know you are capable of generosity. Indeed I have endured enough to satiate the rage of malice itself. You see what I suffer from the rage and tempest of my own thoughts, even without the assistance of any external foe. Let me die in that degree of tranquility I am able to attain. I will not trouble you long.”

At another time he addressed me in a different style. “You see, St. Leon, that the anguish of mind I endure is such as is ordinarily attributed to the recollection of great crimes; and you have very probably conjectured that in my case it arises from the same source. If you have, I forgive you; but I assure you that you are mistaken. Take from yourself that uneasiness, if it has ever visited you; you are not giving sanctuary to a villain! I am innocent. I can take no crime to my charge. I have suffered more almost than man ever suffered; but I have sinned little. The cause of my uneasiness and prime source of all my misfortunes, I dare not disclose to you. Be contented with the plan of my conduct. I have digested my purpose: I have determined where to speak and where to be silent.”

The more I saw of this man, the more strange and unaccountable appeared to me every thing that related to him. Why was he so poor, possessing, as he pretended, inexhaustible wealth? Why was he unhappy, with so great talents and genius, and such various information? Why was he friendless, being, as he solemnly assured me, so perfectly innocent, and of consequence so respectable? That he was an impostor, every thing that I saw of him forbade me to believe. His sorrows were too profound and excruciating, for it to be possible for me to rank them among the actions that a man may play. The greatness of his powers, the dignity of his carriage, the irresistible appearance of sincerity that sparkled in his eye and modulated his voice, fully convinced me that he really was what he pretended to be. I had heard of men who, under the pretense of alchemy, fastened themselves upon persons possessing sums of money; and, beguiling them with a delusive expectation of wealth, reduced them to beggary and ruin. One such person I had had a brief connection with during my residence in the Bordelois, though, finding the incident by no means essential to the progress of my history, I have passed it over, together with many others, in silence. But nothing could be more unlike than that man and the person respecting whom I was now concerned. In reality I possessed at that time, if I may be allowed to say so, a more than common insight into the characters of mankind, so as to be little likely, except under the tyranny of passion, as in the instance of gaming, to be made the prey of imposition. I had studied my species as it exhibits itself in history, and had mixed with it in various scenes and under dissimilar aspects. I had accordingly, in the transaction I have just alluded to, soon detected the plans of the villain who expected to delude me. But what could be the purpose of the stranger in this respect? The pretended alchemist in France had obtained a certain sum of money of me, and demanded more. The stranger never made such a demand of me; and perfectly knew that, even if I had been inclined, I was not able to supply him. The alchemist had amused me with descriptions of various processes for the transmutation of metals, had exhibited his crucibles and retorts, and employed a sort of dramatic coup d’œil for the purpose of awakening my curiosity and stimulating my passions. The stranger had simply stated, in the plainest and most direct manner, that it was in his power to enrich me; but had been silent as to the manner of producing the wealth he promised, and had abstained from every effort to intoxicate my mind. I felt therefore in this instance the effect, that, without being able to solve the difficulties and contrarieties that hung about him, I yet believed his assertions; nor was the inscrutability of his history and his motives capable of shaking my confidence.

One day, during the period of his concealment, certain officers of the bishop of Constance, accompanied by a foreigner in a Neapolitan habit, came to my house, and, as it proved, with the express purpose of searching for the man who had put himself under my protection. Charles and myself were at work in the fields within sight of the lake. Their appearance first caught the attention of Charles as they approached the shore, and he inquired of me respecting the habit of the foreigner, which was different from any he had been accustomed to see. While we were yet speaking, I observed in them an intention to land within sight of my cottage. This was an uncommon circumstance; our privacy was rarely invaded, and we lived almost as much out of the world as we should have done in the remotest island of the Atlantic ocean. I reasoned in my own mind upon their appearance: they had little resemblance to a party of pleasure; the habit of the officers of justice I was perfectly acquainted with; and the suspicion of the real nature of their errand immediately darted on my thoughts. Without saying a word to Charles on the subject, I hastened with all the speed I could exert to the apartment of the stranger, and acquainted him with what I had seen. He concurred with me in the ideas I had formed, and appeared much shocked at the intelligence. There was however no time to be lost; and, after having for a moment given vent to an anguish which was too powerful to be suppressed, he withdrew as hastily as he could from the summer-house, and betook himself to the woods. He recommended to me to leave him, telling me that he could conceal himself most effectually alone, and observing that it would be necessary for me to meet the officers, and endeavor as much as possible to remove their suspicions.

Accordingly, as soon as he was gone, I threw open the windows of the summer-house, removed the shutters, and took from it as effectually as I could all appearance of having served as a place of concealment. This was a precaution which the stranger had on a former occasion recommended to me. It fortunately happened that Julia and the little Marguerite were gone out together in the fields on the eastern side of my cottage; otherwise infallibly the child by her innocent prattle, and perhaps Julia by the apprehensive sensibility of her temper, would have betrayed our secret, or at least have suggested to the officers a feeling as if, by a longer stay and a more diligent search, they might possibly succeed in the object of their expedition. As it was, I received them at the door, and learned from their own mouths the nature of their errand. Of Charles, whom they had crossed in the fields, they had simply asked whether they were right as to the name of the person who was proprietor of the cottage before them. They described to me with great accuracy the appearance of the stranger, and insisted that he had been an inhabitant of my cottage. They told me, they were well informed that the summer-house in my garden had carefully been shut up for more than a month past, and that some person had been concealed there. I was interested in the distress of the stranger; I was impressed with the dignity of his character; I implicitly confided in his assertions of innocence, and the unjust persecution that he suffered; I was not insensible to the proposed reward, the realizing of which probably depended on his safety. But, most of all, I considered my honor as pledged for the protection of the man who had thus cast himself upon my fidelity, and believed that I should be everlastingly disgraced if he suffered any evil through treachery or neglect on my part. I therefore answered confidently to the officers that they were misinformed, and offered to conduct them over every part of my house and demesnes, that they might satisfy themselves by inspection that there was no person concealed any where within my possessions. I should have been better pleased, openly to have defied their interrogatories, and to have asked them whether, allowing their suspicions to be just, they were entitled to believe that I was such a villain as to betray a man who had thrown himself upon my generosity? But though this conduct would have had a greater appearance of gallantry, I believed it would have less of the reality, as it would have strengthened their idea of my participation, and increased the danger of the person I was bound to protect.

They accepted my offer of submitting to their search, and made a strict examination of every place about my habitation in which the stranger could be concealed. Disappointed here, they endeavored by threats to discover whether I was able to give them any information. To these I calmly answered, that they had mistaken my character; that, though I was a poor man, I had not forgotten that I was noble; that they were already in possession of my spontaneous answer to their inquiries; and that, in no case, and upon no supposition, should tyranny and ill treatment extort from me what I was not in the first instance disposed to give. My wife was present during this conversation, and, I could perceive, felt an alarm for my danger that she would have been incapable of feeling for a danger to herself.

Though I was extremely anxious that these men should be disappointed in the object of their expedition, yet I did not neglect this opportunity of endeavoring to obtain satisfaction for my own curiosity. I remarked at first that the Neapolitan was an inquisitor, and this circumstance had given additional poignancy to the uneasiness of Marguerite. But the accusations of which the inquisition at this time took cognizance were so numerous—the ecclesiastical power continually usurping upon the civil—that I was little assisted in the judgment I was desirous to frame by any inference to be deduced from this circumstance. I questioned directly, with an air as if it were merely in the way of conversation, what was the crime of the man of whom they were in pursuit? and what was the cause forcible enough to induce a Neapolitan inquisitor to follow so decrepit and forlorn an individual as he described, beyond the Alps, and almost to the banks of the Danube? To this he answered roughly, that though he was not able to discover the object of his search, he was by no means convinced that I was not his abettor and accomplice; and that as to his crime, that was not to be named; the welfare of Christendom demanding that the criminal, and the memory of his offenses, should be buried together. At the same time he warned me to consider well what I did, before I exposed myself to be overwhelmed by the vengeance of the court of which he was a member. To this I answered haughtily, that I had already condescended to repel his suspicion, and that no other man than an inquisitor would have had the stupidity or the audaciousness to question my veracity. I added, that I was perfectly acquainted with the nature of his court, which was an object of abhorrence to the whole Christian world; but that he was mistaken if he supposed that the detestable nature of its proceedings would enable him to practice every sort of outrage with impunity. The officers withdrew into the little enclosure in front of my cottage, and I overheard them consulting whether, having failed in their principal object, they should carry me a prisoner along with them. The firmness of my manner however had awed them, and the fearlessness I expressed seemed to them to arise from a consciousness of innocence. They at length departed as they came.

I watched them from my cottage as they descended to the shore, and it was with no little pleasure that I perceived them reembark, and stand off for the opposite side of the lake. This spectacle for a time entirely engaged me, and when I turned from the door I observed that my beloved Marguerite had been in tears. She endeavored to hide this circumstance from my sight. I took her affectionately by the hand, and, pressing her to my bosom, entreated her not to make herself uneasy.

“Ah, Reginald!” said she, “how can I avoid being uneasy, when I see you exposed to this imminent danger? I thought that, in forfeiting our fortune and our rank, and retiring to this obscure and sequestered situation, we might at least promise ourselves the blessing of the poor—oblivion and security; and that should have consoled me for all I have lost. Who is this man that is thus mysteriously hidden among us? What is the guilt from the punishment of which he thus anxiously withdraws himself? What can be the nature of your connection with such a man? And what will be the issue of so perilous an adventure?”

I hesitated. I knew not what to answer to so earnest an anxiety. I was melted at the distress and the affection of Marguerite. She saw my embarrassment, and proceeded:—

“Mistake me not, my beloved!” said she. “I have no desire to pry into what you are willing to conceal. Forgive the perturbation which has poured itself out in these involuntary questions. I repose an entire confidence in you. I would sooner die than interfere with any object you have at heart. Go on according to the dictates of your own judgment, undisturbed by me. I will not doubt that you have sufficient reasons for what you communicate, and what you suppress. I am grieved indeed at the interruption of our obscure and unambitious tranquility; but I had resolved not to trouble you with my uneasiness and apprehensions. The incident of this morning has extorted them from me; but I will behave better in future.”

This scene was extremely distressing to me. My wife was oppressed with fears, and I had nothing to answer her. The consolations that rose up in my own mind I was prevented from communicating. The more generously she confided in me, the more I felt the ungracious and disagreeable nature of the concealment I practiced. I endeavored however to encourage myself with the idea, that the labor would not be long, and the harvest would prove abundant. I said in my own mind, The worst is now over; the business has been commenced; the shock to my own family has actually occurred; I must go on resolutely, and shut my eyes to the temporarily displeasing circumstances that may be connected with the completing my object.