CHAPTER XVIII.

For some time I could not believe him departed. When I retired to rest, I felt the want of Charles to press my hand, and wish me refreshing slumbers; and I passed on, sad and solitary, to my chamber. When I came next morning into the breakfasting room, Charles was not there, to greet me with looks of affection and duty; and the gilding and ornaments of the apartment were to me no less disconsolate than the damps and sootiness of a dungeon.

I hoped he would return. I knew how tenderly he was attached to his mother and his sisters; I was fully convinced that the affection for me which had been the perpetual habit of his mind, could not be entirely eradicated from his heart. I mentioned him not in my letters to Constance; the pen lingered, my hand trembled, when I thought of him; I could neither pretend that he was with me, nor announce the catastrophe of his absence. But I opened the letters of Marguerite with still increasing impatience. Finding that he did not return to me, I hoped that some alteration of the extraordinary resolution he had formed, would lead him to Constance. In vain I hoped! There reached me, by no conveyance, from no quarter, tidings of my son!

How surprising an event! A youth, not seventeen years of age, forming and executing in the same instant the purpose of flying from his parents and his family! Deserting all his hopes, all his attachments, all his fortune! Refusing the smallest particle of assistance or provision in his entrance upon the wide scene of the world! Oh, Charles! exclaimed I, you are indeed an extraordinary and admirable youth! But are you fortified against all the temptations of the world and all its hardships? Do your tender years qualify you to struggle with its unkindness, its indifference, and its insults? In how few quarters is merit ever treated with the attention and benevolence it deserves! How often is it reduced to tremble with indignation, at the scoffs and brutality to which it is exposed, and at the sight of folly and vice exalted in its stead, and appointed its despot and its master! My son, my son! what will be your fate? Is your unseasoned frame reserved to perish by hunger, in barren deserts and beneath inclement skies? Will you not in some hour of bitter disappointment and unpitied loneliness, lay yourself down in despair and die? Will you not be made the slave of some capricious tyrant for bread? Generous as is your nature, will it be eternally proof against reiterated temptation? Upon what a world are you turned adrift! a world of which you know as little, as the poor affrighted soul of a dying man knows, when launching into the mysterious, impenetrable abyss of eternity! Unnatural father, to have reduced my only son to this cruel alternative! I should with a less aching and agonizing heart have accompanied his senseless remains to the grave. Dreadful as that parting is, there at least the anxious mind of the survivor has rest. There are no thoughts and devices in the silence of the tomb. There all our prospects end, and we are no longer sensible to pain, to persecution, to insult, and to agony. But Charles, thus departed, wandering on the face of the globe, without protector, adviser or resource, no lapse of years can put a close upon my anxiety for him! If I am in ease and prosperity, I cannot relish them, for my exposed and living son may be at that moment in the depth of misery! If I am myself oppressed and suffering, the thought of what may be his fate will form a dreadful addition to all my other calamities! What am I to say of him upon my return to Constance? If he had died, this was a natural casualty; and, whatever grief it might occasion, time no doubt would mollify and abate it. But what account can now be rendered of him to his disconsolate mother and terrified sisters? How can I lift up my head in their presence, or meet the glance of their reproachful eyes!

The idea had occurred to me, in the instant of Charles’s departure, and immediately after his exit, of detaining or bringing him back by force. He was by his extreme youth, according to the maxims of the world, still in a state of guardianship, and unqualified to be the chooser of his own actions. But to this mode of proceeding, however deeply I felt the catastrophe which had taken place, I could never consent. It was in utter hostility to the lessons of chivalry and honor, with which I had been familiarized from my earliest infancy. There might be cases, in which this restraint laid by a father upon his child would be salutary. But the idea which had occasioned the secession of Charles, was decisive in this instance. What right had I to chain him to dishonor? The whole bent of his education had been, to impress him with the feelings by which he was now actuated. If I detained him for a short time, was there any vigilance on earth that could finally prevent him from executing a purpose upon which his whole soul was resolved? Or, suppose there were, must not the consequence be to break his spirit, to deprive him of all manliness and energy, and to render him the mere drooping and soulless shadow of that conspicuous hero I had been anxious to make him? It might be said indeed, that this was the determination of a boy, formed in an hour, and that, if I detained him only long enough for deliberation and revisal, he would of his own accord retract so desperate a project. But I felt that it was a resolution formed to endure, and was built upon principles that could not change so long as an atom of his mind remained. No; I was rather disposed to say, however grievous was the wound he inflicted on me, Go, my son! Act upon the dictates of your choice, as I have acted on mine! I admire your resolution, though I cannot imitate it. Your purpose is lofty and godlike; and he that harbors it, was not born to be a slave. Be free; and may every power propitious to generosity and virtue smooth your path through life, and smile upon your desires!

The anguish I felt for having lost my son, and in this painful and reproachful manner, was not diminished to me either by society or amusement. I dared not go out of my house. I saw no one but my own attendants. I had not the courage to meet the aspect of a human creature. I knew not how far persons in Dresden might have heard the injurious reports which occasioned the flight of my son, or even have been acquainted with the nature of that flight. I had promised to see Coligny again; but, alas! the affair which had at first led me to wish to see him, was now at an end. I had no heart to seek him; nor indeed did I know what story I was to tell him, or how I was to remove the suspicions he had urged against me. The machine of human life, though constituted of a thousand parts, is in all its parts regularly and systematically connected; nor is it easy to insert an additional member, the spuriousness of which an accurate observation will not readily detect. How was I to assign a source of my wealth different from the true, which would not be liable to investigation, and, when investigated, would not be seen to be counterfeit? This indeed is the prime source of individual security in human affairs, that whatever any man does, may be subjected to examination, and whatever does not admit of being satisfactorily accounted for, exposes him whom it concerns to the most injurious suspicions. This law of our nature, so salutary in its general operation, was the first source of all my misfortunes.

I began now seriously to consider what judgment I was to pass upon the bequests of the stranger. Were they to be regarded as a benefit or a misfortune? Ought they to be classed with the poisoned robe of Nessus, which, being sent as a token of affection, was found, in the experiment, to eat into the flesh and burn up the vitals of him that wore it? Should I from this instant reject their use, and, returning to the modes of life established among my fellow men, content myself with the affection of those with whom I had intercourse, though poverty and hardships mingled with the balm?

The experiment I had made of these extraordinary gifts was a short one; but how contrary were all the results I had arrived at, from those I looked for? When the stranger had appeared six months before at the cottage of the lake, he had found me a poor man indeed, but rich in the confidence, and happy in the security and content, of every member of my family. I lived in the bosom of nature, surrounded with the luxuriance of its gifts and the sublimity of its features, which the romantic elevation of my soul particularly fitted me to relish. In my domestic scene I beheld the golden age renewed, the simplicity of pastoral life without its grossness, a situation remote from cities and courts, from traffic and hypocrisy, yet not unadorned with taste, imagination, and knowledge. Never was a family more united in sentiments and affection. Now all this beauteous scene was defaced! All was silence, suspicion, and reserve. The one party dared not be ingenuous, and the other felt that all the paradise of attachment was dwindled to an empty name. No questions were asked; for no honest answer was given or expected. Though corporeally we might sit in the same apartment, in mind a gulf, wide, impassable, and tremendous, gaped between us. My wife pined in speechless grief, and, it was to be feared, had sustained a mortal blow. My son, my only son, a youth of such promise that I would not have exchanged him for empires, had disappeared, and, as he had solemnly protested, for ever. My heart was childless: my bosom was bereaved of its dearest hope. It was for him principally that I had accepted, that I had rejoiced in the gifts of the stranger. My darling vision was to see him clothed in the harness, surrounded with the insignia, of a hero. There was nothing I so earnestly desired as that his merits, graced with the favors of fortune, might cause him to stand confessed the first subject of France; a situation more enviable than that of its monarch, since he who holds it is raised by deeds, and the other only by birth; and if less respected by interested courtiers, is certain to be more honored by the impartial voice of history. But, if I felt thus desolate and heartbroken for the loss of my son, what would be the sentiments of his mother, more susceptible to feel, and, in her present weakness of spirits, less vigorous to bear, than myself, when the dreadful tidings should be communicated to her?

Yet I could not resolve to renounce donations which I had so dearly appropriated. I held it to be a base and cowardly to surrender gifts so invaluable, upon so insufficient an experiment. He, I thought, must be a man of ignoble and groveling spirit, who could easily be prevailed on to part with unbounded wealth and immortal life. I had but just entered the vast field that was opened to me. It was of the nature of all great undertakings to be attended with difficulties and obstacles in the commencement, to present a face calculated to discourage the man that is infirm of purpose. But it became my descent, my character and pretensions, to show myself serene in the midst of storms. Perseverance and constancy are the virtues of a man. Affairs of this extensive compass often prove in the issue the reverse of what they seemed in the outset. The tempest might be expected to disperse, difficulties to unravel themselves, and unlooked-for concurrences to arise. All opposition and hostile appearance give way before him who goes calmly onward, and scorns to be dismayed.