Chapter 23

CHAPTER XXIII.

Having rejoined the remainder of my family, we set out together for the plains of Italy. My first interview with Marguerite after my return from Dresden had been melancholy. But our situation was now such as to give additional anguish to her serious thoughts. She had then regarded me as ambiguous, mysterious, and impenetrable, qualities from which the frankness of her nature spontaneously revolted; she saw in me the destroyer of her son, the idol of her heart; she believed me an alchymist, a character which she viewed as base, degrading, and insensible; she had heard that rumor had been busy with my fame. But now she saw in me a man of blasted reputation, arraigned and imprisoned for robbery and murder. She did not credit these imputations. But did the ingenuous and noble-minded Marguerite de Damville ever think to find herself allied to a being thus loaded with the world’s abhorrence; that she should be compelled to honor with the sacred name of husband a fugitive, a prison-breaker, and an outlaw? If I had suffered these things in the defense of my children, my religion, or my country, the case would have been widely different. If, while encountering the contempt of men, I had carried within me the glorious feeling, that what they regarded as my disgrace was indeed my immortal honor, Marguerite de Damville, beyond all women, was prepared to despise their senseless blame, and proudly to demand her share in such a dishonor.

I know there are men who will listen with fretful impatience to a detail of such sorrows as hers, and who will cry out, “If we must be distressed, give us more substantial and genuine sources of distress!” They will regard the dejection of Marguerite as an idle willfulness of grief, better entitled to aversion than to sympathy; and will tell me that nothing but the most deplorable blindness could have prevented her from discerning the happiness of her condition; that she had the world before her, a rich, a brave, and an enterprising husband, with a lovely family of children; that they could move from country to country, and from climate to climate, carrying with them the means of luxury, indulgence, homage, and usefulness. To such moralizers I write not. For those who are incapable of sympathizing with the delicate sensations of Marguerite, I am as little qualified to enter into their feelings as they into mine. In the sequel of the story however it is not impossible they may meet with their gratification. I am hastening to events corporeal and palpable. I and my family did wander from country to country, and from climate to climate. With what resulting success will speedily be seen.

Our destination at the present moment led us through the territory of the Grisons, and over a limb of the Rhetian Alps, to Como, Milan, Piacenza, Parma, and Pisa, in the neighborhood of which latter city we resolved to take up our immediate residence. In this passage we met with few adventures that merit to be recorded in my history. One however seems entitled to a place, both as it tends to display the singular worth of a dumb and unpretending brute, and as it is in some sort connected with the fortunes I encountered in the Pisan territory. It occurred in our journey over the Alps.

One evening, in the wildest and most desolate part of the mountain, after having lodged my family in an inn, I wandered forth to take a survey of the neighboring scenery. It was moonlight; our travel of the day had been short, and had left on me no impression of fatigue; while the romantic appearance of every thing around, tempted me to extend my excursion further than I had originally purposed. Stories of robberies and murders in the vicinity had been repeated to us, and Marguerite had employed the precaution of desiring Hector, such was the name which the caprice of his former masters had bestowed on my faithful negro, to follow my steps and hold me in sight. No anticipations of danger however disturbed my contemplations. I resigned myself, as all my life I had been accustomed to do, to the impressions of the moment, and sought to shut out memory and the world from all my thoughts. The scene was inexpressibly beautiful; the silence was uninterrupted and awful. The splendor of the moon gave a sober and silvery tint to every thing by which its light was caught; soft white clouds were scattered in the deep azure of the sky; the shades were of a blackness and profundity that could not be surpassed. Every thing was calculated to soothe and subdue the mind, to inspire a grand and expansive tranquility. The enthusiasm it spoke occupied every channel of my heart. I stood still. It seemed as if motion would have jarred and broken the spell that seized me; I yielded with eager transport to the sentiment that shrowded and enveloped me in its ample embrace.

I had remained motionless for above half an hour, when a sudden and eager sound burst upon my ear. It seemed to be the shriek of some human creature in distress. It was repeated several times. My first impulse was to fly to the spot from which the sound appeared to proceed. Meanwhile Hector came up to me, and endeavored to detain me by violence. His first principle was obedience to every just and lawful command; and the errand upon which he was commissioned, was to preserve me from the approach of danger. He represented to me the stories of banditti we had recently heard. He told me that we should too probably fall in with a numerous party of these desperadoes, against whom all our efforts, either for ourselves or for those I was desirous to succor, would be nugatory. What would become of my children? what would become of his mistress, if my rashness were succeeded by a fatal event? While he was thus speaking, and exerting himself to detain me, the cries ceased. I believed they were those of a person assassinated. I conceived that I should be the vilest of poltroons if I suffered any consideration to prevent me from endeavoring to afford to this unfortunate the relief in my power.

I had not advanced far, before I perceived coming towards us, in the same direction from which the sound had reached my ear, a dog, entirely black, and of uncommon stature and strength. He was alone. Having caught sight of us, he increased his pace, and had no sooner reached the spot on which we stood, than he seized the flap of my coat, and pulled it with considerable violence. I was somewhat alarmed at his size and action, the latter of which I apprehended to have a hostile design; and, having shaken him off, I put myself in a posture of defense with a cane that I carried in my hand. Undeterred however by my gesture, he returned to the attack, only pulling with something less exertion of strength than he had done before. More accurate attention convinced me that he had no intention to injure me, and I withheld the action of Hector, who had raised his hand to strike in defense of his master. I suffered him to guide me; and, after a considerable circuit which the nature of the road obliged us to take, he led me to a spot where I found a man lying on the ground, and weltering in his blood, but with no person near, to whom to impute the violence he had sustained.

His blood flowed copiously from two or three different wounds, one of them in particular near his left breast; and my first care was to stop the effusion. For this purpose we stripped him of his clothes, and tore his linen into bandages. When we found him, he was insensible; but the anguish of binding his wounds revived him a little, though only enough to extort from him sighs and groans. This accomplished, I dismissed Hector to the inn to procure something in the nature of a litter, by which he might more easily be conveyed within reach of effectual assistance.

I was now left for six hours with no other companions than the wounded gentleman and his dog, upon the very spot upon which he had just before sustained so ferocious a treatment, probably from the hands of banditti. They might every moment be expected to return. This was no agreeable notion to a person circumstanced as I was. I was compelled to feel that a man possessed of boundless and illimitable wealth, and of the power of repelling old age and disease, did not in these advantages possess every thing. Notwithstanding the disappointments and mortifications I had sustained, I was yet attached to life: and though the bequests of the stranger had hitherto produced to me nothing but evil, I still looked, with almost puerile eagerness and beating of heart, for the time when I might spread out the whole extent of my treasures without parsimony or the dread of reverse. During the interval which I employed in these reflections, the wounded man was for the most part in a state of insensibility, and constantly speechless. I expected his death every moment, and I perceived, as I thought with certainty, that there was no hope of his recovery. While we had dressed his wounds, the dog had watched our motions with the most restless attention, and, now that it was over, he came and licked my hands, and laid himself down at my feet. The least motion however, so much as a rustling among the leaves, startled him: he rose, looked round, and seemed to inquire into the cause of the disturbance; but he abstained from barking and every kind of noise; whether it were that he was conscious of the advantage of quiet to a person in his master’s condition, or that he had the sense to know, in the situation in which we were placed, that whatever produced alarm, might eventually expose us to undiscovered danger.

It was broad daylight before Hector re-appeared, and several other persons in his company. Hector was not of a temper to have receded from any thing he undertook, and the authority of Marguerite had in this instance seconded his remonstrances with the surly and inactive peasants of the place. I had at this time only one other male servant; but, when Hector returned, he brought with him a crazy kind of litter, and a recruit of four mountaineers. The wounded man still lived, and was conveyed alive to the place at which I had taken up my lodging. He survived three days; and, during the whole of that period, the dog could neither be moved by force, nor prevailed on by entreaties, to quit the apartment of his master. Before his death my unfortunate guest recovered the power of speech. He told me that his name was Andrea Filosanto, and, which struck me as somewhat extraordinary, that he was of Pisa, the very place at which I purposed to take up my abode. He had a brother resident in that city, and had himself been about to marry a very beautiful and accomplished young lady, an heiress, of the house of Carracciuoli in Pisa. Previously to his marriage, he resolved to make a visit to his mother, who had espoused to her second husband a French nobleman of Languedoc. He had traveled accompanied only by one servant, contrary to the persuasions both of his brother and the family of his intended bride; but that servant, though he had been a very short time in his employment, was active, ingenious, and obliging, and had established himself strongly in the favor of his master. Signor Filosanto had taken with him a sum of money, the produce of one year’s income of the dower of his mother; and it was but too probable that the richness of the charge he bore, had been fatal to the life of the bearer. His servant had disappeared from his side not a quarter of an hour before his being attacked by the banditti; and various concurring circumstances seemed to fix on this servant the accusation of being an accomplice with the murderers. Having heard from the unfortunate sufferer the tale of treachery of his human attendant, I related to him the extraordinary example of fidelity and attachment shown by his dog. The master was struck with the story I told, and called the dog to him upon his bed. The poor animal first leaped up upon the foot of the bed, and then warily and with great caution crawled to his master’s face. Filosanto embraced the dog, who by his manner showed himself fully sensible of the purport of the action. That very evening, having requested me to convey his remains to the tomb of his ancestors at Pisa, the master expired. The dog in dumb and constant grief watched by the corpse, and followed the vehicle in which it was conveyed to Pisa. After the funeral, he made the choice, from which he could not be diverted, of living with me, and not with the brother and relations of his master, to whom he was almost wholly a stranger, but who would gladly have received him. One of the advantages I derived from this adventure, was the friendship and protection of the Filosanti and Carracciuoli, two of the most powerful families in Pisa.

I have not yet finished the history of my dog. A few months after our establishment in the Pisan territory, the valet of the deceased had the audacity to appear in that city. He believed himself to be entirely unknown there, his master having taken him into his service during his residence as a student in the university of Bologna; and having ordered him, previously to his projected tour into France, to stay behind and settle his debts and other affairs at that place. He found however an adversary in Pisa that in all his anticipations had never occurred to his thoughts. The dog saw him at a distance in the street, ran towards him with incredible swiftness, and fell upon him with savage violence and ferocity. The man was not extricated from his grip, till he had been severely and dangerously wounded. Thus assailed, all the terrors of superstition and an accusing conscience seized on this devoted villain; he owned who he was, and confessed that he had made one among the assassins and plunderers of his master, visible probably to the dog, though unseen by the unfortunate Filosanto. He declared, that he knew not what motive had brought him to Pisa, that he seemed to himself under the guidance of an impulse which he had not power to resist, and that he rejoiced that Providence had thus conducted him to the expiation of his guilt. He was brought to his trial, and suffered death for his crime.

Charon, such was the name by which my dog was distinguished, showed himself in all his actions worthy of the character for attachment and sagacity which he had in these instances acquired. He was therefore the favorite of my whole family, and particularly of Hector. But his own partiality was with the nicest discrimination reserved for me. The ruling passion of his preceding master had been the sports of the field, and his leading singularity an uncommon familiarity and friendship towards his brute attendants. By this conduct he had won the affections, and perhaps awakened the understanding and virtues, of the faithful Charon. I own my weakness. I could not resist the assiduities and regard of this generous brute; and, though I had never before conceived any extraordinary partiality for creatures of his species, his sagacity and nobleness of nature took a strong hold of my affection. I admired his form and agility as he bounded and gamboled before me upon the plain. In the midst of his gayest frolics he was all attention, and the least sign I made him would instantly divert his exertions to a different pursuit. He was accustomed to salute me with honest, undesigning homage every morning as I came from my chamber, and I should have missed his presence with heaviness of heart upon this plain and homely occasion. He was the associate of my solitary walks, and my companion when pensive meditations induced me to withdraw from all human society. I became accustomed at such periods to observe him by my side, and should have felt that all was not right if he were not there. I was interested in his health, his well-being and his enjoyments; and, if any calamity befell him, was prepared to feel it more severely than a wise man is sometimes willing to confess.—It would scarcely be necessary to add to this simple history of my faithful Charon, the circumstance of his having saved the life of a beautiful little boy of ten years old, who had unluckily slipped into the Arno, and whom he seized by his garments and drew to the shore, had it not some connection with what I shall speedily have occasion to relate.