CHAPTER XXXV.

From St. Leon I proceeded to the kingdom of Hungary. To complete this journey I must pass through near twenty degrees of longitude. But that was a trivial consideration: what I most desired was to gain a new situation, and enter upon an untried scene. I had determined in my next experiment upon the endowments of the stranger, to make no half-formed efforts, and to suffer no mischiefs that drew their source from my own irresolution. I determined, as I have said, to forestall all opposition by my firmness, and to silence all objectors by the display of a more than princely magnificence. I thought it therefore eligible to remove to a scene, where no encounter with any one I had ever known might abash me, and no relation of any adventure I had ever met should follow me. The change of my figure, it is true, would render an encounter of this sort of little moment to my liberty or my reputation; but I was a new man, and I was desirous to engross and to feel the benefits that attend upon novelty.

There was another motive however secretly working at my heart, of a grander and more exalted cast, that made me prefer Hungary to all the countries of the earth. Hungary had been now, for upwards of a century, the great frontier of the Christian world,—the theater upon which the followers of Mahomet contended against the followers of Jesus for destruction and for empire. My mind had from time to time brooded over this picture in the solitude and forlornness of my dungeon. I ruminated on all the calamities of Hungary, from the battle of Warna in 1444, to the battle of Mohacz in 1526; in both of which this generous nation had unsuccessfully achieved prodigies of valor, and, even by their defeats, had protracted the date of their own independence, and co-operated for the defense of the population and arts of Europe against a barbarous and blood-delighting foe. My thoughts dwelt with rapturous admiration upon the exploits of the heroic Huniades and his greater son. In the course of my many-colored experience I had seen something of war, and was not totally unacquainted with its never-failing consequences. Meditating as I had done in the dungeons of the inquisition, if ever I recovered my personal liberty and my freedom of action, a journey into Hungary, my imagination had grown familiar with captured towns and smoking villages; with the gallant soldier stretched lifeless on the plain, and the defenseless mother and her offspring brutally insulted and massacred; with fields laid waste, and a people lifting up their hands for bread. Determined as I was to open at once all the stores of my wealth, I thought I could not find a nobler scene for its display. I resolved to pour the entire stream of my riches, like a mighty river, to fertilize these wasted plains, and revive their fainting inhabitants. Thus proceeding, should I not have a right to expect to find myself guarded by the faithful love of a people who would be indebted to my beneficence for every breath they drew? This was the proper scene in which for the possessor of the philosopher’s stone to take up his abode. He who could feel his ambition satisfied in a more straitened field would, by so doing, prove himself unworthy of the mighty blessing.

Nothing occurred to me in my journey of importance enough to obtain a place in this history. When I arrived, I found the condition of the inhabitants even more wretched than the lawlessness of my imagination had represented it. In the battle of Mohacz the last of the line of their native sovereigns, together with the flower of his nobility, had fallen a victim to the merciless plague of war. What survived of eminent persons in the state assembled soon after in national diet, and elected, as they had been accustomed to do, one of the most illustrious among themselves to preside over the councils and to conduct the battles of their country. But the princes of the house of Austria, ever on the watch for the aggrandizement of their family, seized the opportunity of their disastrous situation to enthralled the Hungarians to their scepter. Charles the Fifth caused his brother Ferdinand, whose consort was only sister to the deceased monarch, to advance his claim to the vacant throne, and to enter the country with an imperial army. The native and elected sovereign found himself, in the weakened condition of his realm, unable to resist the Austrian arms, and was finally driven to the desperate expedient of calling in the Turk to his assistance. From this time, for now upwards of thirty years, the kingdom had been a prey to two foreign invaders, alternately taking and retaking her most considerable towns, and distributing with the strictest impartiality the miseries of war to her devoted inhabitants. Solyman the Magnificent, the present Ottoman emperor, in no long time threw off the mask; and, like his rival Ferdinand, professed to fight only for the enlargement of his own dominions; while the claims, the liberties, the constitution, and the prosperity of Hungary, were alike trodden under foot in the protracted and sanguinary struggle.

At the period at which I entered this unfortunate realm, the Turk was in possession of Buda, Gran, Temeswar, and many of the most considerable cities; and Ferdinand, who had now succeeded Charles in the imperial dignity, had been obliged to withdraw the seat of the national government from the first of these towns, the ancient metropolis, to the comparatively insignificant city of Presburg. The war between the two parties had more than once been interrupted; not indeed by the more stable accommodations of a treaty of peace, but by a truce variously concluded for the terms of six or of eight years. Short as was the period assigned to the suspension of arms, it was never suffered to reach its natural termination; but, after the interval of one or two summers, hostilities did not fail to break out again, with aggravated symptoms of resentment and animosity. The warfare that was now carried on had more in it of passion than vigor: it was of little moment to the interest of either of the princes under whose banners it was conducted; but it was not on that account the less, but rather the more, vexatious and distressing to the Hungarian people. It obeyed no rule; it operated in every direction; no place, no province, no town,—neither the church nor the palace, neither the cottage nor the castle,—could assure safety to those who sought its protection. A flying party, which was to-day in the west, would almost the next day make its appearance in the eastern extremity of the kingdom. Arts were neglected; civilization was destroyed; the stern and haughty baron, free from restraint, would sally from his castle, sometimes in pursuit of plunder, sometimes of private resentment and revenge; the starving peasantry gladly enlisted in the band of a ferocious partisan for bread; the gangs of robbers, which the vigilant policy of better times had almost annihilated, rose again in importance, and swelled into regiments; and, while they assumed at pleasure the denomination of adherents to Ferdinand or to Solyman, perpetrated every species of excess with impunity. When a reflecting spectator surveys a country in a condition like this, he is tempted to wonder that the inhabitants still retain the courage to bestow on their fields any sort of cultivation, and that the licensed or the unlicensed robber still finds something over which to extend the fangs of his rapacity.

I had not long passed the gates of Vienna, before I began to observe the symptoms of that, which I had come from the Pyrenees and the Garonne to visit. The farther I advanced, the more melancholy was the scene I beheld. The country in some places entirely deserted; villages laid in ashes; cities reduced to the dimensions and insignificance of villages; fields fertilized or made rank with the manure of human blood; the roads broken up; the erections of human ingenuity almost obliterated; mills thrown down; rivers choked up and rendered stagnant; a few solitary plots of cultivation scattered amid the mighty waste. The inhabitants I saw, appeared terrified, sickly, dejected, and despairing; there was scarcely one who earlier or later had not lost a father or a brother, whose wife had not been made the victim of brutal lust, or who had not seen his children butchered before his face. Persons of the more opulent classes could not travel the country in safety, without being armed and associated in companies and caravans. I was myself obliged to obtain the protection of parties of soldiers, who from time to time happened to be marching in the route I pursued. The savage neglect into which every thing was declining, produced in repeated instances a contagious air and pestilential diseases; while dearth and famine unrelentingly haunted the steps of those whom the sword and the pestilence had spared. Such is war: such are the evils nations willingly plunge into, or are compelled to endure, to pamper the senseless luxury or pride of a Ferdinand and a Solyman!

I proceeded, as I had originally determined to do, to Buda, the metropolis of the kingdom. It was in the hands of the Turk. It was of little importance to me whether the monarch of the soil were a Mahometan or a Christian; my mind was engrossed by considerations of a very different magnitude. I came to relieve and assist, to the utmost of my power, the inhabitants of the country in the extremity of their distress.

I had not proceeded thus far, without bestowing a certain strictness of reflection on the subject. I easily saw that, if I would confer a substantial benefit on this unfortunate nation, I had scarcely any other means for the purpose, than that of reviving among them a spirit of industry. I was aware that, in the strictness of the term, money was not wealth; that it could be neither eaten nor drunk; that it would not of itself either clothe the naked or shelter the houseless; and that it was unable, but by a circuitous operation, to increase the quantity of provisions or commodities that the country afforded. It was my business therefore not to proceed idly in the distribution of gold, but to meditate seriously my plan of operations.

I fixed myself in a spacious and beautiful mansion in the capital. This in the present distressed and depopulated condition of Hungary, it was not difficult to procure. The house I selected had for centuries been the principal residence of the illustrious family of Ragotski; but the present representative of that family, after having seen his sons, one after another, killed in the battles of his country, and his estates ruined by military depredation, had found himself compelled to fly in his old age, and had taken refuge with a distant branch of the same house in the great duchy of Lithuania. It was not necessary for me to proceed to any great extent in the first instance in the manufacture of my wealth; I had every facility for adding to my store from time to time as circumstances should demand.

I determined to open my operations with the article of building. There was sufficient need of it. One half of the houses, through most of the districts of Lower, or Western Hungary in particular, were ruined and untenantable. I did not begin with erecting palaces; I felt that the first claimants in the present emergency were the peasant and the cultivator. I was more desirous that the rustic than the prince should be well lodged and accommodated, provided with the means of rest after fatigue, and secured against the invasion of ungenial seasons.

My reasons for beginning with building were these:—It was my purpose to stimulate and revive the industry of the nation: I was desirous of doing this with the least practicable violence upon the inclinations and freedom of the inhabitants. Had I required of those to whom I addressed myself, that they should fertilize the earth, the seeds with which it should be impregnated might be wanting: I should have a nice balance to adjust between what was necessary for immediate subsistence, and what might be applied as the basis of future; a point better left to its spontaneous level: I might be impeded and controlled by a thousand circumstances and at every step. But the materials of building are to be found in every country; no seasons can impair, no malignity of man can annihilate them. Wherever there are quarries, there is stone; wherever there is clay, there are the means of manufacturing bricks. I was anxious to leave the rest of the great process of human accommodation to its course. While I employed laborers, and paid them their wages, there would be, in the mildest and most salutary mode, a continual influx of money into the market. The increase of the precious metals would give new alacrity to the operations of traffic; the buyers would come forward with double confidence; the vendors would be eager to meet the activity and spirit of the demand. Ardor and hope would revisit the human mind; and the industry I created, and the accommodations of one kind at least to which I gave birth, would inoculate the other departments of the community with a similar industry. I came into Hungary in the spring of 1560; the season was favorable to seeding and cultivation; I seemed to enter on my undertaking with the happiest auspices.

Some time however must necessarily elapse between the period of impregnating the soil, and that of the future harvest. Though I laid it down therefore as a law to myself, to commit the least practicable violence upon the genuine action of human society in pursuit of the means of subsistence, I thought proper in a certain degree to engage in the importation of corn from Poland, Silesia, and other neighboring countries. This seemed an eligible measure, if it were only that I might show others the way, and excite them by my example. I procured agents; I extended my concerns in various directions over the navigable rivers; I formed magazines. It would have been contrary to the genius of my undertaking, either to make a gratuitous distribution of what I purchased, or to sell it at such low prices as to drive other speculators, whose spirit of enterprise might happily co-operate with mine, out of the market. However indifferent I might feel to the receipt of pecuniary compensation, it was necessary that, in the concerns of barter and trade, I should assume the exterior of a merchant.

Nor did I wholly confine my exertions within the occupations of an architect and a corn-dealer. These, or rather the former of the two, I regarded as my true and genuine province; but I did not so far enthralled myself to my own maxims, as to negative in all instances the direct demands of want. I was not anxious to convert a nation or an army of men into my personal adherents and retainers: I was rather desirous to avoid this as a dangerous source of obloquy. I did not therefore always decline, by pretended loans to assist other men to employ laborers as well as myself, to act upon their own designs, and prosecute their own fortune. The cries of the poor man, the widow, and the orphan, were sometimes too importunate, and too well justified by their unquestionable necessities, to allow me to withhold from them my alms. In a few instances I conveyed my supplies anonymously to persons, whose dignity of birth or whose proud independence would have been too grievously wounded if they had known their benefactor. I was cautious and apprehensive as to the direct dispensing of money, but not entirely bent against it; I regarded it as a precarious, but in some cases a necessary interference.

The impulse which, by these various measures, I was fortunate enough to generate, seemed to have the effect, so far at least as the sphere of my activity extended, to revive the almost expiring life of the country. Dejection and hopeless indolence, when I commenced my operations, were written in every face; the miserable inhabitants crawled along the roads or the street, their hands idly relaxed by their side, and their slow and painful steps scarcely supporting their lifeless trunk. When my plan became known, and I had already in a few instances reduced my maxims into practice, it was as if the mellow and spirit-stirring blast of a trumpet had wakened their sleeping souls. Their eyes lightened with intelligence; the tear of anguish was wiped from their faded cheeks; the smile of hope slowly expelled, and faintly succeeded to, the bitter expression of despair. Busy and active thoughts gave new motion to their limbs and quickness to their steps; the laborer was seen hastening from place to place; the sound of the hammer, the saw, and the various tools of the workman, was to be heard from every side.

The conduct I pursued necessarily fixed upon me a considerable portion of public attention. I was a foreigner, destitute of connections, and having no previous acquaintance with any individual in the country. I was in appearance a mere boy, a young man in all the flower and bloom of adolescence, and who must be supposed to have just entered into possession of his patrimony. These things tended to increase the public wonder, and to render the mystery of my proceedings more perplexing and obscure. In the age of genial warmth and melting softness, I did not appear accessible to those passions which haunt the days, and too often undermine the virtues, of youth. Youth is the season of benevolence; but benevolence is rarely, as seemed to be my case, the only fruit that youth is found to produce. There was a maturity and a justness of adaptation in my plans, not less foreign from what those who surrounded me would have expected me to display. The apparent disinterestedness and modesty of my proceedings were not lost upon the spectators. The consequence of all this was, that the sieur de Chatillon, such was the name I at this time assumed, was regarded as a phenomenon which could not be too much admired, or too loudly extolled. Wherever I appeared, the people followed me with their gratitude and blessings; ballads were written in my praise; the very children were taught with their infant tongues to lisp the virtues of the savior of Hungary. My doors were besieged; my steps were watched; I could move no where without public observation. I was importuned with petitions without end; yet, if any petitioner showed himself presumptuous and intrusive, the whole multitude of bystanders was ready to repress his indiscretion, and teach him the respect that was due to their generous benefactor, who never refused any thing, but what it would be improper and injurious to grant.

Such was the treatment I experienced in Buda and the neighboring districts. Whether I looked within or without, I was equally presented with incitements to self-approbation. I sent forth labor, accompanied with her best and loveliest companions, plenty and health, congratulation and contentment, to scatter blessings through the land. I felt that I was prompted to this conduct by none of the motives of vulgar ambition. I desired neither lordships nor estates, neither elevation of rank, nor extension of prerogative. Sufficient to myself, if I effected the happiness of the people, and they confessed me their benefactor, my every passion would then be gratified. The utmost boundary of my personal wishes proceeded no farther than this, that I might be honored and loved. What I desired, I obtained; the youth I had procured to myself through the medium of the opus magnum, was like what we are told of the youth of Job:—“When I went out through the gate of the city, the young men saw me and hid themselves, and the aged arose and stood up; the nobles refrained from talking, and the princes laid their hands upon their mouths. When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to my actions.”

Here it may be thought I had ascended to that sphere which it was fit the possessor of the philosopher’s stone should fill, and reaped the rewards to which a man thus endowed ought to be forward to entitle himself. Nor will I affirm that I was insensible to the gratifications of my present situation. Though I sought to escape from the applause that pursued me, yet there is something in the nature of the human mind, that makes it impossible for us to hear it without complacence. It was not however a boisterous and obtrusive acclamation that satisfied me. A certain inwrought modesty of nature made me listen to noisy commendations with a sentiment of shame. They seemed to be more than any thing I had done could deserve; or they seemed to be in a tone from which the delicacy of a virtuous mind shrinks back displeased. They were so obstreperous, as to take from me the power of hearing the sweeter verdict of my own conscience. No; it was the unbidden tear that glistened in the eye of my beneficiaries; the tongue that faltered beneath the essays of gratitude; the overwhelmed heart that had no power to express itself; the hand of the parent that was stretched out to his children, and dumbly said, These, these shall thank you!—it was these things, that I felt within as the balsam of my life, and the ambrosia of heaven.