CHAPTER XXXVII.

In my conference with the bashaw I may seem to have secured more than one point of material importance; yet it was difficult for any man to be in a state less consolatory or more full of danger and menace, than I was at this moment. By my vigilance and the power which thus I had acquired, I prevented indeed the inhabitants from wantonly destroying the means of their own subsistence; but, the more I was their benefactor, the more I appeared to become odious to their thoughts. My negotiation with the bashaw, whatever other benefit might accrue from it, did not tend to increase the resources of the country; I was obliged to witness many scenes of wretchedness. He that would assist mankind in their adversity, must harden his heart to be the spectator of the distress that he can, and that he cannot, relieve. But whatever I beheld of this sort, the majority of the bystanders obstinately persisted to ascribe to my deliberate malignity. The military aid I found myself necessitated to introduce by no means tended to disarm the prejudices of my clients. In one or two instances, but no more, slight tumults arose, and a few of the rioters fell a prey to their own wickedness and folly. These misfortunes were cast as reproach upon me; and I was pursued with clamors and curses. I found it requisite to obtain a guard for my person. I was abhorred by those for whom all my vigilance was exerted, and insulted by the mouths that I supplied with the necessaries of existence.

Nor was this my only source of alarm and uneasiness in my present situation. I was by no means a dupe to the ostentatious civility of the bashaw. I perfectly understood his insinuation when he invited the frequent repetition of my visits. I knew that, however dearly I purchased his friendship and patronage, I should still have to purchase them again and again. His extortions upon me admitted of no limits, except from his own modesty, or the estimate he might form of my invisible resources. Bribery itself afforded me no complete security; and, now that I had become an object of curiosity and remark, he had sufficiently shown me I was at the mercy of his caprice, or that of his master, for my liberty, and even for my life.

Yet, could I have resolved to quit Hungary, and seek the protection of some more regular government, what benefit should I derive from a removal? Mystery was the great and unconquerable bane of my situation, and from the poisonous influence of mystery, the most regular system of government was not competent to protect me. It would be idle to imagine that, in any country on earth, a stranger would be permitted to launch into such expenses as those in which I was engaged, without becoming an object of suspicion, and being made liable to continual interruption in his measures. Yet, unless allowed to use the resources I possessed, of what advantage was it to be the depository of wealth without a bound? Was it to be wished for a man under my circumstances, to have a family, or to be without a family? When I had one, I found the legacy of the stranger robbing me of every comfort of that sort, with the most calamitous aggravations. When I was stripped of wife and children, though no man could prize those benefits more dearly than I prized them, I took to myself the consolation, that at least now I should risk no one’s happiness but my own; and that, for a person exercising my endowments, it was perhaps requisite to be free from every shackle and incumbrance. I found however the topic from which I had consoled myself, in reality the source of a new misfortune. I had the wealth of a nobleman; but I was deprived of his adventitious attributes. I had no illustrious ancestry to boast; I had neither lineage nor parent; I had neither wife nor children, in whom mutually to reflect and see reflected the elevatedness and generosity of my station. I had not even the ordinary advantage, which is within the reach of almost every man, of connections and acquaintance, friends handed down to me as a branch of my patrimonial inheritance, friends whose value experience enabled me to ascertain, and friends with whom long habits of familiarity had given birth to reciprocal endearment. The bashaw had imputed to me the design of forming a party. Alas! these, which are the great materials for cementing party attachments, were totally denied me. I had no bonds of alliance but those which money afforded, the coarsest, the meanest, the least flattering, and the most brittle of those ligatures, that afford the semblance of uniting man with man.