Chapter 45

CHAPTER XLV.

Among the various confidences reposed in me by my son, one was his love. The object of his attachment was a young lady of quality, named Pandora, niece to Nadasti, great palatine of Hungary. In consequence of the earnest recommendation of Castaldo in 1553, Nadasti had taken my son under his particular protection, and Charles’s principal home at the periods when the army was dispersed in winter-quarters was at the palatine’s house in the city of Presburg. Here his manners had become more polished, and his taste more refined. Till then, bred in tents, and living amid the clangor of arms, he had been a mere soldier, rough, generous, manly, and brave. But Nadasti was an elegant scholar, smitten with that ardent love of classical and ancient lore which has so eminently distinguished the sixteenth century. He assembled round him men of letters from various parts of Europe; and, under his auspices, the days of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, seemed to be revived, whose love of literature was such, that he kept three hundred transcribers in his house, constantly employed in multiplying copies of the precious relics of Roman and Athenian learning. The consort of Nadasti was one of the most accomplished matrons of the age in which she lived, and her three daughters were patterns of every polite and amiable accomplishment. Such was the school into which the chevalier de Damville entered at the age of twenty-five, immediately after the retreat of Castaldo. This may seem an age somewhat late for new-modeling the character, but Charles had an enterprising and aspiring temper; and he soon became a distinguished ornament of courts and the society of ladies. Castaldo had taught him all he knew, the temper, the manners, and the science of a military chieftain: the palace of Nadasti finished and completed the education of my son.

Pandora was only fourteen years of age when Charles de Damville first became a sort of inmate of the house of her uncle. She at that time lived with her father; but he being afterwards killed in the battle which Nadasti fought for the relief of Ziget, Pandora occupied an apartment in the palatine palace. From the first hour he saw her, a mere child as it were, accompanied by her governess, Charles confessed to me that he had beheld her with eyes of distinction. He had said to himself, This little girl will hereafter be a jewel worthy of the crown of an emperor. He had found something inexpressibly attractive in the starry brightness of her complexion; her air he regarded as both lighter and more graceful than any thing he had ever before seen; and her speaking and humid eye seemed to him the very emblem of sensibility and sweetness. If, at the girlish and immature season of fourteen, he had ascribed to her all these perfections, it will easily be supposed that, as she increased in stature as the beauties of form unfolded themselves in her, and she advanced in sentiment and a lovely consciousness of her worth, the partiality of Charles became more deep and unalterable. But the orphan niece of Nadasti was altogether without a portion; and the great palatine would have seen with more complacency the chevalier de Damville addressing his pretensions to one of his daughters.

Charles confessed to me that the passion he nourished had been fruitful of pleasures and griefs, of hope and perplexity. It was now almost a year since Pandora and himself had confessed a mutual affection. The confession had not been the result of design on either side: both had wished to suppress it; Pandora from virgin dignity and reserve; and Charles, because he saw not how their affection could be crowned with success, and he dreaded, more than any misery to himself, to be the author of degradation and misery to her he loved. But what is ever uppermost in the heart will at some time or other betray itself. Their sympathetic and accordant feelings upon a point so deeply interesting to both, rendered them eagle-eyed to discern the smallest indications. They had had a thousand opportunities, and a thousand opportunities had been resisted. They became more than usually silent and reserved towards each other; they shunned to meet, and, when they met, avoided each other’s eyes. One day a casual encounter in a solitary retreat, which each had sought principally with intention to escape the presence of the other, had taken them off their guard. They were mutually hesitating and perplexed; each discerned more unequivocal indications than had ever occurred before of the state of the other’s sentiments; the entire accord snapped as it were at once the chains of reserve; and each, after a short interval of hesitation, spoke with an eloquence, hitherto untried, the language of love. The difference of years between them gave a zest to the communication. Pandora seemed to be throwing herself upon the protection of an elder brother, of a guardian, one in whose prudence she confided as the antidote of her inexperience; Charles felt his maturer years as imposing on him more severely that sacred integrity, the obligation of which, at least as society is at present constituted, seems in the majority of cases to grow out of the relative situation of the sexes, of the protectorship of the one, and the dependence of the other.

“And now,” exclaimed Charles, “what am I to do? what am I to desire? It would be affectation in me to conceal from myself on an occasion like this, that the reputation I have acquired both in the arts of peace and war is such, as to have caused Nadasti to set his heart upon my becoming his son-in-law. The great palatine, though in many respects generous and liberal, has that inflexibleness of opinion, which is perhaps more apt to grow up in the hearts of scholars, than in other departments of society. He is grave and solemn; all his habits are of a majestic and lordly nature; and I have small reason to hope that I shall find him accessible to my representations. He is little subject to sallies of passion; his own propensities are wholly under the control of his judgment; and it is not likely that he will make allowance for the ardent affections of other minds. Pandora is entirely dependent on him; in any case the portion she would receive from him would be very inadequate to her worth; but, discarded and discountenanced by him who has the absolute rule of Christian Hungary, what can she expect? I am myself destitute of fortune; my provision as a soldier will be very inadequate to the wants of the first and softest of her sex. But even of that provision Nadasti will deprive me, if I marry in opposition to his pleasure. Shall I make Pandora the inhabitant of tents and encampments; shall I expose her to all the changes and hazards of a military life; shall I drag her as the attendant of a soldier of fortune through every climate of Europe? No, by heavens! I should regard myself as the most selfish and the basest of mankind, if I could deliberate on such a question. Never shall the charmer of my soul owe a single privation to her Charles. I love her with so pure and entire a passion, that I prefer her prosperity to every earthly good. Nor is it merely necessary to my attachment that she should live in plenty and ease; I require that my Pandora should be seen in her native luster, that she should be surrounded with every appendage due to her merit, that she should command applause from the mercenary, and homage from the superficial. Her praise is the only music I enjoy. I could not bear to hear her name coupled with levity and scorn. I could not bear that, where she appeared, every eye should not be turned to her with reverence and honor. My passion, I confess it, is that of a disciple of liberal arts and a nobleman, not that of an Arcadian.”

The period of the campaign now drew to an end, and Charles, having requested me to accompany him, set out for his usual winter retreat in the city of Presburg. I saw Pandora. Never in my life had I beheld any thing so sweetly simple. I had always been an admirer of the sex; but the perfections of Pandora were of a nature that I had not observed in any other woman. Her symmetry was so perfect, the pearly luster of her skin so admirable, and her form and carriage so light and ethereal, that at first view it was difficult to persuade one’s self that she was framed of the same gross materials as the rest of the species. She seemed not constructed to endure the shocks of the world, and the rude assaults of ill humor or neglect, of censure or adversity. Her voice was of the sweetest, the clearest and softest tone I ever heard. There was a peculiar naïveté in her accents, that riveted your soul in irresistible fetters. Her conversation, for in the sequel I enjoyed much of her conversation, had a very uncommon zest. She seemed to have no art, and what she uttered appeared as if wholly unchecked by consideration or reserve. You were persuaded that she always delivered without restraint the first thing that occurred to her mind; yet in what she said there was so much good sense, so much true feeling, and, as the occasion allowed, so much whim and imagination, that you could not discover how any of her words could be changed but for a worse. This circumstance strikingly contrasted with the childish simplicity, or rather the feminine softness and sylph-like delicacy, of her manner and her tone. The opposition of appearance between her and my son made a strong impression upon me. He was a perfect soldier, with an ample chest, broad shoulders, and a figure, though graceful and well proportioned, yet so strong, that it seemed framed to contend with and to conquer the wrestlers in the Grecian games. His complexion, shaded with luxuriant curls of manly hair, was itself made brown with the rigors of climate. Pandora was so heavenly fair, so sweetly delicate and slender, that you would have thought she would be withered and destroyed in his embrace, like the frailest ornament of the garden before the northern breeze. But courage to choose what is rugged and manlike is often characteristic of the softest of her sex.

I speedily contracted an intimate commerce with the beautiful Pandora. I was naturally desirous to be as consummate a judge as possible of those perfections, which I believed fated to determine the future happiness of my son. When sufficiently satisfied in that respect, I still continued the indulgence, and found a pure and exquisite pleasure in the daily contemplation of accomplishments that were to prove the materials of his gratification and delight, whose gratification I preferred to my own. I had a still further view in this commerce. I was anxious to be perfectly informed of the connections and family of Pandora, that upon them I might build a project I had deeply at heart, of bestowing on her, in the least questionable and exceptionable manner, a dowry, that should place her upon an equality with her cousins, the daughters of Nadasti, and deliver my son from all apprehension of the unpleasing consequences to result from the resentment of the great palatine. Nadasti was opulent, and the portions of his daughters very considerable; and, however inclined, I could not exceed this limit without risking the entire miscarriage of my project. Charles thought nothing too rich either in situation or income to do honor to the mistress of his soul; but, separately from this enthusiastic sentiment, both he and Pandora had too just a taste, not to prefer the simple majesty of ancient nobility, to the expensive ostentations of modern refinement.

Having digested my plan I was obliged to travel as far as Venice for the execution of it. The mother of Pandora had been a Venetian, and the uncle of her mother was one of the adventurers who had sailed with Pizarro for the conquest of Peru. He had died before the completion of that business, and had left behind him no relative so near to him in blood as the lovely Pandora. By a singular piece of good fortune, I encountered at Venice an individual who had sailed in the same ship with the young lady’s uncle. The uncle having died prematurely, the share he might otherwise have obtained of the spoils of Peru was sunk in the shares of the rest, and nothing was allowed to remain that might have descended to his heirs. His friend and countryman I found, though once rich with the booty he made, had by a series of calamities, before he reached his native home, been reduced to a state of poverty. The vicissitudes he experienced, had produced in him the effect of a very uncommon eagerness for acquisition. This man I fixed on for my instrument; I opened to him my plan, and offered him a very ample gratification, provided he acted successfully the part I assigned him. In concert with each other we digested and forged the various documents that were best calculated to give credibility to the tale. Having completed our arrangement, I set out for Presburg without a moment’s delay, and directed my Venetian not to follow till after a stipulated interval. He was not to enter into full possession of his reward till he had completed the task he had undertaken. It was fixed that no person in Hungary should be acquainted with my visit to Venice, but only be allowed to understand generally, that I had been engaged for a certain time in an excursion of amusement. So hard is the fate of the possessor of the philosopher’s stone, and so limited his power, as to have rendered all these precautions on my part indispensably necessary. Had not the various circumstances concurred, the detail of which is here stated, the birth of Pandora’s mother in a maritime state, the expedition of Pizarro to Peru, her uncle’s engaging in this expedition and dying before it was completed, and my own casual rencounter with his compagnon du voyage, my project would too probably have been baffled. A direct gift of the fortune I designed would never have been admitted of; and, had not the coincidence been eminently favorable, even though I should have succeeded in misleading every other party, I could not hope to have eluded the perspicacity and jealous honor of my son.

When I returned to Presburg, I again renewed my intercourse with Pandora. The passion entertained by Damville for the beautiful orphan was a secret to every person at court; they had managed so discreetly as to have avoided every hint of suspicion; and, as it was universally known that the great palatine had an eye on this gallant soldier for one of his daughters, few persons entertained a doubt that my son would speedily declare his election among the co-heiresses of Nadasti. On the other hand, in the friendly intercourse between me and Pandora, neither she nor myself felt that there was any thing to conceal, and it was therefore a matter of complete notoriety. My blooming youth of appearance was remarked; by the majority of bystanders we were judged formed for each other; and, before I was aware, the beautiful Hungarian was awarded to me by the general voice as my destined bride. When however I became acquainted with the rumor, I was contented to smile at it; the consciousness in my own breast how far the public sagacity had wandered in its guess, gave to that guess, in my apprehension, a certain air of whimsical and amusing.