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" Et de vrai la nouvelleté couste si cher jusqu'a cette heure a
ce
pauvre Estat — (et je ne scay si nous en sommes a la derniere
enchere) qu'en tout et partout j'en quitte le party."
MONTAIGNE.
THE Work I now offer to the Public, has been written under great disadvantages —and, might I quote in my apology for the defects of so trifling a composition as a Novel, the expression used in regard to his great and laborious work by Dr. Johnson, I might justly plead in excuse for those defects, that it has been composed "amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow" — at a time when long anxiety has ruined my health, and long oppression broken my spirits — at the end of more than ten years (a very great portion of human life), during which I have been compelled to provide for the necessities of a numerous family, almost entirely by my own labour — and when I am yet to look forward to no other prospect for the future but a repetition of exertions on my part; of injustice and evasion on the part of those who have detained the property of my children from them, or even to greater inconvenience and distress for them, when, quite worn out by my sufferings, I shall no more be able to assist them.
By my friends I have often been congratulated, on the power I have possessed of warding off, in a great measure, the shafts of adversity from my children; but whatever gratification that reflection may afford, it is embittered when I consider that I have toiled only that others might rob — and that the more struggles I have made for their support, the greater has been the facility with which their trustees have given up their property to be plundered by others.
Had I known ten years since, that instead of rescuing them from the mismanagement, it was the purpose of these Trustees to expose them to more direct malversation — had I known that instead of disposing of the property as the will of their Grandfather directs, it was these gentlemens' determination to let their agent put the produce into his own pocket from year to year, without question, and without account — could I have foreseen that the creditors of their Grandfather's estate to a very great amount, would have defied, instead of paying them, I should have done wrong to have attempted raising such a family as a gentleman's family — I should have been wiser to have descended at once into the inferior walks of life, and have humbled them and myself to our fortunes: — but, when I have been told, from year to year, that their property would be restored; when I have been conjured to have patience yet a little longer, on this, or on that pretence, of unavoidable delay — it has seemed a part of my duty to continue my efforts for them; till at length every evasion being exhausted, and their affairs being more embroiled than when their trustees engaged in them, I am sent to Chancery by the very men, who ten years since, undertook the trust for the express purpose of saving them from that expence; and who have been telling me repeatedly, that such an appeal would be ruinous to my hopes of a speedy settlement. I am now to wait the tardy justice of a Court, which to avoid, I have suffered ten years of poverty and deprivation.
The insults I have endured, the inconveniencies I have been
exposed to, are not to be described — but let it not be a matter of
surprise or blame, if the impression made by them on my mind affects my
writings. In the strictures on a late publication of mine, some Review
(I do not now recollect which) objected to the too frequent allusion I
made in it to my own circumstances — I might quote in favour of this
practice, the example of two of the greatest of our poets; but I will
make no other defence than that which is lent me by a sister art: —
The History Painter, gives to his figures the cast of countenance he is
accustomed to see around him — the Landscape Painter derives his
predominant ideas from the country in which he has been accustomed to
study — a novelist, from the same causes, makes his drawing to
resemble the characters he has had occasion to meet with, Thus, some
have drawn alehouse-keepers and their wives — others, artists and
professors — and of late we have seen whole books full of dukes and
duchesses, lords and ladies — I have "fallen among thieves,"
and I have made only sketches of them, because it is very probable that
I may yet be under the necessity of giving the portraits at full
length, and of writing under those portraits the names of the weazles
, wolves, and vultures they are meant to describe — nay,
even to detail at length the unexampled conduct of these persons who
have completed me, being
"Perplexed in the extreme,"
to have recourse to my pen for a subsistence, and at length "My
downright violence and storm of fortune "To trumpet to the world —"
"When a man owns himself to have been in an error," says Pope, "he does but tell you that he is wiser than he was." Thus, if I had been convinced I was in an error in regard to what I formerly wrote on the politics of France, I should without hesitation avow it. I still think, however, that no native of England could help then rejoicing at the probability there was that the French nation would obtain, with very little bloodshed, that degree of freedom which we have been taught to value so highly. But I think also, that Englishmen must execrate the abuse of the name of liberty which has followed; they must feel it to be injurious to the real existence of that first of blessings, and must contemplate with mingled horror and pity, a people driven by terror to commit enormities which in the course of a few months have been more destructive than the despotism of ages — a people who, in place of a mild and well-meaning monarch, have given themselves up to the tyranny of monsters, compared with whom, Nero and Caligula are hardly objects of abhorrence.
For the rest, I have in the present work, aimed less at the wonderful and extraordinary, than at connecting by a chain of possible circumstances, events, some of which have happened, and all of which might have happened to an individual, under the exigencies of banishment and proscription; but I beg leave to add, that my hero resembles in nothing but in merit, the emigrant gentleman who now makes part of my family; and that though some of the adventures are real, the characters are for the most part merely imaginary.
CHARLOTTE SMITH.July 30, 1794.
HARDIKNUTE.
IT was a gloomy evening of October, 1792, the storm which had never ceased the whole day continued to howl round the castle of Rosenheim; and the night approached with ten fold dreariness. The Baroness de Rosenheim and Madame D'Alberg her daughter, and their attendants and servants, tho' wearied by anxiety dared not think yet of repose. All day they had been listening to the sound of cannon, which a strong wind brought from the French frontier, whence they were seventeen miles distant. In the course of the last twenty-four hours they had received undoubted information that the French army, were following the Austrian and Prussian troops in their retreat, and would soon be in the dominions of the Emperor. The Baron de Rosenheim, a general in the Imperial service, was at Vienna; and being detained there by his personal attendance on the Emperor, Madame de Rosenheim knew she had little reason to expect his return, whatever might be the danger to his private property. Unwilling however to spread alarm by her example, or to abandon the castle to the care of servants, yet equally unwilling to await the arrival of the army of the enemy, she had sent off a courier to her husband several days before, requesting his directions how to act. She now hourly expected the return of the messenger, which could hardly be delayed longer than the present evening, unless he had fallen into the hands of the French, which was far from being improbable. Time wore away, but no courier returned, and fear and dismay gained every moment on the inhabitants of the castle of Rosenheim, where, besides the usual number of domestics, as many peasants were admitted, as could be spared from their families in the village beneath. A regular guard was mounted within the walls; while as night approached, each questioned his comrade as to the probable events of the next day. Some affected a contempt of the danger which they were far from feeling; and others apologized for the fears they could not conceal, by relating the cruelties that according to their apprehension, would be exercised by the French on their prisoners. The castle, situated on an eminence, and once strongly fortified, could make a but a feeble resistance now against the troops that had compelled the armies of the emperor and the king of Prussia to retreat; and it was whispered by some of those who apparently had undertaken its defence, that if the French appeared before it, it could not be too soon surrendered.
Madame de Rosenheim, a woman of strong sense, who had seen a great deal of the world, possessed unusual presence of mind; and was not moved by the variety of fears with which people around her perplexed her. She knew she had taken every precaution possible against the evil that threatened her; and having done so, she awaited the event with all the fortitude of an elevated mind. Her daughters, from different motives, listened with apparent composure to the terrors of her women, and the fears of the vassals and domestics. Her soul, absorbed by the idea of the danger of her husband, a Lieutenant Colonel in the retreating army; she was too wretched to be much affected by any alarm for her personal safety. The hope that he might be safe, and soon return, or that, as he passed thro; the country, she might at least hear he was living and well, had hitherto sustained her; but the last information gave her reason to fear that he was among those who had fallen victims to disease on the desolated plains of the Champaign. No letter arrived from him, tho' she had fired a peasant who undertook to convey a letter to him wherever he was. The man, who had engaged to return many days before, had not yet been heard of; and the clamours of his wife and his mother, who were several times at the castle lamenting themselves in the course of the day, had quite overwhelmed the spirits of Madame D'Alberg. It was in vain that her mother, Madame de Rosenheim, endeavoured to direct her thoughts a moment from the father to fix them on the children. The more dear they were to her, the more she feared the loss of their protector. They were yet too young to be sensible of their situation; yet the innocent questions of the two little girls, who were twins, and almost three years old, had served to harrass harass and affect the spirits of their mother, thro' the day. Her son, yet an infant at the breast, was a still dearer object; but even to the preservation of them all, she was unable to attend, and leaving it to the Baroness, she passed the time of this dreary and portentous evening, in walking from room to room. Now sitting down a moment near her sleeping children; now, at every interval when the storm admitted it, listening for the arrival of the storm admitted it, listening for the arrival of the courier her mother had dispatched to Vienna; but with infinitely more solicitude for the return of the peasant.
The Baroness de Rosenheim renewed her exertions to chear the spirits of her dejected daughter, as in the great gothic hall, where they usually eat, they took their melancholy supper. The almoner of the castle was their only companion, who, while Madame de Rosenheim endeavoured to find every earthly source of hope, bade her with more piety than tenderness, divest herself of earthly anxieties, and fix her mind on spiritual happiness; which was, he assured her, the only way fortify herself against the fears that now assailed her. Teized by the unfeeling manner in which he gave this advice, and by its importunante repetition, Madame D'Alberg answered at length that she was very glad he had discovered the efficacy of this entire resignation, and trusted it would prevent his feeling in future any alarms, whatever might arrive. Very certain it was, that on the confirmation of the French troops, no person in the castle had endeavoured to conceal their apprehensions with so little success as the Abbé Heurthofen. As the Baroness went herself around the courts, and saw every body at their posts every night, Madame D'Alberg took leave of her as soon as supper was over, under pretence of retiring to bed. Her mother earnestly recommended it to her to do so; for her pale and languid countenance alarmed her. Madame D'Alberg, to quiet her mother's tender apprehensions, promised to endeavour to compose herself; and going to her own apartments, which consisted of a large anti-room from that where her children were, the bade her woman, who slept in the latter, go to bed, saying she herself should not to night sit up to read, as was very frequently her custom. As soon became still about the castle; but Madame D'Alberg yielding to the anxiety that tormented her, and which she found it impossible to appease, could not determine to go to bed. There were three large and high windows in her bed-chamber; two of them looked into the great court of the castle. She opened the casement of one, and thro' the darkness of the tempest, discerned the light from the lantern of the sentinel who was posted under the gateway, as it glimmered faintly on the opposite wall, and served to render darkness more dreary. The rain coming on again with redoubled violence, and driving that way, the shut the window, and without exactly knowing why, but still in the faint hope that her messenger might yet arrive, she went to the other, which was in that part of the building defended by a very deep fossé, and a parapet behind it. The torrents of rain which had fallen, and had been collected from the higher grounds near the castle (for a mountainous tract lay behind it) now murmured in the fossé, and added to the noise of the wind among the battlements. In that torpor which long-baffled hope frequently creates, Madame D'Alberg remained a moment or two at the window, when at length she fancied she heard a groan as of a person in pain. Alarmed, she listed more attentively; the wind was a moment hushed, and the rain ceased to beat. An instant or two passed, and no return of the same sound alarming her again, she concluded that it was merely the creation of fancy, or that some of the watchmen or persons in the house had made some noise which her fears had magnified into a sound of anguish and complaint. Cold and desolate the left the window, and from an unaccountable restlessness, and a persuasion that she should not sleep, she could not resolve to get into bed; bit made up the almost extinguished fire in her stove, by adding a few pieces of wood to it, and lay down in her clothes. Fatigue of body and mind conquered in a few moments the restlessness and inquietude with which she had been tormented; but she had rather dozed than slept for about a quarter of an hour, when she started! being awakened as she imagined by the same hollow groan more loudly repeated. She sat a moment in consternation; then recollecting herself, began to appease her terror, by believing it to be a dream, the effect of disturbed and unsound sleep; but when she had nearly reasoned herself into this belief, she heard it again so loud as to leave no doubt of its reality. A human voice uttering a few words low and sorrowful, now certainly was heard. These sounds seemed to come from the fossé, at the bottom of the castle wall. She hurried in breathless apprehension to the window. She looked down, but it was too dark to distinguish any object. The water still murmured loudly, and if any person was there, they must be in danger of drowning. She endeavoured to cast a light on the ground from the casement; but the distance between the window and the fossé, made all beneath her appear in chaotic darkness.
Now, however, she more certainly heard the voice of one complaining faintly, as if exhausted by pain, while another person, in all the agonies of apprehension for the sufferer, seemed to be endeavouring to assuage the anguish he deplored; and at length Madame D'Alberg heard distinctly pronounced in French, " If there is any person within hearing, I entreat them to send some assistance to my father." Madame D'Alberg speaking as loudly as she could, endeavoured to assure the person who spoke, that some assistance should be immediately sent. She then rang a large bell by her bed side; but fearing she should not be soon heard by the men servants, who lay in a distant part of this large edifice, she took a candle, and passed into the room where her woman and a nurse slept, with the children. With some difficulty the awaked one of these women, who, notwithstanding the fears she had expressed the preceding night, was sunk into a profound sleep. "There are Frenchmen under the castle wall," said Madame D'Alberg. the servant, awakened thus suddenly, and hearing the word Frenchmen, concluded that the Sans Culottes were in the castle; and staring wildly, she began to cross herself, and to call upon all the saints in the calendar for protection. "You are needlessly alarmed," cried Madame D'Alberg, "these persons appear to be in great distress, and to require our pity, rather than raise our fear; get up, therefore, and endeavour to make the men in the house go down to join the watchmen in the assistance of those unfortunate people, who it is amazing to me they do not hear." "I, Madame," cried the woman, "go through the castle alone to awaken the men! Lord! not for a thousand worlds! I'll ring the bell, if you please, for certainly the watchmen ought to be alarmed. I dare to say they are asleep, and we shall all be murdered." "Grant me patience!" exclaimed Madame D'Alberg; "while you are hesitating from these selfish fears, perhaps some unhappy man is expiring. Good God! D'Alberg himself may, for ought I know, bet this moment in the same situation." By this time the woman who had the care of the children was awakened, who being more reasonable and humane, put on her clothes, and undertook to rouse some of the men. While she was gone, Madame D'Alberg, returned to the window. "I have, I hope, sent you some assistance, my friends," said she. "May I ask your names, and by what accident you have been thus distressed?" "May heaven reward you, Madame, whoever you are," replied the same voice that had spoken before "and may your generous intentions be immediately executed, or it will be too late, Alas! my father is already cold and senseless! I do not know whether he lives to receive your bounty." The manner in which this was spoken was so expressive of the grief and agitation of the person that spoke, that Madame D'Alberg, more than everybody seemed yet ready to go to the relief of the strangers, went herself to the door of her mother's apartment. The Baroness de Rosenheim had too many anxieties on her mind to suffer her to be in a very calm sleep, and starting at the first summons, she immediately arose and unbarred her door. Madame D'Alberg related as briefly as she could, the reason of her disturbing her; and the Baroness, who saw that whatever these strangers might be, prudence and caution was necessary before they were admitted to the castle, immediately put on a night gown, and told Madame D'Alberg she would be down herself. "We must," said she, as she went down stairs, followed by her daughter, "we must however be cautious. This may possibly be some feint, made by an enemy to obtain admittance." "It may undoubtedly," replied Madame D'Alberg; "but these people appear to me to be gentlemen, from the voice and the expressions; and in such extreme distress, which can hardly be feigned, that I am sure we cannot acquit ourselves as Christians, without going to their relief."
The sentinel at the castle gate, to whom the Baroness, attended by two servants, now spoke, was of a different opinion. He was a rough Fleming, with a decided aversion to men of every other nation, tho' he cared for only one individual of his own, and that was himself, he remonstrated against the danger of opening the gates at such an hour. "How do we know," cried he, "but that the enemy may be in force without, ready to rush in upon us?" "You ought to know they are not," cried Madame D'Alberg, offended at his unfeeling suspicions, which she thought favoured equally of cruelty and cowardice, "since you have been upon the watch for the last four hours. A large body of the enemy could with difficulty approach at night, without being hear, whatever caution they might use; but you it seems have not heard even the cries of these distressed people." "Well, well," said the Baroness, who felt the impolicy of weakening her little garrison by apparent distrust, "let us, since now they are heard, endeavour to succour them, if they really suffer, without however losing sight of a proper attention to our own safety." By this time near thirty people, servants and men who had been admitted for security within the castle, were assembled with their arms; the Baroness directed three of them to go to the place where the wounded persons were supposed to be; but seized with the same fears and suspicions as had been expressed by the first sentinel, there was only the steward who would determine to go. The rest, without refusing, hesitated; and each endeavoured to find some unanswerable reason why it was hazarding the general safety of the castle. Madame D'Alberg, who had now followed her mother to the guard house, notwithstanding the storm which still blew, at intervals, became impatient. "Good Heavens!" exclaimed she. "while we are deliberating, these unhappy men are perishing! What can there be to fear from two wanderers, wounded, and perhaps doing? Give me a light," added she, taking a lantern from one of them, "and I will shew you, that woman as I am, I should blush were such pusillanimous apprehensions to prevent my trying to help a fellow creature in distress." "No," said the Baroness, "that must no be, Adriana. You already hazard your health too much. Come," continued she, "If I have no fears, surely, my friends, you will feel none. Let three of those who dare do as I do, follow me." She then directed the porter and his companions to unbar the gates and let down the bridge. Reluctantly the men obeyed her, some of them murmuring loud enough for Madame D'Alberg (who stayed behind at her mother's earnest entreaty) to hear them. "Strangers and foreigners," muttered one of the domestics, "and especially Frenchmen, always interest our ladies; a German might not fare so well with them." "You are wrong there," cried Madame D'Alberg; "It is my endeavour always to do by others, as I wish them to do by me; and I represent to myself Count D'Alberg, imploring perhaps at some other door, the mercy which you would have here refused to these forlorn strangers." This idea froze her blood, the image of her husband, wounded and dying, was almost insupportable. Four or five armed men had been ordered to place themselves at the gate to secure a retreat for the party without, should any danger really threaten them. Madame D'Alberg went out among them to the footsteps of those who traversed it were heard, tho' there was again a pause in the wind. She looked down across a hollow glen filled with old tress, which lay to the left, and which trees had been ordered to be felled, since there was reason to apprehend an attack of the castle. All was now black and hideous, and spectres seemed to flit along the drear obscurity. How different from what it once was, when in a walk, she had herself directed to be made thro' it, D'Alberg, in the early days of their affection, used to walk by her side, and gather for her the wild flowers that were profusely scattered among the rocky hollows, where a little weeping rivulet trinkled down among the old roots, and was lost in the larger stream that came from the hilly grounds beyond the castle. This comparison of the happy past, with the miserable present, she had hardly made, when a very quick step was heard. The party on guard recoiled; some looked terrified, and others endeavoured to look brave; when a young peasant, one of those who had followed the Baroness, appeared breathless with haste. "What is the matter?" cried a number of voices at once, "are the enemy at hand?" "No," answered the lad, as soon as he had breath to speak, "but a mattrass or a bed, must be carried out for the wounded gentleman or dead gentleman: for my part I believe its all over with him. Make haste! my lady the Baroness is impatient." Madame D'Alberg now hurried herself into the castle, and in a moment contrived what seemed a convenient means of conveying the unfortunate stranger into it. Her benevolence of heart, allowed her not any longer to think of the weather, or of the hazard which the people again attempted to make her apprehend. She did not attend to their remonstrances, but ordering three of her own servants to attend her, and the peasant to return with her, she went forward guided by him to the spot, where she found her mother, and where a very affecting scene presented itself. She beheld a young man of about twenty seated on the ground whose features were disfigured by blood and dust, and who, tho' faint and exhausted, supported on his breast the head of a venerable looking man about sixty, who seemed dying. His face, of a clayey paleness, appeared covered with the old dews of death: His looks were turned towards the face of his son: He attempted to speak; and as it should seem, to bless him; awhile the inarticulate blessings of the latter were addressed to the Baroness, who was applying spirits to the temples of the father, and made him swallow a few drops; which had so far revived him that he now opened his eyes, and seemed by the expression of his countenance to be sensible, tho' he could not speak. "Not a moment wasted, before this poor wounded gentleman is removed into a warm bed. Go back, dear Adriana, and let one be prepared, while we endeavour to convey him as easily as can be." "May Heaven reward you," said the young Frenchman, "but how to move him! if the wounds should bleed a fresh! The coldness of the night, rather than my awkward endeavours has staunched the blood. Upon the least motion they will bleed, and my father will expire."
"Where is the Abbé Heurthofen?" enquired the Baroness, "he has some knowledge in these cases; why do I not see him here? Let him be called, but in the mean time let us endeavour to convey your father to the house."
The men, however, accustomed to scenes of distress, as the military part of them were, could not behold the countenance of the dying stranger, nor the agonizing solicitude marked on that of his son, without feeling interested for both. As their apprehensions of a stratagem of the enemy were now subsided, they yielded to the impulse of humanity, and each, encouraged by the Baroness and Madame D'Alberg, exerted themselves to place the old officer on this temporary bier, and while his son, holding a handkerchief to the wound in his father's side, hung over him, they began to move on; though the young man. As he attempted to step forward occupied in this would have fallen, if one of the people who was disengaged, had not supported him on the other side.
The mournful procession soon reached the guard-house, where the beir was set down, and the son threw himself upon his knees by its side. "Speak to me, dear sir!" cried he in an eager voice. "Tell me you are revived! "Thank God! the blood seems staunched, since the motion has not made it stream again. He knows me!" added he, wildly addressing himself to the Baroness, but he is speechless!"
By this time Madame D'Alberg returned to say a chamber was ready, and the Baroness directed her patient to be removed to it, with the same precautions as before.
"Where is Heurthofen?" again enquired the Baroness when they arrived there. "If he is not already up, tell him I desire his attendance." The Abbé in a furred night cap and a wrapping gown as well lined, now made his appearance. "Charity, my good Abbé!" said the Baroness, "has not been active with you, methinks. Here is a wounded gentleman to whom you must endeavour to be useful."
The Abbé cast a look of dissatisfaction on the sufferer, who remained on his mattrass on the floor. "If these events happen often, Madame," said he, "we shall soon have occasion for a person in the castle better skilled in surgery than I am. If gentleman is a French royalist, as I suppose he is, from the order I see at his breast, we are doing him no service, and incurring an additional risk ourselves, by admitting him into the castle. The patriots will be upon us in another day. Nothing in my apprehension can equal the frenzy of our staying here, unless it be admitting people who must encrease our danger." "Go, Sir," said Madame D'Alberg; "if you have these fears, take care of your own safety. The Priest and the Levite we know are but too apt to turn away from the wounded traveller." Strung by this remark, the Abbé, who dared not answer as he was disposed to do, prepared to assist the patient, who still continued insensible; and the ladies left the room; while with great difficulty and very slowly he was conveyed to bed.
COLLINS.
UNABLE themselves to return to their repose, while they were uncertain of the fate of their apparently dying guest, the Baroness and Madame D'Alberg waited in the great hall, where several of their people were again assembled. The almoner at length came to them. Madame de Rosenheim enquired anxiously after the wounded officer. "He is alive," replied the Abbé; "but he will hardly live till noon. His wounds, I believe, would not have been mortal, had they been attended to; but he has lost so much blood, and appears so greatly exhausted, that his recovery seems impossible." "And the young man, his son?" said Madame D'Alberg. "He has refused any assistance," replied Heurthofen; "tho' he has, I understand, a cut thro' the arm, which has made him suffer considerably. He desired me to ask if he might wait upon you, ladies, to thank you for your humanity to his father."
"Poor young man!" exclaimed Madame D'Alberg, "how much his affection interests me for him. Had we not better visit him, Madame?" added she, turning to her mother, "and prevail upon him to have some attention to himself?"
To this proposal the Baroness assented, and went up together to the chamber. The door was open. The curtains of the bed undrawn, and by its side knelt the younger of the strangers, listening to the faint voice of his father, which could hardly be heard, they distinguished, however, his reply. "My father! have pity upon me, if you have none on yourself. All may yet be well!"
"Never, never!" sighed the unhappy father. "The barbeddart of ingratitude tears my heart. Your cruel brother; it is he, D'Alonville! It is he, rather than these wounds, that has destroyed me."
"Think not of it, Sir," answered D'Alonville. "Let me conjure you to drive from you mind all these cruel reflections, and endeavour to live."
"Ah, wherefore to live! banished and a beggar! At my time of life, D'Alonville, to become a wandering fugitive; No. Fayolles has no longer business in this world. But you may, unhappy boy! you, whose life opened with prospects so different!"
"For God's sake, Sir, forbear. If you indeed love me, would you not endeavour to preserve a life so precious? Ah! ladies!" continued he, perceiving the Baroness and Madame D'Alberg; who, greatly affected, had by this time softly approached him; "generous humanity has saved my father, if he will but endeavour to live; but he gives himself up to despair, and I shall lose him still."
"Compose yourself, dear Sir," said Madame de Rosenheim. "You are now in a house where every thing that we can do for you, shall be done. Let me beg of you to be calm, if it be only that this young gentleman may be prevailed upon to attend to himself for a few moments." The Chevalier D'Alonville turned towards her eyes, which expressed more powerfully than words, all the anguish of his soul. "I cannot thank you, Madame," was all he could utter. "My almoner tells me you are wounded, Sir, added she; "Now that your father is so far recovered, let me entreat you to have some application to your wounds; and that you will go yourself to bed."
"A mattrass on the floor by my father, if you please, I will accept of; for I feel myself, indeed, exhausted; but I cannot leave him. As to my wound, I am not sensible of it; it is nothing. I had forgot it."
Madame D'Alberg left the room to order for him the only accommodation he seemed disposed to accept and as his head was now pressed to the hand of his father, as it lay on the quilt, the Baroness for some moments stood by him in silence. D'Alonville starting, as if suddenly recollection himself, said in a low voice, "Have you had any information, Madame, to-day, from the French frontier? Do you know how very near the wretches, who assume the name of patriots, have advanced to this place?"
"Speak lower," answered Madame de Rosenheim, perceiving the eyes of the elder stranger, already glazed by approaching death, were languidly opened as these words were uttered; — "Speak lower; or rather think only of the immediate evil." Her own fear, however, prevented her following the advice she gave, and she immediately added, "Surely they are not so near as to make it probable that they will be here tonight!" The young stranger answered, "We were with a party of Austrians which engaged their advanced guard, not fifteen miles off, at twelve this morning." A deep sigh from Monsieur de Fayolles recalled the thoughts of the Baroness to him. "If you would favour me with a moment's conversation in the adjoining room, Sir," said she to D'Alonville. De Fayolles faintly waved his hand for him to go, and arose to obey. By this time Madame D'Alberg was returned with two servants, who were making up a bed on the floor. The Baroness, unwilling to alarm her daughter with the detail of an encounter in which the might be but too nearly interested, left her, and attended her guest into the next apartment. She there learned, that in an affair which had been fatal to almost all the French royalists who were in it, and to many of the Germans, the Viscount de Fayolles had been wounded and left for dead on the field; that his son, the Chevalier D'Alonville, who was with another party a little farther on, that had not been engaged, no sooner saw the small remains of the troop that had retreated, join them without the Viscount, and understood he was left wounded or dead behind than he returned to seek him, attended by two servants. The Sans Culottes had already gone forward; but the wretches who follow armies for the sake of plunder were stripping the dying and the dead, with which the field of action was strewn. D'Alonville, in describing this scene of horror, seemed a new to feel all the emotions he had at the moment experienced. "I had not," said he, "gone twenty paces, before I saw my father. He was living, but extended on the ground; he raised himself on his arm, and was looking around him; when at the same moment that I approached him on one side, two of those hideous women came towards him on the other; and one of them without regarding me, or rather, perhaps, thinking I was one of their own party, prepared to stab him; for they saw he was an officer of distinction, and mercy had no place in their savage hearts. I was not aware of their design, for this was my first campaign; and I knew not that such wretches in the human form disgraced the earth! Alas! I soon saw what I had to dread, for the poor remains of a life so precious. I threw myself before my father and with one of my servants, for the other had already deserted me, delivered him from the hands of those monsters. I made him sensible of his situation we led him off the field, and I placed him on horseback, and supported him till I hoped we were out of danger. We concealed ourselves for some hours among the reeds and alders in a morass; intending to remain there till evening, and tied up our two horses in a place where we hoped they would escape the parties which we continually heard pass; but in this we were deceived. As soon as it grew dusk, as we distinguished no longer any hostile sounds, we dispatched the servant to seek the horses; for my father was so weakened by loss of blood, hunger, and fatigue, that I found he must perish if I did not procure him some assistance: he had swallowed nothing but a little water, and his exhausted form could support itself no longer. Alas! the feeble hope that I should have been able to convey him to some place where he might have his wounds taken care of, and be restored by nourishment and repose, now escaped me: for my servant returned, but not till I despaired of seeing him anymore. He returned pale, aghast, and trembling. He told me that the horses being gone, he had hoped that they had only broke away to feed, and that he should find them in some neighbouring fields, or in a wood that was not far from thence, whether he crept as silently as he could, for he observed smoke to raise from its skirts, and was afraid of falling again among a party of Sans Culottes of marauders. Approaching under cover of brush wood and surze, he saw our two horses tied up with four or five others; and notwithstanding his precaution, was himself in the most imminent danger; for on all sides of him were scattered small parties of three or four soldiers, and women, who were preparing to pass the night under the shelter of this small wood; and some were putting up pieces of canvass and other contrivances, while others were preparing their repas. There seemed to be about thirty of them; who, wandering about in every direction to collect fuel for their fires, my servant found the utmost difficulty in escaping them, by crawling on his hands and knees among the rough ground, where he was, which being covered with fern bushes and brush wood, saved him from the view of these formidable people, more dreadful than an open and regular enemy; such as I knew them to be, however, and such my affrighted servant described them. I doubted whether I would not be better for us to throw ourselves on their mercy, than for me to risk what seemed, indeed, otherwise inevitable; seeing my father expire thus exhausted and desolate. Hardly was he, I thought conscious of the hurried narrative my servant had been giving: but when I began to debate with this faithful fellow, whether we had not better hazard all that could befall us, than suffer him to die without an attempt to relieve him, his recollection and strength seemed to be suddenly renewed. He eagerly grasped my hand, as I on my knee prevented his head resting on the ground, or rather the marsh, for it was half under water. He grasped my hand and making an effort to speak, tho' he could only whisper, he said, "No, D'Alonville, never, never! I had rather die! far rather, than owe my life, even if it could now be saved, to these infamous monsters. Death, honorable death, I welcome! Let me die my son, in your arms; but do not let the last moments of my life be embittered by the sight of these execrable beings, the refuse of my ruined country; these base instruments of superior villains who have destroyed us. "Promise me," added my father, grasping me still harder, tho' with a convulsive effort, "promise me that you will let me die here. It will not be long first, D'Alonville! and then that you will attend to your own safety. Promise me!" "I do, my father; I promise." This I said, almost without knowing it; but as if satisfied. My father sunk into a stupor, which I believed to be the fore runner of death. He was apparently easy, however; he did not seem to suffer. I still sat on the ground supporting his head. I took off my coat to spread it over him, for the night was cold and wet: my servant, quite worn out with fatigue, famine, and despair, lay down near us. He offered me his clothes, but I absolutely refused them. His bodily sufferings seemed greater than mine. But it was not either him or myself who were the objects of my concern. My father alone engrossed all my attention.
It was now dark; all was quiet around the spot where we were: the wind alone, sighing among the reeds, or the rain that sometimes fell, tho' not very heavily, were the only sounds that broke the dreary stillness which reigned in this desolate wilderness. I turned my eyes to Heaven; I implored its mercy on my father. I distinguished thro' the gathering tempest of the night, a few stars; and I invited the great governor of the universe. I supplicated him to hear a son in behalf of his dying parent. I had now time to reflect on the sad situation in which we were; and my reflections served only to convince me, that if my father survived till morning, we must inevitably fall into the hands either of that party from whom my servant had escaped, or some other of the same description, who were scattered.
over the country in such numbers, that there was no chance of avoiding them. I had time enough to revolve in my mind every plan that occurred to it, but none appeared practicable; my father, however, seemed insensible of his present sufferings. I was under the necessity of remaining, without making any attempt to snatch him from the dangers which I knew the morning would bring with it.
I believe it was about nine o'clock, but I could not distinguish the hour on my watch, when I thought I heard, thro' the silence of the night, footsteps among the reeds. I listened, and was convinced of it. I found they approached, tho' slowly; and that the step was like that of one who either desired to surprized, or feared to be surprized. The former of these was much the most probable; and I prepared to defend my father as well as I could; tho' certain that any resistance I could make, would be otherwise useless, than as it was desirable to fell our lives as dearly as we could. I speak of myself only, because my father was so incapable of any effort, that he could hardly be said to live; and my servant, from excess of fatigue, had fallen into so sound a sleep, that I found it impossible to rouse him, without making more noise than was prudent; since it was possible, that whoever were the persons or person (for I now thought there was only one) who approached, they might not discover us, if I remained quite; for in the dark, the reeds beaten down by our having made our way among them, could not betray us, as probably would happen in the morning I looked around me as much as I could, but besides that the reeds which concealed us were in most places above my head, it was now too dark to distinguish objects. Still I heard footsteps more and more near; and at length a woman's voice, who speaking low to another, said "Here I believe is the place;" and suddenly I saw before me a female peasant, who held in her hand a small lantern which she had concealed, and with her was a boy of twelve or thirteen years old. More alarmed at the sight of us, than I was at seeing her, she stood a moment amazed. I took advantage of it to offer her money, and to entreat that she should lead us to a place of shelter, and procure some sustenance for my father. Tempted by the money I shewed her, and by my promises of more, she seemed willing to assist us, tho' she assured me, that far from being able to promise an asylum, their cottage had already been visited, and that they had bid what they had been able to save from the rapacity of the plunderers, in this marshy spot; whence she and her son now came to fetch it, intending, as they were every day liable to new inroads, and violence more destructive, to take refuge with what little property they could secure, in some of the fortified towns. They cared not under which party they put themselves, if they could only be sure of protection.
As the sum I was able to offer her, was more than equal to any risk she could run of loss, and as the lives of herself and her family were nearly all that they could lose, the woman hesitated not to assist me and my servant in leading my father, or rather bearing him along among us to her small abode, which, as it was at the distance of more than a mile, we accomplished with difficulty. More than once during this long and painful march, he seemed at the point of death; and his wound, to which no proper application had yet been made, threatened again to baffle, by its fatal consequences, all my endeavours to save his precious life.
On a miserable bedstead, where a few rags supplied the place of a bed or mattrass, which had been taken or burnt, my father was placed; and such nourishment as the cottage in its present state could afford, was administered to him he eat of this food and seemed to revive: fatigue and languor of body deprived his mind of the acute feelings which would have shewn him the horrors of his condition: he dozed rather than slept; and seemed insensible rather than easy. The dawn of day arrived without any material alteration. He breathed, I thought, more calmly; when I spoke to him he knew me; and received such nourishment as I could procure for him, which was only a little bad wine and black bread. But this pause from from actual suffering renewed my hopes of saving him, if I could but convey him to a secure asylum. Towards noon he appeared considerable better, and I hardly doubted of his life. But my sufferings on his account were far from being at an end. An alarm from the neighouring peasants, who in their flight announced the French were approaching, compelled them to hasten the resolution they had before taken to seek their safety in flight. To remain where we were, was to give ourselves up to certain destruction; yet how remove a man in such a state as my father was? As soon as he understood the cause of the alarm around him, he called me to him, and exerting all his strength, ordered me to leave him. "Go, my son," cried he; since our evil destiny thus pursues us, seek your own safety, and suffer me not wholly to perish. In you, D'Alonville, I shall still live and the miserable remains of my existence are not worth a thought. As an emigrant, I shall be put immediately out of my pain, by the wretches who will soon arrive. Let me have the consolation, my son, of knowing you are out of their power; and detestable as they are, I shall submit to die by their hands without a murmur." I positively refused to leave my father; and all that remained was to attempt conveying him away. Every thing we had left about us, except my arms and a cutlass, which I would not suffer my servant to part with, was the price of a miserable half starved horse, on which, with the utmost difficulty, we at length persuaded my father to suffer himself to be placed and we sat out with several unhappy beings, who were quitting their homes to wander they knew not whither. Mothers with their infant children! Daughters with infirm parents! Our sad group sensibly diminished as we moved along. Some could go no further from mere weariness, and others remained in the expectation of finding refuge among their acquaintance who lived by the way; for us, who were strangers in this part of France, our only hope lay in reaching before night-fall, some town or village in the dominions of the emperor; but when I cast my eyes on the pale and exhausted figure of my father, and saw with what extream difficulty he sat upon his horse, despair again took possession of my soul. However, slowly we yet moved on. About a mile, as near as I can guess from this place, my father assured me he could go no further, and entreated me to suffer him to lie down and die quietly. I looked around me for some place where I might hope to find shelter from the storm which had been beating upon us all day, but now seemed to be coming on with redoubled violence; but I saw no place of shelter. The roads were almost impassable from the incessant rains; and the wretched horse, who' I had endeavoured to spare him as much as possible, seemed quite disabled. Around us were thick enclosures terminating in woods; and had there been any village near, I knew it would be difficult or impossible for us to distinguish it. Thus circumstanced, I had no choice, but was compelled to yield to necessity, and choice, but was compelled to yield to necessity. We left then the road we were in, and struck into a coppice, where the leaves that yet remained offered us but little shelter; and where I saw from the situation in which my father was in, that he must inevitably perish before morning, unless assistance were procured. To procure it however seemed impossible. Terrible were my reflections! If I left him to seek some help, I feared he would expire in my absence; and it was a very great chance whether I found him again. My servant, tho' honest and faithful, possessed neither courage nor sagacity sufficient for such and undertaking. He was besides dispirited by hunger, fear, and fatigue; and hardly able to support himself, was little in a condition to be of use to me in a talk so difficult as seeking a place of shelter in a country totally unknown, at such an hour, and at such a season. Not finding, however, any better expedient, I determined to send him, after an hour's rest, in search of some place where we might remain for the night, at least, under cover. He was more willing than able to go. I divided with him the morsel of food with which I had provided ourselves; and he left us, promising to return in two hours, if he either found a shelter, or could not meet one within any distance that it was likely we could reach; and he assured me he would endeavour to make such remarks on his way, as should enable him to return to us. Two hours passed away; a third had nearly elapsed, and we had no tidings of him. In darkness and tempest, with a father expiring in my arms, what a situation was mine! Assured that if we remained where we were he would die in a few hours, I determined to make one effort more to save him, by returning into the road we had left, where it was barely possible that some human beings might pass; and to fall into the hands of the enemy, dreadful as it before appeared, now seemed preservable to the lingering horrors of the death that was otherwise inevitable. I had, however, the greatest difficulty to persuade my father to remove from the place where he was. "Let me die here, D'Alonville," said he; "why should I be longer a burthen too you; why risk the loss of your life, to prolong mine for a few miserable hours. Take from my breast this mark of many years faithful services to my now undone country, that you may deliver it to my sovereign; it will be an honorable mission, my son! Heaven grant you may soon fulfill it. Endeavour to live to preserve at least the memory of de Fayolles from more disgrace than already overwhelms it by the conduct of your brother, and take with you my blessing, all I have left to give!"
As I now gave up all expectation of the return of my servant, despair lent me courage to renew my entreaties to my father. I gave him all I had reserved of our miserable provision; I put him once more on horseback, and regained the high road, from which we had not wandered far; but having done so, I seemed to have obtained no advantage. We were equally desolate and forlorn, with hardly a probability that chance would befriend us.
"We had not been more than three quarters of an hour on the road side, when listening in the passage of the storm in the faint hope of hearing the return of my servant, I heard voices not far off, and horses and men approach. It was too dark to distinguish objects, but our condition admitted not of deliberation. Without waiting therefore to enquire whether they were friends or enemies, I called aloud as soon as they seemed to be near. They stopped and came up to us. I knew not at this moment what they really were, but plunder appeared to be their object. I represented our situation to them, and entreated, that if they could not themselves grant us the refuge of which we were so greatly in need that they would point out to us some place where we might obtain shelter for the night. One of them, who seemed to have the most authority, answered, that they were country people travelling to their houses at a great distance, and could not assist us otherwise than by suffering one of their number to conduct us to the next village, but for this they must be paid. As I knew they could, and was well convinced they would, take from me my pistols and sword, since I was entirely in their power, I thought it best to agree with them to give them these arms, as the price of a safe conduct to the village of Rosenheim, where I might probably be received. I was afraid by their manner that they would seize the price without performing the conditions. I was compelled, however, to take my chance as to their integrity, and having resigned to them all I had left, and agreed that they should also have our miserable horse on our arrival at Rosenheim, one of them dismounted, and placing my father before him, while I followed on horseback, we reached group of houses which I could just distinguish through the gloom, and which were, he told me, a part of the small hamlet in question. He then prepared to take leave, as having fulfilled his agreement; but I entreated him to remain till we could obtain admission into some house. To this I could not, however, persuade him. He left us! my father was yet alive, but that was all! for every moment threatened to be his last. In despite of my entreaties and representations, our unfeeling guide had made so much haste that the motion of the horse had occasioned the wound to bleed afresh, and I saw the moment when all my efforts appeared totally useless. We were, however, within hearing of human beings, and I still hoped for succour before it was too late! I seated my expiring parent on the ground, and approached the door of the nearest cottage; but all my attempts to make the inhabitants hear, if indeed there were any within it, were to no purpose. I left it and proceeded to a second, where, after calling and rapping at the doors and windows for a considerable time, a woman appeared at a fort of hole in the thatch, and with a voice strongly expressive of terror, demanded my business. I endeavoured to explain to her what we wanted, and to move her compassion by relating the situation of my father; but without attending to me, she hastily closed her wooden shutter, and disappeared, leaving me to make the same experiment on two other houses with little more success. At one I was told that they knew me to be an enemy, and would fire upon me if I did not immediately leave the place at the other, a woman said, that it was impossible for its inhabitants to admit a stranger, but that if I really was the person I called myself, and in the distress I represented, I should be sure of obtaining admission and relief at the castle above. I entreated her to shew me how I could find the castle? "There is a rising ground a little to the left," said she, "from which you may distinguish the lights at the castle, and that will be your best guide." I ran forward, and in effect I discovered from the place the mentioned, lights on the woody hill above the village. As there seemed no probability of procuring admittance at any of these cottages, I determined to attempt reaching the castle. With infinite difficulty, and at the hazard of seeing my father expire every step he took, we reached as it were by miracle the castle wall; but I mistook the path that led to the gate, and found we were in a part where a ditch filled with water from the mountains, and an high parapet, precluded all hopes of our being heard. The bitterest despair now took possession of my soul! I saw the death of my father was inevitable, and I repented that I had only lengthened and encreased his sufferings. In this dreadful condition we were, continued the Chevalier D'Alonville, when you, Madame, providentially heard, and most generously succoured us.
The young stranger having thus related the events that had brought him and the Viscount de Fayolles, his father, in such a situation, to the castle of Rosenheim, was prevailed upon by his generous hostess to retire to the mattress that was prepared near the bed of his father, who remained nearly in the same state of hopeless depression.
THE almoner Heurthofen, who had been present during the latter part of this narrative, had fixed on the countenance of Madame D'Alberg his keen enquiring eyes, as if to penetrate into the effect it had on her, and what interest she took in the narrator. Her mother had left the apartment to give some further orders for the accommodation of her unfortunate guests, but Madame D'Alberg remained pensively leaning against the wainscot; nor did the move from her reverie till the almoner cried, "A very affecting story indeed! This young Frenchman, it seems, is quite a modern Eneas!" "I know not" answered Madame D'Alberg, what you mean by an Eneas! he is certainly a young man of fashion; and from his filial affection highly interesting." "Oh! yes," repeated Heurthofen, "highly interesting, certainly." "His unfortunate situation," said Madame D'Alberg, "should surely move every good mind in his favor, even if he were without merit." "Undoubtedly," replied Heurthofen, in the same sneering tone; "and the inhabitants of this house particularly, who ought to feel for misfortunes they are so soon likely to share. Probably before to-morrow evening we shall be visited by his countrymen, and turned out to meet such adventures as he has related. There being two emigrants, known to have been in arms, found in the castle, will probably add something to the hostility of the treatment we may expect." "And would you, therefore," said Madame D'Alberg indignantly, "have refused admittance to these unhappy fugitives?" "I would have every body," answered he, "consult their own security first; — it is the first law of nature." "Go then, Sir," cried the lady," consult yours by quitting Rosenheim; and know that with me, at least, a man of sentiments such as yours, can at no time be a welcome resident."
Madame D'Alberg then left the room, and returning to her own, endeavoured to obtain some repose after the alarms of such a night; and to acquire strength to encounter those which the next day threatened to bring with it; but to sleep was impossible. The certainty the Colonel D'Alberg was in an army which, after having suffered very great hardships, was retreating before an enemy intoxicated with unexpected success, was alone sufficient to have distracted her; but the animated account given by the young stranger had awakened more acute anxiety, by placing before her eyes all the variety of misery to which he might be liable. Descended from and connected with military men, she had learned from her earliest recollection to suppose man born only to acquire honor or die gloriously in the field; but when she now saw the reality of the evils of war, of which she had before been accustomed only to the parade and the splendor, and when to these evils the husband she adored was actually exposed, when she imagined him at the present moment wandering alone amid the tempest of the night, and perishing without the consolation of dying honorably with the arms in his hand; all other calamities of life seemed comparatively small, and even the danger which Heurthofen represented as so immediately approaching her mother, her children, and herself, lost much of its effect on her mind.
Madame de Rosenheim was, however, more sensible of the hazard they were in, but equally undecided what to do to escape from it. She redoubled the guard around the castle, though she knew that to resist a regular force was impossible. She then visited her unhappy guest. The Viscount de Fayolles had again fallen into the stupor which accompanies extreme weakness. His son, in the fear that every sigh he heard might be his last, could not attempt to obtain the repose he so much wanted, but with eyes strongly expressive of the anguish of his soul, he watched the pale and convulsed countenance of his father, by the trembling light that was near him. The Baroness de Rosenheim in a low voice entreated him to take some rest; but he only shook his head in mournful silence. She thought it better to leave him; and being assured he had every thing near him that could contribute to the ease of the languishing patient while he yet lived, she went to her own room: it was, however, so near day, and her mind was in a state of such perturbation, that she did not attempt to sleep, but keeping two of her women with her, she directed them to make up the fire in her stove, and remain with her, while she employed herself and them in putting up, in such a manner as would enable her the most easily to remove, the most valuable effects in the castle. Engaged in this employment the melancholy morning found her, and she was preparing to go to her daughter's room, for whose health she was very solicitous, when the Chevalier D'Alonville met her in the gallery leading from her chamber. His swollen eyes seemed no longer able to distinguish the objects around him; his countenance was wild and his manner eager. He caught her hand, apparently unable to speak, and led her into his father's room. Madame D'Alberg was already there, gazing on the expiring object in the bed; for the Viscount de Fayolles was evidently dying, though he was still sensible, and the almoner, Heurthofen, had administered the last sacrements. Nobody else spoke. D'Alonville was apparently unable.
This mournful solemnity over, de Fayolles seemed to collect all his strength to express his gratitude to Madame de Rosenheim, and to give his last blessing to his son; but hardly in a low, broken, and tremulous voice, could he articulate his thanks to his benevolent host, his anguish at leaving his unhappy son. "But for the rest," said he, "for the rest, I quit with pleasure a world where I seem to have no longer any business — and I perish under the ruins of France. — D'Alonville," added he turning to his son, "I die in the consciousness of never having violated the allegiance I swore to my king. Remember, that to whatever fate you are destined, you father's last hope is, that in you, his name will not be disgraced." His voice then totally failed. The ladies, unable to bear so sad a spectacle, retired; and in a few moments the Viscount de Fayolles breathed his last.
Hardly had this mournful event drawn from the eyes of Madame de Rosenheim, and her daughter, those tears which a fate so deplorable excited, when their own danger became too pressing to allow them to indulge their humanity. The messenger who had so many days been expected form Vienna, returned without his despatches, and by his appearance bore testimony to the extreme difficulty with which he had returned at all. He had been detained several days by a party of Sans Culottes, among whom he had fallen, who had plundered him of every thing; and escaped only in consequence of a skirmish, which allowed them no time to attend to their prisoners. Since which he had fallen in with the advanced guard of the French army, who, believing him a peasant, as he was on foot and unarmed, had suffered him to pass unmolested. Madame de Rosenheim eagerly enquired what were the orders of the Baron, which, though his letters were lost, she hoped the messenger might have been acquainted with from himself. The man answered, that the Baron charged him to tell Madame, that he would be at the castle within ten days; but that if any thing during that interval should make her removal and that of her family necessary, she must act as she saw of her family necessary, she must act as she saw occasion. The Baroness then asked how near the army was, and what were the numbers of that part of it among whom he had fallen? He answered, "that of their number he was no judge; but that it seemed to be very considerable; and that they were then within eleven miles, and rapidly advancing. That they did not molest those who appeared willing to adopt their principles; and pretended great moderation and generosity towards all who would receive them. Heurthofen, who listened to the account of the messenger with evident symptoms of terror, ventured, as soon as he heard this, to advise that, instead of making any resistance, which he said was only inviting certain destruction, they should prepare to receive as friends, those who they could not repel as enemies. "Let us send," said he, "proper persons to meet the commander of this advanced guard. Let us represent that we are willing to receive him, and a part of his men; and let us desire him to send proper persons to take possession of the castle, to secure it from the unlicenced soldiery." Madame de Rosenheim regarded him while he spoke with a look of astonishment; while the countenance of her daughter expressed contempt mingled with indignation. "Is this really your advice, Sir?" said the former. "Really," replied he, "and what other circumstanced as we are, can you follow?" "I had much rather perish" replied Madame de Rosenheim, "under the ruins, than entertain in the castle of Rosenheim the men who have rebelled against their king, imprisoned him, and murdered under various pretences number of innocent persons! The men against whom my husband, and my sons are in arms; and who have been, for aught I know, the death of some for those dearest to me upon earth!" "Let the Abbé Heurthofen go, Madame, to meet these monsters," cried Madame D'Alberg, "and be the ambassador who shall treat for his own safety; but let us endeavour to defend this place against them." "No," answered the Baroness, "let us leave it to them, since it must be so! The Abbé Heurthofen is at liberty to provide for his own security in any way that he may prefer. Come, Adriana," added she, "let us think of the children, and of our people. Not a moment is to be lost." She then hastily left the room; and Madame D'Alberg was going out at another door, when the Chevalier D'Alonville met her. "What are the intentions of the Baroness, Madame," said he; "Can I be of the least assistance? Employ me, I entreat you, and give me the consolation of dying in the service of the only persons who now are interested for me on earth." "We are going instantly," replied Madame D'Alberg, "but I know not whither." "Will you not suffer me;" cried D'Alonville, in a voice equally agitated, "Ah! "will you not suffer me to attend you! Give me" added he, pausing and recollecting himself, "give me a moment only. The last mournful duties to my father are not paid. I cannot leave his ashes to the mercy of his persecutors. Will not your charity, best of women, give him a little ground?" His voice here failed him; Madame D'Alberg, distracted by her own apprehensions, could not be insensible to such sorrow; but she had no consolation to offer, and was not in a condition to attempt it. "Go to my mother," was all she could say. She knew Madame de Rosenheim, with equal sensibility for the unhappy, had more presence of mind. D'Alonville obeyed her, though hardly knowing what he did. He found Madame de Rosenheim seated in the midst of her people giving, with apparent composure, the necessary orders to every one. When most of them had departed D'Alonville advanced, and throwing himself on his knees, he seized her hands and bathed them with tears. Greatly afflicted, the Baroness spoke to him soothingly, and would have bade him expect happier days, but her voice refused to articulate words of comfort to the hope of this her mind refused to admit. D'Alonville, sobbing, attempted to speak; "I would ask" said he "permission to bury my father, and then to follow you, Madame, if I can be of any service — if my feeble arm — if I may be employed." He could not go on; yet, after a short pause regained his voice: "You have been more than a mother to me, Madam, in my extreme distress. Alas! I have now no parent; let me now call you my friend, my parent. Yet, why, why should I burthen you with my miseries. A wretched outcast — it is fit I submit to my fate! without a home, without even a country, — without even a spot of earth in which I may lay the cold remains of my father!" Grief again overpowered him. Madame de Rosenheim summoned all her resolution. "You are welcome, dear Sir," said she, "to remain with us wherever we may be, so long as it may be consistent with your own safety. Do not yield to despair, which unfits you for its preservation. Take any of my people to assist you as hastily as you can, for time presses, and let the last mournful offices be performed as decently as the circumstances admit. I will order my almoner to attend you." Madame de Rosenheim then left him, and D'Alonville returned to the room where the corps of the Viscount de Fayolles lay. In the clothes the Viscount had on when he arrived at the castle, and wrapped in a sheet, the unhappy D'Alonville, assisted by some peasants who were in the house, carried these poor remains into the garden, where as deep a grave being made as the time admitted, they were laid in the ground; Heurthofen muttering a service reluctantly over them. He then retired with the peasants, and the grave getting filled up, D'Alonville threw himself upon it, and gave way for a few moments to excess of grief. He then arose from the ground, and looking round him marked the place. A few paces beyond it was a long row of elms, now half leafless, and a few old firs. The immediate spot was marked by two or three laurels. "I shall revisit this place again," cried D'Alonville; "I shall again shed tears of eternal regret over the earth that conceals the reliques of the best of fathers!" He would have relapsed into one of those agonies of grief which render the sufferer incapable of attention to the circumstances of his own situation, but he was awakened from the indulgence of unavailing sorrow by a messenger from Madame de Rosenheim, desiring to see him, and informing him that they were ready to depart. He hastened into the house, and found the reluctant party arranged in order for their departure. An horse was provided for him, on which he followed, together with Heurthofen, and several domestics, the coach that contained Madame de Rosenheim, Madame D'Alberg, two female servants, and the three infant children.
POPE's Odyssey.
THE heavy loaden German coach proceeded very slowly, in a country where to proceed fast is never possible; and which was rendered now more difficult to travel in, by the long continued rains that had laid many leagues of the country, on the banks of the Moselle, under water. D'Alonville, to whom a pair of pistols and a sabre had been give on his leaving the castle, rode pensively after the carriage, having no inclination to converse with Heurthofen, who, from time to time, cast towards him glances sufficiently expressive of the little goodwill he bore him. Dislike is usually reciprocal; and though in the agitated and distressed state of mind in which D'Alonville had lately been, he had given but little heed to the ungracious manners of the almoner towards him, the want of humanity and feeling towards his father, which Heurthofen had evidently betrayed, had not escaped him, and the sight of him now raised only uneasy recollections. No conversation, therefore, arose to call off, even for a moment, the thought of D'Alonville from his own situation; — a situation that appeared insupportable the moment he began to think of it steadily. Hither to solicitude for his father, his faint hopes, his destracting fears, had absorbed every consideration for himself: but now he had lost this object of his anxiety, and all the horrors of his destiny rushed upon his mind.
"What am I, and whither am I going! What will become of me; and what right have I to the friendship of these strangers! How long ought I to receive obligations which I know not that I can ever repay, even if they are willing and able to continue them!" Such were the reflections that crouded on his mind; and the pain they inflickted was so acute that he was almost unconscious of what passed; but drooping under the weight of his sorrows he went mechanically on, because he had once set out. The weather, which in the morning seemed to clear up, darkened again as the sun declined. A tempest of rain and wind made their progress so tedious, that it became impossible for the coach to proceed to the place where Madam de Rosenheim had intended to dine; nine miles beyond a very large wood, which they were now in, and in which, towards is extremity, a miserable hovel, with a sign that announced it entertained travelers offered them an asylum against the furiously driving storm that had threatened, for some moments, to tear up by the roots the trees under which they had been passing, and had even scattered many large branches around them. Madame D'Alberg was alarmed for the safety of her children who were fatigued and restless, and the horses were unable to proceed without some rest. Into this humble cabin then it was determined by the ladies to go, and to take there some refreshments which they had brought with them; while the horses in a shed near it, were placed to take the food and rest of which they were too evidently in need. There was only one place in this wretched hovel that could be called a room, below stairs, and another above; into this upper room the ladies, the children, and the female servants, retired; while D'Alonville, Heurthofen, and the men, assembled in the other but Madame D'Alberg, who had not only goodness of heart which always makes misfortune interesting, but that delicate of mind which tries to blunt the arrows of affliction so acutely felt by those who have been in superior life, no sooner saw her mother and her children a little recovered from the fatigue of being shut up so many hours in a coach in rugged and tedious roads, than she descended the something between steps and a ladder which went to the lower room, and enquired for the Chevalier D'Alonville.
The Chevalier D'Alonville, though his clothes were wet through, and though he certainly needed refreshment as much as any of the party, had been so little forward to ask it, that the men, each eager to take care of himself, had failed to recollect his, but were assembled round Heurthofen, eating, drinking, and asking his opinion of what would happen in the village of Rosenheim, and what he thought would be their own destination, for it was not yet known among them that Madame de Rosenheim had determined to go to Coblentz for immediate safety, and from thence to Vienna, if, as was but too probable, she could not return to the castle. Neglected by Heurthofen, the only person from whom he had a right to expect the civility that one gentleman usually shews another; D'Alonville, with his back against a hole in the mud-wall which was intended for a window, and through which the rain beat, though he seemed not sensible of it, with folded arms, and eyes fixed, was meditating on his deplorable destiny, or rather seemed to meditate; for his mind was in reality in a kind of pasty. He started, however, at the sound of his name and to the enquiries of Madame D'Alberg he answered, that he was doing well.
"Doing well!" exclaimed she "I fear not. Have you had any refreshment? or," added she supposing he might be hurt if she seemed to group him with her servants, "perhaps you had rather partake of the less substantial meal which we women are going to make above. Come, Monsieur Heurthofen, we have room for the Chevalier and you above. You will come up and share our repast." "I believe," answered Heurthofen, very evidently displeased, "I believe there will be but little time to think any more of repasts, unless you intend, Madam, to sleep as well as eat here." "If we do," replied Madame D'Alberg, "I suppose the inconveniences of the place, whatever they may be, will not be greater for you, Sir, than for us." Then turning from him without attempting to conceal her disgust, she again addressed herself to D'Alonville, and, in the voice of friendship and kindness, invited him to share their apartments, such as it was. D'Alonville, afraid of intruding upon her kindness, would have excused himself; he tried to speak, but he could not articulate; and the soothing manner in which Madame D'Alberg spoke to him, roused him from the dreary torpor of despair, but to feel his fate more acutely, and to a sense of something like adoration for the lovely woman who took so generous interest in that fate. "Come, come," said Madame D'Alberg, forcing an appearance of cheerfulness which she was far from feeling; "Come, my young friend, consider me as your elder sister, my mother as your's; and let us in those characters have a right to preach to you a little. Follow me," continued she, giving him her hand "and we will lecture you into a little more fortitude." D'Alonville in the most respectful manner lifted to his lips the hand she gave him and followed her in silence.
Madame de Rosenheim received him with that kindness which she had shewn from his first introduction to her; she invited him to partake of the repast they were going hastily to eat; and spoke cheerfully, though in fact her disquiet was extreme; and it was only by the utmost effort of resolution, that she concealed from her daughter and attendants the real situation of her mind. D'Alonville, unwilling to appear insensible of her civilities, yet unable to answer them, could only testify by his looks the impression her kindness made upon him; he drank the wine she poured out for him, and endeavoured to swallow the food she put before him. In turning his eyes on her countenance, and remarking the looks with which she surveyed her daughter and little ones, he perceived the uneasiness she felt for them, and was sensible of all the value of that real goodness of heart, which, at such a time, extended itself towards a stranger, who had no other recommendation than his misfortune.
D'Alonville had not been many minutes in the room before Heurthofen, though he seemed to have declined the invitation Madame D'Alberg gave him, stalked up; and while he did more justice than D'Alonville to the provisions on the table, he remonstrated with Madame de Rosenheim on their stay, though it had yet been little more than a quarter of an hour. "I merely stay" said Madame de Rosenheim, "Till the violence of the storm is abated, and till the men and horses are a little refreshed." "As to the storm," answered Heurthofen, with less civility than he had ever ventured to use towards Madame de Rosenheim, "there is little chance of staying it out, for you see it is more violent than ever; — and as to the people and the horses, they are as well able to go on now as they will be half an hour hence: Unless, therefore, you or Madame D'Alberg have any reasons for wishing to pass the night here, it is my humble opinion that you cannot too soon give directions for departing. Night is almost come. If we do not hasten on, what place can we reach before it is quite dark; where we have any chance either of getting beds, or of procuring horses that may carry us on?"
There was something in the manner rather than in the matter of this speech, which Madame de Rosenheim thought very extraordinary; but the present was not a time to repress the impertinence of Heurthofen, which she had sometimes been compelled, on other occasions, to do. He might now be necessary; and his ill-humour would contribute to the discomforts of a journey already disagreeable enough; and his ill-humour would contribute to the discomforts of a journey already disagreeable enough; there was besides the appearance of truth in what he said; and therefore, however she felt hurt at the little respect with which he said it, she contented herself with coldly desiring him to hasten the people, as she and her daughter were ready. — Heurthofen, casting a malignant look towards D'Alonville, which did not escape the observation of Madame de Alberg, then left the room; and notwithstanding the rain was as violent as ever, the horses were harnessed, and they left the miserable cabin in the same order as they had entered it; but before they had gone on a mile it was so dreary dark, that Madame de Rosenheim almost repented not having stayed under the shelter it had afforded, wretched as it was; she knew the road they had to pass was yet worse than what they had passed already; and that with horses so fatigued, it was impossible for them to reach the place where, at their first setting our they had proposed to dine, before it would be quite dark. — No remedy however appeared; and the only hope she had was, that as the night advanced the clouds might break away and that the moon, which she found rose about eight o'clock, might afford them light enough to guide them to this place, without their meeting with other inconveniencies than those of roads, tedious and rough, but not dangerous while they could discern their way.
The quantity of water and mud which, from the violent floods, covered these roads, had so unusually fatigued the horses that drew the coach that ever step they took seemed to be the last that they could take. Heavily, heavily, they moved on; then their drivers were compelled to stop; again proceed half a quarter of a mile, and then stop again. — Thus, they hardly went a mile in an hour; and half their weary way was not made, when they were stopped by the overflowing of a small river, or rather brook (for in summer it is no more) that empties itself into the Moselle. The extent of the flood appeared, as far as they could discern, to be much greater than any they had yet passed; but the men seemed to think they could safely go through it; and Heurthofen, who rode forward to the coach-window, assured Madame de Rosenheim that he had passed the place often when the waters were equally high, and that there was no danger. Madame de Rosenheim, however, could with difficulty be persuaded of this, and the alarm of Madame D'Alberg was still greater. The former said it would be better to wait till the moon, which now appear faintly, should afford them light to see the marks which, in such places, are generally made to direct travellers through the floods. To this the men, and particularly Heurthofen, reluctantly consented but as the wind and rain seemed to contend which should render their stay the most comfortless, they soon became impatient, and again represented the possibility of passing in perfect security. Madame D'Alberg by the light of the moon, half-obscured by dark clouds, looked across the troubled extent of water, which the wind drove up against the wheels of the coach, and trembling at the idea of trusting her children to it, entreated her mother rather to remain where they were than to venture across it. D'Alonville, who saw her extreme distress, now advanced, entreated that Madame de Rosenheim would give him leave to ride through it first. "If I arrive on the other side without danger, I can return and guide the coach; if not, I shall have given up in your service a life which to me is merely a burthen." "No, Sir," cried Heurthofen rudely, "you know there is no danger, — you see by the appearance of the water that it is not deep; — your knight errantry therefore is perfectly useless, and can answer no other purpose than to waste time and encrease our difficulties. — Go on, positillions; and encrease our difficulties; I am sure it is perfectly safe." "No, no," cried Madame D'Alberg, :"do not go on; I will not pass the water unless I am more convinced that we can pass it in security than I am by the positive assertations of Monsieur Heurthofen." "Since you are so very clear as to its being safe, Heurthofen," said Madame de Rosenheim, "I have no scruple in desiring you to go through it first, to satisfy my daughter's fears; you have a tall horse, and you say you are perfectly aquainted with the road; you can, therefore, have no objection to going forward; and being once secure that the passage is safe, you can holloo to us to follow you, when you reach the place where the water ceases to be deep.
To this Heurthofen, after a pause which shewed how little he approved of the proposal, answered, that he would go: to be sure he would go: that is, if he thought it necessary; but he could now discern the posts set to mark the height of the water, and he was perfectly sure that the coach might, without the least risk, go across. "Well," answered Madame de Rosenheim, "however, Heurthofen, if my daughter consents to go, do you go on first with two of the servants, and the Chevalier D'Alonville, with the two others, will keep close to the carriage behind." Madame D'Alberg still expressed extreme apprehension; yet as the moon by this time afforded considerable light, and as not only Heurthofen, but the positillions and one of the men declared they now knew the way perfectly, she at length, though reluctantly, consented, Heurthofen with two servants went on first and for a considerable way the coach proceeded along a fort of causeway raised about a foot above the low marshy ground, which extended on each side of the rivulet for near a quarter of a mile. Heurthofen now nearly at the end of this causeway, and believing that he had a right to triumph in the propriety of his advice, and in the prowess he had shewn, spurred his weary horse to gain at once dry land, when he plunged in and disappeared — too late, however, to obviate the danger to the coach, which he had been sent forward to prevent; the two leading horses instantly fell into the same gulph; and as there was neither time nor thought enough to cut the traces the other two almost as immediately followed, and the coach was overturned in the water.
It was at this moment of extreme peril that D'Alonville seemed to recover at once his resolution and presence of mind; regardless of any danger to himself, he threw himself from his horse, and cut with his sabre the leather of the carraige, which was not quite half under water; he then seized the first object he found: it was the infant son of Madame D'Alberg — he gave the child instantly to one of the men, who, seeing him in the water, had dismounted also — D'Alonville then snatched out another of the children— The nurse, with the third in her arms was dragged out by the men; and while they carried them to the shore, D'Alonville endeavoured to extricate the Baroness and Madame D'Alberg; another servant was still in the coach, who, as the first law of nature operated strongly upon her, scuffled so well for herself, that the disengaged herself, and sprang into the stream, whence she walked to the bank but the two ladies were more than half dead when with the assistance of all the men about them, except Heurthofen, who did not appear, they were both carried on shore the deepest part of the place into which the coach had fallen, not being over their shoulders. The extremity of the danger to which his benefactresses were exposed, had lent to D'Alonville spirits and strench, that threatened to forsake him when he thought these exertions useless, and that they were lost — Without any means of assisting them, he gave himself up to despair, and ran about for a moment like a mad man. The Baroness's woman, who had suffered the least, seeing, herself in safety, began to think of her mistress; and while the woman who had the care of the children was busied in recovering the only one who had swallowed much water, the servant of the Baroness endeavoured to render her lady and Madame D'Alberg such assistance as occurred to her. Madame de Rosenheim was the first restored to her senses, but was yet unconscious of her situation; and believing herself still struggling amidst the current, she faintly cried, "Save my daughter and her children:" As soon as her woman heard her speak, she renewed her efforts to restore her to her senses, and exhorted her to recollect herself, assuring her Madame D'Alberg and the children were safe. She soon was more restored; but when she saw her daughter lying by her apparently dead, her reason, feebly returning, threatened again to forsake her; roused, however, after a moment; by the danger of beings so dear to her, she began herself to attempt assisting her daughter, and the little creatures, who, though saved from the immediate danger of drowning, were likely to perish with cold. "Gracious God!" exclaimed she, "what will become of us. — Where shall we obtain help. —Is there no house near!" The moon now high lent her light in vain. Madame de Rosenheim beheld a dreary moor where no human habitation appeared. Madame D'Alberg continued insensible, though the breathed; and her mother alternately pressing the children to her agonized heart, believed the death of them all inevitable, and that she had only seen them snatched from the water to perish more miserably on shore. At this moment the cast her melancholy eyes across the marsh, and beheld a light moving at a distance — it soon approached nearer; and D'Alonville, with five peasants, three men and two women appeared; they brought with them what such people in such a place could collect. The hands and temples of Madame D'Alberg were chased with brandy; and one of the men collected together some pieces of rotten wood, to which he set fire; and the warmth had an almost immediate effect on the child for whom they were most apprehensive; Madame D'Alberg too became suddenly sensible. — She started — attempted to speak, but could not; while her mother, re-animated with hope, renewed those exertions which had effected this change; and not doubting now but that she should save her daughter if she could be place in some house, she eagerly enquired whether there was any kind of shelter near. The female peasants, impressed with high notions of the rank and consequence of the ladies who it was their good fortune to succour, answered that their cottage was about a mile distant, concealed behind a small rise. The question was, how to convey thither Madame D'Alberg, who was certainly unable to walk; however, as there were six peasants and D'Alonville present, their deliberations were soon ended, by the declaration of one of the men, that they could without difficulty carry Madame D'Alberg among them. This they immediately executed, and Madame de Rosenheim, though from her faintness and the weight of her clothes drenched with water, she proceeded slowly, yet exerted herself so well that she arrived at the cottage, though not till after her daughter, who was already placed before a fire, had recovered her senses, and was now embracing her children, and now eagerly asking for her mother, of whose safety she could not be convinced, till she appeared. Tears relieved them both; the mother and daughter wept a moment in each others arms; the former then regaining her usual serenity, began to contrive how they might pass the night; and with the assistance of the women, dry clothes, and a mattrass for the children, spread before the fire, was immediately obtained. When they were provided for, the Baroness and Madame D'Alberg, instead of attending to themselves, enquired for their people, some of whom they feared might be lost; but they learned that all the domestics had appeared; and the women servants, began to be very eloquent in praise of D'Alonville, to whom they declared the preservation of the family had been entirely owing; describing, as well as the confusion they were in at the time, had allowed them to remark, how he had saved them all. "It was dear little master he took first, as I held him up as high as I could," said the nurse. Madame D'Alberg kissed her son, and involuntarily blessed his preserver. "Excellent young man!" cried her mother; "how infinite are our obligations to him; but where is he? It would ease my over burthened heart to thank him!" The men had retired from the room, but one of the women informed her, that when the Chevalier D'Alonville had seen them all safe in the house, and likely to do well, he had gone back to assist the men in getting up the coach, which was not an easy task, as from the struggles of the horses to disengage themselves, it had been dragged farther, and was more entangled than when they quitted it.
At length D'Alonville and the men returned with the coach, which they had dragged out with ropes, and by the aid of other horses; and on a muster made of the whole party, it appeared that none were missing but Heurthofen, who, they all concluded, was drowned.
MILTON.
EARLY the next morning the suffering party, their equipage being repaired enough to carry them to a town about five miles distant, proceeded thither, drawn by such horses as the peasants could furnish them with. The ladies had suffered more from terror than from the water; but the children appeared to be restored; and as they went along, Madame de Rosenheim spoke of nothing but the gallantry and presence of mind that had been so fortunately exerted by the Chevalier D'Alonville. Madame D'Alberg said less; but appeared equally sensible of the obligations they all owed to the young stranger. The women were loquacious in his praise; and while they spoke of his merits, did not forget to dwell on his personal beauty. "Such a sweet young man!" cried one of them. "Such a genteel pretty young man!" echoed the other. Then "what an affectionate son! Poor dear gentleman, how he wept for his father! A good creature, I'll answer for him." In making this eulogium on the living, these good women had lost all recollection of the dead; and the unfortunate almoner Heurthofen was as much forgotten as if he had been already buried seven years. He had never, indeed, been a great favourite in the family, though he had lived in it some time. He was originally a dependant on a minister of state at Vienna, who, from an ancient attachment to his mother, or for some other reason, had educated him in France, the language of which country he spoke as well as his own; but his protector being displaced, his views of preferment had been disappointed. A situation of trust at the castle of Rosenheim, which his patron procured for him by his interest with the Baron, was, with a small annual stipend from the bounty of his first protector, thought an eligible post of for him, till something better occurred. Three years he had unwillingly submitted to bury, in the dull routine of mere business in the Baron's private establishment, talents which he thought entitled him to move in a very different sphere, when he was supposed to have ended his short career. The natural goodness of Madame de Rosenheim's heart prompted her to think well of every body, till they had given her some very good reasons to change her opinion. Heurthofen was not a man for whom she could feel much esteem; yet as whatever his failings were, he had contrived to keep them from her observation, she contended herself with repressing the only fault she discovered in him — as desire to govern and dictate in the absence of the Baron; and thought of him generally with her usual candour. His death therefore gave her very great concern, and more particularly as it seemed to have been owing to his having gone forward by her desire. Madame D'Alberg acquiesced in her mother's expressions of pity; but with a degree of coldness, which seemed to say that she felt less for the death of Heurthofen, than one would have supposed she would have done for that of a perfect stranger, perishing as it were before her eyes. The spirits of the whose party revived on their reaching the town where it had been their intention to stop in their first days journey. There they prepared to pass the night. Madame de Rosenheim remarked with real uneasiness the looks of D'Alonville, who appeared absolutely sinking under the excessive fatigue of so many days of suffering and of exertion, and had just placed him by her at their early supper, and prevailed upon him to eat something, when one of the men servants entered the room, and informed his lady, with more appearance of surprise than satisfaction, that the almoner was alive and coming up stairs. Heurthofen immediately entered, and was received by Madame de Rosenheim with great satisfaction. The rest of the party were silent, listened to the narrative he gave of his escape, without seeming to take much interest in it; while the almoner, either from remarking this coldness, or because he really thought himself injured, continued to tell the miracles of his involuntary voyage, interlacing his narrative with the expressions of "when I was thus abandoned;" "when thus I was left to struggle alone." "In this distressed condition, without any hope of saving my life," said he, "I was carried down the stream for some time upon my horse; at length collecting all my presence of mind, I imagined it would be best to abandon the animal, who was nearly exhausted. I disengaged myself then, and leaving him to his fate as I had been before left to mine, I endeavoured by swimming, in which I was a tolerable proficient, to gain the shore; but the current into which I had thus inadvertently plunged, in obedience to your wishes, Madame, was too rapid for me; and imagine what were my sensations, when I heard the rush of waters, which I knew to be the torrent of a mill-stream." "It is singular," said Madame D'Alberg, "indeed that among this mighty rust of waters, you should distinguish the noise of a mill-stream, from the stream you were struggling in." "Not at all, Madame," answered Heurthofen. "I was convinced I should be driven through the mill race and perhaps dashed to pieces. Succourless as I was, and enfeebled by having so long contended with the boiling torrent, I gave myself up for lost, when as a last effort, I hallooed as loud as I could; — fortunately my voice was heard; a miller came forth with a lantern, he extended a pole towards me, on which I seized with difficulty, for the man was less able than willing, I was dragged on shore — I mounted my horse." " Your horse!" said Madame D'Alberg, — "I thought he had been drowned in the first setting out." "No, Madame," replied Heurthofen, "I did not say so — though he was left, it did not follow that he was drowned. He — he — swam ashore higher up; and was — I know not by whom caught." "But would it not have been better," said Madame D'Alberg, "since you were so nearly exhausted, and had suffered so much — would it not have been better to have gone into the mill for refreshment?" "I could not," replied Heurthofen after a moments pause; "for no sooner had the man who had assisted me to the river's boundary, and another who came out his aid, surveyed my figure, than they declared I was a spy, and they had some inclination to precipitate me again into the raging cataract!" "A spy!" cried Madame D'Alberg, "what extraordinary notions these people must have of spies, to imagine that one of them would proceed on his mission by water at such a time of night!" "I cannot answer for their notions," said Heurthofen, "but I know, Madame, that owing to his absurd notion, I narrowly escaped greater inconveniences even than those I had passed through." "Poor Heurthofen!" said Madame de Rosenheim, who, though she knew he was rhodomontading, had compassion alike for his late escape, and present confusion — "Poor Heurthofen! your perils do indeed seem to have been greater than ours." She good naturedly wished to turn the conversation, but her daughter was not disposed to let him off so easily. "Well, but inform us, Sir?" said she, "since you have so far excited our curiosity inform us if you please, how you got out of the hands of these injudicious persons." "I escaped them on horseback," replied Heurthofen, who had by this time recollected himself; "and making the best of my way from them notwithstanding the impervious darkness of the night. "Nay, nay," cried the inexorable Madame D'Alberg, again interrupting him, "it was not so very dark neither; there was a moon you know;" "Nothing could be darker, however," answered Heurthofen, "than were the woods into which I plunged." "To what purpose?" enquired Madame D'Alberg. "In endeavouring to find my way back" replied he, "to the fatal place where I had left the coach, in the hope, feeble as I own I was, to save the family. "Ah! you were very kind indeed, Sir," answered the lady. "Fortunately for us the Chevalier D'Alonville was nearer at hand, to whose activity and resolution we all owe our lives, which but for him would undoubtedly have been lost, before your plunging into woods and emerging out of boiling torrents would have permitted you to have come to our assistance." Heurthofen cast an angry and indignant look at D'Alonville; but what his mind suggested in answer to information evidently unwelcome to him he had not time to express, a servant at the moment entering the room, who said a person desired to speak to the Abbe Heurthofen. He was not much disposed to move, and enquired rather peevishly who could possibly have any business with him? The servant said the man looked like a miller; and Heurthofen without farther hesitation went down; Madame D'Alberg gravely remarking as he left the room, that she was afraid it might be one of the men who had mistaken him for a spy, and was now come in pursuit of him.
"You are too hard upon Heurthofen," said Madame de Rosenheim to her daughter when he had left the room; "you see, my dear, he has a mind to make a merit of his sufferings." "He does wisely, certainly," returned Madame D'Alberg, to excuse as well as he can his desertion of us; but he lies so aukwardly awkwardly that it provokes one." "I own" answered her mother smiling, "he has forgot himself, as Cervantes did about Sancho's ass; but I dare say he has suffered considerably." "I have no pity," cried Madame D'Alberg, "for his selfish sufferings. After the danger is over, and we are is safety at an inn, he finds us out, and with a round red face, as if he had eat or slept the whole time, insults us with an impossible story of dangers he ran, which never happened, in an attempt that he was now too wise to make. I am very sure, if we knew the truth, we should find that he scrambled out of the water, and found his way to some house, which he probably knew of before, as he is well acquainted with this road; and that all these whirlpools, and enemies, and Cimmerian woods, existed no where but in his own head, and were created only to excite our pity." "You judge too hardly, Adriana," said the Baroness.
"You will find I am right, Madame," answered her daughter. The almoner did not return, and the party separated for the night; D'Alonville undertaking, at the instance of Madame de Rosenheim, to give early directions for a more complete repair of the coach, and to procure horses for their journey.
When Madame D'Alberg retired to the room that was prepared for her, her woman, full of the events of the past days, began to descant upon them. "Surely never had any family such a narrow escape," cried she — "I am sure, now I came to think upon it coolly, my blood quite curdles as it were in my veins — It is a great mercy we are alive to tell of it." "It is certainly," answered her mistress. "But have you heard the more miraculous story of poor Heurthofen, and how near he had been lost in attempting to come back to us?" "He lost," exclaimed the woman; "Has he made you believe so, Madame?" Madame D'Alberg then related all the hair-breadth escapes which the almoner had described. "Well!" exclaimed the woman — "if I am not amazed at the assurance of some folks! So far from his having been in all this danger, I am very sure he scrambled out but a little way beyond where he blundered into the hole, which, after all his boasting, he ought to have known of; though I believe indeed he was pretty well frighted, and glad to find himself safe. He took special care not to get into danger again by trying to help us; but trotted off to a mill a mile or two lower down, where he told the people that he was benighted, and had narrowly escaped drowning: they took him in and gave him a warm bed and a good supper: The man that took care of his horse not being in the way when he sat out from thence this morning, came here by chance to-night with flour, and hearing that the Abbé Heurthofen was at this inn, he sent up to ask for money for the trouble he had taken with his horse. The poor beast it seems was in a bad condition, having been hurt in scrambling up an high bank; but as to the Abbé himself, he was a great deal more frightened than hurt — the miller has been telling our men all about it." "I wish," said Madame D'Alberg, "the man could be made to repeat the story to us as we get into the coach to-morrow; my mother will hardly be brought to believe that Heurthofen, instead of attempting to return to our assistance, went prudently off, and consulted his own safety." "Ah! madam," replied her woman, "I am sure he richly deserves to have the truth known; but my good lady the Baroness is so backward to believe any ill of him — a sly fellow: — as to this time he has taken care to send the man off, and so we shall never hear any more of the truth than we know already, and he will have credit for all his boasting." "Heurthofen," said Madame D'Alberg, "seems to be no favourite of yours." — "No, indeed," answered the woman; "I have not much cause to love him." Madame D'Alberg was too much fatigued to enter this evening into the causes of disgust that Heurthofen had given her servant; she dismissed her, therefore, and endeavoured to quiet her spirits, and to obtain the repose the so greatly wanted.
The next day the proceeded on their journey, and the day following reached Coblentz; nothing occurring worth remark, unless it was the encreasing ill humour of Heurthofen, whose evil disposition towards D'Alonville visibly encreased. — D'Alonville cared very little for his displeasure, and was indeed hardly conscious that such a man existed. Madame de Rosenheim and her daughter found some difficulty in procuring lodgings in a town already crowded with persons, who, driven from the frontiers, had taken shelter there. A female friend whose husband was absent made room for them in her hotel; but D'Alonville, who would be no longer troublesome to them resorted to his own countrymen, among whom he found a distant relation of his mother's a Mareshal de Camp, who, though by no means in high affluence himself, having saved very little, supplied him with money for his present support, and received him into a small apartment in the same house.
It was natural for him to pay the most assiduous attention to persons to whom he was so infinitely obliged; and gratitude, as well as the esteem which their characters inspired, attached him every day more and more to the Baroness de Rosenheim and her daughter. He considered the former as his mother, the latter as his sister; and attempted not to conceal the affection he felt for them, or that the only alleviating circumstance he at present found for his misfortunes, was being admitted on the most friendly footing to visit them; while on their parts they were both equally pleased with him, and as they knew more of him, felt a stronger interest in his fate. The younger lady, who had now received assurances that her husband was safe, and would soon be with her, re-assumed her usual serenity, and waited without uneasiness the instructions that were expected from the Baron, as to their future measures. Madame de Rosenheim seemed to be persuaded that he would direct them to go to him at Vienna; and as she wished to continue to be of service to her young French friend, she had held several conferences with her daughter, on means of retaining D'Alonville with them, without shocking the pride, which his high birth and exalted notions of honor, had very properly inspired. Heurthofen, whose hatred of D'Alonville he did not even attempt to conceal, was very seldom of the parties which the Baroness collected round her; he contented himself with a cold and sullen performance of his duties in the family, and passed almost all the rest of his time in societies of his own; but to the servants he openly expressed his disapprobations of the Baroness's conduct in encouraging around her so many of the French emigrants, and avowed his hopes, that they should soon go to Vienna, and shake off these coxcombs; for a softer name he could not find for men whose superiority, though he felt it, he was too proud to allow. Heurthofen was a man of a singular character, of which pride and self consequence were the predominant features. Thrown by his birth at a great distance from the eminence he desired to aspire to, and apparently condemned, by having taken orders in the Catholic church, to remain for ever dependant on his patron, or to become the pastor of some German village, his ambitious spirit soared above his obscure lot, and he had neither feelings or principles likely to check any means, however daring or however immoral, which that spirit might prompt him to use for his exaltation. With a cool head, and a callous heart, he had none of those passions which so often baffle and betray the schemes of the politician. Incapable alike of friendship or of love, he had yet so much personal vanity, that he was persuaded his abilities gave him a general command over the minds of others; that no man could detect him whom he determined to deceive; no woman resist him whose affections he desired to appropriate. He had not that degree of taste and discrimination which would have led him to admire the talents, virtues, and graces of Madame D'Alberg; but he had tried to ingratiate himself with her, in hopes to have the glory of discovering, that even a woman of understanding so superior, could not resist his art and his eloquence. The haughty repulse that he had always met with, and the pointed dislike towards him, which Madame D'Alberg always expressed, had mortified and piqued him without curing him of his presumptuous folly. He was till persuaded, that only opportunity and perseverance were wanting to obtain a more favorable reception; till her acquaintance with the Chevalier D'Alonville alarmed his pride, by shewing him, that while he was treated with haughty reserve, and kept at a disdainful distance, this young man, of whom nothing was know but his misfortunes, was received and considered like an equal, while he appeared at the parties of the Baroness only as a dependant. Rage and hatred boiled in his bosom, and stimulated his intriguing and malignant spirit to punish the authors of the pain he felt, while he fought himself above the humiliating situation, where his dependence seemed to counteract perpetually the ascendancy of talents, which he believed would be under other circumstances, irresistible.
VOLTAIRE.
THE family who had been driven thus precipitately from the castle of Rosenheim, had no sooner been safely settle at Coblentz, than the Baroness sent off a messenger to Vienna to acquaint her husband of their being in a place of security, and to ask his future directions. The messenger returned in the due course of time, with a letter from the Baron de Rosenheim, in which he expressed his satisfaction, that his family were in safety after so many perils, and assured them, that he would soon be with them. He added, "I am almost afraid to enquire whether, under such circumstances of haste and terror, you thought of those papers and deeds that were in a closet in the wall near the chapel, of which Heurthofen ought to have, and I hope has, taken care. He knew they were there, and he knew that infinite consequence they are to me, and still more to my daughter: they are indeed so material, that it would be a less loss to me to have Rosenheim destroyed, than to lose them — her's and her children's succession to a great part of my property depends on these deeds. I had so little idea of any in road from the French patriots when I left Rosenheim, that I gave no charge about them; but I sent you the key of the iron door which secures them, and charge to you to take care of them, by the messenger, who was, I find, robbed on his way back — a circumstance that, together with your not naming them among the effects you have carried with you to Coblentz, makes me very apprehensive that these very material deeds may have been forgotten; — but even then, as it could answer no purpose to the banditti, who have perhaps plundered my house, to take or to destroy such things, as the small iron door is very little observable, and could not but with great difficulty be opened — there is such a chance of my recovering these parchments, that, if they have unfortunately been forgot, I entreat that some of the servants who know the place may be sent back to attempt to recover them. If, as I have reason to believe, there is a French garrison at Rosenheim, I should not hesitate to write to the commander; or even to offer money for leave to take away these papers, which they cannot make the least use of — not a moment is to be lost in attempting to recover them, should my apprehensions of their having been neglected by well grounded; and I entreat you to exert yourself in doing so; and that you will remember how very much depends upon it. It is very distressing, that my private and public duties are at this moment so incompatible, that when you most want me, I cannot be with you.
On the perusal of this letter, Madame de Rosenheim, to whom the importance of these papers were well known, was struck with consternation and concern — she sent immediately for Heurthofen — he was not to be found; but the Baroness was but too well assured that he had taken no care to secure these papers. When he arrived, he answered her enquires with great coldness; he said, that he had been too much hurried and occupied by her commands to attend the dying emigrant and his son, her young friend; and that if she pleased to recollect what passed on their precipitate retreat, she must do him the justice to acknowledge, that she did not allow him time to execute his duty to the Baron. That he had not the key; and never having been in habits of having the care of these parchments, it was not wonderful he should overlook the charge, in a time of so much confusion. Madame de Rosenheim, in great perplexity, then enquired of him whether he could point out any person who was fit to be entrusted, and would undertake the task of endeavouring to regain them; but he with the utmost sangfroid declined interfering and said that he could not in conscience recommend it to any man who valued his life, to undertake so perilous, and in his opinion, so useless an exploit. Madame D'Alberg came into the room, attended by D'Alonville at this moment; she immediately saw the uneasiness under which her mother suffered, and already detesting Heurthofen, she could not let pass this opportunity of expressing her impatience and disgust. "I am surprised, madam," said she addressing herself to Madame de Rosenheim, "that you should find any difficulty in this matter; undoubtedly Monsieur Heurthofen, who is so bravely adventurous; he who dared so heroically to brave the raging flood in order to our rescue, will readily return to snatch from the invaders these papers, of whose consequence he is aware; besides, continued she (throwing still more irony into her manner), "he may perhaps have interest with Messieurs les Sans Culottes, whose principles, if I am rightly informed, he does not altogether disclaim." Heurthofen evidently struggled with his confusion and rage; he bit his lips, and seemed to repress with difficulty the answer he was tempted to give. Madame de Rosenheim, however, vexed by the loss of the papers, and by the little hope there appeared of recovering them, was more disposed to be angry with herself than with Heurthofen, whom she dismissed, desiring him to consider what could be done; and then she gently intimated to her daughter that she thought her too severe upon Heurthofen, "who, after all, my dear," said she, "was not so much to blame as I was; it was I who ought to have thought of those papers; and if we never recover them, which it is very improbable we ever shall, it is only I, who ought to be reproached with all the disagreeable, indeed ruinous, conseqences consequences that will follow." D'Alonville, who was yet ignorant of the subject of this conversation, now asked if he might be indulged with an explanation. The Baroness read to him that part of her husband's letter which related to his fears for these valuable papers, and she spoke of the reproaches she made herself for having forgotten them. D'Alonville recollected, that amidst so many cares for her own family, and in an hour of such danger and distress, his father's and his own situation had engaged so much of her time and thought; and he was affected almost to tears, when he found how much her generous pity for the calamities of strangers, was likely to injure her family. D'Alonville, however, was not a man to lament the misfortune of his friends, without making some attempt to alleviate those misfortunes; and the persuasion that he had himself been in a great measure the occasion of that which his benefactress now deplored he felt an irresistible impulse to attempt recovering these papers, and he could not help instantly expressing what he felt; declaring with great warmth, that if they would only furnish him with such instructions as should enable him to find the place, he would go himself, and endeavour to repair the loss of which he knew himself to have been the cause. Madame de Rosenheim, thought struck with the generosity of his offer, and the zeal with which he expressed it; but it appeared to her so hazardous in the attempt, and so doubtful in the success, that she besought him to mention it no more. She kindly endeavoured to persuade him, that her omission had not been owing to her attention to his father or himself, and while he remained with her, she affected to make light of a circumstance he, which notwithstanding saw, gave her the greatest uneasiness. The Baroness having left the room for a few moments, D'Alonville obtained from Madame D'Alberg an avowal of the truth. She told him that, in consequence of her father having no male heir, a very considerable part of his property would have gone after his decease, to a distant relation, had it not been for these deeds, executed by the grandfather of the present possessor, who had taken precautions to preserve it to his own posterity, whether male or female. — A power, however, which the relation in question was so much disposed to dispute, that he had been actually at law with the Baron; and the whole cause must turn on these parchments. D'Alonville, more than ever confirmed in his resolution to attempt regaining them at whatever risk, forbore to express his thoughts to Madame D'Alberg; but left her in a few minutes, and went in search of Heurthofen. Heurthofen, as usual, was not to be met with. He seemed to have found a new set of acquaintance, with whom he constantly associated; and was only seen at the hotel inhabited by Madame de Rosenheim, at those hours when it was necessary to appear as her chaplain. At their supper, therefore, the Chevalier D'Alonville met him; and without being deterred by the supercilious coldness with which Heurthofen affected to treat him, he followed him out when he left the house, and accosting him in the street, desired to have a moment's conversation with him in a coffee-house not far from thence. — "With me? Monsieur le Chevalier;" replied the almoner, "I should not have supposed it likely you could have any business with me: whatever it is, it is probably slight enough to be settled where we are, and let it be quickly, if you please, for I have an engagement, and am in haste." D'Alonville despised the priest too much to resent his impertinent and repulsive manner; but entering immediately on the subject, he desired Heurthofen to inform him of what he knew as to the size and number of the parchments which were of so much consequence, and to describe to him, as nearly as he could, the place where they were to be fought by any person who attempted to recover them. "Attempt to recover them!" exclaimed Heurthofen, "And who will attempt to recover them?" "I will attempt it," answered D'Alonville. "You! Monsieur le Chevalier," replied he; "Indeed! I have always had reason to venerate and admire your fears of gallantry in the service of the ladies; and, in truth, thus undertaking this adventure, proves you to be a most daring and adventurous knight, whose prowess, or boast of prowess, will, I dare say, meet with the usual reward in such cases, — The smiles and favors of the fair."
"What do you mean, Sir?" D'Alonville, who could no longer command himself — "I ask of you information which may be material to the family in whose service you are." Heurthofen interrupted him by repeating, indignantly, the word "service!"
"Yes, Sir," cried D'Alonville, with increased warmth — "I say service — You are, according to my apprehension, a domestic in the family of the Baron de Rosenheim; and as such you are obliged by your duty give me the information I demand."
"And who are you, Sir, and by what authority do you demand any thing of me; or by whose desire trouble yourself with the affairs of the Baron de Rosenheim? I shall give you no information, Sir — I know nothing of you— You may or may not be the man you call yourself — You say you are a French noble."
"If I were not so," said D'Alonville, interrupting him, "If I could for a moment put myself upon a level with such a person as you are, you would the next moment feel the chastisement you deserve for your insolence. Even as it is, I dare not trust myself to talk to you longer, left I should degrade myself, and forget the respect I own to Madame de Rosenheim, whose servant as such, is exempt from my vengeance; but you must not imagine this matter is to end here." "Wherever you please, Monsieur le Chevalier," replied Heurthofen, as he walked another way. D'Alonville felt almost irresistibly tempted, to follow him and knock him down; but however warm and impetuous his passion was at this moment, he had good sense enough to remember that the cause in which he was engaged would profit nothing by his giving way to the emotions he felt; and that it was neither proper for him to strike a man who belonged to the household of Madame de Rosenheim, nor a time for an individual of his nation to engage in the streets of Coblentz in a broil, the real cause of which could not be explained. D'Alonville, therefore, suffered the priest to depart without carrying with him any of those marks of resentment which he so well had deserved; but he was extremely vexed in reflecting that he had been baffled in his enquiry by the insolence of this man, for who he felt a decided antipathy, and that he had gained nothing as to the object of his enquiry. He would not, however, at that time yield to the indignation and resentment he felt, but began to consider whether it was not probable that some other of the domestics might supply him with the information he wanted. He had observed that the woman who attended Madame D'Alberg was talkative and communicative; extremely attached to her lady, and possessed of a good understanding. He knew, that as she was a young and rather an handsome girl, he should make himself liable to suspicions very wide of the truth, by attempting to obtain a private conference with her; but this he was determined to hazard. The next day he was early at the hotel inhabited by Madame de Rosenheim's family; and as he sat reading in the room where they usually assembled after breakfast, Madame D'Alberg sent down her femme-de-chambre for the very book he happened to have in his hand; D'Alonville eagerly seizing the opportunity, addressed himself to her; and telling her he had something very material to say to her, entreated her to sit down and hear him. The young woman, whose name was Bessola, being somewhat of a conquest, affected the utmost surprize; "Dear Sir," cried she, trying to disengage her hand which D'Alonville had taken; "I wonder what you can have to say to me —It is quite impossible for me to stay Sir — I must desire you to let me go — There! I declare my lady calls me — Do pray, Sir, give me the book." "I will," replied D'Alonville, "if you will tell us where I can have half an hour's conversation with you." "Good gracious, Sir," replied Bessola, "it is impossible you can have any thing to say to me, Sir: besides, Chevalier, my lady would take it so ill of me, and if she would not, dear me! how is it possible for me to meet you, when I am sure she would never perhaps forgive me, if, when we are all as it were banished from our own homes, and in such troublesome times, I should desire to go out for pleasure. — I never go any where but to vespers."
"And you will be at vespers to-night my pretty Bessola, will you not? At the convent hard by where your lady goes? It is there you pay our devotions?" "Sometimes," replied Bessola; "but now and then I go to the Cordelier's church on the other side of the Grand Place." "And it is there," interrupted he eagerly, "you will be to-night?" "Dear goodness," answered she, "how you do worry one. — I cannot tell; — perhaps I may. There! my lady wonders, no doubt, why I stay so long." A footman entered the room, and Bessola taking the book from D'Alonville, said artfully, "I'll inform my lady, Sir, that you have done with the book." D'Alonville vexed at the delay, and not being sure that she either meant to meet him, or if she did, being uncertain whether he could obtain from her the intelligence he wanted, went to his lodgings; but more mature reflection confirming him in his design, he resolved, at whatever hazard of misrepresentation, to meet Bessola, who, if not able to give him the information he wanted, might, he thought, put him in a way how to procure it from some of the other servants, who might be better acquainted with the particulars he wished to learn.
VIRG. Æneid, II.
AT the time appointed D'Alonville attended at the place where
Mademoiselle Bessola had artfully hinted to him that he might meet her.
He found her there, and prevailed on her at the door of the church to
make with him a tour round another part of the town; and did not keep
her long in suspence as to the purport of his business with her.
Bessola, who had expected a declaration of love, seemed to be very
much mortified at finding that the Chevalier merely meant to enquire
after a parcel of old musty parchments; and when he expressed his
concern, that he could not learn any thing that related to what was of
so much consequence to her lady, she replied, "I am sorry, Sir, too, as
I with my lady well; but I dare say these deeds, or whatever your call
them, that there is such a racked about, are only the old Baron's
pedigrees of twenty mile long, that carry back his quarterings beyond
the flood, as they have told me. If that is all I suppose there will
be no great harm if they are never found again. The Abbe Heurthofen
has told me sometimes in confidence that, in his opinion, these great
families are no better than we ourselves, and that the subjection we
are in to them—" "The Abbe Heurthofen!" exclaimed D'Alonville,
interrupting her, "He holds these doctrines, does he?" "Oh
Lord, yes, Sir," replied Bessola, "and a great many others, of which
you have very little notion; why Sir, he has been telling us lately
—" D'Alonville listened eagerly to hear what Heurthofen had been
inculcatin, when the damsel was interrupted in her discourse by
Heurthofen himself, who suddenly came out from the door of an obscure
house near which they were passing, as little wishing to be seen, as
those who met him; but he was so near them that neither could escape.
He spoke with some warmth, and without immediately regarding the
persons who were thus in his path, to two or three strange figures
enveloped in mantles, who hurried away. Heurthofen too, casting a
significant glance at D'Alonville and his companion, concealed himself
from their farther observation by hastening down a dark passage near
the place. D'Alonville, who knew that his conference with Bessola
might be misinterpreted, was only concerned on her account; and he was
the more concerned, as she herself seemed to be much alarmed, and very
apprehensive of the construction Heurthofen might put upon her, being
thus observed traversing the streets of an evening with the Chevalier
D'Alonville. Disappointed, equally perhaps on both sides, they parted
before they reached the hotel of Madame de Rosenheim. Bessola, whom
D'Alonville had flattered into some degree of good humour promising
before she left him, that she would endeavour to gather from the
childrens' maid, who had lived longer in the family, such particulars
as she could recollect relative to the subject of his enquiry. With
this promise D'Alonville was compelled to be content for that night;
and his Quixotism had by this time determined him to set out the next
day at all events. A wish to revisit the spot of earth where his
father lay buried, mingled itself with his eager desire to shew his
gratitude to the family of Madame de Rosenheim; and these two motives
were strong enough to make him disregard any dangers that might
threaten him, in the execution of his design. He was, however, too
solicitous for its success to omit any precaution that might enable him
to get through it; and early in the morning he set about procuring the
dress of a Flemish peasant. This was easily had, and he had just
returned to his lodgings, after making the purchase, when that servant
of Madame D'Alberg's, who usually attended on her children, entered
his apartment. This woman, who was older, and of a very different
disposition from Bessola, gave him a great deal of information; she
said, that having been often attending on the two little girls of whom
the Baron was passionately fond, she had sometimes followed them into
his room, when he had been busied among papers, and as the children ran
about after him, she had seen him deposit papers in a strong closet in
the anteroom to the chapel, which communicated by a private passage
with his study; of which closet he always kept the key himself. The
room was hung with coarse arras, which concealed the closet; but from
her account, and the marks she made upon a card he gave her, he thought
he perfectly understood where to look for it, and even hoped from her
description, that if the castle of Rosenheim was, as there was reason
to believe, in possession of the French patriots, this place might have
escaped their plunder. The woman having told him all she knew, began
to exert her powers of speech in describing all the dangers of his
undertaking. He answered, that she was mistaken, in supposing he had
determined to go himself, but that it was true, that being aware of the
consequence the recovery of these deeds were to a family he had been so
much obliged to, he was thinking of every method likely to contribute
to that end. And he requested his eloquent informer to say nothing to
her ladies of his enquiries, as he should explain to them himself his
reasons for making them, witthout without which explanation they might
appear extraordinary. The woman, with whom D'Alonville had always been
a great favourite, promised too observe his directions, and withdrew
full of admiration for the "brave pretty creature," who she was
persuaded meant to throw himself again into the midst of his enemies.
As she went home, she pondered on what he had said to her; and
determined, notwithstanding her promise to the contrary, to inform her
ladies that she suspected the Chevalier D'Alonville had some intention
of returning to the castle of Rosenheim; and this information she
failed not to give; relating much that he had said to her, and more
that she had fancied. Madame de Rosenheim was convinced, that should
D'Alonville do this, he would go to his death and without being of the
least use to her, sacrifice a life which might hereafter be useful to
his country and honorable to himself; she therefore consulted with
Madame D'Alberg in what way to prevent his rash attempt, and they
agreed, that it would be proper to beg immediately to see him. But as
their messenger was leaving the hotel, a letter was delivered to Madame
D'Alberg, together with a small box. — The letter was as follows:
MADAME,
"When you read this, I shall be some miles on my journey towards
Rosenheim. I could not learn how much the interest of your family was
concerned in the recovery of those papers, which your generous
solicitude for my father and me certainly occasioned your leaving there
without feeling it an indispensable duty to attempt regaining them.
If I fail, I fail in a cause which will consolate me in imprisonment,
or even in death; If I succeed, I shall at least have made one attempt
to express more than in mere words, the everlasting gratitude of my
heart, and the respect and veneration with which I have the honor to
be, Madame, your most obliged, and most devoted servant,
LE CHEVALIER D'ALONVILLE."
Coblentz, 9th Nov. 1792.
P.S. "The box I take the liberty to leave under your care,
contains the croix worn by my father, and a small locket set with
diamonds, of little value, which I used to wear round my neck —
precious to me, because it contains a lock of my mother's hair. As it
is necessary for me to go in the disguise of a peasant, I will not risk
being discovered by carrying these things about me — In your hands
they will be safe; but, if I do not return in two months, you may
conclude that my attempt has failed, and that my unhappy life is at an
end — In that even may I entreat you, should it be possible, to send
these memorials of a brother and nephew she loved, to Madame de Mount
Basil, the only sister of my father."
The perusal of this letter filled the Baroness and Madame D'Alberg with concern. The former had an affection for the young and interesting stranger, as if he had been her son; and she could not think without terror and regret of the danger to which he exposed himself. Madame D'Alberg, though she said less, felt equal concern; but there was no remedy; and they were obliged to wait the event with patience. A few days after the departure of D'Alonville, Count D'Alberg arrived; and the whole family, Heurthofen still being one of it, removed to Vienna. Madame de Rosenheim related to the Count on his first arrival all the circumstances of their precipitate retreat from Rosenheim, and the danger they encountered on their way. He listened with the generosity and sensibility natural to his temper, to that part of her narrative that related to D'Alonville. He expressed himself much interested for a young man who had shewn so much tenderness to his father, and so much resolution in the service of his friends, and most heartily concurred in wishing his safe return, when he assured Madame de Rosenheim he would use all his interest in his favor. But after a day or two he seemed to have lost all these favourable impressions. He received with coldness and even with dislike every mention of D'Alonville, and at length became evidently impatient when ever Madame de Rosenheim spoke of him; while Madame D'Alberg perceived this change, and who perhaps guessed from whence it arose, ceased to speak of him at all. The Baroness, however, whom no caprice of others could divert from what she felt to be her duty towards her young friend, left at the hotel where she had lived at Coblentz directions where she was to be found at Vienna, together with a most pressing invitation to him to come to them there, and assurances that the Baron de Rosenheim would have infinite pleasure in being of service to him.
D'Alonville in the mean time journeyed on foot and alone towards Rosenheim. He had been at the college at Doway, and afterwards in garrison at Lisle, and he knew the patios of the peasantry of the French and German frontiers. Animated even to enthusiasm by the hope of succeeding in his enterprize, the difficulties with which it was attended served only to make him pursue it with equalardour and caution. The second day brought him into the country where the soidisant patriot army was encamped. He continually fell among parties of them, but passed as a peasant, not without frequent attempts on their part to enlist a young man, whose height and figure made him so fit for a soldier. After two or three of these recountres he was perfectly master of their jargon, and telling some plausible story to each as he was interrogated, he passed without any adventure that materially retarded his course, till he arrived about noon on the fifth day at a village, which he thought he remembered, as being the first they had passed after they left Rosenheim. It was here that the country bore the most dreary aspect and presented all the horrors of the seat of war. The borough or large hamlet where he now was, had been just evacuated by a party of Sans Culottes, who had left to the miserable inhabitants hardly any other possession than their lives; and consternation and dismay appeared on the countenances of the few, who could not quit their ruined houses, because they knew not whether to go. D'Alonville, overcome with fatigue, and desirous of obtaining some information of the state of the castle before he proceeded thither, obtained leave of an unhappy widow, who with her children had remained in their plundered dwelling, to lie down for a few hours on the floor of one of her rooms, on a little dirty straw, the only bed that was left to her and her family. He told her, that he only requested her indulgence for a few hours till he was able to go on, and would pay her whatever he could afford for the accommodation she granted him. This amounted to nothing more than the straw bed, a piece of black bread, a few roots, and water; with which, however hunger and fatigue enabled him to make an hearty meal. His hostess, of whom only he ventured to enquired, informed him that the village and castle of Rosenheim were near two leagues distant; that she had heard the French had a detachment there, but she knew no more; and had probably found it so hard to support her own portion of calamity, that she had no time to enquire into what had befallen others. D'Alonville slept for two hours, and then, as he determined approach Rosenheim in the dusk of the evening, he paid for his coarse fare, and proceeded on his way. The evening came on before he got to the end of the first league; but was not yet dark, unless among the woods, which are here extensive; he followed the high road through them, but he met nobody: on his coming out of the last, he had just light enough to discern that the plain on which he entered had lately been the scene of skirmish. The bodies of men, to whom neither the conquerors or the conquered had afforded the rites of sepulture, and many horses lay scattered over the ground; the dreary silence was broken only be the hollow cries of the owls from the wood; and there was just that degree of light that served to lend artificial to the real horrors with which D'Alonville was surrounded, for the objects appeared indistinct, and uncertain. Near the middle of the plain, which was a fort of common field of about a mile over, he paused, and looking around him, endeavoured to recollect where he was. He though the remembered such a place within sight of the castle of Rosenheim; and casting his eyes towards the quarter where he supposed its scite was, with higher grounds behind it, he fancied he was right, though the hills and woods upon them appeared now only a mass of shadow, in which he could not distinguish the spires and towers of the castle; but the persuasion that he was so near the place he fought, gave him spirits to proceed with redoubled activity; and he walked another hour, by which time the few stars that could pierce the gloom of a November night, were his only guides. He found, however, without much difficulty, the road which, striking out of that to the village, led up among the woods to one of the castle gates. Though he was now within two hundred yards of the castle, and it was not yet a time of night when its inhabitants, whoever they were, were likely to be retired to rest; all was so perfectly quiet that D'Alonville began to believe, that if the enemy had been masters of it, they had abandoned it, and that some of the inhabitants of the village below had again taken possession of it for their ancient lords. — In this flattering hope, which promised him the easy execution of his design he walked on. He arrived at the area of the castle, if castle that might be called which had been reduced by fire to an almost shapeless mass of ruin. The strong wall within the fosse had been beat down; the fosse was so far filled with the materials, that it cold be passed over — the towers and battlements, half fallen, exhibited only a scene of desolation. The ruins yet smoked; and a dull heat and smell of smothered fire proceeded from them; the smell indeed had struck D'Alonville a considerable way off; but he imputed it to the burning of some village, which he supposed had, like too many others, been fired by the contending armies.
A moment he stood amazed and aghast; hardly believing what he saw: for all around him had the gloomy uncertainty of an horrible dream. He listened to hear if the fire yet crackled beneath the smouldering walls; but it had exhausted its rage, and only the low murmurs of the wind that groaned among the hollow ruins, and the water that rippled around the fosse, interrupted the dreary stillness. D'Alonville turned his eyes towards that part of the castle which had overlooked the garden, where he had so lately deposited the sad remains of his only parent; but from the place where he was broken buildings, and the dim light of heaven appearing through dismantled windows, and walls perforated by fire.
Without much reflecting on his purpose, he would have made his purpose, he would have made his way to the garden side; but a path which had formerly led round on that part which had formerly led round on that part of the hill, was now choaked with impassable masses of fallen stones; he saw no way of getting to any other part of the ruins, than by descending the way he came, and attempting the high road from the village on the other side; for, without much discrimination as to the reason or utility of what he was about to attempt, he felt an invincible desire to explore the crumbling remains of this venerable edifice; though he was convinced his mission was now hopeless. In pursuance of this wish, he returned by the same road that had brought him thither, arriving at the foot of the hill, turned into that which he imagined must lead him to the high road that passed through the village. Thither he found his way, but the houses, though not in ashes as he expected to see them, seemed to be almost all deserted. Desolation in its various forms appeared to have swept away at once the household of the seigneur, and the humble families of his vassals. D'Alonville recollected how, at a former period, and in still greater distress than he now felt, he had wandered among these cottages, entreating shelter for his father and that he was then repulsed; yet he forgave the people who had at that time denied him assistance, through fear of the very evil that was since come upon them; and he wished to hear the sound of a human voice. He thought he might obtain some information relative to the destruction of the castle above, if he could find a peasant yet in the village; but he knew that to attempt entering houses, whose inhabitants, if any still remained, were probably in unceasing alarms for their lives, the only possession which remained to them, were in vain. while he deliberated, what to do, he saw a faint light from the lower windows of the very cottage where he had on is former melancholy journey received directions how to reach the castle — he approached the door — he listened — and fancied he heard in a flow in a particular cadence, a woman's voice as if lulling a child to sleep, or attempting to soothe it. Being after a moments pause confirmed in this conjecture, he ventured to rap softly at the door; the same voice enquired who was there; and D'Alonville answering in the language of the country, "a friend," was bid to come in. He entered the cottage, or rather cabin, and saw sitting near a few dying embers, a woman, who held one infant on her knees, while another lay sleeping on the ground on a few shreds of woollen that had once been a blanket; a rush light was fixed to the side of the chimney by an iron, and the whole appearance of the miserable room presented ideas of famine and despair. The woman, who seemed wholly occupied by the child in her arms, did not immediately look up, but when D'Alonville approached her, she turned, and seeing a stranger, shrieked; and in a tone of piercing anguish exclaimed that the enemy were returned. D'Alonville made haste to re-assure her; he protected that he was an unhappy young man, who had himself been driven from his home, who had lost his father, and was now — He stopped, however, on recollecting that it would be better not to say for what he was come; he therefore added, that he was come thus far to regain if he could his own country; and requested her to inform him whether he was likely to proceed to the edge of the French frontier in safety.
The woman, whose fears were immediately dissipated by his youth and candid appearance, as well as by the probability of the story he told her, then began in her turn to relate her distresses. She told him that the French republican army had over run the country, and finding no resistance, had for some days established an hospital for their sick at the castle of Rosenheim. They had first, she said, paid for what they had, and been less sanguinary and ferocious than the inhabitants of the country expected; but on the arrival of a deputy from the assembly, they suddenly determined on an immediate removal, and as their sick and wounded were by this time in a condition to be moved, they had sent them into France; and the commissioner, or deputy, having learned that the castle belonged to an Imperial general, Baron de Rosenheim, and that Count D'Alberg was his son-in-law, he ordered the castle to be plundered and then fired; "and we," continued the poor woman, "we have suffered because we were my lord the Baron's vassals. Ah! my friend, we have suffered indeed — my husband, my poor husband, whom the good god knows if I shall ere see again, has been compelled by them to drive their waggons towards France, leaving me and these children, whom he never left before, destitute of every thing; for the little we had since my good ladies left us, has been taken away!" "Your ladies were good ladies then," said D'Alonville, "and you regret them?"
Ah! that we do indeed," replied she; "never were better masters than ours, or ladies so charitable; ah! my poor little Ulric," addressing herself to the infant she held, "you would not now be sick as you are, and without help, if Madame D'Alberg and my lady the Baroness were here; folks may say what they will of all people being upon a footing; but I am sure one such good house as our castle above was, is a thousand times better for the poor than all these new notions that have brought us no good yet."
D'Alonville having listened to the female peasant till she had nearly told her tale of sorrow, began at length to make more minute enquiries into the state of the castle; for on reflection he thought it possible that what he came in search of flames. The woman told him that some parts of the building were as she understood less injured than the rest, but that the little she knew was only from the report of her neighbours; "for I have never had the heart to go up there myself," said she, "and for these four or five days, since I saw it all in flames, and just upon my husband was forced to go, my trouble has been so great that I have been as it were out of my senses." D'Alonville now determined to visit the ruins in the morning, and to stay till then where he was, if his new acquaintance would permit him — she readily agree to allow him to remain in her house and by her fire, which was all the accommodation she had to offer him; for her mattrasses, she told him, had been carried away for the sick men when they were removed from the castle, and she had no food in the house, having subsisted for the last two of three days on the charity of such of her neighbours as had been lucky enough to conceal some of their provisions from the plunder of the Sans Culottes. D'Alonville assured her he would thankfully pay her for the liberty of remaining near her fire, where wrapping himself up in his coarse peasant's coat, and seating himself in a corner near the chimney, the fatigue he had undergone prevented his feeling the want of a bed, and gave him up to a few hours of repose.
AT the dawn of the morning D'Alonville hastened to satisfy his hostess for the shelter he had obtained under her roof, and to secure himself the same accommodation for the following night, if he should have occasion for it, and then, rather to indulge a melancholy imagination, than with any other fixed purpose, he took his way to the castle of Rosenheim. The appearance of the building, dismantled, and in many parts so much injured as to threaten to fall with every wind, was even more dismal now that it was distinctly seen, than it had been when it seemed only black and broken ruins, by the dim light of the evening before. He entered what had once been the guard-house, in the outward area, and passed through the court among piles of stones and immense beams half burnt, to the remains of the great hall, of which only the walls were now in being; D'Alonville made his way through it, and among piles of fallen bricks, towards that part of the building where he believed, from description, for he had never seen it himself, that the chapel had been; and that anti-room, whether, if it had still existed, his search would have been directed. Slowly and with difficulty he proceeded along he proceeded along to a door-way, which he found so choaked with stones and rubbish, that he meditated a moment whether he had better return to find a passage round another way, or endeavour with his hands to remove the impediments which prevented his passing by this, when he was surprised by a deep sigh, which seemed to come from the pile of ruins before him; he listened attentively, heard it a second time, and without farther reflection he forced away the sones around the door way, and entered the space whence it seemed to proceed.
He saw, sitting on a mass, of bricks and rubbish, and old man, whose grey locks fell over his hands as they supported his head, with his elbows resting on his knees. The noise D'Alonville made seemed not to have roused his from his melancholy reverie, but glad to see any one who might give him information, D'Alonville spoke to him — he looked up, and discovered an honest open countenance, deeply sorrowed by the hand of time, but where that of recent calamity seemed to have fallen more heavily — "Are you of this place, my friend," enquired D'Alonville, when he had obtained his attention: "Of what place?" replied the old man; "Do you mean of this castle, or of the village below?" "I would enquire whether you belonged to either?" "And who are you, young man?" "One," answered D'Alonville, "who most sincerely deplores the ruin of this noble mansion, and the injury sustained by its excellent owners." "I should know your voice," said the old man, "but my memory is quite gone; where have I ever seen you before?" "Perhaps," rejoined D'Alonville, "You were a domestic here." "I was once so," answered he, "but of late years I had retired to a small house in the village, given me by the Baron, my good master; but when the Baroness was afraid of an attack, I went into the castle, for old as I am now, I was a soldier once, and I could at least instruct the younger men — aye, and I could have used a sabre once more!" — D'Alonville saw that his ancient companion having once began to talk, he should hear all he wanted to know. "But the Baroness and her daughter left us," continued he, " and in two days afterwards the French poured in upon us!"
"And did you attempt to defend the castle?" enquired D'Alonville.
"I would have attempted it, and there were two or three others of the same mind; but what were two or three? The greatest part were cowardly enough to desire nothing but their own safety, they opened the gates to the French — and they sent hither their sick and wounded, and made," added he with a deep sigh; "they made an hospital of the castle of Rosenheim."
He paused a while, as if to recover from the painful recollection of a circumstance which filled him with indignation.
"The rascals remained here almost three weeks," resumed he, "and by that time they learned to whom the castle and the village belonged. The names of Rosenheim and D'Alberg were well known to them; and when they removed, they sent away their sick, set fire to the caste, and plundered the village."
"I fear then you have lost all your property," said D'Alonville. "Every thing I had in the world," replied the old man. "All that the bounty of my lord had given to make my latter days comfortable; but it is not that which grieves me — no! I have but a little while to live, and I can die in the empty shed that is yet left me. But to see my master's house a heap of ruins! Ah! that is what I find it hard to bear. It is now near forty years since the Baron took me to be his servant; I served under him in the year 1757, at the siege of Leipsic, where he had an arm broke in two places. I attended him during his tedious recovery; and afterwards, when the death of his son afflicted him so severely as to occasion a dangerous illness, it was only my attendance that he would allow. Madame D'Alberg too, my dear young mistress!" Grief for a moment impeded the simple, melancholy narrative; but making an effort to recover himself, he went on.
"All is over," said he. "I have heard that Count D'Alberg is killed; my lady and the countess her daughter are driven away; and they and my lord the Baron will return no more, if indeed so many is fortunes do not kill them."
D'Alonville would have consoled the venerable mourner, and have offered to his view brighter prospects; but he had none to offer. The desolation around him, the evident injury that his friends had sustained, the sad scenes that had passed when he had first sought their hospitality, combined now to depress him. If he who had youth and health, could see little else before him but despair; and to an old man, the ruin that had overwhelmed his master's house, to which alone he was attached, was possibly as afflicting as those misfortunes that D'Alonville suffered in his own person; neither of them seemed disposed to break their sorrowful silence; at length D'Alonville enquired if every part of the castle was as much injured as that where they now stood.
"Nearly, so," answered the ancient domestic. "I will shew you," added he, "if you desire it, round on the other side, where I think the walls less are damaged, and some left are standing, from their thickness, though the fire has destroyed all the wood-work. D'Alonville silently followed the old man, who feebly and with difficulty made his way among the fragments of broken stone, which in some places yet smoked. When they came to what was a state apartment, he stopped, and pointed to a mass of iron which had once been a magnificent stove, but was now partly melted by the violence of the heat. He stooped and picked up a piece that was broken; "It was my lord's arms," said he, "cast in iron ; it belonged to the ornaments of the stove, and see how little it is injured." — D'Alonville at that moment recollected that the strong closet, in which was left the deeds he came to recover, was described to him as being lined, or secured with iron. This old man, so long a confidential servant of the Baron's could probably point out the place. Animated once more with the hope of recovering them, he determined to disclose himself, and the purpose of his visit to his conductor. "A hectic of a moment," passed across the languid countenance of the old servant. Timid and cautious, from sufferings and from experience he hesitated for an instant after D'Alonville ceased to speak; but it was impossible even for the cold caution of age to look at a countenance so ingenious, or listen to a narrative so clear and simple, without soon losing all doubts of the integrity of D'Alonville. "I know," said Rodolph, (which was the name of the old servant) "I know, Sir, all the importance of the papers you speak of but is it possible that my lord when he went to Vienna, or the Baroness, when she was driven from hence, should have neglected to have secured these papers?" D'Alonville briefly re-counted what had happened to himself at the castle when the family were compelled to leave it, and accused himself of being in some measure the cause of this unfortunate neglect. Rodolph then recollected him, "Ah! yes, Sir," said he, "I now remember you — I knew I had seen you before, and not long ago. In that dismal day when my dear good lady left us, she employed me, because she knew she could trust me, in packing up some of the valuable articles; I saw many papers, and rolls of parchment, which I thought might be those deeds, and therefore I never reminded her of them; indeed I did not certainly know they were in the castle, for I supposed my lord might have taken them to Vienna when he last went thither about the law suit. If they should be lost, "continued he, "it will be nearly as detrimental to my lord as the burning of his house." "It was represented to me," answered D'Alonville, as being much more so; let us see then what we can do towards regaining them, my good old friend." "Ah! Sir, " said the old man in a trembling voice, "could I, before I die, be of any service to my lord" — "Shew me the place," said D'Alonville, "and let us try what can be done."
They now arrived where an arched passage had led to the anti-room immediately before the chapel; but towards the end the wall had fallen in; "We must go round," said Rodolph; "There is a better chance of getting through the chapel." There indeed the difficulties were less, for there being only a roof above and no range of apartments, as over the other parts of the edifice, the area was less obstructed by what had fallen. With an anxious heart D'Alonville followed his conductor to that end which led to the anti-room. It was arched with stone, which had preserved part of it; but the rubbish that had fallen from the other part was higher than the place, which the old man pointed out as the iron-lined closet. "We must remove these stones," said D'Alonville, "or we shall never know whether the place we seek has escaped the fury of the flames." It was an arduous task; for the ruins that rose above them threatened them with destruction, and the wind as it muttered around the broken wall, seemed to menace them as if blasts a little more violent would overwhelm them beneath the tottering fragments. Feeble and dispirited, and trembling with age and sorrow, the faltering hands of the honest old domestic were but of little use; but D'Alonville, whom the hope of success roused to the utmost exertion, laboured with such diligence and effect, that in about an hour the bricks and stones were removed; the iron door, which had probably been concealed from the plunderers by the arras with which the room was hung, was now visible; but the wood work was destroyed that had encompassed it, and the rubbish had broken in. D'Alonville, at the risk of bringing the wall down upon him, forced it open; it gave way; for the hinges were loosened by the weight of the bricks above. He saw a leathern sack, which the old man assured him contained what he was in search of; D'Alonville eagerly seized it. "Are there any more papers," enquired he? "Let me not fail now for want of an exact search. He found two other small parcels enveloped in paper; and nothing more remaining, he retired precipitately; and breathless with the satisfaction he felt, hurried into the chapel "Never more," said he, as he sat down on a broken pillar; "Never more will I complain of my ill fortune. Oh! my worthy old friend, how shall I make you any acknowledgment adequate to the service I have received from you. I , alas! who am more reduced by fortune than you are!" "All I desire," replied the faithful veteran, "is to hear these papers are safe in the hands of my masters — but I shall never hear it," added he, dejectedly; "No, never! I am too old to go to them, and they will never come back here — I have nothing to do but to go die in my cold shed."
To recur thus to self is but too natural to the old and helpless; Rodolph forgot the success of D'Alonville in behalf of his lord, in reflecting that he himself should not personally partake of the satisfaction such a circumstance would occasion in the family. "You shall not die," cried D'Alonville, in your cold shed. "I am very sure that when the Baroness knows what has happened — for yet you know she is ignorant that the village has been plundered and the castle burnt; when she knows what has happened, she will order you to be removed near her, unless indeed you rather wish to continue here, and to have your house refitted." "Continue here," answered Rodolph, "what, in the seat of war! — No— of I had been able I would have crept after the Baron to Vienna; for with one so old and helpless it would not have been reasonable to have added to the troubles of my lady, who knew not whither to be herself." "And what hinders you," enquired D'Alonville from going now with me. Have you a wife or any other connection that you cannot leave?" "Alas! no," answered the old man. "My wife has been dead many years; she left me a daughter, who married the valet of a French nobleman that came about five years ago on a visit to my lord. She went into France with her husband; and it is very long since I have heard of her. I have no child left to help me; and my sister, who since my daughter married, kept my house, was so terrified on the arrival of the French army in our village, that being old and sickly before, she grew worse upon it, and died ten days ago."
D'Alonville listened to this narrative of sorrow, with as much interest as he could feel on any subject that did not immediately relate to the means of conveying safely to such a distance, what he had so miraculously recovered. The old man had ceased speaking long before he had formed any plan that appeared feasible. The present question, however, was to secure these papers in some place of safety in the village; for he considered, that if he were seen thus loaded, he might incur suspicions injurious to himself and hazardous to his charge. He thought it best, therefore, after a moment's reflection, to divide them; to fill the pockets of the old man and his own, which he immediately did; but as these conveyances were not sufficient for all, he secured others under his waistcoat. Having done this he dismissed Rodolph to his cottage, assuring him, he would himself be with him immediately, and that they would talk farther of his going to his ancient master. The honest old servant seemed to be arrived at that period of life, when hope but faintly warms the human heart; he felt that, like the faithful dog of Ulysses, he could do little more than look upon his master and die at his feet; and he seemed half unwilling to move from the place where he had seen better days, only to linger out a few miserable months among strangers; but D'Alonville was persuaded he should render an acceptable service to his generous benefactors, in rescuing their ancient domestic from the calamitous situation to which he was reduced.
Having dismissed his companion, D'Alonville thought of gratifying the mournful inclination thought of gratifying the mournful inclination he felt to visit the place where his father was buried. He found his way with some difficulty to the spot. The heat of the fire had withered the shrubs that grew around it; but from their remains, and his former observations, he found the very place where he so lately wept over the remains of his only parent. Those sensations of sorrow were now renewed; yet when D'Alonville reflected on all he had since suffered, and looked forward in mournful presentiment to what was probably still to come, he hardly wished his father had lived to struggle with the bitterest evils of life; — poverty and exile. To mourn over the dereliction of principle which had estranged him from his eldest son; the convulsions that had imprisoned the sovereign to whom he was attached, and the overthrow of the government he had sworn to support. "The dead are happy," cried he; "in the grave they have not the storms that shake to its centre the miserable kingdom of France! Oh my father! would I too were in peace; but my feeble arm may yet be called for in the service of that country for which you died. I remember your last injunctions, and I will endeavour to obey them." The unfortunate young man now returned to the village; and after many projects, on which he consulted old Rodolph, it was agreed, that they should proceed together in a little cart to Coblentz, and pass for an old peasant and his son; concealing in the boards of their humble vehicle the papers they had so fortunately obtained. In every plan they formed there appeared hazard and difficulty; but after examining them all, this seemed the least objectionable. The old domestic, who could not have undertaken such a journey on foot, seemed in the expectation of reaching once more the protection of his ancient master, to be sensible of the only gleam of hope that could cheer his forlorn and melancholy existence; and awakened in some measure from the torpor of despair, to which he was before resigned, he set himself about the preparations for their journey with such earnestness, that he obtained an horse, and with the aid of a neighbour got a light cart of his mended, in which, after depositing what they judged of the most consequence in the safest place, D'Alonville and Rodolph began their journey. They were stopped twice by straggling parties of French, who now were in possession of many leagues of the country through which they passed; but Rodolph managed his story so well, that they seemed so perfectly what they represented, that on the fourth day after leaving Rosenheim they arrived safely at Coblentz.
SPENCER.
IT was late in the evening when D'Alonville reached the end of his journey. Fatigued not so much by travelling in so uneasy a vehicle, as by the solicitude of his mind, and the care of which his old and helpless companion required of him — Having seen him provided for an an inn, D'Alonville hastened to the hotel where he expected to find his friends, and delighted himself with thinking that these deeds being saved, would mitigate their vexation for the destruction of their castle; but he had the mortification to find, they had left Coblentz the next day but one after his departure from Rosenheim; and that they were gone to Vienna. Thither indeed he was cordially invited in the letter Madame de Rosenheim had left for him; but he felt himself hurt and depressed by this unexpected absence; and retired uneasy and sorrowful to his former lodgings; nor could he till after some consideration, determine whether to go to Vienna, or send thither, charged with his successful commission, his ancient companion, while he himself sought to join some of the corps of emigrant French that were again forming. The next day he met the same friend who had formerly supplied him with money, and for whose advice, from his age, and the friendship his father had borne him, D'Alonville had a great respect. This nobleman, the Marquis de Magnevillier, advised him by all means to go to Vienna; where after he had seen his friends, he might take such measures as the circumstances required; and either enlist himself under the Prince of Conde, or in despite of the late decrees against emigrants, endeavor to return into France; a part which Monsieur de Magnevilliers himself meant to take, though well aware of all the hazard that attended it. He was of Picardy, as well as D'Alonville; and persuaded himself that they might by returning, raise yet a party in favor of the unhappy monarch, whose cruel and unjust imprisonment would, he thought, estrange from the usurped tyranny of the men who had inflicted it, many who now shrunk under their power and submitted to their government. But, whoever ventured to return must do it singly and with artifice and caution, Monsieur de Magnevilliers, without pressing his friend to accompany, or even to join him, contented himself with informing him in confidence, what he informing him in confidence, what he intends himself, and thought best for him, but not till he had visited his German friends, whose regard was of too much value to be neglected. Monsieur de Magnevilliers then gave D'Alonville another small supply of money, who received it without scruple; and the next day set off for Vienna, with Rodolph, by the diligence, already crouded with French, who, dispersed and uncertain what to do, were travelling, some towards the capital of the German empire, and others towards Italy. D'Alonville felt not that consolation which arises from the contemplation of fellow sufferers in calamity; on the contrary, his heart sunk in reflecting on the sad condition to which so many brave men were reduced, and the deplorable state of the country whence they were driven, for no other crime than adherence to the king whom they had sworn to defend, and to a government which, however defective, was infinitely preferable to the tyrannical anarchy which had, under the pretence of curing those defects, brought an everlasting disgrace on the French name. Among his fellow-travellers were the aged and the helpless, who knew not where to find shelter for their weary heads; and who seemed to repent that they had not submitted their necks to the stroke of the executioner, rather than have been driven forth to linger out, in foreign countries, their few and miserable days. Women, who had been accustomed to the elegancies of life, were now accompanied by helpless children, wandering round the world without the requisites of existence; some deploring the death of their fathers, brothers, or husbands; others uncertain what was become of those most dear to them, and dreading to be assured.
The mind of many seemed to have been so shaken by the storms that had so heavily fallen upon them, that they had no longer strength to contemplate what was yet before them, but sunk helpless and resistless under the weight of their sufferings; others with more fortitude accommodated their spirits to their fallen fortunes, and attempted to bear with calmness the evils they could not escape; while another description of persons, and principally young military men, were full of projects for the re-establishment of their affairs, and sanguine in the success of those projects. D'Alonville, who had formed no scheme for his future proceedings, listened to those of his countrymen with dissidence, but saw none which seemed to have a more reasonable foundation. than what had been proposed to him by Monsieur de Magnevilliers. He hoped, however, to receive council and consolation from the friends to whom he was going, and believed that in the old Baron de Rosenheim he should find a second father.
He hastened immediately on his arrival to pay his compliments to the family of Rosenheim, and with all the eagerness of youth and inexperience, anticipated as he went, the cordial reception he should meet with. He found the family at home, and was introduced into a room where the Baron, his wife, his daughter, and Count D'Alberg, with three German officers and several ladies, were engaged at play. Madame de Rosenheim was the only person who arose to meet him, and expressed pleasure at his coming. Madame D'Alberg was so changed in her manner, that he felt no inclination to address her. The Baron indeed spoke to him, with the ease and politeness inseparable from the address of an old military courtier; but Count D'Alberg, who was standing near a table where others were playing, hardly bowed when Madame de Rosenheim introduced him, and surveyed him in a way which it required no great knowledge of manner and countenance, to discover to to signify approbation.
It has been generally said, that no set of young men on earth were so presuming, or so apparently satisfied with themselves, as young French officers; and this has been repeated by their own writers, and echoed by ours, till we, who judge only from what we read (and that frequently in books of mere entertainment, where all the characters are overcharged) have taken it for granted, that every young military man in France, is, (or, perhaps it should be said, was) a coxcomb. That a very great number were so; that their manners were more frivolous, and their appearance more effeminent, than the most frivolous and most effeminate among us, cannot be denied; but as under these blemishes and follies, personal bravery, and a punctilious sense of honor, is acknowledged to have existed, the candour of other nations would not be too much extended, if credit were given them for many other virtues, which, however, appearances were against them, they certainly possessed in as great a degree, at least, as the military among any people. D'Alonville was undoubtedly an exception to the prejudice that indiscriminately condemns them all, for he was so far from being vain or presumptuous, that his dissident sensibility had frequently been the ridicule of his young companions; and much more so of his elder brother, who was of a daring and ambitious spirit, and had at an early period thrown of that parental authority, which in France was more and longer respected than in England; and having a considerable fortune independent of the Viscount de Fayolles, his father, he had long thought and acted for himself. He had decidedly taken the republican party, quitted his name, abjured his rank, and adhered to the men who, not contented with limiting the power of the king, and humiliating the nobility, had now imprisoned the monarch, and massacred the few nobles who remained around him. It was this conduct in his eldest son that had driven to despair the Viscount de Fayolles; it was this conduct in his brother that had cruelly wounded the sensible heart of D'Alonville, and depressed his spirits more than the misfortune of his exile; of that if ever he had indulged any degree of warmest hours of youth, affluence, and prosperity, it was not now that any symptoms of it remained. Count D'Alberg, to whom he had been described as assuming and avantageuse, surveyed him as if he was convinced of his being so; and hardly shewed him those external marks of civility which one gentleman owes to another. No man was more easily repulsed than D'Alonville; and so much was he hurt by the manner in which he was received, particularly by Madame D'Alberg, that he determined to take his leave; to write the information he had to give, and to bid adieu for ever to friends from whom he had certainly expected a continuation of the kindness they had shewn him, before he had done any thing to deserve it.
He, therefore, after remaining a few moments in the room, (where Madame de Rosenheim went on with her play as soon as she had spoken to him) approached the table where she sat, and told her in a low voice, that as he saw this was not a proper moment to trouble her with an account of his commission, he would do himself the honor of writing to her the event, and would deliver to the care of her people the pacquet of papers which were below and which he found it was not now a fit time to restore to her. The Baroness, however, accustomed to command herself, changed countenance, and betrayed emotions that seemed to D'Alonville perfectly unaccountable. Then recovering herself, she gave her cards to gentleman who was near her chair, and saying with a forced smile, that she had business with her young friend the Chevalier D'Alonville, she left the room. — D'Alonville bowing to the party who remained in it, followed her.
Madame de Rosenheim passed into a lower apartment where preparations were making for supper; she sat down, and desired D'Alonville to take a chair by her. He silently obeyed.
"My amiable friend," said she, "thinks, I fear, that our reception of him is not such as he deserves. I am not at liberty to account for it; I dare tell him no more than that the Baron does not know the service he so generously undertook; and Count D'Alberg, unhappy from the circumstances of the late retreat, which he thinks disgraceful to the armies of the emperor, his master, — Some disagreeable events too that have befallen himself — The situation of public affairs — In fact, my dear Sir, the best men are liable to have their tempers ruffled by the perverse accidents of life; and though there is not in the world a husband more fondly attached to his wife than Count D'Alberg —
Madame de Rosenheim hesitated like one, who, sensible that an apology is necessary, seeks for that least likely to hurt the feelings of him to whom it must be made. D'Alonville interrupted her.—
"My dear Madam," said he, "I beg of you not to distress yourself and me, by accounting for what certainly needs no apology. I am a stranger to Count D'Alberg, and have no claim whatever upon his friendship, or on that of the Baron de Rosenheim. The obligations I owe to you, Madam, are such as no time can efface from my remembrance? but does it therefore follow, that I am to tax the kindness of all our house? Surely no! I ought not perhaps to have intruded upon you at all; but charged as I was with a commission which, though you did not give it me, I felt myself powerfully impelled to fulfil, I was unwilling to trust any thing to chance. If you will now permit me," added he, rising and going into a sort of hall next the room where they were, "to put into your possession these papers, and to wish you and your family every felicity, I will trouble you no more." The vexation and distress of Madame de Rosenheim visibly encreased, when D'Alonville put on a chair near her, the deeds about which she had shewn so much anxiety. "Is it possible," said she, "you can have succeeded? What hazard you must have been in! And what a reception you have met with in return. I am, indeed, obliged to you more than I can find words to express! I shall not be easy till I know in what way I can be greatful grateful! The patriots then are not in possession of Rosenheim?"
D'Alonville, from the manner of the whole family on his first appearance, had taken up a notion, that from common fame, or by means of some of their vassals, the fate of their habitation was known; and that, as is often the case, in misfortune, they were sullenly resigned to their loss, yet half disposed to quarrel with the world around them. Having entertained this idea, he was surprise at the question put to him by the Baroness, and embarrassed how to answer it; but after a moment's pause, he determined to relate, in as concise a manner as possible, the circumstances of this journey. Madame de Rosenheim heard the account of that destruction which had overwhelmed her noble habitation, with the firmness of an elevated mind. Great as the loss was, considered in a pecuniary light, the reflected how much greater it might have been, but for the assiduous gratitude of D'Alonville, in rescuing from the ruins, the deeds which, at least, secured to her family the lands of their ancestors; and looking on him, she remembered how much more he had lost; how many of his countrymen were driven from more splendid palaces to wander over the world; and having made these reflections, it appeared unworthy of her heart and understanding, to lament deeply her own loss. But D'Alonville, while he admired the calm dignity with which she listened to a detail, which would have agitated many women with vexation and rage, yet saw that something more embarrassing than how to relate this event to her family, hung upon her mind; and fancying that his stay only added to the solicitude she seemed suffer, he arose to take his leave. The Baroness, as he was repeating his wishes for the happiness of her and her household, while his voice faultered and tears were in his eyes, suddenly followed him. as he was opening the door, took his hand and said eagerly "We must not part so, Chevalier! Why am I not at liberty to explain to you! — But you do not immediately leave Vienna?" "Immediately," said D'Alonville. "I had no other business than to deliver into your hands, Madame, the papers I have been so lucky as to recover, and to acquit myself of a little, a very little, of the great debt of gratitude I owe you; having done so, I go."
"Whither?" cried Madame de Rosenheim — "where can I hear of you? — "Whither, tell me, do you propose to go?" "Alas! Madame," replied D'Alonville, mournfully, "you ask me a qustion question which it is not possible for me to answer; alone upon this earth, I know not to what part of it chance or fatality may lead me, to perish in the cause of my unfortunate king; but the vague schemes I have hitherto formed, have tended to France."
"You cannot surely mean it — certain destruction awaits you there," said Madame de Rosenheim.
"And certain misery every where — but why should I communicate it to you, Madam, or give you one thought for a being who is, believe me, indifferent what becomes of himself."
"Only tell me," cried the Baroness, with a degree of eagerness as if some body was coming, who she foresaw migh might interrupt their conversation — "Only tell me where I can write to you to-morrow; you will surely pass to-morrow at least Vienna?"
"Certainly I will, if you have any commands for me."
"I have; and entreat your stay and your address."
D'Alonville then drew from is pocket a card on which he had written his name, and that of the hotel where he lodged, to leave, should he not have found his friends of Rosenheim at home. The Baroness received it, and said in a low voice, "you will hear of me, Chevalier, to-morrow." She then went back into the room and D'Alonville, in greater depression of spirits than he had ever felt since his father's death, took his way to the inn.
Those who ever felt that delicious sensation which fills the bosom, when we hope we have paid in some degree a debt of gratitude to friends we love, and when we are on a point of meeting them after such a service, and after a long absence, may also have experienced the blank and sullen gloom which follows a cold repulse, instead of the cordial reception anticipated. D'Alonville at this moment experienced it, in all its bitterness, and never till now had he though himself wholly desolate and wretched. In the dreadful hour when his father died in his arms, he seemed to have found another parent in Madame de Rosenheim, and in her daughter a sister and a friend. The delicacy with which they bestowed the favors he was compelled to accept, softened the sense of his reduced and humiliating situation; and expelled as he was from his country, deprived of his father and his fortune, he had yet found in these generous and amiable friends a connection which reconciled him to, or at least enabled him to bear, the calamities of life. But they had now withdrawn this consolation from him, and he seemed to look around him in vain for hope, no where to be found. His pride was cruelly hurt by the coldness, and the something like disdain which was evident in the behaviours of Count D'Alberg; and in the courtier-like civility of the old Baron, he saw nothing but the undistinguishing manners of a person who received every one alike, whom he had no immediate interest in conciliating, and who was generally polite, but who, if he never saw him again, would forget he had seen him at all; while the unaccountable change in Madame D'Alberg, who instead of teaching him to call her sister, seemed desirous to forget even their acquaintance, was infinitely more mortifying — conscious that he had done nothing to forfeit the esteem she had so lately professed for him, he could no otherwise account for her change of behaviour, than by imputing it to the motives that greatly lowered in his opinion, a woman who had before seemed the most amiable and perfect of her sex. Such were the irksome reflections which D'Alonville carried to his uneasy pillow; he was roused from it at a very early hour the following morning, by receiving a letter, which one of the men who waited in the inn, informed him, had been left by a person, who said it required no answer. These were its contents:
"I never recollect being so much at a loss what to say, as I now am, when it is necessary to account to you, for a reception so little like what you had a right to expect, my dear Chevalier, even though you had not succeeded in the commission which you so generously undertook. It is difficult, indeed, because I ought to be, I must be ingenuous, and ingenuous I connot cannot be, without imputing to two of the best men in the world, the only errors and prejudices that detract from the general excellence of their characters. The Baron, whose life has been passed between the court and camp, is an excellent husband, father, and master, but out of his own family he has no attachment, and very little sensibility. This will undoubtedly appear strange to you who have not yet had an opportunity of observing the various shades of characters, which in a longer life you will meet with. The Baron de Rosenheim is passionately attached to his daughter and her children, and he would see nothing extraordinary in all the rest of the world, being equally interested for them; yet for one of his friends who had a daughter or a son in sorrow or distress, he would feel no concern; but turn to indifference matters with the most perfect composure, even while the sufferers were yet before his eyes. I have often seen instances of this temper with concern and wonder, in the younger part of my life, indeed it has frequently hurt me so much, that it was necessary to recollect all the other qualities of my husband, before I could reconcile myself to this apparent hardness of heart; this tendency towards selfishness, and self consequence, blemishes for which hardly any virtues can make amends ; gradually I have become accustomed to it, and as I see other men with faults so much more pernicious to their families and to society, I have learned to pass by this defect, (for a defect I must ever think it) in a character otherwise irreproachable; nor should I now have named it, but to account for the coldness and indifference with which the Baron de Rosenheim may receive a service so important as that you have rendered him. I have not yet told him of it, nor did he know that you had undertaken it; but as, for particular reasons, I said in general terms that measures were taken to repair my neglect of these papers, he will probably — but too probably, receive the material objects you have recovered, as a matter of course; as he heard, without expressing any interest in your future destiny, the detail I gave him of your first destiny, the detail I gave him of your first arrival at Rosenheim, the death of the Viscount de Fayolles, and the activity and address which you had so happily exerted when our lives were in such imminent hazard on our way to Coblentz. He listened without any apparent emotion, to what appeared to me so interesting and affecting; and when I said I had given you an invitation to come hither, did not even say that he wished to see, and thank you for the preservation of his family.
"My son in law, Count D'Alberg, who is of a very different disposition, has received I know not what unfavorable impressions, I fear from Heurthofen. He passed the early part of his life in France; and from some circumstances that happened to him there, with which I was never perfectly acquainted, has entertained such ideas of the libertinism of the young and highly-born of your nation, that he believes no young married woman can admit one of them to her friendship, without the greatest risk of losing her character, if not her honor. My daughter, whose warmth of heart and conviction of your worth led her to speak of you in terms of the highest praise, perceived at once that her husband did not willingly hear her; persisting, however, in declaring sentiments which did her honour, sentiments as pure as those of angels, she found after a few days, and after the Count had passed some hours shut up with Heurthofen, that not only general prejudice, but particular suspicion, operated against you, in the mind of her husband, and for the first time since her marriage, she found that jealousy and mistrust, the banes of felicity, had touched the heart of the man whom she almost adores. I know not whether her pride or her love have suffered most; but I know that her distress has been extreme; and that she has her distress has been extreme; and that she has rescued every thing but the future repose of her life, to convince Count D'Alberg how cruelly he injured her tenderness and your honor. On this subject he hears not with patience, a woman whose wishes were till now his law; and he had told her, that however ill founded his notions of the dissolute manners of the French may be, he expects she will pay him the compliment of yielding to them her prediction, (for more he knows it is not) in favor of a stranger, who may be an exception; but who, with at least equal probability, may be as loose in principle as the rest of his countrymen. Far from considering your fortunate exertions, when you saved us from the most imminent risque of drowning, as an obligation, he believes we exaggerate the danger, to exaggerate the value of the service, and is persuaded by Heurthofen, that what hazard we were in, were incurred by our preferring the rash advice of a young man, unacquainted with the country, to his, who would have directed better. This Heurthofen, whom I never esteemed, I am now convinced is a villain; and I have in my turn insisted on his being dismissed from my family. The Baron has promised that he shall; but his is not a moment, he says, in which he can dismiss a man who is acquainted with the affairs of his estate, which the unfortunate events of the campaign have thrown into confusion. To this reason I have been compelled for the present to yield, but I have declared, that in whatever else the Baron or Count D'Alberg may chose to employ this man, he shall never fill that of almoner to the family, while I am at the head of it. He is now sent by the Baron on business, I know not whither, and I am thus delivered from his hateful presence; but the mischief he has done is irreparable.
"It is so delicate a matter to interfere between married people, and the happiness of Adriana is so dear to me, that I have not ventured to speak to Count D'Alberg on this subject, so decidedly as on any other I would have done. I dread lest he should believe my daughter has complained of his groundless prejudice, and unworthy suspicions; and that by remonstrating with him, I may rather irritate than conciliate. Had I less dependence on the nobleness of your nature, my amiable young friend, I should not have written all this; but I think; am not mistaken in supposing, that whatever resentment you may feel towards the Count, for the hasty, undeserved, and I must add, illiberal opinion he has formed and in regard to you, you will sacrifice it to the tranquillity of a family you honor with your esteem — such a being as Heurthofen is altogether beneath your regard, and excites contempt rather than anger.
Be assured, my dear Sir, that though our acquaintance is thus
interrupted, though I cannot, as I intended, make my house your home,
and shew you all the little kindness in my power; (all would, alas!
have been infinitely short of what you have a claim to) yet no time, no
circumstance, will erase from my memory, and that of my daughter, the
obligations we owe you; and if you would not render us both more
unhappy, allow us still, in such manner as may yet be in our power, to
continue our acknowledgments of esteem and of gratitude. I would have
requested again to have seen you, rather than to have troubled you with
this long letter, but I am conscious that I could not meet you without
pain, and should probably communicate some part of the regret I feel.
I had better, I believe conclude here, requesting only to know, by a
messenger I will send to day, whither you go on quitting Vienna. Do
not write me; you may intrust the person charged with my commission,
with any message with which you may oblige,
Dear Sir,
Your most sincere friend,
and faithful servant,
WILHELMINA ULRICA,
Baroness de Rosenheim."
S. JOHNSON.
D'ALONVILLE had read the Baroness's letter only once over, execrated the man he before despised, and began to consider how he ought to act, when a woman, muffled up in a close cap and hood, was shewn into his room; in whom he recognized his old friend Theresa, the faithful attendant on the children of Madame D'Alberg. "I am sent by my lady, the Baroness, Sir," said she, as soon as she sat down. "Without my saying so, you must thing think it very strange that I make you such a visit, especially after what has been said."
"Tell me, my good Theresa, what has been said? I understand, indeed, that I have been strangely misrepresented in your family; and I suspect to whom I owe those misrepresentations."
"Yes, Sir, for I'll venture to say there was only one person who could make them. — A false monster! I believe I should be almost ready to tear his eyes out, were I to see him at this moment. But, however, other people have not been quite free from false dealings, neither. There is Bessola: — I cant say I ever thoroughly like her — a vain conceited thing! It has been told to the Count, Sir, for as to my lord, the Baron, he troubles himself very little with what does not immediately concern his own family; but it has been told to the Count, that you were frequently seen in deep conference with Mademoiselle Bessola at undue hours; which they pretended to believe, forsooth, was to prevail upon her to carry letters to my lady. I declare such infamous insinuations put one out of the patience — as if you ever thought of such a wicked thing as winning my lady's affections away from the Count."
"Never," cried D'Alonville, with vehemence, "Never, as there is honor, truth, or gratitude in man." "I do believe you, sir, said Theresa; " and how the Count, who never before shewed the least disposition to jealousy ever since he married my lady, should get such abominable nonsense into his head now, without the least ground, is to me unaccountable. For my part, I believe he is bewitched."
"There is nothing extraordinary in it, however, my friend," answered D'Alonville, "if he is weak enough to listen to such a fellow as Heurthofen, and narrow-minded enough to entertain those prejudices, which affix to different nations different characters of vice. I am sorry it is so, Theresa, as it deprives me of almost the only happiness I reckoned upon, being allowed to call myself the friend of those generous and amiable women, the Baroness de Rosenheim and her daughter. But my hopes, dear as they were to me, must be instantly sacrificed to their repose. For Count D'Alberg, I know him not, nor shall I ever seek to know him — I believed him to be a soldier and a gentleman. — I wish there was now less difficulty than there will be, in my learning to respect him as the husband of your excellent lady; as such only I will endeavour to think of him; but with his chaplain, if I am so lucky as to be able to meet with him, I must renew my acquaintance on terms somewhat different from those on which we last met."
"That is the very circumstance Madame de Rosenheim is apprehensive of, Sir" said Theresa; "and one of the principal things she charged me to entreat of you was, not to speak to Heurthofen, if you happen to meet with him. She says she has the most urgent and particular reasons to request this of you, and she hopes you will not refuse her; remembering, that towards a priest you cannot shew the same anger as you might to another person. Besides, if you were to say any thing to him, it would be known that somebody had told you of the ill-office he had done you, and the mischief would be greater than ever. My lady and the Baroness both charged me to ask you to promise them, upon your word of honor, that you will not seek Heurthofen."
"I will not," answered D'Alonville, "since their commands ought to be my laws. I will not seek this villainous fellow, but if I meet him!"
"You must pass him by; indeed, Sir, you must; your resentment you cannot properly shew; and he is of that disposition, my lady says that it is one of his highest gratifications to know he has been successful in mischief. If he can but make himself of consequence, he care not by what means; and his maxim is, that next to the pleasure of being beloved, is that of being dreaded."
"In truth, my dear Theresa, the family of Rosenheim have chosen an admirable spiritual counsellor. But to put an end to all solicitude on my account, for what right have I to give them the least? Assure your ladies of my obedience to dare venture to promise this, because I am sure they will order nothing that shall be inconsistent with my honor."
"That I am sure of too, Sir," answered Theresa; "for as to the Baroness, I declare I believe, that if you were her own son she could not love you better. I don't know when I have seen her so vexed as she has been at the Baron's indifference, and the Count's almost rude treatment of you. Indeed she hardly knows how to conceal her vexation; but she puts it all to the account of the burning of Rosenheim. Well, Sir, and so what I had farther in commission from my lady the Baroness, to say, that as she understood you meant immediately to leave Vienna, she entreated to know whither you intended to go, hoping, of all things, it was not to France. She cannot, she says ask you to write to her, for reasons that are too obvious; but if you would be so good as now and then to contrive to let her hear of you, by writing to me, if you would not be above such a condescension, both she and Madame D'Alberg indeed, charged me particularly to tell you, that however, from her behaviour last night, she may appear, she can never forget the obligations she owes you, and must always recollect with sisterly affection, a gentleman who she must consider as the saviour of her children, and of her fortune; for she knows, and I believe she only yet, that it is you who have almost by miracle, recovered these papers. Ah! Sir, the Baron is a very good man, but has been always too much disposed not to consider others enough, and to fancy all the world made for him." D'Alonville sighed deeply, for among a thousand painful thoughts, he remembered how very lately he was in a situation of life equal, if not superior, to that of the Baron de Rosenheim; by whom his services were now only thought of among those due from a dependent to their lord.
"But do not, my good Sir, be cast down," resumed Theresa; "depend upon it the day will come when you will see all right again; and when you will see your friends happy and be happy yourself. Yes, yes! Heurthofen will be found out, for the villain I know him to be. — Oh! Chevalier, I could tell you such stories of him; but I dare not stay any longer, and therefore must hasten to obey my last orders. The Baroness, Sir, gave me this," continued she, "taking out of her pocket a small dear box, sealed with four seals, "and she directed me to deliver it to you upon receiving your promise that you will not open it till you are forty miles from Vienna. Chevalier, do you promise me?"
"I cannot indeed," replied D'Alonville, "made any such promise, unless I knew the contents of the box. — I cannot even receive it."
"You must, however," said Theresa, " for I assure you I shall not take it again. — The Baroness ordered me to tell you, that if you refused to receive this box, which perhaps contains her picture, she shall think you have renounced her friendship; and that nothing in the world can make her more unhappy. No, no! Chevalier, you must not distress Madame de Rosenheim by refusing it. Adieu, Sir! — may you be as happy wherever you go, as from my heart I believe you deserve to be!"
Theresa then hurried to the stairs, trying to conceal her tears and stifle her sobs. D'Alonville, uncertain how he ought to act, followed her, and begain began again to argue with her; but the public inn, was certainly an improper one for such a conference. Theresa reminded him of it:
"Oh! do think, Chevalier, what would be the consequence, should any one pass who knows me to be the servant of the Countess D'Alberg, and what is so likely!" D'Alonville, struck with the remark, immediately acknowledged the justice of it; and pressing the hand of Theresa, in losing whom he seemed to lose one of his last friends, he suffered her to depart, and hurried back into his own apartment.
He then took up the box; it was light, and might, he thought, contain that memorial of the friendship of Madame de Rosenheim which Theresa had intimated. But whatever were the contents, he could not return the box without offending a woman he so highly respected; not could he do it, without hazarding to disturb the peace of her family. Nothing indeed seemed to remain for him but to quit Vienna as soon as possible, and he began anew to consider whither he could go — "The world was all before him where to chuse choose ," but no part of it offered to him, "a place of rest." A man of his age, however, seeks not rest; his wish was rather for the means of signalizing himself, or in dying in the cause which he had promised his father till his latest hour to defend. In pursuit of this object he went among those of his countrymen who were at Vienna, and found some with whom he was acquainted; but in their consultations how to proceed, all was yet confusion and doubt. Some were disposed to assemble under the princes of the blood; but without the assistance of foreign powers they could not long keep themselves embodied; and of that assistance they had no certain assurance. The cheerful and sanguine temper, so much the general character of the nation, supported many of these gallant unfortunate men amidst difficulties and mortifications, under which men of any other European nation would have sunk; but others, who had not only suffered the loss of fortune and the miseries of exile, but who were torn from their dearest connections, for whose fate they suffered more than a steady eye any prospect that was offered them; while there were those of a third description, who attached, from their former situations, to the fallen family of their king, were rendered desperate by the continual reports that arrived of the unmanly and unjustifiable treatment of the ill-fated prisoners in the Temple; and in their councils were rather actuated by frenzy than by reason, rashly insisting on plans impossible to execute, even had all circumstances been at this period as favorable as they were evidently otherwise.
D'Alonville saw with extreme regret that the difference of opinions, the innumerable variety of lights in which every important object was seen, and the heat and vehemence with which every man pursued his own ideas, in meeting where none had any right to dictate to the rest, was an almost invincible obstacle to the adoption and steady perseverance in any plan likely to be successful. A thousand vague reports, mistrusts, and misconception, were continually baffling or distracting the best imagined schemes; and sometimes these mistrusts were found but too well some were discovered to be the emissaries of the republicans, who not only betrayed the councils at which they assisted, but spread among the German towns the principles of their party; and while the estranged the minds of the inferior classes, occasioned among the higher, suspicions of the real principles of all the French.
In this cause, as in every other, success determines more than sense or justice; and many who had shewn the greatest zeal for it, when the Austrian and Prussian armies marched towards France at the opening of the campaign now looked on with discouraging coolness, and discountenanced what they had once applauded. Some affected to fear the dissemination of principles inimical to the tranquillity of the German states, and others to declare against the French as a nation; and to hint at the propriety of their being forbidden to assemble in other countries.
D'Alonville, after having passed a day or two, listening to fluctuating opinions, and impracticable propositions, found none which he thought better than that recommended by his friend; and he had nearly determined to return immediately to Coblentz, where he thought he might yet arrive in time to accompany M. de Magnevilliers, when he met at a coffee house the Marquis de Touranges, a man of his own age, whom he had know at a military academy at Paris about two years before the revolution, and with whom he had at that time had some degree of intimacy. The Marquis de Touranges informed him in conversation, that he was the next day going with his friend and former tutor, the Abbé de St. Remi, to Berlin, by the way of the Prague. "The Abbé de St. Remi," said he, "has a niece married to a Prussian of high rank, and she offers an asylum to her respectable uncle, which I have advised him to accept; and as I have not yet determined whether I shall go myself, I have taken the resolution to travel at least so far with my ancient preceptor." D'Alonville felt an inclination to make a third in this party; the proposal appeared extremely agreeable to de Touranges. He introduced D'Alonville the same evening to the Abbé, whose mild manners immediately prejudiced him in his favor. It was agreed that they should proceed on horseback, or in the public carriages of the country, as economy, an equal object to all, rendered most advisable, and at an early hour the next morning they left Vienna.
LA FONTAINE.
HEAVY with fogs, and cold and dreary was the morning on which D'Alonville with his two friends took leave of Vienna. United in general calamity, each had his particular sorrows. The Abbé de St. Remi had long passed his fiftieth year; and at his time of life the fatigue of a long journey, and the uncertainty of what would be his reception when he arrived at the end of it, were likely to be considerations more oppressive than they were to younger men, who could more sanguinely indulge hopes of brightening prospects and better days: the Abbé, however, instead of being the most depressed, was the most cheerful of the three.
The Marquis de Touranges, one of the first order of nobility, was about four years older than D'Alonville. Inheriting an immense fortune, from a long line of illustrious ancestors, he had never till the period of the revolution known a wish he could not immediately gratify; — at that time he was rapidly approaching the highest posts of honor and profit that a military man could obtain about the court; and hardly twelve months before the time when his sovereign was compelled to dismiss from the place he held about his person, he had married a very lovely woman. Thus forced from all that had rendered him happy, he was now one of the most miserable beings upon earth; and profiting but little from the friendly or pious remonstrances of his ancient tutor, the thoughts of what he had been and what he was, agitated his mind almost to frenzy. He now vehemently cursed the very name of liberty, which had been used only as a pretext to effectuate the change he execrated; now swore eternal vengeance against the people, the instrument used to produce it, and now sinking into the sullen dejection of despair, remained whole hours apparently unconscious of what was around him: and, reflecting on the past, dared not look forward to the future,
From this state of melancholy, as it was better than paroxysms of rage, the Abbé de St. Remi seldom endeavoured to rouse him, and either talked to D'Allonville D'Alonville , whose character less violent and impetuous, gave his reason more time to operate; or gibing way to reflection, he himself remained silent; and the three travellers, during their first days journey, which they made on horseback, with a servant belonging to de Touranges, and a postillion to bring back the horses frequently rode several miles without exchanging a word. In the morning, when they first left the walls of Vienna, D'Alonville could not help looking back towards them with regret. In leaving the habitation of those friends who he had once flattered himself would alleviate to him the loss of his relations and of his country — those relation and that country seemed to be a second time lost. As the morning mist cleared a little away, he turned his horse, and from a rising ground, looked earnestly and mournfully towards the public buildings of the city, which were still visible; and though silently, he seemed to take so melancholy a leave of it, that the Abbe de St. Remi, who observed him, imputed his concern to sensations very different from those by which he was really affected. The Abbé might indeed have discovered causes enough, in common with his own subject of concern, for the depressed spirits of his new acquaintance; but he imagined, that in addition to the general cause which so sensibly affected them both as Frenchmen, Vienna contained some object from whom D'Alonville was divided, without any hope of ever seeing her again; and this persuasion, together with that mild, yet manly character, which he already remarked in his young friend, created in the breast of this worthy man a warm interest in his behalf, and urged the friendly attempts he made to administer to the wounded spirits of D'Alonville consolation, which the more turbulent and irritated mind of de Touranges was not yet in a condition to receive. Late on the evening of their first days journey they arrived at a small post house, where travellers seldom remain longer than while they change horses; but though nothing could be more desolate and discouraging than the appearance of the house, situated in a wide and uncultivated plain, where the deep and barren sands hardly produced the ragged furze and scanty heath, now equally withered and brown; yet as de Touranges took it into his head to remain there all night, and the Abbe de St. Remi was enough fatigued to consider even such arresting place as considerable, D'Alonville, who cared not at any time where he lay down to sleep, readily consented. He was glad indeed of this opportunity to examine the contents of the box Madame de Rosenheim had given; he was now near forty miles from Vienna, and could open it without a breach of the promise which, though he had not given it, had been understood when it was left in his possession. De Touranges, who was not disposed to take any refreshment would have retired immediately and alone to one of the wretched rooms the house afforded; but in such a temper of mind the Abbé de St. Remi would not consent to leave him. He went with him, therefore, and by his usual humane and friendly attention endeavoured to soothe the anguish which every hour seemed to render more acute to this unhappy friend. D'Alonville sat down by the sad light of a lamp placed against a wall, and inspected the present that had been forced upon him. A valuable diamond ring, with the cypher of Madame de Rosenheim's name, was wrapt in a bill of exchange of the vallue value of two thousand flrorins florins . D'Alonville was sensible of that delicacy with which the Baroness had at one paid the debt of gratitude that she believed was due to him, and supplied his necessities. Conscious that those necessities were owing neither to vices or follies of his own, and believing that to such a woman as Madame de Rosenheim he might be obliged without shame, he thought not of returning a present so useful, and which relieved him from the painful apprehension of being reduced to degrading exigencies in a strange land, or of being compelled to accept pecuniary assistance from his countrymen, so little able to spare it. In leaving Vienna, he hardly knew why he had preferred so long a journey through Germany, rather than adhering to his original plan of returning into France; but undecided and unadvised, his wavering resolution had been influenced by the earnestness with which de Touranges had solicited him to join the Abbé and himself in their journey to Berlin, and afterwards determined by the serious manner in which the Abbé de St. Remi had exhorted him to accompany the Marquis, even adding, when they were for a moment alone, that it would be of the most essential service to his old friend; and hinting that the circumstances of de Touranges, reduced as their were, would easily admit of his making to the Chevalier D'Alonville the difference of expence, certainly very considerable, between this journey, and what he had slightly spoken of as his intended rout route . D'Alonville had, however, declined any assistance of that sort, assuring the Abbé that he should not have occasion for it. This was in fact true, as far as related to his traveling expences. He had more than sufficient to carry him to Berlin; and what was to become of him afterwards he had not yet steadily reflected. The friendly present of the Baroness de Rosenheim put an end to all anxiety of that sort; and far as such a circumstance could alleviate that pain of heart which he had for many months sustained, he became more easy, and having now nothing to hope from the friendship towards which he had so fondly looked, (since he dared not even write to thank the Baroness of her present) nor any thing to fear for the immediate necessaries of life, his solicitude was of course decreased, and though he was not happier, he was more tranquil.
This was a fortunate circumstance for the Abbé de St. Remi, who after an hours absence came back into the room where D'Alonville waited for him to partake the slender supper they had bespoke, with a countenance which so forcibly expressed uneasiness, that D'lAonville D'Alonville eagerly enquired the cause. "Ah! my dear Sir," said the Abbé, with a deep sigh, "this poor friend of ours breaks my heart. In the severe trial under which it is the will of heaven that I should suffer in common with the whole body of French clergy, I have never yet resigned my fortitude as an individual; but the sight of de Touranges, while his mind seems every moment likely to lose its balance; while I see him now on the verge of frenzy, and now of suicide, would be so afflicting to me, that I know not if I should undertake to endure it at all, but for the assistance I hope for from you. "There are times," added he, in a tone yet more melancholy, "when I seem to have lost all the influence which my long attachment to him, and the sincere affection he knows I bear him, had given me over his mind. His situation is indeed afflicting; but it is the trying scenes of adversity that a spirit like his ought to exert itself — an inferior mind might find in unworthy dejection, but of the Marquis de Touranges should rise superior to the events of life. Religion, alone my dear Chevalier; religion alone can enable any of us to do this. Yet my friend, once so well instructed in his , has trusted rather to that fallacious, that pernicious philosophy which has undone us all; and alas! what does it do to console him in this hour of bitterness?"
"I have hardly acquaintance enough with the Marquis de Tourange's affairs since we last parted," said D'Alonville, "to know why he feels in the present moment more severe affliction than so many thousand others, who are like him driven from their possessions and their country, and have in the course of those convulsions that have distracted that country, lost some of their dearest friends by death, and have seen others estranged from them by the accursed spirit of the party, or the allurements of ambition or avarice. In these misfortunes, the most dreadful perhaps that humanity can suffer, every native of France who has refused to join in the system now called republican, must, more or less, have partaken. Every man bears his share as he can. Perhaps that of our friend may be rendered less supportable than that of the generality, by some circumstances to which I am a stranger, and which may well excuse that acute sensibility that you lament for otherwise, from what I have formerly known of Touranges, he must be greatly changed if he now shrinks form the common lot, without common fortitude."
"All is by comparison, Chevalier," answered St. Remi. "You have, in common with thousands, abandoned your country, and seen your fairest hopes of returning thither baffled; you have lost an excellent father, and you have seen your brother disgrace the name he has quitted; all these are great and severe afflictions, but they are less grievous, because you know their extent. Alas! de Touranges knows not the worst that may have befallen him, yet he knows of calamities greater even than yours."
"You have excited at once my concern and my curiosity," said D'Alonville.
"Perhaps then," resumed the Abb—, "you do not know that Madame de Touranges, the mother of our friend, was among the unfortunate prisoners of the second of September. She was an attendant on the female part of the royal family — that was her only crime. Dropping with the blood of her fellow prisoners, she twice saw the murderous dagger of the assassins at her throat, and twice she was saved as it were by miracle. By the mockery of a trial, in which she was acquitted with the same caprice that had condemned numberless other equally innocent, she was released, and under the protection of a tradesman who had received many favors from her family, she was carried more dead than alive to her house — her house was deserted; for her servants, fearing to share her fate, had quitted it, when they heard she was imprisoned. Heart struck, the unhappy Madame de Touranges now entreated her conductor not to leave her alone, exposed to the fury of ruffians, whom a desire of vengeance, or of plunder, might engage to seek her in her house and destroy her: but when the man enquired what he could do to secure her safety, or whither he should conduct her, she knew not what to answer. Her first idea was to go to a country house of her son's near Orly, four leagues from Paris, where the young Marquise de Touranges, near the time of her delivery, had for some days expected her; but the barriers were shut, and so strictly guarded, that to execute this was impossible, at least at that time. To find shelter in a convent, where she had many friends, and where she had occasionally resided, was the next hope she formed; but the person in whom she was obliged to confide, declared to her he believed that at the present juncture, any other place was more secure than a religious society, since against those, the popular vengeance was directed. — In this destracting debate so much time was wasted, without her being able to form any resolution, that her protector, who was a municipal officer, told her with great concern, that it would be impossible for him to stay with her, and hardly knowing what she did, she entreated him to afford her the protection of his house, till she would find some asylum more permanent. To this the man agreed — she put her house with all its valuable contents into his power, and by favor of the night went with him to his own house in Rue Columbier, where she remained several days, and then, when after those dreadful massacres which have filled every heart with terror and abhorrence, the general alarm had somewhat subsided, and the barriers were less strictly guarded, her humane host (who with his wife and family had shewed her all the attention in their power) conducted her in a disguise, but not without considerable hazard to himself, to the villa near Orly, where she hoped to have found her daughter-in-law, and to have consulted with her on the means of securing their mutual safety. Alas! on her arriving a Beaurepaille near Orly, she found it deserted; only one of the tenants and his wife were in it, who informed Madame de Touranges, that the young Marquis had been so much alarmed on hearing of what had passed at Paris, that notwithstanding the extreme danger of undertaking a journey in such a situation, she had immediately dismissed all her servants but her own maid and one valet, and had taken post for Mante — where, the man who gave this account heard, she was stopped by the municipal guard: but he knew no more; nor could the unfortunate Madame de Touranges obtain any other intelligence. — Partly in the hope of overtaking her daughter, and partly with a view to her own safety, the elder Marquise de Touranges followed the same route, and wrote to her son from Mante, where it was said the younger lady had been arrested. This appeared not to have been true; but it was too certain that from thence she could not be traced. My poor friend has received no other letter from his mother, nor has he ever since heard of his wife. He has written he has sent a servant bribed by almost half he saved, to under take a perilous research after these two ladies, but hitherto with out success; and he would have returned at the most imminent hazard of his life, for it is certain that he is so well known that is is impossible he could escape, had not the command he held rendered it for some time impossible; and since the retreat of the army, my earnest exhortations with held him. I have represented to him the great improbability of his finding his mother and his wife, and if he found them, the impossibility of his affording them any protection. — Ah! it is far more probable that he would perish in the attempt, and draw down on these unhappy women severer calamities than they have yet experienced. It is possible they may have escaped from France, under the protection of an uncle of the younger lady's, who about the same time disappeared from the neighbourhood of Rouen, and is known to have proposed seeking an asylum in Holland or England. A nobleman of the same name, as what he has been said to have assumed, is at Berlin; and on this slender hope, aided by the conviction that by returning to France he should throw away a life that may yet be useful to them, I have prevailed upon his to begin this journey; but I now doubt whether he will ever complete it. Tormented incessantly with the most dreadful fears for the fate of his wife, his infant, and his mother, he is now half resolved to execute his first resolution, and to rush upon certain destruction by returning to France; and now he is tempted by the corroding anguish that preys upon his heart to put an end to his life and sufferings together. Unhappily he has been but to conversant with those pernicious broachers of what is falsely called Philosophy, who have for these last twenty years been fashionable; and when I recall to his mind the precept I once inculcated, and as I fondly hoped with so much success, I am answered by a quotation from Rousseau, or from some German writer whose works he admires. However I am not discouraged, and I hope much from a temper which, though not without faults, has many perfections. — I hope more from that high sense of honor that he possesses, and which surely must make him consider, that his quitting life, while his religion, his country, and his family demand it, would be an act of cowardice as unworthy his personal character as of the great men from whom he derives his descent; which is indeed as illustrious as that of any man in France."
The Abbé de St. Remi here ceased to speak; and D'Alonville, impressed with the deepest concern for his unhappy friend, whose misfortunes he allowed to be greater than his own, could only assure the Abbé, that what little he could do, during their journey, to soothe a heart thus torn with the most afflicting uncertainties, he would most cheerfully endeavour to do. The Abbé than gave him some hints of the sort of conversation he wished him to hold with de Touranges, and they soon after parted for the night, being early the next morning to set out on their second days journey towards Prague.
THERE was, an please your honor," said Corporal Trim, "There was a certain king of Bohemia, who had seven castles."
A modean modern Novelist, who, to write "in the immediate taste," has so great a demand for these structures, cannot but regret, that not one of the seven castles was sketched by the light and forcible pencil of Sterne: for, if it be true, that books are made, as he asserts, only as apothecaries make medicines, how much might have been obtained from the king of Bohemia's seven castes, towards the castles which frown in almost every modern novel?
For my part, who can now no longer guild chateaux even en Espague, I find that Mowbray Castle, Grasmere Abbey, the castle of Rock March, the castle of Hauteville, and Rayland Hall, have taken so many of my materials to construct, that I have hardly a watch tower, a Gothic arch, a cedar parlour, or a long gallery, an illuminated window, or a ruined chapel, left to help myself. Yet some of these are indispensibly necessary; and I have already built and burnt down one of these venerable edifices in this work, yet must seek wherewithal to raise another.
But my ingenious cotemporaries contemporaries have fully possessed themselves of every bastion and buttress — of every tower and turret — of every gallery and gateway, together with all their furniture of ivy mantles, and mossy battlements; tapestry, and old pictures; owls, bats, and ravens — that I had some doubts whether, to avoid the charge of plagiarism, it would not have been better to have earthed my hero, and have sent him for adventures to the subterranious town on the Chatelet mountains in Champagne, or even to Herculaneum, or Pompeii, where I think no scenes have yet been laid, and where I should have been in less danger of being again accused of borrowing, than I may perhaps be, while I only visit "The glympses of the moon."
On giving the first volume however to a friend to peruse, and hinting at the difficulty I was sensible of in finding novelty from my dark drawings, he bade me remember the maxim so universally allowed — "Que rien n'est beau que le vrai."I asked him how it were possible to adhere to le vrai, in a work like this. But I believe I shall be better understood if I relate our conversation in the way of dialogue.
Friend.— "I do not mean to say that you can adhere to truth in
a book which is avowedly a fiction; but as you have laid much of the
scene in France, and at the distance of only a few months, I think you
can be at no loss for real horrors, if a novel must abound in
horrors; your imagination however fertile, can suggest nothing of
individual calamity, that has not there me exceeded. Keep therefore as
nearly as you can to circumstances you have heard related, or to such
as might have occurred in a country where murder stalks abroad, and
calls itself patriotism; where the establishment of liberty serves as
a pretence for the violation of humanity; and I am persuaded, though
there may be less of the miraculous in your work; though it may
resemble less A woman's story at a winter's fire
Authoriz'd by her grand dam,
SHAKESPEARE.
YOUNG.
Author. — Certainly not.
Friend. — Then I am really in greater pain for you — for I am afraid you will again incur the charge of immorality, and intend to make your hero in love with Madame D'Alberg, a married woman.
Author. — I have no such design.
Friend. — Well, I really am at a loss then to comprehend your plan; for I have now read the greater part of the first, volume, and except your Adriana, your Madame D'Alberg, I see nobody who can possibly be intended for your heroine.
Author. — Alas! my dear Sir! if you had yourself ever seen much of that part of the critical world who descant on novels, you would be aware of the extreme difficulty of the task that a Novelist has to execute: — besides that the number of strange situations under which the heroes and heroines have been represented, are so numerous as to leave hardly any new means of bewildering them in difficulties, there are such objections continually made to some part or other of our fabricated stores, as have continually reminded me of the fable of the Man, his Son, and his Ass. I have been assailed with remonstrances on the evil tendency of having too much of love — too much of violent attachments in my novels; and as I thought in the present instance, the situation of my hero was of itself interesting enough to enable me to carry him on for some time without making him violently in love, I was determined to try the experiment.
Friend. — I am afraid it is an experiment you must not carry too far. I do not believe that the generality of novel reader, and it is to those you must look, will agree with you sage advisers, who were, I suppose, ladies far advanced in life.
Author. — They were indeed. — One was an authoress; one who is herself above all the weaknesses of humanity, and whose talents give to her character a peculiar hardness, which is all placed to the account of her understanding.
Friend.— And the others?
Author.— Were women no longer young, and who now assume a sort of stoicism quite opposite to their former sentiments and habits of life.
Friend. — To such I should listen without any great deference, and when they discover that the stories you have invented turn too much on the passions of love, ask them what are the subjects of those books of mere entertainment, which are now classics? — Ask them while they put into the hands of their daughters novels that have for years been considered as written in the cause of virtue, and by which our mothers, I suppose, set their minds, whether they can seriously object to any one page of your five-and-twenty volumes, as immoral, or even improper, in the imagination of the most prudish censurer. But on some future occasion I may give you more fully my opinion of English novels. I speak not of the trifles which issue every day from the press to satisfy the idlest readers of a circulating library, but such as deserve to be read by persons who have other purposes in reading than to pass a vacant hour, or escape for a few moments from the insipid monotony of prosperity, by adventures; of fables, that only a distempered imagination can produce, or a vitiated taste enjoy.
Author. — I shall be extremely obliged to you for your opinion, which cannot fail to entertain and edify me; though I believe, as far as relates to the business of novel writing, I shall never have occasion to avail myself of your judgment.
Friend. — Why so?
Author. — Because I think I have taken my leave for ever of that species of writing.
Friend. — Your imagination then is exhausted?
Author. — Perhaps not. — In the various combinations of human life — in the various shades of human character, there are almost inexhaustible sources, from whence observation may draw materials, that very slender talents may weave into connected narratives; but in this as in every other species of composition, there is a sort of fashion of the day. Le vrai which you so properly recommend, or even le vrai semblance, seems not to be the present fashion. I have no pleasure in drawing figures which interest me no more than the allegoric personages of Spencer: besides, it is time to resign the field of fiction before there remains for me only the gleanings, or before I am compelled by the caprice of fashion to go for materials for my novels, as the authors of some popular dramas have lately done, to children's story books, or rather the collection which one sees in farm houses; the book of apparitions; or a dismal tale of an haunted house, shewing how the inhabitants were forced to leave the same by reason of a bloody and barbarous murder committed there twenty years before, which was fully brought to light.
Friend. — Well! but if you should change your mind, I can furnish you with such a ghost story.
Author.— I thank you — but I have no talents that way; and will rather endeavour, in whatever I may hereafter produce, (if I am still urged by the same necessity as has hitherto made me produce so much,) to remember, whenever it can be remembered with advantage, Que rien n'est beau que le vrai.
BRAMSTON.
IN the capital of Bohemia the three wanderers remained no longer than was necessary to refresh themselves after the fatigues they had passed, and to enable them to undertake those which were to come in their way to Dresden. De Touranges, whose sufferings were of that sort for which time itself can apply no remedy, was, during these few days, in a state of mind that gave the greatest concern to his two friends; and the Abb— de St. Remi hardly ever left him so apprehensive was he that his fortitude would yield to his despair; while D'Alonville, either from his milder disposition, or because he knew the worst that could, as an individual, befal befall him, bore his misfortunes with greater calmness, and applied himself to soothe his more unhappy friend. Yet could he not offer hope he did not himself feel; and was conscious in this case of the inefficacy of all those common topics of consolation which are so generally dwelt upon, but of so little use in alleviating real affection.
There were many French arrived at Prague before them, and some who had left France very lately. The accounts these persons gave of the situation of affairs at Paris, their conjectures and apprehensions, were by no means calculated to appease the solicitude that tortured De Touranges. He fled, therefore, as much as possible from their society, and seemed relieved when with his two friends he again set forward on his journey.
Though no complaint escaped him, it was easy to see that the Abbé de St. Remi had suffered very much from the fatigue of travelling the greater part of the way on horseback between Vienna and Prague; D'Alonville, therefore, who already entertained the sincerest esteem for that excellent man, took some pains to procure for him a more commodious conveyance; and at length found a man who engaged to carry two persons and part of the baggage of the whole party to Dresden, in a kind of cabriolet, drawn by two horses, which he was to drive himself. For his own conveyance D'Alonville hired an horse of the same person, and another for De Touranges' servant. Matters being thus arranged, they left Prague five days after their arrival there.
From the time when the retreat of the combined armies from Champaign, had given so fatal a blow to the hopes of the French royalists, until the present hour, D'Alonville had been so much agitated by solicitude, or overwhelmed by sorrow; so continually suffering in his own person, or for those he loved, that he had never had time to look back on past events with coolness, or steadily to contemplate the prospect before him; but now, as slowly, and often at a distance, he followed the carriage in which his friends were seated, through the deep sands, and over the mountainous forests of Bohemia, the dreary stillness of every thing around him, the heavy gloom of a December sky, and the dark solemnity of the woods of fir through which the road often lay for many miles together, were united to produce reflection, retrospection, and regret.
His thoughts naturally reverted to those happy days of which fortune, rank, youth, and health, flattered him with a long continuance; when his father considered him with affectionate pride, as the second hope and support of a noble house; and beheld with exultation the world around him, eager to do justice to the early promise of merit in a beloved son. He could not but recollect many scenes of former felicity, which were passed for ever; a few months only had elapsed, and now, without any fault of his own, he was an exile, and in comparison of his former situation, a better, wandering in the woods of Bohemia, without any certain purpose, and by no means assured of what he was to expect at the end of his journey, or indeed where that journey was to end.
In mournful contrast to the brilliant prospects of his youth, the miseries that had been crowded into the short space of two years, and particularly those that had marked the two last months, recurred to him in all their horrors. The defection of his brother, and the anguish it inflicted on the Viscount de Fayolles; the precipitate journey his father had made to the frontiers to join the Austrian and Prussian armies; their retreat, and all the horrors that followed it; the dreadful nights he passed between the time that his father was wounded, and his deplorable death; the castle of Rosenheim, and its inhabitants; their eventful journey to Coblentz, and his return to Rosenheim; with his subsequent mortifying disappointment in being dismissed from the friendship of the Rosenheim family, through the infamous arts of Heurthofen, all passed through his mind as an uneasy and distressing dream is recalled after a restless night; but with this melancholy difference, that all these events, which a little time before would, if they could have been prophesied, have appeared more improbable than the wildest fiction of a disordered imagination, were now too real; and, while to look back was thus afflicting, the future was hid in hideous obscurity. What had happened, had so baffled every conjecture that might from experience or analogy have been made on the probable courses of human events, that the most sanguine mind could distinguish, in what was to come, nothing on which it might rest with hope. The most timid could hardly be accused of yielding too much to fear.
Lost in these contemplations, D'Alonville often lingered behind his friends, and arrived at the places where they stopped, some time after them. As the same horses were to draw them all the way to Dresden, and the man to whom they belonged had bargained that he was to take his own time, they were to be four days in reaching that town from Prague, though it is not much above seventy English miles. On the the third of these days D'Alonville had walked with his two friends up a steep ascent in order to relieve the horses. The Marquis and the Abbé had again entered their chaise, and were descending on the other side, where D'Alonville rather chose to walk, as his horse was fatigued, and the road slippery from sleet which was still falling; when arriving at an angle which had before concealed the road from him, he saw a past chaise which, in descending also, appeared to have been overturned by the fall of one of the horses; and two strangers and their servants were endeavouring to get the horse up. D'Alonville saw the cabriole in which his friends were, stop, and the Abbé de St. Remi was already out of it, to lend what assistance he could to the travellers. He hastened on himself as fast as the road would allow; and when he came near the carriages tied his horse to a tree and went forward to offer his services to the gentlemen, whom he now learned from a servant who could speak French, were Englishmen, travelling in their own chaise with post horses to Dresden, on their way through Germany from Italy to England. These gentlemen, one of whom appeared younger than the other, though neither of them were above six or seven and twenty, were employed in disengaging the suffering animal, who had in failing dragged the chaise over him, broke the shaft, and seemed to be stunned if not killed by the violence of the all. D'Alonville understood, and could speak a little English; and while he lent what help seemed in his power, he could not avoid remarking how differently the two travellers proceeded. He who appeared the eldest of them, in every strong term which the English language so copiously affords, cursed all foreign postillions, post horses, and post masters. He swore that on the whole Continent there was not one of any sort of these worth a damn; and that a man had better go to the devil at once, than put himself in the way of having any thing to do with such hellish cattle and such infernal scoundrels. All this eloquence was entirely lost on the German postillion, who, without moving a muscle of his broad face, and with his short pipe still in his mouth, had very calmly taken off the other horses, fastened them to a tree, and now began with equal composure to unbuckle, untie, and unstrap the intricacies of the harness, entangled around the fallen horse; intricacies of which he alone was probably master. The furious gentleman was for cutting them without hesitation; and his companion seemed only solicitous to deliver the poor animal as immediately as possible from the painful situation in which he lay, to which the violence and noise of his friend seemed by no means likely to contribute. An English servant, under the directions of the former gentleman, appeared to act with the most intelligence, while and Italian valet stood aghast, and without undertaking to help or to advise himself, seemed to be addressing his favorite saint for assistance; till a volley of oaths from the other Englishman, who called him a macaroni son of a b—h, and asked him what he stood quivering there for; roused him from his pious appeal; and though he did not understand the force of the exhortation, urged him to spring forward. But here again he was wrong — and for this misapplied zeal received only a repulse — "Why you landsided rascal, get out of the way, and be cursed to you. Don't you see that here are more already than do any good? Come, you Monsieur, (addressing himself to the Marquis's servant) here, lend us a lift on this side. — Pooh! damn it, not so — here, this way. — I'll be cursed if he or any of his countrymen, know the head of a horse from the tail!" By this time the horse was so far released that he could have got up had he been able; but it appeared he was so much hurt that he could not rise, and was at all events disqualified from proceeding. There were three, however, left, which were sufficient to take the carriage to the next post-house; but much yet remained to do before it could move. The shaft was to be spliced, and one of the wheels damaged in the fall to he put in a condition to perform the rest of the journey. "Dire were the oaths and deep the cursings" from the mouth of the apparently irritable Englishman, before this could be accomplished. And, notwithstanding the discouragement of his rough manners, for which his friend repeatedly apologized to D'Alonville, and to the Abbé de St. Remi, in French as soon as he found that one of them understood English, they both staid and lent every possible assistance till the vehicle was put in a condition to proceed with safety. The Abbé, who from his age and character might well have executed himself from taking any trouble at all, where there were so many others, then slightly touched his hat and returned to his own chaise, where the Marquis de Touranges, who did not believe his interference necessary, and who had formed no very favorable ideas of the travellers, from what little he understood of the conversation of one of them, had remained a quiet spectator of the bustle; and was indeed in a few moments after it began so entirely absorbed in his own sad reflections, that nothing but the loud voice and furious oaths of one of the strangers could have made the least impression upon him. When the Abbé however returned to take his feat by him, the younger of the two Englishmen followed him, and in polite term renewed his acknowledgments. The Abbé in return, assured him he was glad he had been of any service, and wished him a good journey. The cabriole then proceeded, and De Touranges said, "one is surprized to hear French, and even good French, if it were not for the vile accent it is spoken with, form the mouth of those half-savages."
"Who do you qualify," enquired the Abbé "with the name of half-savages?"
"Those Englishmen," replied De Touranges.
"And why so?" enquired St. Remi.
"Because I can consider them no otherwise," answered the Marquis.
"I think you wrong, however," replied the Abbé. "I know no nation of Europe more enlightened, more respectable, at least so they appear to me, even from the little I know of them, by the translations we have of their best authors; for thought I read English, it is hardly fluently enough to enable me to enjoy them in the original."
"You might as well judge of the wit of the Spaniards from a French version of Don Quixote. The Spaniards, however, have as little of what is properly called wit, as the English of any kind of genius. As to the latter, they are a nation to whom we owe almost all the evils that war has brought upon France; and the greatest of all evils, that which has now destroyed her."
De Touranges the sunk into one of his mournful reveries. and though the Abbé undertook to defend the nation for whom he pleaded from the imputation, and proceeded with equal reason, eloquence, and method; the dialogue became a monologue, for de Touranges had ceased to listen, and gave no other answer, than that he thought the English a proud, ferocious, and hardly civilized people; and that the man they had lately seen was a just specimen of the nation.
While the unfortunate de Touranges was thus indulging national prejudice, roused and embittered by peculiar calamity, D'Alonville remained in conversation with the two English gentlemen, though only by one of them he could make himself understood in his own language, for the elder, whose name was Melton, could speak no language but English, though he was now on his return from the tour of Europe. His friend, however, informed D'Alonville, that they had not travelled together the whole way, but that they met by accident at Turin, Mr. Melton coming last from Naples, and himself from Geneva, where he had been since France had became an uneasy residence for strangers. Mr. Melton receiving intelligence there of the death of two dowagers, who had kept him out of the moiety of a very large fortune, and sick of scenes for which he never had any taste, was returning to England. The young man who spoke, a younger brother of the name of Ellesmere, had agreed to accompany him through Germany, in the intention of visiting some of the German courts, and particularly Berlin; and having some thoughts of entering into the army, wished to understand more than he now did the tactics of a nation, who, under their last monarch, were the admiration of Europe. This conversation passed as D'Alonville and Ellesmere walked together down the hill; Melton had wrapped himself in his great coat and was replaced in the chaise. é when it stopped at the bottom for Ellesmere to get into it, he thanked D'Alonville in warmer and civiller terms than before, for the assistance they had received form him and his friend in their little dilemma; and added, that as they were travelling the same way, he should be glad if any opportunity offered of renewing their acquaintance. The post chaise in which these gentlemen were, notwithstanding it moved now only with three horses, proceeded faster than D'Alonville could do on the miserable and thoroughly-tired horse he was furnished with; they soon therefore left him behind, and passed the cabriole in which were the Abbe and De Touranges. — Melton had till then been silent, but at the noise the postillions made in passing each other he seemed to be roused form his reverie, and speaking to Ellesmere, said, "well Ned, what did you do with your Frenchman?"
"Nothing," answered Ellesmere, "but thanked him for having tried to help us, which methought was the more necessary, as you were not too civil in abusing the man's country all the time he and his friend were standing in the rain, and helping us as well as they could."
"Pooh! damn it," replied Melton, "they did not understand me."
"Pardon me," said Ellesmere, "the younger of them understands English perfectly, though he does not speak it much; and even the elder one, whom I take to be a priest, seems to know at least what is said."
"Oh! what the fellow with a round black patch upon his scull, as if he had got a plaister for a broken head? Well! and what if he did? Who was that stately gentleman that was perched up in their rabbit-cart, and hardly put his nose out of his frizzled and furred great coat to peep at us? I suppose he was master of the other two."
"I did not observe him," replied Ellesmere, "but whoever he might be, I do not believe the other two were servants.— The young man with whom I conversed, seemed to be very much of a gentleman; and from the appearance of the whole party, I fancy they are emigrant French, who are seeking in some other country, an asylum against the tyranny and injustice that is executing in their own."
"A fine hand to be sure they have made of their liberty," said Melton. "What the devil had they to do to think of being free? I suppose they will now over run every country in Europe. For my part I cannot love them, nor ever did."
"But it does not appear, my friend," rejoined Ellesmere, "that Italians please you better."
"Oh! damn them — squeaking, fiddling, scraping, persidious rascals."
"Or Germans?" added Ellesmere.
"Humph! Yes they are a little better. I think they have a little more of Englishmen about them."
"Or Spaniards, or Portuguese?"
"Oh curse them; I hate them, though I know very little of them. They are fellows one knows hardly any thing about."
"Or Russians, or Swedes, or Danes, or Dutchmen?"
"Dutchmen! Hah! the most cheating money-getting, narrow-souled, bargain-driving scoundrels! — No, damn me, a Dutchman is worse —.."
"Worse than a Frenchman?" cried Ellesmere.
"No, nothing can be worse; but I think they are almost as bad."
"Not one nation of Europe then has the honor of being held in any degree of esteem by you; but my good friend, might you not be enabled to judge better of their characters, if you could speak their languages?"
I don't wish to speak their languages; what good does it do an Englishman? When I go to my estate in Gloucestershire, now for example, which I intend to do now the gentlewomen are both gone to earth, d'ye think I shall ever see any of these fellows? And among my neighbours and tenants d'ye believe we shall find occasion for French and Italian?"
"Why then," said Ellesmere, "did you go among them at all professing present dislike, and having no view of subsequent improvement?"
"Why! Nay faith I can hardly tell. I had lost a pretty round sum among sharpers."
"Englishmen, I suppose?"
"Aye, Englishmen, some of them, but others of them were Irishmen; so as I hated to hear about it from my aunt and my grandmother, and did not know very well what to do to get out of their way, I was persuaded to try the tour, as it is called, which it seems a man of fortune is expected to make. — but I pique myself upon returning to England as entirely British as I sat out — And unless my mind alters strangely, I shall live and die a thorough Englishman."
"I do believe you," answered Ellesmere; "and who but must rejoice, that there are still any of that excellent breed left, and that we are not wholly degenerated?"
They now arrived at the inn where they were to remain that night. The other three travellers, who were obliged to submit to the convenience of the proprietor of their horses, reached not so far, but remained at a village three leagues behind on the road.
THE evening of the following day D'Alonville and his companions arrived at Dresden. The Abbé de St. Remi had some acquaintance there, to whom he immediately went; and who, as soon as they knew he had two friends with him, sent to desire they might see them also, as they were people of very high rank. — De Touranges with some difficulty was prevailed upon to accept the offered hospitality; but D'Alonville, who wished to see the town, of which he had heard much, excused himself, as being confined to the hours of a private family, would have interfered too much with his design of visiting whatever was curious or worth seeing. The Abbe left him with reluctance, to wander alone round Dresden for the little time he stayed; but his solitary excursions were hardly begun on the morning after his arrival, when in one of the squares he met his English acquaintance, Mr. Ellesmere, who seemed glad to renew their acquaintance. This meeting produced another; and every time they met the mutual liking they had conceived for each other encreased; and after the third such a degree of confidence was produced, that D'Alonville gave to his new friend a brief sketch of his melancholy history.
Ellesmere had almost all those good qualities of the heart which the English are too apt to believe exclusively their own, because they undoubtedly possess a greater share of them than any other people; so far at least can be judged either from their private or public history. Ellesmere was candid, generous, humane, and good-natured; with notions of honor which more men of the world would call romantic, and ideas of friendship which such men would condemn as ridiculous. His father, a Baronet of an ancient family but a small fortune, had wasted much of his life and more of his property in attending on a court, where, for a few years the sacrifice of his time and his independence was rewarded with an employment, which, though lucrative, was not more than adequate to the different manner of living which it obliged him to adopt. On a change of ministry he lost his place, and retired to his family seat in Straffordshire, leaving his eldest son to sustain the family consequence, by becoming in his turn a statesman, to which his ambition urged him, as well as the necessities of his family, for he had married a young woman of very high fashion, without fortune, and had already several children; but as unfortunately the lady's connections were all among what is called the opposition, he had espoused a party in which no present advantage was offered; and as virtue is too often its own reward, the elder Mr. Ellesmere derived from his politics no profit, and only partial glory, since what was by his own friends called patriotism, was, by the other and more powerful party, stigmatized with the name of faction. — This circumstance affected his father, Sir Maynard Ellesmere, very sensibly; for though the family of Lady Sophia, his son's wife, assisted in the support of a man so nearly allied to them, and who was in some measure the victim of that alliance, yet their power was by no means so extensive as to enable him to appear as his connections and prospects demanded; without such assistance from his father as compelled him to live himself with the most rigid economy, and to confine within very narrow bounds the expenses of the younger branches of his family, which consisted of five other children, two sons and three daughters. Of these, D'Alonville's new acquaintance was the eldest. He had been designed by his father for the law, had passed three years at the university to apply to that study, and afterwards went to the Temple; but on a nearer view he became disgusted with the rugged features and incomprehensible manners of English jurisprudence; and Sir Maynard, who could very ill afford the expence of supporting him till the period when his pursuit of the law would become productive, yielded to his son's wishes of quitting it entirely, and embracing the profession of arms. But as Sir Maynard saw no immediate prospect of getting his forward in this line, he had consented to his travelling to acquire the European languages, so necessary to a military man. With a very limited allowance, he had been eleven months on the Continent; and now, on the probability of a war, was returning to England.
Yet unhackneyed in the ways of men, and unspoiled by prosperity, the sensible heart of young Ellesmere was extremely affected by the relation D'Alonville gave him, and he soon felt the most earnest desire to alleviate the sorrows of his new friend. Little was in his power beyond advice and good wishes; but those, so sincerely offered to a man, who was far from all those, from whom he could claim the soothing offices of friendship, were invaluable. D'Alonville felt that they were so; and once more his heart, chilled and depressed by his late disappointment, was expanded and cheered with the hope of having found a friend. Melton, who professed to travel, because he knew not what to do with himself at home, till he could give more unbounded scope to his turn for some sort of expence, had not the least inclination to seek in any capital town, other society than Englishmen of the same description afforded him. There were several at Dresden, with whom he associated, and among them one with whom he had formerly been much acquainted, and who was going post to England. An immediate return to his native country was by this time become, in the opinion of Melton, a desirable circumstance, and he entered into an agreement to join this his acquaintance, and to leave Dresden three days sooner than he had originally proposed with Ellesmere; to whom he began a blunt apology, and was giving the reasons he had to change his mind. Ellesmere, who, rather felt himself released than offended, besought him to set his heart at ease in regard to him; and adjusting their account of expences, they took leave of each other with all imaginable good humour, but without the least degree of friendship. — Ellesmere reflecting with wonder on the little activity of Melton's mind; which with every power that fortune and situation gave to acquire information, sunk into puiescent ignorance, Melton not reflecting at all. The jolly party he soon after he might have had respecting his want of politeness, and great rudeness towards Ellesmere — he passed a jovial evening, and, without going to bed, fat out on his journey by the break of the day. Thus left to find his way to Berlin alone, or in any company he liked, Ellesmere sought his French friend, with an intention of offering himself to join his party. He was directed at the hotel, where he had before enquired for him to another, where, on sending for him, D'Alonville came down, and telling Ellesmere he was with some of his countrymen, who would be a very happy if he would favor them with his company, he introduced him to the Marquis de Touranges, the Abbé de St. Remi, and two old French noblemen, who received him with that politeness for which men of their rank were so justly distinguished. The Abbé de St. Remi too, who though a priest had no illiberal prejudices, was pleased with the appearance of the young Englishman; De Touranges alone maintained a cold reserve — and while the others were engaged in conversation, seemed to suffer his mind to be entirely engrossed by thoughts of sad import, which conversation had no power to soothe.
When the party broke up, D'Alonville proposed to Ellesmere to go with him to his lodgings; where, when they arrived, he related to his English friend the purport of some dispatches which the gentlemen he had just left, had received from France; they were extremely unfavorable to their hopes, ad D'Alonville sighed as he concluded the detail. "These accounts," said Ellesmere, "are indeed discouraging, yet with how much philosophy or resignation do your friends whom we have been with endure this accumulation of evil tidings — I mean the Abbe and the two oldest gentlemen — the younger does not, I think, seem to have learned so well the difficult art of appearing cheerful when anguish is corroding the soul — If I were to indulge myself in remarks on national character, I should say, that he is affected more life an Englishman than a Frenchman."
"If you knew what he suffers as an individual," said D'Alonville, "the want of fortitude, which you justly remark, would appear more excusable, yet perhaps the Marquis de Touranges has more than his share of pride, allied to the first houses in France, and boasting of blood, second only to that of royalty, it is more difficult for him than for most others (and we have none of us found it very easy), to submit to the innovations that the revolution has made. At its commencement de Touranges was among those who resisted, with the most resolution, the concessions demanded of the nobility; when they became inevitable, he still remained near the king, to whom he was personally attached; but as he could neither approve of the continual diminution of power which he had been taught to consider as sacred, nor conceal his detestation of the democratic faction that was making such rapid strides towards the total destruction of monarchy, he soon became so obnoxious to these men that his stay was injurious to his master, and dangerous to himself; and after the 20th of June this was so evident, that he was at length prevailed upon to retire. All this is but the same destiny we have almost all of us experienced, varied only by local or domestic events; and in these respects de Touranges has particularly suffered."
D'Alonville then went on to relate what had befallen Madame de Touranges, the mother of the Marquis, and the distressing circumstance of his being unable to learn what was become of her, or of his wife and her infant. The sensible heart of Ellesmere was touched by this narrative; he not only blamed himself for having so hastily conceived some dislike to the Marques, on account of what he mistook for the reserve of haughty superiority, but felt a most earnest, though ineffectual wish to soothe the suffering of these unhappy strangers. The idea he had at first conceived of de Touranges, had deterred him from proposing to join their party; but as the cause of his apparent reserve was now explained, his inclination to do so was renewed, and he mentioned it to D'Alonville, who expressed the utmost satisfaction in the prospect of having the advantage of his company. He hastened immediately to settle their journey with two friends. The Abbé was pleased with the acquisition thus made of another travelling companion: de Touranges neither approved or opposed it; D'Alonville therefore, to whom it was left to arrange their conveyance, settled it, by hiring a sort of coach that held four persons, with conveniences without for their servants and baggage; and in this they set out on their way to Berlin, somewhat less than an hundred miles from Dresden.
Nothing worth noticing occurring on their first day's journey — Ellesmere became continually more prejudiced in favor of his young friend; and for the Abbé de St. Remi, he learned to feel veneration and esteem, without, however, being influenced by the conversation of either, or by the pity he felt for their ruined fortunes, to alter his original opinions, as to the errors of the former government of their country, or the propriety of those reforms, which, had they been carried on by reason and justice, would have rendered France, under a limited monarchy, the most flourishing and happy nation of Europe. His thorough conviction of what it might have been, only encreased the concern and disgust he felt in reflecting on what it was; but if ever any conversation on this subject arose, he concealed the former of these sentiments form his unhappy friends when they were altogether, and particularly from de Touranges, who, on their first day's journey he had observed to be so much irritated and inflamed by discourse of such a tendency held at a table d'hote, by a German who dined in their company, that a quarrel of the most alarming nature would have ensued, but for the interposition of the Abbe de St. Remi and an old Prussian officer — Ellesmere fancied that de Touranges looked upon him as a man who from the government under which he had been brought up, could not but be favorably disposed towards democracy; and he felt too much concern for the sad reverse of fortune under which De Touranges was suffering, not to make every possible allowance for him, and forbore to press any argument that might render more irritable a wounded mind.
On the second day the weather was so unfavorable that their progress was slow; and towards evening a storm of wind, with snow and rain, made it so disagreeable, and indeed dangerous (for it was quite dark before they were within three leagues of the post-house where they proposed stopping,) that they consented rather to remain at a little alehouse where they had taken shelter, than expose themselves to the danger of being overturned, in the obscurity of such a night, in a wild and mountainous country. There were in this place no beds for them; but the Abbe remarked with a smile that it was part of the vow he had taken to sleep on boards — de Touranges cared not where he laid his head, and D'Aonville D'Alonville had not been of late too much used to hard fare of every kind, not to be indifferent about a transient inconvenience. Ellesmere very justly concluded that he should not be more incommoded than his friends; and they retired in their clothes to some bundles of straw which their servants had carried up into a place which might rather be called a granary than a room; it just afforded, however, a shelter from the wind and water, and the travellers preferred it to the only room below where they could have stayed, because that room was crowded with people, among whom were some strange figures, whose occupation seemed at least equivocal; and agree in nothing but in smoaking, that room was on many accounts less eligible than the loft they had chosen.
Towards morning D'Alonville, who was impatient to get forward on his journey — arose from his straw, and found his way down a kind of ladder. He went out, and, though it was a dark and dismal morning, he roused the men who slept in the stable, entreating them to get ready as soon as they could, for he apprehended a fall of snow from the change of the wind, and was afraid that the longer they staid the more difficult they might find it to depart. Having given these orders, he returned with a design to hasten his friends; but as the ladder-like stairs, that led to the place where he left them, received very little light, and towards the top branched off in two directions, he hesitated a moment to recollect which he ought to take — then imagining he had guessed right, he proceeded to mount four or five steep steps, and opening a door, or rather a few old planks nailed together to supply the want of one, he was struck by the sight of a woman kneeling by the side of a wretched bed, where lay a human figure, on which her eyes were fixed with a look of hopeless despair. Through the disorder of a white wrapping dress, and her hair that hung loosely over her face and shoulders, D'Alonville distinguished that she was very young and not of the common rank — almost without reflection he stepped towards her; she turned towards him a countenance pale and emaciated, but still lovely, and looking surprised to behold a stranger, spoke to him in a very soft and affecting voice, but in a language of which he did not understand a syllable. The expressive tones of distress, however, needed not words to make vibrate an heart which, like D'Alonville's, had been accustomed to suffer. He hastily approached the bed, and distinguished the person who lay on it to be a man between fifty and sixty, who appeared to be extremely ill. He addressed to the young woman an enquiry in French, whether he could be of any use, or in what he could serve her. She seems to understand that he wished to assist and relieve her, and burst into tears.
The sick man, whose half closed eyes had been fixed on her face, was roused by this expression of sorrow; she spoke to him in her own language, and he turned his faint looks towards D'Alonville, who, now seeing that he noticed him, and answered in the same language, imperfectly indeed, yet so as to be comprehended, that he was a native of Poland — that having taken an active part in the late attempt of that country to regain its freedom, he had been marked for the vengeance of the powers who had now the ascendancy; and would have been imprisoned for life, if he had not, with his daughter made a precipitate escape with what little property they could save, of the greater part of which he had been robbed by a servant; and that they were now travelling towards Vienna, where they had relations; but that fatigue and anxiety having thrown him into a fever, he had lain above three weeks in this miserable house. His fever, he said, was gone, but he had lost, through weakness, the use of his limbs, and feared he should never be able to quit that place which, for himself he should not lament; but that his daughter's desolate condition —
He could not go on, but D'Alonville perfectly understood what he would say. — Here then was a being more miserable than even his friends and himself — an exile too like them — the victim of a contention, like that which desolated their country; but who had taken a different art in it. He was not less an object of compassion to the generous mind of D'Alonville; who feeling the same sentiment that actuated the gallant Sidney, as he gazed on the unhappy object before him, would have said,"Thy necessity is greater than mine."
He immediately began to assure the Polish gentleman, that whatever he could do to amend his situation should instantly be done. The voice of pity, so soothing to the sick heart, seemed to have an almost immediate effect on the unfortunate Polonese. He tried however in vain to express his gratitude, and his daughter could only weep — D'Alonville was afraid of abruptly offering money; nor did ne indeed well know in what way to administer the assistance these two unfortunate wanderers seemed so greatly in need of; but telling them he would wait upon them again in a few moments, he went to find his friend Ellesmere, whom he met upon the stairs somewhat disquieted at his absence, having been for some time vainly in search of him.
When they descended the ladder, which was not a very convenient place for such a conference, D'Alonville related in a few words the extraordinary adventure he had met with. — A lovely girl weeping over her expiring parent, in a miserable German cabaret; that parent the victim of his principles! — It was a story exactly calculated to acquire a sudden interest over the romantic mind of Ellesmere, on whom beauty in distress had always a most powerful effect; and who, though he detested the present Anarchists of France, and was impatient to draw his sword against them, had an heart attached to the true English principles, an heart detesting tyranny and injustice under whatever semblance they appeared, and ready to side with every man who dared honestly resist them. He took fire at the sketch D'Alonville gave of the melancholy scene he had been witness to; and taking it for granted the people of the house had been cruel to their unhappy guests as soon as their money had failed, he went back into the kitchen to enquire about them.
The woman of the house answered him coolly enough that the man and the girl, as she called them, had had what they wanted; but for her part she had a large family of her own to look after. They were taxed high, and were devoured by soldiers; and she could not be burthened with strangers. She was sorry for the gentleman, if he was a gentleman; but she though folks who had no money, or but little, should stay at home in their own country, and not run about to be burthensome to other people."
D'Alonville did not understand this harangue, which was delivered in German, so well as Ellesmere, who was more master of that language. He did not, however, warm as he was in his zeal for the suffering party, exclaim against the inhumanity
of his German hostess, and conclude that therefore all German hostesses were inhuman; but he reflected on a much more evident truth — how nearly the people of all countries are alike. Such he knew would probably have been the language of an alewife between London and Harwich, and of la Cabaratiere, at any little auberge between Calais and Paris. His solicitude however for the Polonese gentleman was encreased, and he entreated D'Alonville to introduce him when he returned to his chamber, that they might together discover what could be done for him. Time pressed — for the Marquis de Touranges and the Abbe were by this time earnest to depart. The former heard the story with so little sensibility that Ellesmere could only apologize for him, by supposing true what has often been asserted, that uninterrupted prosperity and great insensible to the distresses of others. Had he known more of De Touranges, he would have discovered that he was not naturally unfeeling, but that the word liberty, a word to which he imputed all the evils under which his country groaned, had a power over him like that of the fabled shield of Minerva, and turned his heart to stone. The Abbe de St. Remi had more Christian charity; he offered not only to lend the the sick man any spiritual advice which might console him, but to contribute what little was in his power to his personal necessities; and to exert the skill he had acquired in medicine towards his recovery. Ellesmere heretically thought these two last-mentioned offers the most to the purpose; but he agreed with D'Alonville that they would accept only the last; and in this no time was to be lost. D'Alonville therefore immediately returned, and proposed to the Polonese, a visit from the Abbe. — It was gratefully accepted; and though it lasted but a few moments, was highly satisfactory; for the Abbe, on his return to the two young men, assured them, that the danger in which he believed his patient to have been, was over; and that though he was still extremely weak, his recovery was retarded, by what had occasioned his illness — mental anguish; and by that hopeless lassitude which a long course of suffering occasions, even to the firmest mind. — The dread of leaving his daughter desolate and unprotected in a strange country, had been so great, that he denied himself even the few comforts he could have obtained, because he desired to reserve the little money he had left to send her back to Warsaw, where he hoped the relations of her mother would receive her, when he himself, whose politics had estranged them from him, could offend them no more. But she had positively refused to leave him and the contention between his anxiety for her, and her tenderness for him, had affected him so much, just at the moment when accident introduced D'Alonville into the room, that it gave him the appearance of being even in a more languid state than he really was.
This account redoubled the solicitude of the two young men, who now became extremely impatient to set at ease the anxious heart of a father for a daughter so deserving, by enabling him to secure her return to Warsaw. This however would probably require more time than De Touranges would be willing to spare; and when they recollected that at Berlin he had hopes of gaining some intelligence of his wife, his child, and his mother, they forgave impatience, which in any other case would have indicated want of humanity.
After a short consultation between Ellesmere, D'Alonville, and the Abbe, they agreed that the latter should go on with De Touranges to the next post town, about nine miles distant, whither they would follow in two or three hours; and that if in that time they did not come up with their friends, the Abbe and De Touranges might still proceed. D'Alonville and Ellesmere had no doubt of overtaking the carriage, by the superior speed of post-horses, on the following day; or at least before it reached Berlin.
HOR.
THE friendly interest which men of another country, and of other principles, took in his fate, and in that of his daughter, had almost an instantaneous effect on the depressed spirits of Carlowitz. When Ellesmere was by his friend D'Alonville introduced, they found him risen from his miserable couch, and sitting on his side, but too weak to support himself; he leaned against his daughter, who hung over him with the tenderest solicitude. While D'Alonville endeavoured to put an end to the attempts he made to express his gratitude, Ellesmere approached, and would have spoken to his daughter; but he was so struck by her figure, and by the expression of her countenance, that he could only murmur out a broken sentence, which he forgot she could not understand. Her father spoke to her in the Polish language; and though Ellesmere knew not what he said, he imagined he bade her attempt to speak French. Her faded cheek was for a moment tinted with a faint blush; and turning towards D'Alonville, she made an unsuccessful effort to express herself; but Ellesmere was tempted to envy him, what seemed almost a preference, and would have been himself the person in whose favor the attempt was made.
"Alexina," said her father, addressing himself to them both, "Alexina is a very young scholar in your language, gentlemen, (for he did not distinguish Ellesmere's country;) but though she is unable to say how much she is obliged to you, believe me she is sincerely sensible of you kindness. — "He then again spoke to her; and quitting him, she took up a cloak with a large hood which lay in a chair, and wrapping herself in it, so as to conceal her face as much as possible, she left the room.
Ellesmere followed her with his eyes and knew not how to help offering to assist her down the stairs or rather ladder— but fearful of offending, he continued to gaze at the door through which he had passed; and it was the repetition of her name only, that drew him from his admiration of her form, to attend to her interest, which D'Alonville already began to discuss with her father.
"Yes," said Carlowitz, "it is only on account of Alexina that my heart has failed me; for myself, I fear not death. I have affronted it in the most hideous forms; but my Alexina! — I wished to place her in the projection of the only relation I have at Vienna — and then if I live, do not imagine that I mean to pass the rest of my life in inactivity. While I have any remains of strength I must use it, though my country exists no longer."
He was proceeding with all that vehement enthusiasm which the cause that he had been engaged in defending, inspires, when recollecting the probability there was, that the principles of the persons to whom he was speaking were very different from those he was thus declaring, or perhaps reading in the countenance of D'Alonville some dissent from his opinions, he stopped — and said, "but perhaps I am speaking to those who are themselves suffering from a very different cause."
"You judge rightly," answered D'Alonville, "as to me. My friend is an Englishman; but I am, like you, an exile from my country. We will not talk however of our politics. If every man should consider his fellow man as a brother, the tie is surely strengthened between unhappy men. If I can assist you, then, your opinions will not lessen my zeal to do so. Had I been a Polonese, I might have thought and have acted as you have done. Had you been a native of France, you would have seen her monarchy exchanged for anarchy infinitely more destructive and more tyrannical, with the same abhorrence as I have done." This candid discussion of a subject which has but too often divided the most sacred connections, by the warmth of the contention it has raised, soon set the new friends mutually at ease with each other; a little plan for the conveyance of Carlowitz and Alexina to Vienna on the return of the carriage which was going on to Berlin, with D'Alonville and his friends, was soon adjusted, which, with about the value of ten guineas English, was all Carlowitz could prevailed upon to accept. To this Ellesmere insisted on contributing half, and the noble Polonese gave them an acknowledgment for it, and in order to receive it at Vienna, by bill of exchange, of which he peremptorily demanded their acceptance, as the only terms on which he would receive the money. Fatigued as he was by a long conversation, Ellesmere fancied that, under all the disadvantages of illness, and of speaking with difficulty a foreign language, there was in the countenance and manner of this stranger an uncommon portion of sense and spirit. Their business being arranged, Carlowitz expressed a wish to see his daughter, and Ellesmere with extreme eagerness flew down to find her; while D'Alonville, whom he seemed to fear had the same project, accompanied him but with a different intention. He went to make interest with the hostess, whose manners were much softened towards her sick guests, to prepare for them all a little repast, and to intercede for a better room for his Polonese friend, the little time he was still to stay at her house. While he was thus negotiating, Ellesmere had gone out in search of Alexina, who he was told had walked out. Within fifty yards of the house that stood alone near the foot of a steep hill, began a wood of birch and pine trees, with which that and the surrounding mountains were covered. A path led thither, and Ellesmere followed it, because the shelter the firs afforded made it most likely that it had been taken by Alexina. He saw her within a few paces of its entrance, leaning against a tree, her face almost veiled by her hood, and her figure by her long cloak; but yet he thought he never saw a form so graceful. He approached and spoke to her; — she put aside her veil, and discovered in the opinion of Ellesmere a face where sorrow and resignation irresistibly lent charms to feature perfectly lovely; and which acquired, by visible dejection, a grace which more than compensated for the bloom of health. — Ellesmere made her comprehend that her father wished to see her. A faint and melancholy smile told him she understood him, and she walked towards the house. Ellesmere attended her, and offered his hand as he ascended the stairs. When they reached the door of the room he would have retired, but Carlowitz saw him, and entreating him to come in he obeyed.
Alexina eagerly approached her father, who gave her his hand, which she held a moment between both her's, while he spoke to her in her native language; and, as Ellesmere imagined, related the arrangements that had been made. Her answer, from the expression with which it was accompanied, he translated to be, "I shall not go back to Warsaw, and leave you, then, my father?" — Her dark eyes were filled with tears, yet she turned them towards Ellesmere, seemed to wish she could explain how much she thought herself obliged to him, and then sat down, uttering one of those deep drawn sighs which appear to relieve the heart after the sudden removal of any oppression.
Carlowitz looked at her with so much concern and tenderness, that Ellesmere felt more than ever gratified by the reflection, that he had assisted in relieving from the anguish of threatened separation, a father and a daughter so fondly attached to each other; yet his heart was conscious of an acute pang, when he recollected that in a few moments he should lose sight of Alexina, and probably should never see her again. Carlowitz now entered into conversation with Ellesmere, as well as he could, in French (of which he was by no means master), on the happy constitution of England, and the flourishing situation to which she had arisen, even after a war which had threatened her destruction. He touched on the hopes the people of Poland had entertained of assistance from the English; and could not help remarking, how soon he had forgot the conduct of the empress of Russia towards them in their war against America; and the impolicy of her being allowed now to encrease her enormous power by the acquisition of so large a share of Poland. Ellesmere, who had never till then felt the least interest for the fate of a country which has so little influence on the politics of his own, had never considered the subject; the merits of which however Carlowitz was endeavouring to make him comprehend, when D'Alonville returned, followed by the hostess, who with much civility enquired whether they would remove into the best room she had below. This civility, the weak state of Carlowitz compelled him to refuse. He made some apologies to his friends, and besought them not to confine themselves to his room; they refused however to leave him, and a better dinner than the place seemed likely to afford, was served up. During which, Corlowitz Carlowitz gave them a slight sketch of his life, and of the events which had occasioned his expulsion from his country. As he spoke, his pale countenance became animated. His eyes flashed fire as he uttered the eulogium of the king of Poland; and his whole countenance lost its languor, while he uttered sentiments of which D'Alonville had till then had not idea, and which he found himself but little disposed to acquiesce in; while Ellesmere, to whose opinions they were more congenial, looked upon him an oracle; and felt from that, or some other cause, encreasing regret from the reflection that they were so soon to part.
Above all Ellesmere was impressed with veneration for that indifference to life which Carlowitz professed, who declared that his fears only for Alexina had tempted him to submit to flight; but that the agonies in which he saw her, the horror and dread she had of outliving him, and becoming a dependant on relations who had basely betrayed him, for their own security, had determined him to sacrifice to her, a life which could now indeed be of no use to his country.
"And when I feel the ignominy of my condition," cried he, "I will look again at Alexina, and I shall think myself again ennobled as her protector. When the idea of all I have lost recurs to me, I will remember the struggle I made to preserve it; and what I have been , and ought to be, shall console me for what I am, or may be." D'Alonville could not help remarking to himself, that the effect on his mind, of banishment and loss of property, was exactly the reverse; and, that it was what he had been and ought to be, that embittered to him every reflection on what he was, or might have been. As neither the father nor the daughter occupied his thoughts or his eyes so much as they appeared to do those of his English friend, his mind was gone back to Vienna, and he was musing, as was become his custom when left a moment to himself, on his strange destiny, when the lateness of the hour suddenly occurred to him. He had not a watch, but he requested Ellesmere to look at his, who declared, with some surprise, that it was past two o'clock. He had hardly fancied it noon. It was time to go, if they did not design to let their companions proceed quite to Berlin without them. Carlowitz was sensible of the inconvenience they had already put themselves to on his account, and entreated them to avoid those of darkness and tempest, which might too probably overtake them on their way, should they be under the necessity of following on horseback, farther than the next post-house. D'Alonville pressed their departure; but Ellesmere seemed unable to determine to go. At length, as no excuse remained for his stay, and the horses were ready at the door, the moment of bidding adieu to his two new friends could no longer be avoided. D'Alonville, who was really interested for their fate, as much as it was possible to be for persons of whom he knew so little, begged to hear of their arrival at Vienna — repeated the good wishes he had before expressed; and in a polite and easy manner took his farewell of Carlowitz, who expressed anew the warmest gratitude for all his kindness. He next approached Alexina, and with equal ease and civility took leave of her, kissing her hand and wishing her every felicity. D'Alonville then went to his horse, leaving Ellesmere to manage his adieus as he would; — they were so long, that D'Alonville became impatient, and was on the point of returning to hasten his lingering friend, when at length Ellesmere appeared, and silently mounting the horse that was waiting, proceeded for a league almost without speaking. D'Alonville took the occasion of their going slowly up an hill to mention the friends they had left, and by Ellesmere's answers, he thought he discovered more plainly what he had before suspected — that the fair Alexina had made an impression on the heart of the young Englishman; but supposing it would be no more than one of those gouts passageres, of which he had been accustomed to think so lightly, he took and opportunity slightly to rally Ellesmere, who answered him in raillery; but though it seemed as if he wished to escape from the subject, and to laugh it off, his long fits of gravity, and the deep sighs that escaped him were not calculated to destroy the notion D'Alonville insensibly led the discourse to the arrangements he had contrived for the conveyance of Carlowitz and his daughter to Vienna — and Ellesmere then said, "there is in the character of that man something very singular — he has an originality of mind that I have never met with her before. I wish I could have cultivated a farther acquaintance with him."
"And with Mademoiselle his daughter too. — I fancy my dear friend she has her part in that wish."
"I do not deny it," answered Ellesmere; "and though I cauld could not converse with her for want of language, she has, if there be any trusting to the expression of countenance, a soul as elevated as her father's, softened by the feminine virtues — did you ever see a more intelligent, a more lovely countenance?"
"Would you have me answer honestly?" replied D'Alonville. "Why then I own, that though I think Mademoiselle Carlowitz hansome, and allow her to have a very fine and graceful form, yet I have seen women, of whom the countenance was more lovely, and equally intelligent."
"My dear Chevalier," cried Ellesmere, who seemed at least as much pleased with his dissent, as if he had appeared equally fascinated, "your eyes have been accustomed to French beauty, till you have lost all taste for the great simple. I am persuaded now you would have thought Alexina perfectly lovely, had she first been pointed out to you in a box at the opera at Paris as being a foreign beauty, whom it was the rage of the day to admire. Her unadorned loveliness is in too simple, too grand a style, if I may so express myself, to please a taste vitiated by the false glare of rouge, and the fantastic aid of fashionable dress. And thus I have often observed among most men who effect ton in England, and among almost all descriptions of men in France, that their taste is governed by fashion. A woman who is cried up as the beauty of the season, is declared to be, "divine — absolutely without equal." — In a few months her novelty is gone; another matchless creature appears; and the first glides imperceptibly into oblivion, unless by some daring singularity, of dress of conduct, she can support herself a few months longer."
"You will recollect, my friend," answered D'Alonville, "that I was never regularly initiated into the great world at Paris, having only passed a few months there, at a time when the French were thinking more of politics than of the frivolous distinction of which I believe you justly enough accuse them. To what happens in London, I can still say less; but permit me to make one inequity, and let that be, whether the fair Alexina does not derive some of the extraordinary charms you find in her, from the distresses that surround her; and whether a lovely nymph, wandering amidst woods and wilds, in not peculiar charms in the eyes of my friend, who is a little, perhaps a very little, romantic?" To this Ellesmere answered, "You sometimes say to me, my friend, when I hazard a reflection or a sentiment which appears which appears to you uncommon" — 'Il faut être bien Anglois pour avoir une telle pensée;' so I now reply, 'que c'est être bien Francois que d'avoir une telle idée.' No; though it is certain that the sweet attachment of Alexina to her father gives me the highest opinion of her heart and understanding, and though she has one of those graceful and attractive forms, which is suited to adorn a landscape where nature puts on her awful and commanding features, yet I think, nay, I am sure, that the impression Alexina has made upon me, is not owing to any local circumstance. Wherever it had first been my chance to meet her, I should have been equally struck with her."
"You are really and absolutely in love, then, with this northern beauty, after an acquaintance of four or five hours?"
"In love! — Oh! no not in love I hope neither — if I made indeed as light of the matter as, "vous autres," — I might say I was, "courant d'amour," but in the sober sadness of an Englishman, I must go no farther than declaring that if Alexina has the mind she appears to have, and if I was a man of fortune, and could marry, I should prefer her to fill up my scheme of happiness before any woman I ever saw. But alas! as it is — a younger brother, whose portion is the sword, the pulpit, or the bar; and who, according to the equitable maxim adopted both in your country and mine, must scramble through the world as well as he can, that the elder branch may transmit the family estate, with only the burthens he shall himself place upon it to posterity; a younger brother has no business to think of a wife." — "And so," added he with a sigh — "we will talk no more of Alexina, at least for this time." At the end of the stage D'Alonville and Ellesmere, contrary to their expectations, overtook their companions, who had waited for them and they proceeded altogether without any occurrence worth noticing till they arrived at Berlin.
GUARINI.
HOWEVER changed might be the spirit of the government since the death of Frederic the Great, long established modes of life, and the actual preparations for another campaign, which might repair the errors of the last, still gave to Berlin the appearance of a great garrison, rather than of the capital of a kingdom. D'Alonville was soon weary of a scene which presented little else than"Man and steel; the soldier and his sword
."Many families, of whom the father's or husband's were gone or
going to the army, had retired from Berlin to pass the time of their
absence in the country, and among these was Madam Lewenstirn, the niece
of the Abbé de St. Remi, whose husband had received orders to depart
immediately for Flanders with a regiment he had raised, and who had
already taken leave of his wife, and was on the point of quitting
Berlin when the Abbé and his friends arrived there.
This, though it was what he might well have expected, was a severe mortification to the Abbê who had depended upon the open and generous character of Colonel Lewinstirn, for the most cordial reception of de Touranges, as well as of himself; and in his power he thought it might be to procure, for his unhappy friend, the information they were so anxious to obtain relative they were so anxious to obtain relative to a Count de Remesnil, who was said to have been at the Court of Berlin, and who, there was reason to believe, was the uncle of Madame de Touranges, under an assumed name. In the hurry of the moment in which they found him, Colonel Lewenstirn could do no more than recommend the Abbé and his friends to the hospitable attentions of a relation of his own, who the next day accompanied them to the persons who were the most likely to give them the information they wanted. They soon learned that an old French nobleman, calling himself the Count de Remesnil, had resided or a short time at Berlin. He had two or three ladies belonging to him; but these even the French, who knew by sight the person calling himself Remesnil, had never seen, nor could they tell of what ages the ladies were, or by what names they were called. The description they gave of Monsieur de Remesnil himself, resembled that of the person they sought; but this was not very convincing evidence, as there was nothing remarkable enough about him to assure them, that many other men of the same age might not answer the same description. Distressing, however, as this uncertainty was, such was the distracted state of mind into which de Touranges was replunged, by his hopes of finding his family being thus delayed, if not baffled, that the watchful and indefatigable friendship of the Abbé would immediately have pursued the track of this Count de Remesnil, on the uncertain vague light they had thus acquired; but on closer investigation they could not discover which way he had gone when he left Berlin. To some of the French, with whom he had been slightly acquainted, (for none had known him before they saw him there) he had talked of going to Holland; others declared he had frequently spoken of seeking an asylum at Petersbourgh; and two or three had heard him enquiring about England. But whither he had directed his course, none had enquired — for, every man occupied with troubles of his own, or schemes to escape from them, few thought of asking the intentions of a person whom they had never seen before, and might never see again. De Touranges, who had in an hundred instances acted with the same indifference himself, was now so irritated as to be ready to quarrel with every man of his country whom he met, because they had failed to procure the information which could not interest them. He felt disposed to accuse them of want of feeling, and of want of regard for their native land; and as they were so little attentive to emigrants of rank, he was certain that many of them were Jacobins, whom he was therefore inclined to run through the body. The remark is generally just, that sorrow softens, but despair hardens the heart. De Touranges experienced but little of its power to render the mind flexible: its power to irritate and inflame, he felt with but too much force. He was "angry alike at those that injured, and those that did not help; careless to please where nothing could be gained, and fearless to offend where nothing farther was to be dreaded
." In this disposition of mind, the soothing friendship, or the
calm reasoning, of the Abb—, equally lost their effect, and his
attachment for the unfortunate de Touranges was often put to the
severest proof. It was in vain he represented to his distracted
friend, that the paroxysms of passion to which he thus yielded, might
encrease, but could not alleviate his calamities; and that a plan
regularly pursued, would be infinitely more conducive to the object so
near his heart. But after being embroiled in two or three quarrels,
and exposing himself to the disagreeable probability of receiving an
order to quit Berlin, he took the sudden resolution of returning to
Vienna, and throwing himself into some of those corps of French which
yet remained on the frontiers. He found that the Abbé de St. Remi had
received an invitation from his niece Madame Lewinstirn, to make her
residence his home, and that nothing but his reluctance to quit him,
prevented his accepting such an offer. A young woman, in the absence
of her husband, could not prevail upon the Abbé to leave him, after
long arguments upon the subject, he resolved at least to put an end to
his friends difficulties on his account; and having appeared for a day
or two more calm, and to be debating on what he should do, he suddenly
departed in the night with his servant putting into a packet directed
to St. Remi, more than half the money he had left, together with a long
letter, in which he declared to him, that any pursuit of him would be
in vain, but that he would write where ever he might be. The excellent
heart of St. Remi was extremely affected, both by his friend's
departure, and the reasons he gave for it; but he had only to
acquiesce, knowing the disposition of the Marquis too well to have
attempted to pursue him, had the means been in his power. —
D'Alonville and Ellesmere did whatever was possible to console this
respectable man, who was not insensible of their attention. In a few
days after the departure of de Touranges, Madame Lewenstirn came to
Berlin on purpose to carry her uncle with her to her retirement. He
was then compelled to bid adieu to his two young friends. To
D'Alonville he gave much excellent advice for his future conduct, and
found him more willing to receive it, than the impetuous and irretable
irritable de Touranges. He made D'Alonville promise to write to him;
and parted him with concern truly paternal. When he was gone,
Ellesmere and D'Alonville, who had no longer any motive to stay at
Berlin, prepared to depart also. The latter had again the whole world
before him, without any particular motive to determine him to any part
of it; unless it were those which had for some time made him wish to
hazard a return to France. His English friend, Ellesmere, was the only
person who now seemed interested for his fate: —with him he canvassed
every project for the future as it arose in his mind; and every
conversation ended with Ellesmere's persuading him to go with him to
England. "If you afterwards determine to go to France," said he,
"though to me it appears the wildest and most impractical scheme
imaginable — from whence can you go with so much convenience as from
England? though I have not, my friend, an house to offer you, being
only a younger brother, and not knowing what is to be my own destiny,
yet it may be in my power to be of some use to you; and if events
should turn out more favourable than they at present promise, you may
not be sorry to pass a few weeks in England on you way back to your own
country." D'Alonville shook his head sorrowfully. "Ah, my dear Sir,"
replied he, "you should not hold out to me visions so flattering, and
so little likely to be realized. Once indeed I thought to have visited
England as a traveller, for pleasure and instruction. Now, as what am
I to appear there? — As one of those unhappy strangers, whose numbers,
notwithstanding the generosity of your country, are already a subject
of complaint." Recollections of those happy days, when every object
wore for him aspects so different, now crowded on his mind; but
Ellesmere, whose friendship for him was equally warm and sincere, would
not leave him to these melancholy reflections, but appeared so
sincerely desirous of their remaining together, and offered so many
reasons why he should go to England, that D'Alonville at length
determined upon it. After staying about ten days at Berlin, they
quitted it, and took their road to Hamburgh, where they intended to
embark for England. On their way the conversation frequently turned on
the Polish friends, of whom Ellesmere as frequently expressed the
utmost solicitude to hear — absence, and the little probability there
was that he should ever see her again, had not diminished the tender
admiration that he felt for Alexina; and when he indulged himself be
talking of her in a rapturous style, D'Alonville frequently rallied him
on the figure he would make among his country women, should it be known
of him, that he had left his heart with a Polonese, whom he met
wandering in a German forest. Ellesmere, in his turn, accused his
friend of insensibility; "or rather," said he, "you deny the existence
of those charms in Alexina, which surely no man can deny, because you
have in your memory all resemble. — Ah Chevalier! you are not I
believe exempt from that taste in gallantry that has been imputed to
your country. This charming Madame D'Alberg — this Adriana of whom I
have heard you speak — Confess my friend, that for this imperial
beauty, you feel that preference which you wonder at my feeling for the
lovely pilgrim.'
"No, upon my honor," answered D'Alonville very gravely, "I never was so ungrateful, or so much of coxcomb, as to think of Madame D'Alberg otherwise than as a sister, to whom I owe the greatest obligations — nor do I recollect calling her by the familiar name of Adriana, unless when I have been repeating to you, conversations between her mother and her, or her mother and me; and I assure you, my dear Ellesmere, you might as well suspect me of a penchant for the respectable Baroness de Rosenheim, as for her daughter."
"But this Theresa, to whom I saw you writing the other day?"
"Theresa is the confidential servant of Madame D'Alberg. It is by her means only, that my friends can hear of me. Their generous solicitude for my safety, induced them to propose my writing, by directing my letters to her. I have obeyed them but only once since I bade them adieu. I do not mean often to avail myself even of this permission, left it should be attended with inconvenience to them." D'Alonville, however, never renewed the mention of his German friends without a sigh; and Ellesmere, though he forebore to repeat his suspicions of his being attached to Madame D'Alberg, when he saw those suspicions really gave him pain, could not help continuing to believe, that his young friend had given to the German Count more cause of uneasiness than he was willing to allow.
Ellesmere sometimes talked of the persons to whom he hoped to have an opportunity of introducing him in England. "We will go down together to the old hall in Staffordshire," said he; "for my father and mother are worthy kind of folks enough, and are always glad to see me, and any friend I bring with me for a month or so. As to my sisters, they are good girls — not very handsome; and they had been educated, except the eldest, almost entirely in the country; so that they are not of the haut ton. You, who have lived, I suppose, among women of the first style in France, will be in no danger of falling in love with them, even though you are not by your predeliction in favor of some other, secured from the attractions of my fair country women."
I might be in imminent danger," answered D'Alonville, if that were all my security, and especially as I have heard so much of the beauty of English ladies; but alas! my friend, the unfortunate exiles who now seek an asylum in your country, are not likely to engage in gallantries; or whatever others may be, I believe I dare venture to assure you, that I shall never so far violate the laws of hospitality in the house of my friend's father, should I be admitted there. Every woman will have my respect; but none, whatever may be their charms, will, I trust, occasion me to forget what I owe to the confidence and hospitality that admits me." "You take the matter too seriously," replied Ellesmere. "If the girls were handsome, I don't know why you should not like them as well as another; or why you should not say so; but perhaps you are determined, my friend, to shew an uncontrovertible instance of what has been often asserted within these two years, that the French and the English nations have changed characters — you, a volatile Frenchman, seem at one-and-twenty to be a stoic; I, phlegmatic Englishman two years older, am falling desperately in love every step I take, with some nymph or other."
"The change, if it be one, "answered D'Alonville, "is easily
accounted for; at least as far as relates to us, as individuals; you
may freely indulge the fallies of your imagination, for you are secure
of being received, after all you egarements, by family who love
you, in a country where security and prosperity await you; but I must
be indeed more naturally volatile, than the most volatile of my
countrymen ever were even in the proudest days of France, if the
reverse of fortune which I have experienced, did not check my levity.
I had a father, a brother, fortune, friends, and prospects of a still
more brilliant destiny. I now blush to be called a Frenchman; and if
ever I enter that country again; what shall I be destined to behold!
"Dans des fleuves de sang, tant d'innocent planges
"Le fer de tous cotés dévastant cet empire
"Tous ces champs de carnage."
Such," continued D'Alonville, are the spectacles which continually
haunt my imagination — and I own to you, embitter my existence so
entirely, that it is hardly worth having." Their journey passed
without any remarkable occurrence. They reached Hamburgh on the last
day of December, and embarking on board a merchant ship which lay ready
to sail, arrived in the usual course of time, and without any
remarkable occurrence in the Thames — where, quitting the vessel, they
took a post-chaise, which in a few hours set them down at an hotel in
London.
COWPER.
THE avenues that lead from the banks of the river to the immense capital of the British empire, are ill calculated to impress a stranger with the idea that he is entering the first city in the world. It was almost night-fall when D'Alonville passed through the city; and at such a season of the year, and such a time of the evening, every object appeared to him as dark and dreary as his own destiny. Though accompanied by Ellesmere, he had, on his landing experienced some of that behaviour by which the lower class of people in England disgrace themselves in their conduct towards foreigners — and while the mob had abused both D'Alonville and Ellesmere as Frenchmen on their going on shore, the authorized enqueries of the Custom-house, evidently indicated unusual suspicion and mistrust. It was at the period when every foreigner was suspected of being a Jacobin, and when there were undoubtedly many agents of that society sent round Europe, at once to inform their club of the disposition of other countries, and to blow up every spark of spirit, resembling that which had occasioned in their own so dreadful a conflagration. To the antipathy which the inferior class of the English have been taught to entertain against every other nation, but particularly against the French, together with the numbers that had lately taken shelter in England, was now added doubts, left every foreigner was an incendiary; and the assurances of Ellesmere, on behalf of his friend, were hardly sufficient to secure him from molestation. To a stranger, so imperfectly acquainted with the language, as to be unable to follow their rapid dialogue, the loud tones, and rough language used on such occasions, seems doubly harsh and menacing; the specimen of national hospitality with which D'Alonville was greeted on his first touching English ground, was not very flattering, no much calculated to raise his depressed spirits.
The unceasing attention, however, of his friend, who would not go to his usual lodgings, but remained at the hotel with him, and the cheerfulness and neatness of every thing around him, a good supper, and an excellent bed, reanimated in some degree the weary wanderer; and the next morning, while Ellesmere wrote to his friends in Staffordshire, D'Alonville found himself disposed to give to the Abbé de St. Remi, a much more favorable description of England and Englishmen, than he had been inclined to do the evening before.
It was at this period, that the cruel mockery of trying the injured and insulted King of France was carrying on at Paris; and though nobody then imagined that the Convention would have been so impolitic as to have committed an action which, without answering any possible purpose, made enemies of every considerable power of Europe; yet, while the master to whom his father's life had been dedicated, to whom he had himself sworn allegiance, was suffering the ignominy of being arraigned as a criminal, and while public expectation fearfully waited the event. D'Alonville did not think it consistent for one of his nation, and in his situation, to appear in public places; he declined therefore the pressing instances of Ellesmere, who was eager to shew him whatever was most worth seeing in London, and when his friend at his earnest entreaty left him of an evening to join his acquaintance, he remained at the hotel, where he had but too much time to meditate on his situation.
Every day indeed in which he passed through the streets of London, gave him occasion for "meditation even to madness." He saw numbers of his country men thrown from every comfort of life, on the bounty of a nation, which, by an effort of generosity, conquered, or at least concealed, their ancient enmity, to send them assistance. Yet while the English with one hand rescued, with the other they seemed disposed to draw the sword against a whole people, of which the mass appeared to be sullied with crimes unknown before in the history of mankind. To the common people of England, who have little means of distinguishing, all foreigners were formerly considered as Frenchmen. They now heard of the atrocities committed by the French as a nation, and having still less the power of discrimination, involved every one of that nation in universal condemnation; adding to their long rooted national hatred, the detestation raised by these horrors, of which every day brought some new detail. This made London an abode extremely uneasy to D'Alonville. He knew that of the English nation, it now might be said, in respect to its conduct towards his countrymen, as was side of one of its most illustrious literary characters, of whose tenderness of heart and harshness of manners so much has been related
— "If all he says is rough, all he does is gentle."And that
while he was hissed and insulted in the streets of London, there was
hardly an opulent, or even easily-circumstanced family in the houses
that formed those streets, but what had contributed to relieve the
necessities of the French, who had been thrown destitute on their
shore; yet was there so much pain in every reflection dejection every
hour encreased; nor could he sometimes help asking himself, as he sat
alone of an evening. What he had to do in England? What he had to do
in London?
Alas! these questions served only to introduce another — "What had he to do any where?" Nothing, in truth, but to return to the Continent, and enter again into the army, or to endeavour to get into France, disguised and unknown; there to join those, who, revolted by the infamous measures that had lately been taken, were secretly endeavouring to re-establish their dethroned monarch.
This last part appeared to D'Alonville the most desirable: he wrote, therefore, to the Marquis de Magnevilliers, (for the communication between the two countries was yet open) couching his letter in such terms as he thought least likely to be understood, should it be intercepted; directed under a feigned name; and giving him, with the same precautions, an address where he might be heard of in London; and determining to wait no longer in England than till he could obtain an answer, which might serve as a guide to his future conduct, he readily accepted the continual invitation of Ellesmere, (which was warmly repeated in letters his friend received from Sir Maynard and Lady Ellesmere;) and agreed to go with him to the family seat in Staffordshire.
D'Alonville had been introduced during his short stay in London, to Mr. Ellesmere, the elder brother of his friend, and his wife, Lady Sophia. But though they were well bred, and spoke French like people of education, D'Alonville was never tempted to renew the visit, though he received a civil common place invitation. Mr. Ellesmere seemed emmersed in politics, and gave very little attention to whatever passed that had nothing to do with his pursuits. His wife was a fine lady, and rather a prettyish woman: she passed her mornings in going form shop to shop, occupied in the study of uniting two objects which do not easily assimilate — shew and economy. — It was necessary for Lady Sophia to be well dressed, to have every thing in the most fashionable style, and even to be quoted as a model of elegance for the imitation of others; but as the finances of her husband, (though the whole family were sacrificed to the splendor of his establishment,) were by no means equal to the disbursement necessary to this end, if it were to be obtained only of the most expensive devisers of fashion, Lady Sophia condescended to encounter, several times in the week, the thick atmosphere of the City, or Holborn-hill, and the materials thus purchased, were, by her own ingenuity, aided by that of a female cousin and her own maid, so well arranged, that for appearance, she was allowed to rank high in the list of fashion. But as from his pursuits, her husband had acquired a set of ideas peculiar to the persons he lived among, Lady Sophia had her head filled with the names of warehouses and millenary rooms, cheap hosiers, and places where contraband dealers secretly disposed of the articles of their illicit commerce. Such speculations were so constantly in her mind, that she had hardly time to qualify herself for the small talk of the day; but this was usually supplied for her by the female cousin, who possessed every talent and every accomplishment; who was the model of fashion and the oracle of wit, understood all sciences and all languages, and lived only among people of the very first world, and foreigners of distinction. D'Alonville did not happen to meet this combination of all that was admirable and attractive; but heard from Lady Sophia, how concerned she was, that Miss Milsington was engaged that evening to dine with her aunt, the Duchess of —, to meet the Duke of —, and a long list of ambassadors and plenipos. D'Alonville cared very little for the disappointment, nor did he recollect the name, when talking with his friend Ellesmere, as they travelled together towards Stafford, of the days they had passed in London, and the people they had seen. Ellesmere exclaimed against the generality of the women. "What moppets they are," said he. "Is there one among the dressed dolls we met the other day at dinner at my brother's, or those who formed the circle in the evening, that a man who has five ideas, can never think of a second time? Can any human being be less rational than my sister-in-law, Lady Sophia? And yet these women are what are called accomplished."
"And I dare say they are so," replied D'Alonville; "and surely some of them — many of them must be allowed to be handsome."
"Yes, your French taste perhaps may call them so; and that my dear friend is the very fault I find with your taste. Their beauty is mere gilding and painting, like the fitting up of your rooms; and for their accomplishments — the very name of them disgusts me."
"Really, my good friend," answered D'Alonville, "if I did not know you so well as I do, I should suspect that, in this dissenting from the general opinion, you affected singularity. — What are then the accomplishments which you admire?"
"Oh! not what are called so by courtesy; not playing a dozen lessons on a harp or piano-forte, which interrupt all conversation, and tire the unfortunate hearers to death; not painting a rose an hearts-ease, which, if one did not know them by prescription, might as well be a piony and an auricula; not speaking a few phrases of French with a broad English accent, and calling every foreigner Mounshere, as I heard one of those Miss Westwoods call you; girls that are said to be well educated, though I think them hateful, little, formal, conceited things!" Oh! deliver me from such accomplishments!"
"Well," said D'Alonville, "but this Mademoiselle whose name I did not hear enough to remember — the lady of whom Lady Sophia said so much."
"Aye, Miss Milsington. What, your curiosity was raised, my good friend, by the mention of Miss Milsington! — No, I will not attempt it, for it is impossible to describe her; nor would I diminish, by giving you a foretaste of what she is, the pleasure it must, I think, give you to see, for you will probably see her one day or other, a non descript in the female world."
"But is she handsome?"
"Beauty you know depends upon taste."
"Let me put the question in another manner. — do you think her handsome?"
"She is not very young," answered D'Alonville, smiling, and evading the question; "but that if you retain the taste established not many years since in France, may diminish none of her perfections in your eyes."
"The lady," said D'Alonville, "appears to be not more a favorite than those we have already canvassed."
"Yet her accomplishments I do not deny," continued Ellesmere. "She certainly speaks your language like a native of France; understands and speaks Italian; is so much mistress of music as to compose; and, as far as I know, executes every other lady-like science, in their respective lines, like an artist. Yet you see that, highly allied, and living always among people of fashion, and tout paitrie, to borrow an expression which my own language does not furnish, with all these graces, Miss Milsington is unmarried; a proof that I am not singular in my opinion of her, though I believe I am extremely singular in having the courage to own it."
"In a word" said D'Alonville, "she is not at all like the beautiful Polonese, Alexina?"
"Alexina!" replied Ellesmere, "Alexina! by heavens there is no more resemblance between them, than between the Midecean Venus, and one of those cherry-checked figures, clad in red and green, which a Jew carries about on a board."
"La comparison est un peu fort," cried D'Alonville.
On their arrival late in the evening, at Eddisbury-Hall, the seat of Sir Maynard, they found a group assembled of very different characters from those that Ellesmere had treated with so much severity.
Sir Maynard Ellesmere was now turned sixty. In his person he resembled the idea given in the old Ballad of "The old Courier of the Queens ;" and in his manners he observed much of the formality and ceremony now so generally exploded. Though he had been disappointed in his views of aggrandizing and enriching his house, by some of those comfortable sinecures which make up to so many noble families for the prodigality or unrequited zeal of their ancestors, he was still the most loyal of country gentleman, and held in utter abhorrence, all who did not implicitly believe in the infallibility of powers and princes. His detestation of all such persons was supposed to be considerably augmented, since a neighbouring estate, larger than his own, had been purchased by a rich Dissenter, who, from a very humble origin, had risen to great wealth, by being concerned in a manufacture in an adjoining county. Though no intercourse had ever subsisted between the two houses, so great was the enmity Sir Maynard bore the proprietor of this estate, that he would not suffer his family to notice any persons around them, who visited this obnoxious Presbyterian; and dismissed the apothecary, whose ancestors had for two generations felt the pulse of the Ellesmere family, because he had been too assiduous in paying his court to the new comers, and had made his visits at Eddisbury Hall, during a fit of the rheumatism, to which Lady Ellesmere was subject, with less alacrity, as Sir Maynard fancied, than he used to do when his attention was not divided with this opulent patient. In other respects, Sir Maynard was a good neighbour, and affected popularity. His table was more hospitable than his fortune could with prudence allow; and he made a very respectable figure as chairman of the sessions, and foreman of the grand jury. He was a good master, and his servants grew old in his service and as a husband and a father, he had through life acquitted himself well: the only error he had committed being perhaps sacrificing too much to have no favorable effect on the destiny of his five other children. Lady Ellesmere was one of those women to whom might be applied, with great truth, the epithet which usually means nothing — that of a very good sort of woman. She had been handsome in her youth without being vain; and though she brought Sir Maynard a good fortune, being a co-heiress, she had resigned with great cheerfulness her house in town, and, when it became necessary to retrench their expences, retired to the country, where she had supplied, as well as she could, to her three daughters, the deficiencies which inevitably happened in their education from want of masters which only London could supply. But though she had been well educated herself, she was not a great proficient in what are called accomplishments; and the instructions she gave were rather useful than ornamental — such as were likely to make her daughters good wives to country gentlemen, if country gentlemen had been what they once were. For such wives, however, it did not appear that there now existed any demand. Miss Ellesmere was in her twenty-seventh year — without being very handsome she had an agreeable countenance, and a genteel figure; but there was an air of melancholy about her, which was imputed to a disappointment she had met with a few years before, when a marriage between her and a young clergyman had been broken off upon Sir Maynard finding it impossible to fulfil, in regard to her fortune, the engagement he at first seemed willing to enter into on behalf of his daughter. Miss Mary, the second daughter, a year younger than D'Alonville's friend, was a sprightly girl of two and twenty; who did not take much pains to conceal the reluctance with which she should wither on the virgin thorn, only that her elder brother might have a few thousands less to pay out of the family estate. Though she was not hansome, there was something smart and piquant in her whole appearance; and at the public meetings of the country, where she had within the last eighteen months been seen (for Lady Ellesmere kept her as long as she could from coming out, as it is called) she had been enough the object of admiration to make her long to try her fortune in London. — For this purpose she had imagined a little plan to procure an invitation from Lady Sophia; but she had failed, as Lady Sophia seemed not to like either the trouble of expence of introducing her husband's sisters into circles, where their appearance could not be supported by their father, but by lessening his allowance to his eldest son. Miss Mary, therefore, was compelled to remain the belle of rural balls; and to limit her present hopes of conquest to the very few young men who were within twenty miles. Her younger sister, Theodora, was about eighteen; but being not tall, and very fair, she passed for at least three years younger; and was dressed and treated as a child. The younger brother of the family, who was designed by Sir Maynard for the church, had been just entered at Oxford on leaving Eaton College; but he was now at home, for the festivals of the Christmas recess, and those which celebrate the commencement of the new year, were not yet over, when Edward Ellesmere introduced to the family thus described, his friend the Chevalier D'Alonville.
SHAKESPEARE.
SIR Maynard Ellesmere received the foreign friend of his son with the hospitality of an English gentleman, and the politeness of a courtier of fifty years ago. He had almost entirely forgotten his French; but he tried in favor of D'Alonville's supposed ignorance of English, to recover such common phrases as he could recollect, which did not however much accelerate the conversation. There was a native and simple civility about D'Alonville, which had not yet been spoiled by the affectation of the day. He neither wearied his friends with bows and fine speeches, or, as is now more usual, sat absent or yawning. Sir Maynard was pleased with his manner, and what Edward Ellesmere had related to him of his tender and affectionate attendance on his father confirmed this empression in his favor. — When, therefore, Sir Maynard discovered that he understood English, he found great pleasure in conversing with him; expressed his approbation of his political sentiments; and the first day at dinner made him drink eternal confusion to all Dissenters, Roundheads and Sans Culottes. D'Alonville had no very clear notion of what the two first were; but imagining by their being joined to the other, that they might be the English species of the same genius, he swallowed as much wine as Sir Maynard thought necessary to direct, towards their extirpation. When these potations were at their height, Edward Ellesmere contrived to glide off, for though Sir Maynard did not drink, according to the English meaning of the word, yet there was sometimes a period after dinner, when he became extremely eloquent, and insisted, somewhat at large, on his great services to government; the sacrifices he had made, and the hardship he thought it, to be discarded after a life so loyally passed, and duties so ably fulfilled. All this was very true; but Edward Ellesmere had heard it so often, that he left his friend, to whom it had at least the advantage of novelty, to listen to it alone, and went up to a little study which had been fitted up for him near his own room, where his second sister presently came to him.
"Well, Mary," said he as she entered, "have you examined what I have brought you from London? — Tell me, have I fulfilled all my commissions well?"
"You are a dear soul," answered Miss Mary; "and the things, particularly the bonnets, are divine. What a sweet cloak you have brought mama — only I think it too young for her."
"Oh! as to that, it was no affair of mine, you know. Lady Sophia did condescend to order that; but for your millinery, and Elizabeth's, and Theodora's, she declared that she could as soon fly, as give any attention to all those things; for she was in the midst, not preparing herself for the birth-day (for you know she does not go to court) but of superintending the dresses of I know not how many Lady Frances's and Lady Caroline's, whose names she ran over. There was the Miss Milsington with her, and I would not have staid five minutes longer in the room to have been made a peer; so I even took D'Alonville with me, and we went about among the smart milliners, and chose your fineries ourselves. — I believe we have exceeded my order a little in point of expence; but if my mother should think it too much, I must manage the difference as well as I can, though I assure you, my dear Molsy, I am come back the poorest traveller in the three kingdoms." "Oh, Ned," answered Miss Mary; "you are such a good creature, that I want to have you rich — and I want to send an heiress for you. Do you know we have been all fancying you might carry off this little nabobess that has just now made her appearance. She is really pretty — she is to be at the ball on Tuesday, and we long to have you contrive to engage her."
"Chimeras!" cried Ellesmere. "I promise thee, my sweet Mary, that I shall never marry a nabobess, or an heiress of any description. A pair of colours, and the honor of being shot at by Messieurs les Patriots, is, I believe, my decided destination; but you don't tell me what you think of my friend — is he not a very fine young fellow?"
"Y-e-s," answered the lady slowly, and only as half assenting; "he is hansome — that is, I should think him a very handsome man, perhaps, if he were not a Frenchman." "And does that single circumstance," cried Ellesmere laughing, "change your opinion of his person? Alas! my sister is it not a little owing to the circumstances under which you see him, rather than to his country, that makes him appear in a light so little advantageous? I would not have D'Alonville's figure, and a French dukedom, in your way, Mary." "No, " said she, hesitating, "'tis not that I assure you — but somehow, I don't like foreigners."
"Your somehow," replied her brother, "is a word of great force and effect; but however we will not argue this matter any farther, Molsy, for I do not want my friend to be in love with you, nor you in love with my friend. We men are no great judges of one another, it is true; but I assure you, that had I a favourite nymph, without your happy prejudice of not liking a foreigner somehow, I should not introduce to her my friend D'Alonville; nor should I have brought him down hither, had I not known that there was nothing to fear for you my cold pensive nun Elizabeth; for who are looking out for a fortune and a title, and besides do not like foreigners somehow — nor fort he little snow-drop, Theodora." "Theodora! indeed," exclaimed Miss Mary — "It is curious to name that child, as thinking of, or being thought of by a lover — Mama would be mightily delighted to have such stuff put into her head — she is safe indeed — yes, I think so!"
"Nay be not angry, sister Mary; Theodora shall have no lover till she is forty, if you are not disposed of first — so let us be friends again, and go down to tea in my mother's dressing room."
On their arrival they found D'Alonville already seated between lady Ellesmere and her daughter, and assisting the latter to make tea. Lady Ellesmere endeavoured to shew him all the civility in her power; for her heart, naturally good, was interested for every body in distress; she had at length been made to comprehend that he was a gentleman who had left his country in hopes of returning to re-instate his dethroned king; and seeing his situation in this light, she felt for him pity and respect; but to the strange scenes that had been passing for so long a time in France, her curiosity had till now been very little directed. She was one of those women, who content with an home prospect, never risk the sobriety of their understanding, by attempting the giddy heights of science. Kings and politicians occupied her attention no otherwise than when she read of the places they had to give; she wished her son Ellesmere, the great object of her ambition, had one of them; but of despotic government, of limited monarchy, or republicanism, she had not a single idea; and never knew from whence originated the revolution in France, of which, without ever attending to it, she had been hearing for four years. Sir Maynard had told her several times, but she always forgot; " and was indeed as much a poco curante, as Mrs. Shandy herself, in a thousand things about which half the world was running mad.
But however indifferent she might be to what passed at a distance, in the scene immediately near her she took the liveliest interest. She bore the most perfect good will to the generality of her neighbours, except always the rich Presbyterian, whom she hated as much as it was her nature to hate any one; though why she was to hate him, except that he was rich, and an upstart of yesterday, she never understood; for of the tendency which Sir Maynard supposed this man, and all his sect, had to republican principles, she had no notion — but thought it quite a sufficient cause of dislike, that such a man, who was only a tradesman, had a large house, a fine estate, and all the luxuries which ought exclusively to belong to people of birth; every other family around them paid them some sort of deference; and Lady Ellesmere had pleasure in promoting meetings, where her daughters were the first in rank, and looked up to as the leaders of fashion. As the obnoxious neighbour was from these sociable parties carefully excluded, none disputed with the Ellesmere family the prominence in birth, beauty, elegance, or wealth; and the young ladies usually returned satisfied with every thing but the chance these meetings gave them of changing their names — year after year they had passed in the same dull succession. The same dances, the same faces, the same conversation, had regularly been danced, looked at, and heard, since Miss Ellesmere was fourteen. Her unfortunate attachment had been formed during a visit in Oxfordshire, and it was now the source of that languor and indifference which gave her the appearance of being haughty and reserved: Miss Mary, younger and more sanguine, was already wearied by the same scene but now the calling out of the militia, the arrival of the only daughter of a rich East Indian on a visit to a neighbouring family, and some other strangers coming among them, together with the return of her second brother from abroad, contributed to animate her spirits, and to reconcile her to another winter passed in the country, while her mother, who began to fear that her eldest daughter might never marry, was very anxious to have Mary appear to the best advantage; and was now occupied in the various arrangements necessary for a ball at a neighbouring town, which was to take place on the following day save one.
Lady Ellesmere had heard that all the French were great
dancers, and she concluded that D'Alonville would be very happy at a
ball. She talked therefore to him of this great event, as if it had
been an affair of weight enought enough to interest all the world; and
observed, albeit unused to observe, that he heard her without any
expressions of satisfaction. She was still more surprised, when
Ellesmere told her, his friend had no intention of going, not thinking
it proper for a native of France to appear at a place of public
entertainment, while so many of his countrymen were exposed to the
greatest distress, and his sovereign arrigned arraigned before a
tribunal of his subjects. Of these kind of sentiments Lady Ellesmere
had no idea. She could not be made to understand, why a young man
should shun an amusement, when his doing so could not remedy the evils
he lamented: — she did not consider, that to a stranger, an assembly
of people who he never saw before, and might never see again, was
wholly indifferent — but thus it is, that those who are not in habits
of reflecting, or of mingling in various scenes of life, nothing is so
difficult as to enter into the sentiments of others, and consequently
nothing so rare as to see people do as they would be done by. — Lady
Ellesmere, though nothing would have alarmed her more than to suppose a
young man situated as D'Alonville was, and of another country, and
another religion, should presume to think of one of her daughters; yet
was not pleased that he shewed no ambition to recommend himself to
them. Miss Mary, though she would have preferred a young Ensign in the
militia, who was heir to a good fortune, for a partner, was yet
mortified that she should not have an opportunity of shewing the
handsome foreigner to the neighbouring Misses, and of shewing too that
her charms had equal influence on men of all nations. But being no
more able to comprehend than her mother, that a man of D'Alonville's
age and figure would decline an amusement without some very good
reason, she took it into her head that he had conceived partiality for
her sister Theodora, and had an intention of passing the afternoon with
her. Her indignation was roused by the very idea — and she
determined, if such was his project, to defate it, by directing the
servants to send the French gentleman supper in at eleven o'clock —
and procuring from her mother a strict charge to the old woman, who had
acted at once as nurse and governess in the family to the younger
children, not to let Miss Theodora go down. D'Alonville handed the
ladies into their carriage, and returned with great punctuality, the
low bows and solemn apologies which Sir Maynard made for the indecorum
of leaving him — while he shook his friend Edward by the hand, and in
French, in an half whisper, he bade him try to find in the fortune of
the young heiress, about whom his sisters had been rallying him, a
panacea for the wound which he had received from a certain pair of dark
eyes in the woods of Bohemia. When the carriages drove away,
D'Alonville returned melancholy and pensive to his friend's little
book-room, where he desired he might pass the evening. It was the
first time he had been alone for some weeks, for he could hardly fancy
himself so in the noise and hurry of London, where, though nothing
amused him, every thing distracted his attention. He felt relieved by
being now for a few hours left to his own reflections: for the extreme
civility of Sir Maynard, the questions of the ladies, and even the
attentions of his friend, were sometimes oppressive to him; and since
his three days residence at Eddisbury-hall, he had once or twice almost
involuntarily repeated, "Encore si je pouvois libre dans mon malheur,"
"Par des larmes au moins, soulager ma douleur."
He was no sooner alone, than he drew from his pocket a letter he had that day received from the Abbé de St. Remi. It gave a most melancholy account of the situation of many French with whom D'Alonville was acquainted, and particularly of the unfortunate de Touranges, who had written to him, the Abbé, in a manner so expressive of the state of his mind, "that I am," said the good man, more than ever uneasy about him; and though I possess her the tranquillity which I cannot hope for, if I return again to the seat of war, it seems to me, my dear Chevalier, to be my duty to follow the fate of my unhappy pupil. He has been engaged from the faults of a temper naturally impetuous, and now irritated by misfortune and disappointment, in two or three quarrels, which are not only of very ill consequence to himself, but injurious to the emigrant French in general — who are every where received with suspicion and mistrust, and who cannot be too careful not to offend even the prejudices of the nations whose hospitality they claim — you will not suspect me of a disposition to blame my own nation, yet less to discover faults in the character of a man, to the forming of whose youth I have dedicated so many years of my life, and of whose maturity I formed such sanguine hopes; but adversity so unexpected and so heavy, how few can sustain? You, my dear Chevalier, are one of those that, disappointed as I am, in beholding the ravage it makes on the mind of de Touranges, I still believe will nobly sustain the severest trails — and to you, assured of being heard, I will say, in the words of Cicero,
"I would not omit this opportunity of entreating and exhorting you to bear your afflictions as becomes a man of your distinguished spirit and fortitude: in other words, let me conjure you to support with resolution those common vicissitudes of fortune, which no prudence can prevent, and for which no mortal is answerable."
"The time must come, my friend, when heaven shall avenge its cause. — Dark as our prospects now are, the clouds will disappear — even the cruel persecution of our unhappy monarch, will produce a favorable change in our affairs — the power usurped and abused, that has brought him to a trial, must, whether it acquits of condemns him, find it has gone too far. They will find it impossible to imprison him and his family for their lives; and that they dare not consummate their crime by taking his life, lest the indignation of the people should conquer their fears; for be assured that by terror only the populace has been restrained, and that the atrocities that have been committed have so astonished and intimidated them, that they have suffered pass as their actions, the villainy of a hired bandits . That calm dignity with which Louis XVI. endures the unworthy treatment these monsters load him with; and their failing, as they evidently do, in supporting the most material of those charges which in this mockery of a trial they bring against him, will have its effects.
Our king has been sometimes ill advised — The softness, or if you will, the mild indolence of his temper, occasioned his yielding too easily to the judgement of people, whose understanding was inferior to his own; and to opinions given almost always from interested, and generally from wicked motives; but to repeat an expression, which an Englishman used to me the other day from his favourite Shakespeare, he is "A man more sinned against than sinning."He never meant ill to the people; he was no tyrant, as he has been absurdly called. — The fortitude with which he has borne reverse of fortune beyond example, proves that his conscience acquits him — for what, my friend, can in such bitter moments lend courage to the sufferer, but the consciousness of not having merited the evils under which we suffer? I quote on this occasion some lines from an author; do not love, but they are applicable."Quand le ciel en colere
"De ceux qu'il persecute a comble la misere
"Il les foutient souvent dans le sein des douleurs
"Et leur donne uncourage egal a leur malheurs."
After all this, my young friend, which should serve as a
preparation against the worst news you can hear as an individual, I
venture to tell you that I know from undoubted authority, your brother,
who ought to bear the respectable name of De Fayolles, and to be any
where rather than where he is, is now one one of the most violent
leaders of the faction who are deluging with blood our unhappy country,
and appears under the name of La Fosse. These are times when men of
sense must make up their minds to bear domestic as well as public
misfortunes. Alas! the former are almost always the necessary
consequence of the latter.
"I believe you have regard enough for me to bear with a little
egotism; I will tell you, then, that after some deliberation, I have
determined to rejoin my unhappy pupil de Touranges, and even to follow
him back to our devoted country, if thither he persists in returning.
Though, if it be attended with danger to him, I, who probably shall
still less escape danger, my say, "Neque vero tum ignorabat, se ad
crudelissimum hostem, et ad supplicia prolisicisci . Write to me
immediately, my friend, and give mean account of yourself and our
fellow travellers, whose liberality of sentiment and amiable manners,
have left on my mind the most favourable impressions. I cannot
conclude my letter more properly than by recommending to your constant
recollection, these often quoted, and admirable lines of our great poet
."Celui qui met frein a la furent des flots,
"Scait aussi des mechans, arreter les complots
"Soumis avec respect à sa volonté sainte
Je crains Dieu cher Abner, et, n'ai point d'autre erainte."
Notwithstanding the excellent doctrines of fortitude and resignation which this letter contained, D'Alonville found his heart sink under the reflections it occasioned. His brother's apostasy, above all, disturbed him, and all his father had suffered from it arising forcibly to his recollection, gave him now a much pain as when it had first happened. He felt sensibly for the unhappy de Touranges; while the disinterested and preserving friendship of the Abbe de St. Remi, strengthened all those sentiments of respect and affection which he had, from their first acquaintance, felt for that excellent man. — He sat down to write to him, and that employment engaged himself till a late hour; not at all suspecting that his declining to join in the gay scene of the evening, had created in the mind of one of his friends' sisters, suspicions and dislike: and that his coldness and been construed into designs which never once entered his imagination.
While he was occupied in expressing to the Abbe what he felt at the situation of his king, his country, and his friends, some of the domestics of Sir Maynard were giving their opinions of the foreign gentlemen. — An old butler, who acted also as house steward, and was high in the favor of Sir Maynard, was chief orator. The young ladies maid, who had lived just long enough in London to make her unfit for the country, began the conversation, as she took her tea in the housekeeper's room, by declaring, that "she must say, that if the gentleman was not a foreigner, and such like, she should think him an handsome genteel person" — an opinion to which, without any reservation, the housemaid, who was that evening admitted to the party subscribed. "Why, what do you know Martha," said the butler, "of handsome and genteel? Do you consider, child, that this here young fellow is, as one may say, a natural born enemy to us, and our king and country? What d'ye talk of handsome and genteel. Did any body ever see a Frenchman like one of us? No, never I'll answer for it. For my part, what I wonder at is this: that my master, Sir Maynard, encourages master Edward in his liking of these here people not natives of Great Britain, for what is the upshot? Why, by little and little he gets into such a fancy for 'em that he gives them a preference before his natural countrymen, which never can do him no good: seeing it is his own countrymen, honest heart of oak Englishmen, he is to live among, and not these soup-meager chaps, who only come here now, as far as I can find, to live upon us, because they've made their own country too hot to hold them. For my part, I always had, from a boy, the greatest dislike in the world to them, and I can't abide to heart Master Edward and this here Mounseer gabble together; for somehow, though I don't understand it, I always think they are talking about we English. Aye they'll spoil our young master if he gets so much among 'em— for I've heard tell, that they are all as treacherous as so many devils, and have the art and the cunning of Belzebub himself."
"When I lived with the Honorables Mrs. Compton, in Welheck-street, near Cavendish square," said Miss Ellesmere's maid, "you must know we had a French Vally-de-Chamber, and my lady and master never spoke English when they was together; so that I might have learned the French tongue, I believe, especially as Bruffy, the vally, was always a wanting to teach me. — But I used to laugh so at the queer words he made me repeat, and he had so many odd ways, just like a monkey, that I never could help being ready to die a laughing when he began — So, I made nothing of it, which I have been sorry for since; for I find ladies like to have their women speak Erench French , and I might have got better wages and a higher place, perhaps. Indeed the Honorable Mrs. Compton would have taken me abroad with her, when she went to Rome, in Italy, if I could have spoke the language; but she told me she must have a person that could; so she hired a Swish young woman, as Madam Gaggleganni, the Genese Ambassador's lady, and Miss Milsington together, recommended to her, and by that means I lost my place, and so I was obliged to take" —
An old upright virgin, who had waited on Lady Ellesmere from a girl, heard this harangue with great disgust. She had already taken two pinches of snuff while it lasted, with an air of disdain, and now sniffed up the third with uncommon vehemence; while speaking through her nose she interrupted the orator —" obliged to take, indeed! Truly you may think it a happy thing to be received in such a respectable family as this. — I should not have thought, indeed! I'm sure many young gentlewomen of good patronage and education, would be happy to be situated as well; and as to French, and such sort of things, I'm sure people in your station, Mrs. Kitty, may well dispense with it. — No good comes of over knowledged, or of high notions. — I'd have you remember, Ma'am, that Sir Maynard Ellesmere's family is as respectable as any of your Honorable mistresses this and that, that you're always telling of — people that live away for a little while and never pays, and then away they go to France and Italy. Those that ar'nt content in a good Baronet's family, like ours, had better have gone with them." The asperity with which Mrs. Kitty (who deeply resented the disrespect of not being called by her surname,) was about to answer, was happily, for the peace of the house put an end to by the entrance of Miss Theodora herself, who, gliding down from her solitary room, while her old Duenna dosed after her tea, which was usually qualified with a few spoonfuls of brandy, to prevent its affecting her nerves, entered with a mournful and languid step, and addressing herself to Mrs. Packer, her mother's woman, entreated that some of the maids might go up and play cards with her. "'Tis so dull," said the poor girl, "to be shut up with old Griffin, from one day's end to another, when mama and my sisters are gone out; and I do so think of the ball! Height-ho! I was ten times better off when I was quite a child; for then I used to be suffered to go to Mr. Boulanger's ball once a year, but now — never, never am I allowed to go out of the house." Mrs. Packer answered, with a very sour face, that it was not for her to interfere with Mrs. Griffin's business.— If she chose to have the maids up, 'twas very well; but she knew what her lady's orders were, and therefore would have nothing to do with it. She then walked away very majestically, and Theodora exerted her eloquence with so much effect on Mrs. Kitty, otherwise Mrs. Parry, that she persuaded her to go with her to a game of all-fours. Their was lay up a stair-case, which led through a long passage by the room where D'Alonville sat, which was the study of his friend. "Lord," cried she, what fun it would be to rap at the door and frighten the Frenchman! How he'd jump! Perhaps he'd think it was a spirit." "For heaven's sake don't!" said Theodora, "Mama would never forgive such a thinking." "There would not be the least harm in it, though," cried Kitty; "I've a good mind to peep through the keyhole to see what he is about. — I wonder what he's thinking of now — It would be much more polite, methinks, if he'd come and play at cards with us, and I dare say he'd be amazing pleased if we were to ask him."
Theodora, though not very prudent, and having certainly received, by being left at home with the servants, impressions far less eligible than might have been given at a country assembly, that there would be a great indecorum in what Mrs. Parry proposed; and with some difficulty prevailed on her to go quietly to her room, where they found Theodora had not been missed by good Mrs. Griffin; and where they passed their time in yawning over a pack of dirty cards, or listening at intervals to some of Kitty's stories of pranks played by "young Mr. Compton from Westminster school, when he used to come visit his brother the honorable Mr. Compton in Welbeck-street, near Cavendish-square," till the hour arrived when Mrs. Griffin, being heartily tired of herself, saw her young charge to the chamber within her own, where poor Theodora, unable to sleep, lay listening for the return of the happy party from the assembly, and longing to hear who her sisters danced with, and whether Miss such a one, and Miss such a one, and her cousins from Warwick, were there, and whether Miss Ann had a partner, and how she was dressed. For all this interesting information she was under the hard necessity of waiting will the next morning.
It has been said of prisoners long accustomed to darkness, that the eye at length becoming habituated to want of light, they can distinguish objects around them without it, and feel an interest in the habits of the animals or reptiles that inhabit their dungeon. Thus it seems to be with the human mind. People who from choice or necessity live very remote from capitals, where knowledge is more amply diffused, and science is surrounded with all its splendors, form around them a world of their own, and become as seriously interested in the history of the next market town, as those of more enlarged views are in that of the universe — Of this order of beings was Lady Ellesmere; who while she could never give more than "poor man," or "very astonishing indeed!" to the monarch whose melancholy fate she heard every body deprecating, or the kingdom of France so strongly convulsed, could enter with the liveliest interest into the history of Mr. Samuel Harrison, an attorney, who had been discarded by Miss Fanny Pinkney, an apothecary's daughter; and wonder for an hour, that Mrs. Grisby, or the doctor, should suffer the Miss Grisbys to dance with those two officers, both of whom were strangers, and one of them an Irishman. These important points, and many others of the like nature; such as the dress and conversation of the evening, furnished ample matter for discourse at breakfast the next morning, to Lady Ellesmere and her two eldest daughters, and continued during the following days, long enough to disgust Edward Ellesmere, who, though he loved his mother extremely, was though he loved his mother extremely, was often put half out of humour by her attachment to insignificant things and insignificant people; and the little attention gave to D'Alonville, who, as he could not enter into their amusement, soon sunk into a cypher, hastened his visit to an uncle who was partial to him, and who longed to see him after his return from abroad.
SHAKESPEARE.
ON the edge of Reedwood-forest, and about seven-and-twenty miles from the residence of Sir Maynard Ellesmere, lived in a small freehold of an hundred and fifty pounds a year, his younger brother, who had changed his name to that of Caverly, for an estate of which he had long since parted with the greater proportion — but he still retained enough to live comfortably, for he had the half pay of a lieutenant added to his farm, which he occupied himself. His domestic arrangements were not unlike those of Columella; but with so many oddities about him as to acquire the name of a humourist, he had an excellent heart; and though he professed himself a misantrope, much of his time, and all the money he could spare, were given to the distresses of his neighbours, by whom he was extremely beloved. Though Sir Maynard and Captain Caverly were always on the most friendly terms, he seldom went to Eddisbury-hall. He hated the forms he was expected to observe there; and though he did not express it very openly, he was disgusted by the unwarrantable partiality Sir Maynard shewed to his eldest son in preference to his other children, all of whom he thught thought as deserving, and Edward who was his favourite, infinitely more so. When his niece Elizabeth lost her lover, the honest Captain was so much concerned for her, that her offered to mortgage fifty pounds a year of his own little property to assist in raising the sum that was demanded by the father of the young man; and he was continually endeavouring to represent the cruelty of sacrificing a whole family to its elder branch. It was owing to his encouragement that Edward Ellesmere assumed courage enough to declare his dislike to the law; and he had assisted him to the utmost of his power during his travels. To such an uncle it was natural for Edward to wish to pay his respects as soon as he could, after his return into Staffordshire, and at the end of then he set out on horseback, with D'Alonville, and at the hour of Captain Caverly's dinner, they arrived at Fernyhurst, which was the name of the farm where the honest veteran resided.
Captain Caverly was half a mile from his house, in a field that looked into the hight road, watching the arrival of his nephew; and he no sooner saw him approaching, than he got over the style that was between them, as fast as some remains of his last fit of the gout, and half a dozen greyhounds and pointers would let him — and greeting young Ellesmere by the name of "dear Ned," he cordially shook him by the hand as he sprung off his horse, and bade him heartily welcome — then with an equal shew of good humour, made his rough but honest compliments to D'Alonville; apologized for not being able to speak to him in his own language — " but tell him," said he to Ellesmere,— "tell him, will you, that I am a rusticated old fellow now, though a few years ago I was as militaire as the best of us; and I have seen his country-men in the field with other guess looks, though I am heartily glad to see him here now, with such as I have." Ellesmere set the Captain's heart much at ease, by assuring him, that his foreign friend knew English enough to be sensible of his civilities without an interpreter; and they went into the house together; D'Alonville feeling himself already relieved in having escaped a while from the formal splendors of Eddisbury-hall, and already prejudiced in favor of the Captain from the bonhommie — that he appeared to possess.
their dinner, though very simple, was so well dressed and so neatly served, that the superintendance of some women well versed in domestic arrangements was very evident. The Captain was so gay and good humoured, that both his guests were delighted with him; and the evening passed in his hearing the account of Ellesmere's tour, in which it seemed that his uncle, who had once made it himself, took great interest. He spoke, in his turn, on the affairs of France, like a man of sense; and expressed his wishes that he could go out against the cursed fellows, who were base enough to use a woman, and pretty woman too, as they had treated the Queen of France. "But this wound in my neck," said he, "which plagues me cursedly once or twice a year; and the gout which hinders my marching, will compel me, I fear, to send thee, my dear Ned, as my substitute. Why what is the old Baronet, my worthy elder brother, about, that he does not get thee provided for in the army?" Ellesmere informed his uncle of all that had passed on this subject since he come home; and the discourse took another turn.
When they retired for the night, the Captain shewed them into their respective rooms, which were furnished with such simple neatness that D'Alonville could not but remark it. Beyond that designed for him, was a large light closet full of books, many of which were in his own language. "This is your apartment," said Captain Caverly, "as long as you will, my good Sir, and remember that nobody in my house is to be under the least restraint, whenever we talk too much, or drink too much for you, come up here for as long as you will. — Apropos, Ned and I are going a hunting to-morrow with Lord Aberdore's hounds. The weather to-night promises well; — Ned says your horses will do it well enough — if not, I will manage to mount ye both — what say you? — Have ye a mind to see how we "allez a la chasse dans Angleterre ; " — D'Alonville expressed his readiness to be of the party, and nine the next morning was named as the hour of their setting forth.
The morning was favourable, and the sport, they said, good; D'Alonville, however, did not enjoy it, for besides that the fox-hunting in England is altogether different from that in France, to which he had been accustomed, his heart was unusually heavy. The echoes among the woods, however, when the fox broke cover were very fine, and at any other time might have animated him to some degree of that enjoyment which seemed to be felt by the people around him. Several gentlemen passed, who understanding him to be an emigrant, a friend of Edward Ellesmere's touched their hats with civility enough, but none of them spoke to him; the grooms hearing he was a Frenchman stared at him, and longed to see how he would sit his horse when they should have a sharp burst, being very sure that a Frenchman could not ride.
D'Alonville, however, gave them no opportunity to criticise his horsemanship; — he followed the hounds for some time at a distance; then losing the sound, and finding himself in the forest whence he knew nothing of his way out, he slackened his peace, and forgetting for what purpose he was there, began one of his usual meditations on France. The wood he was in brought to his mind those of his native country; and insensibly along the winding paths, his horse, from a gentle trot began to walk, and at length hardly moving, began to brouze on the vegetables that a mild winter had left under the shelter of the luxuriant hollies , which serve as guides to the forester in his way through these wild-wood walks; D'Alonville musing, let him do almost as he would — till he found it grew late, and not knowing how far he was from the house of Captain Caverly, he thought it time to endeavoured to find his way back. He stopped his horse, and listened; for it was possible that the cry of the hounds might yet come from at a distance to guide him to his friends; but no sounds were heard save the melancholy chirping of the birds, whose winter notes seemed rather to solicit food than express pleasure, and the sullen sighing of the wind among the listless branchess branches. It seemed to have changed its quarter since the morning, and to have got round to the north, giving to the sky that cold gloomy appearance which precedes snow. After listening at several intervals, D'Alonville hearing nothing that could direct him on his way, touched the idle old hunter, to make him move somewhat faster in the tract they were in; and soon found himself out of the forest, and in a green lane, which he conjectured, from the traces of horses and carts with which it was worn, led to at least some large farm, if not to a village; and he meditated on the English sentence it would be necessary for him to utter, to obtain from whoever he should meet, the information he wanted to direct him to the abode of Captain Caverly, which could not, he thought, be more than seven or eight mi es miles distant.
His conjectures were just, as to the road he took; it led him to a village where several cottages were scattered in groups along a sort of a common, with two or three farm houses. He looked around for some face which might encourage his enquiry, but the inhabitants of the hamlet were most of them out at their work — he rode up to a group of boys playing near a pool of water; and having arranged his expressions as well as he could, asked them how he could find the road to Fernyhurst; for he had a memorandum of the name in his pocket-book. The boys ceased their play, and approached him: but though he had repeated his enquiry in every form he could imagine, it was totally fruitless. The eldest of the boys stared at him, scratched his head, and cried. "Anan?" — an expression which D'Alonville understood as little, as they did his question. Baffled in this first attempt, he went towards a farm, where in a barn was a thresher, who supposing him to be of the hunt, had suspended his labour to answer him; but here D'Alonville's unfortunate accent occasioned his disappointment. The churl either did not, or would not understand his enquiry; and muttering to himself — "humph, a Frenchman! — I wonder what he does here!" began to thump on the threshing floor, without affording him any farther attention. D'Alonville flattered himself that from the softer sex he might obtain a more favourable hearing — and returning back to what might be called the village street; he accosted an old woman, the only woman he saw; and taking off his hat, endeavoured to the utmost of his power, to make her understand his question. The woman stopped, and fixed her eyes upon him, set down a bucket she was carrying and appeared by her countenance, to wish to understand him — Encouraged by her attention he redoubled his endeavours, but still it did not appear that he gained ground. At length she came close to his horse, and putting back her hat and cap, cried, in a very shrill and distinct voice, "Speak louder, your Honor, I am hard of hearing." D'Alonville comprehended she was deaf, and cantered away towards a young man who was mounted on a cart-horse, and driving two others before him. "How must I do," said he, speaking slowly, and, as he supposed extremely plain, "how must I do, to go to Fernyhurst?" the man stopped his horses — D'Alonville in the same words repeated his question — "why as well as you can;" repeated the clown; — "But which way must I go?" said D'Alonville, putting his enquiry into another form — "Follow your nose," replied the brutal rustic — "and that will be to the devil, I hope; for I wish all Frenchmen there with all my soul, and be cursed to them — for 'tis they that be the cause of our taxes, and our being drawn for the militia." D'Alonville, though far from entering into the spirit of this reply, comprehended it to be abusive; and at the same moment perceiving a little farther on an house or two of better figure than those he had passed, he pushed on his horse towards them. He soon reached the door of a brick mansion, of neat appearance — it had three windows in front, a little bow at one end; the door, to which led a short walk, paved with brick through a turfed court, was painted, as well as the paling before it, of a bright green; the knocker was large, and of resplendent brass; and over the door a morter, gilt more resplendently, confirmed the information given by certain singularly-shaped and lettered vases in one of the windows, that from hence the blessings of Esculapius were dispensed to the surrounding country — which indeed D'Alonville might, on a near inspection, have read over the door, where the name of Sanderson and the three branches of the profession in which Mr. Sanderson practised, were displayed also in green and gold.
Here then, thought D'Alonville, is a house where perhaps I may make myself understood, for it seems to be inhabited by some of the decent Bourgeoises. He left his horse fastened to a hook evidently placed for such purposes on the rails, and entering the court, rapped gently at the door; a red-headed boy of fifteen or sixteenth sixteen, with an apron on, opened it, and seeing a young and genteel looking man, invited him in, and asked what he pleased to want. Once more D'Alonville enquired the way to Captain Caverly's — to a place called Fernyhurst. The lad, who seemed to have his ideas occupied by the drugs he was mixing, understood no more than the rest had done what D'Alonville wanted; but in a loud voice bidding him sit down and wait a moment, and he would call miss, he went out of the shop, and shut the door after him. D'Alonville sat down, as he was bid, near another door which was a jar, and from whence he heard indistinct noise of sobs and deep sighs, as of a person distressed, or in pain — and with some surprise he heard another person endeavouring to appease the anguish of the sufferer in language which persuaded him it was that of a woman of his own country. His attention was now deeply engaged; he eagerly listened, and heard a dialogue which convinced him both the speakers were French women, and both suffering under some terrible and recent misfortune. He was tempted, by an almost irresistible impulse, to break through common forms, and seek the room where they were, so powerfully was his sympathy and his affections awakened; the agitation of his mind was visible in his countenance, when his attention was called off to a figure, who now addressed him from the other side of the counter — gay as shewy printed cotton a scarlet sattin sash, and a blue bonnet put over one ear could make her. Miss Sanderson, the sister of the gentleman whose name the door exhibited, appeared, and gratefully curtseying and sweetly smiling, desired, in soft tones, the honor of the gentleman's commands.
So many roses adorned the dimpled cheeks of this rural Belle, and so insinuating was her address intended to be, that at any other time D'Alonville would have been amused, and for a moment engaged by her; but now he hardly knew to whom he spoke, or recollected what he wanted to ask. So indistinctly indeed did he repeat the question of "which was the way to the house of Captain Caverly" that it was not at all surprising his fair auditor did not understand him. The Lady, however, was not one of those who trust to personal attractions only. She had attended to the embellishment of her mind, and had cultivated as much as her opportunities allowed her, the knowledge of the French tongue, which she acquired at a boarding school; of this knowledge she was not a little proud, and being delighted with every occasion of shewing it, she said, "Monsieur J'apprereoive que vous ate un etraunger — Put ater que vous ate un parang de les dames qui loge dans notre maison ." D'Alonville seizing at once an opportunity so favorable to his wishes of discovering who these ladies were, — replied (in rather better French), that "he was not a relation, but a person much interested in the fate of those ladies." He hesitated, considering a moment what he should say to obtain an introduction to them; and fearful of discovering that he had no right to it than what he could claim as their countryman; — when the good-natured young country woman, who was afraid he might suspect what was really the fact, that she did not understand him, was determined to convince him she did; and therefore, without waiting for any farther explanation, she cried; "Oui, Monsieur, c'est bain verrai — cette un chose bian terrible — tout le monde est en dessespair?" D'Alonville on the rack, and knowing that if she continued to speak French, he should never know what she meant, acquired recollection and English enough to say, that though he was a native of France he was fortunate enough to understand a little English; and begged she would have the goodness to flatter his predilection for that language, so far as to converse with him in it. The lady who could not have gone on in any other, obligingly condescended to his request, and — "So Sir," said she," as I was saying, the ladies, our lodgers, are as may be supposed, in the greatest affliction; and I am sure, though I did not hear them say they expected you, that they will be heartily rejoiced to see you. I will tell them if you please that you are here — Who shall I say Sir, is the gentleman that desires to see them?"
D'Alonville recollected that it would be better to write than to trust to a message, which strange in itself, might be yet more strangely delivered; he therefore took a pencil and wrote in his own language — "The Chevalier D'Alonville, younger son of the deceased Viscount de Fayolles, hearing by accident that some ladies of his country are in this house, entreats the honor of being allowed to offer them his respects." The obliging Miss Sanderson took the note when he had folded it up, and after an absence, which D'Alonville's impatience made him think would be eternal, she came back with another small folded note, to this effect: —
"The ladies who inhabit this house, though they have not the honor of knowing the Chevalier D'Alonville, yet recollecting the name, and having no doubt of his having quitted France from the same unfortunate cause as drove them from it, cannot decline receiving the favor he offers them; it being some consolation in the present moment of their affliction to mingle their sorrows with those of one of their countrymen, whom they can yet call so." The style of this note redoubled the impatient solicitude of D'Alonville, who with sensations as if he were sure of being introduced to two of the most interesting women he had ever seen, followed Miss Sanderson into a small parlour, where he found a woman of between fifty and sixty, in whose faded face there was an uncommon expression of penetration and sense, not unmingled with an air of haughty superiority. Her form and manners were such as instantly impressed the idea of her being a person of high fashion — she stood to receive D'Alonville, who made a speech he hardly knew what, expressive, however, of his gratitude for being permitted to "offer her his homage." She answered him with perfect ease, though in a tone of voice the most mournful he had ever heard; and turning to a lady who sat near the fire, her head leaning against the wainscot, while a bonnet with a deep veil concealed her face, she said — "You will pardon, Sir, my daughter's rising to receive you — she is too ill — the news of to-day has too much over-powered her." A very deep convulsive sigh from the daughter was all that intimated, on her part, her having heard what the elder lady said. D'Alonville expressed extreme concern, and added, that he was almost afraid to enquire whether the painful news of which Madame spoke, was of a public or private nature.
"Is it possible, Sir," said the elder lady, by whom D'Alonville was now seated, "that you cannot have heard it?" She then related, in terms which forcibly expressed all the sorrow and indignation she felt, the fatal event of the 21st of January.
D'Alonville was struck with horror and consternation, which, for a moment, deprived him of words; while the younger lady, by a burst of tears and sobs that seemed to shake her delicate frame (for eminently delicate it seemed to be attracted the attention of her mother to soothe and console her. It would be difficult to relate the whole conversation that now passed. On the part of the elder lady the desire of vengeance continued to weep, and D'Alonville attempted in vain to offer to them that consolation he himself wanted. —He no longer knew how time passed, and had no recollection of the reason of his first entering into the house. Nor would the conversation, vauge vague as it was, have been soon interrupted, if a female French servant had not entered the room, holding in her arms a beautiful boy about seven months old; at the sight of him different passions seemed anew to agitate both the ladies. The grandmother, with her eyes animated with all the energy of her character, expressed a wish that he was old enough to draw a sword, that he might assist in extirpating the banditti who had disgraced his country for ever, by so foul a crime; while the younger lady, his mother, then first lifting up the lace that had before concealed it, shewed a very lovely, though pale, countenance, and eyes dimmed by tears — the infant held out to her his little hands — she took him, and pressing him fondly to her bosom, a tear fell on his cheek, as she whispered, "O mon petit emigre que deviendra tu ?" Never in his life had D'Alonville felt himself so affected; he could not determine to go; he wanted to enquire if his new friends were as comfortably placed as there circumstances admitted, though he saw they had been accustomed to situations very different. He wanted to be of some use to them — he wished to make them friends among the English ladies of fashion with whom he was acquainted, the mother and sisters of his friend Ellesmere.
But if he became thus warmly interested for them, while he only knew them as women, who were, like him, unhappy in being torn from their connections, and compelled to wander helpless and desolate in a foreign country, his zeal to serve, befriend, and protect them to the utmost of his power was redoubled, when he learned that he had been conversing with the mother and the wife of de Touranges, a man for whom, though he could not love him, he felt the tenderest compassion; and who was entitled to every office of friendship; though it were only on the account of the Abbé de St. Remi. The rest of the day after this interesting discovery was passed in his relating to the elder Marchioness (while the younger retired overcome with the violence of her emotions) what he knew of her son; yet even to her, strong as her mind appeared to be, he did not then venture to disclose the purport of the last letter he had received from the Abbé. — It was a conversation which neither party were disposed to end. Madame de Touranges had a thousand questions to ask; and D'Alonville had no longer any recollection of the necessity of going back to the house from whence he came; but when it was settled that D'Alonville should see the ladies again the following day, it occurred to him, that it was then night; and that if he could not find his road to Fernyhurst in the light, it was somewhat improbable he should do it in the dark. This consideration compelled him to have recourse for advice to the fair Miss Sanderson (for her brother was not yet returned;) she seemed to have conceived the most flattering opinion of him. Indeed he was so very handsome a figure, and had a countenance so well corresponding with it, that Miss Sanderson, who was deeply read in novels, and who called herself Suzette, for unhappily her name was Susannah, (and it was impossible to make any thing of it in English,) really fancied him the subject of some famous story — Tancard of Normandy, or some chivalrous knight sung by the Troubadours. She had read, and even translated, some of the tales of D. Florian, and there was not one of the heroes to whom she did not compare the adventurer, who now, with more humble pretensions, solicited her to find for him, in the village, a man who could serve him as a guide to the habitation of Captain Caverly. This, as all the inhabitants were gone to bed, was by no means easy; and was the perplexity of the fair and generous Suzette; who did not dare send out her brother's apprentice, or the horse which always stood in the stable ready to carry him out on those nocturnal visits to which he was so frequently summoned — but after a long prequisition, a man was found, who, for a crown D'Alonville readily promised him, mounted a cart horse, and led the way through many intricate windings and cross roads to Fernyhurst, at the distance of near six miles. D'Alonville did not arrive there till past eleven o'clock; but by his arrival he communicated great satisfaction both to Ellesmere and the honest Captain, who having in vain hunted for him in the woods will it was dark, had returned home in hopes that he might have got thither before them; but not finding him, they became uneasy, and had sent out people in search of him, who just before he came back had returned, without any tidings of him. On his appearance, their apprehensions being at an end, the Captain began to rally him on his long absence — but Ellesmere easily perceived that gaiety was misplaced. At that moment he recollected the melancholy news which their newspapers had only that day informed them of; and apologising to D'Alonville for his uncle's ill-timed levity, he was disposed to mingle his tears with those which he perceived in the eyes of his friend.
WHEN Ellesmere learned the circumstances that had happened the evening before, he became as eager as D'Alonville, or if possible more so, to offer to the unhappy strangers every service he could render them. He proposed for this purpose a thousand projects in a moment. He would write to his mother and sister — he would carry the two ladies to Eddisbury. D'Alonville, who was not so sanguine as to the reception they might meet with, felt all the generosity of his friend, but did not seem in haste to avail himself of it. He readily, however, assented to Ellesmere's wish of going with him to wait on them; and with a melancholy smile bade him beware of the fascinating eyes of the younger Madame de Touranges. "I know the influence of beauty in distress, my friend," said he, "and I assure you, you will not find that of the young Marquisse less dangerous that that of your fair Polonese."
"Probably it might be much more," replied Ellesmere "were I a Frenchman; but I have not been accustomed to consider married women as objects of gallantry, having had neither a foreign nor a fashionable education."
"Well, then, let us go," said D'Alonville, "for though I hope and believe that this wandering family of our luckless acquaintance de Touranges, is not so distressed as to need pecuniary assistance, yet it cannot but be advantageous to them to be known by people of consequence in England. They seem extremely sensible of the kindness they have received from a family of the name of —, I cannot now recollect the name — but I understand them to be related to the nobleman with whose hounds we were out, and to live about two miles from the village. It was this family who found the lodging for them, and who have with unwearied kindness visited them since. — I am sorry I cannot recollect the name."
"Relations of Lord Aberdore's are they," answered Ellesmere. "I do not know any family of that description, but indeed this is a part of the country with which I am very slightly acquainted; and I only know Lord Aberdore by sight. If he has relations so liberal minded I am glad of it, for of his own liberality of mind one hears but little."
"Suppose," added Ellesmere, " that I tell my uncle whither we are going. He would do any thing in the world to serve women in distress — and is a perfect knight-errant in their cause."
"Perhaps it would be better," replied D'Alonville, "to see the Ladies de Touranges first ourselves; — your uncle has no woman in his family, and perhaps we may only, by engaging his good humoured endeavours, be troublesome to him, without deriving any benefit to the parties for whom we are interested." "I fear," added he, "that in this country, people of mine, hate nothing to hope but protection and subsistence; for the great evils they suffer, the most generous efforts of strangers can do nothing to relieve. These poor women, who are now hid in a little lodging in a solitary village, have been accustomed to the highest degree of affluence. The elder of them has passed her life at court; the younger, with all the advantages that beauty and youth, fortune and birth could give her, was just entering on a most spendid splendid scene of life, all is vanished! but that they no longer are surrounded with whatever can glatter the imagination or gratify the taste, does not seem to be to them the subject of regret. It is de Touranges for whom his mother trembles, it is de Touranges that draw continual tears from the eyes of his wife, and the dreadful fate that has overwhelmed our country, and now our lamented monarch. The general evil, indeed, cannot be repaired, but their individual misfortune may. Would to heaven I knew where de Touranges is." — D'Alonville now fell into a reverie, which lasted till they reached the hose they were going to, and Ellesmere did not interrupt him.
On their entering the shop they were received by Mr. Sanderson, to whom Ellesmere was known; and who, on their eager enquiry after the two French ladies, shook his head when he mentioned the younger. "The sweet creature," said he, " is so ill, so nervous, and, in short, her whole system so deranged, that Susy and I have been up all night." "I hope," said D'Alonville, extremely alarmed, "that there is no danger." "I assure you I dont don't half like the symptoms, and that languor and giving herself up, which she does to an excess I never saw. But however, our young ladies from Besthorpe will be here by and by, and I hope that this company, which always does Madame the Marchioness good, and seeing you Gentlemen, her friends, will altogether be of more use than my drugs."
"And who," enquired Ellesmere, "are the ladies from Besthorpe?" "The Denzil family," replied Sanderson, "perhaps, Mr. Ellesmere, you may know them. — Excellent, worthy people, I can assure you they are, and nearly related, as I understand, to the Aberdone family, though how I cannot make out. Somehow though, the connection came by the late lady, though that you know" continued he, nodding significantly, "does not recommend them to the house now; but indeed the noble family is so seldom down, that I don't imagine Mrs. Denzil and the family took a place in this neighbourhood on that account, so much as because it suited them in other respects. It was by their means that I was induced to let my house to these foreign ladies. I was at first rather averse to it; but on reflection, I thought the Denzil family would not recommend people the least improper; and Susy, who loves any thing that is uncommon, was mightily for receiving them. I cannot say I have repented it. The elder lady, who, I am told, lived always with the Queen, in her own country, is, to be sure, what we in England call haughty; but for the youngest, she is, as her confessor sometimes says, half an angel. A man must be a savage who would not undertake almost any thing to do her good. I assure you, she is too pretty and amiable not to be very dangerous; even a country apothecary, like me, who has enough to do to think of his patients, and to ride round the country from six in the morning to twelve at night, can find out that there would be no living near her without being in love with her, if it were not for the difference of religion and country, and her being married already, as I told her confessor."
"Her confessor," said Ellesmere, "and who is her confessor, is he here now?" "He is a French priest," replied Sanderson, "who came over with them, and has been with them ever since they have been here, but he is now gone to London on the business of his order. A very honest, simple, good sort of man he seems to be. For my part, I am free to own, I had conceived a sort of a prejudice against Catholic priests. One has heard all on's life time, ugly stories of them; but I am free to confess, that this gentleman seems to me to be as worthy a man as any clergyman of the church of England." — While this dialogue was passing, D'Alonville, who had received a message from Madame de Touranges, that she would be glad to see him in a few moments, stood meditating on the strange reverse of fortune. The woman, who so lately had the most brilliant circles around her that Paris or Versailles could boast of, was now an object for the pity of a country apothecary. Whoever recollects the distance at which people of high rank in France were accustomed to keep even the most respectable professional men in that line, will pardon a remnant of involuntary pride in D'Alonville, who, notwithstanding the good-humoured manner in which Mr. Sanderson spoke of his guests, felt shocked that he should name them so familiarly; yet, in a moment remembering to what condition Marie Antoinette of Austria was reduced, he corrected himself, and was ashamed of the transitory emotion he had felt; and had he ever read Spencer in ours, or had he at that moment recollected any thing to the same purport in his own language, he would perhaps have said in the sense, if not in the words, of the author of the Fairy Queen.
"Such is the weakness of all mortal hope;
"So fickle is the state of earthly things,
"That, e'er they come into their aimed scope,
"And bring us bale and bitter sorrowings
"Instead of comfort which we should embrace.
"This is the state of Keasars and of kings.
"Let none, therefore, that is in meaner place,
"Too greatly gravest his unlucky case."
Miss Sanderson now came and informed D'Alonville, that Madame de
Touranges desired to see both him and the gentlemen his friend; they
entered the small parlour he had been in the evening before, where only
the elder lady appeared.
Perfectly mistress of herself, from her long intercourse with the world, she received Ellesmere as if she had known him from his infancy; and spoke of their affairs to D'Alonville with the same unreserved as if a stranger had not been present." "My daughter," said she, "has been so affected by what we have heard from the Chevalier D'Alonville, relative to our poor wanderer, though I endeavoured to alleviate the pain such intelligence must give her, as much as possible, that she is too ill to leave her bed. Had I not expected the favor of seeing you, my good Chevalier," continued she, addressing herself to D'Alonville, "I believe I should have got our hosts here to have sent to you, for my daughter is restless, because she did not herself hear all the particulars relative to de Touranges, which she believes you can tell her. I endeavoured to evade this painful recital, but she persists in it; and will perhaps be easy when she has seen both you and this gentleman, your friend, who is the same, I conclude by his name, that passed through Germany from Vienna to Berlin, with Marquis." Ellesmere bowed, and Madame de Touranges again spoke:
"As you have travelled," said she, speaking to Ellesmere, "and as you," addressing herself to D'Alonville, "are of a country where such things are customary, I shall make no apology to either of you, for desiring you to attend my daughter in her bed room - - - for I have insisted upon her not leaving her bed. I believe we may now go up." Madame de Touranges led the way, and Ellesmere and D'Alonville followed.
In a small neat room they found the beautiful French woman in her bed, with her infant boy sleeping by her. If D'Alonville had thought her extremely lovely and interesting from what he had seen of her the day before, she now appeared infinitely more so: yet there was nothing studied, or coquettish, in her dishabille. Ellesmere gave D'Alonville a look, which seemed to say "you might well tell me there was danger in this service;" while the glance D'Alonville returned, intimated a sort of half-triumph, which expressed "have I then always a taste adulterated by French notions? Is here not a woman of my country, who is truly and simply beautiful." The elder Marquise began the conversation, and did not wish that either Ellesmere or D'Alonville should conceal any part of what they knew as to the state of mind in which they had seen the unfortunate de Touranges, or his abruptly quitting friendly monitor St. Remi; and even by her own questions she drew from D'Alonville what he thought it necessary to conceal from them both — the purport of the Abbé last letter.
This conduct D'Alonville thought strange, after the fears Madame de Touranges had expressed for her daughter's health and life; — and still more was he hurt, when having asked this letter of him, and then gave it to Gabrielle, as she sometimes familiarly called her daughter. Gabrielle did little else but weep — she tried to read the letter, but could not; and she was so visibly overcome, that is seemed almost cruel to remain with her. Far from seizing it with avidity, on the hopes that her husband would be restored to her, with which some how or other her mother-in-law had contrived to flatter herself, she seemed to consider the state of mind in which the Abbé de St. Remi described him to be, as tending to the most fatal consequences. She saw him rushing on destruction, by going back to France — already, perhaps he was the victim of his own despair, and the inhumanity of savages, who seemed to delight only in blood. Her own desolate situation affected her not; but when she spoke, her conversation expressed an inclination to abandon the asylum they had found in England, and go back, at all hazards, to France. The persuasion that she should there meet de Touranges, or death, was strengthened by what she now learned from the Abbe's letter.
When it seemed better to leave her than to make any farther attempts to console her, D'Alonville and Ellesmere took leave; but both were too much occupied with their new acquaintance, to have the power of thinking of any think else. "What can be done, my dear friend?" said Ellesmere, as he rode away from the door — "how can we relieve the anguish of this charming woman?" "I do not know, indeed," answered D'Alonville, if she is determined to give herself up to despair. Her project of going to France is wildness and insanity, and must not be listened to; but all circumstances considered, though these poor women cannot go, I know who can." "Aye, indeed!" answered Ellesmere, who did not comprehend him; — "do you know any one whose going will be of use to them?"
"Yes," replied he, "I believe I do — I think my going will be of use to them; and in a few, a very few days, I shall take leave of you, my dear Ellesmere, and of this hospitable island." "But how," cried his friend, "on what plan? In what character would you go?"
"Do not ask me yet," said D'Alonville, "for yet, I hardly know myself — but I find it impossible not to go."
"And I," answered Ellesmere, "shall find it as impossible to stay inactive in England. We will cross the water together, Chevalier — and should you go to France, which, however, I hope you will not do; — I will go as a volunteer into the army on the Continent, if I do not procure a commission in our own troops.
On their return to Fernyhurst, Ellesmere, who could speak and think of nothing else; with the permission of D'Alonville related to his uncle the little melancholy romance of their two ladies, Captain Caverly, who retained gallant and eccentric ideas enough to have revived the age of chivalry, if its world; was, as his nephew had foreseen, immediately seized with the most ardent zeal to serve and protect these interesting strangers; and it was with some difficulty that Ellesmere could prevent his setting out immediately, to offer them an asylum in his house. "You are very good," said he, "my dear uncle — but I am afraid our friends could not with propriety accept your generosity;" "And why not, pray," answered he, "propriety! — non-sense! — will they hear the remarks that are made by the wife gentlemen of the neighbourhood, or have they not so much sense as not to care for them if they did; what is propriety in this country, to women of another; and pr'y thee tell me, dear Ned, whether any of the prudes who might find out this want of propriety would have the generosity to prevent its neccessity, by receiving these unhappy women themselves, or even shewing them the least countenance? not they indeed — illiberal-minded, selfish, odious cats, half of them — yet it is to such that one is expected to make all kinds of sacrifices."
Ellesmere knew there was a great deal of truth in what Captain Caverly said; but he knew also, that there were other insuperable objections to which the warm-hearted veteran, in his first ardour to succour the ladies in distress, had not sufficiently attended. Ellesmere gently hinted at these, and Caverly immediately seemed to retreat into himself, and soon after turned the conversation, which he no more renewed on the same footing; but he still professed so much inclination to befriend the Mesdames de Touranges, that the two young men were extremely happy to find they had secured them a warm advocate and protector; for it seemed to be agreed, in their short consultation hitherto, that the two ladies could no where be better situated than where they were, will some intelligence could be obtained of the Marquis de Touranges, or some favorable event restore them to their country. Alas! such events seemed more distant than ever.
GUARINI.
IT was now become impossible for the two friends to find any enjoyment in hunting, or any other of those amusements which they meant to have engaged in during their stay with Captain Caverly. No pretence was necessary to excuse their repeating their visit to the house of Mr. Sanderson; for the elder lady had declared that nothing gave her so much satisfaction as to see them; and besides that general invitation, it was merely a matter of common civility to enquire after her daughter-in-law, whom they had seen the day before so much indisposed. They set out together, therefore, about ten o'clock; having persuaded Captain Caverly to postpone, till another opportunity, the introduction he was so desirous of obtaining; not only because they believed Madame de Touranges was too ill, not to be incommoded by the presence of another stranger, but because he had complained the evening before of some symptoms of the gout, which early in spring generally attacked him with great severity. But though he could not now pay his respects to the foreigners for whom he felt so generously interested, he charged his nephew and D'Alonville to offer them, on his part, all manner of service, and sent them, from his own garden, some of the productions of his hot-beds, on which he greatly prided himself.
He was not happier in thus exercising his benevolence, than his nephew was in being its messenger; and D'Alonville, though far enough from happiness, felt at this moment that it was yet worth while to live; yet the satisfaction he felt in the certainty of being of service to his new friends, was at present as disinterested in regard to the one as the other of them.
On their reaching the village, Ellesmere stopped to speak to a tenate of Sir Maynard's whom he met in the road; and D'Alonville entering the house of Sanderson alone, was shewn by the apprentice immediately into the parlour, where he saw the younger Madame de Touranges, with her little boy sleeping on her lap; and by her sat a young person who appeared to be about seventeen, and who was employed in some kind of work for her friend. She was in a very simple morning dress. The little powder that had been scattered in her hair, had almost been blown away in a windy walk — a black beaver hat, which alone had confined it, lay in a chair by her; but the disorder of her head-dress lent peculiar charms to a face, which though not perfectly handsome, D'Alonville thought the most interesting he had ever seen. Madame de Touranges, who already considered him as an old friend, held out her hand to him, and with a melancholy smile, bade him welcome, — she bade him to thank her for introducing him to her fair young friend, Miss Denzil; who was come, she said, to pass the morning with her — D'Alonville made one of those speeches which are usually made on such occasions; and when Madame de Touranges enquired for his companion, enquired in his turn for the Marquise who by this time appeared; and soon, as was usual with her, engrossed the conversation. Soon after Ellesmere joined them, and yet it did not become more general for some time; the younger Madame de Touranges (whom for distinction sake we must henceforth call Gabrielle,) being accustomed to let her mother-in-law, for whom she felt an awe almost approaching to fear, take the lead in all companies. Ellesmere was engaged in listening to her; and the eyes and thought of D'Alonville were entirely engrossed by the young stranger. He suffered Ellesmere to say what he would of his projects and intentions; and to acquaint Madame de Touranges of his resolution of the night before, to set out for France; — a resolution which she highly approved. D'Alonville heeded not, though he heard their discourse, and considered at this moment nothing but how he might induce Miss Denzil to enter into conversation with him. He had hardly heard the sound of her voice, before he wanted to know if she spoke French fluently, and whether her understanding corresponded with the intelligent sweetness of her countenance. Madame de Touranges, though she had no longer any claim to the attraction of youth and beauty, was one of those women, who, from being long accustomed to adulation, expect it equally every where — and believe that the influence of superior understanding ought to continue to them the ascendancy which time may have diminished, in robbing them of their personal charms. While she lived in a court, she had too much interest to feel the decline of those attractions that she had eminently possessed in the morning and noon of life; and now, amidst the sad reverse of fortune, and after all the calamities she had experienced, the habit she had acquired of demanding attention, did not forsake her; — D'Alonville's evident distraction, therefore, when she addressed herself to him, did not please her; — he listened to her, indeed, and assented to all she said; but there was no longer that respectful deference, that marked attention, and that ready acquiescence, which the day before had so enchanted her in her young compatriot — taking, however, for a settled resolution, the scheme of his returning to France; she laid down, what was in her opinion, the safest plan for him to pursue; though of that it was impossible she could be a judge; and offered him letters to a friend of her's in London, who being one of the last men of consideration who had emigrated, and who had lately passed through Britanny, could give him better information than almost any other person on the present state of that province. D'Alonville accepted of her offer, without however, feeling much inclination to be introduced to a person who had lately emigrated; for such he had learned to consider as persons who had been too much connected with the men and measures of the first revolution.
Near an hour had passed thus: Miss Denzil engaged by the work she was about hardly looked from it, unless to speak in a low voice, to Gabrielle. — D'Alonville listened with the most eager attention; but the sharp and loud tones of Madame de Touranges, who sat immediately close to him, prevented his distinguishing what she said. — At length it seemed as if Miss Denzil had enquired the hour of the day; for she arose in some haste, and putting on her hat, she took from a work-basket a large gauze handkerchief, with which she carelessly tied it under her chin, and then asking if she might borrow Agatha to go over the common with her, she kissed the baby which still remained sleeping in its mother's arms; and tenderly pressing the hand of Gabrielle, said, "Jusqu à demain ma chere amie, adieu!" She then courtsey'd with grave respect to Madame de Touranges, and, with the distant civility one owes to a new acquaintance, to Ellesmere and D'Alonville; and Agatha (who was Madame Touranges's French maid) appearing ready at the door of the room, she was quitting it; when D'Alonville found it impossible to part with her thus, without knowing whether he should ever see her again; and ventured to say, "You are going, then, Mademoiselle? — Is it not permitted me to wait on you part of the way?" A transient blush arose on the fair cheek of the beautiful stranger, while she answered that she should be sorry to give him so much trouble, and could not think of taking him from his friends. — D'Alonville, unwilling to take this as a refusal, turned to Madame de Touranges, and requested her permission to see Mademoiselle to her home — "You have my permission," answered the lady, "but my woman must go with her also. — Her mother entrusted her to come hither with a servant, who, being obliged to go another way, could not stay to escort her back. I promised to let some person see her over the common, which brings her within sight of her mother's residence. As I was not aware of your gallantry, and am not at all sure that my friend, Madame Denzil, will approve of it, I must, whether you go or no, Chevalier, still perform my engagement, and send Agatha with her." "I will, however," said D'Alonville, "accept of the honor of waiting on the young lady on any conditions you shall annex." Madame de Touranges ordered her maid to attend Miss Denzil; and nodding to D'Alonville, in a way that said "you may go with her if you will," — he hastened away to overtake her, followed by Agatha.
Miss Denzil had already crossed the village street; and passing a low style, had taken a path that led through some cottage garden to the heath, over which her way lay, when D'Alonville overtook her. Though the quickness with which she had awaked, and some surprise at the perseverance in attending her, from a young man with whom she had not exchanged half a dozen words, had raised the lovely glow of her cheeks, D'Alonville flattered himself that he read in her beautiful blue eyes no displeasure. — He found that she spoke French imperfectly, and with extreme dissidence but there was even in this defect a nameless enchantment; and her voice was so sweet, that whatever she said acquired a thousand charms only from the tone in which it was spoken. The walk, though really of near three miles, almost two of which were over a dreary common, appeared to him but as a quarter of a mile; and his countenance, had it been examined, would have betrayed what he felt, when his beautiful companion said, "I am now Sir, only a few paces from my home; and I should be sorry to give you the trouble of coming any farther, unless, indeed, you will do my mother the favor of walking in." D'Alonville hesitated a moment. This might perhaps be the only opportunity he might ever have to make up acquaintance in a family to which this charming girl belonged; but how might he be received? Her mother might be displeased, or alarmed, at his introduction. — She might be prudish, she might be proud or ignorant; and the very means he took to obtain some farther acquaintance, might possibly shut the doors of her house against him for ever. It was better not to venture it. He therefore told Miss Denzil, that, "he could not take so great a liberty as that of intruding on Madame Sa Mere, without her permission." Yet he could not determine to bid adieu to Mademoiselle sa fille, without eagerly enquiring when he might hope to see her again. — "Oh!" replied she, with the ease of unsuspecting innocence, "I am continually with my friend, the Ladies de Touranges; and my mother, when her health permits, almost as often as I am. — You do not live far off," added she. "I live!" replied he, "Alas! Mademeiselle Mademoiselle , I live no where! I had once," continued he, with a deep sigh, " home and a country! but now I am, as well as the ladies for whom you are so generously interested, a wanderer upon the earth. Ah! if you knew how infinitely amiable you appear, as the friend of these strangers! But — I beg pardon for detaining you. — Do you think I shall, indeed, be so happy as to see you once again, before I leave England; never, in all probability, to return?
Miss Denzil seemed hurt by the evident melancholy and dejection with which he said this, and embarrassed how to answer it. — Her natural candid simplicity, however, got the better of any artificial reserve, which would, perhaps, have taught her to conceal the concern she felt — "I hope we shall meet again," said she, "I am sure I wish it, and I hope if you do leave England, Sir, it will not be to return to France; for such a journey must be attended with danger, which one is shocked even to think of." "Wherever I go," replied D'Alonville, "whatever becomes of me, it is flattering to believe that you will deign to recollect me." He was conscious that he was going too far. They were at a gate which opened into a little shrubbery that surrounded her mother's house. It was time to tear himself away. — He felt that the longer he continued this dangerous parley, the greater would become the difficulty of ending it; he therefore repeated his hopes of seeing her again, his acknowledgments for the honor she had done him in permitting him to attend her home; and then, as she went in at the gate, he left her, Agatha waiting on her into the house.
D'Alonville returned hastily by the path he came. On a rising ground, two or three hundred yards from the gate, he turned to see in there was yet a glimpse, at the door, of the fascinating figure he had just parted with; but she had disappeared. — He surveyed the house. — It was an irregular and low house, half concealed by the trees which crowded round it, and did not seem to have been originally intended for the residence of a gentleman's family; an involuntary sigh escaped him as he lost sight of it, and almost mechanically he followed the path which led back to the house where he had left his friends.
He found Ellesmere as attentively listening to Madame de Touranges as when he had left him; she had never given him time to consider how time passed, or that his uncle expected them back to a late dinner; nor did the appearance of D'Alonville rouse to recollection either the narrator of the listener. — Madame de Touranges, indeed, was giving Mr. Ellesmere a very circumstantial account of the scenes she had passed through at Paris the preceding September, and they were too extraordinary not to engage his attention. Gabrielle appeared to shudder with terror, and to wonder how her mother could speak with so much firmness, of what she had seen and suffered, even at this distance of time. — D'Alonville thought it want of consideration in Madame de Touranges to dwell so minutely on such descriptions before her daughter, whose health was visibly affected by the sad recollection. — He sat down near her, and began with her some conversation on topics less melancholy: — he mentioned her young friend, who was indeed the subject most immediately in his mind. "Is she not a very charming girl?" said Gabrielle. "Indeed the whole family are very amiable; and we are infinitely obliged to them for a number of little kindnesses, that have made much more commodious than it would otherwise have been, this retreat, which, when my health made my stay in London impossible, Mrs. Denzil herself found for us." D'Alonville longed to ask an hundred questions about them, and would have hazarded some, but Ellesmere at this moment recollected that it was more than time to return to Fernhust Fernyhurst; he reminded D'Alonville of it, and they departed; Ellesmere having first obtained permission to introduce his uncle in a day or two. They left Madame de Touranges in better spirits than she had been for many months. She had not only made friends, from whom she hoped to receive considerable assistance and protection during the involuntary residence of herself and her daughter in England, but she had somebody to talk to, who seemed willing to allow her the quality of a woman of superior understanding; a claim which, among the generality of the English, she was in great danger of losing. — Besides these consolations, she formed the most sanguine expectations from the voyage proposed to be taken by D'Alonville, whom she had no doubt would procure for them intelligence of de Touranges, and restore to her a son for whose fate her pride was as much interested as her love. He was the last of his family, save only the infant whom he had never seen, and whose life had begun amidst the dispersion and ruin of his family: on these two lives, one of which was exposed to such imminent peril, and the other to all the diseases which in early infancy beset a human creature, depended that happiness to which Madame de Touranges looked forward from amidst the depression of exile — that of seeing the house of de Touranges restored to its original splendor, and trampling in the dust the party to whom it owed its being eclipsed.
EURIPIDES.
ELLESMERE had been talked to till he had no inclination to hear even the sound of his own voice, and D'Alonville was still less disposed to speak; they rode near a mile together before this silence was broken by Ellesmere's checking his horse suddenly, and asking his friend whether he thought Captain Caverly would not have something to undergo for having suffered them to keep his dinner waiting so long? D'Alonville, who by no means understood the question, asked an explanation. "Why don't you know, my friend," said he, "that our good uncle, who never could be prevailed upon to submit to the yoke of matrimony, of which he entertained the most formidable ideas, is under the dominion of an housekeeper, who governs him with more severity than the most imperious dame of family would probably ever thought, of exercising. — As she does not love me much, for she has taken up, I know not how, a notion that I make the honest Captain restless under her authority, and as she always suspects I may come in for a share of his fortune, for which she has provided other claimants, she has made several attempts to shut me out from ever appearing in her little despotic government; in this instance, however, our old soldier has stoutly resisted her tyranny; out the knowledge that it gives her an opportunity of teazing him, always shortens my visits, and renders them less pleasant to me while they last.— Heaven knows, that to possess, or even to share, the little fortune of Capt. Caverly, never made any part of my scheme of life, but I love my uncle, and wish he had made out for himself a happier destiny." "I beseech you," said D'Alonville, "if our delay is likely to be the occasion of a moment's uneasiness to him, let us make more haste." "No," answered Ellesmere, "it is not so much that which just now struck me; for though a dinner spoiled is a very serious grievance, yet with a few hours grumbling and pouting it may be got over; but what led me to think and to speak of my uncle's governante, was, the difficulty he will have to escape from her wrath, when it is known that he is about to make an acquaintance with these French ladies, and even proposed receiving them into his house."
"Permit me one remark," said D'Alonville. "You English accuse the French (I speak of the French as they were) of dissolute manners and as being a nation wholly unprincipled in their gallantries; yet in my short acquaintance with England, I have observed several instances of arrangements which, in my country, would appear extraordinary examples of want of principle, or rather what we call of bien seance , than any thing that usually occurs in France."
"A truce with your moralizing comparisons, my dear Chevalier. Notwithstanding the solemn airs we English give ourselves, your remark is just enough; but there is nothing so blind as national prejudice and national presumption. That Miss Denzil," added he, changing the conversation, "is a good fine girl, D'Alonville?"
"I think her," answered he, "not only the most lovely woman I have seen in England but during my whole life."
"Yes," said Ellesmere, "I saw you were taken with her, which I should not have expected; for after all, it is but a little uncultivated rustic, and surely rather shewy than handsome, I should have fancied thee, my good friend, much more likely to be charmed with the fair Gabrielle."
"What the wife of my friend?"
"Cela n'empeche rien, Chevalier, as you know very well; but left it should be really likely you should be espris with the simple charms of the nymph of the wilds, let me put you upon your guard, by telling you, that I understand she is the second or third daughter of a numerous family, and that, by I know not what strange combination, they are robbed of the greatest part of their property, and are compelled to live in great obscurity. — I could only obtain a very vague and in-complete account from Madame de Touranges, who is too much occupied, as may well be supposed with her own affairs, to attend much to those of others; besides that I think foreigners hardly ever comprehend the domestic history of the English; which is owning, perhaps, to our manners being so different form theirs. What I clearly comprehended, however, was that Mrs. Denzil has nothing to give her daughters, and that they are in circumstances very far from fortunate."
"I grieve to hear it," answered D'Alonville; "not because more brilliant fortune would give me a chance of being favorably received in the family of Mademoiselle Denzil, for to such an happiness I could not in any case pretend; but because, if credit is to be given to the exterior indications of an amiable and ingenious mind, there are not many young persons who deserve an happier destiny than her of whom we have been speaking." D'Alonville sighed so deeply as he concluded this sentence, that Ellesmere could not but remark it. "Is it even so?" cried he. "What! is my invulnerable friend touched at last? He on whom the graceful vivacity of France, the majestic gravity of Germany, and even the celebrated charms of English women, have hitherto made no impression?" D'Alonville turned off this raillery as well as he could; and they soon after arrived at Fernyhurst, where they found the poor Captain in some concern, much more indeed than a spoiled dinner seemed to deserve from a man who was not particularly attached to the pleasures of the table. Ellesmere lamented the derangement he had been the occasion of, though he shewed by his appetite that it was not a matter of much consequence to him. D'Alonville was dejected and silent. The face, the figure, the tone of voice of the beautiful Denzil were present to his imagination, and he seemed to have discovered that there was in the world one being for whom it was worth while to wish to live; and that England contained one object which made him wish to remain in it.
He was not, however, so much fascinated by this infant passion, as not to be perfectly sensible of the folly of indulging it; yet had he not so much command over himself as to refuse the opportunities of seeing Miss Denzil, which, after this first accidental meeting. Ellesmere seemed purposely to throw in his way. The next day he contrived to get his uncle to wait on Madame de Touranges; and interested him so much in her favor, and so much more in that of her daughter-in-law, that braving all the domestic storms he incurred, the old Captain became their most assiduous visitant. His farm and his garden were made to offer their best productions for the table of these strangers; and parties were made for them, first at the house of Mrs. Denzil herself, and the elder Madame de Touranges being present, malice itself could find nothing in such society to offend the most inveterate prudery. D'Alonville must have been unlike every other man of his age and country, or indeed of any other country, if, when he continually saw the object who had by this time acquired so decided a preference in his heart, he could have concealed from her that preference; yet whenever he was alone, and ventured to examine his own conduct, he reproached himself; for he was conscious that, situated as he was, he ought not to think of engaging the affections of an innocent girl, of whom he must soon take an everlasting adieu. Alas! when he saw Angelina, (for by that name a romantic mother had called her third daughter,) he forgot all that reason and prudence suggested, and his real disposition, which was warm and impetuous, predominated over the artificial character that adversity and sorrow had given him. He fancied that the soft and expressive eyes of Angelina understood the language of his; — and when he spoke of his ruined fortune, of his being a wanderer and a fugitive, those charming eyes were filled with tears. Once he ventured to begin a sketch of the melancholy circumstances that had attended his father's death; but his voice faultered as he would have described the scene at the castle of Rosenheim, and Angelina entreated him not to go on. — At this instant her mother, who had left the room a few moments before, returned, and very naturally enquired what was the occasion of the tears she saw stealing down the cheeks of her daughter. — D'Alonville got up, and went to the window; but Angelina, without hesitation, answered, "Oh! my dear mama, the Chevalier has been telling me so many sad particulars of what happened to him before he came to England, that it breaks one's heart!" I beg your pardon, Madam." said D'Alonville, "I was not aware how much the sensibility of Mademoiselle Angelina might be excited by the story of distresses, with which, as they are without remedy, I do not generally trouble my friends; I know not indeed how I now came to be betrayed into the weakness of unavailing complaint." Mrs. Denzil seemed to hear this apology with as much interest as her daughter had attended to the story that had given occasion for it; and answered with a pensive smile; "Don't you know, Chevalier, that we always listen with patience, and even with sympathy, to the relation of sorrows, of which we have ourselves tasted? Alas! Sir, my children and I have also been wanderers and exiles. I know not whether we may not still be called so; for the victims of injustice, oppression and fraud, we are now banished from the rank of life where fortune originally placed us; and England, with all its advantages, is not the country where such a change of fortune is much softened to the sufferer. "But come," continued she, in a more cheerful voice, "we are only making one another melancholy — let us find some conversation less infectious."
These parties were made every day during the first ten days of the residence of the two friends at Fernyhurst; a nearer way was found, which made the distance hardly four miles from thence to North-Feldbury and Besthorpe, the villages in which Mrs. Denzil's and Mr. Sanderson's house stood; and Captain Caverly was so moved by the eloquence of one of the French ladies, or the beauty of the other, (though the former he did not clearly understand, and the latter he dared not openly admire) that for him the age the chivalry seemed indeed to be revived. He had a post-chaise, which, that he might not pay an heavy duty for what he seldom used, he had for some time shut up in a wood house, where it had remained almost forgotten; the lining had suffered from time and moths; and though there was not bend sinister on the pannels, to mortify the genealogic pride of the Ellesmere's or the Caverly's, yet the blended arms of those two ancient and respectable families, which had originally been blazoned on them, were nearly effaced by mould. Some difficulties had occurred as to a conveyance for Mesdames de Touranges, on the first venturing to Fernyhurst; — to obviate these against another time, Ellesmere undertook to inspect this long neglected vehicle; and, not withstanding this long neglected vehicle; and, notwithstanding such strong opposition on the part of the Captain's governante as greatly hazarded the peace of the establishment, the lining was brushed out and darned, — and the old post-chaise, drawn into the sun on a favorable morning, was in a great measure restored to its former consequence. Two of the handsomest and best matched cart horses carefully trimmed, and a smart boy in his Sundays clothes, made altogether an equipage which far from being contemptible, and greatly facilitated the benevolent and friendly endeavours of Captain Caverly to restore the languid spirits of the fair Gabrielle, who, from a state of the most melancholy depression, now began to look forward to brighter prospects; so easily do the sanguine eyes of youth turn from the rugged path of adversity, to contemplate the fair landscapes which hope then displays before them.
Of the delicious infatuation of hope D'Alonville was another instance — a thousand enchanting visions now appeared to him, rather as waking dreams than as sketches with which the steady hand of reason had any thing to do. Mrs. Denzil, far from appearing to consider him as an adventurer, whom she ought to fear, or an alien, who she should for that reason despise, treated him with particular kindness, and a very few interviews with her charming daughter convinced him that he had obtained an interest in her young and innocent heart, which worlds could not tempt to relinquish; — but the future happiness of Angelina was dearer to him than worlds — and yet he was about to sacrifice that to his own selfish and inconsiderate passion.
Yet, why selfish and inconsiderate? — Was his fortune always to remain as desperate as it now appeared? — Was he always to be an exile, without property, friends, or home; and was every effort against the anarchists and murderers of France to be fruitless, because one campaign had been unsuccessful? — To believe so would be to mistrust the justice of Providence. If the house should arrive, which would restore him to his country, should he not have it in his power to place the woman he loved in a situation of life superior to what, from the misfortunes of her family, she was likely to fill in her own country? This thought led to the most flattering train of ideas — and he determined to pursue, and to obtain the object, without whom he was convinced his being restored to his country, and enjoying there the most unclouded prosperity, would not make him happy. At length he had dressed up a set of future possibilities of colours so bewitching, and by th sophistry of love had so far subdued every objection to their bein arrange as his ardent imagination had place them, that he ventured, whe Ellesmere touched himself on the subject of his evident attachment, t mention his plan of seriously making proposals to Mrs. Denzil. — Far from repressing such a project with the cold phlegm of a sober-bloodied Englishman, Ellesmere not only encouraged him in it, but offered him every service in his power towards its success; — and it was determined that, as D'Alonville had already secured the approbation of the daughter; he should take the first opportunity of declaring himself to the mother, from whom every observation he had lately made persuaded him he had very little reason to apprehend a repulse. — This determination was taken after a most delightful day, passed in such society as is not often met with; Madame de Touranges was hardly ever so agreeable. Her daughter, always interesting was now almost cheerful; and Mrs. Denzil, on a small but excellent piano forté with an organ stop, had been playing some simple airs, while her daghters daughters sung, till Ellesmere, who was passionately fond of music, declared that he was in danger of being as much in love with Olivia, the second sister, as D'Alonville already was with the third. A declaration which was answered by D'Alonville, by reminding him of his prepossession for the fair Polonese, towards whom he laughingly accused him of infidelity. Ellesmere answered by declaring, that he had never yet seen a woman whom he liked so well as he did Alexina; at which D'Alonville, who did not believe him serious, and thought it almost impossible he should ever see her again, only laughed. They then went on to plan another party, which should be as agreeable that they had just left; and they met the next morning with the expectation of realizing this project, when a packet of letters, brought by a servant whom Sir Maynard had sent over on purpose, put an end to it. Ellesmere found it necessary to return to Eddisbury immediately, and D'Alonville, though with an heavy heart, took leave of his generous host, and of the neighbourhood, which was become so interesting; and though they both promised themselves they should find an opportunity of revisiting Fernyhurst in a few days, they returned with almost equal reluctance to the dull round of long stories from Sir Maynard, and inspired anecdotes from Lady Ellesmere, with the formal and tedious dinners and solemn suppers that awaited them at Eddisbury.
COWPER.
AS Mrs. Denzil and her family will frequently appear in the subsequent part of this history, a sketch of some of them may not be unnecessary — and this may perhaps best be given in a letter of her own, in answer to one she had received from a friend, who remonstrated with her on the restless temper she had lately evinced, which had induced her more than once to change her residence, a circumstance that occasioned her prudent correspondent to represent to her the expence of frequent removals, and to interlard her friendly sermon with many proverbs of great authority; at the head of which appeared that excellent axiom, "that a rolling stone gathers no moss:" her answer to which, and to much other stationary wisdom, was in the following terms:
"There is always, my dear *****, so much real friendship in your severity; you mean so perfectly well, that with you I shall, without scruple, enter into a defence of those parts of my conduct which you seem to disapprove; and let this be a testimony of my real affection for you; for to the greater part of those who still do me the honor to call themselves my friends, I am content to let my conduct justify itself, conscious of the rectitude of my intention, and certain hat nothing is so difficult, even to minds the most liberal and the most enlightened, as to judge of the actions of another, when the motives of those actions cannot be known.
You think I do wrong in again proposing to move, when you imagine me so pleasantly, and as you express it, so snugly situated in this house — fitted for an own uncle of Lord Aberdore's — very certainly an house fittted fitted up for the own uncle of a lord, must be a great acquisition to me, who am not one of those poets who have a house and who ought to be glad of so great an advantage as being admitted to live, as you observe, "rent free" in a mansion, which I do verily believe would bring in my children's noble kinsman five, or, for ought I know, six-in-twenty whole pounds a year, which, to a man who possesses about twenty thousand annually of his own and about seven in places, I allow to be a very considerable object.
But are you, my dear ******, who, fortunately for you, have seen very little of such people as those I am connected with — are you aware, that there are more ways than one of paying for such advantages? — Alas! it is almost a pity to give you, who have so much philanthropy, a true idea of men as they are, especially of those who we call great men, and who you consider, I know to be indeed what they ought to be, from the superiority of their education, as well as their greater power of benefiting mankind.
But now, as a matter of self defence, I must tell you, that there are not only two ways of doing a favor, but that one of those ways entirely annihilates the obligation, while the other doubles it.
Now my good Lord of Aberdore knows only the first of these methods — and he contrived to accommodate me by his house here, with so much parade of the obligation I owe him, to clog it with so many ceremonies, and to tell so often to all his satellites, how very good he has been to "poor Mrs. Denzil and her family," that I, who have had all this repeated to me, who have found since I inhabited the house many conditions annexed to it, which I never dreamt of when I was induced to enter it, and who am neither dazzled by his nobility, nor feel myself degraded by my own poverty, have at times, had very great inclination to return his house to the old man and woman who inhabited it heretofore, and with "une reverence tres prefonde" for all past favors, to pack up my children and my books, in which consist all my riches, and, like a female Prospero, set forth for some desert island — or any island but this dear England of ours, which I acknowledge, however, to be the very best of all possible countries for a thousand things. — There is no such place in the world for fat beeves, and rich pastures, fine horses, fine meadows for them to live in, and convenient furniture — fine servants in fine liveries, and fine carriages for them to ride behind, and fine public places to shew them at: — fine places for those who have great talents, and admirable sinecures for others who have only great interest — excellent laws to defend the property of those who can pay for being so defended — a brave army, and the first navy in the world. — Of all these excellencies there is no manner of doubt, together with many others "too numerous to mention;" nor am I disposed to point out, as our favorite poet
does, on another occasion,— " a spot or two,"Which so much beauty
would do well to purge."On the contrary, I will praise the
disinterested characters of our statesmen, the self denial and humility
of our divines, the integrity and dispatch of our men of law, more
particularly those thrice worthy members of it yclept attornies
by the vulgar, but by themselves called solicitors. See now if
you can with reason accuse me of insensibility towards the many great
blessings we enjoy; so for from it, that the consciousness alone of
those blessings (together with some other trifling reasons) compels me
to stay in "This land, that from her pushes all the rest;and among
others there is one very cogent one, viz. that I have lost in it evere
every thing but my head, and should I now venture out of it, I
think I should be in some hazard of being deprived of that should be in
some hazard of being deprived of that also, my sole remaining
poossession possession, with which, grace a Dieu, I have been
enabled to supply the want of those, which the very worthy and honest
relations of my children have taken from me; and have verified, at the
expence indeed of my health, (and sometimes of temper) the truth of
that excellent adage, that "Learning is better than house or land:"When
house and land is gone and spent,"Then learning" —or, as my
housemaid's edition reads, "Larning is most excellent." Now, as this
commodity on the way I possess it would not be marketable in any other
country, seven if my head remained on) you see, my dear friend, that
while I must live by it, that is, while the worthies above named choose
to keep me and my children entirely out of the property that belongs to
us, I must remain in England, notwithstanding my rattle about my
voyages. — Thus circumscribed
"To one small island, and but half an age."do not wonder If I want
to move about in my prison, and have a horror of being planted here,
like a cabbage, to grow white-headed and hard-hearted. You, who are
one of very few people who shrink not from the couch of pain and
sickness when friendship or duty calls upon you to attend it, have seen
how uneasy is the sufferer who seeks rest but finds none — Every part
of his bed is tried, and all are alike strewn with thorns — Allow
something like this to accompany a mind ill at ease, a mind overwhelmed
with present troubles, and future dread for the fate of my children —
Driven from my home twelve years since, with a large family wandering
without any fixed plan, was long a matter of necessity and may now, for
aught I know, be grown into habit, and be a fault of temper. — Be it
so — I do not prerend pretend to be without faults — and as a poet, I
might plead imprudence by prescription. Alas! dear ****, how little
can the generality of the prosperous world judge of a situation to
unlike their own. — Many of my ci devant friends, for many I
have dropped by the way, (I beg pardon, they have dropped me) were born
to the same prospects of easy competence as I was; and their subsequent
destiny — ah! how unlike mine — has not believed the early
promise of affluence. — These ladies have always had a father, an
husband, or a brother, to order all their peculiarly concerns. — The
morning arose only to awaken them to some pleasurable party abroad, or
some chosen amusement at home — their winters have passed, and, for
aught I know, pass still while they are in London, in shopping or
visiting in a morning — or by such as are literary, or are told they
ought to be so, in examining new pamphlets, peeping into reviews to
form their opinions, listening to that of "Dear Mr. Such a one the most
charming man in the world, who writes sweet verses himself;" in
entering some delightful lines into a book, or following a
celebrated preacher, or attending philosophical lectures — Others, of
less mental accomplishments, frequent auctions or exhibitions, or drive
into the Park, or walk in Kensington Gardens. The former set (the
literary ladies) return to dress for a late dinner, then go to some
conversation, where there is "The feast of reason, and the flow of
soul."or by their interest with some favorite actress they get places
when others are refused, and from their severer studies unbend at a
celebrated performance. — The less enlightened, the beauties, or
rather those who insist upon being still noticed as such, dress with
more eclat, though not with more care — they dash at new fashions to
leave the vulgars and ruffs at an immeasurable distance —dine
at eight o'clock — go to the opera; set up half the night at deep play
— talk loud about it the next day as they stop in Bond-Street, to
some idle man who affects fashion. — If they happen to be women
whose connections were originally in the city, they take care to talk a
great deal to, and of lords and ladies, Sir John and Sir Frederick,
and to exceed in their follies and their expences these new
acquaintances. — Such are the lives persons lead, who "are very
sorry for poor Mrs. Denzil, but cannot help saying they think her quite
wrong in many things — to be sure she has some talents, but nothing so
extraordinary; and if she had, it is a thousand pities to use them in
attacking people of consequence, who really wished her well — and then
to have any opinion of politics is so extremely wrong! — There can
be but one opinion on those things among 'les gens comme il faut' —why
then offend them by differing from them, when they only can be
of use in promoting the interest of her large family." — Such are the
charitable comments on the conduct of "poor Mrs. Denzil," who leaves
her bed in a morning, when her health permits, to go to her desk, from
whence she rises only to sit down to a dinner she cannot eat, waited
upon by an awkward boy, or a strapping country girl, who stare at madam
"bin as how she writs all them there books that be on the shelf." From
this delectable repast, during which the authoress "Chews the food of
sweet and bitter fancy,"rather than any thing else, she is not
unfrequently called on by an honest gentleman, in a brown rough great
coat, corduroy breeches, boots, and green boot garters, his hair
curling naturally in his pole, to the great advantage of his shining
face, who with that sort of half bow which a substantial trade sman
tradesman sometimes makes, as much as to say, "Humph! for all you are a
lady, I know you are poor and in debt" — pulls out a little square
wafered letter, of which the contents peradventure run thus —
"Mrs. DENZIL.
"Madam,
"My neighbour, Mr. Thomas Tough, coming your way, I have desired
him to call to receive of you the sum of sixty-two pounds nine
shillings and eleven-pence, due as per bill delivered for your young
gentlemen, I having sent up the same, as desired, Messieurs Ramsay and
Shrimpshire, who answer they have no effects in hand for discharge of
ditto; — wherefore hope you will please immediately to pay the same
to bearer, whose receipt will be sufficient for,
Madam,
Your humble servant,
HUMPHRY HOTGOOSE.
"N. B. Madam, I hope you'll not fail herein, as I have a great sum to make up next Wensday, and hope you'll give me no furder trubble; but if shoud, must put it into a lawyer's hands."
From the tète-á-tëte with Mr. Thomas Tough, she goes to her desk again, and begins to write, "With what appetite she may," in the forlorn hope of procuring from her bookseller part of the money she has been compelled to promise to the said Thomas's peremptory demands on the behalf of Mr. Humphry Hotgoose — precious recipe to animate the imagination and exalt the fancy!
The evening comes, however, and finds her so employed. After a
conference with Mr. Tough, she must write a tender dialogue between
some damsel, whose perfections are even greater then those "Which
youthful poets fancy when they love," and her hero, who, to the bravery
and talents of Caesar, adds the gentleness of Sir Charles Grandison,
and the wit of Lovelace. But Mr. Tough's conversation, his rude
threats, and his boisterous remonstrances, have totally sunk her
spirits; nor are they elevated by hearing that the small beer is almost
out; that the pigs of a rich farmer, her next neighbour, have broke
into the garden, rooted up the whole crop of pease, and not left her a
single hyacinth or jonquil. She knows remonstrance to be vain; or if
it were not, that farmer Duckbury cannot restore her bed of sweet
flowers, on which she depended for the amusement of a few solitary
moments in the spring. Melancholy and dejected she recollects that
once she had a walled garden well provided with flowers; and the
comforts and pleasures of affluence recur forcibly to her mind. She is
diverted from such reflections, however, by hearing from her maid, as
she is assisting her to undress, that John Gubbin's children over the
way, and his wife, and John his-self, have all got the scarlot favor
; and that one of the children is dead on't, and another like to die.
She is ashamed of concern she felt a few moments before for a nosegay,
when creatures of the same species, and so near her, are suffering
under calamities infinitely more severe. She enquires what attendance
these poor people have had; and finds that farmer Duckbury has sent the
doctor, (Hired by the parish to attend the poor at so much a head) and
that he says the favor's very catching and he's afraid to go nist um.
Compassion for these unhappy persons is now mingled with apprehensions
for her own family. A malignant fever raging in a dirty cottage not an
hundred yards from her door, gives her but an unpleasing impression to
carry to her pillow, where "The churlish chiding of the winter's wind"
does not lull her agitated mind to repose. Sleep flies from her eyes;
or if it visits her a moment, the figure of that animal, "Hateful to
gods and men," a Dun, appears before her disturbed imagination; or she
sees her sick neighbours expiring around her. With the earliest dawn
she sends her servant (her nose well stopped with rue,) to enquire at
their door how they do? — The scene of exquisite misery, even as
described by the unadorned account of her maid Betty, excites her
commiseration. She buys her wine by the dozen, not having been for a
long time rich enough to purchase a pipe, and she sends a man and horse
ten miles to fetch it; but all she has in the house is now sent to
supply the pressing occasions of John Gubbins and his family, for whom
she knows it will do more than medicine, especially such as is sent in
to be paid for by farmer Ducksbury, as overseer, at so much a head.
The rest of the day is passed as before; her hero and her heroine are
parted in agonies, or meet in delight and she is employed in making the
most of either; with interludes of the Gubbins' family, and precautions
against importing the infectious distemper into her own. The farmer
arrives towards evening, who had been to the market-town, and had
undertaken to bring her letters. He delivers her two, of which the
contents are probably as follows:
"No. 4, Thaives-Inn, Feb. 23, 17
"Madam,
"The trustees have received your's of the 9th past. I hereby
acquaint you from them, that they will not, for the future, correspond
with you, or answer any questions you may ask. They are suprised at
the abuse you throw upon them about Mr. Prettythief, their agent. You
have already been informed that the trustees have written to him to
know what he has done with the 650l. &c. and for his accounts so long
ago as five months. Have no doubt, as he is a very honest man, that he
will give, in due time, a true account thereof. Mean time, as for
money for your children's support, the gentlemen have none in hand; but
if they had, it would make no difference, they being determined not to
pay a farthing without an order from Chancery.
I am, Madam,
For Mess. Ramsay and Shrimpshire,
Your humble servant,
ANTHONY LAMBSKIN."
LETTER II.
"Madam,
"Am much surprised at your not sending up, as promised, the end of
the third volume of the new novel purchased by me. The trade expects
it at the time I notified to them that it would be ready; and the
printer informs me he shall stand still if not supplied immediately.
Must insist on having a hundred pages at least by Saturday night; also
the Ode to Liberty, mentioned by you as a close to the same: but I
shall change the title of that, having promis'd the trade that there
shall be no liberty at all in the present work; without which
asshurance they would not have delt for the same. — Hopin to receive
the manscrip (as you have had money thereon,) at the time before-named,
remain,
Madam, your humble servant,
JOSEPTH CLAPPER.
"194, Holbourn,
Feb. 22, 17 ."
Such, my dear *****, are the delights that her existence now affords to Mrs. Denzil, mingled and varied with others, of which she will forbear to give a description, because you are not ignorant of some, and others would only give you pain.
But to cease speaking in the second person — Do not you , my friend, add your censure to that of the unfeeling triflers I have before described, and to many others whom I could describe. Do not add your censure if I find it always impossible to submit, without murmuring, to so dreary a fate; and let others, if I find it always impossible to submit, without murmuring, to so dreary a fate; and let others, if they can a moment divest themselves of selfish prejudice, ask their own hears whether they could acquit themselves better in circumstances like mine than I have done.
All, however, I could have borne, because I must — because I felt a degree of self-approbation in stemming a tide of adversity under which the generality of women would have sunk. — All this I could have endured with less disposition to murmur, did I not see, as I proceed in this rugged way, that those who now and then threw a flower before me, drop off as I go along — some from the mere weakness and caprice of human nature; others because I will not consent to consider it as proper to give up my understanding to their disposal; and some, alas! by death. You know how tenderly I was attached to one friend, thus torn from me; and if you love my attempts in poetry, as well as you once did, though perhaps those attempts are not what they were once, you may possibly have a melancholy satisfaction in reading the lines that occurred to me a few evenings since, as I was wandering alone, watching the rising of the moon above the plantation on the hilly common behind the house here, and recollected that it was twelve months since I lost the friend who supplied to me the many relations and connections that calamity has robbed me of — some by distance, and some by that estrangement which policy imposes on the sage and the prudent.
Like a poor ghost, the night I seek,And this is, in my opinion, my dear ***** "a consummation devoutly to be wished." — Yet when I look at my children, particularly my girls and my little boy, I blush at my cowardice, and resolve that I will not even wish to desert my post, terribly untenable as it frequently appears.
But what amends can be made me by the men, who, under pretence
of serving, have undone us? — If there is justice either on earth or
in Heaven, they will have a dreadful account to answer to both. In the
mean time, notwithstanding your exhortations to moderation, I shall
endeavour to shew what they are to a world who is already but little
disposed to think well of them — And you will see it really may
happen in this very happy land, that men who are rich may commit, with
impunity, crimes infinitely more unpardonable, because they are
committed with less temptation, than those for which "little villains"
suffer everyday — crimes which involve in their consequences the most
fatal events. — I dare not trust myself longer on this subject, for
my temper and health suffer from it. — Farewel, my dear *****; while
I exist, I must, however, or wherever situated, remain your most
faithful and affectionate servant.
CHARLOTTE DENZIL.
" Et de vrai la nouvelleté couste si cher jusqu'a cette heure a
ce
pauvre Estat — (et je ne scay si nous en sommes a la derniere
enchere) qu'en tout et partout j'en quitte le party."
MONTAIGNE.
The famous Gratian, in his little book wherein he lays down maxims for a man's advancing himself at Court, advises his reader to associate himself with the fortunate, and to shun the unfortunate; which, notwithstanding the baseness of the precept to an honest mind, may have something useful in it to those who push their interest in the world.
ADDISON.
THE family at Eddisburgh were, when Edward Ellesmere and D'Alonville arrived there, so occupied with the expectations of seeing Mr. Ellesmere, Lady Sophia, and their son, who were to be with them the next day, together with Lady Sophia's inseparable friend, Miss Milsington, that hardly any body seemed to perceive the return of the two friends, unless it was Sir Maynard, who had sent for Edward, and who now required his attendance in the library, where he was shut us above an hour with his father. D'Alonville was entertained while he remained with the ladies by being told of the consequence of their elder brother; the elegance and his fashion of Lady Sophia; and the uncommon accomplishments of Miss Milsington. D'Alonville listened as well and as long as he could and endeavoured to prevent their perceiving that his mind was occupied by objects very different from those that had in their eyes so much importance.
He retired as soon as possible, under pretence of writing letters; and excused himself from supper, where, however, his friend was compelled to attend, and to hear and answer numberless questions from his mother and sisters, as to what he had done with himself; and who he had seen at Fernhurst Fernyhurst . "I cannot imagine," said Miss Mary, "what you could do with your French friend — he seems tired to death here; and what must he be at Captain Caverly's? You are always saying, you know, brother Edward, that foreigners prefer the society of ladies; but I see no signs of that disposition in this friend of your's. Perhaps, though, he may meet with ladies at the Captain's who suit him better."
"Fye, Mary!" cried lady Ellesmere. "Surely, child, you forget yourself."
"Mary is perfectly right;" answered Edward. "We did meet with ladies; not indeed at my uncle's, but in his neighbourhood, whom we both thought, not more agreeable indeed than those we left at home, but, however, very agreeable."
"Aye, pray who? I did not think that part of the country had produced any thing extraordinary. I suppose the Aberdore family are hardly in the country at this time of the year," said lady Ellesmere. "There is a family of the name of Denzil," said Ellesmere, "settled in the neighbourhood, distant relations, it seems, of Lord Aberdore's; a lady and several sons and daughters." "Oh!" cried Miss Mary, "I recollect hearing something about them. Sister Elizabeth, those Misses are the girls that Mr. Sedgemoor and Mr. Wilkinson talked so much about, the end of last summer. They saw them at some assembly; and bored us to death with telling us I know not what about them. I asked Mr. Wenman afterwards, whether there was any thing so extraordinary about them, and he said, "no; that they were tolerable, but by no means what Mr. Sedgemoor (who is always wild after any new people he happens to meet with) described them."
"Denzil! Denzil!" said Sir Maynard; "the name is a respectable one."
"Yes, papa;" interrupted Miss Mary, with quickness, "but I assure you these Misses are nobody of any consequence; and they are related very, very distantly, quite an hundred and twentieth cousinship to the late Lady Aberdore; and so as they were extremely distressed in their circumstances, my Lord lent them one of his farm houses just to save their paying rent; but I heard that they hardly ever went to Darleston Park in the little time the family are down; and when they do, that it is quite in the style of dependants."
"You know more of them, I see, than I do;" said Ellesmere, "I rather wonder, Mary, how you come to be so well informed."
"Because these two men," answered she, "that silly booby Squire Sedgemoor, and Wilkinson his echo, and his led Captain, quite surfeited me with the fulsome praises they gave these miraculous Misses; and I was determined, whenever I saw Wenman, whose estates are just by, so that he knows all the people of the country, that I would make him tell me about them." Ellesmere convinced that his sisters would give still less credit to his French, than to his English acquaintance, let the conversation drop, and entered into the sort of discourse which they usually held when only their own family were assembled.
It was near seven the next evening before Mr. Ellesmere, Lady Sophia, and her friend arrived; for though they slept on the road, the ladies had no notion of getting to Eddisburgh before dinner, D'Alonville now saw for the first time the prodigy of talents and taste, of whom he had heard so much. In her person there was not much attraction: — she was very tall, bony and masculine; and had features so coarse and large, that rouge, however judiciously applied, rather added to the strength than to the beauty of that expression of countenance on which she piqued herself. Her voice, naturally loud and hollow, she softened into something between a murmur and a whisper, by speaking through her half-shut teeth. The childing gaiety of her dress, which was always in the extremity of fashion, with some little fanciful variation or addition of her own, would have been less remarkable in a girl under twenty, than when it was assumed by a woman whose age she herself allowed to be a little turned of thirty. There were indeed some ill-natured old folks who affected to recollect her first appearance in the world, and who scrupled not to affirm that she might have added twelve or fourteen years more to the account, without over-stepping the modesty of truth. The little, slight, made-up insignificant figure of Lady Sophia, was an admirable contrast to the stupendous elegance of her friend, who engrossed much of the conversation, and talked of fashions, and news: what was doing among people of rank in towns; and what the Duke said; and how Lady Georgina was dressed when she was presented: how Lord M— won his wager; and how much the connoisseurs approved of the solo which Sir G. F— composed himself. All which, however heterogeneous, was so rapidly detailed, that nobody who could be entertained with such anecdotes, could possibly think the dinner tedious; though both Edward Ellesmere and D'Alonville were convinced that it lasted above three hours. When Miss Milsington had exhausted the first collection of news and anecdote, the conversation was taken up by Mr. Ellesmere, who was solemn and sententious; and putting on a look of profound sagacity, spoke of alarms and apprehensions; of disaffected spirits, and turbulent partizans — the French had emissaries — the presbyterians were insidiously at work, and should be repressed in time — a sentiment in which Sir Maynard heartily concurred; and began to relate to his son with a degree of vehemence, which no other topic could excite, all the new reasons he had to detest his neighbour of that persuasion; whose recent offence was, having purchased another estate close to the Park paling of Eddisburgh Hall. Sir Maynard denounced them all; and hoped to hear that means would soon be taken for their total extirpation. En attendant however, the news which his eldest son took the earliest opportunity of communicating, was the most gratifying he could now hear; for it was a confirmation that his long depending negotiation with ministry was at length settled. He was to be brought inte into the House of Commons; to have a pension of six hundred a year, and a cornetcy of horse for his brother Edward; on condition only of the most perfect acquiescence in politics, whatever turn they may take; and he declared with great solemnity, that his interest, and his conscience, went hand in hand. Sir Maynard, who was happy beyond his hopes at this favourable turn in his son's affairs, and who foresaw from the talents he believed him to possess, the greatest probability of his rising to some very exalted station, was only concerned to know how he could acquit himself to the noble family to whom he was allied, the father, uncles, and brothers of Lady of Sophia; but he understood with extreme satisfaction that the whole house of G——— were make their terms, and would very soon join the party towards whom he had made the first advances, as a fort of avant courier. Sir Maynard, in whose bosom ambition only slumbered, was now elevated with the most sanguine hopes; and nothing could be more flattering to those hopes, than the preliminary article — A cornetcy of horse for Edward — which had been slightly hinted at in Mr. Ellesmere's letters; and which was the subject of the conference held with him the evening before. Sir Maynard had then found his second son extremely anxious for the appointment; and he had now the pleasure of being assured, that little more remained to secure it to him than the king's signature, which would probably be procured in a few days. "But there is one thing, my dear Sir," said the sagacious elder brother, " which you will allow me to touch upon. These are times when persons in our rank of life, and situated and connected as we are, should be particularly cautious; forming no friendships in any degree equivocal; making no alliances which may however remotely, call into question the correctness of our own principles. My brother is young, unguarded, and of course not aware, it may be, of all this. You will therefore understand my reasons for saying, that in my opinion, and according to the view I have taken of the matter, he is wrong in connecting himself so much as it appears he does, with French emigrants. They may be the people they call themselves: — men of fashion in their own country; and of good principles; — but they may not. People, as I observed before, cannot be too much upon their guard. Jacobin emissaries are about; and are so artful, that it is hardly possible to detect them. I hope Edward knows his acquaintance — yet I understand he picked him up on the road. I gave him indeed a hint or two, when I saw him with him in town, how proper it was to be well secure of this Monsieur D'Alonville, which I understand is a French name not very much known; but Edward either did not, or would not understand me."
Sir Maynard, by whom the wisdom of Solomon, and the politics of Machiavel, would have been despised, when the wisdom or the political sagacity of his eldest son were in contemplation, agreed with him entirely. "He said that the same thing had occurred to himself. That Edward was too fond a great deal of foreigners, and of new acquaintance; and though certainly this young Frenchman appeared very inoffensive, yet there was no knowing; and it was a nation celebrated for deceit."
Sir Maynard therefore agreed to give Edward an hint the first apportunity opportunity, that his hospitality to the chevalier D'Alonville, had extended far enough; and on the other hand, the profound Mr. Ellesmere engaged to find out, by means of Miss Milsington, who he really was. "For Miss Milsington," said he, "is so much acquainted with all foreigners of fashion in and about London, that when she comes to talk to him a little of people of a certain rank in his own country, it will be impossible for him to escape detection, if he is not what he calls himself."
In pursuance of this plan, D'Alonville was beset the next day by Miss Milsington, who soon discovered, or pretended to discover, that he was a man of real fashion, and of the most respectable connections. He was indeed eminently accomplished; and notwithstanding all the ridiculous affectation which disgusted as many as dared think for themselves, Miss Milsington was really qualified to judge of those accomplishments. Insensibly, from being engaged to find out who D'Alonville was, she discovered that he was very amiable; and became so fond of him that she could not conceal her partiality. Personal beauty might possibly have its effect; and the unassuming manners of D'Alonville, who, though he was master of almost every science, was contented to listed to the dictatorial theories of the universal Miss Milsington, flattered her vanity, and gratified her ambition of being considered by her wondering friends as omniscient. This experiment was far from giving pleasure to the sapient Mr. Ellesmere. The man whom he had before suspected as an imposter, he now disliked because he was applauded; and though Mr. Ellesmere's attention was directed to very different acquirements, he had a mind so narrow, that he hated to see any man excel, even in what he had never himself attempted.
D'Alonville, though wearied to death, was civil enough to attend whenever he was summoned to the harpsichord, where he could accompany at sight the most difficult lessons; and Miss Milsington, who was really mistress of music, contrived to keep him so constantly engaged, that he had very little time to observe the cold and supercilious manners of Mr. Ellesmere towards him: but his friend Edward remarked it, and remarked it with impatience; and though many reasons concurred which made him desire to hasten his journey to the continent, and he proposed with D'Alonville to quit Eddisburgh in a few days, his generous spirit made him wish to have his arrogant elder brother understand, that he did not take his friend away one day sooner, for his illiberal dislike to him. An opportunity of telling him so, failed not to offer itself. The two brothers were left alone after dinner, Sir Maynard being called out upon business; when the elder began such an harangue about forming troublesome connections, and the imprudence of youthful friendships, that Edward did not affect to doubt his meaning; and the subject was canvassed with so much asperity, that they parted in mutual displeasure. Edward resolutely adhering to his friend, of whom he spoke in the warmest terms; and his sage brother assuring him, with a magisterial air, and an affectation of cold and tranquil policy, "That as he got on in life, those boyish ebullitions would subside. What is this friendship," said he, "about which you declaim, my good brother Edward? Have men of a certain grasp of intellect, a certain turn for business; men, I mean, who aim at making a figure in the superior walks of like — have they any private friendships? No. We see that all these attachments, nay, even what are called the ties of blood, are immediately dissolved on any political exigency; or if it happens otherwise, if by some unusual circumstance, a man so embarrasses himself, as not to be able to shake off these inconvenient adherents, don't you see the eagle entangled, and often compelled to descend from his daring flight, by the serpents he has wound around him?" "I know nothing of your eagles, and serpents, Sir," replied the younger brother; "but I know that a man who is incapable of feeling any real friendship for any human being, may be fit for a statesman, or to make such fine speeches as you made just now, if he can get to be heard in the House of Commons; but that I should never desire to sit there, or any where else with him; for I shall always believe such a man capable of being a rascal, and only wanting temptation and opportunity." "That sort of boyish heat," cried the other, rising and stalking aong along the room, "will never do you any good, Mr. Edward Ellesmere — "as a man of business." "I hope I shall never be what you call a man of business, Sir," answered the other; "for I think a highwayman as respectable a character. "You can never even expect to rise in the army, I assure you, Ned," added the elder contemptuously, "with notions fit only — upon my word I know not for what they are fit — Friendship! stuff! as a soldier, Sir, (since men of business you do not honour with your approbation) as a soldier you will learn to rejoice at the death of your brother officers. Poor such a one, cry they, after a battle; poor Harry such a one; and honest Will such a one: well, they are gone, but we shall have a move in the regiment. Did you ever hear of an instance of personal regard superseding self-interest? Why should it?"
"Good evening to you, Mr. Ellesmere," said Edward, as he quitted the room, on finding his patience likely to fail, "We shall never agree. Your humble servant." He then went up to his mother's dressing room, where he found D'Alonville chained to the side of Miss Milsington, who was playing and singing a tender Italian air, to which she was teaching D'Alonville the second. After one rehearsal, they both executed their parts so well, that the lady, flattered by the proficiency of her scholar, desired to go over it again, and they began it with great success; but unfortunately, the only son of Lady Sophia, a pale, spoiled, sickly boy of eight years old, whom his mother had for sometime kept quiet, by letting him rummage her netting box as he sat on the sopha, now became tired of his employment, and running up the harpsichord, he dashed his hands among the keys, and squalled out "Miss Milsington, then — Milsington, I say — have done with that nasty tune — I won't have it played any more; I don't like it; I will have you play an English dance, or something pretty." All remonstrance was in vain; Master Ellesmere had never been contradicted in his life; and Lady Sophia, in her still, mawkish way, said, "Fie, Seymour; my dear, you should not do so! but I dare say Jemima will oblige you. Jemima, love! will you let this air alone, till to-morrow, and do as my poor Puggy desires?" Jemima, with a meek resignation that might recommend her to the most honourable servitude, though internally vexed at the interruption, began a country dance; and Mr. Ellesmere just then entering, Lady Sophia related, probably as an instance of her son's wit, his insisting to have a lively English tune. "The dear boy is in the right," said the father, "he knows how to appreciate things; I augur well of his genius." The boy is in the right," said the father, "he knows how to appreciate things; I have been severely checked, and sent to bed, and Edward Ellesmere could with difficulty restrain himself from saying so. But D'Alonville was very glad to be released; and his friend retiring in disgust to his own book-room, he soon after, not withstanding the expressive glances of Miss Milsington, who looked most kindly on him, took an opportunity of following him.
(LE ROI DE PRUSSE.)
IT was in this friendly conference that the two young men canvassed their future projects. Ellesmere, whose ingenuous and sensible heart swelled with indignation when he believed D'Alonville insulted on account of his country; still more, when his unhappy situation seemed to call forth the sneering arrogance of unfeeling prosperity; was prompted to conceal from him as far as he could, what he flattered himself he might not perceive. D'Alonville, too tremblingly alive to be deceived, was perfectly aware of the supercilious flights which the elder Mr. Ellesmere evidently designed for him; but he saw too, that such circumstances gave great pain to his friend, and therefore he determined not to appear to perceive them. Edward Ellesmere now, for the first time, acquainted him that his appointment was fixed; and that he meant to go to Captain Caverly's in the next day but one, and to return home only a few hours to take leave of his family before he went to London, from whence he should immediately return to the Continent. D'Alonville knew that every consideration of propriety and duty urged him to adopt at the same time his original plan, and to return to France; but to leave, and probably for ever the only woman to whom his heart had been truly attached, could not thought of but with exquisite pain. He sat silent for some time, till Ellesmere who had been arranging some papers which lay before him, suddenly said, "And there will be some degree of kindness, my dear Chevalier, in your going before our poor friend becomes more ridiculous; — she is already very far gone."
"What are you talking of, my friend?" enquired D'Alonville. "Don't affect to be blind," answered Edward, "because it is quite impossible for you not to be conscious that the fair , the young, the gentle, the accomplished Milsington is more than half in love with you. But, however, to humble you a little, and lest you should be too vain upon it, know, my friend, that to love, is necessary to the amiable Jemima. I do not see much of her, but I have heard at least ten persons who have been the objects of her fond attachments; most of them men of high rank, whom she thought had hearts tender enough to consider how sad it was, that a creature so accomplished should languish in vain; and could be urged by the knowledge of her being in love with them, to remove her from the inconveniences of a very narrow fortune, to affluence and rank. Hitherto, however, she has not succeeded in this plan of attack, though she has by no means relinquished it; but as its success may yet be remote, she has no objection, ehimin faisant , to the gentle attentions of any handsome young fellow who maybe disposed to coquet with her." "Oh! n'en parlons pas," answered D'Alonville, "Don't let us talk of her. Heavens! that you should chuse such a subject of discourse, when my thoughts are busied with one so different." They then renewed their conversation on the family at Besthorpe; and Ellesmere agreed that D'Alonville who was impatient to renew his visits there, should go the next day to Captain Caverly's, who would be happy to see him, and that Edward Ellesmere should follow him as soon as he could; taking leave at once of his family instead of returning to do so, as he had proposed at the beginning of their conversation.
"Yes," cried he, after having talked it over, "it will be better to go at once, I think — not that there will be much pain felt at my departure. You see how my father is absorbed in considerations for the aggrandisement of his eldest son; and fancies, poor good man, that in doing so, he is consulting the prosperity of all the rest of us. For he believes Mr. Ellesmere has such political capabilities about him, that if once he gets into the right line, he will rapidly attain an eminence of power that will enable him to provide for all his family. It may be so. I only know that I should not greatly venerate a group of statesmen, in which such an understanding as my honoured brother's would have any weight. He was the most formal specious dunce in a great school. A hundred times I have tried to get him into scrapes, but if ever his prudence slept, its succadaneum, cunning, was always awake; and he contrived to vindicate himself, and leave us poor impolitic wights in the lurch. His character is now exactly what it was then."
"And precisely the character," said D'Alonville, "I suppose to make as much progress as your father imagines; at least such a man would have made his way infinitely faster than a man of lively imagination, and brilliant talents; and I belive believe it to be true, that all courts are alike. If I were in a habit of laying wages, a l'Anglais, I would hazard something considerable, that you will see your brother high in place, and by his means become a Colonel." D'Alonville then fell into a reverie on the different fate which probably awaited himself; till he was roused by a long letter from the Abbé de St. Remi. The servant who was usually sent for letters to the neighbouring post-town having been detained by accident, and that moment only returned.
D'Alonville eagerly opened it. It was dated from Merol in Britanny, where the Abbé had the courage to return in disguise, and to rejoin his unhappy pupil; who, in the habit of an inferior tradesman, had contrived to remain for some time in that town, and to have collected a party which every day became more formidable from the numbers who were disgusted by the wickedness and folly of the Convention, and wearied by the alarms, the want, and the tyranny, they were every day exposed to. The Abbé who wrote all this under another name, and in terms which rendered it difficult to be understood by any but the person to whom it was addressed, added, that they had established a correspondence with the count de Magnivillers, and that all at present had a favourable appearance. He described the nightly rendezvous at an estate of De Tourange's, at the extremity of the province, about three leagues from the town, a part of the country which D'Alonville was not acquainted with, though his father had a small property there, and concluded with expressing the most sanguine hopes of their final success; his greatest doubts of it arose from the disposition of De Touranges. "Though he has hitherto," said the Abbé, "had so much command over himself, as to act a part so very difficult, he undertook it at first in the flattering expectation of learning in his native country, some news of his wife and mother, who after long enquiries, he fancied he traced thither. Disappointed in this, he has since submitted to continue the difficult dissimulation, because he sees no other means revenging the evils he has sustained. The long, long misery of being separated from all he holds dear; and, as he now believes, separated for ever, for he thinks his mother, his wife, and his child, have perished; and the agonies, amounting almost to alienations of mind, which the sad retrospect of this loss inflicts upon him, make me fear, left , in some of the paroxisms of despair, he should betray himself" The Abbé, without directly expressing a wish that D'Alonville would join them, let it be clearly understood: for he told him, it was know that the dependents and peasantry on the property of the late viscount his father, were disgusted with Monsieur du Bosse, whom they considered as an apostate, and that they were much more disposed than they dared avow themselves, to return to the original form of government, and to vindicate the honor of their ancient lords, the last of whom had been so much their benefactor that his name was particularly dear to them" Tears arose in the eyes of D'Alonville as he read this. "I must go," sighed he to himself, "the sacred shade of my father calls me. — Yes! — I ought to go, though certain that death awaited me there, and that in England I might be the happiest of men — the husband of Angelina." Ellesmere wished to know as much of the purport of the Abbé's letter as D'Alonville chose to communicate. D'Alonville put the letter into his hand, and his friend could not but allow the propriety of the resolution he had formed. "Yet I will tell you very honestly," said he, "my dear Chevalier, that I wish you could take this Angelina with you." "Heaven forbid," replied D'Alonville, "take her to share such dangers, or even to see such scenes as I shall probably see! No; rather than expose her to the slightest hazard, I would tear myself from her forever, and entreat her to forget me." "All that is very well," answered Ellesmere, "and I believe you would do as you say — perhaps ought to do it; yet I have made up such a romance for you in my head, that I shall be very sorry not to see it realised. Happiness is so rare, that when once it presents itself, it should never be suffered to escape, left it disappear for ever." "Oh, seducing epicurean;" cried D'Alonville, "do not inculcate doctrines to which I am but too wiling to listen. I must fly from them, my dear Edouard; indeed I must; and whatever it may cost me, take shelter under the religious stoicism of the Abbé."
Such were the generous resolutions of D'Alonville, when, after taking a formal leave of the family at Eddisbury-hall, he set out the next morning for Fernyhurst. As to the family at the Hall, Sir Maynard received his acknowledgments for the hospitality he had received, with great politeness and great indifference: Lady Ellesmere, with still more coldness, and less habitual civility. Lady Sophia just got off her seat as he made his bow; and the three young ladies wished him a good journey with much formality; but Miss Milsington was not disposed to part so easily with the only person whose presence promised to make