THE
LIBERTINE;
BY
CHARLOTTE DACRE,
BETTER KNOWN AS
ROSA MATILDA,
AUTHOR OF
_Hours of Solitude_, _Nun of St. Omer’s_, _Zofloya_, _&c._
IN FOUR VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
_SECOND EDITION._
Dark bending from the skirts of the wood, her wounded father came.
He appeared at times, then seemed as hid in mist. Bursting into
tears, she rose; she knew that the Chief was low. To her came a
beam from his soul when folded in its storms. Thou wert the last of
his race, blue-eyed Dardu-lena!
OSSIAN.
_LONDON_:
PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, STRAND.
1807.
THE
LIBERTINE.
CHAPTER I.
The painter, who seeks the admiration of the crowd alone, bestows his
chief attention upon vivid colouring, and striking effect, desirous
rather to seize the imagination by the boldness of his conception, than
to satisfy the judgment by the closeness of his designs from nature.
Thus the writer, who would address the heart, and who has a moral
purpose in view, should not, in his delineations of vice, exaggerate,
or overcharge the picture, by unnatural representation; but, tracing
conscientiously, and steadily, its terrible consequences, aim rather to
fortify the mind, by a lesson of severe truth, than to astonish, without
impressing it, by the incongruous legends of romance.
It was in that sublimely beautiful part of Switzerland, which the magic
pen of the tender enthusiast, Rousseau, has rescued from obscurity, that
Montmorency, and his daughter, retired within their cottage, listened
tranquilly to the raging storm without. The youthful Gabrielle, in all
the bloom of beauty, and simplicity of innocence, the result of a life
passed among the mountains, free from the contagion of society, was
endeavouring, by the efforts of her pencil, to rescue from decay the
perishable tints of a flower. Montmorency was reading, but not aloud,
the Maxims of La Rochefoucault; for, though he fled from, and hated the
world, he wished not to cloud, by premature misanthropy, the generous
dawn of youth.
While thus they were mutually employed, the latch of the cottage door
was gently raised, the door opened, and a young man, of an elegant
figure, presented himself before them. It was enough;--Montmorency
detested the world, but he could not refuse shelter to a stranger;--he
rose immediately, and taking him by the hand, placed him in his own
chair, while Gabrielle instinctively threw another faggot on the fire,
and hastened to procure some wine.
“The kindness which I experience,” observed the stranger, in that
polished voice that marks the gentleman, “induces me to hope that I may
find shelter here for the night; if so,” he added, looking alternately
at Montmorency, and his daughter, but longer at the latter, “how shall I
not bless the chance which has conducted me hither?”
“Our accommodations here,” answered Montmorency, “are, probably, not
such as you have been accustomed to; for one night, however, you will, I
hope, endeavour to conform to them.”
The stranger was profuse of acknowledgments; but Montmorency was silent,
for he had acted only according to the impulse of his heart, and as he
considered his duty. He caused a bed, the best his cottage would afford,
to be prepared for his guest; he sought to render agreeable to him, by
attention, the lodging to which accident had directed him; then,
unwilling to enter into conversation which might cause him to unbend,
or induce a relaxation from a reserve now become habitual to him, he
motioned his daughter to retire, and pointing out to him his apartment,
withdrew immediately to his own.
Montmorency, the present inhabitant of a small sequestered cottage, in
the village of Meillerie, buried amid mountains, and isolated from the
world, was yet a gentleman, in the purest and most positive acceptance
of the term. His birth was noble, his ancestry illustrious, for he was
descended from the family of the chivalrous Josselin de Montmorency, who
distinguished himself in the third crusade against the Saracens, under
Philip Augustus. Though now bereft of fortune, friends, and every future
prospect, faithful to the sacred memory of his ancestors, he preserved
his honour unimpeached, and retained too, amid his disastrous poverty,
the genuine dignity which results from the consciousness of true
nobility. But what occasioned this painful degradation in the fortunes
of the unhappy Frenchman? It was gaming! source of unnumbered ills!
insatiate furor which has destroyed the fortune of millions, and still
continues to destroy them. Montmorency pursued its seductive
allurements, nearly to the gates of ruin; till then he recovered not
from his infatuation; he awakened but to behold around him a desolate
waste; while in melancholy association with himself, deprived of all,
his eye paused in horror upon his unconscious child. What anguish in a
retrospect of the past! He stood, with his beggared offspring, alone in
the world; friends talked of pity, but remained aloof, and, in the midst
of a populous city, he soon beheld himself in the profoundest solitude.
Disgusted with the base selfishness of the world, its ingratitude, its
delusions, its ephemeral friendship, and time-serving hypocrisy, he,
with scrupulous exactness, proudly scorning to explain his situation,
gave up almost the whole of what he possessed, assigning to each what
was his due, and then, with the young Gabrielle, quitted for ever the
haunts of civilised society, where man, polished and cultivated, preys,
like a refined barbarian, upon his fellow man.
Such the leading features of Montmorency’s history. On abandoning the
world, he had sought to be ever remote from its observation; his was no
lukewarm quarrel with, or splenetic disgust against it; he possessed no
feeling that momentary exhiliration, or brighter thoughts, might chace;
therefore, he desired a solitude, eternal, and profound, where he might
live, and die, forgotten and unnoticed by those he dreaded and
abhorred. Such a situation he had found amid the wilds of
Switzerland,--a desolate retirement, fenced round by rugged rocks, where
he had fixed his residence, though with some pangs of the heart, yet
with a prouder feeling than swells the bosom of the youthful heir who
takes possession of the splendid estate of his ancestors. His fair
daughter, alone, accompanied him in his exile; and the pangs of
Montmorency were for her only, when he remembered that, thus robbed of
fortune, and every future prospect, she must lose likewise the superior
advantage of polished education. “Yet can I not” said he, mentally, “be
myself her instructor? Assuredly I can;” and, in pursuance of this idea,
the best selection of books that his limited means would allow, no
inferior substitute for the society of which they would be deprived,
some musical and mathematical instruments, and materials for drawing,
were soon transferred to, and embellished their solitary abode.
It is a well-known fact, that the Mountaineers of Switzerland, though
not an highly-educated race, are far removed from ignorance. Books,
Metaphysical, Philosophical, and even Classical, are to be found in
cottages that have scarcely, perhaps, a second chair; thus the few
scattered inhabitants that resided near the dwelling of the fallen, but
noble Frenchman, suffered him to pursue his plan of life, unmolested
either by vulgar curiosity, or troublesome remark.
Possessed at once of taste, learning, and a refined understanding, he
was well calculated to impart to the ductile mind of his daughter,
their exhaustless treasures. Already, in childhood, from his tender and
patient instructions, she had acquired a knowledge superior to what she
could have attained from the hired, systematic, and mechanical
operations of persons wholly uninterested, but for their own advantage.
She had received, as it were, the ore refined from the dross; a polished
education, without the contagion of evil example; her instructions
tended to improve her mind, and to render her virtuous; and nothing
tended to counteract their effects. As she advanced in years,
Montmorency depicted to her, in glowing, but not flattering colours, the
world from which she was excluded, and which fondly he endeavoured to
hope it would be never necessary for her to associate with. Availing
himself of his experience, and impressed with the severe lessons he had
received, he represented to her, mankind as monsters, from whom it was
happiness to escape.
“There is a world, beyond these sublime solitudes, my Gabrielle,” would
he say; “but seek not to know it, for your knowledge must be purchased
by the destruction of your innocence, and the wreck of your peace.
Society corrupts the heart; if in retirement, it should be urged that
the active duties of life are not so powerfully called forth, neither
does the comparatively limited sphere of existence require them. Oh, may
you never quit this seclusion! for here alone can you remain both
virtuous and happy.” The frequent recurrence of this subject, wherein
Montmorency continually presented to his daughter the worst side of
human nature, ever pourtrayed with increasing bitterness, inspired her
innocent mind with a feeling amounting almost to horror of her fellow
creatures; the first wish of her heart was, to live and die, in the
seclusion of her childhood; and fervently did she concur in the wish of
her father, that never might she be necessitated to quit it. Whether the
plan of Montmorency was just and safe, in thus describing all men alike,
in levelling all distinction, and teaching her, that all should be
equally distrusted; or whether, by so doing, he did not run a risk of
leaving her open to the wiles of the first accomplished seducer she
encountered, who might appear a being wholly different from his
description, remains to be proved; but, taking the hue from his
feelings, and trembling with the anxiety of a father, he had no mode of
preserving her from temptation, but by an exaggeration of the danger to
be encountered.
Gabrielle, however, possessed a natural energy of mind, and strength of
character, that no education could give, and which to exist must be
imbued with the soul: though a life of solitude might never call forth
these attributes, yet was it powerless to subdue them. She reflected
often on the conversation she held with her father, and sometimes
allowed herself to ask, “Are all mankind, then, equally bad? Can there
be no exceptions?--Surely, surely, my father has been ill treated by the
world--he has met with ingratitude.--Or if it be, indeed, a world such
as he describes, if such are human beings, it is almost a reproach to be
of the same species.” Her mode of life, her habits of gloomy reflection,
and the doubts in which her enquiring mind was occasionally involved,
contributed to throw over her air a certain melancholy, that, though
little suited to her period of life, appeared in her beautiful and
interesting. This was chiefly perceptible after conversing with her
father; an uneasy impression remained on her spirits, and, like those
who entered the cave of Trophonius, animation was long after invincibly
chilled. The pictures of Montmorency, sketched ever by the pencil of a
misanthrope, could not fail of deeply affecting the youthful mind,
permitted only to behold the miseries of social intercourse, without a
reference to its comforts; yet he persuaded himself, that he was right
in doing thus,--that he did not wish her to hate, but merely to dread
the world; and, fearful lest she should imagine it a heaven, he verged
into the opposite extreme, and painted it a hell.
The person of Gabrielle resembled her mind; it was majestic; her noble
features were animated by the sublimity of her soul; her eyes darted at
once, sparkling intelligence, and grandeur of sentiment; her fair cheek,
unlike the ruddy mountaineers’, was of the white rose teint; it spoke a
charming pensiveness; and over her whole appearance was diffused a
dignified grace that showed a soul at ease with itself. As a fair lily
flourishes beneath the shielding umbrage of some spreading oak, so did
she flourish beneath the eye of a father, cherished by his anxious love,
and shielded by his care.
Count Angelo D’Albini, the stranger who had sought shelter beneath the
roof of this peaceful pair, was of noble family, and possessed of an
extensive fortune. His father, by birth an Italian, had married a young
English female, of considerable rank, who had become known to him in
England, during a temporary residence of pleasure there; unable,
however, to obtain her hand, but by consenting to remain in England, he
acceeded to the condition, (for to resign her was from the question) and
fixed his residence in the place of her nativity. One son only was the
fruit of this marriage; he was the hope and idol of the house. Count
D’Albini lived only to behold him enter his twenty-fifth year, when he
paid the debt of nature, and, in less than another year, was followed to
the grave by his wife, who had remained inconsolable for his loss: Thus,
in the full bloom of youth, and pride of fortune, Angelo beheld himself
almost alone in the world, (for so may he be considered who has no human
being to whom he is united by the tender ties of consanguinity.) These
melancholy events having so rapidly succeeded each other, filled him
with a melancholy, which the dissipation of the gay metropolis was
powerless to divert; he determined, therefore, to quit the dull round of
unsubstantial pleasures, and irrational delights, (the very repetition
of which rendered them disgusting, or converted them into toils) for a
mode of life, if not more useful, less uniform at least, and boasting
the charm of novelty; he resolved on travel, and quitting England, he
visited Paris, where he remained till the same frivolous pursuits,
noise, and folly, reminded him of the scenes he had quitted. He next
passed into Italy; the demon of disgust followed him there. Failing of
finding the variety he had sought, from change of place, where the
similarity of the scenes, the same gay nothings pervading, rendered it a
change of place only, without a change of pleasures, his thoughts
wandered beyond the careless circle of society, and in the wilds of
animated nature, in the independent majesty of solitude, he conceived
that he should find those pure delights, which he had failed of
experiencing in the idle clamour of the giddy world.
Thus, then, he abandoned for a time, his gay connections, and the crowd
of beings, who, while they complain that life is short, are ever busily
employed in destroying time, to breathe at large among the mountains of
Switzerland, and to presume to think, amid the expansive waste of his
silent scenery, and romantic beauties. Thither, ever accustomed to yield
to his first impulses, and to regard his own will as law, he quickly
transported himself. For a while he wandered delighted o’er Geneva’s
majestic lake; he coasted along its borders, enraptured at the rich and
varied prospects he beheld, where nature has done so little, and man has
effected so much; where cultivation reveals her stores, and where the
lately barren rock now smiles in the green treasures of vegetation.
Next along the banks of the winding Rhone, among the mountains of La
Valais, where, in the quaintness of character, and blunt honesty of the
good Helvetians, he discovered already the variety he sought, in the
forcible contrast which they exhibited to the manners of the world he
had left; ennui and vacuum fled, and he began to experience a little
rational pleasure.
It was one evening that, allured by the sublime beauty of the
surrounding scenery, he remained out longer than he intended, night,
accompanied by a dreadful hurricane, overtook him; the sense of his
danger, in a situation unknown, and teeming with hazard at every step,
caused him, amid the savage and nearly desolate mountains among which he
found himself, to hail with joy the first appearance of a human
habitation; he hastened towards it, and without otherwise announcing
himself, according to the established custom among the hospitable Swiss,
than by simply lifting the latch which fastened the door, (for thus
easily had he till now insured himself a welcome) he requested, and
instantly obtained, admission beneath the roof of Montmorency.
From the circumstance of having been an only child, the count D’Albini,
as is too frequently the case, was loved by his parents, “not wisely,
but too well”--he was rather, like a scarce exotic, tenderly cherished,
than improved; the brilliant rather than the solid, was attended to in
his education; content with beholding him an engaging child, and an
accomplished man, they sought no further; no prominent vices, or glaring
imperfections, had hitherto developed themselves; consequently, the
decided bent of his character remained unknown, and uninvestigated. He
attracted homage, he met with universal approbation; his parents,
satisfied with this, as most parents are, did not trouble themselves to
enquire, how far justified was this ephemeral approbation, or how much
of it was attendant upon the circumstances in which he was placed by the
adventitious combination of birth, rank, and fortune. Thus left to form
itself, the character of Angelo had no decided principles, no solid
foundation, no fixed rule of action; he possessed not powerful judgment,
nor sound discrimination to enable him to distinguish between right and
wrong, or to give him a basis on which to form his conduct; no strong
hypothesis had ever exercised his youthful reason, no circumstance had
occurred materially to draw it forth, nor no rule bounded in his mind
the nice and almost imperceptible gradations which mark the limits
between virtue and vice. His heart was by nature generous, and
impassioned; but, proper education having never corrected the exuberance
of these feelings, they had degenerated into vices, while the germs of
many virtues became withered in his breast. A good action was with him
an impulse, not a principle; if he acted wrong, it was involuntarily,
from the want of due reason, or just discrimination for his guide: when
made sensible of any impropriety of conduct that, in its effects, had
been productive of injury to others, the regret which he felt was only
to be equalled by his anxiety to repair the mischief. Thus, often his
very faults seemed graceful in him, as they were accompanied by virtues,
which were attendant upon them, and which could not otherwise have
existed. Weak, volatile, and unsteady, because of an undisciplined mind,
he yet possessed a quick, tenacious pride, which ever took alarm at the
least thought of dishonor, and a susceptibility of soul, which, while it
rendered him alive to his error, was continually leading him into the
most dangerous excesses: remorse ever followed his faults, and faults
again succeeded to the upbraidings of his conscience: all his sensations
were, however, too transient; his pliable feelings, like the fickle reed
to the wind, yielded readily to every allurement; his wishes were his
guides, and the decision of one moment was ever in danger of being
broken, by the temptation of the next.--Thus was his character a mixture
of good and evil; while he charmed the undiscriminating part of society,
by the frankness, naiveté, and gracefulness of his manners, he ravished
admiration from the wiser part; he extorted from the coldest a praise
which it surprised them to hear themselves bestow, and philosophy’s
self could not but exclaim “pity that, in so beautiful a garden, such
noxious weeds should have sprung up with the flowers!”