To dwell on subjects that cause us to abhor human nature, and dread to
associate with civilized man, can surely convey no pleasure in the
perusal, nor, in the present system of things, be productive of benefit.
Let us, therefore, pass lightly over details that have no useful
tendency, and revert to events, which almost justified the distrust and
misanthropy that so long had governed the mind of the unhappy
Montmorency, and which, perhaps, it had been better for him had he still
persevered in.--Suffice it then to say, that Angelo daily beheld those
obstacles which had opposed themselves to the gratification of his
wishes becoming less formidable. The love of Gabrielle acquiring fresh
force, though the suggestions of her virtue became not weaker, rendered
the task of conquering it more and more difficult.
Angelo had so far perceived his power over her heart, that he had dared
a second time to hazard to her the proposal of quitting her father’s
roof, but this was again received indignantly, with bitter reproaches,
and with tears of burning anguish, to see herself so fallen in the
estimation of the man she loved; that at this late period, when he
should have known her better, he still should presume to think her
capable of sin so abominable. Thus she thought, yet still she listened
to, and forgave more readily than before the man who could thus presume.
Angelo perceived, and availed himself of every increasing advantage,
and pressed the subject with renewed ardour; but no, though far advanced
in the path of error, though tottering on the brink of a deceitful
precipice, though feeble from the excess of her love, she had still
virtue enough to hear this proposal with horror, and to reject it with
firmness. What! desert her venerable father? the fond guardian of her
childhood, the tender friend of her youth; abandon him; abandon that
faded, that majestic form, which now seemed to stand accusingly before
her? Deprive him of the sweet support, the staff of his declining years!
terrible and alarming guilt was in the thought. Could such an image dare
then for an instant to present itself before a mind once so pure? But
one step remained to ensure her safety; it was to make a confession of
the whole to her father. She turned this idea in her mind, but
abandoned it with terror, at having proceeded so far; the shame
attendant upon such a confession, the dread of the reproaches, but more
of the misery of Montmorency; above all, a latent unacknowledged fear,
which shook her inmost soul, that she should then be for ever torn from
the object of her fatal love, prevented her from yielding to this safe
suggestion of her better reason.
She suffered then the evil daily to acquire fresh strength; her virtue,
her innocence, were no longer sufficient protection, and destruction
became inevitable; true, she did not quit with her seducer the roof of
the miserable father; she remained, and pointed the dagger at his heart,
even while cherished beneath the wings of his unsuspecting love, and by
that fond pride which rejoiced in the fancied contemplation of her
spotless purity. Even in the midst of his felicitations was he
deceived, and robbed for ever of the valued treasure of a daughter’s
innocence.
To attempt description of the feelings of one, who, till this fatal
period, had been sinless, even in idea,--to paint the horror of mind of
that being, whose torturing remorse told her loudly of her guilt, while
that guilt infatuated too much to be abjured,--would be a task no pen
could accomplish. The temptation to evil once admitted, it is no longer
easy to repel its insidious advances; a dreaded step once taken, another
quickly follows; and the wretched victim of error seldom awakens, till
repentance is in vain. Thus, with the unhappy Gabrielle;--miserable,
degraded in her own eyes, having plunged in an ocean of guilt, she
continued to sail amid its dangerous straits; the sun of delusion
flashed over her gloomy way a momentary ray of deceitful pleasure, nor
was she roused to the full horror of her situation, till, like a thunder
clap sounding in her ears, the voice of Angelo spoke of his departure.
For some moments the power of speech was denied her; when, at length,
she recovered the power, she had not the wish to speak,--a deadly chill
crept through her blood, an universal weakness trembled through her
frame, her mouth became parched, now her cheek turned of an ashy
paleness, and now flushed with the crimson of agony; she did not even
look at Angelo, for despair possessed her wholly.
Angelo beheld her agitation; he took her hand, “Why are you thus, my
love?” he cried, “what is there so terrible in my departure? or, if you
indeed consider it so, why not, at once, determine to accompany me?”
Gabrielle shook her head, but replied not.
“Why, then,” proceeded he, “this apparent unhappiness? you always knew,
fair Gabrielle, that I could not remain for ever here.”
“True, true;” faltered Gabrielle, looking at him, and turning hastily
away.
“We may meet again, my love, under happier auspices.”
Gabrielle clasped her hands in silent agony; the tears rolled down her
cheeks, and again she ventured a glance at Angelo.
He pressed her hand; “Say, then, shall we go together?”
Gabrielle withdrew her hand; and, though Angelo made the proposal, who
shall say, that now, as eagerly as ever, he desired that she should
accede to it? “Oh, Angelo!” she indignantly exclaimed, “is this
consolation?”
“Really, dearest Gabrielle, you are not yourself to-day; why thus
unkind; why thus disposed to reject, with scorn, all I can say?”
“Miserable, yet justly, punished wretch that I am!” cried Gabrielle, and
quickened her steps. Angelo followed, but not with quite such eager
anxiety as once he had followed her with, when involuntarily he had
offended her; “Come, dearest Gabrielle,” he cried, “sweet girl, be
reasonable;” then, willing to divert her grief, he added sportively
“what of my departure,--I would venture now, you will soon forget me.”
“Oh, this is too cruel,” exclaimed Gabrielle, bursting into tears, “Oh
God, I begin to feel that my father, my dear father, spoke not too
severely of man.”
Angelo was affected, not at her tears so much, but she had interested
his feelings through the medium of his self-love; the heart of man is
often vulnerable through that medium, when it can be touched through no
other; he saw that Gabrielle really loved him, and was tortured at the
thought of his departure. He instantly seized her hand again, and
falling at her feet, implored forgiveness for an unintentional offence,
swore that he loved her with an unabated passion, and would not rise
till she had sealed his pardon.
Gabrielle sighed; with the pangs of love she had now, alas, become fully
acquainted; they had followed closely upon its short-lived pleasures.
“Rise, rise then at once, Angelo,” she said.
He arose--they proceeded a few paces--Angelo still dwelt upon the excess
of his love; to this Gabrielle replied not; but in a melancholy voice
she said, without raising her eyes from the ground, “you will write to
me, Angelo?”
“Can you doubt it, my love?”
“It would be a terrible thing _now_, Angelo, to be forgotten.”
“That can never happen, fair Gabrielle.”
Gabrielle sighed, “Where do you go from hence.”
“To Italy, where certain connections of my father will, no doubt, render
my stay desirable for some time.”
A weight of ice fell upon the heart of Gabrielle; Angelo could talk of
being happy, of being so without her!--A new world opened to her view; a
world of misery; her doom--a dreadful doom, seemed fixed; she was no
longer what she had been,--peaceful because innocent. She felt a wretch,
and felt, by anticipation, what despair would be hers, when left in the
terrible solitude of guilt, to her reflections.
The heart of Angelo was not systematically bad; he erred from the want
of firm principle, and persisted in his errors from want of energy to
combat them. The allurements of vice wire too strong for his sense of
right, and while he yielded readily to every temptation, he felt not
much remorse that he did so. His character was not an uncommon one; but
such as is frequently met with among men; some few perhaps better, more
infinitely worse; many possessing his weak heart, and wandering mind;
few his sensibility, frankness, and generosity, to counterpoize the
opposite balance. He had told Gabrielle that he loved her, and he had
told her truth, to the extent of which his soul was capable, for
deception was foreign to his nature. That he did not love her with that
delicate, refined, and rare affection of which superior minds alone are
capable, was not attributable to him as a fault; he loved her more than
he had ever before loved woman; but his was not a mind to admit that
sentiment, and to feel it in all its fine-drawn and boundless
ramifications. Gabrielle, whose soul knew not vice, and whose eyes had
never beheld it, loved differently; her’s was an ardent, pure, and
unsophisticated passion, which, having taken root in a rich native soil,
was calculated to exist, while she existed, strong and immutable. Over
the conviction of her love she shed bitter tears; she felt that she
ought to overcome it, but reason was unable to attempt the arduous task.
In a short time Angelo was no longer an inmate of the cottage of
Meillerie. Montmorency took leave of him with feelings of regret; his
solitude for some time past had been cheered by the presence of a
rational, and, as he believed, a not unworthy human being; for, with all
his experience of mankind, he could not consider Angelo in that light;
he had seen him, without alarm, the companion of his daughter, for he
thought him too artless to be dangerous; he did not take into his
calculation, that Gabrielle, from her inexperience, required no artifice
to be misled; he did not remember that from that very inexperience she
would be unable to judge but from appearance, to penetrate into motives,
or to draw correct deductions; above all, he forgot,--for he was not of
an age when those ideas present themselves forcibly to the mind,--he
forgot the danger attendant upon the circumstance of her being a
stranger to man, till one the most engaging in form and manners
presented himself to her astonished view. In the world he dreaded,
Montmorency would have been the guardian of his daughter, because in the
mass of mankind, he would have prepared himself to encounter the greater
part villains; but, independently of his believing that the innocence
of the one, and guilelessness of the other, were sufficient security for
the safety of his child, he did not, in all the severity of his judgment
of society, conceive that there existed a creature base enough, under
such circumstances, to repay his trust with treachery and ingratitude:
he did not consider that man became as often base from weakness as from
depravity, and that even the firmest, and best-intentioned minds are not
always proof against the powerful temptation of combining circumstances.
Thus is it ever with short-sighted mortals, who, shielding themselves by
the strong habergeon of caution and mistrust, are assailed in a path
where least they dreamt of danger, and vanquished in points which were
considered too insignificant to guard. Thus too with Montmorency, who,
while cautiously guarding the out-posts, admitted the enemy into the
camp.
Some time had now elapsed since the departure of Angelo from the cottage
of Meillerie, but its inhabitants were no longer in the state he had
found them; in his once animated and blooming daughter, Montmorency
found no more the intelligent and rational companion, or the cheering
associate; on her fair cheek, where, indeed, the teint of the red rose
had never blushed, he now beheld the sickly hue of grief, and marked the
change with fond unsuspicious solicitude. He divined not the cause, for
no superior female, and superior she must have been to have charmed
Montmorency, had ever taught him to feel for her the pain or delirium of
love; he knew, therefore, but little of the extremities to which it
sometimes drives its victims. All he knew, and all he beheld, was, that
the only happiness of his life, the only charm which bound him to
existence, was fading before his eyes, like a fragile flower at the
approach of autumn. The conviction struck a dagger to his heart; and,
looking tenderly upon her, he would sometimes say, “Oh, my beloved
child, what is the cause that thus I see thee perishing before my aged
eyes? Wilt thou die, Gabrielle, and leave me to support alone the
burthen of increasing years? Wilt thou not exert thyself, my child? wilt
thou not endeavour to live for the sake of thy father?”
These words would pierce Gabrielle to the soul; oft was she on the point
of confessing all, but dread of the grief she would inflict, horror at
the thought, lest such dreadful acknowledgement should hasten him to the
grave; these were the thoughts, rather than the shame that restrained
her, for that oppressive shame humbly she would have submitted to, as
slender penance for her inexpiable guilt, the terrible idea of which
weighed down her aching heart.
But soon remorse for her crime became not the only anguish or punishment
of the wretched Gabrielle, that anguish and that punishment, which had
already more than trebly exceeded the transitory delight she had
enjoyed; soon more dreadful, boundless, and overwhelming misery opened
to her view,--she found, with horror that mocks expression, that long
she might not even spare her miserable father the terrible secret of her
grief, and that one might yet exist, who to the reproaches of her
conscience might add others bitterer still, for being called into life
the offspring of guilt and shame. Unhappy Gabrielle! unfortunate
Montmorency! fate pursues thee, even in thy solitude, with re-doubled
rigour; thy seclusion from man shall not preserve thee from misfortune,
and thy cottage, in the bosom of mountains, shall, equally with the
habitations of the populous world, become the house of mourning and
despair.
In vain did the distracted Gabrielle endeavour to consider the best
steps to pursue; her mind was chaos, and she could not organize it to
reflect. First, she imagined to quit the roof of her still unconscious
father, and save him the dreadful pang that knowledge of her guilt must
inflict; but then again, this, by leaving him in all the horrors of
suspence, would cause him torture equal to a knowledge of the truth; and
yet a knowledge of the truth!--The idea was madness; it would be instant
death; how then determine? how act? she could decide on nothing. Day
after day passed on; her secret wretchedness, her concealed anguish,
became almost too great for endurance; her form faded, her melancholy
became uninterrupted by even occasional attempts at vivacity, and the
hapless Montmorency, catching the infection of her gloom, resigned
himself to a hopeless woe, which seemed neither to expect or look for
termination but in the grave.
It was the sight of this awful grief that increased the sufferings of
the wretched daughter; add to all, Angelo had now been three months
absent. During that space, she had heard from him but once, and that in
the first fortnight after his departure. His letter then informed her of
his arrival at Naples, in what spot he had taken up his residence, and
that his stay in the country being rendered so agreeable by numerous
connexions of his father, all anxious to pay him tribute, he could fix
no certain period of departure, but rather imagined it would not take
place for some months at least. He concluded by the most tender
protestations (which Gabrielle, however, thought cold and constrained)
of undiminished affection, and intreaties to render her mind as happy as
possible, till propitious fate should permit them to be re-united. To
this letter Gabrielle had returned an answer, but not at that time
surmising her situation, had merely expressed her deep sorrow at his
absence, the remorse and anguish which preyed upon her mind, and
conjured him to write speedily, as his letters alone could rouse her
from the gloomy melancholy that oppressed her. Unhappily, however, with
this pathetic entreaty on the part of the forlorn Gabrielle, the
correspondence had ceased, and the wretched girl, though necessarily
uncertain of the fate of her letter, felt too much pride, supposing him
to have received it, to trouble with love-sick reproaches, a man who,
perhaps, desired to forget her. For the same reason could she not
consent to inform him, that forgotten as she might be, her cruel fate
ordained that in tender anguish she should still remember him.
In truth, Angelo had received her letter, received it too in a brilliant
society, and, retiring a moment, had hastily perused it; he had kissed
it even, and promised himself that ere he slept he would answer it.
Overcome with wine, however, he had retired to rest, and forgotten his
intention; he slept till late the following morning, and scarcely awoke
in time to attend a party of pleasure, which had been planned the
preceding evening. Pleasure, pleasure varying, though unvaried, left no
room for the performance of a duty. Brilliant beauties present,
eclipsed the memory of an absent love; another, and another day, and
still something intervened to prevent his writing. At length so many
days had elapsed, that when a spare half hour did present itself,
accompanied by the recollection of his unperformed promise to Gabrielle,
the gay Angelo took up the pen, but suddenly decided, that now to think
of answering a letter so long ago received, would lead Gabrielle to
suppose, that neglect or indifference alone could have hitherto caused
the delay. He therefore determined, that he would wait for another
letter, and then answer that on the instant; and perhaps, the vanity so
natural to man, made him desire this additional proof of being fondly
remembered by the girl, whose superior love he was so little capable of
appreciating.
Meantime, great was the pain, and bitter were the feelings which this
unknown arrangement, in the giddy mind of Angelo, gave to the
susceptible heart of Gabrielle; yet did not Angelo intentionally inflict
this pain, but purely from not considering that he did so. Had Gabrielle
been with him, had she been present, it is probable he would have still
loved, admired, and dedicated his fondest moments to her; but, immersed
as he was in voluptuous gaiety, he thought not often of his poor girl of
the mountains, who for him had sacrificed all, and become a wretch. The
idea grew fainter and fainter in his mind, and when he had leisure to
remember that she did not write, his pride became offended at the
omission, and he considered himself now justified in not having answered
her first letter. Oh, man! such is your cruelty and injustice; by
setting first the example of indifference, you provoke and induce that
conduct in woman, which ye are likewise first to censure and condemn.
Thus was Gabrielle left to pine unnoticed.--Though Angelo possessed
feelings, they required to be roused; Gabrielle was absent; her presence
might have acted as a stimulus, for in some respects Angelo resembled
the flint, which, to emit a spark, requires the strong collision of the
steel.