“There are times when we are diverted out of errors, but could
not be preached out of them.--There are practitioners who can cure
us of one disorder, though, in ordinary cases, they be but poor
physicians--nay, dangerous quacks.”--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
LUMLEY FERRERS had one rule in life; and it was this: to make all things
and all persons subservient to himself. And Ferrers now intended to go
abroad for some years. He wanted a companion, for he disliked solitude:
besides, a companion shared the expenses; and a man of eight hundred a
year, who desires all the luxuries of life, does not despise a partner
in the taxes to be paid for them. Ferrers, at this period, rather liked
Ernest than not: it was convenient to choose friends from those richer
than himself, and he resolved, when he first came to Temple Grove, that
Ernest should be his travelling companion. This resolution formed, it
was very easy to execute it.
Maltravers was now warmly attached to his new friend, and eager for
change. Cleveland was sorry to part with him; but he dreaded a relapse,
if the young man were again left upon his hands. Accordingly, the
guardian’s consent was obtained; a travelling carriage was bought, and
fitted up with every imaginable imperial and _malle_. A Swiss (half
valet and half courier) was engaged, one thousand a year was allowed
to Maltravers;--and one soft and lovely morning, towards the close of
October, Ferrers and Maltravers found themselves midway on the road to
Dover.
“How glad I am to get out of England,” said Ferrers: “it is a famous
country for the rich; but here, eight hundred a year, without a
profession, save that of pleasure, goes upon pepper and salt; it is a
luxurious competence abroad.”
“I think I have heard Cleveland say that you will be rich some day or
other.”
“O yes: I have what are called expectations! You must know that I have
a kind of settlement on two stools, the Well-born and the Wealthy;
but between two stools--you recollect the proverb! The present Lord
Saxingham, once plain Frank Lascelles, and my father, Mr. Ferrers, were
first cousins. Two or three relations good-naturedly died, and Frank
Lascelles became an earl; the lands did not go with the coronet; he was
poor, and married an heiress. The lady died; her estate was settled
on her only child, the handsomest little girl you ever saw. Pretty
Florence, I often wish I could look up to you! Her fortune will be
nearly all at her own disposal, too, when she comes of age; now she is
in the nursery, ‘eating bread and honey.’ My father, less lucky and less
wise than his cousin, thought fit to marry a Miss Templeton--a nobody.
The Saxingham branch of the family politely dropped the acquaintance.
Now, my mother had a brother, a clever, plodding fellow, in what is
called ‘business:’ he became richer and richer: but my father and mother
died, and were never the better for it. And I came of age, and
_worth_ (I like that expression) not a farthing more or less than this
often-quoted eight hundred pounds a year. My rich uncle is married, but
has no children. I am, therefore, heir-presumptive,--but he is a saint,
and close, though ostentatious. The quarrel between Uncle Templeton
and the Saxinghams still continues. Templeton is angry if I see the
Saxinghams and the Saxinghams--my Lord, at least--is by no means so sure
that I shall be Templeton’s heir as not to feel a doubt lest I should
some day or other sponge upon his lordship for a place. Lord Saxingham
is in the administration, you know. Somehow or other I have an equivocal
amphibious kind of place in London society, which I don’t like; on one
side I am a patrician connection, whom the _parvenu_ branches always
incline lovingly to--and on the other side I am a half-dependent cadet,
whom the noble relations look civilly shy at. Some day, when I grow
tired of travel and idleness, I shall come back and wrestle with these
little difficulties, conciliate my methodistical uncle, and grapple with
my noble cousin. But now I am fit for something better than getting on
in the world. Dry chips, not green wood, are the things for making a
blaze! How slow this fellow drives! Hollo, you sir! get on! mind, twelve
miles to the hour! You shall have sixpence a mile. Give me your purse,
Maltravers; I may as well be cashier, being the elder and the wiser man;
we can settle accounts at the end of the journey. By Jove, what a pretty
girl!”
BOOK II.
“He, of wide-blooming youth’s fair flower possest,
Owns the vain thoughts--the heart that cannot rest!”
SIMONIDES, _in Tit. Hum_.
CHAPTER I.
“Il y eut certainement quelque chose de singulier dans mes
sentimens pour cette charmante femme.” *--ROUSSEAU.
* There certainly was something singular in my sentiments for this
charming woman.
IT was a brilliant ball at the Palazzo of the Austrian embassy at
Naples: and a crowd of those loungers, whether young or old, who
attach themselves to the reigning beauty, was gathered round Madame de
Ventadour. Generally speaking, there is more caprice than taste in
the election of a beauty to the Italian throne. Nothing disappoints a
stranger more than to see for the first time the woman to whom the
world has given the golden apple. Yet he usually falls at last into the
popular idolatry, and passes with inconceivable rapidity from indignant
scepticism into superstitious veneration. In fact, a thousand things
beside mere symmetry of feature go to make up the Cytherea of the
hour.--tact in society--the charm of manner--nameless and piquant
brilliancy. Where the world find the Graces they proclaim the Venus.
Few persons attain pre-eminent celebrity for anything, without some
adventitious and extraneous circumstances which have nothing to do
with the thing celebrated. Some qualities or some circumstances throw a
mysterious or personal charm about them. “Is Mr. So-and-So really such
a genius?” “Is Mrs. Such-a-One really such a beauty?” you ask
incredulously. “Oh, yes,” is the answer. “Do you know all about him or
her? Such a thing is said, or such a thing has happened.” The idol is
interesting in itself, and therefore its leading and popular attribute
is worshipped.
Now Madame de Ventadour was at this time the beauty of Naples: and
though fifty women in the room were handsomer, no one would have dared
to say so. Even the women confessed her pre-eminence--for she was
the most perfect dresser that even France could exhibit. And to no
pretensions do ladies ever concede with so little demur, as those which
depend upon that feminine art which all study, and in which few excel.
Women never allow beauty in a face that has an odd-looking bonnet
above it, nor will they readily allow any one to be ugly whose caps are
unexceptionable. Madame de Ventadour had also the magic that results
from intuitive high breeding, polished by habit to the utmost. She
looked and moved the _grande dame_, as if Nature had been employed by
Rank to make her so. She was descended from one of the most illustrious
houses of France; had married at sixteen a man of equal birth, but old,
dull, and pompous--a caricature rather than a portrait of that great
French _noblesse_, now almost if not wholly extinct. But her virtue was
without a blemish--some said from pride, some said from coldness. Her
wit was keen and court-like--lively, yet subdued; for her French
high breeding was very different from the lethargic and taciturn
imperturbability of the English. All silent people can seem
conventionally elegant. A groom married a rich lady; he dreaded the
ridicule of the guests whom his new rank assembled at his table--an
Oxford clergyman gave him this piece of advice, “Wear a black coat and
hold your tongue!” The groom took the hint, and is always considered
one of the most gentlemanlike fellows in the county. Conversation is the
touchstone of the true delicacy and subtle grace which make the ideal
of the moral mannerism of a court. And there sat Madame de Ventadour,
a little apart from the dancers, with the silent English dandy Lord
Taunton, exquisitely dressed and superbly tall, bolt upright behind
her chair; and the sentimental German Baron von Schomberg, covered with
orders, whiskered and wigged to the last hair of perfection, sighing at
her left hand; and the French minister, shrewd, bland, and eloquent, in
the chair at her right; and round on all sides pressed, and bowed, and
complimented, a crowd of diplomatic secretaries and Italian princes,
whose bank is at the gaming-table, whose estates are in their galleries,
and who sell a picture, as English gentlemen cut down a wood, whenever
the cards grow gloomy. The charming De Ventadour! she had attraction for
them all! smiles for the silent, badinage for the gay, politics for the
Frenchman, poetry for the German, the eloquence of loveliness for all!
She was looking her best--the slightest possible tinge of rouge gave
a glow to her transparent complexion, and lighted up those large dark
sparkling eyes (with a latent softness beneath the sparkle) seldom seen
but in the French--and widely distinct from the unintellectual languish
of the Spaniard, or the full and majestic fierceness of the Italian
gaze. Her dress of black velvet, and graceful hat with its princely
plume, contrasted the alabaster whiteness of her arms and neck. And what
with the eyes, the skin, the rich colouring of the complexion, the
rosy lips and the small ivory teeth, no one would have had the cold
hypercriticism to observe that the chin was too pointed, the mouth too
wide, and the nose, so beautiful in the front face, was far from perfect
in the profile.
“Pray was Madame in the Strada Nuova to-day?” asked the German, with as
much sweetness in his voice as if he had been vowing eternal love.
“What else have we to do with our mornings, we women?” replied Madame de
Ventadour. “Our life is a lounge from the cradle to the grave; and
our afternoons are but the type of our career. A promenade and
a crowd,--_voila tout_! We never see the world except in an open
carriage.”
“It is the pleasantest way of seeing it,” said the Frenchman, drily.
“I doubt it; the worst fatigue is that which comes without exercise.”
“Will you do me the honour to waltz?” said the tall English lord, who
had a vague idea that Madame de Ventadour meant she would rather dance
than sit still. The Frenchman smiled.
“Lord Taunton enforces your own philosophy,” said the minister.
Lord Taunton smiled because every one else smiled; and, besides, he had
beautiful teeth: but he looked anxious for an answer.
“Not to-night,--I seldom dance. Who is that very pretty woman? What
lovely complexions the English have! And who,” continued Madame de
Ventadour, without waiting for an answer to the first question, “who is
that gentleman,--the young one I mean,--leaning against the door?”
“What, with the dark moustache?” said Lord Taunton. “He is a cousin of
mine.”
“Oh, no; not Colonel Bellfield; I know him--how amusing he is!--no; the
gentleman I mean wears no moustache.”
“Oh, the tall Englishman with the bright eyes and high forehead,” said
the French minister. “He is just arrived--from the East, I believe.”
“It is a striking countenance,” said Madame de Ventadour; “there is
something chivalrous in the turn of the head. Without doubt, Lord
Taunton, he is ‘_noble_’?”
“He is what you call ‘_noble_,’” replied Lord Taunton--“that is, what we
call a ‘gentleman;’ his name is Maltravers. He lately came of age; and
has, I believe, rather a good property.”
“Monsieur Maltravers; only Monsieur?” repeated Madame de Ventadour.
“Why,” said the French minister, “you understand that the English
_gentilhomme_ does not require a De or a title to distinguish him from
the _roturier_.”
“I know that; but he has an air above a simple _gentilhomme_. There
is something _great_ in his look; but it is not, I must own, the
conventional greatness of rank: perhaps he would have looked the same
had he been born a peasant.”
“You don’t think him handsome?” said Lord Taunton, almost angrily (for
he was one of the Beauty-men, and Beauty-men are sometimes jealous).
“Handsome! I did not say that,” replied Madame de Ventadour, smiling;
“it is rather a fine head than a handsome face. Is he clever, I
wonder?--but all you English, milord, are well educated.”
“Yes, profound--profound: we are profound, not superficial,” replied
Lord Taunton, drawing down his wrist-bands.
“Will Madame de Ventadour allow me to present to her one of my
countrymen?” said the English minister approaching--“Mr. Maltravers.”
Madame de Ventadour half smiled and half blushed, as she looked up, and
saw bent admiringly upon her the proud and earnest countenance she had
remarked.
The introduction made--a few monosyllables exchanged. The French
diplomatist rose and walked away with the English one. Maltravers
succeeded to the vacant chair.
“Have you been long abroad?” asked Madame de Ventadour.
“Only four years; yet long enough to ask whether I should not be most
abroad in England.”
“You have been in the East--I envy you. And Greece, and Egypt,--all the
associations! You have travelled back into the Past; you have escaped,
as Madame D’Epinay wished, out of civilisation and into romance.”
“Yet Madame D’Epinay passed her own life in making pretty romances out
of a very agreeable civilisation,” said Maltravers, smiling.
“You know her Memoirs, then,” said Madame de Ventadour, slightly
colouring. “In the current of a more exciting literature few have had
time for the second-rate writings of a past century.”
“Are not those second-rate performances often the most charming,” said
Maltravers, “when the mediocrity of the intellect seems almost as if it
were the effect of a touching, though too feeble, delicacy of sentiment?
Madame D’Epinay’s Memoirs are of this character. She was not a virtuous
woman--but she felt virtue and loved it; she was not a woman of
genius--but she was tremblingly alive to all the influences of genius.
Some people seem born with the temperament and the tastes of genius
without its creative power; they have its nervous system, but something
is wanting in the intellectual. They feel acutely, yet express tamely.
These persons always have in their character an unspeakable kind of
pathos--a court civilisation produces many of them--and the French
memoirs of the last century are particularly fraught with such examples.
This is interesting--the struggle of sensitive minds against the
lethargy of a society, dull, yet brilliant, that _glares_ them, as it
were, to sleep. It comes home to us; for,” added Maltravers, with a
slight change of voice, “how many of us fancy we see our own image in
the mirror!”
And where was the German baron?--flirting at the other end of the room.
And the English lord?--dropping monosyllables to dandies by the doorway.
And the minor satellites?--dancing, whispering, making love, or sipping
lemonade. And Madame de Ventadour was alone with the young stranger in
a crowd of eight hundred persons; and their lips spoke of sentiment, and
their eyes involuntarily applied it!
While they were thus conversing, Maltravers was suddenly startled by
hearing close behind him, a sharp, significant voice, saying in French,
“Hein, hein! I’ve my suspicions--I’ve my suspicions.”
Madame de Ventadour looked round with a smile. “It is only my husband,”
said she, quietly; “let me introduce him to you.”
Maltravers rose and bowed to a little thin man, most elaborately
dressed, and with an immense pair of spectacles upon a long sharp nose.
“Charmed to make your acquaintance, sir!” said Monsieur de Ventadour.
“Have you been long in Naples?... Beautiful weather--won’t last
long--hein, hein, I’ve my suspicions! No news as to your parliament--be
dissolved soon! Bad opera in London this year!--hein, hein--I’ve my
suspicions.”
This rapid monologue was delivered with appropriate gesture. Each
new sentence Mons. de Ventadour began with a sort of bow, and when
it dropped in the almost invariable conclusion affirmative of his
shrewdness and incredulity, he made a mystical sign with his forefinger
by passing it upward in a parallel line with his nose, which at the
same time performed its own part in the ceremony by three convulsive
twitches, that seemed to shake the bridge to its base.
Maltravers looked with mute surprise upon the connubial partner of the
graceful creature by his side, and Mons. de Ventadour, who had said as
much as he thought necessary, wound up his eloquence by expressing the
rapture it would give him to see Mons. Maltravers at his hotel. Then,
turning to his wife, he began assuring her of the lateness of the hour,
and the expediency of departure. Maltravers glided away, and as he
regained the door was seized by our old friend, Lumley Ferrers. “Come,
my dear fellow,” said the latter; “I have been waiting for you this half
hour. _Allons_. But, perhaps, as I am dying to go to bed, you have
made up your mind to stay supper. Some people have no regard for other
people’s feelings.”
“No, Ferrers, I’m at your service;” and the young man descended the
stairs and passed along the Chiaja towards their hotel. As they gained
the broad and open space on which it stood, with the lovely sea before
them, sleeping in the arms of the curving shore, Maltravers, who had
hitherto listened in silence to the volubility of his companion, paused
abruptly.
“Look at that sea, Ferrers.... What a scene!--what delicious air! How
soft this moonlight! Can you not fancy the old Greek adventurers,
when they first colonised this divine Parthenope--the darling of the
ocean--gazing along those waves, and pining no more for Greece?”
“I cannot fancy anything of the sort,” said Ferrers.... “And, depend
upon it, the said gentlemen, at this hour of the night, unless they were
on some piratical excursion--for they were cursed ruffians, those old
Greek colonists--were fast asleep in their beds.”
“Did you ever write poetry, Ferrers?”
“To be sure; all clever men have written poetry once in their
lives--small-pox and poetry--they are our two juvenile diseases.”
“And did you ever _feel_ poetry!”
“Feel it!”
“Yes, if you put the moon into your verses, did you first feel it
shining into your heart?”
“My dear Maltravers, if I put the moon into my verses, in all
probability it was to rhyme to noon. ‘The night was at her noon’--is a
capital ending for the first hexameter--and the moon is booked for the
next stage. Come in.”
“No, I shall stay out.”
“Don’t be nonsensical.”
“By moonlight there is no nonsense like common sense.”
“What! we--who have climbed the Pyramids, and sailed up the Nile, and
seen magic at Cairo, and been nearly murdered, bagged, and Bosphorized
at Constantinople, is it for us, who have gone through so many
adventures, looked on so many scenes, and crowded into four years events
that would have satisfied the appetite of a cormorant in romance, if it
had lived to the age of a phoenix;--is it for us to be doing the pretty
and sighing to the moon, like a black-haired apprentice without a
neckcloth on board of the Margate hoy? Nonsense, I say--we have lived
too much not to have lived away our green sickness of sentiment.”
“Perhaps you are right, Ferrers,” said Maltravers, smiling. “But I can
still enjoy a beautiful night.”
“Oh, if you like flies in your soup, as the man said to his guest, when
he carefully replaced those entomological blackamoors in the tureen,
after helping himself--if you like flies in your soup, well and
good--_buona notte_.”
Ferrers certainly was right in his theory, that when we have known real
adventures we grow less morbidly sentimental. Life is a sleep in which
we dream most at the commencement and the close--the middle part absorbs
us too much for dreams. But still, as Maltravers said, we can enjoy a
fine night, especially on the shores of Naples.
Maltravers paced musingly to and fro for some time. His heart was
softened--old rhymes rang in his ear--old memories passed through
his brain. But the sweet dark eyes of Madame de Ventadour shone forth
through every shadow of the past. Delicious intoxication--the draught of
the rose-coloured phial--which is fancy, but seems love!
CHAPTER II.
“Then ‘gan the Palmer thus--‘Most wretched man
That to affections dost the bridle lend:
In their beginnings they are weak and wan,
But soon, through suffrance, growe to fearfull end;
While they are weak, betimes with them contend.’”
SPENSER.
MALTRAVERS went frequently to the house of Madame de Ventadour--it was
open twice a week to the world, and thrice a week to friends. Maltravers
was soon of the latter class. Madame de Ventadour had been in England
in her childhood, for her parents had been _emigres_. She spoke English
well and fluently, and this pleased Maltravers; for though the French
language was sufficiently familiar to him, he was like most who are more
vain of the mind than the person, and proudly averse to hazarding his
best thoughts in the domino of a foreign language. We don’t care
how faulty the accent, or how incorrect the idiom, in which we talk
nothings; but if we utter any of the poetry within us, we shudder at the
risk of the most trifling solecism.
This was especially the case with Maltravers; for, besides being now
somewhat ripened from his careless boyhood into a proud and fastidious
man, he had a natural love for the Becoming. This love was unconsciously
visible in trifles: it is the natural parent of Good Taste. And it was
indeed an inborn good taste which redeemed Ernest’s natural carelessness
in those personal matters in which young men usually take a pride. An
habitual and soldier-like neatness, and a love of order and symmetry,
stood with him in the stead of elaborate attention to equipage and
dress.
Maltravers had not thought twice in his life whether he was handsome or
not; and, like most men who have a knowledge of the gentler sex, he knew
that beauty had little to do with engaging the love of women. The air,
the manner, the tone, the conversation, the something that interests,
and the something to be proud of--these are the attributes of the man
made to be loved. And the Beauty-man is, nine times out of ten, little
more than the oracle of his aunts, and the “_Sich_ a love!” of the
housemaids!
To return from this digression, Maltravers was glad that he could talk
in his own language to Madame de Ventadour; and the conversation between
them generally began in French, and glided away into English. Madame
de Ventadour was eloquent, and so was Maltravers; yet a more complete
contrast in their mental views and conversational peculiarities can
scarcely be conceived. Madame de Ventadour viewed everything as a woman
of the world: she was brilliant, thoughtful, and not without delicacy
and tenderness of sentiment; still all was cast in a worldly mould. She
had been formed by the influences of society, and her mind betrayed its
education. At once witty and melancholy (no uncommon union), she was a
disciple of the sad but caustic philosophy produced by _satiety_. In the
life she led, neither her heart nor her head was engaged; the faculties
of both were irritated, not satisfied or employed. She felt somewhat too
sensitively the hollowness of the great world, and had a low opinion
of human nature. In fact, she was a woman of the French memoirs--one of
those charming and _spirituelles_ Aspasias of the boudoir, who
interest us by their subtlety, tact, and grace, their exquisite tone of
refinement, and are redeemed from the superficial and frivolous, partly
by a consummate knowledge of the social system in which they move, and
partly by a half-concealed and touching discontent of the trifles on
which their talents and affections are wasted. These are the women
who, after a youth of false pleasure, often end by an old age of false
devotion. They are a class peculiar to those ranks and countries in
which shines and saddens that gay and unhappy thing--_a woman without a
home_!
Now this was a specimen of life--this Valerie de Ventadour--that
Maltravers had never yet contemplated, and Maltravers was perhaps
equally new to the Frenchwoman. They were delighted with each other’s
society, although it so happened that they never agreed.
Madame de Ventadour rode on horseback, and Maltravers was one of her
usual companions. And oh, the beautiful landscapes through which their
daily excursions lay!
Maltravers was an admirable scholar. The stores of the immortal dead
were as familiar to him as his own language. The poetry, the philosophy,
the manner of thought and habits of life--of the graceful Greek and the
luxurious Roman--were a part of knowledge that constituted a common and
household portion of his own associations and peculiarities of thought.
He had saturated his intellect with the Pactolus of old--and the
grains of gold came down from the classic Tmolus with every tide. This
knowledge of the dead, often so useless, has an inexpressible charm when
it is applied to the places where the dead lived. We care nothing about
the ancients on Highgate Hill--but at Baiae, Pompeii, by the Virgilian
Hades, the ancients are society with which we thirst to be familiar.
To the animated and curious Frenchwoman what a cicerone was Ernest
Maltravers! How eagerly she listened to accounts of a life more elegant
than that of Paris!--of a civilisation which the world never can know
again! So much the better;--for it was rotten at the core, though most
brilliant in the complexion. Those cold names and unsubstantial shadows
which Madame de Ventadour had been accustomed to yawn over in skeleton
histories, took from the eloquence of Maltravers the breath of
life--they glowed and moved--they feasted and made love--were wise
and foolish, merry and sad, like living things. On the other hand,
Maltravers learned a thousand new secrets of the existing and actual
world from the lips of the accomplished and observant Valerie. What a
new step in the philosophy of life does a young man of genius make, when
he first compares his theories and experience with the intellect of a
clever woman of the world! Perhaps it does not elevate him, but how it
enlightens and refines!--what numberless minute yet important mysteries
in human character and practical wisdom does he drink unconsciously from
the sparkling _persiflage_ of such a companion! Our education is hardly
ever complete without it.
“And so you think these stately Romans were not, after all, so
dissimilar to ourselves?” said Valerie, one day, as they looked over the
same earth and ocean along which had roved the eyes of the voluptuous
but august Lucullus.
“In the last days of their Republic, a _coup-d’oeil_ of their social
date might convey to us a general notion of our own. Their system, like
ours--a vast aristocracy heaved and agitated, but kept ambitious and
intellectual, by the great democratic ocean which roared below and
around it. An immense distinction between rich and poor--a nobility
sumptuous, wealthy, cultivated, yet scarcely elegant or refined; a
people with mighty aspirations for more perfect liberty, but always
liable, in a crisis, to be influenced and subdued by a deep-rooted
veneration for the very aristocracy against which they struggled;--a
ready opening through all the walls of custom and privilege, for every
description of talent and ambition; but so strong and universal a
respect for wealth, that the finest spirit grew avaricious, griping, and
corrupt, almost unconsciously; and the man who rose from the people did
not scruple to enrich himself out of the abuses he affected to lament;
and the man who would have died for his country could not help thrusting
his hands into her pockets. Cassius, the stubborn and thoughtful
patriot, with his heart of iron, had, you remember, an itching palm.
Yet, what a blow to all the hopes and dreams of a world was the
overthrow of the free party after the death of Caesar! What generations
of freemen fell at Philippi! In England, perhaps, we may have ultimately
the same struggle; in France, too (perhaps a larger stage, with far more
inflammable actors), we already perceive the same war of elements which
shook Rome to her centre, which finally replaced the generous Julius
with the hypocritical Augustus, which destroyed the colossal patricians
to make way for the glittering dwarfs of a court, and cheated the people
out of the substance with the shadow of liberty. How it may end in
the modern world, who shall say? But while a nation has already a fair
degree of constitutional freedom, I believe no struggle so perilous and
awful as that between the aristocratic and the democratic principle.
A people against a despot--_that_ contest requires no prophet; but the
change from an aristocratic to a democratic commonwealth is indeed the
wide, unbounded prospect upon which rest shadows, clouds, and darkness.
If it fail--for centuries is the dial-hand of Time put back; if it
succeed--”
Maltravers paused.
“And if it succeed?” said Valerie.
“Why, then, man will have colonised Utopia!” replied Maltravers.
“But at least, in modern Europe,” he continued, “there will be fair room
for the experiment. For we have not that curse of slavery which, more
than all else, vitiated every system of the ancients, and kept the rich
and the poor alternately at war; and we have a press, which is not only
the safety-valve of the passions of every party, but the great note-book
of the experiments of every hour--the homely, the invaluable ledger of
losses and of gains. No; the people who keep that tablet well, never
can be bankrupt. And the society of those old Romans; their daily
passions--occupations--humours!--why, the satire of Horace is the glass
of our own follies! We may fancy his easy pages written in the Chaussee
d’Antin, or Mayfair; but there was one thing that will ever keep the
ancient world dissimilar from the modern.”
“And what is that?”
“The ancients knew not that delicacy in the affections which
characterises the descendants of the Goths,” said Maltravers, and his
voice slightly trembled; “they gave up to the monopoly of the senses
what ought to have had an equal share in the reason and the imagination.
Their love was a beautiful and wanton butterfly; but not the butterfly
which is the emblem of the soul.”
Valerie sighed. She looked timidly into the face of the young
philosopher, but his eyes were averted.
“Perhaps,” she said, after a short pause, “we pass our lives more
happily without love than with it. And in our modern social system” (she
continued, thoughtfully, and with profound truth, though it is scarcely
the conclusion to which a woman often arrives) “I think we have pampered
Love to too great a preponderance over the other excitements of life.
As children, we are taught to dream of it; in youth, our books, our
conversation, our plays, are filled with it. We are trained to consider
it the essential of life; and yet, the moment we come to actual
experience, the moment we indulge this inculcated and stimulated
craving, nine times out of ten we find ourselves wretched and undone.
Ah, believe me, Mr. Maltravers, this is not a world in which we should
preach up too far the philosophy of Love!”
“And does Madame de Ventadour speak from experience?” asked Maltravers,
gazing earnestly upon the changing countenance of his companion.
“No; and I trust that I never may!” said Valerie, with great energy.
Ernest’s lip curled slightly, for his pride was touched.
“I could give up many dreams of the future,” said he, “to hear Madame de
Ventadour revoke that sentiment.”
“We have outridden our companions, Mr. Maltravers,” said Valerie,
coldly, and she reined in her horse. “Ah, Mr. Ferrers,” she continued,
as Lumley and the handsome German baron now joined her, “you are too
gallant; I see you imply a delicate compliment to my horsemanship, when
you wish me to believe you cannot keep up with me: Mr. Maltravers is not
so polite.”
“Nay,” returned Ferrers, who rarely threw away a compliment without a
satisfactory return, “Nay, you and Maltravers appeared lost among the
old Romans; and our friend the baron took that opportunity to tell me of
all the ladies who adored him.”
“Ah, Monsieur Ferrare, _que vous etes malin_!” said Schomberg, looking
very much confused.
“_Malin_! no; I spoke from no envy: _I_ never was adored, thank Heaven!
What a bore it must be!”
“I congratulate you on the sympathy between yourself and Ferrers,”
whispered Maltravers to Valerie.
Valerie laughed; but during the rest of the excursion she remained
thoughtful and absent, and for some days their rides were discontinued.
Madame de Ventadour was not well.
CHAPTER III.
“O Love, forsake me not;
Mine were a lone dark lot
Bereft of thee.”
HEMANS, _Genius singing to Love_.
I FEAR that as yet Ernest Maltravers had gained little from Experience,
except a few current coins of worldly wisdom (and not very valuable
those!) while he has lost much of that nobler wealth with which youthful
enthusiasm sets out on the journey of life. Experience is an open giver,
but a stealthy thief. There is, however, this to be said in her favour,
that we retain her gifts; and if ever we demand restitution in earnest,
‘tis ten to one but what we recover her thefts. Maltravers had lived in
lands where public opinion is neither strong in its influence, nor rigid
in its canons; and that does not make a man better. Moreover, thrown
headlong amidst the temptations that make the first ordeal of youth,
with ardent passions and intellectual superiority, he had been led by
the one into many errors, from the consequences of which the other
had delivered him; the necessity of roughing it through the world--of
resisting fraud to-day, and violence to-morrow,--had hardened over the
surface of his heart, though at bottom the springs were still fresh and
living. He had lost much of his chivalrous veneration for women, for he
had seen them less often deceived than deceiving. Again, too, the
last few years had been spent without any high aims or fixed pursuits.
Maltravers had been living on the capital of his faculties and
affections in a wasteful, speculating spirit. It is a bad thing for a
clever and ardent man not to have from the onset some paramount object
of life.
All this considered, we can scarcely wonder that Maltravers should have
fallen into an involuntary system of pursuing his own amusements and
pursuits, without much forethought of the harm or the good they were to
do to others or himself. The moment we lose forethought, we lose sight
of duty; and though it seems like a paradox, we can seldom be careless
without being selfish.
In seeking the society of Madame de Ventadour, Maltravers obeyed but the
mechanical impulse that leads the idler towards the companionship which
most pleases his leisure. He was interested and excited; and Valerie’s
manners, which to-day flattered, and to-morrow piqued him, enlisted
his vanity and pride on the side of his fancy. But although Monsieur
de Ventadour, a frivolous and profligate Frenchman, seemed utterly
indifferent as to what his wife chose to do--and in the society in which
Valerie lived, almost every lady had her cavalier,--yet Maltravers would
have started with incredulity or dismay had any one accused him of a
systematic design on her affections. But he was living with the world,
and the world affected him as it almost always does every one else.
Still he had, at times, in his heart, the feeling that he was not
fulfilling his proper destiny and duties; and when he stole from the
brilliant resorts of an unworthy and heartless pleasure, he was ever
and anon haunted by his old familiar aspirations for the Beautiful, the
Virtuous, and the Great. However, hell is paved with good intentions;
and so, in the meanwhile, Ernest Maltravers surrendered himself to the
delicious presence of Valerie de Ventadour.
One evening, Maltravers, Ferrers, the French minister, a pretty Italian,
and the Princess di ------, made the whole party collected at Madame
de Ventadour’s. The conversation fell upon one of the tales of scandal
relative to English persons, so common on the Continent.
“Is it true, Monsieur,” said the French minister, gravely, to Lumley,
“that your countrymen are much more immoral than other people? It is
very strange, but in every town I enter, there is always some story
in which _les Anglais_ are the heroes. I hear nothing of French
scandal--nothing of Italian--_toujours les Anglais_.”
“Because we are shocked at these things, and make a noise about them,
while you take them quietly. Vice is our episode--your epic.”
“I suppose it is so,” said the Frenchman, with affected seriousness. “If
we cheat at play, or flirt with a fair lady, we do it with decorum,
and our neighbours think it no business of theirs. But you treat every
frailty you find in your countrymen as a public concern, to be discussed
and talked over, and exclaimed against, and told to all the world.”
“I like the system of scandal,” said Madame de Ventadour, abruptly; “say
what you will, the policy of fear keeps many of us virtuous. Sin
might not be odious, if we did not tremble at the consequence even of
appearances.”
“Hein, hein,” grunted Monsieur de Ventadour, shuffling into the room.
“How are you?--how are you? Charmed to see you. Dull night--I suspect
we shall have rain. Hein, hein. Aha, Monsieur Ferrers, _comment ca
va-t-il_? Will you give me my revenge at _ecarte_? I have my suspicions
that I am in luck to-night. Hein, hein.”
“_Ecarte_!--well, with pleasure,” said Ferrers.
Ferrers played well.
The conversation ended in a moment. The little party gathered round the
table--all, except Valerie and Maltravers. The chairs that were vacated
left a kind of breach between them; but still they were next to each
other, and they felt embarrassed, for they felt alone.
“Do you never play?” asked Madame de Ventadour, after a pause.
“I _have_ played,” said Maltravers, “and I know the temptation. I dare
not play now. I love the excitement, but I have been humbled at the
debasement: it is a moral drunkenness that is worse than the physical.”
“You speak warmly.”
“Because I feel keenly. I once won of a man I respected, who was poor.
His agony was a dreadful lesson to me. I went home, and was terrified to
think I had felt so much pleasure in the pain of another. I have never
played since that night.”
“So young and so resolute!” said Valerie, with admiration in her voice
and eyes; “you are a strange person. Others would have been cured by
losing, you were cured by winning. It is a fine thing to have principle
at your age, Mr. Maltravers.”
“I fear it was rather pride than principle,” said Maltravers. “Error is
sometimes sweet; but there is no anguish like an error of which we feel
ashamed. I cannot submit to blush for myself.”
“Ah!” muttered Valerie; “this is the echo of my own heart!” She rose
and went to the window. Maltravers paused a moment, and followed her.
Perhaps he half thought there was an invitation in the movement.
There lay before them the still street, with its feeble and unfrequent
lights; beyond, a few stars, struggling through an atmosphere unusually
clouded, brought the murmuring ocean partially into sight. Valerie
leaned against the wall, and the draperies of the window veiled her from
all the guests, save Maltravers; and between her and himself was a large
marble vase filled with flowers; and by that uncertain light Valerie’s
brilliant cheek looked pale, and soft, and thoughtful. Maltravers never
before felt so much in love with the beautiful Frenchwoman.
“Ah, madam!” said he, softly; “there is one error, if it be so, that
never can cost me shame.”
“Indeed!” said Valerie with an unaffected start, for she was not aware
he was so near her. As she spoke she began plucking (it is a common
woman’s trick) the flowers from the vase between her and Ernest. That
small, delicate, almost transparent hand!--Maltravers gazed upon the
hand, then on the countenance, then on the hand again. The scene swam
before him, and, involuntarily and as by an irresistible impulse, the
next moment that hand was in his own.
“Pardon me--pardon me,” said he, falteringly; “but that error is in the
feelings that I know for you.”
Valerie lifted on him her large and radiant eyes, and made no answer.
Maltravers went on. “Chide me, scorn me, hate me if you will. Valerie, I
love you.”
Valerie drew away her hand, and still remained silent.
“Speak to me,” said Ernest, leaning forward; “one word, I implore
you--speak to me!”
He paused,--still no reply; he listened breathlessly--he heard her
sob. Yes; that proud, that wise, that lofty woman of the world, in that
moment, was as weak as the simplest girl that ever listened to a lover.
But how different the feelings that made her weak!--what soft and what
stern emotions were blent together!
“Mr. Maltravers,” she said, recovering her voice, though it sounded
hollow, yet almost unnaturally firm and clear”--the die is cast, and I
have lost for ever the friend for whose happiness I cannot live, but for
whose welfare I would have died; I should have foreseen this, but I was
blind. No more--no more; see me to-morrow, and leave me now!”
“But, Valerie--”
“Ernest Maltravers,” said she, laying her hand lightly on his own;
“_there is no anguish, like an error of which we feel ashamed_!”
Before he could reply to this citation from his own aphorism, Valerie
had glided away; and was already seated at the card-table, by the side
of the Italian princess.
Maltravers also joined the group. He fixed his eyes on Madame
de Ventadour, but her face was calm--not a trace of emotion was
discernible. Her voice, her smile, her charming and courtly manner, all
were as when he first beheld her.
“These women--what hypocrites they are!” muttered Maltravers to himself;
and his lip writhed into a sneer, which had of late often forced away
the serene and gracious expression of his earlier years, ere he knew
what it was to despise. But Maltravers mistook the woman he dared to
scorn.
He soon withdrew from the palazzo, and sought his hotel. There, while
yet musing in his dressing-room, he was joined by Ferrers. The time had
passed when Ferrers had exercised an influence over Maltravers; the
boy had grown up to be the equal of the man, in the exercise of that
two-edged sword--the reason. And Maltravers now felt, unalloyed, the
calm consciousness of his superior genius. He could not confide to
Ferrers what had passed between him and Valerie. Lumley was too _hard_
for a confidant in matters where the heart was at all concerned. In
fact, in high spirits, and in the midst of frivolous adventures, Ferrers
was charming. But in sadness, or in the moments of deep feeling, Ferrers
was one whom you would wish out of the way.
“You are sullen to-eight, _mon cher_,” said Lumley, yawning; “I suppose
you want to go to bed--some persons are so ill-bred, so selfish, they
never think of their friends. Nobody asks me what I won at _ecarte_.
Don’t be late to-morrow--I hate breakfasting alone, and I am never later
than a quarter before nine--I hate egotistical, ill-mannered people.
Good night.”
With this, Ferrers sought his own room; there, as he slowly undressed,
he thus soliloquised: “I think I have put this man to all the use I can
make of him. We don’t pull well together any longer; perhaps I myself
am a little tired of this sort of life. That is not right. I shall grow
ambitious by and by; but I think it a bad calculation not to make the
most of youth. At four or five-and-thirty it will be time enough to
consider what one ought to be at fifty.”
CHAPTER IV.
“Most dangerous
Is that temptation that does goad us on
To sin in loving virtue.”--_Measure for Measure_.
“SEE her to-morrow!--that morrow is come!” thought Maltravers, as he
rose the next day from a sleepless couch. Ere yet he had obeyed the
impatient summons of Ferrers, who had thrice sent to say that “_he_
never kept people waiting,” his servant entered with a packet from
England, that had just arrived by one of those rare couriers who
sometimes honour that Naples, which _might_ be so lucrative a mart
to English commerce, if Neapolitan kings cared for trade, or English
senators for “foreign politics.” Letters from stewards and bankers were
soon got through; and Maltravers reserved for the last an epistle from
Cleveland. There was much in it that touched him home. After some dry
details about the property to which Maltravers had now succeeded, and
some trifling comments upon trifling remarks in Ernest’s former letters,
Cleveland went on thus:
“I confess, my dear Ernest, that I long to welcome you back to England.
You have been abroad long enough to see other countries; do not stay
long enough to prefer them to your own. You are at Naples, too--I
tremble for you. I know well that delicious, dreaming, holiday-life of
Italy, so sweet to men of learning and imagination--so sweet, too, to
youth--so sweet to pleasure! But, Ernest, do you not feel already how it
enervates?--how the luxurious _far niente_ unfits us for grave exertion?
Men may become too refined and too fastidious for useful purposes; and
nowhere can they become so more rapidly than in Italy. My dear Ernest,
I know you well; you are not made to sink down into a virtuoso, with a
cabinet full of cameos and a head full of pictures; still less are you
made to be an indolent _cicisbeo_ to some fair Italian, with one passion
and two ideas: and yet I have known men as clever as you, whom that
bewitching Italy has sunk into one or other of these insignificant
beings. Don’t run away with the notion that you have plenty of time
before you. You have no such thing. At your age, and with your fortune
(I wish you were not so rich), the holiday of one year becomes the
custom of the next. In England, to be a useful or a distinguished man,
you must labour. Now, labour itself is sweet, if we take to it early.
We are a hard race, but we are a manly one; and our stage is the most
exciting in Europe for an able and an honest ambition. Perhaps you will
tell me you are not ambitious now; very possibly--but ambitious you
will be; and, believe me, there is no unhappier wretch than a man who is
ambitious but disappointed,--who has the desire for fame, but has lost
the power to achieve it--who longs for the goal, but will not, and
cannot, put away his slippers to walk to it. What I most fear for you is
one of these two evils--an early marriage or a fatal _liaison_ with some
married woman. The first evil is certainly the least, but for you it
would still be a great one. With your sensitive romance, with your
morbid cravings for the ideal, domestic happiness would soon grow trite
and dull. You would demand new excitement, and become a restless and
disgusted man. It is necessary for you to get rid of all the false fever
of life, before you settle down to everlasting ties. You do not yet
know your own mind; you would choose your partner from some visionary
caprice, or momentary impulse, and not from the deep and accurate
knowledge of those qualities which would most harmonize with your own
character. People, to live happily with each other, must _fit in_, as it
were--the proud be mated with the meek, the irritable with the gentle,
and so forth. No, my dear Maltravers, do not think of marriage yet a
while; and if there is any danger of it, come over to me immediately.
But if I warn you against a lawful tie, how much more against an illicit
one? You are precisely at the age, and of the disposition, which render
the temptation so strong and so deadly. With you it might not be the
sin of an hour, but the bondage of a life. I know your chivalric
honour--your tender heart; I know how faithful you would be to one who
had sacrificed for you. But that fidelity, Maltravers, to what a life
of wasted talent and energies would it not compel you! Putting aside
for the moment (for that needs no comment) the question of the grand
immorality--what so fatal to a bold and proud temper, as to be at war
with society at the first entrance into life? What so withering to manly
aims and purposes, as the giving into the keeping of a woman, who has
interest in your love, and interest against your career which might part
you at once from her side--the control of your future destinies? I
could say more, but I trust what I have said is superfluous; if so, pray
assure me of it. Depend upon this, Ernest Maltravers, that if you do
not fulfil what nature intended for your fate, you will be a morbid
misanthrope, or an indolent voluptuary--wrenched and listless in
manhood, repining and joyless in old age. But if you do fulfil your
fate, you must enter soon into your apprenticeship. Let me see you
labour and aspire--no matter what in--what to. Work, work--that is all I
ask of you!
“I wish you would see your old country-house; it has a venerable and
picturesque look, and during your minority they have let the ivy cover
three sides of it. Montaigne might have lived there.
“Adieu, dearest Ernest,
“Your anxious and affectionate guardian,
“FREDERICK CLEVELAND.
“P. S.--I am writing a book--it shall last me ten years--it occupies me,
but does not fatigue. Write a book yourself.”
* * * * *
Maltravers had just finished this letter when Ferrers entered
impatiently. “Will you ride out?” said he. “I have sent the breakfast
away; I saw that breakfast was a vain hope to-day--indeed, my appetite
is gone.”
“Pshaw!” said Maltravers.
“Pshaw! Humph! for my part I like well-bred people.”
“I have had a letter from Cleveland.”
“And what the deuce has that got to do with the chocolate?”
“Oh, Lumley, you are insufferable; you think of nothing but yourself,
and self with you means nothing that is not animal.”
“Why, yes; I believe I have some sense,” replied Ferrers, complacently.
“I know the philosophy of life. All unfledged bipeds are animals, I
suppose. If Providence had made me graminivorous, I should have eaten
grass; if ruminating, I should have chewed the cud; but as it has made
me a carnivorous, culinary, and cachinnatory animal, I eat a cutlet,
scold about the sauce, and laugh at you; and this is what you call being
selfish!”
It was late at noon when Maltravers found himself at the palazzo of
Madame de Ventadour. He was surprised, but agreeably so, that he was
admitted, for the first time, into that private sanctum which bears
the hackneyed title of boudoir. But there was little enough of the fine
lady’s boudoir in the simple morning-room of Madame de Ventadour. It was
a lofty apartment, stored with books, and furnished, not without claim
to grace, but with very small attention to luxury.
Valerie was not there, and Maltravers, left alone, after a hasty glance
around the chamber, leaned abstractedly against the wall, and forgot,
alas! all the admonitions of Cleveland. In a few moments the door
opened, and Valerie entered. She was unusually pale, and Maltravers
thought her eyelids betrayed the traces of tears. He was touched, and
his heart smote him.
“I have kept you waiting, I fear,” said Valerie, motioning him to a seat
at a little distance from that on which she placed herself; “but you
will forgive me,” she added, with a slight smile. Then, observing he was
about to speak, she went on rapidly; “Hear me, Mr. Maltravers--before
you speak, hear me! You uttered words last night that ought never to
have been addressed to me. You professed to--love me.”
“Professed!”
“Answer me,” said Valerie, with abrupt energy, “not as man to woman, but
as one human creature to another. From the bottom of your heart, from
the core of your conscience, I call on you to speak the honest and the
simple truth. Do you love me as your heart, your genius, must be capable
of loving?”
“I love you truly--passionately!” said Maltravers, surprised and
confused, but still with enthusiasm in his musical voice and earnest
eyes. Valerie gazed upon him as if she sought to penetrate into his
soul. Maltravers went on. “Yes, Valerie, when we first met, you aroused
a long dormant and delicious sentiment. But, since then, what deep
emotions has that sentiment called forth? Your graceful intellect--your
lovely thoughts, wise yet womanly--have completed the conquest your face
and voice began. Valerie, I love you. And you--you, Valerie--ah! I do
not deceive myself--you also--”
“Love!” interrupted Valerie, deeply blushing, but in a calm voice.
“Ernest Maltravers, I do not deny it; honestly and frankly I confess the
fault. I have examined my heart during the whole of the last sleepless
night, and I confess that I love you. Now, then, understand me--we meet
no more.”
“What!” said Maltravers, falling involuntarily at her feet, and seeking
to detain her hand, which he seized. “What! now, when you have given
life a new charm, will you as suddenly blast it? No, Valerie; no, I will
not listen to you.”
Madame de Ventadour rose and said, with a cold dignity: “Hear me calmly,
or I quit the room; and all I would now say rests for ever unspoken.”
Maltravers rose also, folded his arms haughtily, bit his lips, and stood
erect, and confronting Valerie rather in the attitude of an accuser than
a suppliant.
“Madame,” said he, gravely, “I will offend no more; I will trust to your
manner, since I may not believe your words.”
“You are cruel,” said Valerie, smiling mournfully; “but so are all
men. Now let me make myself understood. I was betrothed to Monsieur
de Ventadour in my childhood. I did not see him till a month before we
married. I had no choice. French girls have none. We were wed. I had
formed no other attachment. I was proud and vain: wealth, ambition, and
social rank for a time satisfied my faculties and my heart. At length
I grew restless and unhappy. I felt that something of life was wanting.
Monsieur de Ventadour’s sister was the first to recommend me to the
common resource of our sex--at least, in France--a lover. I was shocked
and startled, for I belong to a family in which women are chaste and men
brave. I began, however, to look around me, and examine the truth of the
philosophy of vice. I found that no woman, who loved honestly and deeply
an illicit lover was happy. I found, too, the hideous profundity of
Rochefoucauld’s maxim that a woman--I speak of French women--may live
without a lover; but, a lover once admitted, she never goes through
life with only one. She is deserted; she cannot bear the anguish and the
solitude; she fills up the void with a second idol. For her there is no
longer a fall from virtue: it is a gliding and involuntary descent
from sin to sin, till old age comes on and leaves her without love and
without respect. I reasoned calmly, for my passions did not blind my
reason. I could not love the egotists around me. I resolved upon my
career; and now, in temptation, I will adhere to it. Virtue is my lover,
my pride, my comfort, my life of life. Do you love me, and will you rob
me of this treasure? I saw you, and for the first time I felt a vague
and intoxicating interest in another; but I did not dream of danger. As
our acquaintance advanced I formed to myself a romantic and delightful
vision. I would be your firmest, your truest friend; your confidant,
your adviser--perhaps, in some epochs of life, your inspiration and your
guide. I repeat that I foresaw no danger in your society. I felt myself
a nobler and a better being. I felt more benevolent, more tolerant, more
exalted. I saw life through the medium of purifying admiration for a
gifted nature, and a profound and generous soul. I fancied we might be
ever thus--each to each;--one strengthened, assured, supported by the
other. Nay, I even contemplated with pleasure the prospect of your
future marriage with another--of loving your wife--of contributing with
her to your happiness--my imagination made me forget that we are made
of clay. Suddenly all these visions were dispelled--the fairy palace was
overthrown, and I found myself awake, and on the brink of the abyss--you
loved me, and in the moment of that fatal confession, the mask dropped
from my soul, and I felt that you had become too dear to me. Be
silent still, I implore you. I do not tell you of the emotions, of the
struggles, through which I have passed the last few hours--the crisis of
a life. I tell you only of the resolution I formed. I thought it due
to you, nor unworthy to myself, to speak the truth. Perhaps it might be
more womanly to conceal it; but my heart has something masculine in
its nature. I have a great faith in your nobleness. I believe you can
sympathise with whatever is best in human weakness. I tell you that I
love you--I throw myself upon your generosity. I beseech you to assist
my own sense of right--to think well of me, to honour me--and to leave
me!”
During the last part of this strange and frank avowal, Valerie’s voice
had grown inexpressibly touching: her tenderness forced itself into her
manner; and when she ceased, her lip quivered; her tears, repressed by
a violent effort, trembled in her eyes--her hands were clasped--her
attitude was that of humility, not pride.
Maltravers stood perfectly spell-bound. At length he advanced; dropped
on one knee, kissed her hand with an aspect and air of reverential
homage, and turned to quit the room in silence; for he would not dare to
trust himself to speak.
Valerie gazed at him in anxious alarm. “O no, no!” she exclaimed, “do
not leave me yet; this is our last meeting our last. Tell me, at least,
that you understand me; that you see, if I am no weak fool, I am also
no heartless coquette; tell me that you see I am not as hard as I have
seemed; that I have not knowingly trifled with your happiness; that
even now I am not selfish. Your love,--I ask it no more! But your
esteem--your good opinion. Oh, speak--speak, I implore you!”
“Valerie,” said Maltravers, “if I was silent, it was because my heart
was too full for words. You have raised all womanhood in my eyes. I did
love you--I now venerate and adore. Your noble frankness, so unlike the
irresolute frailty, the miserable wiles of your sex, has touched a chord
in my heart that has been mute for years. I leave you to think better
of human nature. Oh!” he continued, “hasten to forget all of me that can
cost you a pang. Let me still, in absence and in sadness, think that I
retain in your friendship--let it be friendship only--the inspiration,
the guide of which you spoke; and if, hereafter, men shall name me with
praise and honour, feel, Valerie, feel that I have comforted myself
for the loss of your love by becoming worthy of your confidence--your
esteem. Oh, that we had met earlier, when no barrier was between us!”
“Go, go, _now_,” faltered Valerie, almost choked with her emotions; “may
Heaven bless you! Go!”
Maltravers muttered a few inaudible and incoherent words, and quitted
the apartment.
CHAPTER V.
“The men of sense, those idols of the shallow, are very inferior
to the men of Passions. It is the strong passions which, rescuing
us from sloth, can alone impart to us that continuous and earnest
attention necessary to great intellectual efforts.”--HELVETIUS.
WHEN Ferrers returned that day from his customary ride, he was surprised
to see the lobbies and hall of the apartment which he occupied in common
with Maltravers, littered with bags and _malles_, boxes and books,
and Ernest’s Swiss valet directing porters and waiters in a mosaic of
French, English, and Italian.
“Well!” said Lumley, “and what is all this?”
“Il signore va partir, sare, ah! mon Dieu!--_tout_ of a sudden.”
“O-h! and where is he now!”
“In his room, sare.”
Over the chaos strode Ferrers, and opening the door of his friend’s
dressing-room without ceremony, he saw Maltravers buried in a fauteuil,
with his hands drooping on his knees, his head bent over his breast, and
his whole attitude expressive of dejection and exhaustion.
“What is the matter, my dear Ernest? You have not killed a man in a
duel?”
“No.”
“What then? Why are you going away, and whither?”
“No matter; leave me in peace.”
“Friendly!” said Ferrers; “very friendly! And what is to become of
me--what companion am I to have in this cursed resort of antiquarians
and lazzaroni? You have no feeling, Mr. Maltravers!”
“Will you come with me, then?” said Maltravers, in vain endeavouring to
rouse himself.
“But where are you going?”
“Anywhere; to Paris--to London.”
“No; I have arranged my plans for the summer. I am not so rich as some
people. I hate change: it is so expensive.”
“But, my dear fellow--”
“Is this fair dealing with me?” continued Lumley, who, for once in his
life, was really angry. “If I were an old coat you had worn for five
years you could not throw me off with more nonchalance.”
“Ferrers, forgive me. My honour is concerned. I must leave this place. I
trust you will remain my guest here, though in the absence of your host.
You know that I have engaged the apartment for the next three months.”
“Humph!” said Ferrers, “as that is the case I may as well stay here.
But why so secret? Have you seduced Madame de Ventadour, or has her wise
husband his suspicions? Hein, hein!”
Maltravers smothered his disgust at this coarseness; and, perhaps, there
is no greater trial of temper than in a friend’s gross remarks upon the
connection of the heart.
“Ferrers,” said he, “if you care for me, breathe not a word
disrespectful to Madame de Ventadour: she is an angel!”
“But why leave Naples?”
“Trouble me no more.”
“Good day, sir,” said Ferrers, highly offended, and he stalked out of
the chamber; nor did Ernest see him again before his departure.
It was late that evening when Maltravers found himself alone in his
carriage, pursuing by starlight the ancient and melancholy road to Mola
di Gaeta.
His solitude was a luxury to Maltravers; he felt an inexpressible sense
of relief to be freed from Ferrers. The hard sense, the unpliant, though
humorous imperiousness, the animal sensuality of his companion would
have been torture to him in his present state of mind.
The next morning, when he rose, the orange blossoms of Mola di Gaeta
were sweet beneath the window of the inn where he rested. It was now the
early spring, and the freshness of the odour, the breathing health of
earth and air, it is impossible to describe. Italy itself boasts few
spots more lovely than that same Mola di Gaeta--nor does that halcyon
sea wear, even at Naples or Sorrento, a more bland and enchanting smile.
So, after a hasty and scarcely-tasted breakfast, Maltravers strolled
through the orange groves, and gained the beach; and there, stretched at
idle length by the murmuring waves, he resigned himself to thought,
and endeavoured, for the first time since his parting with Valerie, to
collect and examine the state of his mind and feelings. Maltravers, to
his own surprise, did not find himself so unhappy as he had expected. On
the contrary, a soft and almost delicious sentiment, which he could not
well define, floated over all his memories of the beautiful Frenchwoman.
Perhaps the secret was, that while his pride was not mortified, his
conscience was not galled--perhaps, also, he had not loved Valerie so
deeply as he had imagined. The confession and the separation had happily
come before her presence had grown--_the want of a life_. As it was,
he felt as if, by some holy and mystic sacrifice, he had been made
reconciled to himself and mankind. He woke to a juster and higher
appreciation of human nature, and of woman’s nature in especial. He
had found honesty and truth where he might least have expected it--in
a woman of a court--in a woman surrounded by vicious and frivolous
circles--in a woman who had nothing in the opinion of her friends, her
country, her own husband, the social system in which she moved, to keep
her from the concessions of frailty--in a woman of the world--a woman of
Paris!--yes, it was his very disappointment that drove away the fogs and
vapours that, arising from the marshes of the great world, had gradually
settled round his soul. Valerie de Ventadour had taught him not to
despise her sex, not to judge by appearances, not to sicken of a low and
a hypocritical world. He looked in his heart for the love of Valerie,
and he found there the love of virtue. Thus, as he turned his eyes
inward, did he gradually awaken to a sense of the true impressions
engraved there. And he felt the bitterest drop of the fountains was not
sorrow for himself, but for her. What pangs must that high spirit have
endured ere it could have submitted to the avowal it had made! Yet, even
in this affliction he found at last a solace. A mind so strong could
support and heal the weakness of the heart. He felt that Valerie de
Ventadour was not a woman to pine away in the unresisted indulgence of
morbid and unholy emotions. He could not flatter himself that she would
not seek to eradicate a love she repented; and he sighed with a natural
selfishness, when he owned also that sooner or later she would succeed.
“But be it so,” said he, half aloud--“I will prepare my heart to rejoice
when I learn that she remembers me only as a friend. Next to the bliss
of her love is the pride of her esteem.”
Such was the sentiment with which his reveries closed--and with
every league that bore him further from the south, the sentiment grew
strengthened and confirmed.
Ernest Maltravers felt there is in the affections themselves so much
to purify and exalt, that even an erring love, conceived without a cold
design, and (when its nature is fairly understood) wrestled against with
a noble spirit, leaves the heart more tolerant and tender, and the mind
more settled and enlarged. The philosophy limited to the reason puts
into motion the automata of the closet--but to those who have the world
for a stage, and who find their hearts are the great actors, experience
and wisdom must be wrought from the Philosophy of the Passions.
BOOK III.
“Not to all men Apollo shows himself--
Who sees him--_he_ is great!”
CALLIM. _Ex Hymno in Apollinon_.
CHAPTER I.
“Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears--soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.”
SHAKESPEARE.
BOAT SONG ON THE LAKE OF COMO.
I.
The Beautiful Clime!--the Clime of Love!
Thou beautiful Italy!
Like a mother’s eyes, the earnest skies
Ever have smiles for thee!
Not a flower that blows, not a beam that glows,
But what is in love with thee!
II.
The beautiful lake, the Larian lake!*
Soft lake like a silver sea,
The Huntress Queen, with her nymphs of sheen,
Never had bath like thee.
See, the Lady of night and her maids of light,
Even now are mid-deep in thee!
* The ancient name of Como.
III.
Beautiful child of the lonely hills,
Ever blest may thy slumbers be!
No mourner should tread by thy dreamy bed,
No life bring a care to thee--
Nay, soft to thy bed, let the mourner tread--
And life be a dream like thee!
Such, though uttered in the soft Italian tongue, and now imperfectly
translated--such were the notes that floated one lovely evening in
summer along the lake of Como. The boat, from which came the song,
drifted gently down the sparkling waters, towards the mossy banks of a
lawn, whence on a little eminence gleamed the white walls of a villa,
backed by vineyards. On that lawn stood a young and handsome woman,
leaning on the arm of her husband, and listening to the song. But her
delight was soon deepened into one of more personal interest, as the
boatmen, nearing the banks, changed their measure, and she felt that the
minstrelsy was in honour of herself.
SERENADE TO THE SONGSTRESS.
I.
CHORUS.
Softly--oh, soft! let us rest on the oar,
And vex not a billow that sighs to the shore:--
For sacred the spot where the starry waves meet
With the beach, where the breath of the citron is sweet.
There’s a spell on the waves that now waft us along
To the last of our Muses, the Spirit of Song.
RECITATIVE.
The Eagle of old renown,
And the Lombard’s iron crown
And Milan’s mighty name are ours no more;
But by this glassy water,
Harmonia’s youngest daughter,
Still from the lightning saves one laurel to our shore.
II.
CHORUS.
They heard thee, Teresa, the Teuton, the Gaul,
Who have raised the rude thrones of the North on our fall;
They heard thee, and bow’d to the might of thy song;
Like love went thy steps o’er the hearts of the strong;
As the moon to the air, as the soul to the clay,
To the void of this earth was the breath of thy lay.
RECITATIVE.
Honour for aye to her
The bright interpreter
Of Art’s great mysteries to the enchanted throng;
While tyrants heard thy strains,
Sad Rome forgot her chains;
The world the sword had lost was conquer’d back by song!
“Thou repentest, my Teresa, that thou hast renounced thy dazzling career
for a dull home, and a husband old enough to be thy father,” said the
husband to the wife, with a smile that spoke confidence in the answer.
“Ah, no! even this homage would have no music to me if thou didst not
hear it.”
She was a celebrated personage in Italy--the Signora Cesarini, now
Madame de Montaigne. Her earlier youth had been spent upon the stage,
and her promise of vocal excellence had been most brilliant. But after
a brief though splendid career, she married a French gentleman of
good birth and fortune, retired from the stage, and spent her life
alternately in the gay saloons of Paris and upon the banks of the dreamy
Como, on which her husband had purchased a small but beautiful villa.
She still, however, exercised in private her fascinating art; to
which--for she was a woman of singular accomplishment and talent--she
added the gift of the improvvisatrice. She had just returned for the
summer to this lovely retreat, and a party of enthusiastic youths
from Milan had sought the lake of Como to welcome her arrival with the
suitable homage of song and music. It is a charming relic, that custom
of the brighter days of Italy; and I myself have listened, on the still
waters of the same lake, to a similar greeting to a greater genius--the
queenlike and unrivalled Pasta--the Semiramis of Song! And while my boat
paused, and I caught something of the enthusiasm of the serenaders, the
boatman touched me, and, pointing to a part of the lake on which the
setting sun shed its rosiest smile, he said, “There, Signor, was drowned
one of your countrymen ‘bellissimo uomo! che fu bello!’”--yes, there,
in the pride of his promising youth, of his noble and almost godlike
beauty, before the very windows--the very eyes--of his bride--the waves
without a frown had swept over the idol of many hearts--the graceful and
gallant Locke.* And above his grave was the voluptuous sky, and over
it floated the triumphant music. It was as the moral of the Roman
poets--calling the living to a holiday over the oblivion of the dead.
* Captain William Locke of the Life Guards (the only son of the
accomplished Mr. Locke of Norbury Park), distinguished by a character
the most amiable, and by a personal beauty that certainly equalled,
perhaps surpassed, the highest masterpiece of Grecian sculpture. He was
returning in a boat from the town of Como to his villa on the banks
of the lake, when the boat was upset by one of the mysterious
under-currents to which the lake is dangerously subjected; and he was
drowned in sight of his bride, who was watching his return from the
terrace or balcony of their home.
As the boat now touched the bank, Madame de Montaigne accosted the
musicians, thanked them with a sweet and unaffected earnestness for the
compliment so delicately offered, and invited them ashore. The Milanese,
who were six in number, accepted the invitation, and moored their boat
to the jutting shore. It was then that Monsieur de Montaigne pointed out
to the notice of his wife a boat, that had lingered under the shadow
of a bank, tenanted by a young man, who had seemed to listen with rapt
attention to the music, and who had once joined in the chorus (as it was
twice repeated), with a voice so exquisitely attuned, and so rich in its
deep power, that it had awakened the admiration even of the serenaders
themselves.
“Does not that gentleman belong to your party?” De Montaigne asked of
the Milanese.
“No, Signor, we know him not,” was the answer; “his boat came unawares
upon us as we were singing.”
While this question and answer were going on, the young man had quitted
his station, and his oars cut the glassy surface of the lake, just
before the place where De Montaigne stood. With the courtesy of his
country, the Frenchman lifted his hat; and, by his gesture, arrested the
eye and oar of the solitary rower. “Will you honour us,” he said, “by
joining our little party?”
“It is a pleasure I covet too much to refuse,” replied the boatman, with
a slight foreign accent, and in another moment he was on shore. He was
one of remarkable appearance. His long hair floated with a careless
grace over a brow more calm and thoughtful than became his years; his
manner was unusually quiet and self-collected, and not without a certain
stateliness, rendered more striking by the height of his stature,
a lordly contour of feature, and a serene but settled expression of
melancholy in his eyes and smile. “You will easily believe,” said he,
“that, cold as my countrymen are esteemed (for you must have discovered
already that I am an Englishman), I could not but share in the
enthusiasm of those about me, when loitering near the very ground sacred
to the inspiration. For the rest, I am residing for the present in
yonder villa, opposite to your own; my name is Maltravers, and I am
enchanted to think that I am no longer a personal stranger to one whose
fame has already reached me.” Madame de Montaigne was flattered by
something in the manner and tone of the Englishman, which said a great
deal more than his words; and in a few minutes, beneath the influence of
the happy continental ease, the whole party seemed as if they had
known each other for years. Wines, and fruits, and other simple and
unpretending refreshments, were brought out and ranged on a rude table
upon the grass, round which the guests seated themselves with their
host and hostess, and the clear moon shone over them, and the lake slept
below in silver. It was a scene for a Boccaccio or a Claude.
The conversation naturally fell upon music; it is almost the only thing
which Italians in general can be said to know--and even that knowledge
comes to them, like Dogberry’s reading and writing, by nature--for of
music, as an _art_, the unprofessional amateurs know but little. As vain
and arrogant of the last wreck of their national genius as the Romans
of old were of the empire of all arts and arms, they look upon the
harmonies of other lands as barbarous; nor can they appreciate or
understand appreciation of the mighty German music, which is the proper
minstrelsy of a nation of men--a music of philosophy, of heroism, of the
intellect and the imagination; beside which, the strains of modern Italy
are indeed effeminate, fantastic, and artificially feeble. Rossini is
the Canova of music, with much of the pretty, with nothing of the grand!
The little party talked, however, of music, with an animation and gusto
that charmed the melancholy Maltravers, who for weeks had known no
companion save his own thoughts, and with whom, at all times, enthusiasm
for any art found a ready sympathy. He listened attentively, but said
little; and from time to time, whenever the conversation flagged,
amused himself by examining his companions. The six Milanese had nothing
remarkable in their countenances or in their talk; they possessed the
characteristic energy and volubility of their countrymen, with something
of the masculine dignity which distinguishes the Lombard from the
Southern, and a little of the French polish, which the inhabitants of
Milan seldom fail to contract. Their rank was evidently that of the
middle class; for Milan has a middle class, and one which promises great
results hereafter. But they were noways distinguished from a thousand
other Milanese whom Maltravers had met with in the walks and cafes of
their noble city. The host was somewhat more interesting. He was a
tall, handsome man, of about eight-and-forty, with a high forehead, and
features strongly impressed with the sober character of thought. He had
but little of the French vivacity in his manner; and without looking at
his countenance, you would still have felt insensibly that he was the
eldest of the party. His wife was at least twenty years younger than
himself, mirthful and playful as a child, but with a certain feminine
and fascinating softness in her unrestrained gestures and sparkling
gaiety, which seemed to subdue her natural joyousness into the form and
method of conventional elegance. Dark hair carelessly arranged, an open
forehead, large black laughing eyes, a small straight nose, a complexion
just relieved from the olive by an evanescent, yet perpetually recurring
blush; a round dimpled cheek, an exquisitely-shaped mouth with small
pearly teeth, and a light and delicate figure a little below the
ordinary standard, completed the picture of Madame de Montaigne.
“Well,” said Signor Tirabaloschi, the most loquacious and sentimental of
the guests, filling his glass, “these are hours to think of for the rest
of life. But we cannot hope the Signora will long remember what we never
can forget. Paris, says the French proverb, _est le paradis des femmes_:
and in Paradise, I take it for granted, we recollect very little of what
happened on earth.”
“Oh,” said Madame de Montaigne, with a pretty musical laugh, “in Paris
it is the rage to despise the frivolous life of cities, and to affect
_des sentimens romanesques_. This is precisely the scene which our fine
ladies and fine writers would die to talk of and to describe. Is it not
so, _mon ami_?” and she turned affectionately to De Montaigne.
“True,” replied he; “but you are not worthy of such a scene--you laugh
at sentiment and romance.”
“Only at French sentiment and the romance of the Chaussee d’Antin. You
English,” she continued, shaking her head at Maltravers, “have spoiled
and corrupted us; we are not content to imitate you, we must excel you;
we out-horror horror, and rush from the extravagant into the frantic!”
“The ferment of the new school is, perhaps, better than the stagnation
of the old,” said Maltravers. “Yet even you,” addressing himself to
the Italians, “who first in Petrarch, in Tasso, and in Ariosto, set to
Europe the example of the Sentimental and the Romantic; who built among
the very ruins of the classic school, amidst its Corinthian columns and
sweeping arches, the spires and battlements of the Gothic--even you are
deserting your old models and guiding literature into newer and wilder
paths. ‘Tis the way of the world--eternal progress is eternal change.”
“Very possibly,” said Signor Tirabaloschi, who understood nothing of
what was said. “Nay, it is extremely profound; on reflection, it is
beautiful--superb! you English are so--so--in short, it is admirable.
Ugo Foscolo is a great genius--so is Monti; and as for Rossini,--you
know his last opera--_cosa stupenda_!”
Madame de Montaigne glanced at Maltravers, clapped her little hands, and
laughed outright. Maltravers caught the contagion, and laughed also.
But he hastened to repair the pedantic error he had committed of talking
over the heads of the company. He took up the guitar, which, among their
musical instruments, the serenaders had brought, and after touching its
chords for a few moments, said: “After all, Madame, in your society,
and with this moonlit lake before us, we feel as if music were our best
medium of conversation. Let us prevail upon these gentlemen to delight
us once more.”
“You forestall what I was going to ask,” said the ex-singer; and
Maltravers offered the guitar to Tirabaloschi, who was in fact dying to
exhibit his powers again. He took the instrument with a slight grimace
of modesty, and then saying to Madame de Montaigne, “There is a song
composed by a young friend of mine, which is much admired by the ladies;
though to me it seems a little too sentimental,” sang the following
stanzas (as good singers are wont to do) with as much feeling as if he
could understand them!
NIGHT AND LOVE.
When stars are in the quiet skies, Then most I pine for thee;
Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes! As stars look on the sea!
For thoughts, like waves that glide by night, Are stillest where they shine;
Mine earthly love lies hushed in light Beneath the heaven of thine.
There is an hour when angels keep Familiar watch on men;
When coarser souls are wrapt in sleep,-- Sweet spirit, meet me then.
There is an hour when holy dreams Through slumber fairest glide;
And in that mystic hour it seems Thou shouldst be by my side.
The thoughts of thee too sacred are
For daylight’s common beam;--
I can but know thee as my star,
My angel, and my dream!
And now, the example set, and the praises of the fair hostess exciting
general emulation, the guitar circled from hand to hand, and each of the
Italians performed his part; you might have fancied yourself at one
of the old Greek feasts, with the lyre and the myrtle-branch going the
round.
But both the Italians and the Englishman felt the entertainment would be
incomplete without hearing the celebrated vocalist and improvvisatrice
who presided over the little banquet; and Madame de Montaigne, with a
woman’s tact, divined the general wish, and anticipated the request
that was sure to be made. She took the guitar from the last singer, and
turning to Maltravers, said, “You have heard, of course, some of our
more eminent improvvisatori, and therefore if I ask you for a subject it
will only be to prove to you that the talent is not general amongst the
Italians.”
“Ah,” said Maltravers, “I have heard, indeed, some ugly old gentlemen
with immense whiskers, and gestures of the most alarming ferocity, pour
out their vehement impromptus; but I have never yet listened to a young
and a handsome lady. I shall only believe the inspiration when I hear it
direct from the Muse.”
“Well, I will do my best to deserve your compliments--you must give me
the theme.”
Maltravers paused a moment, and suggested the Influence of Praise on
Genius.
The improvvisatrice nodded assent, and after a short prelude broke forth
into a wild and varied strain of verse, in a voice so exquisitely sweet,
with a taste so accurate, and a feeling so deep that the poetry sounded
to the enchanted listeners like the language that Armida might have
uttered. Yet the verses themselves, like all extemporaneous effusions,
were of a nature both to pass from the memory and to defy transcription.
When Madame de Montaigne’s song ceased, no rapturous plaudits
followed--the Italians were too affected by the science, Maltravers by
the feeling, for the coarseness of ready praise;--and ere that delighted
silence which made the first impulse was broken, a new comer, descending
from the groves that clothed the ascent behind the house, was in the
midst of the party.
“Ah, my dear brother,” cried Madame Montaigne, starting up, and banging
fondly on the arm of the stranger, “why have you lingered so long in the
wood? You, so delicate! And how are you? How pale you seem!”
“It is but the reflection of the moonlight, Teresa,” said the intruder;
“I feel well.” So saying, he scowled on the merry party, and turned as
if to slink away.
“No, no,” whispered Teresa, “you must stay a moment and be presented
to my guests: there is an Englishman here whom you will like--who will
_interest_ you.”
With that she almost dragged him forward, and introduced him to her
guests. Signor Cesarini returned their salutations with a mixture of
bashfulness and _hauteur_, half-awkward and half-graceful, and muttering
some inaudible greeting, sank into a seat and appeared instantly lost
in reverie. Maltravers gazed upon him, and was pleased with his
aspect--which, if not handsome, was strange and peculiar. He was
extremely slight and thin--his cheeks hollow and colourless, with
a profusion of black silken ringlets that almost descended to his
shoulders. His eyes, deeply sunk into his head, were large and intensely
brilliant; and a thin moustache, curling downwards, gave an additional
austerity to his mouth, which was closed with gloomy and half-sarcastic
firmness. He was not dressed as people dress in general, but wore a
frock of dark camlet, with a large shirt-collar turned down, and a
narrow slip of black silk twisted rather than tied round his throat; his
nether garments fitted tight to his limbs, and a pair of half-hessians
completed his costume. It was evident that the young man (and he was
very young--perhaps about nineteen or twenty) indulged that coxcombry of
the Picturesque which is the sign of a vainer mind than is the commoner
coxcombry of the _Mode_.
It is astonishing how frequently it happens, that the introduction of
a single intruder upon a social party is sufficient to destroy all the
familiar harmony that existed there before. We see it even when the
intruder is agreeable and communicative--but in the present instance, a
ghost could scarcely have been a more unwelcoming or unwelcome visitor.
The presence of this shy, speechless, supercilious-looking man threw a
damp over the whole group. The gay Tirabaloschi immediately discovered
that it was time to depart--it had not struck any one before, but it
certainly _was_ late. The Italians began to bustle about, to collect
their music, to make fine speeches and fine professions--to bow and to
smile--to scramble into their boat, and to push towards the inn at Como,
where they had engaged their quarters for the night. As the boat glided
away, and while two of them were employed at the oar, the remaining
four took up their instruments and sang a parting glee. It was quite
midnight--the hush of all things around had grown more intense and
profound--there was a wonderful might of silence in the shining air and
amidst the shadows thrown by the near banks and the distant hills over
the water. So that as the music chiming in with the oars grew fainter
and fainter, it is impossible to describe the thrilling and magical
effect it produced.
The party ashore did not speak; there was a moisture, a grateful one,
in the bright eyes of Teresa, as she leant upon the manly form of De
Montaigne, for whom her attachment was, perhaps, yet more deep and
pure for the difference of their ages. A girl who once loves a man, not
indeed old, but much older than herself, loves him with such a _looking
up_ and venerating love! Maltravers stood a little apart from the
couple, on the edge of the shelving bank, with folded arms and
thoughtful countenance. “How is it,” said he, unconscious that he was
speaking half aloud, “that the commonest beings of the world should be
able to give us a pleasure so unworldly? What a contrast between those
musicians and this music. At this distance their forms are dimly seen,
one might almost fancy the creators of those sweet sounds to be of
another mould from us. Perhaps even thus the poetry of the Past rings
on our ears--the deeper and the diviner, because removed from the clay
which made the poets. O Art, Art! how dost thou beautify and exalt us;
what is nature without thee!”
“You are a poet, Signor,” said a soft clear voice beside the
soliloquist; and Maltravers started to find that he had had unknowingly
a listener in the young Cesarini.
“No,” said Maltravers; “I cull the flowers, I do not cultivate the
soil.”
“And why not?” said Cesarini, with abrupt energy; “you are an
Englishman--_you_ have a public--you have a country--you have a living
stage, a breathing audience; we, Italians, have nothing but the dead.”
As he looked on the young man, Maltravers was surprised to see the
sudden animation which glowed upon his pale features.
“You asked me a question I would fain put to you,” said the Englishman,
after a pause. “_You_, methinks, are a poet?”
“I have fancied that I might be one. But poetry with us is a bird in the
wilderness--it sings from an impulse--the song dies without a listener.
Oh that I belonged to a _living_ country,--France, England, Germany,
Arnerica,--and not to the corruption of a dead giantess--for such is now
the land of the ancient lyre.”
“Let us meet again, and soon,” said Maltravers, holding out his hand.
Cesarini hesitated a moment, and then accepted and returned the
proffered salutation. Reserved as he was, something in Maltravers
attracted him; and, indeed, there was that in Ernest which fascinated
most of those unhappy eccentrics who do not move in the common orbit of
the world.
In a few moments more the Englishman had said farewell to the owner of
the villa, and his light boat skimmed rapidly over the tide.
“What do you think of the _Inglese_?” said Madame de Montaigne to her
husband, as they turned towards the house. (They said not a word about
the Milanese.)
“He has a noble bearing for one so young,” said the Frenchman; “and
seems to have seen the world, and both to have profited and to have
suffered by it.”
“He will prove an acquisition to our society here,” returned Teresa; “he
interests me; and you, Castruccio?” turning to seek for her brother; but
Cesarini had already, with his usual noiseless step, disappeared within
the house.
“Alas, my poor brother!” she said, “I cannot comprehend him. What does
he desire?”
“Fame!” replied De Montaigne, calmly. “It is a vain shadow; no wonder
that he disquiets himself in vain.”
CHAPTER II.
“Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To strictly meditate the thankless Muse;
Were I not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?”
MILTON’S _Lycidas_.
THERE is nothing more salutary to active men than occasional intervals
of repose,--when we look within, instead of without, and examine almost
_insensibly_ (for I hold strict and conscious self-scrutiny a thing much
rarer than we suspect)--what we have done--what we are capable of doing.
It is settling, as it were, a debtor and creditor account with the past,
before we plunge into new speculations. Such an interval of repose
did Maltravers now enjoy. In utter solitude, so far as familiar
companionship is concerned, he had for several weeks been making himself
acquainted with his own character and mind. He read and thought much,
but without any exact or defined object. I think it is Montaigne who
says somewhere: “People talk about thinking--but for my part I never
think, except when I sit down to write.” I believe this is not a very
common case, for people who don’t write think as well as people who do;
but connected, severe, well-developed thought, in contradistinction to
vague meditation, must be connected with some tangible plan or object;
and therefore we must be either writing men or acting men, if we desire
to test the logic, and unfold into symmetrical design the fused colours
of our reasoning faculty. Maltravers did not yet feel this, but he was
sensible of some intellectual want. His ideas, his memories, his dreams
crowded thick and confused upon him; he wished to arrange them in order,
and he could not. He was overpowered by the unorganised affluence of his
own imagination and intellect. He had often, even as a child, fancied
that he was formed to do something in the world, but he had never
steadily considered what it was to be, whether he was to become a man
of books or a man of deeds. He had written poetry when it poured
irresistibly from the fount of emotion within, but looked at his
effusions with a cold and neglectful eye when the enthusiasm had passed
away.
Maltravers was not much gnawed by the desire of fame--perhaps few men of
real genius are, until artificially worked up to it. There is in a
sound and correct intellect, with all its gifts fairly balanced, a calm
consciousness of power, a certainty that when its strength is fairly
put out, it must be to realise the usual result of strength. Men
of second-rate faculties, on the contrary, are fretful and nervous,
fidgeting after a celebrity which they do not estimate by their own
talents, but by the talents of some one else. They see a tower, but
are occupied only with measuring its shadow, and think their own height
(which they never calculate) is to cast as broad a one over the earth.
It is the short man who is always throwing up his chin, and is as erect
as a dart. The tall man stoops, and the strong man is not always using
the dumb-bells.
Maltravers had not yet, then, the keen and sharp yearning for
reputation; he had not, as yet, tasted its sweets and bitters--fatal
draught, which _once_ tasted, begets too often an insatiable thirst!
neither had he enemies and decriers whom he was desirous of abashing by
merit. And that is a very ordinary cause for exertion in proud minds. He
was, it is true, generally reputed clever, and fools were afraid of
him: but as he actively interfered with no man’s pretensions, so no man
thought it necessary to call him a blockhead. At present, therefore, it
was quietly and naturally that his mind was working its legitimate way
to its destiny of exertion. He began idly and carelessly to note down
his thoughts and impressions; what was once put on the paper, begot
new matter; his ideas became more lucid to himself; and the page grew
a looking-glass, which presented the likeness of his own features. He
began by writing with rapidity, and without method. He had no object but
to please himself, and to find a vent for an overcharged spirit; and,
like most writings of the young, the matter was egotistical. We commence
with the small nucleus of passion and experience, to widen the circle
afterwards; and, perhaps, the most extensive and universal masters of
life and character have begun by being egotists. For there is in a man
that has much in him a wonderfully acute and sensitive perception of his
own existence. An imaginative and susceptible person has, indeed, ten
times as much life as a dull fellow, “an he be Hercules.” He multiplies
himself in a thousand objects, associates each with his own identity,
lives in each, and almost looks upon the world with its infinite objects
as a part of his individual being. Afterwards, as he tames down, he
withdraws his forces into the citadel, but he still has a knowledge of,
and an interest in, the land they once covered. He understands
other people, for he has lived in other people--the dead and the
living;--fancied himself now Brutus and now Caesar, and thought how _he_
should act in almost every imaginable circumstance of life.
Thus, when he begins to paint human characters, essentially different
from his own, his knowledge comes to him almost intuitively. It is as if
he were describing the mansions in which he himself has formerly
lodged, though for a short time. Hence in great writers of History--of
Romance--of the Drama--the _gusto_ with which they paint their
personages; their creations are flesh and blood, not shadows or
machines.
Maltravers was at first, then, an egotist, in the matter of his rude and
desultory sketches--in the manner, as I said before, he was careless and
negligent, as men will be who have not yet found that expression is
an art. Still those wild and valueless essays--those rapt and secret
confessions of his own heart--were a delight to him. He began to taste
the transport, the intoxication of an author. And, oh, what a luxury
is there in that first love of the Muse! that process by which we give
palpable form to the long-intangible visions which have flitted across
us;--the beautiful ghost of the Ideal within us, which we invoke in the
Gadara of our still closets, with the wand of the simple pen!
It was early noon, the day after he had formed his acquaintance with the
De Montaignes, that Maltravers sat in his favourite room;--the one
he had selected for his study from the many chambers of his large and
solitary habitation. He sat in a recess by the open window, which looked
on the lake; and books were scattered on his table, and Maltravers
was jotting down his criticisms on what he read, mingled with
his impressions on what he saw. It is the pleasantest kind of
composition--the note-book of a man who studies in retirement, who
observes in society, who in all things can admire and feel. He was yet
engaged in this easy task, when Cesarini was announced, and the young
brother of the fair Teresa entered his apartment.
“I have availed myself soon of your invitation,” said the Italian.
“I acknowledge the compliment,” replied Maltravers, pressing the hand
shyly held out to him.
“I see you have been writing--I thought you were attached to literature.
I read it in your countenance, I heard it in your voice,” said Cesarini,
seating himself.
“I have been idly beguiling a very idle leisure, it is true,” said
Maltravers.
“But you do not write for yourself alone--you have an eye to the great
tribunals--Time and the Public.”
“Not so, I assure you honestly,” said Maltravers, smiling. “If you
look at the books on my table, you will see that they are the great
masterpieces of ancient and modern lore--these are studies that
discourage tyros--”
“But inspire them.”
“I do not think so. Models may form our taste as critics, but do not
excite us to be authors. I fancy that our own emotions, our own sense
of our destiny, make the great lever of the inert matter we accumulate.
‘Look in thy heart and write,’ said an old English writer,* who did not,
however, practise what he preached. And you, Signor--”
* Sir Philip Sidney.
“Am nothing, and would be something,” said the young man, shortly and
bitterly.
“And how does that wish not realise its object?”
“Merely because I am Italian,” said Cesarini. “With us there is no
literary public--no vast reading class--we have dilettanti and literati,
and students, and even authors; but these make only a coterie, not a
public. I have written, I have published; but no one listened to me. I
am an author without readers.”
“It is no uncommon case in England,” said Maltravers.
The Italian continued: “I thought to live in the mouths of men--to stir
up thoughts long dumb--to awaken the strings of the old lyre! In vain.
Like the nightingale, I sing only to break my heart with a false and
melancholy emulation of other notes.”
“There are epochs in all countries,” said Maltravers, gently, “when
peculiar veins of literature are out of vogue, and when no genius
can bring them into public notice. But you wisely said there were two
tribunals--the Public and Time. You have still the last to appeal to.
Your great Italian historians wrote for the unborn--their works not even
published till their death. That indifference to living reputation has
in it, to me, something of the sublime.”
“I cannot imitate them--and they were not poets,” said Cesarini,
sharply. “To poets, praise is a necessary aliment; neglect is death.”
“My dear Signor Cesarini,” said the Englishman, feelingly, “do not give
way to these thoughts. There ought to be in a healthful ambition the
stubborn stuff of persevering longevity; it must live on, and hope
for the day which comes slow or fast, to all whose labours deserve the
goal.”
“But perhaps mine do not. I sometimes fear so--it is a horrid thought.”
“You are very young yet,” said Maltravers; “how few at your age ever
sicken for fame! That first step is, perhaps, the half way to the
prize.”
I am not sure that Ernest thought exactly as he spoke; but it was the
most delicate consolation to offer to a man whose abrupt frankness
embarrassed and distressed him. The young man shook his head
despondingly. Maltravers tried to change the subject--he rose and moved
to the balcony, which overhung the lake--he talked of the weather--he
dwelt on the exquisite scenery--he pointed to the minute and more latent
beauties around, with the eye and taste of one who had looked at Nature
in her details. The poet grew more animated and cheerful; he became even
eloquent; he quoted poetry and he talked it. Maltravers was more and
more interested in him. He felt a curiosity to know if his talents
equalled his aspirations: he hinted to Cesarini his wish to see his
compositions--it was just what the young man desired. Poor Cesarini!
It was much to him to get a new listener, and he fondly imagined every
honest listener must be a warm admirer. But with the coyness of his
caste, he affected reluctance and hesitation; he dallied with his own
impatient yearnings. And Maltravers, to smooth his way, proposed an
excursion on the lake.
“One of my men shall row,” said he; “you shall recite to me, and I will
be to you what the old housekeeper was to Moliere.”
Maltravers had deep good-nature where he was touched, though he had not
a superfluity of what is called good-humour, which floats on the surface
and smiles on all alike. He had much of the milk of human kindness, but
little of its oil.
The poet assented, and they were soon upon the lake. It was a sultry
day, and it was noon; so the boat crept slowly along by the shadow of
the shore, and Cesarini drew from his breast-pocket some manuscripts of
small and beautiful writing. Who does not know the pains a young poet
takes to bestow a fair dress on his darling rhymes!
Cesarini read well and feelingly. Everything was in favour of the
reader. His own poetical countenance--his voice, his enthusiasm,
half-suppressed--the pre-engaged interest of the auditor--the dreamy
loveliness of the hour and scene--(for there is a great deal as to time
in these things). Maltravers listened intently. It is very difficult to
judge of the exact merit of poetry in another language even when we
know that language well--so much is there in the untranslatable magic of
expression, the little subtleties of style. But Maltravers, fresh, as
he himself had said, from the study of great and original writers,
could not but feel that he was listening to feeble though melodious
mediocrity. It was the poetry of words, not things. He thought it cruel,
however, to be hypercritical, and he uttered all the commonplaces of
eulogium that occurred to him. The young man was enchanted: “And yet,”
said he with a sigh, “I have no Public. In England they would appreciate
me.” Alas! in England, at that moment, there were five hundred poets as
young, as ardent, and yet more gifted, whose hearts beat with the same
desire--whose nerves were broken by the same disappointments.
Maltravers found that his young friend would not listen to any judgment
not purely favourable. The archbishop in _Gil Blas_ was not more touchy
upon any criticism that was not panegyric. Maltravers thought it a bad
sign, but he recollected Gil Blas, and prudently refrained from bringing
on himself the benevolent wish of “beaucoup de bonheur et un peu, plus
de bon gout.” When Cesarini had finished his MS., he was anxious to
conclude the excursion--he longed to be at home, and think over the
admiration he had excited. But he left his poems with Maltravers, and
getting on shore by the remains of Pliny’s villa, was soon out of sight.
Maltravers that evening read the poems with attention. His first opinion
was confirmed. The young man wrote without knowledge. He had never felt
the passions he painted, never been in the situations he described.
There was no originality in him, for there was no experience; it was
exquisite mechanism, his verse,--nothing more. It might well deceive
him, for it could not but flatter his ear--and Tasso’s silver march rang
not more musically than did the chiming stanzas of Castruccio Cesarini.
The perusal of this poetry, and his conversation with the poet, threw
Maltravers into a fit of deep musing. “This poor Cesarini may warn me
against myself!” thought he. “Better hew wood and draw water than attach
ourselves devotedly to an art in which we have not the capacity to
excel.... It is to throw away the healthful objects of life for a
diseased dream,--worse than the Rosicrucians, it is to make a sacrifice
of all human beauty for the smile of a sylphid that never visits us but
in visions.” Maltravers looked over his own compositions, and thrust
them into the fire. He slept ill that night. His pride was a little
dejected. He was like a beauty who has seen a caricature of herself.
CHAPTER III.
“Still follow SENSE, of every art the Soul.”
POPE: _Moral Essays_--Essay iv.
ERNEST MALTRAVERS spent much of his time with the family of De
Montaigne. There is no period of life in which we are more accessible
to the sentiment of friendship than in the intervals of moral exhaustion
which succeed to the disappointments of the passions. There is, then,
something inviting in those gentler feelings which keep alive, but do
not fever, the circulation of the affections. Maltravers looked with
the benevolence of a brother upon the brilliant, versatile, and restless
Teresa. She was the last person in the world he could have been in
love with--for his nature, ardent, excitable, yet fastidious, required
something of repose in the manners and temperament of the woman whom he
could love, and Teresa scarcely knew what repose was. Whether playing
with her children (and she had two lovely ones--the eldest six years
old), or teasing her calm and meditative husband, or pouring out
extempore verses, or rattling over airs which she never finished, on
the guitar or piano--or making excursions on the lake--or, in short, in
whatever occupation she appeared as the Cynthia of the minute, she was
always gay and mobile--never out of humour, never acknowledging a
single care or cross in life--never susceptible of grief, save when her
brother’s delicate health or morbid temper saddened her atmosphere
of sunshine. Even then, the sanguine elasticity of her mind and
constitution quickly recovered from the depression; and she persuaded
herself that Castruccio would grow stronger every year, and ripen into
a celebrated and happy man. Castruccio himself lived what romantic
poetasters call the “life of a poet.” He loved to see the sun rise over
the distant Alps--or the midnight moon sleeping on the lake. He spent
half the day, and often half the night, in solitary rambles, weaving his
airy rhymes, or indulging his gloomy reveries, and he thought loneliness
made the element of a poet. Alas! Dante, Alfieri, even Petrarch might
have taught him, that a poet must have intimate knowledge of men as well
as mountains, if he desire to become the CREATOR. When Shelley, in one
of his prefaces, boasts of being familiar with Alps and glaciers, and
Heaven knows what, the critical artist cannot help wishing that he had
been rather familiar with Fleet Street or the Strand. Perhaps, then,
that remarkable genius might have been more capable of realizing
characters of flesh and blood, and have composed corporeal and
consummate wholes, not confused and glittering fragments.
Though Ernest was attached to Teresa and deeply interested in
Castruccio, it was De Montaigne for whom he experienced the higher and
graver sentiment of esteem. This Frenchman was one acquainted with a
much larger world than that of the Coteries. He had served in the army,
had been employed with distinction in civil affairs, and was of that
robust and healthful moral constitution which can bear with every
variety of social life, and estimate calmly the balance of our moral
fortunes. Trial and experience had left him that true philosopher who
is too wise to be an optimist, too just to be a misanthrope. He enjoyed
life with sober judgment, and pursued the path most suited to himself,
without declaring it to be the best for others. He was a little hard,
perhaps, upon the errors that belong to weakness and conceit--not to
those that have their source in great natures or generous thoughts.
Among his characteristics was a profound admiration for England. His own
country he half loved, yet half disdained. The impetuosity and levity of
his compatriots displeased his sober and dignified notions. He could
not forgive them (he was wont to say) for having made the two grand
experiments of popular revolution and military despotism in vain. He
sympathised neither with the young enthusiasts who desired a republic,
without well knowing the numerous strata of habits and customs upon
which that fabric, if designed for permanence, should be built--nor with
the uneducated and fierce chivalry that longed for a restoration of the
warrior empire--nor with the dull and arrogant bigots who connected all
ideas of order and government with the ill-starred and worn-out dynasty
of the Bourbons. In fact, GOOD SENSE was with him the _principium et
fons_ of all theories and all practice. And it was this quality that
attached him to the English. His philosophy on this head was rather
curious.
“Good sense,” said he one day to Maltravers, as they were walking to and
fro at De Montaigne’s villa, by the margin of the lake, “is not a merely
intellectual attribute. It is rather the result of a just equilibrium
of all our faculties, spiritual and moral. The dishonest, or the toys of
their own passions, may have genius; but they rarely, if ever, have good
sense in the conduct of life. They may often win large prizes, but it is
by a game of chance, not skill. But the man whom I perceive walking an
honourable and upright career--just to others, and also to himself
(for we owe justice to ourselves--to the care of our fortunes, our
character--to the management of our passions)--is a more dignified
representative of his Maker than the mere child of genius. Of such a man
we say he has GOOD SENSE; yes, but he has also integrity, self-respect,
and self-denial. A thousand trials which his sense raves and conquers,
are temptations also to his probity--his temper--in a word, to all the
many sides of his complicated nature. Now, I do not think he will have
this _good sense_ any more than a drunkard will have strong nerves,
unless he be in the constant habit of keeping his mind clear from the
intoxication of envy, vanity, and the various emotions that dupe and
mislead us. Good sense is not, therefore, an abstract quality or a
solitary talent; but it is the natural result of the habit of thinking
justly, and therefore seeing clearly, and is as different from the
sagacity that belongs to a diplomatist or attorney, as the philosophy of
Socrates differed from the rhetoric of Gorgias. As a mass of individual
excellences make up this attribute in a man, so a mass of such men thus
characterised give a character to a nation. Your England is, therefore,
renowned for its good sense, but it is renowned also for the excellences
which accompany strong sense in an individual--high honesty and faith
in its dealings, a warm love of justice and fair play, a general freedom
from the violent crimes common on the Continent, and the energetic
perseverance in enterprise once commenced, which results from a bold and
healthful disposition.”
“Our wars, our debt--” began Maltravers.
“Pardon me,” interrupted De Montaigne, “I am speaking of your
people, not of your government. A government is often a very unfair
representative of a nation. But even in the wars you allude to, if you
examine, you will generally find them originate in the love of justice,
which is the basis of good sense, not from any insane desire of conquest
or glory. A man, however sensible, must have a heart in his bosom, and
a great nation cannot be a piece of selfish clockwork. Suppose you and
I are sensible, prudent men, and we see in a crowd one violent fellow
unjustly knocking another on the head, we should be brutes, not men, if
we did not interfere with the savage; but if we thrust ourselves into a
crowd with a large bludgeon, and belabour our neighbours, with the hope
that the spectators would cry, ‘See what a bold, strong fellow that
is!’--then we should be only playing the madman from the motive of the
coxcomb. I fear you will find in the military history of the French and
English the application of my parable.”
“Yet still, I confess, there is a gallantry, and a noblemanlike and
Norman spirit in the whole French nation, which make me forgive many
of their excesses, and think they are destined for great purposes, when
experience shall have sobered their hot blood. Some nations, as some
men, are slow in arriving at maturity; others seem men in their
cradle. The English, thanks to their sturdy Saxon origin, elevated, not
depressed, by the Norman infusion, never were children. The difference
is striking, when you regard the representatives of both in their great
men--whether writers or active citizens.”
“Yes,” said De Montaigne, “in Milton and Cromwell there is nothing of
the brilliant child. I cannot say as much for Voltaire or Napoleon.
Even Richelieu, the manliest of our statesmen, had so much of the French
infant in him as to fancy himself a _beau garcon_, a gallant, a wit, and
a poet. As for the Racine school of writers, they were not out of the
leading-strings of imitation--cold copyists of a pseudo-classic, in
which they saw the form, and never caught the spirit. What so little
Roman, Greek, Hebrew, as their Roman, Greek, and Hebrew dramas?
Your rude Shakespeare’s _Julius Caesar_--even his _Troilus and
Cressida_--have the ancient spirit, precisely as they are imitations of
nothing ancient. But our Frenchmen copied the giant images of old just
as the school-girl copies a drawing, by holding it up to the window, and
tracing the lines on silver paper.”
“But your new writers--De Stael--Chateaubriand?” *
* At the time of this conversation the later school, adorned by Victor
Hugo, who, with notions of art elaborately wrong, is still a man
of extraordinary genius, had not risen into its present equivocal
reputation.
“I find no fault with the sentimentalists,” answered the severe critic,
“but that of exceeding feebleness. They have no bone and muscle in their
genius--all is flaccid and rotund in its feminine symmetry. They seem to
think that vigour consists in florid phrases and little aphorisms, and
delineate all the mighty tempests of the human heart with the polished
prettiness of a miniature-painter on ivory. No!--these two are children
of another kind--affected, tricked-out, well-dressed children--very
clever, very precocious--but children still. Their whinings, and their
sentimentalities, and their egotism, and their vanity, cannot interest
masculine beings who know what life and its stern objects are.”
“Your brother-in-law,” said Maltravers with a slight smile, “must find
in you a discouraging censor.”