Arrived in Rome, Angelo awaited there only till he might receive some
intelligence from his friend, when he determined to lose no time in
embarking immediately for France, passing through Paris, which he
desired once more to revisit, and thence proceeding immediately to
England.
Mean time he remained for two days in the utmost privacy, when he
received the anxiously expected letter from Verospi, which informed him
of what he had not before entertained a doubt, that the ill-starred
Darlowitz had expired on the spot; that the convent was in the utmost
horror and confusion at such an outrage having been committed within
their precincts; that nevertheless they desired for their own sakes to
render the affair as little public as possible; and Verospi added, that
for the sake of Agnes it would be expedient to make some delicate
compensation to their house in the form of a magnificent offering.
He concluded thus: “Happily we discovered that the rash Steinhaussen did
not come entirely alone to this country, he was accompanied by an
intimate friend, to whom we had the melancholy task of committing his
lifeless body. But endeavour to console yourself, my dear friend. The
youth was wild and imprudent, and rushed upon his fate; _your honour
required you to act as you did! had I been in your situation, I feel I
must have done the same_? It is an event which, however humanity may
lead us to lament, reason, honour, and the _usage of society_, tell us
it was impossible to avoid.
“For your fair daughter, be under no apprehensions; I will attend daily
to enquire after her health. It is true she is at present in a state of
the wildest delirium, but she will speedily recover, and all will be
well. Let me conclude by advising you to put immediately in execution
your projected plan--to quit Italy at once, and above all, for the sake
of diversifying the scene, and to banish uneasy reflections from your
mind, to pass a few months at Paris, previous to returning to England.
Mean time I wish you health and happiness.”
Notwithstanding the futility of the observations contained in this
letter, it conveyed to the heart of Angelo a balm more consolatory than
the intelligence it gave inflicted pain. He was happy to find that
another, and one of whom he had an high opinion, would have acted as he
had done, and this reflection abated the remorse which he had felt, and
helped to reconcile him to himself.
Thus is error disseminated, and such is the language man holds to man;
their mistaken ideas of honour lead them readily to excuse in others
that which on similar false and destructive principles, they would feel
no remorse in being guilty of themselves. At the shrine of barbarous
custom, the happiness and lives of individuals are daily immolated,
society becomes in consequence more corrupt, and the aggregate of human
misery increased!
Agreeably to the advice of his friend, Angelo departed from Rome, first
however thanking him for the valuable letter he had sent him, which he
declared to have lightened his soul of half its oppression; then stating
to him his intended movements, observed that he should make no stay till
he arrived at Paris, where he hoped to find a letter waiting for him,
informing him of the welfare of his daughter, respecting whom he
entreated him to enquire daily.
In justice to Angelo, however, be it said, that though he decided to
visit Paris before his return to England, it was not so much to
diversify the scene, as his friend expressed it, as to gratify the
earnest desire he felt, of learning, perhaps through the medium of the
infamous Milborough, (if still she continued to reside there) some
intelligence of his son, whom fondly he endeavoured to hope might either
have returned to her, or given her some information of himself.
He embarked accordingly at Civita Vecchia, landed at Toulon, pursued his
way through France without relaxing his speed, and stopping only to take
necessary rest till he arrived at Paris; when allowing himself only a
few hours of repose, unable to controul his natural impetuosity, he
hastened to the abode of the Marquis St. Evremond, chusing rather to
enquire first of him concerning Milborough, ere he sought an interview
with that detested female.
Happily for his impatience, he found St. Evremond at home, and passing
hastily over customary salutations, reverted to the principal occasion
of his visit.
“Oh, that Englishwoman!” replied St. Evremond, seeming suddenly to
remember whom he meant--“Ah!--she has long ceased to glitter a star in
our hemisphere!”
“Know you then whither she is gone?” hastily demanded Angelo, unable to
relish gaiety at this moment.
“Would you know?” answered the Marquis laughing--“she has retired to one
of our petit maisons!”
“How!” exclaimed Angelo, “she was not mad!”
“Not certainly when I had the pleasure of introducing you to her,”
replied St. Evremond, with the utmost nonchalance; though I think she
gave some symptoms of derangement that night; but shortly after, it was
conceived that an abode of that nature was most proper for her.”
“Do not trifle with me, I beseech you!” exclaimed Angelo, “but if you
are really serious, be more explicit in your information.”
“Well, you must know then,” resumed the Marquis, “that after that
memorable night, when there appeared to be some secret between you,
which neither I nor any one else could fathom, whether the company began
to entertain certain suspicions detrimental to her character, or whether
they began to be weary of her, I cannot pretend to determine, but she
was shortly forsaken by the whole of the gay world, and absolutely
shunned by the better part. But mark me, Count; I do not wish to pay my
nation the compliment of possessing either much delicacy or much
discrimination; if they can obtain amusement, they are not fastidious
about the means; I simply suppose, that as they are fond of novelty, and
as after one visit to la belle Angloise, you saw as much of her as you
could in twenty, they grew literally tired of her, and therefore it
became the fashion to forsake her, and a crime in the court of our
arbitrary goddess, after once she had decreed this, to notice her.
“You know, fashion here is omnipotent: one of our first rates gave the
word, looked cool on her, shrugged her shoulders, and remained silent
when she was praised. The infection instantly caught, it spread like
wildfire; to be seen with her became a barbarism, and going into her
house was sufficient to exclude you for a week from every other.--La
belle Angloise was in consequence deserted by every creature here; she
was considered as no longer in the world, and might as well have resided
among the sandy deserts of Arabia. What must she do in this dilemma? she
applied to a never failing but treacherous friend, one whose potent
influence exhilarated as it led to the grave, and whose aid, report
loudly proclaimed, she had ever had recourse to. She permitted herself
to be conquered by this subtle soother, its ardent fires mounted to her
brain, and produced there an inflammation so violent as to bring on
raving delirium, which ultimately ended in a total privation of reason.
“Ascertained to be absolutely in a state of madness, it was deemed
necessary for the present to confine her in one of our petit maisons,
from whence however, should she not shortly recover, of which not the
smallest hopes are entertained, it is intended to remove her to the
Bicêtre, the hospital for lunatics, and incurables, as it is proved that
she has no resources in this country, and draws none from any other.
Before her absolute derangement, finding herself suddenly so isolated,
she surprised me one morning at my lodgings, and after reproaching me
with her best powers of rhetoric, peremptorily asked me, for what cause
I had abandoned her.--What could I reply? I lamented her situation, but
fashion, _our_ goddess of reason, would not permit me to break through
her rules.--This I hinted to her; she raved with fury, I bowed, and left
her my apartment.”
The Marquis concluded; he had related her story with a smile upon his
countenance; he had not paid even the tribute of a moment’s seriousness
to her dreadful state! Seen with contempt, she was remembered with
indifference--in her best days, she had excited no interest, in her
misfortunes no pity.
Such is ever the fate of the female, who, by excelling in infamy alone,
obtains the short lived triumph of a moment, despised even by the
ephemeral beings she attracts, or execrated by those her false glitter
may have unhappily misled.
Angelo heard the relation which baffled his hopes without a sentiment of
regret, but on that account. He felt no surprise that a dreadful habit,
by which he knew her formerly distinguished, should have grown upon her
in the degree, and been resorted to in the shocking excess described by
St. Evremond.
Well he knew that the wretched Milborough possessed nor mind nor soul:
transferred by her vile arts from a menial situation to one of
splendour, and then again justly sunk into worse than pristine
degradation, her weak reason was not adequate to support the change, nor
the tormenting reflections that assailed her. Destitute of every merit,
she was no longer young nor even attractive; who would be the consoling
friend, who would sympathise with a female like her, and reduced to her
situation? The result then was obvious, and that which could banish
reflection, blind her to the present, and divest her of care for the
future, was the only resource to which she could eagerly fly.
Yet he formed a wish to behold her, not because he felt the remotest
interest for her, but perhaps she was not so mad as St. Evremond
represented--perhaps she might know him!--perhaps, brought by her
situation to a sense of her crimes, she might experience remorse, and
inform him if she knew aught respecting his son. These ideas passed
rapidly through his mind; he looked at St. Evremond, and exclaimed,
“Marquis, cannot I see the hapless wretch?”
The Marquis burst into a laugh. “What! have you not seen enough of her,
Count?--pardon me, but I thought you had!--you can see her, certainly;”
when perceiving Angelo look grave, he added, “I will even accompany you,
if you please; but I absolutely confess to you, though I would not, have
it breathed, that I paid her a visit a week ago, which was lost on her
however, as she did not know me.”
“Well then, you can go with me at once,” cried Angelo.
“When I have dined,” answered St. Evremond, “it will be too late--in the
evening I am engaged,--if you will accompany me whither I am going, I
promise to attend you to-morrow morning on your philanthropic expedition
to the fair insensible.”
To this proposition Angelo with reluctance acceded; he dined with his
gay companion, and could not separate from him till a late hour of the
night.
On the following morning, agreeably to his promise, the Marquis agreed
to accompany Angelo to the wretched abode where he believed Milborough
at present was. When they arrived, they were informed that she had been
removed three days ago to the Bicêtre, as incurable.
At this intelligence, St. Evremond shrugging his shoulders exclaimed,
“Pauvre diable! We have nothing to do but to return then,” he added,
addressing Angelo; yet at his earnest entreaty at length consented to
accompany him to this receptacle for lost humanity, the abode of the
most terrible woe! though not without complaining of the waste of time
which might be so much more agreeably spent.
When they reached the Bicêtre they inquired concerning Milborough, but
were answered, that no one could be permitted to visit her, as she was
in a state that rendered it improper for her to be seen. By dint of high
bribery however they were secretly admitted. The instant they were
within the walls the most terrible, and varied din assailed their
shrinking sense; mournful cries! terrific shrieks! lengthened moans! and
echoing peals of laughter, as if in mockery! As they passed along the
various doors, here the loud discordant song attracted pity from the
hardest heart! there the wild unconscious solitary whispered aloud his
secret of fancied importance! here the lover reproached in bombastic
strain his mistress who was not by! and there her who had been forsaken,
implored the compassion of him who heard her not, and who had long since
forgot that he had ever known her!--Oh! human nature! to what an abyss
of woe art thou reduced, when the fine chords of the mind are entangled
in confusion, or disorganised by madness--Oh! most pitiable of
calamities! with which mysterious Providence permits his creatures to be
afflicted!--Oh! man! _what art thou_, when such becomes thy state!--At
length they reached the spot where the miserable Milborough was
confined.
Here the sight which met the eyes of Angelo, whose nerves were less
rigid than those of the Frenchman, was almost more than, with all his
just abhorrence of her, he could endure.
Sitting half naked on some straw, secured round the waist by a massy
iron chain to a ring in the wall, raved in wildest madness the insensate
Milborough! The garments that partly covered her, (for in her paroxysms
she had torn them almost to tatters) exposed to view that wretched
person, bearing evident marks of the treatment she had necessarily
received. Her hair fell around her in wild disorder, her starting eyes
rolled rapidly in their sockets, her cheek was haggard and pale, and in
her whole aspect there was an expression of savage fierceness, that
_shocked_ rather than _interested_ the beholder.
When Angelo first entered, she was heaping straw upon her head, but on
observing him she suddenly sprang up, and whether or not she for an
instant recognised him, the most dreadful fury took possession of her,
and she made an attempt to rush towards him! Failing of course, from the
confinement of her chain, she uttered a fearful yell, clapped her hands
together repeatedly, and bursting into a loud discordant laugh, which
echoed through the terrible abode, and seemed multiplied by a thousand
others, she leaped and danced with antic movement, and struggled to
escape, till, exhausted by a violence that the strength of madness alone
could give, she sunk exhausted down.
Unable to endure a repetition of this horrible scene, and finding it
vain to expect aught like reason (in which hope alone he had visited
her) from a wretch so lost, he precipitately left the spot, resigning to
a fate dreadful, yet justly merited, her who had barbed the keenest
arrow for the heart of Gabrielle, the envenomed poison of which had
festered there, and sapped the source of life! Her who had rendered him
detestable in his own eyes, and who had filled his breast with remorse,
excited a feeling of melancholy, but no compassion for her state, in the
breast of Angelo.
Men love not the remembrance of their crimes; firm friendships can be
never founded on the basis of guilt; hence the wicked have no sympathy
for each other in the hour of adversity. The remembrance of a good
action performed together by the virtuous, diffusing a feeling of
complacency over their souls, may draw them resistlessly towards each
other, even after years of variance or disunion; but the guilty fly from
those who remind them of their sins, and hate those who were the
partners of their guilt.
As Angelo returned home, he inquired at the post-office if any letters
had arrived for him from Italy; one was put into his hands, which by the
superscription he saw was from Verospi; he hastily tore the seal, too
impatient to wait for its perusal till he reached his lodgings.
It contained however but few lines, and those of little import save what
regarded Agnes, of whom Angelo, with a pang of remorse, read, that
although her delirium had left her, it had been succeeded by a
melancholy, so settled and profound, as to give some colour for
apprehension that it would ultimately become rooted.
“She seldom,” added Verospi, “answers when addressed, or if she does,
wholly from the subject, never of herself addressing any one. Her air is
mournful, solemn, abstracted; in person she is considerably reduced, her
cheek is paler than death, and though in general the expression of her
countenance is that of piteous resignation, if I may be allowed the
idea, I have sometimes seen a wildness in it that has excited in me some
alarm lest her intellects should be incurably deranged. But these, I
trust, are only the fears of one interested in your welfare, and hers;
all will yield to time; be assured they are but latent effects of
certain occurrences, the remembrance of which have not yet ceased to
haunt her imagination. But that you forced a promise from me at
parting, to inform you punctually respecting her, I should not have
enlarged so much upon a subject which I fear you will dwell on too
deeply.”
Notwithstanding the endeavours of his friend to treat lightly the
situation of Agnes, the vivid imagination of Angelo beheld her already
stretched upon the bed of death, or, thought far more horrible! perhaps
in a state resembling that of the wretched being he had just quitted.
“But no! no,” he cried, remembering the gentle sweetness of Agnes, “so
fair a mind can never be possessed by the infuriate dæmons of despair or
madness like that I have beheld, appropriate only to the ever stormy
soul and the degenerate mind of a Milborough! Agnes may sink to the
grave, weighed down by insupportable woe, but she will die like an
angel, and the pure soul quitting her body without a struggle, will
excite no horror in its flight!”
His first impulse was to return immediately to Italy, but the reflection
of his son, of whose fate he was in utter ignorance, prevented him from
yielding to it. Besides, his return, so far from rendering the smallest
benefit to his daughter, would revive in her mind, with a force that
might prove fatal, events that the power of time might perhaps
obliterate; a remote idea too of the inconvenience, if not danger, which
might probably still await him there, operated completely to deter him.
To remain longer in Paris, was now however unnecessary; he therefore
wrote to Verospi informing him of his meditated departure, desiring that
he might address his next to him in England, most earnestly entreating
that he would continue to pay Agnes every attention, to conceal nothing
from him respecting her, and concluded by a request that he would lose
no time in presenting to the convent in his name a sumptuous golden
censer with massy chains, and a diamond cross for the bosom of the
Virgin. This done, and having from the shortness of his stay nothing
material to arrange, he early on the following morning quitted Paris,
and with desponding mind embarked for England.