It was not long before the unhappy partner of my fortunes was informed
of what had passed. The wretches who had stripped me of my all soon
made their appearance to claim what was no longer mine. What would
have been their reception, if I had sufficiently possessed myself to
parley with them on the subject, I am unable to determine. I could
not have preserved the wreck of my property from their grasp, but at
the expense of an indelible stain upon my honour; yet my desperation
would probably have led me to a conduct equally extravagant and
useless. In the condition in which I was, the whole direction of the
business devolved upon Marguerite; and never did human creature demean
herself with greater magnanimity and propriety. She saw at once that
she could not resist their claims but at the expense of my reputation;
for herself she valued not riches, and had no dread of poverty; and,
thus circumstanced, she had the courage herself to bring to me the
papers they offered, the object of which I scarcely understood, and
to cause me to annex that signature which was to strip her and her
children of all earthly fortune. Her purpose was, as soon as this
business was over, to cause us to quit France, and retire into some
scene of virtuous obscurity. But she would not leave behind her for
the last descendants of the counts de St. Leon any avoidable disgrace.
Her mode of reasoning upon the subject was extremely simple. Obscurity
she regarded as no misfortune; and eminent situation, where it fairly
presented itself, as a responsibility it would be base to shrink from:
ignominy alone she considered as the proper theme of abhorrence. For
the fickleness and inconstancy of fortune it is impossible to answer;
by one of those reverses in which she appears to delight, she might yet
restore us to the lustre of our former condition; but, if the name of
St. Leon was henceforth to disappear from the annals of France, she was
desirous at least, as far as depended on her, that it should expire,
like the far famed bird of Arabia, in the midst of perfumes.
When the whole situation of Marguerite is taken into consideration,
the reader, like myself, will stand astonished at the fortitude of
her conduct. She had come to Paris, unable any longer to tranquillise
the agitation of her mind, and exhausted with fears, suspicions,
and alarms. When she arrived, she experienced indeed one delusive
moment of transport and joy. But that was soon over. It was succeeded
by reflections and conjectures respecting the mysteriousness of my
behaviour; it was succeeded by my unexpected departure, and the
hourly expectation of my return. After the lapse of a night and a
day, I returned indeed, but in what a condition! Drenched with rain,
trembling with inanition, speechless and alone. Scarcely had she
received notice of my arrival, and come forward to meet me, than she
saw me fall, motionless and insensible, at her feet. She watched my
recovery, and hung with indescribable expectation over my couch.
She was only called away by the wretches, who came to advance their
accursed claims, and to visit her with the intelligence of our ruin, as
with a thunderbolt. Already enfeebled and alarmed by all the preceding
circumstances, they spoke with no consideration to her weakness, they
stooped to no qualifications and palliatives, but disclosed the whole
in the most abrupt and shocking manner. Any other woman would have sunk
under this accumulation of ill. Marguerite only borrowed vigour from
her situation, and rose in proportion to the pressure of the calamity.
She took her resolution at once, and answered them in the most firm and
decisive language.
The period of inactivity and stupor that at first seized me was
succeeded by a period of frenzy. It was in this condition that
Marguerite conducted me and my children to an obscure retreat in
the canton of Soleure, in the republic of Switzerland. Cheapness
was the first object; for the most miserable pittance was all she
had saved from the wreck of our fortune. She had not chosen for
beauty of situation, or magnificence of prospects. The shock her
mind had sustained was not so great as to destroy her activity and
fortitude, but it left her little leisure for the wantonness of studied
indulgence. The scene was remote and somewhat sterile. She conceived
that, when I recovered my senses, an event which she did not cease to
promise herself, solitude would be most grateful, at least to the first
stage of my returning reason.
Hither then it was that she led me, our son, and three daughters.
Immediately upon our arrival she purchased a small and obscure, but
neat, cottage, and attired herself and her children in habits similar
to those of the neighbouring peasants. My paternal estates, as well as
those which had fallen to me by marriage, had all been swallowed up in
the gulf, which my accursed conduct had prepared. Marguerite made a
general sale of our moveables, our ornaments, and even our clothes.
A few books, guided by the attachment to literature which had always
attended me, were all that she saved from the wreck. A considerable
part of the sum thus produced was appropriated by my creditors.
Marguerite had the prudence and skill to satisfy them all, and was
contented to retain that only which remained when their demands were
discharged. This was the last dictate of her pride and the high-born
integrity of her nature, at the time that she thus departed a voluntary
exile from her native country. Two servants accompanied us in our
flight, whose attachment was so great, that even if their attendance
had not been necessary, it would have been found somewhat difficult
to shake them off. Marguerite, however, was governed by the strictest
principles of economy; and, whatever the struggle might have been with
the importunity of humble affection in dismissing these last remains
of our profuse and luxurious household, she would have thought herself
obliged to proceed even to this extreme, if judicious parsimony had
demanded it from her. But it did not. Our youngest daughter was at this
time only twelve months old, and it would have been scarcely possible
for the mother, however resolute in her exertions, to have discharged
the cares due to such a family, at a time when the father of it was
suffering under so heavy an affliction. One female servant she retained
to assist her in these offices. She could not dispense herself from a
very assiduous attention to me. She could never otherwise have been
satisfied, that every thing was done that ought to be done, that every
tenderness was exercised that might be demanded by my humiliating
situation, or that sufficient sagacity and skill were employed in
watching and encouraging the gleams of returning reason. The violence
of my paroxysms, however, was frequently such as to render a manual
force greater than hers necessary to prevent me from effecting some
desperate mischief. Bernardin, a trusty servant, nearly of my own age,
and who had attended upon my person almost from infancy, was retained
by Marguerite for this purpose. I was greatly indebted for the recovery
which speedily followed to the affectionate anxiety and enlightened
care of this incomparable woman. It is inconceivable to those who have
never been led to a practical examination of the subject, how much may
be effected in this respect by an attachment ever on the watch, and
an understanding judicious to combine, where hired attendance would
sleep, and the coarseness of a blunt insensibility would irritate, nay,
perhaps, mortally injure.
It is scarcely possible to imagine a wife more interesting and
admirable than Marguerite appeared upon the present occasion. Fallen
from the highest rank to the lowest poverty, she did not allow
herself a mean and pitiful regret. No reverse could be more complete
and abrupt, but she did not sink under it. She proved, in the most
convincing manner, that her elevation was not the offspring of wealth
or rank, but was properly her own. She gave a grace, even a lustre, to
poverty, which it can only receive from the emanations of a cultivated
mind. Her children were reconciled and encouraged by her example, and
soon forgot those indulgences which had not yet had time to emasculate
their spirits. The deplorable situation to which the father of the
family was reduced was far from inducing her to cease from her efforts
in the bitterness of despair. She determined for the present to be
both a father and a mother to her children. She looked forward with
confidence to my speedy recovery. Though I was the author of her
calamities, she did not permit this consideration to subtract from
the purity of her affection, or the tenderness of her anxiety. She
resolved that no word or look of hers should ever reproach me with my
misconduct. She had been accustomed to desire rank, and affluence, and
indulgence for her children; that her son might run the career of glory
which his forefathers ran, and that her daughters might unite their
fates with what was most illustrious and honourable in their native
country. But, if she were disappointed in this, she determined, as far
as it should be in her power, to give them virtue and cheerfulness and
content, a mind that should find resources within itself, and call
forth regard and esteem from the rest of mankind.
My recovery was fitful and precarious, sometimes appearing to be
rapidly on the advance, and at others to threaten a total relapse.
Among the expedients that Marguerite employed to re-excite the
slumbering spark of reason was that of paternal affection. Ever on
the watch for a favourable opportunity, she sometimes brought to me
her own little namesake, who, though only twelve months old, did not
fail to discover unequivocal marks of that playfulness and gaiety
which made so considerable a part of her constitutional character.
Her innocent smiles, her frolic and careless laughter, produced a
responsive vibration that reached to my inmost heart. They were, not
unfrequently, powerful enough to check the career of my fury, or to
raise me from the lowest pitch of despondence. Julia wept for me, and
Louisa endeavoured to copy the offices of kindness she was accustomed
to see her mother perform: Charles, who conceived more fully than the
rest the nature of my indisposition, was upon all occasions solicitous
to be admitted into my presence, and attended me for the most part
with speechless anxiety, while his watchful, glistening eye uttered
volumes, without the assistance of words. His mother at length yielded
to his importunity, and he became established the regular assistant of
Bernardin in the care of my person. The restlessness and impetuosity he
had hitherto manifested seemed upon this occasion entirely to subside:
hour after hour he willingly continued shut up in my chamber, eager for
every opportunity of usefulness, and gratified with that complaisance
with which the human mind never fails to be impressed, when it regards
its actions as beneficent, or approves its temper as compassionate.
The restoration of my health was greatly retarded by the melancholy
impressions which necessarily offered themselves to my mind when
recollection resumed her seat. It was fortunate for me that this sort
of retrospection appears not to be the first thing that occurs after
a paroxysm of insanity. When the tide of incoherent ideas subsides,
the soul is left in a state of exhaustion; and seems, by a sort of
instinct, to shun the influx of tumultuous emotions, and to dwell upon
such feelings as are mild, tranquil, and restorative. Once, however,
when I was nearly recovered, the thought of what I had been, and the
recollection of what I was, violently suggesting themselves to my mind,
brought on a relapse, attended with more alarming and discouraging
symptoms than my original alienation. At that moment Marguerite was,
for the first time, irresistibly struck with the conception that mine
was an incurable lunacy; and, as she afterwards assured me, at no
period down to that instant had she felt herself so truly inconsolable.
But even a sentiment of the last despair was incapable of superseding
the active beneficence of Marguerite. Her assiduities, so far as
related to this fatal calamity, were at length crowned with success.
Her gloomy prognostics were not realised, and the distemper of my
understanding quitted me for ever.
Wretched, however, as I have already remarked, beyond all common
notions of wretchedness, were my thoughts, when my soul returned to its
proper bias, and I fully surveyed the nature of my present situation.
Marguerite, who, by her sagacity and patience, had recovered me from
a state of the most dreadful disease, now exerted herself to effect
the more arduous task of reconciling me to myself. She assured me
that she forgave me from her inmost heart; nay, that she was thankful
to Providence, which, in the midst of what the world calls great
calamities, had preserved to her what she most valued, my affection,
entire. She contrasted what had been the subject of her apprehensions
before she came to Paris, with what had proved to be the state of the
case afterwards. She averred, that the worst that had happened was
trivial and tolerable, compared with the image that her fears had
delineated. She had feared to find my heart alienated from her, and
herself a widowed mother to orphan children. She dreaded lest I should
have proved myself worthless in her eyes, lest I should have been
found to have committed to oblivion the most sacred of all duties;
and, for the gratification of a low and contemptible caprice, to have
sacrificed all pretensions to honour and character. For that, indeed,
her heart would have bled; against that, all the pride she derived from
her ancestry and my own would have revolted; that would have produced
a revulsion of her frame, snapping the chain of all her habits, and
putting a violent close upon all the sentiments she had most fondly
nourished. She dreaded, indeed, that she should not have survived
it. But the mistake I had committed was of a very different nature.
I had neither forgotten that I was a husband nor a father; I had only
made an injudicious and unfortunate choice of the way of discharging
what was due to these characters. What had passed was incapable of
impeaching either the constancy of my affections or the integrity of
my principles. She forgave me, and it was incumbent upon me to forgive
myself.
She assured me that poverty, in her apprehension, was a very slight
evil; and she appealed to my own understanding for the soundness
of her judgment. She bid me look round upon the peasantry of the
neighbourhood, upon a footing with whom we were now placed, and ask my
own heart whether they were not happy. One disadvantage, indeed, they
were subjected to,--the absence of cultivation and learning. She could
never bring herself to believe that ignorance was a benefit; she saw
the contrary of this practically illustrated in her own case, in mine,
and in that of all the persons to whom, through life, she had been
most ardently attached. She wished her children to attain intellectual
refinement, possess fully the attributes of a rational nature, and to
be as far removed as possible from the condition of stocks and stones,
by accumulating a magazine of thoughts, and by a rich and cultivated
sensibility. But the want of fortune did not in our case, as in the
case of so many others, shut them out from this advantage: it was in
our own power to bestow it upon them.
It was the part of a reasonable man, she told me, not to waste his
strength in useless regrets for what was past, and had already eluded
his grasp; but to advert to the blessings he had still in possession.
If we did this in our present situation, we should find every reason
for contentment and joy. Our pleasure in each other, and the constancy
of our attachment, was unassailed and unimpaired. Where were there
two married persons, she would venture to ask, who had more reason to
applaud their connection, or to whom their connection was pregnant
with so various gratifications? From ourselves we had only to turn our
thoughts to our children; and we were surely as singularly fortunate
in this respect as in each other. Charles, who had always been the
subject of our pride, had lately exhibited such an example of patient
sympathy and filial affection, as perhaps had never been equalled in a
child so young. The sensibility of Julia, the understanding of Louisa,
and the vivacity of Marguerite, were all of them so many growing
sources of inexhaustible delight. Our children were intelligent,
affectionate, and virtuous. Thus circumstanced, she entreated me not
to indulge that jaundice of the imagination, which should create to
itself a sentiment of melancholy and discontent in the midst of this
terrestrial paradise.
Most virtuous of women, now perhaps the purest and the brightest
among the saints in heaven! why was I deaf to the soundness of your
exhortations, and the generosity of your sentiments? Deaf, indeed, I
was! A prey to the deepest dejection, they appeared to me the offspring
of misapprehension and paradox! Supposing, in the mean time, that they
were reasonable and just in the mouth of her who uttered them, I felt
them as totally foreign to my own situation. The language, as they
were, of innocence; it was not wonderful that to an innocent heart
they spoke tranquillity and peace. Marguerite looked round upon the
present rusticity and plainness of our condition, and every thing that
she saw talked to her of her merit and her worth. If we were reduced,
she was in no way accountable for that reduction; it had been the
test of her magnanimity, her patience, and the immutableness of her
virtue. She smiled at the assaults of adversity, and felt a merit in
her smiles. How different was my situation! Every thing that I saw
reminded me of my guilt, and upbraided me with crimes that it was
hell to recollect. My own garb, and that of my wife and children, the
desertion in which we lived, the simple benches, the unhewn rafters,
the naked walls, all told me what it was I had done, and were so many
echoes to my conscience, repeating, without intermission and without
end, its heart-breaking reproaches. Sleep was almost a stranger to me;
these incessant monitors confounded my senses in a degree scarcely
short of madness itself. It is the property of vice to convert every
thing that should be consolation into an additional source of anguish.
The beauty, the capacity, and the virtue of my children, the affection
with which they regarded me, the patience and attentiveness and
forbearance of their excellent mother, were all so many aggravations
of the mischief I had perpetrated. I could almost have wished to have
been the object of their taunts and execration. I could have wished to
have been disengaged from the dearest charities of our nature, and to
have borne the weight of my crimes alone. It would have been a relief
to me if my children had been covered with the most loathsome diseases,
deformed and monstrous. It would have been a relief to me, if they had
been abortive in understanding, and odious in propensities, if their
hearts had teemed with every vice, and every day had marked them the
predestined victims of infamy. The guilt of having stripped them of
every external advantage would then have sat light upon me. But thus
to have ruined the most lovely family perhaps that existed on the
face of the earth, the most exemplary of women, and children in whom
I distinctly marked the bud of every excellence and every virtue, was
a conduct that I could never forgive even to myself. Oh, Damville,
Damville! best of men! truest of friends! why didst thou put thy trust
in such a wretch as I am! Hadst thou no presentiment of the fatal
consequences? Wert thou empowered to commit thy only child and all her
possible offspring to so dreadful a risk? Indeed, it was not well done!
It was meant in kindness; but it was the cruellest mischief that could
have been inflicted on me. I was not a creature qualified for such dear
and tender connections. I was destined by nature to wander a solitary
outcast on the face of the earth. For that only, that fearful misery,
was I fitted. Why, misguided, misjudging man! didst thou not leave me
to my fate? Even that would have been less dreadful than what I have
experienced!--Wretch that I am! Why do I reproach my best benefactor?
No, let me turn the whole current of my invective upon myself! Damville
was actuated by the noblest and most generous sentiment that ever
entered the human mind. What a return then have I made, and to what a
benefit!
All the previous habits of my mind had taught me to feel my present
circumstances with the utmost acuteness. Marguerite, the generous
Marguerite, stood, with a soul almost indifferent, between the opposite
ideas of riches and poverty. Not so her husband. I had been formed,
by every accident of my life, to the love of splendour. High heroic
feats, and not the tranquillity of rural retirement, or the pursuits of
a character professedly literary, had been the food of my imagination,
ever since the faculty of imagination was unfolded in my mind. The
field of the cloth of gold, the siege and the battle of Pavia, were
for ever present to my recollection. Francis the First, Bayard, and
Bourbon, eternally formed the subject of my visions and reveries.
These propensities had indeed degenerated into an infantine taste for
magnificence and expense; but the roots did not embrace their soil the
less forcibly, because the branches were pressed down and diverted from
their genuine perpendicular. That from a lord, descended from some of
the most illustrious houses in France, and myself amply imbued with
the high and disdainful spirit incident to my rank, I should become a
peasant, was itself a sufficient degradation. But I call the heavens to
witness that I could have endured this with patience, if I had endured
it alone. I should have regarded it as the just retribution of my
follies, and submitted with the most exemplary resignation. But I could
not, with an equal mind, behold my wife and children involved in my
punishment. I turned my eyes upon the partner of my life, and recalled
with genuine anguish the magnificence to which she was accustomed,
and the hopes to which she was born. I looked upon my children, the
fruit of my loins, and once the pride of my heart, and recollected
that they were paupers, rustics, exiles. I could foresee no return
to rank, but for them and their posterity an interminable succession
of obscurity and meanness. A real parent can support the calamity of
personal degradation, but he cannot bear to witness and anticipate this
corruption of his blood. At some times I honoured Marguerite for her
equanimity. At others I almost despised her for this integrity of her
virtues. I accused her in my heart of being destitute of the spark of
true nobility. Her patience I considered as little less than meanness
and vulgarity of spirit. It would have become her better, I thought,
like me, to have cursed her fate, and the author of that fate; like me,
to have spurned indignant at the slavery to which we were condemned;
to have refused to be pacified; and to have wasted the last dregs of
existence in impatience and regret. I could act that which had involved
us in this dire reverse; but I could not encounter the consequences of
my act.
The state of my mind was in the utmost degree dejected and forlorn.
I carried an arrow in my heart, which the kindness of my wife and
children proved inadequate to extract, and the ranklings of which
time itself had not the power to assuage. The wound was not mortal;
but, like the wound of Philoctetes, poisoned with the blood of the
Lernean hydra, I dragged it about with me from year to year, and it
rendered my existence a galling burden hardly to be supported. A great
portion of my time was passed in a deep and mournful silence, which
all the soothings that were addressed to me could not prevail on me to
break. Not that in this silence there was the least particle of ill
humour or sullenness. It was a mild and passive situation of the mind;
affectionate, as far as it was any thing, to the persons around me; but
it was a species of disability; my soul had not force enough to give
motion to the organs of speech, or scarcely to raise a finger. My eye
only, and that only for a moment at a time, pleaded for forbearance and
pardon. I seemed like a man in that species of distemper, in which the
patient suffers a wasting of the bones, and at length presents to us
the shadow, without the powers, of a human body.
This was at some times my condition. But my stupor would at others
suddenly subside. Mechanically, and in a moment, as it were, I shook
off my supineness, and sought the mountains. The wildness of an
untamed and savage scene best accorded with the temper of my mind. I
sprung from cliff to cliff among the points of the rock. I rushed down
precipices that to my sobered sense appeared in a manner perpendicular,
and only preserved my life, with a sort of inborn and unelective care,
by catching at the roots and shrubs which occasionally broke the
steepness of the descent. I hung over the tops of rocks still more
fearful in their declivities, and courted the giddiness and whirl of
spirit which such spectacles are accustomed to produce. I could not
resolve to die: death had too many charms to suit the self-condemnation
that pursued me. I found a horrible satisfaction in determining to
live, and to avenge upon myself the guilt I had incurred. I was far
from imagining that the evils I had yet suffered were a mere sport and
ostentation of misery, compared with those that were in reserve for me.
The state of mind I am here describing was not madness, nor such as
could be mistaken for madness. I never forgot myself, and what I
was. I was never in that delirium of thought, in which the patient
is restless and active without knowing what it is that he does, and
from which, when roused, he suddenly starts, shakes off the dream
that engaged him, and stands astonished at himself. Mine was a rage,
guided and methodised by the discipline of despair. I burst into no
fits of raving; I attempted no injury to any one. Marguerite therefore
could not reconcile herself to the placing me under any restraint.
I frequently returned home, with my clothes smeared with the soil,
and torn by the briars. But my family soon became accustomed to
my returning in personal safety; and therefore, whatever was the
uneasiness my wife felt from my excursions, she preferred the enduring
it, to the idea of imposing on me any species of violence.
The state of my family presented a singular contrast with that of its
head. Marguerite was certainly not insensible to the opposition between
her former and her present mode of life; but she submitted to the
change with such an unaffected cheerfulness and composure, as might
have extorted admiration from malignity itself. She would perhaps have
dismissed from her thoughts all retrospect to our former grandeur, had
not the dejection and despair that seemed to have taken possession of
my mind forcibly and continually recalled it to her memory. For my
sufferings I am well assured she felt the truest sympathy; but there
was one consideration attending them that imperiously compelled her
to task her fortitude. They deprived me of the ability of in any
degree providing for and superintending my family; it became therefore
incumbent upon her to exert herself for the welfare of all. Had we
never fallen under this astonishing reverse, I might have spent my
whole life in daily intercourse with this admirable woman, without
becoming acquainted with half the treasures of her mind. She was my
steward; and from the result of her own reflections made the most
judicious disposition of my property. She was my physician; not by
administering medicines to my body, but by carefully studying and
exerting herself to remove the distemper of mind. Unfortunately no
distempers are so obstinate as mental ones; yet, had my distemper had
any lighter source than an upbraiding conscience, I am persuaded the
wisdom of Marguerite would have banished it. She was the instructor of
my children; her daughters felt no want of a governess; and I am even
ready to doubt whether the lessons of his mother did not amply supply
to Charles his loss of an education in the university of Paris. The
love of order, the activity, the industry, the cheerfulness of, let me
say, this illustrious matron, became contagious to all the inhabitants
of my roof. Once and again have I stolen a glance at them, or viewed
them from a distance busied, sometimes gravely, sometimes gaily, in
the plain, and have whispered to my bursting heart, “How miserable
am I! how happy they! So insurmountable is the barrier that divides
innocence from guilt. They may breathe the same air; they may dwell
under the same roof; they may be of one family and one blood; they may
associate with each other every day and every hour; but they can never
assimilate, never have any genuine contact. Is there a happier family
than mine in all the valley of this far-famed republic? Is there a
family more virtuous, or more cultivated with all the refinements that
conduce to the true dignity of man? I, I only am its burden and its
stain! The pleasure with which I am surrounded on every side finds a
repellent quality in my heart that will not suffer its approach. To
whatever is connected with me I communicate misfortune. Whenever I
make my appearance, those countenances that at all other times spoke
contentment and hilarity fall into sadness. Like a pestilential wind,
I appear to breathe blast to the fruits of nature, and sickliness to
its aspect.”
Marguerite expostulated with me in the most soothing manner upon the
obstinacy of my malady. “My Reginald! my love!” said she, “cease to be
unhappy, or to reproach yourself! You were rash in the experiment you
made upon the resources of your family. But have you done us mischief,
or have you conferred a benefit? I more than half incline to the latter
opinion. Let us at length dismiss artificial tastes, and idle and
visionary pursuits, that do not flow in a direct line from any of the
genuine principles of our nature! Here we are surrounded with sources
of happiness. Here we may live in true patriarchal simplicity. What is
chivalry, what are military prowess and glory? Believe me, they are the
passions of a mind depraved, that with ambitious refinement seeks to be
wise beyond the dictates of sentiment or reason! There is no happiness
so solid, or so perfect, as that which disdains these refinements. You,
like me, are fond of the luxuriant and romantic scenes of nature. Here
we are placed in the midst of them. How idle it would be, to wish to
change our arbours, our verdant lanes and thickets, for vaulted roofs,
and gloomy halls, and massy plate! Alas, Reginald! it is, I fear, too
true, that the splendour in which we lately lived has its basis in
oppression; and that the superfluities of the rich are a boon extorted
from the hunger and misery of the poor! Here we see a peasantry more
peaceful and less oppressed than perhaps any other tract of the earth
can exhibit. They are erect and independent, at once friendly and
fearless. Is not this a refreshing spectacle? I now begin practically
to perceive that the cultivators of the fields and the vineyards are
my brethren and my sisters; and my heart bounds with joy, as I feel
my relations to society multiply. How cumbrous is magnificence! The
moderate man is the only free. He who reduces all beneath him to a
state of servitude becomes himself the slave of his establishment, and
of all his domestics. To diminish the cases in which the assistance
of others is felt absolutely necessary is the only genuine road to
independence. We can now move wherever we please without waiting the
leisure of others. Our simple repasts require no tedious preparation,
and do not imprison us in saloons and eating rooms. Yet we partake
of them with a more genuine appetite, and rise from them more truly
refreshed, than from the most sumptuous feast. I prepare for my meal
by industry and exercise; and when it is over, amuse myself with my
children in the fields and the shade.--Though I love the sight of the
peasants, I would not be a peasant. I would have a larger stock of
ideas, and a wider field of activity. I love the sight of peasants
only for their accessories, or by comparison. They are comparatively
more secure than any other large masses of men, and the scenes in the
midst of which they are placed are delightful to sense. But I would
not sacrifice in prone oblivion the best characteristics of my nature.
I put in my claim for refinements and luxuries; but they are the
refinements and purifying of intellect, and the luxuries of uncostly,
simple taste. I would incite the whole world, if I knew how to do it,
to put in a similar claim. I would improve my mind; I would enlarge my
understanding; I would contribute to the instruction of all connected
with me, and to the mass of human knowledge. The pleasures I would
pursue and disseminate, though not dependent on a large property, are
such as could not be understood by the rustic and the savage.--Our
son, bred in these fields, indeed, will probably never become a
_preux chevalier_, or figure in the roll of military heroes; but he
may become something happier and better. He may improve his mind, and
cultivate his taste. He may be the counsellor and protector of his
sisters. He may be the ornament of the district in which he resides.
He may institute in his adoptive country new defences for liberty, new
systems of public benefit, and new improvements of life. There is no
character more admirable than the patriot-yeoman, who unites with the
utmost simplicity of garb and manners an understanding fraught with
information and sentiment and a heart burning with the love of mankind.
Such were Fabricius and Regulus among the ancients, and such was Tell,
the founder of the Helvetic liberty. For my part, I am inclined to be
thankful, that this unexpected reverse in our circumstances has made
me acquainted with new pleasures, and opened to my mind an invaluable
lesson. If you could but be prevailed on to enter into our pleasures,
to dismiss idle reproaches and pernicious propensities, our happiness
would then be complete.”
The expostulations of Marguerite often excited my attention, often my
respect, and sometimes produced a sort of imperfect conviction. But the
conviction was transient, and the feelings I have already described
as properly my own returned, when the fresh and vivid impression of
what I had heard was gone. It was in vain that I heard the praises of
simplicity and innocence. I was well pleased to see those who were
nearest to me not affecting contentment, but really contented with
these things. But I could not be contented for them. The lessons of
my education had left too deep an impression. I could myself have
surrendered my claim to admiration and homage, as a penance for my
misdeeds; but I could not figure to myself a genuine satisfaction
unaccompanied by these accessories: and this satisfaction I obstinately
and impatiently coveted for those I loved.