My affairs being thus far adjusted, I took leave of my late habitation,
and set off with my wife and children the same afternoon. In the
evening we arrived at Basle, where we were permitted to remain that
night; and the next morning were conducted in form out at the north
gate of the city, where our attendants quitted us, with a fresh
prohibition under the severest penalties, if we were found within
the ensuing twelve months in any of the territories of the Helvetic
republic.
Marguerite and myself had already formed our plan. We began with
dismissing both our servants. An attendant was no longer necessary
to me, nor a nurse for the infant. The suggestion of this measure
originated in myself. My temper at this time, as I have already said,
underwent a striking change. I was resolved to be happy; I was resolved
to be active. It was hard to part with persons so long familiar to
us, and who appeared rather in the character of humble friends than
domestics; but an imperious necessity demanded it. “Let us,” said I
to Marguerite, “increase and secure our happiness by diminishing our
wants. I will be your husbandman and your labourer; you may depend
upon my perseverance. My education has fitted me to endure hardship
and fatigue, though the hardships then thought of were of a different
nature. You have ever delighted in active usefulness; and will not, I
know, repine at this accumulation of employment. Let us accommodate
ourselves to our circumstances. Our children, I perceive, are fated to
be peasants, and will therefore be eminently benefited by the example
of patience and independence we shall set before them.”
The next object of our plan related to the choice of our future place
of residence. This originated with Marguerite. She had heard much
of the beauty and richness of the country bordering on the lake of
Constance, and she thought that, while we denied ourselves expensive
pleasures, or rather while they were placed out of our reach, there
would be a propriety in our procuring for ourselves a stock of those
pleasures which would cost us nothing. This was a refinement beyond
me, and serves to evince the superiority which Marguerite’s virtue and
force of mind still retained over mine. The virtue I had so recently
adopted was a strenuous effort. I rather resolved to be happy, than
could strictly be said to be happy. I loved my children indeed with an
unfeigned affection. It was with sincerity that I professed to prefer
them to all earthly possessions. But vanity and ostentation were habits
wrought into my soul, and might be said to form part of its essence.
I could not, but by the force of constant recollection, keep them out
of my wishes and hopes for the future. I could not, like Marguerite,
suffer my thoughts, as it were, to riot and wanton in the pleasures of
poverty. I could only reconcile myself to my fate by a sort of gloomy
firmness. The tranquillity I seemed to have attained, was an unnatural
state of my soul, to which it was necessary that I should resolutely
hold myself down, and from which my thoughts appeared ever upon the
alert to escape. Bitter experience had at length taught me a hard
lesson; and that lesson I was determined to practise, whatever pangs my
resignation might cost me.
We proceeded without hesitation in the direction we had resolved to
pursue. Our whole journey exceeded the space of forty leagues in
extent, and the expense necessarily attendant upon it (our family,
even after its reduction, consisting of no less than six persons),
drained our purse of a great part of the money which had been supplied
to us by the benevolent senator. But he had agreed to undertake the
disposing of the property we were obliged to leave behind us, and in
the mean time, if any considerable interval occurred before that was
accomplished, to furnish us with the sums that should be necessary for
our subsistence. We placed the utmost reliance upon his fidelity, and
dismissed from our minds all anxiety respecting the interval which our
banishment had interposed between us and the resources necessary for
our future settlement.
Upon our arrival at Constance, we found a letter from our friend; and
though he transmitted to us no fresh supply, the complexion of his
communication was upon the whole so encouraging, as to determine us,
with no other delay than that of four days’ rest from our journey,
to pass to the other side of the lake, and explore for ourselves a
situation suitable to our design. The western bank of the lake, with
the exception only of the city of Constance, was part of the _pays
conquis_ of the United Cantons; the eastern bank was a territory
dependent on the government of that city. It was in this territory that
we purposed fixing our residence; and we trusted, that our affairs
would shortly be put in a train to enable us to take possession of the
spot we should select.
Thus driven once more into flight by the pressure of misfortune, and
compelled to exchange for a land unknown the scenes which familiarity
might have endeared, or tender recollections have made interesting, we
did not sink under the weight of our adversity. This removal was not
like our last. Switzerland was to none of us endeared like the vales of
St. Leon. I was not now goaded and tormented by conscious guilt in the
degree I had then been; Marguerite was not afflicted by the spectacle
of my misery. Our present change, though it might be denominated a
fall, was light in comparison with the former. The composure I had
gained was new to me, and had to my own mind all the gloss of novelty.
To my companions it proved contagious; they were astonished at my
serenity, and drew from it an unwonted lightness of heart.
Thus circumstanced, our tour had its charms for us all; and there
are few passages of my life that I have felt more agreeably. The
lake itself is uncommonly beautiful, and its environs are fertile and
interesting. It is surrounded with an abundance of towns, villages,
country seats, and monasteries, sufficient to adorn and diversify the
view, but not to exclude the sweetness of a rural scenery, or the
grand features of nature. We coasted a considerable part of the lake,
that we might judge in some degree, previously to our landing, which
part of the shore promised best to yield us the object we sought. The
autumn was now commencing; the air was liquid and sweet; the foliage
was rich and varied; and the vine-covered hills exhibited a warmth and
luxuriance of colouring, that no other object of nature or art is able
to cope with. Surrounded with these objects, I sat in my boat in the
midst of my children; and, as I was but just awakened to an observation
of their worth and my own happiness, I viewed them with a transport
that would be ill illustrated by being compared with the transport of a
miser over his new-recovered treasure from the bowels of the deep.
O poverty! exclaimed I, with elevated and unconquerable emotion, if
these are the delights that attend thee, willingly will I resign the
pomp of palaces and the splendour of rank to whoever shall deem them
worth his acceptance! Henceforth I desire only to dedicate myself to
the simplicity of nature and the genuine sentiments of the heart. I
will enjoy the beauty of scenes cultivated by other hands than mine,
or that are spread out before me by the Author of the universe. I will
sit in the midst of my children, and revel in the luxury of domestic
affections; pleasures these, that may be incumbered, but cannot be
heightened, by all that wealth has in its power to bestow! Wealth
serves no other purpose than to deprave the soul, and adulterate the
fountains of genuine delight.
Such was the spirit of exultation with which my mind was at this time
filled. I am sensible that it was only calculated to be transitory.
I might learn to be contented; I was not formed to be satisfied in
obscurity and a low estate.
Thus happy, and thus amused, we spent two days in coasting the lake,
landing frequently for the purposes either of variety or enquiry, and
regularly passing the night on shore. On the evening of the second day
we were struck with the neat appearance and pleasing situation of a
cottage, which we discovered in our rambles, about a mile and a half
from the lake. We found that it was to be sold, and it seemed precisely
to correspond with the wishes we had formed. It was at a considerable
distance from any populous neighbourhood, the nearest town being that
of Merspurg, the usual residence of the bishops of Constance, which was
distant from this spot not less than three leagues.
The cottage was situated in a valley; the hills being for the most
part crowned with rich and verdant foliage, their sides covered with
vineyards and corn, and a clear transparent rivulet murmuring along
from east to west. In the distance a few similar cottages discovered
themselves, and in front there was an opening between the hills, just
wide enough to show us a few sails as they floated along the now even
surface of the lake. We approached the cottage, and found in it only
one person, an interesting girl of nineteen, who had resided there from
her birth, and had been employed for the last four years in attendance
upon the closing scene of her mother. Her mother had been dead only a
few weeks, and she was upon the point of removing, as she told us, to
the house of a brother, the best creature in the world, who was already
married, and had a family of children. While we were talking with her,
we perceived a fine boy of about eleven years of age skipping along the
meadow. He proved to be her nephew, and hastened to say that his father
and Mr. Henry were just behind, and would be with her in a few minutes.
We waited their arrival; and it was easy to see that Mr. Henry was by
no means an indifferent object in the eyes of the beautiful orphan: she
had probably conditioned that he should permit her to remain single as
long as she could be of any use to her mother. The lovers were well
satisfied that the girl’s brother should be taken aside, that I might
talk over with him the affair of the cottage. We made a tour of the
fields that were part of the property of the deceased, and the terms of
our intended purchase were easily adjusted.
Though we had now accomplished the immediate purpose of our
expedition, yet, as we had found unusual exhilaration and sweetness in
the objects it presented to us, we came to a resolution of continuing
it still further, and completing the circuit of the lake. We were aware
that it would be vain as yet to expect to receive the money requisite
for completing our purchase; and as no pleasure, merely in the way of
relaxation, could be more delightful than that we were now enjoying,
so was it impossible that we could fill up our time in a more frugal
manner than in this little voyage. Our gratification was not less, but
more perfect, because it consisted of simple, inartificial, unbought
amusements. The scenes around us were refreshing and invigorating; they
were calculated, temporarily at least, to inspire gaiety and youth into
decrepitude itself. Amidst these scenes we forgot our sorrows; they
were a kind of stream, in which weariness and dejection plunged their
limbs, and came forth untired and alert. They awakened in the mind all
its most pleasing associations. Having already, as we believed, chosen
the place of our future residence, we busied ourselves in imagining
all the accompaniments that would grow out of it. We determined that
poverty with health would not fail to be attended with its portion of
pleasures. The scenes of nature were all our own; nor could wealth
give them a more perfect, or a firmer, appropriation. The affections
and charities of habitude and consanguinity we trusted we should feel
uninterrupted; unincumbered with the ceremonies and trappings of life,
and in that rural plainness which is their genial soil.
After a leisurely and delightful voyage of six days, we returned
to Constance. We expected to have found on our return some further
intelligence from the beneficent senator, but in this we were
disappointed. The imagination however easily suggested to us a
variety of circumstances that might have delayed the business he had
undertaken; and it was no forced inference to suppose that he deferred
writing, because he had nothing important to communicate. At first
therefore we suffered little uneasiness from the delay; but as time
proceeded, and the silence of our protector continued, the affair began
to assume a more serious aspect. The little stock we had brought
with us in our exile was in a rapid progress of decay. We had managed
it with frugality; though not at first with that anxious solicitude,
the necessity of which we now began to apprehend. We had procured for
ourselves two small and inconvenient apartments in an obscure alley
of the city of Constance. We were in the act of meditating what steps
it would be necessary to take in this unfortunate emergency, when
intelligence was brought us of the sudden decease of the person upon
whose kindness and exertions we depended.
He was succeeded in his estate by his nephew, a man of whom we had
heard something during our residence in the neighbourhood, and
whose habits we understood to be diametrically the reverse of his
predecessor’s. In short, he had been represented to us as illiberal,
morose, selfish, and litigious; a man who, having suffered in one part
of his life the hardships of poverty, scrupled no means, honourable or
otherwise, of removing it to the greatest practicable distance. He had
already reaped the succession some weeks, when we heard of the event
that put him in possession of it; and the letters which I had more than
once addressed to our protector had probably fallen into his hands.
These circumstances afforded no favourable augury of the treatment
we might expect from him. The first thing which seemed proper was to
write to him, which I accordingly did. I acquainted him with the nature
of the transaction between myself and his uncle, and signified how
necessary it was that we should come to a conclusion as speedily as
possible. I represented to him pathetically the condition to which I
was born, and the opulence in which I had passed many years of my life,
together with the contrast afforded by the present reduced and urgent
circumstances of my family. I entreated him to exert his generosity and
justice in behalf of an unfortunate exile, whom untoward events had
deprived of the power of doing justice to himself.
To this letter I received no answer. Uncertain as to the cause of my
correspondent’s silence, or even whether my letter had been received,
I wrote again. My heart was wrung with this new adversity. I was
forbidden, under pain of perpetual imprisonment, to return to the
territories of the republic, and I had no friend to solicit in my
behalf. In Constance I was utterly a stranger. In Switzerland, my
unfortunate habits of life, the depression and solitude in which I had
been merged, deprived me of the opportunity of forming connections. The
deceased was the only person who had been disposed to interfere for me.
It was too probable that the silence of his successor was an indication
of the hostility of his views. I saw nothing before me but the prospect
of my family perishing with want, deprived of their last resource,
exiles and pennyless. Thus destitute and forlorn, what could we do? to
what plan could we have recourse? We had not so much as the means of
providing ourselves with the implements of the humblest labour. If we
had, could I, under my circumstances, resolve upon this? Could I give
up the last slender pittance of my children while there was a chance of
recovering it; and, by surrendering them to the slavery of perpetual
labour, devote them to the lowest degree of ignorance and degradation?
No; I still clung to this final hope, and was resolved to undertake
any thing, however desperate, rather than part with it. Such were my
feelings; and, in the new letter which I now despatched, I poured out
all the anguish of my soul.
A reply to this letter was at length vouchsafed. The heir of my
protector informed me, that he knew nothing of the business to which
I alluded; that he had come into possession of the lands I described,
together with the other property of his late uncle, and regarded
himself as holding them by the same tenure; that he found in the
accounts of the estate a sum of money advanced to me, which he might
with the strictest justice regard as a debt, and pursue me for it
accordingly. He should be liberal enough however so far to give credit
to my story, and to consider the sum in question as advanced upon a
pledge of land: in that case, I might regard myself as sufficiently
fortunate in having obtained even that amount at a time when, but for
the humanity or weakness of his uncle, my estate would not have sold
for a farthing. Meanwhile, the forbearance which he proffered would,
he observed, depend upon my conduct, and be retracted if I afforded
him cause for resentment. He added, that he despised my menaces and
commands, and that, if I took a single step against him, I should find
it terminate in my utter ruin.
Nothing could be more profligate than the style of his letter. But
its impotence was equal to its wickedness. It was absurd to threaten
to inflict ruin on a man whom ruin had already overtaken. Before the
letter arrived, I had disbursed the whole sum I brought with me from
Switzerland. This entire annihilation of my resources seemed to steal
on me unperceived. Finding that all reply to my importunity was either
refused, or deferred to an uncertain period, I would willingly at
all risks have sought the villain who thus obdurately devoted me and
my family to destruction, and have endeavoured to obtain justice in
person. But it was now too late. Before I felt the case thus desperate,
my finances were so far reduced as to make it impracticable for me to
leave my wife and children enough to support them in my absence, even
if I had determined myself to set out upon this perilous expedition
pennyless. I resolved that, if we did perish, we would perish together.
Penury was now advancing upon us with such rapid strides, that the
lowest and most scanty resources no longer admitted of neglect. Had
a case thus desperate been encountered with timely attention, it is
not improbable that some of the various talents I had acquired in
the course of my education would have furnished me with a means of
subsistence not altogether plebeian or incompetent. But, with the
uncertainty of my situation, and totally unaccustomed as I was to
regard my person or mind as a machine fitted for productive labour, I
had not looked to this question, till the urgency of the case deprived
me of every advantage I might otherwise have seized. I was glad
therefore to have recourse to menial occupation, and sought employment
under the gardener of the episcopal palace, for whose service I was
sufficiently qualified by my ten years’ retreat in the Bordelois. That
I might better adapt myself to the painful necessity of my situation, I
previously exchanged some of my own clothes for garments more suitable
to the business I now solicited. It was not till I had arrived within
a very few days to the end of my resources; that even this expedient,
by a sort of accident, recurred to my mind. Marguerite, though fully
aware of the urgency of the case, had, as she afterwards told me,
imposed on herself a compulsory silence, fearing for the inflamed and
irritated frame of my mind, and aware that the course of events would
ultimately lead me to a point with which she dreaded to intermeddle.
This was for her a trying moment; my lately recovered insanity obliging
her to contemplate in silence our growing distress, and to wait the
attack of hunger and want that threatened to destroy us, with an
apparent tranquillity and cheerfulness.
For me, so entire a revolution had taken place in my sentiments, that
I spurned with contempt, so far as related to myself, that pride of
rank and romantic gallantry of honour, which had formerly been my
idols. I submitted with a sort of gloomy contentment to the situation
upon which my destiny drove me. I regarded it as the natural result of
my former misconduct; and derived a sentiment of ease and relief from
thus expiating, as it were, with the sweat of my brow, the temptations
to which I had yielded. Had I been myself only reduced thus low, or
had the produce of my labour been sufficient to purchase competence
for my wife and the means of instruction for my family, I can safely
affirm that I should have found no consequence so direct from my own
degradation as the means of silencing the reproaches of conscience and
reconciling me to myself. But when I returned in the evening with the
earnings of my day’s labour, and found it incompetent to the procuring
for those who depended on me the simplest means of subsistence, then
indeed my sensations were different. My heart died within me. I did
not return after the fatigues of the day, which, to me who had not
been accustomed to unremitted labour, and who now began to feel that I
was not so young as I had been at the siege of Pavia, were extremely
trying,--I did not return, I say, to a night of repose. I became
a very woman when I looked forward, and endeavoured to picture to
myself the future situation of my family. I watered my pillow with
my tears. Often, when I imagined that my whole family were asleep, I
gave vent to my perturbated and distracted mind in groans: Marguerite
would sometimes overhear me; and with the gentlest suggestions of her
admirable mind would endeavour to soothe my thoughts to peace. For the
present, as I have said, my earnings were incompetent, and we found it
necessary to supply the deficiency by the sale of the few garments,
not in immediate use, that we still possessed. What then would be the
case when these were gone, and when, in addition to this, it would be
necessary to purchase not only food to eat, and a roof to shelter, but
also clothes to cover us?