It was in the evening of a summer’s day in the latter end of the
year fifteen hundred and forty-four, that a stranger arrived at my
habitation. He was feeble, emaciated, and pale, his forehead full of
wrinkles, and his hair and beard as white as snow. Care was written
in his face; it was easy to perceive that he had suffered much from
distress of mind; yet his eye was still quick and lively, with a strong
expression of suspiciousness and anxiety. His garb, which externally
consisted of nothing more than a robe of russet brown, with a girdle
of the same, was coarse, threadbare, and ragged. He supported his
tottering steps with a staff; and, having lost his foreteeth, his
speech was indistinct and difficult to be comprehended. His wretched
appearance excited my compassion, at the same time that I could easily
discern, beneath all its disadvantages, that he was no common beggar or
rustic. Ruined and squalid as he appeared, I thought I could perceive
traces in his countenance of what had formerly been daring enterprise,
profound meditation, and generous humanity.
I saw that he was much fatigued, and I invited him to rest himself upon
the bench before the door. I set before him bread and wine, and he
partook of both. I asked him his name and his country. He told me that
he was a Venetian, and that his name, as nearly as I could collect, was
signor Francesco Zampieri. He seemed however averse to speaking, and he
requested me to suffer him to pass the night in my habitation. There
was nothing singular in the request, a hospitality of this sort being
the practice of the neighbourhood; and humanity would have prompted
my compliance, if I had not been still more strongly urged by an
undefinable curiosity that began to spring up in my bosom. I prepared
for him a camp-bed in a summer-house at the end of my garden. As soon
as it was ready, he desired to be left alone, that he might seek in
rest some relief from the fatigue he had undergone.
He retired early; and therefore, soon after daybreak the next morning,
I waited on him to enquire how he had rested. He led me out into the
fields; the morning was genial and exhilarating. We proceeded, till
we came to a retired spot which had frequently been the scene of my
solitary meditations, and there seated ourselves upon a bank. We had
been mutually silent during the walk. As soon as we were seated, the
stranger began: “You are, I understand, a Frenchman, and your name the
count de St. Leon?” I bowed assent.
“St. Leon,” said he, “there is something in your countenance and manner
that prepossesses me in your favour. The only thing I have left to do
in the world is to die; and what I seek at present, is a friend who
will take care that I shall be suffered to die in peace. Shall I trust
you? Will you be that friend to me?”
I was astonished at this way of commencing his confidence in me; but I
did not hesitate to promise that he should not find me deficient in any
thing that became a man of humanity and honour.
“You do not, I think, live alone? You have a wife and children.”
“I have.”
“Yet none of them were at home when I arrived last night. You brought
yourself to the summer-house every thing that was necessary for my
accommodation.”
“I did so. But I have a wife to whom I have been married seventeen
years, and with whom I have no reserves. I told her of your arrival; I
spoke of your appearance; I mentioned your name.”
“It is no matter. She has not seen me. My name is not Zampieri; I am no
Venetian.”
“Who are you then?”
“That you shall never know. It makes no part of the confidence I design
to repose in you. My name shall be buried with me in the grave; nor
shall any one who has hitherto known me, know how, at what time, or
on what spot of earth, I shall terminate my existence. The cloud of
oblivion shall shelter me from all human curiosity. What I require of
you is that you pledge your honour, and the faith of a man, that you
will never reveal to your wife, your children, or any human being, what
you may hereafter know of me, and that no particular that relates to my
history shall be disclosed, till at least one hundred years after my
decease.”
“Upon these conditions I am sorry that I must decline your confidence.
My wife is a part of myself; for the last six years at least I have had
no thought in which she has not participated; and these have been the
most tranquil and happy years of my life. My heart was formed by nature
for social ties; habit has confirmed their propensity; and I will not
now consent to any thing that shall infringe on the happiness of my
soul.”
While I spoke, I could perceive that my companion grew disturbed and
angry. At length, turning towards me a look of ineffable contempt, he
replied--
“Feeble and effeminate mortal! You are neither a knight nor a
Frenchman! Or rather, having been both, you have forgotten in
inglorious obscurity every thing worthy of either! Was ever gallant
action achieved by him who was incapable of separating himself from a
woman? Was ever a great discovery prosecuted, or an important benefit
conferred upon the human race, by him who was incapable of standing,
and thinking, and feeling, alone? Under the usurping and dishonoured
name of virtue, you have sunk into a slavery baser than that of the
enchantress Alcina. In vain might honour, worth, and immortal renown
proffer their favours to him who has made himself the basest of all
sublunary things--the puppet of a woman, the plaything of her pleasure,
wasting an inglorious life in the gratification of her wishes and the
performance of her commands!”
I felt that I was not wholly unmoved at this expostulation. The
stranger touched upon the first and foremost passions of my soul;
passions the operation of which had long been suspended, but which
were by no means extinguished in my bosom. He proceeded:--
“But it is well! Years have passed over my head in vain, and I have
not learnt to distinguish a man of honour from a slave. This is only
one additional sorrow to those in which my life has been spent. I
have wandered through every region of the earth, and have found
only disappointment. I have entered the courts of princes; I have
accompanied the march of armies; I have pined in the putridity of
dungeons. I have tasted every vicissitude of splendour and meanness;
five times have I been led to the scaffold, and with difficulty
escaped a public execution. Hated by mankind, hunted from the face
of the earth, pursued by every atrocious calumny, without a country,
without a roof, without a friend; the addition that can be made to such
misfortunes scarcely deserves a thought.”
While he spoke, curiosity, resistless curiosity, presented itself as a
new motive, in aid of the sense of shame which the stranger had just
before kindled in my bosom. His manner was inconceivably impressive;
his voice, though inarticulate from age, had an irresistible melody
and volume of sound, which awed, while it won, the heart. His front
appeared open, large, and commanding; and, though he complained, his
complaints seemed to be those of conscious dignity and innocence. He
went on:--
“Farewell, St. Leon! I go, and you shall see me and hear of me no
more. You will repent, when it is too late, the folly of this day’s
determination. I appear mean and insignificant in your eyes. You think
my secrets beneath your curiosity, and my benefits not worth your
acceptance. Know that my benefits are such as kings would barter their
thrones to purchase, and that my wealth exceeds the wealth of empires.
You are degraded from the rank you once held among mankind; your
children are destined to live in the inglorious condition of peasants.
This day you might have redeemed all your misfortunes, and raised
yourself to a station more illustrious than that to which you were
born. Farewell! Destiny has marked out you and yours for obscurity and
oblivion, and you do well to reject magnificence and distinction when
they proffer themselves for your acceptance.”
“Stop,” cried I, “mysterious stranger! Grant me a moment’s leisure to
reflect and determine.”
He had risen to depart, with a gesture of resolution and contempt. At
my exclamation he paused, and again turned himself towards me. My soul
was in tumults.
“Answer me, most ambiguous and impenetrable of mortals! What is thy
story? and what the secrets, the disclosure of which is pregnant with
consequences so extraordinary?”
“Do you recollect the conditions upon which only the disclosure can be
made?”
“What can I say? Shall I determine to part with that which for years
has constituted the only consolation of my life? Shall I suppress the
curiosity which now torments me, and reject the boon you pretend to
have the power to confer?”
“I grant you the interval for reflection you demand. I refuse to place
further confidence in you, till you have maturely examined yourself,
and roused all the energies of your spirit to encounter the task you
undertake.”
“One word more. You know not, indeed you know not, what a woman you
exclude from your confidence. She is more worthy of it than I am.
Referring to my own experience and knowledge of the world, I can safely
pronounce her the first of her sex, perhaps the first of human beings.
Indulge me in this; include her in your confidence; and I am content.”
“Be silent! I have made my determination; do you make yours! Know I
would not if I could, and cannot if I would, repose the secrets that
press upon me in more than a single bosom. It was upon this condition
I received the communication; upon this condition only can I impart
it. I am resolved; to die is the election of my soul--a consummation
for which I impatiently wait. Having determined therefore to withdraw
myself from the powers committed to me, I am at liberty to impart them;
upon the same condition, and no other, you may one day, if you desire
it, seek the relief of confidence.”
Having thus spoken, the stranger rose from his seat. It was yet early
morning, nor was it likely we should meet any one in our walk. He
however employed the precaution of causing me to explore the path,
and to see that we should return uninterrupted. We came back to the
summer-house. The window-shutters were still closed; the stranger
determined they should remain so. When I had come to him as soon as
I rose, I had found the door secured; nor had he admitted me, till
he recognised my voice, and had ascertained that I was alone. These
precautions scarcely excited my attention at the time; but, after the
conversation that had just passed, they returned distinctly to my
memory.
The remainder of the day which had been opened by this extraordinary
scene was passed by me in great anxiety. I ruminated with unceasing
wonder and perturbation upon the words of the stranger. Shall I shut
upon myself the gate of knowledge and information? Is it not the part
of a feeble and effeminate mind to refuse instruction, because he is
not at liberty to communicate that instruction to another--to a wife?
The stranger professes to be able to raise me to the utmost height of
wealth and distinction. Shall I refuse the gift, which in a former
instance I forfeited, but for which, though contemplated as at an
impracticable distance, my whole soul longs? If there is any thing
dishonourable connected with the participation of this wealth, I shall
still be at liberty to refuse it. There can be no crime in hearing
what this man has to communicate. I shall still, and always, be master
of myself; nor can I have any thing personally to fear from a man so
feeble, so decrepit, so emaciated. Yet what can be the gifts worthy of
acceptance of a man who, while he possesses them, is tired of life, and
desires to die? or what the wealth of him who bears about him every
external symptom of poverty and desolation?
The conversation I had just held revived in my mind the true feeling
of my present situation. The wounds of my soul had been lulled into
temporary insensibility; but they were in a state in which the
slightest accident was capable of making them bleed afresh, and
with all their former violence. I had rather steeled my mind to
endure what seemed unavoidable, than reconciled myself to my fate.
The youthful passions of my soul, which my early years had written
there in characters so deep, were by no means effaced. I could not
contemplate the splendour of rank with an impartial eye. I could not
think of the alternative of distinction or obscurity for my children
with indifference. But, most of all, the moment I had experienced for
them of hunger, and impending destruction by famine, had produced an
indelible impression. It had destroyed all romance, I had almost said
all dignity, in my mind for ever. It had snapped, as by the touch of a
red-hot iron, all the finer and more etherialised sinews of my frame.
It had planted the sordid love of gold in my heart, there, by its
baneful vegetation, to poison every nobler and more salubrious feeling.
When I returned to the house, Marguerite enquired of me respecting
the stranger, but my answers were short and embarrassed. She seemed
to wonder that he did not come into the house, and partake of some
refreshment in the midst of my family. She asked, whether he were
indisposed? and whether he did not stand in need of some assistance
that she might afford him? Perceiving however that I was desirous of
saying as little as possible respecting him, she presently became
silent. I could see that she was hurt at my incommunicativeness, yet
I could not prevail upon myself to enter into an explanation of the
causes of my taciturnity. Ours was a family of love; and I could
observe that the children sympathised with their mother, and secretly
were surprised at and lamented my reserve. There would have been little
in this, in perhaps any other family than ours. But the last six years
had been spent by us in such primeval simplicity, that scarcely one of
us had a thought but what was known to the rest. Marguerite cherished
my frankness and unreserve with peculiar zeal; she remembered with
bitterness of soul the periods in which I fostered conceptions only
proper to myself--periods of dreadful calamity, or of rooted melancholy
and sadness. She could not help regarding the silence into which for
the present occasion I relapsed, as a portent of evil augury. Charles,
who was now sixteen years of age, recollected the period of our ruined
fortunes when he had been alone with me at Paris, and partook of his
mother’s feelings.
A trifling circumstance, at this time occasioned by the little
Marguerite, now eight years of age, rendered the restraint under which
I laboured more memorable and striking. She had left a little book
of fairy tales, in which she had been reading the day before, in the
summer-house. At first she did not recollect what was become of it, and
employed herself in searching for it with great assiduity. Of a sudden
however she remembered where she had read in it last; and, exclaiming
with exultation, “It is in the summer-house!” sprang forward to fetch
it. I detained her, and told her there was a sick gentleman there that
she would disturb! “Then, dear Julia!” rejoined she, “be so good as
to get it for me; you are so quiet and careful, you never disturb any
body.”
“My love,” answered I, “nobody must get it for you. The gentleman
chooses to be alone, and will not let any body come to him. You shall
have it after dinner.”
“Ah, but, papa, I want it now. I put it away, just where the naughty
giant had shut up the gentleman in the dungeon, who came to take away
the lady. I was obliged to put it away then, because mamma called me to
go to bed; but I want so to know what will become of them, you cannot
think.”
“Well, dear Marguerite, I am sorry you must wait; but you must learn to
have patience.”
“Do you know, papa, I walked in the garden before breakfast: and so,
not thinking of any thing, I came to the summer-house; and I tried to
open the door, but I could not. I found it was locked. So I thought
Julia was there; and I knocked, and called Julia, but nobody answered.
So then I knew Julia was not there, for I was sure she would have
opened the door. So I climbed upon the stump of the pear-tree, and
tried to look in at the window; but the shutters were shut, and I
could not get to see over the top of them. And I walked all round the
summer-house, and all the shutters were shut. Papa, I wish you would
not let a man get into the summer-house, who shuts all the shutters,
and locks the door. You always used to let me go into every room I
liked; and, do you know, I think none but bad people lock and bolt
themselves up so. It puts mind of the giants with their drawbridges and
their pitfalls; I shall be quite afraid of this frightful old man.”
This prattle of the child was nothing; yet it increased the
embarrassment of my situation, and made the peculiarity of the case
more conspicuous. Finding her pertinacious in insisting upon a topic
that was disagreeable to me, her mother called her from me, and put
her upon some occupation that served to divert her attention. I felt
like a person that was guilty of some crime; and this consideration and
kindness of my wife, when I seemed to myself to deserve her reproach,
had not the power to calm my uneasiness.
These little occurrences appeared like the beginning of a separation
of interests, and estrangement of hearts. I tasked myself severely. I
summoned the whole force of my mind, that I might strictly consider
what it was in which I was about to engage. If this slight and casual
hint of a secret is felt by both Marguerite and myself with so much
uneasiness and embarrassment, what will be our situation, if I go on
to accept the stranger’s confidence, and become the depository of an
arcanum so important as he represents his to be? He declares himself
able to bestow upon me the highest opulence; what will be the feelings
of my wife and children when they see my condition suddenly changed
from its present humble appearance to splendour and wealth, without
being able to assign the source of this extraordinary accession?
It is difficult to conceive a family picture more enviable that than
to which I was now continually present, and of which I formed a part.
We had been happy on the banks of the Garonne, and we had pictured
to ourselves a plan of happiness immediately on our arrival in the
city of Constance. But these were little and imperfect, compared with
what I now enjoyed. In the first situation my children were infants,
and in the second the eldest was but ten years of age. The mother
was now thirty-five; and she had lost, in my eyes at least, none
of her personal attractions. Her intellectual accomplishments were
much greater than ever. Her understanding was matured, her judgment
decided, her experience more comprehensive. As she had a greater
compass of materials to work upon, her fancy was more playful, her
conversation richer, and her reflections more amusing and profound.
The matron character she had acquired, had had no other effect on her
feelings, than to render them more deep, more true and magnetical.
Her disposition was more entirely affectionate than it had been even
in the first year of our cohabitation. Her attachment to her children
was exemplary, and her vigilance uninterrupted; and, for myself, she
was accustomed, in all that related to our mutual love, to enter into
my sentiments and inclinations with so just a tone of equality and
kindness, that we seemed to be two bodies animated by a single soul.
If the mother were improved, the children were still more improved.
In their early years we are attached to our offspring, merely because
they are ours, and in a way that has led superficial speculators
to consider the attachment, less as the necessary operation of a
sensible and conscious mind, than as a wise provision of nature for
the perpetuation of the species. But as they grow up, the case is
different. Our partiality is then confirmed or diminished by qualities
visible to an impartial bystander as really as to ourselves. They
then cease to be merely the objects of our solicitude, and become our
companions, the partners of our sentiments, and the counsellors of our
undertakings. Such at least was my case at the present period. Charles,
who was now sixteen, was manly beyond his years; while the native fire
of his disposition was tempered by adversity, by an humble situation,
and by the ardour of filial and fraternal affection. Julia, who was
two years younger, became daily more interesting by the mildness of
her disposition and the tenderness of her sensibility. Louisa was only
twelve; but, as she was extremely notable, and had an uncommonly quick
and accurate spirit of imitation, she rendered herself exceedingly
useful to her mother. Marguerite, the plaything and amusement of the
family, had, as I have said, just completed the eighth year of her age.
One exquisite source of gratification, when it is not a source of
uneasiness, to speak from my own experience, which a parent finds in
the society of his children, is their individuality. They are not
puppets, moved with wires, and to be played on at will. Almost from the
hour of their birth they have a will of their own, to be consulted and
negotiated with. We may say to them, as Adam to the general mother of
mankind, “But now, thou wert flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone;
and, even now, thou standest before me vested in the prerogatives of
sentiment and reason; a living being, to be regarded with attention and
deference; to be courted, not compelled; susceptible of the various
catalogue of human passions; capable of resentment and gratitude, of
indignation and love, of perverseness and submission. It is because
thou art thus formed that I love thee. I cannot be interested about
objects inanimate or brute. I require a somewhat that shall exercise
my judgment, and awaken my moral feelings. It is necessary to me to
approve myself, and be approved by another. I rejoice to stand before
you, at once the defendant and the judge. I rejoice in the restraint to
which your independent character subjects me, and it will be my pride
to cultivate that independence in your mind. I would negotiate for your
affections and confidence, and not be loved by you, but in proportion
as I shall have done something to deserve it. I could not congratulate
myself upon your correspondence to my wishes, if it had not been in
your power to withhold it.”
While I indulge this vein of reflection, I seem again to see my family,
as they surrounded me in the year fifteen hundred and forty-four;
Marguerite the partner of my life, Charles the brother of my cares, the
blooming Julia, the sage Louisa, and the playful cadette of the family.
How richly furnished, how cheerful, how heart-reviving, appeared to
me the apartment in which they were assembled! I dwell upon the image
with fond affection and lingering delight. Where are they now? How
has all this happiness been maliciously undermined, and irrevocably
destroyed! To look back on it, it seems like the idle fabric of a
dream. I awake, and find myself alone! Were there really such persons?
Where are they dispersed? Whither are they gone? Oh, miserable solitude
and desertion, to which I have so long been condemned! I see nothing
around me but speechless walls, or human faces that say as little to my
heart as the walls themselves! How palsied is my soul! How withered my
affections!--But I will not anticipate.