For some time I could not believe him departed. When I retired to rest,
I felt the want of Charles to press my hand, and wish me refreshing
slumbers; and I passed on, sad and solitary, to my chamber. When I
came next morning into the breakfasting room, Charles was not there,
to greet me with looks of affection and duty; and the gilding and
ornaments of the apartment were to me no less disconsolate than the
damps and sootiness of a dungeon.
I hoped he would return. I knew how tenderly he was attached to his
mother and his sisters; I was fully convinced that the affection for me
which had been the perpetual habit of his mind, could not be entirely
eradicated from his heart. I mentioned him not in my letters to
Constance; the pen lingered, my hand trembled, when I thought of him; I
could neither pretend that he was with me, nor announce the catastrophe
of his absence. But I opened the letters of Marguerite with still
increasing impatience. Finding that he did not return to me, I hoped
that some alteration of the extraordinary resolution he had formed,
would lead him to Constance. In vain I hoped! There reached me, by no
conveyance, from no quarter, tidings of my son!
How surprising an event! A youth, not seventeen years of age, forming
and executing in the same instant the purpose of flying from his
parents and his family! Deserting all his hopes, all his attachments,
all his fortune! Refusing the smallest particle of assistance or
provision in his entrance upon the wide scene of the world! Oh,
Charles! exclaimed I, you are indeed an extraordinary and admirable
youth! But are you fortified against all the temptations of the world
and all its hardships? Do your tender years qualify you to struggle
with its unkindness, its indifference, and its insults? In how few
quarters is merit ever treated with the attention and benevolence it
deserves! How often is it reduced to tremble with indignation, at
the scoffs and brutality to which it is exposed, and at the sight of
folly and vice exalted in its stead, and appointed its despot and its
master! My son, my son! what will be your fate? Is your unseasoned
frame reserved to perish by hunger, in barren deserts and beneath
inclement skies? Will you not in some hour of bitter disappointment and
unpitied loneliness, lay yourself down in despair and die? Will you
not be made the slave of some capricious tyrant for bread? Generous
as is your nature, will it be eternally proof against reiterated
temptation? Upon what a world are you turned adrift! a world of
which you know as little, as the poor affrighted soul of a dying
man knows, when launching into the mysterious, impenetrable abyss
of eternity! Unnatural father, to have reduced my only son to this
cruel alternative! I should with a less aching and agonising heart
have accompanied his senseless remains to the grave. Dreadful as
that parting is, there at least the anxious mind of the survivor has
rest. There are no thoughts and devices in the silence of the tomb.
There all our prospects end, and we are no longer sensible to pain,
to persecution, to insult, and to agony. But Charles, thus departed,
wandering on the face of the globe, without protector, adviser or
resource, no lapse of years can put a close upon my anxiety for him!
If I am in ease and prosperity, I cannot relish them, for my exposed
and living son may be at that moment in the depth of misery! If I am
myself oppressed and suffering, the thought of what may be his fate
will form a dreadful addition to all my other calamities! What am I
to say of him upon my return to Constance? If he had died, this was a
natural casualty; and, whatever grief it might occasion, time no doubt
would mollify and abate it. But what account can now be rendered of him
to his disconsolate mother and terrified sisters? How can I lift up my
head in their presence, or meet the glance of their reproachful eyes!
The idea had occurred to me, in the instant of Charles’s departure, and
immediately after his exit, of detaining or bringing him back by force.
He was by his extreme youth, according to the maxims of the world,
still in a state of guardianship, and unqualified to be the chooser
of his own actions. But to this mode of proceeding, however deeply I
felt the catastrophe which had taken place, I could never consent. It
was in utter hostility to the lessons of chivalry and honour, with
which I had been familiarised from my earliest infancy. There might
be cases, in which this restraint laid by a father upon his child
would be salutary. But the idea which had occasioned the secession of
Charles, was decisive in this instance. What right had I to chain him
to dishonour? The whole bent of his education had been, to impress him
with the feelings by which he was now actuated. If I detained him
for a short time, was there any vigilance on earth that could finally
prevent him from executing a purpose upon which his whole soul was
resolved? Or, suppose there were, must not the consequence be to break
his spirit, to deprive him of all manliness and energy, and to render
him the mere drooping and soulless shadow of that conspicuous hero I
had been anxious to make him? It might be said indeed, that this was
the determination of a boy, formed in an hour, and that, if I detained
him only long enough for deliberation and revisal, he would of his
own accord retract so desperate a project. But I felt that it was a
resolution formed to endure, and was built upon principles that could
not change so long as an atom of his mind remained. No; I was rather
disposed to say, however grievous was the wound he inflicted on me, Go,
my son! Act upon the dictates of your choice, as I have acted on mine!
I admire your resolution, though I cannot imitate it. Your purpose is
lofty and godlike; and he that harbours it, was not born to be a slave.
Be free; and may every power propitious to generosity and virtue smooth
your path through life, and smile upon your desires!
The anguish I felt for having lost my son, and in this painful and
reproachful manner, was not diminished to me either by society or
amusement. I dared not go out of my house. I saw no one but my own
attendants. I had not the courage to meet the aspect of a human
creature. I knew not how far persons in Dresden might have heard the
injurious reports which occasioned the flight of my son, or even have
been acquainted with the nature of that flight. I had promised to see
Coligny again; but, alas! the affair which had at first led me to
wish to see him, was now at an end. I had no heart to seek him; nor
indeed did I know what story I was to tell him, or how I was to remove
the suspicions he had urged against me. The machine of human life,
though constituted of a thousand parts, is in all its parts regularly
and systematically connected; nor is it easy to insert an additional
member, the spuriousness of which an accurate observation will not
readily detect. How was I to assign a source of my wealth different
from the true, which would not be liable to investigation, and, when
investigated, would not be seen to be counterfeit? This indeed is the
prime source of individual security in human affairs, that whatever any
man does, may be subjected to examination, and whatever does not admit
of being satisfactorily accounted for, exposes him whom it concerns to
the most injurious suspicions. This law of our nature, so salutary in
its general operation, was the first source of all my misfortunes.
I began now seriously to consider what judgment I was to pass upon
the bequests of the stranger. Were they to be regarded as a benefit
or a misfortune? Ought they to be classed with the poisoned robe of
Nessus, which, being sent as a token of affection, was found, in the
experiment, to eat into the flesh and burn up the vitals of him that
wore it? Should I from this instant reject their use, and, returning to
the modes of life established among my fellow men, content myself with
the affection of those with whom I had intercourse, though poverty and
hardships mingled with the balm?
The experiment I had made of these extraordinary gifts was a short one;
but how contrary were all the results I had arrived at, from those
I looked for? When the stranger had appeared six months before at
the cottage of the lake, he had found me a poor man indeed, but rich
in the confidence, and happy in the security and content, of every
member of my family. I lived in the bosom of nature, surrounded with
the luxuriance of its gifts and the sublimity of its features, which
the romantic elevation of my soul particularly fitted me to relish.
In my domestic scene I beheld the golden age renewed, the simplicity
of pastoral life without its grossness, a situation remote from
cities and courts, from traffic and hypocrisy, yet not unadorned with
taste, imagination, and knowledge. Never was a family more united in
sentiments and affection. Now all this beauteous scene was defaced!
All was silence, suspicion, and reserve. The one party dared not be
ingenuous, and the other felt that all the paradise of attachment was
dwindled to an empty name. No questions were asked; for no honest
answer was given or expected. Though corporeally we might sit in the
same apartment, in mind a gulf, wide, impassable, and tremendous,
gaped between us. My wife pined in speechless grief, and, it was to
be feared, had sustained a mortal blow. My son, my only son, a youth
of such promise that I would not have exchanged him for empires, had
disappeared, and, as he had solemnly protested, for ever. My heart
was childless: my bosom was bereaved of its dearest hope. It was for
him principally that I had accepted, that I had rejoiced in the gifts
of the stranger. My darling vision was to see him clothed in the
harness, surrounded with the insignia, of a hero. There was nothing
I so earnestly desired as that his merits, graced with the favours
of fortune, might cause him to stand confessed the first subject of
France; a situation more enviable than that of its monarch, since he
who holds it is raised by deeds, and the other only by birth; and if
less respected by interested courtiers, is certain to be more honoured
by the impartial voice of history. But, if I felt thus desolate and
heartbroken for the loss of my son, what would be the sentiments of
his mother, more susceptible to feel, and, in her present weakness of
spirits, less vigorous to bear, than myself, when the dreadful tidings
should be communicated to her?
Yet I could not resolve to renounce donations which I had so dearly
appropriated. I held it to be a base and cowardly to surrender gifts so
invaluable, upon so insufficient an experiment. He, I thought, must be
a man of ignoble and grovelling spirit, who could easily be prevailed
on to part with unbounded wealth and immortal life. I had but just
entered the vast field that was opened to me. It was of the nature of
all great undertakings to be attended with difficulties and obstacles
in the commencement, to present a face calculated to discourage the man
that is infirm of purpose. But it became my descent, my character and
pretensions, to show myself serene in the midst of storms. Perseverance
and constancy are the virtues of a man. Affairs of this extensive
compass often prove in the issue the reverse of what they seemed in
the outset. The tempest might be expected to disperse, difficulties
to unravel themselves, and unlooked-for concurrences to arise. All
opposition and hostile appearance give way before him who goes calmly
onward, and scorns to be dismayed.