Having rejoined the remainder of my family, we set out together for
the plains of Italy. My first interview with Marguerite after my
return from Dresden had been melancholy. But our situation was now
such as to give additional anguish to her serious thoughts. She had
then regarded me as ambiguous, mysterious, and impenetrable, qualities
from which the frankness of her nature spontaneously revolted; she saw
in me the destroyer of her son, the idol of her heart; she believed
me an alchymist, a character which she viewed as base, degrading, and
insensible; she had heard that rumour had been busy with my fame. But
now she saw in me a man of blasted reputation, arraigned and imprisoned
for robbery and murder. She did not credit these imputations. But did
the ingenuous and noble-minded Marguerite de Damville ever think to
find herself allied to a being thus loaded with the world’s abhorrence;
that she should be compelled to honour with the sacred name of husband
a fugitive, a prison-breaker, and an outlaw? If I had suffered these
things in the defence of my children, my religion, or my country,
the case would have been widely different. If, while encountering
the contempt of men, I had carried within me the glorious feeling,
that what they regarded as my disgrace was indeed my immortal honour,
Marguerite de Damville, beyond all women, was prepared to despise their
senseless blame, and proudly to demand her share in such a dishonour.
I know there are men who will listen with fretful impatience to a
detail of such sorrows as hers, and who will cry out, “If we must be
distressed, give us more substantial and genuine sources of distress!”
They will regard the dejection of Marguerite as an idle wilfulness of
grief, better entitled to aversion than to sympathy; and will tell me
that nothing but the most deplorable blindness could have prevented her
from discerning the happiness of her condition; that she had the world
before her, a rich, a brave, and an enterprising husband, with a lovely
family of children; that they could move from country to country,
and from climate to climate, carrying with them the means of luxury,
indulgence, homage, and usefulness. To such moralisers I write not. For
those who are incapable of sympathising with the delicate sensations of
Marguerite, I am as little qualified to enter into their feelings as
they into mine. In the sequel of the story however it is not impossible
they may meet with their gratification. I am hastening to events
corporeal and palpable. I and my family did wander from country to
country, and from climate to climate. With what resulting success will
speedily be seen.
Our destination at the present moment led us through the territory
of the Grisons, and over a limb of the Rhetian Alps, to Como, Milan,
Piacenza, Parma, and Pisa, in the neighbourhood of which latter city
we resolved to take up our immediate residence. In this passage we
met with few adventures that merit to be recorded in my history. One
however seems entitled to a place, both as it tends to display the
singular worth of a dumb and unpretending brute, and as it is in some
sort connected with the fortunes I encountered in the Pisan territory.
It occurred in our journey over the Alps.
One evening, in the wildest and most desolate part of the mountain,
after having lodged my family in an inn, I wandered forth to take a
survey of the neighbouring scenery. It was moonlight; our travel of the
day had been short, and had left on me no impression of fatigue; while
the romantic appearance of every thing around, tempted me to extend my
excursion further than I had originally purposed. Stories of robberies
and murders in the vicinity had been repeated to us, and Marguerite had
employed the precaution of desiring Hector, such was the name which
the caprice of his former masters had bestowed on my faithful negro,
to follow my steps and hold me in sight. No anticipations of danger
however disturbed my contemplations. I resigned myself, as all my life
I had been accustomed to do, to the impressions of the moment, and
sought to shut out memory and the world from all my thoughts. The scene
was inexpressibly beautiful; the silence was uninterrupted and awful.
The splendour of the moon gave a sober and silvery tint to every thing
by which its light was caught; soft white clouds were scattered in the
deep azure of the sky; the shades were of a blackness and profundity
that could not be surpassed. Every thing was calculated to soothe
and subdue the mind, to inspire a grand and expansive tranquillity.
The enthusiasm it spoke occupied every channel of my heart. I stood
still. It seemed as if motion would have jarred and broken the spell
that seized me; I yielded with eager transport to the sentiment that
shrowded and enveloped me in its ample embrace.
I had remained motionless for above half an hour, when a sudden and
eager sound burst upon my ear. It seemed to be the shriek of some
human creature in distress. It was repeated several times. My first
impulse was to fly to the spot from which the sound appeared to
proceed. Meanwhile Hector came up to me, and endeavoured to detain me
by violence. His first principle was obedience to every just and lawful
command; and the errand upon which he was commissioned, was to preserve
me from the approach of danger. He represented to me the stories of
banditti we had recently heard. He told me that we should too probably
fall in with a numerous party of these desperadoes, against whom all
our efforts, either for ourselves or for those I was desirous to
succour, would be nugatory. What would become of my children? what
would become of his mistress, if my rashness were succeeded by a fatal
event? While he was thus speaking, and exerting himself to detain me,
the cries ceased. I believed they were those of a person assassinated.
I conceived that I should be the vilest of poltroons if I suffered
any consideration to prevent me from endeavouring to afford to this
unfortunate the relief in my power.
I had not advanced far, before I perceived coming towards us, in the
same direction from which the sound had reached my ear, a dog, entirely
black, and of uncommon stature and strength. He was alone. Having
caught sight of us, he increased his pace, and had no sooner reached
the spot on which we stood, than he seized the flap of my coat, and
pulled it with considerable violence. I was somewhat alarmed at his
size and action, the latter of which I apprehended to have a hostile
design; and, having shaken him off, I put myself in a posture of
defence with a cane that I carried in my hand. Undeterred however by my
gesture, he returned to the attack, only pulling with something less
exertion of strength than he had done before. More accurate attention
convinced me that he had no intention to injure me, and I withheld
the action of Hector, who had raised his hand to strike in defence
of his master. I suffered him to guide me; and, after a considerable
circuit which the nature of the road obliged us to take, he led me to
a spot where I found a man lying on the ground, and weltering in his
blood, but with no person near, to whom to impute the violence he had
sustained.
His blood flowed copiously from two or three different wounds, one of
them in particular near his left breast; and my first care was to stop
the effusion. For this purpose we stripped him of his clothes, and tore
his linen into bandages. When we found him, he was insensible; but the
anguish of binding his wounds revived him a little, though only enough
to extort from him sighs and groans. This accomplished, I dismissed
Hector to the inn to procure something in the nature of a litter,
by which he might more easily be conveyed within reach of effectual
assistance.
I was now left for six hours with no other companions than the wounded
gentleman and his dog, upon the very spot upon which he had just
before sustained so ferocious a treatment, probably from the hands of
banditti. They might every moment be expected to return. This was no
agreeable notion to a person circumstanced as I was. I was compelled
to feel that a man possessed of boundless and illimitable wealth,
and of the power of repelling old age and disease, did not in these
advantages possess every thing. Notwithstanding the disappointments
and mortifications I had sustained, I was yet attached to life: and
though the bequests of the stranger had hitherto produced to me nothing
but evil, I still looked, with almost puerile eagerness and beating
of heart, for the time when I might spread out the whole extent of
my treasures without parsimony or the dread of reverse. During the
interval which I employed in these reflections, the wounded man was for
the most part in a state of insensibility, and constantly speechless.
I expected his death every moment, and I perceived, as I thought
with certainty, that there was no hope of his recovery. While we had
dressed his wounds, the dog had watched our motions with the most
restless attention, and, now that it was over, he came and licked my
hands, and laid himself down at my feet. The least motion however, so
much as a rustling among the leaves, startled him: he rose, looked
round, and seemed to enquire into the cause of the disturbance; but he
abstained from barking and every kind of noise; whether it were that
he was conscious of the advantage of quiet to a person in his master’s
condition, or that he had the sense to know, in the situation in which
we were placed, that whatever produced alarm, might eventually expose
us to undiscovered danger.
It was broad daylight before Hector re-appeared, and several other
persons in his company. Hector was not of a temper to have receded
from any thing he undertook, and the authority of Marguerite had in
this instance seconded his remonstrances with the surly and inactive
peasants of the place. I had at this time only one other male servant;
but, when Hector returned, he brought with him a crazy kind of litter,
and a recruit of four mountaineers. The wounded man still lived, and
was conveyed alive to the place at which I had taken up my lodging.
He survived three days; and, during the whole of that period, the dog
could neither be moved by force, nor prevailed on by entreaties, to
quit the apartment of his master. Before his death my unfortunate guest
recovered the power of speech. He told me that his name was Andrea
Filosanto, and, which struck me as somewhat extraordinary, that he
was of Pisa, the very place at which I purposed to take up my abode.
He had a brother resident in that city, and had himself been about to
marry a very beautiful and accomplished young lady, an heiress, of the
house of Carracciuoli in Pisa. Previously to his marriage, he resolved
to make a visit to his mother, who had espoused to her second husband a
French nobleman of Languedoc. He had travelled accompanied only by one
servant, contrary to the persuasions both of his brother and the family
of his intended bride; but that servant, though he had been a very
short time in his employment, was active, ingenious, and obliging, and
had established himself strongly in the favour of his master. Signor
Filosanto had taken with him a sum of money, the produce of one year’s
income of the dower of his mother; and it was but too probable that
the richness of the charge he bore, had been fatal to the life of the
bearer. His servant had disappeared from his side not a quarter of an
hour before his being attacked by the banditti; and various concurring
circumstances seemed to fix on this servant the accusation of being
an accomplice with the murderers. Having heard from the unfortunate
sufferer the tale of treachery of his human attendant, I related to
him the extraordinary example of fidelity and attachment shown by his
dog. The master was struck with the story I told, and called the dog
to him upon his bed. The poor animal first leaped up upon the foot of
the bed, and then warily and with great caution crawled to his master’s
face. Filosanto embraced the dog, who by his manner showed himself
fully sensible of the purport of the action. That very evening, having
requested me to convey his remains to the tomb of his ancestors at
Pisa, the master expired. The dog in dumb and constant grief watched
by the corpse, and followed the vehicle in which it was conveyed to
Pisa. After the funeral, he made the choice, from which he could not
be diverted, of living with me, and not with the brother and relations
of his master, to whom he was almost wholly a stranger, but who would
gladly have received him. One of the advantages I derived from this
adventure, was the friendship and protection of the Filosanti and
Carracciuoli, two of the most powerful families in Pisa.
I have not yet finished the history of my dog. A few months after our
establishment in the Pisan territory, the valet of the deceased had the
audacity to appear in that city. He believed himself to be entirely
unknown there, his master having taken him into his service during his
residence as a student in the university of Bologna; and having ordered
him, previously to his projected tour into France, to stay behind and
settle his debts and other affairs at that place. He found however an
adversary in Pisa that in all his anticipations had never occurred to
his thoughts. The dog saw him at a distance in the street, ran towards
him with incredible swiftness, and fell upon him with savage violence
and ferocity. The man was not extricated from his grip, till he had
been severely and dangerously wounded. Thus assailed, all the terrors
of superstition and an accusing conscience seized on this devoted
villain; he owned who he was, and confessed that he had made one among
the assassins and plunderers of his master, visible probably to the
dog, though unseen by the unfortunate Filosanto. He declared, that he
knew not what motive had brought him to Pisa, that he seemed to himself
under the guidance of an impulse which he had not power to resist,
and that he rejoiced that Providence had thus conducted him to the
expiation of his guilt. He was brought to his trial, and suffered death
for his crime.
Charon, such was the name by which my dog was distinguished, showed
himself in all his actions worthy of the character for attachment and
sagacity which he had in these instances acquired. He was therefore
the favourite of my whole family, and particularly of Hector. But his
own partiality was with the nicest discrimination reserved for me.
The ruling passion of his preceding master had been the sports of
the field, and his leading singularity an uncommon familiarity and
friendship towards his brute attendants. By this conduct he had won
the affections, and perhaps awakened the understanding and virtues,
of the faithful Charon. I own my weakness. I could not resist the
assiduities and regard of this generous brute; and, though I had never
before conceived any extraordinary partiality for creatures of his
species, his sagacity and nobleness of nature took a strong hold of my
affection. I admired his form and agility as he bounded and gamboled
before me upon the plain. In the midst of his gayest frolics he was all
attention, and the least sign I made him would instantly divert his
exertions to a different pursuit. He was accustomed to salute me with
honest, undesigning homage every morning as I came from my chamber, and
I should have missed his presence with heaviness of heart upon this
plain and homely occasion. He was the associate of my solitary walks,
and my companion when pensive meditations induced me to withdraw from
all human society. I became accustomed at such periods to observe him
by my side, and should have felt that all was not right if he were
not there. I was interested in his health, his well-being and his
enjoyments; and, if any calamity befell him, was prepared to feel it
more severely than a wise man is sometimes willing to confess.--It
would scarcely be necessary to add to this simple history of my
faithful Charon, the circumstance of his having saved the life of a
beautiful little boy of ten years old, who had unluckily slipped into
the Arno, and whom he seized by his garments and drew to the shore,
had it not some connection with what I shall speedily have occasion to
relate.