To return to the thread of my narrative, which in stating these
particulars I have in some points anticipated.--I sat down, as I have
already said, in the environs of the city of Pisa. Marguerite, as
well as myself, had a powerful attachment to the retirement of rural
life, and I judged it equally eligible for the health and intellectual
improvement of my daughters. I accordingly purchased a small domain,
delightfully situated, but of simple appearance, on the banks of
the Arno. Here I proposed to remain during the indisposition of my
wife, which I flattered myself retirement, tranquillity, attention
and kindness, would in no long time be able to cure. To this object
I resolved to devote my exertions. Well did she merit this return
from me, who had restored me in the guilty ruin of my fortunes, and
raised me from the abyss of insanity. Odious and detestable in the
utmost degree should I have appeared in my own eyes, if I could have
neglected any means I was able to devise, to heal a mischief of which
my own precipitation, selfishness, and folly were the only causes.
Every little, continual, nameless care I exerted, was as a drop of
healing balm to the burning fever and remorse of my conscience.
Nothing indeed could eradicate my distemper; I felt the ever-living
worm of perpetrated guilt gnawing at my heart. But my solicitudes for
Marguerite, at least during the moments they were in action, mitigated
my anguish; and this transitory relief, however insignificant it may
appear in the eyes of others, I cherished beyond the wealth of kingdoms.
Marguerite and myself appeared at this time to have changed characters.
She was languid, indisposed in body and mind, her thoughts gloomy, her
hopes blasted, her wishes bankrupt. Still however she maintained her
superiority to what I had been in a similar condition. She endeavoured
to make the best of what yet remained to her, though she declined
the vain attempt of forgetting what she had lost. She hung over her
daughters with inexpressible endearment. She consoled them; she
reasoned with them; she endeavoured to steel their minds for whatever
ill might be yet in store. She cultivated their understandings; she
breathed into them mingled sentiments of resignation and energy. There
was in her conversation with them a striking tone of celestial and
divine. Her eloquence was copious; her manner rich, unaffected, and
flowing; her speech simple, free from exaggeration and turbulence,
but mild, affectionate, and winning. It sank deep into the hearts
of her hearers, and seemed to give a new turn to their tempers
and disposition. It rendered the character of Julia at once more
distinctive, and yet more chastised; it inspired an unwonted mildness
and sensibility to that of Louisa; and rendered the cadette of the
family unusually grave, thoughtful, and sedate.
But upon me were devolved the more active occupations of our
establishment. Marguerite had formerly been, I was now, the steward.
Every kind of superintendence, from which the distinction of sex did
not unavoidably exclude me, was resigned to me by the lovely victim of
my indiscretions. Marguerite had been my nurse, I was now ambitious
to be hers. I made myself the schoolmaster of my children; Marguerite
confined her communications to general topics and the culture of the
heart. I initiated them in music, drawing, geography, several different
languages of Europe, and in every accomplishment that I believed would
be really ornamental or improving to them. I might, it is true, have
hired different masters to instruct them in each of these branches,
and it is not impossible that they might then have been better taught,
though I was myself no incompetent preceptor. But I had an honest
artifice for my guide in the plan I adopted: I was desirous of removing
out of the sight of my wife every thing that might remind her of the
fatal legacy, the effects of which she was induced so bitterly to
deplore. In some particulars I may affirm of myself that I was now
a better and a kinder husband, than I had been in the days of our
gayest prosperity, or the scene of our infant loves. I studied with
assiduity the temper of Marguerite; I watched her looks; I endeavoured
to anticipate her every wish. I meditated with care the plan of life,
which her simple and feeling heart, if solely consulted, would have
led her originally to have chosen; and I copied out in the whole
arrangement of our household the idea painted in my mind. Far from us
were now the ostentation and pomp of the family-château on the banks
of the Garonne. We lived now, not to awaken admiration and envy in the
bosom of guests and spectators: we lived for ourselves. Every thing was
elegant; every thing was tasteful; but not an article found its place
in our residence, that did not rest its claim to be there upon a plea
of usefulness. Though, by the nature of my situation, I was superior to
all restraint from a consideration of expense, yet our competent board
and orderly habitation approached nearer in their appearance to the
honest plainness of a rustic, than to the sumptuousness of hereditary
nobility. A table set out with striking propriety and neatness was
preferred to the richness of plate and the splendour of porcelain and
lustres. I was anxious that Marguerite should forget the change of our
situation and the extent of my resources. The objects of my present
pursuit were obscurity and content. That Marguerite might forget my
acquisition, I was studious to appear to have forgotten it myself. If a
stranger had entered our habitation, and surveyed our economy, he would
have judged that our revenues amounted to a decent competence, and that
we disbursed them with a judicious discretion. Nothing was to be seen
that would have betrayed the possessor of the powder of projection.
We had no guests. We cultivated no acquaintance. We were formed to
suffice to each other within our little circle; and, but for the
importunate recurrence of disquieting reflections, we should have
done so. To look at the exterior of our household, it might have been
thought that we had arrived at that sweet forgetfulness of anxious
care, that delicious leisure and unbroken retreat, which have in all
ages been the theme of panegyric to poets and philosophers. But it
was not so. Our reciprocal relations were changed; and the hope of
the house of St. Leon was no longer in the midst of us, to cheer, to
enlighten, and to warm our bosoms.
A life of leisure is often an active and a busy life. The grand, I
might almost say the single, object of present attention to me, was
the restoration of the health and tranquillity of Marguerite. For that
I watched with unwearied assiduity. Subordinate to this occupation
were the different arts and accomplishments in which I instructed my
daughters. Yet neither the former nor the latter of these engagements
filled up all the time of a mind so restless and rapid as mine was.
Intervals occurred, in which my attentions to Marguerite would have
been, not soothing, but troublesome, and in which I could no longer
impart a lesson to my daughters, without relaxing and weakening the
spring of progression in their minds. These intervals I sometimes
dedicated to chemistry and the operations of natural magic. The more
effectually to hide these pursuits from the eye of Marguerite, I
occupied, unknown to her, a sort of grotto, buried almost from human
observation in a hollow on the banks of the river, and which was
connected, by a winding path and a concealed subterranean passage,
with the garden of my own habitation. The secrets of the stranger had
given me a particular relish for this kind of pursuit. There are habits
of the mind and modes of occupying the attention, in which, when once
we have engaged, there seems a sort of physical impossibility of ever
withdrawing ourselves. This was my case in the present instance. My
habit was of no long standing. But no reading of my story, no mere
power of language and words, can enable a bystander to imagine how
deep it was sunk into my heart, how inextricably it was twisted with
all the fibres of my bosom. That he may in some degree enter into my
situation, I entreat the reader to consider what are the most imperious
passions of the human mind. They have rudely been described to be
wealth, power, and pleasurable sensation. How alluring to every one
of us are the visionary conceptions of the mind respecting these most
potent excitements! But mine were no visions. I had grasped them in
my hand, and known their reality. I had felt that the wealth of the
whole world was at my disposal, and that I held my life by a tenure
independent and imperial. These are not of the class of conceptions
that fade and perish from the mind. We cannot wake from them as from
a dream, and forget that ever such things were. They had changed the
whole constitution of my nature. It would have required a miracle,
greater than all the consecrated legends of our church record, to have
restored me to what I formerly was. If then I could have resolved never
henceforth to use the gifts I had received, I yet firmly believe that
I never could have refrained from the composition and decomposition of
simples, and from experiments on the nature of substances, chemical
and metallic. I was however far from having formed any such resolution
as that I have named. My present forbearance to bring forth the secret
treasure of my powers was purely an accommodation to the unhappy
condition of my wife; and I felt it as a meritorious exertion thus to
postpone the use of the faculties I possessed. In the mean time the
amusement I sought, that I regarded as properly and entirely my own,
consisted in these experiments. While I was busied with my crucible, I
was able more vividly to present to myself my seeming superiority to
the rest of my species. I used the employments of my grotto, as a sort
of starting-post from which to set forth in a series of intoxicating
reveries; not to mention that to improve in the facility of my secret
operations might become a valuable subsidiary to the pursuits of my
future life.
I took occasionally as my companion at these periods the negro of the
prison of Constance. I found him sufficiently adapted for my purpose;
his innocence and implicit obedience to whomever he served, rendering
me secure that he would anticipate nothing, that he would conjecture
nothing, that he would rest in what he saw, that I might almost
exhibit my whole process under his eye, without once awakening the
busy fiend of curiosity in a mind to which science had never unveiled
her charms. He was formed to be a pure, passive machine in the hands
of his employer, only with this singular difference from the lifeless
machine of the engineer or mechanical inventor, that he was susceptible
of attachment and affection, as well as of a certain species of
contentment and a certain species of goodness and virtue.
A feature of my individual character which has already frequently
presented itself to the attention of the reader is the love of
admiration and spontaneous deference. I am at this moment ashamed of
my vices and my follies; but it must be recollected, in the first
place, that they are human, and in the second that I am writing, not
their vindication, but their history. In the midst of my experiments
and chemical lucubrations, I could not help sometimes ostentatiously
exhibiting to Hector the wonders of my art, and those extraordinary
effects which have in all ages drawn upon the more eminent operators of
natural magic the reproach of being necromancers and conjurers. This I
did, partly perhaps that my attendant might learn to look up to me with
a kind of nameless respect and awe, but partly also that I might divert
myself with the simplicity of his nature, and the gaping and motionless
astonishment with which he viewed my performances. If I had not done
this, or digressed into idle and ostentatious experiments, he would
otherwise have seen enough, in the operations in which his assistance,
if not absolutely necessary, was extremely convenient, to have induced
a person, so void of the meanest European information, to regard me as
assisted by and in league with invisible powers.
The prejudice against me, with which this poor fellow had been
impressed at the commencement of our intercourse did not long hold out,
in his ingenuous mind, against the more favourable sentiments which my
present situation and mode of living were calculated to inspire. The
specimens he had hitherto seen of European society were of the most
unfavourable kind. His first master was a wretch of brutal disposition,
ferocious and insolent; disdaining to reason himself, and impatient of
remonstrance in others. This man had exercised the temper of his humble
and honest attendant with every variety of savage caprice; and, having
tired the restlessness of his own gloomy tyranny, without being able to
exhaust the modest and unexampled patience of his servant, had finished
by throwing him into gaol, upon a wanton and groundless charge of
dishonesty. This, which was intended as a further exercise of tyranny,
deserved to be hailed by the poor sufferer as a period of jubilee and
deliverance. His innocence, as I have already related, was speedily
recognised by his new task-master, who accordingly exerted himself to
obtain justice for the friendless victim; and from a reputed thief
proposed to elevate him to the rank of a turnkey. Hector had neither
kindred nor patron to assist him; the outcast of a gaol, he must again
have entered the world with a blasted character. Thus circumstanced,
and influenced beside by gratitude to the unlooked-for liberality of
his deliverer, he willingly accepted the situation proposed to him.
With his new master, who, not less unprincipled, was less tyrannical
than his predecessor, the humbleness of his hopes taught him to be
contented. Yet in the bosom of the gaoler all his fidelity and regard
could not enable him to detect one positive virtue; and, within the
walls of the prison, there had existed nothing that could by any
possibility cherish and refresh the human heart.
The scene presented to Hector’s observation in our little retreat, on
the banks of the Arno, was of a very different nature. To his frank
and affectionate spirit, it appeared a perfect paradise. He had yet
scarcely been acquainted with any but the refuse of mankind, from the
infection of whose vices his unapprehensive and invincible simplicity
had been his only safeguard; and he was now suddenly introduced to
the presence and intercourse of the most perfect of her sex. He loved
her as a benefactor, and he worshipped her as a god. There is no
receipt for begetting affection in others, so infallible as a warm
and susceptible heart. Hector accordingly soon became in a remarkable
degree the favourite of my daughters. His temper was naturally cheerful
and gay; and, warmed by their encouragement, it became a thousand
times more so. When he had completed the occupations of the day, the
lightness of his spirit would prompt him to sing and dance for ever. He
exhibited the whole circle of his sportive games for their amusement.
The infantine innocence of his understanding remarkably adapted him to
be the butt of their little waggeries and mischiefs. Whatever tricks
were played upon him, were however tempered by the forbearance and
regard his worth demanded; while the obstreperous cheerfulness with
which he would second their mirth, when most ignorant of its occasion,
gave uncommon zest to the amusement, and furnished eternal provocation
to the prolonging and varying its features.
Let not the fastidious reader complain of the inconsistency of this
part of my picture, or censure the levity of my daughters. I am not
writing a tragedy, but a history. Sad grief and melancholy cannot, and
ought not, for ever to reign in the human face or the human heart.
No daughters ever loved a mother more entirely, more fervently, than
Marguerite was loved by her children. They were unwearied in their
attention to her: often was their pillow watered with tears, occasioned
by the sad presentiment of the loss they were destined to sustain.
But the human mind, particularly in the season of youth, has an
unconquerable principle of elasticity in its frame. The bow cannot be
kept for ever on the stretch; and, when the whole soul appears to be
bent down by calamity to the grave, it will often surprisingly recover
its vigour and renew its strength. The ingenuous nature of these poor
girls led them indeed occasionally to reproach themselves with these
moments of cheerfulness as with a crime. But it was no crime. None
but the uncharitably rigorous and morose will charge it upon them as
a crime. It interfered with no duty; it diminished no affection; it
had no tendency to harden their hearts. It was a tax they paid to the
imperfectness of our nature; it was a tribute of gratitude to that God
who, while he deals out to us the most terrible calamities, fails not
to mix with the copious draught some solitary drops of beneficence.
Julia alone, whose temper was constitutionally serious and soft,
entered little into these sports, of which her youngest sister was
the eternal leader and untired partaker. Yet even upon the grave
countenance of Julia they would sometimes provoke an unwilling smile,
which upon her countenance sat with uncommon lustre.
The hilarity and loveliness which Hector found in the midst of my
family instigated and increased the attachment he began to feel for
myself. He could not believe that the father of such daughters, and
the chosen husband of such a consort, could be destitute of a title to
be loved. He reasoned in his own way upon the attempt I had made to
corrupt his fidelity, an attack which he never thoroughly digested. I
have reason to believe that his attendance upon my chemical processes,
and the wonders I occasionally showed to excite his astonishment, did
not tend to elevate me in his good opinion. But he could not avoid
witnessing in me many of the virtues of a good husband and a good
father, and these, so new to his observation, strongly impressed him in
my favour. The regularity of my habits and the mildness of my carriage
were also calculated to win his affection and esteem. Never had the
poor fellow’s affections been so forcibly called out as they were in
his new situation; and he would cheerfully have stretched out his neck
to the assassin’s knife, to have warded off impending evil from the
meanest of us.
Prosperity and ease have often been found the parents of wishes and
inclinations unfelt before. Adversity is the season of sober thought,
calls home the erratic mind, and teaches us to be cheaply satisfied.
But the man who has many gratifications is apt to wander in imagination
from daily and familiar joys, and confidently to reach after things
yet untried. Such was the situation of Hector: Hector was in love. Our
sweet and simple mansion was distant scarcely more than two hundred
yards from a characteristic Italian village. The maid of a little
_albergo_ in this place had caught his inexperienced heart. He had
been invited by some peasants to a moonlight festivity on the lawn
of the _albergo_; and, though I should have been better pleased that
my servants should decline this sort of amusement, I could not have
the heart to deny him. It was, so far as I knew, the first and the
last time that Hector had ever resorted to it. But I was deceived.
Hector had proved the gayest and most amusing of the whole circle. His
cheerfulness was inexhaustible, and his mirth in the utmost degree
harmless and good humoured. He had played a thousand antics, and danced
with an agility that knew no end. In a word, the accomplishments of
Hector, in spite of the jetty hue that stained his face, had won the
heart, or roused the coquetry, of the plump and rosy bar-maid. The
overtures she made and the lures she threw out were too glaring to
escape the notice even of the modest Hector. He felt himself flattered,
such is human nature, at suddenly becoming an object of admiration and
preference to a woman, whom his imagination, stimulated by her visible
partiality, attired in a hundred charms. He owned himself hers, in all
fair and honest fealty, to the world’s end.
Love taught Hector a lesson which he had never learned before. In
nature he was frank, and, as far as fidelity to his master permitted
it, wore his heart as naked as his face. Love taught him dissimulation.
A vulgar footman or clown is as forward as the most empty beau, in
boasting of the triumphs he has gained over the female heart, and in
sacrificing the reputation of those who have loved him at the shrine
of his vanity. Not such was Hector. He shut Up his new sensations
and reveries as a sacred deposit in his bosom. Nature worked within
him, and he would have been ashamed to speak, and distressed to hear,
of emotions, now felt, till now never experienced. His artless and
ingenuous temper in this one particular assumed the guise of cunning.
Never did he tell his love in the ear of any indifferent auditor;
assiduously did he avoid pronouncing even the name of her to whom he
was attached. In any other case he would have announced to me his
inclinations, and previously demanded my leave of absence for his
excursions. But love seemed to him imperiously to command privacy, and
he employed every imaginable precaution to prevent me and all human
beings from knowing whither he went, or that he was absent at all.
In one of his visits to his fair _donzella_, he happened incautiously
to drop some very remote hint of the scenes in which he had just
been engaged with me in my secret grotto. The curiosity of the girl
was strongly roused; she questioned him further. He started, and was
terrified to recollect what he had said. I had strictly enjoined him
secrecy towards every member of my family: my precaution had extended
no further; for, as I have said, I scarcely knew that he had the most
casual intercourse with any person beyond my own roof. But Hector
naturally dreaded that what I was so earnest to conceal from every one
in my house he would be highly to blame to communicate to a stranger.
He therefore peremptorily refused, and with many signs of distress, to
say another word on the subject.
The _donzella_, piqued at his resistance, had recourse to female arts.
She was cruel; she uttered words of sharp displeasure and disdain;
she knew that a person who refused her such a trifle could not have
an atom of regard for her; she commanded him never to see her more.
Unsuccessful in these expedients, she had recourse to expedients of
a different sort. She wept; she called him base, false-hearted and
unkind; she saw he was determined to be the death of her; she was
seized with strong fits of sobbing and hysterical affection. In the
midst of all this he was as unmoved as a rock of marble. He interpreted
every thing that passed in its most literal form; he felt more severely
her unkindness, and sympathised more truly in her distress, than
perhaps any human creature would have done. But no further could she
gain upon him. The confidence of his master was in question, and he
would sooner have died upon the rack, than run the slightest risk of
betraying it.
From these arts she descended to arts more congenial to the habits
of her life. She summoned all her skill to perplex him with cunning
and insidious questions. From her questions he ought to have fled;
but of this Hector was incapable. He was distressed by her severity,
he grieved for the unintentional pain he had caused her. All these
circumstances melted his heart; and he could not resolve upon any thing
that was not considerate and respectful towards her. As the framing
of artful questions was the strong-hold of the _donzella_, and she
might have challenged in this article the most hoary practitioner of
the quibbling bar, so it was exactly the weakest side upon which poor
Hector could be attacked. His simplicity yielded him up a defenceless
prey to the assailant; least of all human undertakings was he capable
of detecting the various faces of a doubtful question, and of guarding
himself against the traps of an insidious foe. It was not till the
fourth interview from Hector’s original hint, that the _donzella_
had recourse to this species of attack; and she did not withdraw her
forces, till she had extorted from him all he knew.
When Hector found that all his guards were baffled and put to flight,
he had then recourse to the only expedient that remained, conjuring
her by every thing sacred and every thing tremendous, not to betray a
trust she had so ungenerously obtained from him. She readily promised
every thing he desired. Soothed by her compliance, he determined not to
mention to me the lapse of which he had been guilty. It would in his
opinion have been little less than treason, to suspect his Dulcinea
of indiscretion or frailty. In the breast of this miracle of nature
was not his loyalty as secure as it could be even in his own? Why then
should he betray the secret of his love, which had never yet been
confided even to the senseless air? Why should he subject himself to
the inconceivable anguish and confusion, of owning, where my interests,
or where my wishes were concerned, that he had been found tripping and
imperfect? Why should he inflict a pain, or cause in me a fear, which
he knew, and he only could know, was groundless? Thus it happened that
I had one more confident of what I purposed should be secret, than I
was myself in the smallest degree advertised of.
The consequences of this indiscretion of my servant were not slow
in rendering themselves visible. The _donzella_ was by no means so
scrupulous or delicate in her sentiments, as my humble, but faithful,
attendant. As she had given her company to Hector, she had had an
opportunity of observing in him such integrity and goodness of heart,
as could not fail to extort the esteem of any human being. She really
honoured him; she was unwilling to give him any cause of uneasiness.
But she had another lover; perhaps she had more. The laws of chastity
she regarded as prejudices, and believed they were never formed for
persons in her situation in society. She was of opinion that the more
lovers she had, provided she satisfied them all, the more completely
did she improve the talents with which Heaven had endowed her. Few
women have any secrets for the man they admit to their embraces. In an
hour of amorous dalliance she communicated to Agostino, the ostler, all
that she knew of the conjurations and spells of Monsieur Boismorand,
such was the name I had assumed upon my entrance into Italy. Her
communication was probably attended with cautions, imitated from those
with which Hector had so industriously loaded the _donzella_ in the
preceding example. Perhaps the _illustrissimo Agostino_ had another
mistress, with whom he thought it would be unjust to practise greater
reserves than the _donzella_ had done with him. Be that as it will, the
rumours which were whispered to my prejudice speedily got air; and,
it may be, were repeated with the greater avidity, on account of the
mystery that attended them, and the injunctions of secrecy with which
they were accompanied.