It was no long time after the death of Charon, that Hector came home
one evening in a state of the most violent anxiety and trepidation. He
burst upon me in my study, where I was sitting alone, buried in one of
those deep reveries which, especially since the legacy of the stranger,
had been among the most frequent habits of my mind. His perturbation
was such as to render it impossible for him to impose on himself the
smallest degree of caution and restraint. The noise he made in entering
the apartment startled me. I looked up, and perceived his features
swelled, his face bruised, and his garments disfigured with blood.
“For heaven’s sake, Hector,” exclaimed I, “what is the matter?”
He answered not. He advanced towards the upper end of the room, he took
down a pistol, one of those which I always kept loaded in my apartment,
he came towards me, he fell upon his knees, he tendered the pistol to
my acceptance.
“Hector!” cried I, “what am I to understand? what is the meaning of
this?”
“Kill me, dear master! For Christ’s sake I entreat you to kill me!”
I took the pistol from his hand; it pointed towards the floor.
“And will you not kill me?” in a mournful accent exclaimed he.
“What have you done, that deserves that I should kill you?”
“Kill me! only kill me! pray kill me!” He spread out his hands towards
me with a gesture of intreaty.
“Hector, what means this agitation? what has happened? You terrify me
beyond expression.”
“Must I speak?” replied he. “Must I be the accuser of my guilty self?”
He burst into an agony of tears.
“Would I were dead! Would I had been torn into a thousand pieces,
before this had happened! Indeed, sir, I am innocent! I thought no
harm! Indeed it is not my fault!”
“What have you done? Whence come these bruises and this wound?”
“It is all my fault! It is all my doing,--nobody else! Why will you not
kill me?”
“Hector, I cannot bear this uncertainty. Recollect yourself! Be
pacified! and tell your story!”
“Will you forgive me?”
“Forgive you what? What have you done to deserve my anger?”
“No, no, I do not wish to be forgiven! I only wish you to abhor, to
detest, to curse and to kill me!”
“This is beyond all patience.”
“I never loved any body but you, and my mistress, and my dear young
ladies. I never did any body else the least atom of mischief; and now
my folly will be the ruin of you all!
“Pardon me, sir! I will torment you no longer. I will get the better of
myself, and tell you all that has happened.”
He then informed me, though with many breaks and passionate
interruptions, of what he had just discovered, my evil repute as a
necromancer, the many strange and terrible stories that were circulated
of me, the antipathy universally entertained against me, the active
ferociousness with which this antipathy was accompanied, and the
consequences that he feared would result. He ascribed the whole to
his own imprudence, and to the particulars which the superior cunning
of the donzella, in spite of his invincible refusal to acquaint her
with a single circumstance, had wrung from him. Hector had collected
several of these particulars accidentally from a neighbouring rustic,
and had been vehement in my defence. While they were eager in debate,
others had joined them, but Hector had found them all opponents, not
one a supporter. Irritated with the contest, and the opprobrious
language heaped upon himself and his master, Hector had been provoked
to strike the most insolent of the disputants. Immediately several had
fallen upon him at once, and it was owing to the uncommon strength and
dexterity he possessed, that he had escaped alive out of their hands.
Beside innumerable blows with fist, foot, and stick, he had received
two or three stabs in different parts of the body, from the knives
with which the Italian is too much accustomed to assail his adversary.
It was easy to see that the gallant and generous defence of Hector
had considerably augmented the danger of my situation. They dismissed
him with a thousand execrations against both him and myself, and
vows that they would signalise their vengeance by setting fire to my
house. Having related his story, Hector concluded with again earnestly
conjuring me to kill him, that so he might expiate the imprudence and
folly by which he had made himself the author of my calamity.
The excessiveness of the poor fellow’s distress excited me to employ
every effort to pacify his mind. “Hector,” said I, “you have been
very imprudent, but I foresee no such consequences as your terrified
imagination has led you to forebode. The idle threats of clowns in
the midst of their brawls are entitled to little regard. I am not so
weak and infirm of soul as to be moved from my tranquillity by their
senseless prate. I entertain no doubt of your fidelity and affection.
I am not angry with you. The fault you have been guilty of, arose
from no defect of vigilance or attachment. You did what you could,
and where you failed, it was only in that to which your powers were
not commensurate. You have done well and wisely now, in acquainting
me with particulars and the whole extent of the danger: doubt not but
I will employ such precautions and be so awake to my situation, as to
forestall the possibility of mischief.”
Thus I endeavoured to assuage honest Hector’s perturbation, but with
no adequate effect. He hung his head in sorrow, and refused to be
comforted. Shame and terror assailed him together, and he knew not how
to support their united pressure. He intreated me not to lull myself in
fancied security, and fall blindfold on my ruin. He entreated me not
to forgive him. My clemency and forbearance served only to make him
regard with greater horror the crime of which he had been guilty. If
however I refused to punish him, and by penance or death to lighten the
remorse that hung upon his heart, he would at least devote himself in
opposition to the evil he had created, and die rather than it should
touch a hair of our heads. This idea he seemed to view with some
complacency; but the pleasure it gave was a glimmering and momentary
light; he could not remain in any place for an instant; he wrung his
hands with anguish, and exhibited every feature of the deepest despair.
I examined his bruises and wounds, the latter of which, though attended
with a copious effusion of blood, did not appear to be dangerous. I
warned him to be guilty of no further indiscretion, to betray nothing
of what had happened to any one of my family, and to engage in no
further controversies and broils in my vindication.
Though I endeavoured to make light of what I heard in compassion to
the distress of my servant, yet, when I came to reconsider the subject
in solitude, it by no means appeared to me in a light and trivial
point of view. One part of Hector’s story had related to the death
of Charon, who, I now found, had owed his fate to the superstition
of my uncultivated neighbours. I had always entertained a formidable
idea of the character of an Italian populace, whom I regarded as
more suspicious, sanguinary, and violent than any other race of men
in the world. I deplored my fate that exposed me to their rage. I
deplored my folly that had admitted any confidant into my individual
pursuits, though my confidence had been so limited, and its receiver
so trustworthy, that I could not have imagined any evil would have
resulted. I determined that I would not expose myself to the risk of
such sinister consequences, as in my opinion might in my present
situation easily overtake me. I grieved for the tender health and the
doubtful state of mind of my beloved Marguerite, which alone opposed
themselves to the adoption of an immediate change of scene. In the
state of her health I had been grievously disappointed. I had looked
for amendment; I found decay. The decay however was gradual, almost
imperceptible; from time to time I had even flattered myself that
the progress was in an opposite direction; but the delusion was soon
banished. Another difficulty arose in addition to the rest; Marguerite
appeared pregnant; a circumstance that now first presented itself after
a cessation of ten years.
The morning after the accident and disclosure of Hector I went to Pisa,
determined to consult with the marchese Filosanto, elder brother of
the unfortunate Andrea, who was probably more accurately acquainted
with the Italian character than myself, and understood the shades of
that character, as they were modified in the particular territory
in which I resided. The marchese was a man universally admired for
subtlety of reasoning, vigorousness of comprehension, and refinement
of taste. In the structure of his mind he was scarcely an Italian.
He had resided several years in England, and was the intimate friend
of Henry Howard earl of Surrey, who some time after fell a victim to
the jealous tyranny of his native sovereign, king Henry the Eighth.
The marchese was frank, generous and disinterested, and possessed
more fully the affections of every one within the circle of his
friendship than any other man I ever knew. He was of a sanguine temper,
always contemplating the world on its brightest side; and, from the
generosity of his own heart, incapable of crediting a distant danger,
or of discerning the storm in the embryo cloud where it was silently
engendering.
In the conference we held, I was influenced too implicitly by my
consciousness of his integrity and the gigantic powers of his mind, and
did not sufficiently advert to those peculiarities in his temper which
I have now described. The external facts with which the narrative of
Hector had furnished me I fully detailed to him; as to my particular
pursuits, I contented myself with stating that I indulged freely in
the study of chemistry, and was of those persons, ordinarily accounted
visionaries, who amused themselves with the expectation of finding the
philosopher’s stone. Having heard my story to an end, the marchese
ridiculed my apprehensions. He saw nothing in the facts that alarmed
me, but a cowardly superstition whose utmost flight reached no higher
than the shooting a dog, and a squabble between a boisterous rustic,
and a servant too acutely sensitive for the reputation of his master.
He assured me that the days of such superstition as I contemplated were
long since past, and that his countrymen less deserved the imputation
than any others, as, living at the very centre and source of catholic
imposition, they saw deeper into the mystery, and were not exposed to
the advantage which distance possesses for augmenting our reverence.
He expatiated with great eloquence on the vice of a suspicious temper.
A spirit of alarm and continual apprehension, like the jealousy of
lovers, he said, made the meat it fed on. It brooded over plots that
had no existence but in the wanderings of a disturbed imagination.
It was continually interrupting the quiet of its owner, and the
tranquillity of society; and, for the sake of avoiding imaginary
evils, often plunged into such as were real. He advised me to go home
and be contented. He recommended to me to clear up the clouds of my
mind, and cultivate a light heart, a cheerful temper, and a generous
confidence in the honest sympathies of mankind. In fine, he bade me
continue my pursuits, avoid éclat, and trust in his sagacity that no
ill consequences would ensue.
The remonstrances of the marchese Filosanto led me to suspect that I
had been idly credulous. I had too easily participated the feelings
and apprehensions of a poor uninstructed negro, and had suffered the
secret griefs that brooded in my heart, to discolour my perceptions,
and aggravate the features of circumstances in themselves trifling
or indifferent. I began to be half ashamed of the gloominess of my
conceptions. I could not, alas! follow the advice of the marchese as
to the cheerfulness of my heart; but I could exert myself to prevent
my present melancholy from disfiguring to me every thing I saw. The
influence exercised over my conceptions by persons of eminent intellect
has always been great. Not that the judgment I formed of the powers of
my own mind was peculiarly humble; but I reasoned thus. Perhaps the
person I consult is as well informed in the subject under consideration
as I am, in that case his decision is as fully entitled to attention
as my own; and thus, without cowardly self-contempt on my part, the
general balance of the argument was materially altered. Perhaps,
without being on the whole my superior, he may be more competent to
this particular question. In either case my idea of its merits became
perceptibly modified. I never listened to the sentiments of a man of
talents when they differed from my own, unless where he was evidently
visionary and irrational, without being shaken as to the credit due to
my own view of the subject.
Such then was the effect produced on me by the marchese’s
expostulation. I shook off my apprehensions, and laughed at my fears.
I was ashamed of the want of gallantry that had possessed me, when I
meditated flight from so trivial a menace. I concluded that dangers,
particularly such as arise from the irrational passions of a capricious
multitude, were increased when symptoms of apprehension discovered
themselves, and abated, when received with neglect or repelled with a
magnanimous serenity.