Before the dawn of the succeeding morning I turned my face towards
Lucca. I beheld the last cloud of mingling smoke and flame ascend
from the ashes of my villa. The blaze sunk, its materials were nearly
consumed, and it yielded an uncertain and fitful light only, when
I withdrew from being any longer the melancholy and heart-wounded
spectator of the ruin. I took an everlasting leave of the marchese. I
had been introduced to him under a friendly aspect, as the man who had
had courage to perform the last offices of humanity to his unfortunate
brother; and he had conceived a warm affection for me. The painful
nature of the catastrophe he had witnessed melted his heart, and he
earnestly pressed me to draw upon him for any supplies I wanted,
or rather to receive from him a sum equivalent to the damage the
superstition of his countrymen had inflicted on me. This I positively
refused; but I found it impossible to silence his importunity, till I
submitted to the duplicity of promising that, if I found myself reduced
to any necessity, I would not fail to apply to him. It was in the very
moment of our separation that intelligence was brought me of the fate
of Hector. The reader may imagine with how heavy a heart I set out on
my journey.
Lucca is about seventeen miles from the city of Pisa; from the
place where I had spent the greater part of this memorable night it
was twenty. The marchese made me promise to take a serpentine and
circuitous route, the more completely to elude the possibility of
future danger. An adventure occurred to me in this passage, with the
relation of which I will not interrupt my narrative, which prevented me
from arriving at Lucca till the noon of the following day. Suffice it
to say, that it was of such a nature, that, impatient as I was under my
present extraordinary circumstances to rejoin my family, I should have
held myself destitute of every atom of humanity, if I had not submitted
to this short delay.
Short as it was, I found, when I reached Lucca, that my evil genius
had been busy to accumulate for me new misfortunes. Marguerite and her
daughters were wholly unknown in this place; and the intelligence of
the Pisan riot having reached Lucca in the course of the day, it was
related to my wife, as to a hearer unconcerned, with all its horrid
circumstances and the calamitous fate of our generous Hector, by the
hostess of the inn. The rapidity of events, during the last part of
our residence in the Pisan territory, was such as to have obliged me
to say little of the effect they produced upon Marguerite. But the
reader can scarcely be so inadvertent and unreflecting, as not easily
to imagine to himself that she felt them in the highest degree painful
and overwhelming. This last blow was too much. Marguerite had been some
months pregnant. She was immediately seized with the pains of labour,
and delivered of a dead child. The first intelligence communicated to
me upon my arrival was that my wife was dying.
Lucca however did not witness the period of her existence. After having
continued for several days upon the very extremity, as it were, between
life and death, she grew perceptibly better; and in a week more, though
in a very feeble state, it became apparent that her case was not a
rapid one. We agreed to proceed upon our Spanish voyage. It appeared
not improbable that the sea-air might be found beneficial, and the
experiment was warmly recommended by her physicians. They were not
however aware of the whole extent of her disorder. During the voyage
her crisis returned with such malignant symptoms, as scarcely to permit
us the hope she would reach the land alive. We debarked at Barcelona on
the 14th of April 1546.
We had no sooner taken up our abode in this city than, fully aware
of the state of her disease, she assembled her daughters, and poured
forth to them without restraint that flood of affection, that ardent
spirit of love, by which she was distinguished and elevated above
every creature that lived. Her mind was clear, her intellectual powers
were complete and entire. The enthusiasm with which she now expressed
herself was not of that inconsiderate nature which should tend to make
them feel with greater acuteness the loss they were about to sustain.
It was bright, unclouded and serene. It was the eloquence as of a
disembodied spirit, freed from the perturbation and alloy of human
passions. She reminded them that they were sisters, and exhorted each
to fulfil the duties of a sister and a mother to the other two. If
wise and good, they would be happy in each other, and their little
association would be a school, preparing them for the more genuine and
venerable duties for which nature had destined them. Her views of all
human things were altered by her present situation on the brink of the
grave. Our reserves and misunderstandings had wrung her heart; but she
forgave me. Things which had lately appeared of the highest magnitude
and moment, faded in the distance, and mingled with the vulgar crowd
of human concerns which was now retiring from her view: she must again
return, she said, to life, before she could again feel the passions
and the interests of this petty scene. For the sake of her daughters
she had lately desired to live. She was now reconciled and content to
die. She had formed the chain and link of connection between me and
my girls; perhaps it was better that we should burst our fetters and
be free. On the fourth day after our arrival at Barcelona Marguerite
expired.
There is nothing in the vast variety of objects which this wretched
world presents to our view so dreadful and distressing as the sight of
one we have loved, but who is now no more. I saw, these eyes beheld,
the lifeless corse of Marguerite. Great God of heaven! what is man?
and of what are we made? Within that petty frame resided for years all
that we worship, for there resided all that we know and can conceive of
excellence. That heart is now still. Within the whole extent of that
frame there exists no thought, no feeling, no virtue. It remains no
longer, but to mock my sense and scoff at my sorrow, to rend my bosom
with a woe, complicated, matchless and inexpressible. The cheek is pale
and livid; the eyes are sunk and circled with blackness. Corruption
and ruin have already seized their prey and turned it into horror.
Draw, for heaven’s sake, draw the pall over those lifeless features!
Bury, bury them deep in the bowels of the earth! Let not my imagination
follow them into the chambers of the grave, and dwell amidst
pestilential damps and all the series of destruction! Let me recollect
all that Marguerite was as she lived, her numerous accomplishments,
her unparalleled virtues,--ay, in all the magnitude and wealth of
their detail,--for that is a divine and celestial madness: but let me
not recollect her as I saw her on the bier, lest I become raving and
blaspheme!
I have no power to talk of the situation in which I was now placed, and
the reader must therefore explain it for himself,--if he can. I never
loved but once; I never loved but Marguerite. All other affection is
stillness and ice compared with this. This is the great crisis of my
history, the gap between life and death, the gulf that cut me off for
ever from every thing that deserves the name of human. Such was the
legacy of the stranger! my son an exile, myself publicly arraigned as
a murderer, the unmerited and tragical death of Hector, the premature
and self-deriving loss of the better half of my soul! Who would have
believed that this envenomed gift would, in less than two years, have
thus dreadfully changed the face of my affairs, and destroyed every
thing that composed the happiness of my life?
After some delay in this wretched and ill-omened town of Barcelona
(such it has ever since appeared to my thoughts), we proceeded to
Madrid. The reader will give me credit, when I tell him that, however
eager I had lately felt to exhibit my magnificence and my wealth,
I had no such eagerness now. I speak no more of the character of
Marguerite; I attempt not to compose her panegyric. The story of her
life is the best record of her virtues. Her defects, if defects she
had, drew their pedigree from rectitude of sentiment and perception,
from the most generous sensibility, from a heart pervaded and leavened
with tenderness. A simple stone in the western aisle of the great
church at Barcelona records her personal and her family name, with this
single addition, THE PRESERVER OF HER FAMILY IN POVERTY AND RUIN, THE
VICTIM OF HER DISCONSOLATE AND REPENTANT HUSBAND’S UNHALLOWED WEALTH.
But, dismissing for ever, and henceforth consigning to unviolated
silence her excellencies, could I avoid feeling that I could never
again form a similar, or indeed any real union, so long as I existed?
Being now indeed more than forty years of age, having spent near twenty
of that forty in a most enviable wedlock, and being blessed with a
sufficiently numerous offspring, it may be thought perhaps I might be
contented. But, without discussing the propriety of such a maxim as it
relates to the species in general, it must be recollected in my case
that my youth was to be recommenced by a perpetual series of renewals.
I never gave credit to that axiom of a sickly sensibility, that it is a
sacrilege, in him who has been engaged in one cordial and happy union,
ever to turn his thoughts to another. Much more reasonable than this is
the Indian doctrine, that the survivor ought to leap into the flames,
and perish upon the funeral pyre of the deceased. While we live, it
is one of our most imperious duties to seek our happiness. He that
dedicates his days to an endless sorrow is the worst and most degraded
of suicides. It is an important question in the economy of human life,
up to what age we should allow ourselves to contract engagements to a
wife and a probable offspring: but, separately from this consideration,
I should hold that in many cases he who entered into a second marriage,
by that action yielded a pure and honourable homage to the manes of the
first. But from genuine marriage I was henceforth for ever debarred.
An immortal can form no true and real attachment to the insect of an
hour.
Mourning, a depressing and speechless regret, was yet the inmate of our
house. Grief does not commonly lay a strong and invincible hold of us
in the morning of our days; and, though the temper of Julia was perhaps
at her age the most tender and susceptible I ever knew, even she, who
was now in her seventeenth year, reaped the benefit of that elasticity
which in early life is the portion of humanity. Nothing material
occurred to us in the first three months of our residence in Madrid.
It was impossible for any one to be surrounded with a more lovely and
blooming family than I was.
Yet from happiness I was immeasurably distant. Exclusively of my recent
and in every sense irreparable loss, my mind was full of dark and
gloomy forebodings. I feared not for myself, but I had an unconquerable
alarm and apprehension for my children. My youngest was but ten years
of age; the eldest was not seventeen. Sweet, tender blossoms, that
the cruelty and hardness of mankind might so easily blight, and that
required a concurrence of favourable circumstances to ripen into all
they were capable of becoming! When I recollected what had happened in
the course of the last two years, I could not flatter myself that our
misfortunes were at an end, or that I had not, to speak moderately,
many fierce trials yet to encounter. I seemed, like the far-famed
tree of Java, to be destined to shelter only to destroy, and to prove
a deadly poison to whatever sought its refuge under my protecting
branches. In this melancholy frame of mind the last words of my
adored Marguerite passed and repassed ten thousand times through my
recollection. “She had formed the chain and link of connection between
me and my girls; perhaps it was better that we should burst our fetters
and be free.”
Whatever she had said was sacred to the present temper of my
imagination: her last behest I would have died to execute. The idea
contained in the sentence I have just repeated was ambiguous and
obscure, rather hinted, than expressed. But was it worthy of the
less attention, because its author, with her usual gentleness and
sweetness, had modestly suggested an advice, instead, which she was
well entitled to have done, of prescribing a will? I determined to
part with my children, that I might no longer be to them a source of
corroding misery and affliction. I believed that the cloud that now
oppressed me was transitory. I seemed pursued for the present by a
malignant genius; but a man, endowed as I was with unbounded wealth and
immortal vigour, cannot easily be reduced to despair. When the tide of
my prosperity should unfold its rich and ample current, I might easily
communicate of its bounty to my daughters. If I parted with them now, I
did not lose them as I had perhaps lost their brother for ever. I could
turn to a particular point, and say, “There lies my soul!” I could cast
my eye upon a projection of the globe, and put my finger upon their
residence. Wherever I wandered, whether I were plunged in a dungeon or
mounted a throne, my heart, like the mariner’s needle, would tremble
towards that point as its cynosure. I had still something to love,
something to pant for, something to dream about, and be happy.
Having ruminated insatiably upon the last expressions of Marguerite,
having formed my commentary, and fixed my predilection, I recollected
a person, then a young woman upon my paternal estate, for whom my
wife had conceived a remarkable friendship. She was the daughter
of a peasant, her birth had been low, and her education confined.
But she had taste, she had discretion, she had integrity, I think I
may add, she had genius. As Marguerite had discovered her merits,
and distinguished her from her equals, she had been of great use to
this extraordinary rustic in unfolding her mind, and guiding her
propensities. This was not so much a matter of deliberate and meditated
purpose in _la dame du seigneur_; it rose out of the circumstances of
their situation. They were almost of an age; and Marguerite frequently
invited her to be the associate of her studies and amusements. Mariana,
that was her name, did not perhaps resemble my wife considerably in her
features, but her stature was the same, her complexion and the colour
of her hair. The similarity in carriage and gesture, Mariana having
never had an opportunity of contemplating the accomplishments she
admired in any one but madame de St. Leon, was still more striking.
There were points indeed in which no human creature could compare with
Marguerite, the expressive and flexible tone of her voice, and those
cadences, which sprung from, and communicated to every susceptible
hearer, the divinest sensibility. One of the unhappy consequences
of our exile from the Bordelois was the misfortunes of Mariana. Her
father had fallen to decay. To relieve his distress she had contracted
a marriage, not of sentiment and predilection, but with a man who had
promised her that her father should never come to want. This marriage
had been unhappy. The husband was a prodigal and a profligate. A period
of seven years however delivered her from her Egyptian bondage. She
had but lately become a widow; and the prudence and integrity of her
conduct had rendered this alliance, which to many women would have
proved a rock of destruction, an additional source of honour and
respect. Mariana, at the death of her husband, had no children; she had
buried her father; she was consequently entirely alone.
It was this woman I fixed upon as the protector of my daughters. I was
better pleased with the meanness of her extraction, than I should have
been with one of the high-born descendants of the houses of St. Leon
or Damville, had it been my fortune to have had in the female line any
near relations on either side. My daughters were no longer children;
they were singularly prudent, considerate, and unimpeachable in their
conduct and propensities. They wanted a protector in the eye of the
world; it was desirable for them that they should have an adviser; but
I should have been grieved and mortified to give them a dictator.
I wrote to Mariana Chabot, communicating my project, and requesting her
to give us the meeting at St. Lizier on the frontiers of France. She
was delighted with the office I tendered to her acceptance, and readily
consented to every thing I required. I conducted my daughters to the
place of rendezvous without imparting to them the design by which I
was actuated; I believed that they would of their own motion conceive
a partiality for the friend of their mother. I was not deceived in my
prognostic; the meeting was an interesting one. The eyes of Mariana
overflowed at meeting, after so long an interval, the husband and
progeny of the dearest and most revered friend she had ever known; the
mourning we wore reminded her how lately her incomparable patroness had
been committed to the grave. My girls were struck with the resemblance
of Mariana to their mother. Accident had prevented us from cultivating
almost any intimate connections out of our own family from the period
of our exile; my girls had therefore never met with a person who
approached in any degree so near their mother in accomplishments, in
skill, in turn of thinking and opinion. Mariana came up to my warmest
hopes as a protector and companion for my children; her unhappy
marriage, by concentrating her thoughts and expectations in herself,
had perhaps rendered her more exemplary in carriage, and more elevated
in sentiment, than she would ever have been without it.
At St. Lizier I passed myself for monsieur Valmier, the guardian of
the orphan heiresses of St. Leon. It fortunately happened that my
paternal estate was at this time upon sale. I determined to become the
purchaser, and to settle my girls in the scene of their nativity. I
procured an agent, and despatched him with an ample commission for that
purpose. Having adjusted this point, I resolved to make a tour with my
daughters, through Languedoc, Dauphiné, and the provinces usually known
by the denomination of the south of France. I wished to familiarise
them to the society of madame Chabot, and to assist them in discerning
her merits under a variety of points of view. I asked them whether they
would not be delighted to obtain her as a companion, who might assist
and conduct them in such points as only a woman of understanding and
experience is competent to. They, every one of them, listened to the
idea with pleasure.
At length I received the information that the purchase of St. Leon was
completed, and I proceeded to the critical disclosure that my daughters
were on the point of being separated from their father. They listened
to the communication with astonishment and terror. They had entered
successively into the feelings of their deceased mother, and I am well
persuaded felt a less ardent attachment to my person than they had done
at the cottage of the lake of Constance. But, culpable and criminal as
I had been, I was not destitute of every virtue, and they could not
extinguish in themselves the respect they had so long entertained for
me. Habit has a resistless empire over the human mind; and, when we
reflect with how much reluctance we consent to the removal of a tree
or a hedge, to the sight of which we have been accustomed, it will not
be wondered at that my daughters could not calmly think of so complete
a separation from their father. The impression of their mother’s death
was yet green, and to lose me, was to become orphans a second time.
But I had fully meditated my plan, and was peremptory. That I might
withhold from them no advantage it was in my power to confer, I gave
them Bernardin for their superintending bailiff and steward of their
property. Our parting was not less painful and melancholy, than its
occasion was extraordinary and its mode uncommon. It took place at the
town of Montauban.
I saw my dear children set forward on their journey, and I knew not
that I should ever behold them more. I was determined never again
to see them to their injury; and I could not take to myself the
consolation,--on such a day, in such a month, or even after such
a lapse of years, I will again have the joy to embrace them. In a
little while they were out of sight, and I was alone. The reader will
perhaps agree with me, that no man had more exquisitely enjoyed the
dearest ties of society than I had, and that perhaps few men were ever
better formed to enjoy them. This complete and dreadful separation,
this stroke that seemed to cut me off abruptly from every thing most
valuable that the earth contains, was not the result of any of the
ordinary necessities of human life. Still less was it the dictate of
alienation or indifference. No; it was the pure effect of love, of a
love so strong, complete, and uncontrollable, as inflexibly to refuse
every thing that could be injurious to its objects. I own I could not
thus have parted with Marguerite. Her idea was mingled with the vital
springs of my existence; and scarcely any power less resistless than
death could have made me consent to pass an entire day without her
society. But then it is to be considered, that my daughters were in
the morning of life; their hopes were untarnished, their prospects not
obscured by a single cloud; and that the crime would probably have been
greater, obstinately to have made them the partners of my misfortunes
and disgrace. There are persons who will regard this passage in my
history as culpable, and the testimony of a cold and unsusceptible
heart. I contemplate it, even at this distance of time, as the noblest
and most virtuous effort of my life; and a thousand circumstances have
occurred since, to induce me to congratulate myself that I had the
courage to achieve my purpose.