The first employment in which I purposed to engage my new-found liberty
and youth, was a visit to my daughters. I now carried a disguise
perpetually about with me, that would render my journey incapable of
proving injurious to them. My daughters were all that remained, if
indeed they still remained, of my once idolised family. For twelve
years I had continued totally ignorant of their fortune, and even of
their existence. Part of the plan I had adopted for their advantage
necessarily precluded me from all correspondence or communication
with them or any one near them, that might satisfy and tranquillise
the anxieties of a father. If it had been otherwise, deprived, as
I had been, of the common benefits of light and air, and cast out
from the society of mankind, I could have obtained no intelligence
of their welfare. In visiting, I determined not to make myself known
to them; yet, notwithstanding the greatness of this disadvantage, I
felt that one of the most exquisite gratifications the earth could
afford me was to behold my children. What a multitude of adventures
and incidents might they not have encountered in the space of twelve
years! Imagination and affection dwell impatiently on the interval;
nor can any thing quiet the conjectures of him that loves, short of
the most complete information. What a difference must twelve years
have produced in the very persons and figures of creatures so young?
With what mingled and exquisite emotions does the father contemplate
his daughter, whom he left a child, grown up into a woman? He sees her
with astonishment and rapture, displaying maturer beauties, discovering
in her countenance new traces of knowledge and sentiment, and in her
gesture and manners a character finished, matronly, and sedate. The
very circumstance that I should visit them unknown, and converse
intimately with them without being discovered, while it cut me off
from many pure and ingenuous pleasures, added in some respects a new
relish to the indulgence; for it gave it a character, singular, and
perhaps unprecedented, in the history of mankind. I anticipated with
eager transport the hour at which I should revisit the place of my
birth, wander amidst the shades where my careless infancy had strayed,
recognise objects made sacred to my heart by associations with my
venerable mother and my adorable wife, now illumined with the presence
of my children, and steal a joy, unsuspected and unknown, to which the
very secrecy with which it was ravished would give a tenfold gust.
I embraced the nearest route, by Pampeluna and the Pyrenees, to the
banks of the Garonne. One particular pleasure that I reaped during
this tour, which the climate and scenery might alone have rendered
delightful, consisted in the youthful sensation with which every thing
I saw was enjoyed. Every one who can call to mind the amusements of
his childhood will be conscious that during that period all his senses
were in a tone adapted to convey the most exquisite gratification.
This is not merely, as is vulgarly supposed, the result of the
novelty and freshness with which at that time every thing strikes us.
The extremities of the nerves are in a state of the most delicate
susceptibility, upon which no touch, however slight and evanescent, is
lost, and which makes us, upon every occasion favourable to enjoyment,
gasp and tremble with the pleasure we imbibe. We feel it thrilling
through every pulse, and communicating its tone to every part. Our
attention is engrossed by a single object; or, if we are sensible to
accompanying incidents, it spreads over them an animating sunshine,
and totally varies their appearance and hue. Age, on the contrary,
imperceptibly brings along with it callosity and sluggishness of
sensation, our gratifications are coldly relished, and our desires
feebly awakened. Such is the difference in our perception, of delicious
fruits, of fragrant smells, of smooth and glossy surfaces, of the
vividness of colour, and the heavenly sweetness of sound. If this be a
just account, I leave the reader to imagine how I enjoyed my tour from
Valladolid to the beautiful and romantic retirement of St. Leon.
There was however one sentiment with which I was at this time
impressed, that I shall find it difficult to make the reader understand
in the extent in which I felt it, and that formed a powerful drawback
upon the pleasures I have just described. A short time ago I had been
old; now I was young: I had quaffed of the elixir of immortality. The
revolution this had produced in my sentiments was not less memorable
than that which it had effected in my corporeal lineaments and my
mental elasticity. It is so different a thing to conceive a proposition
theoretically, and to experience it in practice! The case is parallel
to that of the expectation which an ordinary Christian entertains of
eternal bliss. It is an article in his creed; he repeats it every
night when he lies down, and every morning when he rises. He would
be both offended and surprised if you told him he was not persuaded
of it; and yet how faint and indistinct a picture it produces in
his intellectual retina! The affairs of the world strike him with
all the force of vision; to them he cannot make himself a stranger
and a pilgrim; he cannot transfer all his affections to the mere
creature of his imagination, engendered in solitude, and nurtured by
enthusiasm,--heaven. How different must have been the feelings of the
celebrated apostle, who had been taken up into the third heaven, and
had beheld the new Jerusalem with all its jaspers, its chrysolites, its
emeralds, and its sapphires!
My situation was similar to this. I had long known, as far as
reflection could assure me of it, that I possessed the elixir of
immortality. But never till now had I felt the julep tingling in my
veins, and known the effects of it in every joint and articulation
of my frame. I before believed, I now felt, that I was immortal. The
consequence of this intimate persuasion was not without its portion of
melancholy. I still bore the figure and lineaments of a human creature;
but I knew that I was not what I seemed. There was a greater distance
between me and the best constructed and most consummate of the human
species, than there is between him and an ant or a muskito, crushed
by the first accidental tread, or consumed by the first spark wafted
by the wind. I can no longer cheat my fancy; I know that I am alone.
The creature does not exist with whom I have any common language, or
any genuine sympathies. Society is a bitter and galling mockery to my
heart; it only shows in more glaring colours my desolate condition.
The nearer I attempt to draw any of the nominal ties of our nature,
the more they start and shrink from my grasp. From this moment I could
not shake off the terrible impression of my loneliness; no, not for an
hour. Often does this impression induce me to regard my immortality
with loathing indescribable; often do I wish to shelter myself from it
in the sweet oblivion of the grave. From this hour I had no passions,
no interests, no affections; my heart has never expanded with one
natural emotion; I have never delivered myself up to the repose of one
genuine amusement. If at any time I have had a glimpse of pleasure, it
has irritated, only to deceive; it has increased the appetite, while
it displayed in stronger colours my impotence to gratify it. What is
worse, every added year has still subtracted something from the little
poignancy and relish which the bowl of human life continued to retain.
I have the power of assuming a youthful and glossy appearance whenever
I think proper; but this is only a bitter mockery of the furrows
ploughed in my heart. In so much of my adventures as remains for me
to describe, I feel that I shall be obliged to employ the established
terms of human description. I cannot interrupt the history of my
sensations, by a recital of those pangs by which they have been every
moment interrupted. The terms I must use may delude the reader into an
imagination that I still participate of enjoyment and of hope. Be it
so; they may cheat the reader; they cannot cheat myself!
Previously to my arrival in the vicinity of the Garonne, I equipped
myself in the habit of an Armenian, and assumed the character of
a merchant travelling from country to country for the sale of his
commodities.
It was in the close of a wintry day in the bleak and cheerless
month of December, that I first viewed from a distance the turrets
of St. Leon. I procured myself accommodations for the night in the
adjoining village. Being now, after so long an absence, within reach
of the residence of these lovely treasures, I sought, without any
direct consciousness of the sentiment, to delay our interview. When I
entered the little _auberge_, sheltered under a small plantation of
olives, I dreaded to hear the repetition of my family name. I longed
most fervently to be informed of the welfare of my daughters, yet I
could have died sooner than utter a single question on the subject.
I found that that ardent love which had urged me with rapid steps
from Valladolid to St. Leon, gradually, as the distance grew little,
changed from an impetuous vehemence to hear of, and to see them, to
fearful, awe-struck, motionless anxiety. Their light and airy figures,
as I last saw them at Montauban in 1547, danced before the eyes of my
imagination: what casualties, what calamities might not have overtaken
them since! I was afraid almost to breathe, lest I should dissolve
the unreal scene that played around me. How did I know that I did not
indulge this cheerful imagination for the last time? Again and again
in the course of the evening, I felt as if I could have wasted ages in
this _auberge_ and the neighbouring fields, still believing that my
daughters inhabited yonder towers, still hovering round their fancied
residence, but never daring to utter their name, lest it should be
found the prelude to some fatal intelligence. How rich and refined a
repast in some cases is uncertainty! It had the power to impart to
these precious pledges a share of that immortality of which I was the
destined monopolist.
Why had I not the courage never to overpass the limit at which I was
now arrived, and, wherever I afterwards wandered on the various
surface of the globe, still to be able to repeat to myself the
complacent whisper, “I have visited my daughters in their separated
abode, and my visit was productive of none but agreeable sensations?”
My passions were too much afloat to suffer me really to rest in this
patient, contemplative gratification. Before the morning’s dawn, I
walked forth, and turned my eyes towards the castle. I loitered from
bank to bank, and from point to point. Daylight slowly broke in upon
me, but all was silent and quiet in my paternal château. “The family
is not yet stirring,” said I to myself. I turned my steps to the spot
where the ashes of my mother were mingled with their parent earth.
The time that had intervened since her decease, the various fortunes
and impressions I had experienced, had somewhat obliterated the
vividness of her picture in my memory, and deadened the tremblingness
of sensation with which I once thought of her. Yet enough was left,
to make it an interesting moment to me, when I kneeled at her tomb.
Why, oh why, as it had been with my great forefathers, was it not a
moment of exultation to me, when I thus feelingly saluted the shade
of a parent! He that exults in such an hour, must feel that he has
illustrated his birth, and honoured his progenitors. I had done nothing
of this: I was an exile on the face of the earth, had acquired no
trophies, and accumulated no fame. I had none to honour, none even to
know me; I had no family, I had no friend! These bitter recollections
started up in array before me, and cut me to the heart. The spirit of
my mother frowned upon her son; and I returned along the path by which
I came, disgraced and disconsolate.
“I am now,” said I, “in a fit temper to learn intelligence of my
daughters: if they have been unhappy, to hear it will not make me more
forlorn; if they have been fortunate, that knowledge, and that alone,
may revive my courage.” I hastened towards the avenue. I looked into
the thickets and winding paths, as I passed. They communicated to me
mingled pictures of my own boyish days, and of the amusements of the
present inhabitants.
I told the nature of my pretended traffic to the servants of the house,
and proposed an exhibition of my commodities; I was admitted, as I
desired, to the apartment of their mistresses. I saw two young ladies,
who appeared to be respectively about twenty-eight and twenty-four
years of age, and whom without much difficulty I recognised for my
daughters Louisa and Marguerite. Their situation and their ages
identified them; and when afterwards I came to peruse their features
attentively, I could easily discover traits of the amiable young woman
and the playful child they had been when last we parted. I found them
employed upon a piece of embroidery; a comely and respectable looking
young woman, a servant, was sewing in another part of the room. Every
thing about the ladies bespoke the ease of their circumstances, and the
propriety of their sentiments. Both had on an elegant morning-habit;
both had an air of sedateness and sobriety, that to my apprehension
told that they had not lived unchastened by misfortune.
They each slightly looked up, as I was ushered into the apartment; they
saluted me with a graceful and condescending bend of the head, such as
we are accustomed to use to an inferior whom we are willing to put at
his ease. What were my sensations, a father, disguised and unknown,
in the presence of his children! I attempted to stand, as is usual
for a tradesman, when he waits on his customers at their own house. I
attempted to speak. My tongue refused its office; my legs tottered as
if sustaining an unusual weight. Louisa observed me, and desired me to
be seated. I had no power of choice; I accepted her civility. No sooner
was I seated, than in spite of myself a flood of tears gushed from my
eyes. She was astonished; she begged to know if I were indisposed;
she requested me to make use of every assistance the house could
afford. I now found my speech. I apologised for my behaviour; said I
had felt suddenly ill, but that the tears I shed would prove the most
effectual relief to me. My appearance, it may be proper to mention,
was not that of a vulgar pedlar; it was tall, graceful, and ingenuous,
with a certain air of refinement and politeness; my Armenian dress,
though formed of uncostly materials, was such as to display my person
to considerable advantage. Both the young ladies showed themselves
interested in the symptoms of my distress. After a few minutes internal
struggle, I rose, made an excuse for the abruptness of my departure,
and requested permission to repeat my visit in the afternoon, when I
should have something not unimportant to communicate to them.
I had seen two of my daughters; I had been satisfied that they still
existed; I had witnessed their exterior health and beauty. As I
withdrew, I laid my hand upon my heart, and congratulated myself: “Thus
far,” said I, “it is well!” I felt relieved from part of the weight
that lay there. With my right hand I struck upon my forehead: “but, oh,
where,” cried I, “is my other daughter?” The thought came over me with
the force of a demonstration: she is dead! A servant was attending me
to the door; I requested to speak to the housekeeper; I was introduced
to Mariana Chabot. She was struck with my appearance, as I believe my
daughters had been, as if my features were those of some person with
whom she was intimately acquainted. She would probably have mistaken me
for my own son, but that I looked considerably too young. I intreated
her to pardon my curiosity; but, I assured her, I had a particular
reason to interest myself in the family of Monsieur St. Leon, and I
therefore requested that she would have the goodness to inform me of
their affairs, as far as she could with propriety communicate them
to a person who was not so happy as to be in the catalogue of their
acquaintance. I told her that I had just seen two of her ladies, but
that I had understood there had been three, and I particularly desired
some information as to the young lady who had not made her appearance
in the parlour. My presentiment was true; the impression that smote
me when I left the parlour, was her funeral knell; my beloved Julia
was dead; she had been dead four years! If it had not been for the
agitation of my mind when I visited the tomb of my venerable parent,
I should have discovered her monument near that of her grandmother.
That would have been too overwhelming a mode of learning the painful
intelligence; I was glad at least to have escaped that!
In this and some subsequent conversations I held with this respectable
matron, I learned a variety of particulars respecting my daughters.
Madame Chabot expressed herself sorry that she had nothing pleasing
to communicate. Her young ladies had been pursued by a train of
misfortunes, though, heaven knew, they had merited every happiness.
A few years after they had been settled at St. Leon, Julia had been
addressed by a lover in every sense worthy of her. He was rich, noble,
of a gallant spirit, of a cultivated understanding, and a truly kind
and affectionate heart. Their attachment had been long and tried;
habit and experience of each other’s virtues had caused it to take
a deep root. The father of the young man had destined him to marry
the daughter of a duke and peer of the kingdom; but, finding his
affections unalterably fixed, he had at length yielded, and sanctioned
their mutual passion with his consent. Every thing was now prepared
for the nuptials; a day was fixed, and the appointed time was fast
approaching. Just at this juncture, the father changed his mind, and
became more obstinate and inexorable than ever. A report had begun to
be circulated that monsieur St. Leon, the father of the young ladies,
was still alive. Madame Chabot expressed her fear that this report had
originated in some indiscretion of Bernardin, who, however, had always
proved himself a most zealous and faithful servant, and who had since
paid the debt of nature. Be that as it might, the father of the lover
of Julia was found no longer accessible to expostulation or entreaty.
He was of an avaricious disposition, and he regarded the fortune of the
young lady, which would otherwise have been considerable, as entirely
alienated and annihilated by this flaw in the title. But what was
more material, it by no means accorded with his ideas of nobility and
honour, that the father-in-law of his only son should be a fugitive
and a wanderer, with whose residence no one was acquainted, and of
whom no one could tell whether he were living or dead. The manner in
which the ladies had entered into the repossession of their paternal
estate, when minutely investigated, was thought to have something
in it of an ambiguous and unpleasant nature. It was well known that
monsieur St. Leon had left the country in consequence of his having
ruined himself by the vice of gaming. “Surely,” said some, “it is a
little mysterious, how his children came, after an interval of nine
years, to be able to repurchase all he ever possessed.” In short, the
more the old vicomte was reasoned with, the more furious he grew. At
length he made use of the power which the government of France vests
in the father of a family, and shut up his son in one of the royal
prisons. This was a fatal blow both to the chevalier and his mistress.
Disappointed in the object of his warmest affections, maltreated and
disgraced by the severity of a father, his health sensibly declined.
Nothing however could shake the inflexibility of the vicomte; he would
release his son upon no other terms than a renunciation of his love,
terms which the sense of dignity and honour in the young gentleman,
equally with his passion, forbade him to accept. To all representations
of the necessity of granting liberty to his son, if he would not make
himself answerable for his death, the vicomte sternly replied, “that
he preferred his dying to the idea of his connecting himself with a
family of dishonour.” It was not till a few weeks before he expired,
that the father had consented to his release from prison, and had
removed him to one of his castles in a remote province. But the malady
of the chevalier was found incurable; the vital principles of the
system were fatally deranged. The lover died; and the consequences of
this unhappy affair had put a premature close to the existence of the
unfortunate Julia. Madame Chabot added that, the circumstance of this
story having become a subject of public animadversion, it had had a
most unfavourable effect on the prospects of the surviving sisters.
They bore their situation with dignity; but they could not but feel the
unhappy coincidence, which cut them off from the happiest condition of
human life, an honourable and well assorted settlement in marriage.
While madame Chabot related to me the tragical history of Julia, I
felt convulsed with passion, and more than once burst into an agony
of tears. Fatal legacy! atrocious secrets of medicine and chemistry!
every day opened to my astonished and terrified sight a wider prospect
of their wasteful effects! A common degree of penetration might have
shown me, that secrets of this character cut off their possessor from
the dearest ties of human existence, and render him a solitary, cold,
self-centered individual; his heart no longer able to pour itself into
the bosom of a mistress or a friend; his bosom no longer qualified to
receive upon equal terms the overflowing of a kindred heart. But no
mere exercise of imagination, nothing short of the actual experience
through which I had passed, could have adequately represented the
mischiefs of a thousand various names, that issued from this Pandora’s
box, this extract of a universal panacea. I regarded myself as the
murderer of these two lovers, than whom I concluded, from my personal
observation of the one, and all that I heard of the other, two purer
and more affectionate beings, more singularly qualified to form each
other’s happiness, had never existed. I felt as truly haunted with the
ghosts of those I had murdered, as Nero or Caligula might have been;
my wife, my son, my faithful negro; and now, in addition to these,
the tender Julia and her unalterable admirer. I possessed the gift of
immortal life; but I looked on myself as a monster that did not deserve
to exist.
It is with difficulty that I shall be able to make the reader
understand how much more severe the impression of this last catastrophe
was made to me, by the place and time in which I received the
intelligence. We are creatures of sensation: our worst calamities
derive as much of their pungency from the accessories by which they
are accompanied, as they do from their intrinsic evil. If I had heard
this story at any other period, I am persuaded its effects would not
have been half so painful. The idea of my daughters was faded in my
sensorium, and whatever related to them, though really felt, and felt
like a father, would have been felt with a less overpowering interest.
But now I had journeyed from Valladolid to the Garonne to behold them;
I had surveyed the castle they inhabited; I had viewed the garden
which they arranged with their hands; I had entered the parlour which
they adorned with their presence. All this controlled the operation
of absence and of distance; I felt at this moment as if I had been
accustomed to see them every day, and to regard them as inseparable
from my existence. I experienced, as it were, the united effect of
familiarity and novelty; I felt the melancholy fate of Julia, with
all the keenness of an inmate, and all the surprise of a long absent
traveller. The very metamorphosis I had undergone gave new poignancy
to my distress. Madame Chabot tortured me deliberately and at leisure,
without the slightest consciousness of what she was doing; she believed
she was pouring a tale of persons unknown into the ears of a native of
the other hemisphere, at the moment that she was calling up in arms the
strongest and most excruciating feelings of a father for his child. I
on the other hand had the most violent struggle with myself, while I
endeavoured to suppress the appearances of an emotion, which to the
person who witnessed them must have been for ever unaccountable. As it
was, and in spite of all my efforts, madame Chabot betrayed no little
amazement at the agitation with which I listened to a story, in which,
as she apprehended, I could have no personal interest.
What I heard from madame Chabot suggested to me a conduct, which I
resolved to adopt under the present circumstances. In my next interview
I told Louisa that I would now account to her for emotions which, at
the time they occurred, must have appeared somewhat extraordinary. I
owned that I had been acquainted with her father; I said that I had
first met with him in a journey, in which I was then engaged through
the province of Mesopotamia; that I had received from him, though a
stranger, a singular obligation; that a sincere friendship between
us had been the result of this event; that he died about two years
since; that I had attended him in his last moments; that he had charged
me with his dying recommendations and requests; and that my present
journey into France had principally been instigated by a desire to
visit his children. I then delivered into her hands various letters
and papers, which I had counterfeited chiefly with the intention of
supplying my daughters with legal evidence of the decease of their
father.
Louisa listened to what I related with those marks of affection and
sorrow, which are inseparable from the habits of a well constituted
mind. The emotion she discovered led me farther than I first intended.
I was urged by an irresistible impulse to practise, beyond what the
occasion demanded, upon the feelings of her virtuous mind. I know not
whether this is to be considered as a vain refinement and a criminal
curiosity; but--I think--every generous spirit will excuse me, when
it is recollected that this covert and imperfect proceeding was all
that was left me to soothe the impatient cravings of a father’s heart.
From time to time I reminded her of particulars that it was scarcely
possible any one but her father should know; I conjured up past scenes;
I made all the revolutions of her youth pass successively in review
before her; I touched all the pulses of her soul. Sometimes she was
fixed in mute astonishment at the exactness of my information, and
was ready to do me homage as some aerial genius, who condescended to
clothe himself in this earthly figure; at other times astonishment was
swallowed up in feeling, her soul dissolved in tenderness, and she
appeared ready to faint into my arms. It is scarcely possible to depict
the pleasurable sensations I drew from these intercourses; I know not
whether they were entirely innocent; but this I know, that in me they
produced a sentiment of innocence, and a sentiment of paradise. I felt
sometimes as if I could have wasted ages in this sort of gratification.
As the executor of their father, my daughters received me with every
mark of respect; but, after having already protracted my visit to
them for the space of many days, I felt that I should be guilty of
something alike hostile to their decorum and reputation, if I did
not speedily bring it to a termination. I was a person unknown and
almost without a name; nor could it be proper for a young woman to
continue to receive the visits of a person of her own age and a
different sex, upon the intimate and confidential footing upon which
my visits were paid, except in the case of him whom she intends to
make her husband. To considerations of this sort I was obliged to
sacrifice the gratifications in which I had lately been indulging. My
principal concern at St. Leon, from the time in which madame Chabot
had communicated to me the real nature of my daughter’s situation,
was to remove those disadvantages in which my destiny and my errors
had involved them: it would therefore have been the extreme of
inconsistency in me, while I was healing one mischief, to prepare for
them another. It is not indeed probable that I should long have been
contented for myself with this anomalous and neutral situation, in
which I more resembled a piece of furniture endowed with the faculty of
noting the sensations of those around me, than the member of any human
society. It was high time, as I thought, even in this point of view,
that I should put an end to the inglorious scene, should appear in some
real character, and engage in some real undertaking.
Influenced by these considerations, I now quitted the residence of my
daughters. I had satisfied the longing curiosity of a father, had seen
their situation, had witnessed their beauty, their accomplishments, and
their virtues. If I had been afflicted at hearing of the premature fate
of my eldest daughter, if I had been agonised by the reflection that I
might justly regard myself as her murderer, who was so fitted to suffer
this anguish as myself? The outcast of my species, what right had I
to expect to be happy in my own person, or prosperous in any of my
relations? The guilty cause of all this mischief, it was but suitable
that it should be brought home to my own bosom, that it should tear
and distract my own brain! Add to this, I was not without a hope that
my journey would not be found useless to the survivors. By furnishing
to them the proper documents to certify the death of their father, I
flattered myself that I had cut them off more effectually than before
from all connection with my unpropitious destiny, and had placed them
nearly upon a footing with the other noble and unmarried heiresses of
their native country. I have nothing further to relate in regard to
these two amiable and excellent sisters. From the time that I quitted
St. Leon upon this occasion, to the time in which I am now writing,
the opportunity of making further enquiries respecting them has not
occurred to me. If ever it does occur, I have only this one wish to
entertain, which, if granted, will, I am sure, satisfy my fondest
hopes,--May I find they have been as happy, as they so well deserve to
be!
The parting between me and my daughters was not an unaffecting one.
On my part, whose bosom was fraught with a thousand tender feelings,
to which I could give no language, and of which those whom they
principally concerned had not the slightest suspicion, it could not
be unaffecting. Nor did Louisa and her younger sister look with an
indifferent eye upon the bearer of the last sentiments of their father,
the witness of his death, the executor of his will. There was something
in the features of my countenance, a peculiar sort of conformation, a
family resemblance to themselves, which it is probable they did not
advert to, but which I am persuaded wrought within them to the full
extent of the mysterious sympathies of our nature. I pretended to have
been the familiar confident of their father; I told them of things at
which they started and almost blushed to think that any one beyond
the circuit of their dearest relations should have been privy. In the
hour of our separation, they shed many tears, and embraced me with a
warmth that might have well become sisters to a brother. Yet, shall I
confess my weakness, a weakness in which I do not apprehend myself to
be singular? It happens to few men to witness the manner in which the
story of their own deaths is received. If it did, I believe we all of
us have enough of vanity and personal feeling, however sincere a grief
might show itself in the demeanour of survivors, to find it falling
short of our appetites and demand. This I know, I was myself a party
to this unreasonableness. My daughters received the intelligence of
my death with a decorum and sensibility, which in the eyes of every
impartial spectator would have reflected honour on their characters, a
sensibility beyond what could have been imagined in daughters who now
had not seen their father for twelve years. Yet it was an unpleasing
reflection to me, thus to have occasion to gauge their love, and to
say, This is the exact measure of their affection. I remained in this
part of the world long enough to see my children consoled, and myself
forgotten. Self-importance of man, upon how slight a basis do thy
gigantic erections repose!