Aware of the difficulties which unavoidably sprung out of the nature of
my situation, I resolved immediately to endeavour to supply them to the
best of my power. I conceived that there was no consideration so urgent
upon me at the present moment, as that I should without loss of time
create to myself connections that might balance and keep at bay the
sallies of arbitrary rule, and that I should weave with my own hand the
cords of friendship.
I had no sooner formed this project, than an individual suggested
himself to my reflections, whom I judged to be, by a singular
concurrence of circumstances, happily fitted to be the subject of my
experiment, and admirably qualified to afford me protection in the
most unfavourable events. The name of this man was Bethlem Gabor. He
had been some time before brought to me by one of his friends, and he
was a man whom for a thousand reasons it was impossible to see and
converse with, without receiving the most indelible impression. He
was the lineal representative of one of the most illustrious houses
in Hungary. His vocation, like that of the majority of the Hungarian
nobility, had been arms; but, in the midst of a fraternity all of whom
were warlike, he stood conspicuous and alone. His courage, though cool
and deliberate, almost mounted to a degree of desperate rashness; and
the fertility of his invention, and the variety of his stratagems
did not fall short of his courage. The celerity of his measures was
equally distinguished; distance was no bar to him; and he had no
sooner conceived a project, however arduous, than it was executed. He
had formed under his own eye a band of men like himself, impetuous
yet deliberate, swift in execution, silent in march, invincible to
hardship, contemners of fatigue, of difficulties, of hunger, and of
thirst. When introduced to me, he was upwards of fifty years of age. He
was more than six feet in stature; and yet he was built as if it had
been a colossus, destined to sustain the weight of the starry heavens.
His voice was like thunder; and he never uttered a word, but it seemed
to shake his manly chest. His head and chin were clothed with a thick
and shaggy hair, in colour a dead black. He had suffered considerable
mutilation in the services through which he had passed; of one of
his hands three fingers were gone; the sight of his right eye was
extinguished, and the cheek half shot away, while the same explosion
had burned his complexion into a colour that was universally dun or
black. His nose was scarred, and his lips were thick and large. Bethlem
Gabor, though universally respected for the honour and magnanimity of a
soldier, was not less remarkable for habits of reserve and taciturnity.
But these habits misfortune had caused to become more deeply ingrafted
in his nature. During one of his military excursions, a party of
marauders had in his absence surprised his castle, burned it to the
ground, and savagely murdered his wife and children, and every living
creature within the walls. The same stroke that rendered him childless
made him also a beggar. He had been regarded for his proceedings as
an adherent to the Turkish standard, but he had always tenaciously
maintained the most complete independence. The adversity that had now
fallen upon him was too great. He would not become a pensioner of the
sultan; despair had taken fast possession of his heart. He disbanded
the body of men he had formed, and wandered a solitary outcast upon
the face of his country. For some time he seemed to have a savage
complacence in conceiving that the evil he had suffered was past all
remedy, and in spurning at those palliations and disguises with which
vulgar souls are accustomed to assuage their woe. Yet the energy of his
nature would not suffer him to rest: he wandered an outcast; but every
day engendered some new thought or passion: and it appeared probable
that he would not yet quit the stage of existence till he had left
behind him the remembrances of a terrible and desolating revenge.
It may seem strange that such a man as I have described should be the
individual I selected out of the whole Hungarian nation to make my
friend. It may seem that his qualities were better adapted to repel
than attract. My choice would not appear strange, if the reader could
have conversed with him, as I did. He was hideous to the sight; and
he never addressed himself to speak, that I did not feel my very heart
shudder within me. Seldom did he allow himself to open his thoughts;
but, when he did, great God! what supernatural eloquence seemed to
inspire and enshroud him! Not that upon such occasions he was copious
and Ciceronian, but that every muscle and every limb seemed to live,
and to quiver with the thoughts he expressed. The hearer could not
refuse to venerate, as well as fear him. I never pitied him; Bethlem
Gabor’s was a soul that soared to a sightless distance above the
sphere of pity; I can scarcely say I sympathised with him; but, when
I listened to his complaints, rather let me say his invectives, I was
astonished, overwhelmed, and motionless. The secret of the effects
he thus produced, lay in his own way of feeling the incidents he
described. Look at him, when he sat alone, wrapped in meditation, you
would say, “That is a man of iron; though adversity pour her fiercest
darts upon him, he is invulnerable; he is of too colossal a structure
to be accessible to human feelings and human affections.” Listen to
his narrative, or rather to the bursts of passion, which with him
supplied the place and performed the functions of narrative, you would
soon confess your mistake. While he spoke, he ceased to be a man, and
became something more amazing. When he alluded to what he had endured,
you did not compassionate him, for you felt that he was a creature
of another nature; but you confessed, that never man seemed to have
suffered so much, or to savour with such bitterness the cup of woe.
He did not love his wife or his children as any other man would do;
he probably never dandled or fondled them; his love was speechless;
and disdaining the common modes of exhibition, it might sometimes be
mistaken for indifference. But it brooded over and clung round his
heart; and, when it was disturbed, when the strong ties of domestic
charity were by the merciless hand of war snapped asunder, you then
saw its voluminous folds spread and convulsed before you, gigantic and
immeasurable. He cursed their murderers; he cursed mankind; he rose up
in fierce defiance of eternal providence; and your blood curdled within
you as he spoke. Such was Bethlem Gabor: I could not help admiring
him: his greatness excited my wonder and my reverence; and, while his
manners awed and overwhelmed me, I felt an inexplicable attachment to
his person still increasing in my bosom.
On his part, my kindness and partiality appeared scarcely less pleasing
to Bethlem Gabor, than his character and discourse were fascinating to
me. He had found himself without a confidant or a friend. His wife and
his children in a certain degree understood him; and, though he had an
atmosphere of repulsion beyond which no mortal ever penetrated, they
came to the edge of that, and rested there; they trembled involuntarily
at his aspect, but at the same time they adored and they loved him. The
rest of the world viewed him from a more fearful distance; respected
him, but dared not even in fancy be familiar with him. When therefore
he lost his family, he lost his all. He roamed the earth in solitude,
and all men made room for him as he passed. I was the first who, since
the fatal event that had made him childless and a beggar, had courted
his society, and invited his communications. I had dared to take the
lion by the paw, and seat myself next him in his den. There was a
similarity in our fortunes that secretly endeared him to me. We had
each by the malice of a hostile destiny, though in a very different
manner, been deprived of our families; we were each of us alone.
Fated each to be hereafter for ever alone; we blended ourselves the
one with the other as perfectly as we could. Often over our gloomy
bowl we mingled groans, and sweetened our draught as we drank it with
maledictions. In the school of Bethlem Gabor I became acquainted with
the delights of melancholy--- of a melancholy, not that contracted, but
that swelled the soul--of a melancholy that looked down upon the world
with indignation, and that relieved its secret load with curses and
execrations. We frequently continued whole nights in the participation
of these bitter joys; and were surprised, still at our serious board,
by the light of the morrow’s sun.
I have now, I believe, fully accounted for our intimacy, and displayed
the ligatures that secretly bound us to each other. It is scarcely
necessary to add, that my understanding confirmed what my heart
impelled. Bethlem Gabor appeared to me the fittest man in the world
upon whom to fix for my friend. We were qualified mutually to benefit
each other. My kindness, my unremitted attentions, the earnestness with
which I listened to and soothed his griefs, mitigated their agony. I
proposed, when I could once more reconcile and incite him to activity,
to repair his castle, and restore his fortune. On the other hand,
he was, of all the persons I could have pitched upon, the ablest to
protect me. By his birth he ranked among the first men of his country;
by his ability, at least as a partisan soldier, a character at that
time highly esteemed, he rose above them all.
For some time I regarded Bethlem Gabor as entirely my friend, and I
consulted him in every thing, in which, compatibly with the legacy of
the stranger of the summer-house, I could consult him. I told him of
the suspicions of the bashaw, and the precariousness of my safety. I
demanded his advice as to the best method of securing it. Ought I to
regard it as a more effectual or as a cheaper expedient, to attempt
to purchase the countenance of the sultan, instead of condescending
to bribe his minister? Ought I to set up for myself, and by rendering
myself the independent prince of one of the Hungarian provinces, defy
the Turk, or at least endeavour to negotiate with him from a more
respectable and commanding situation? I said more than enough under
these heads, as it afterwards appeared, to awaken strange imaginations
in a mind of so much penetration as that of Bethlem Gabor. In fine,
I demanded of him whether, in case of any great and formidable
danger falling on me, he would to the utmost of his power afford me
protection? When the question was first started, he swore to me with
his customary impressiveness and energy that he would.
While I was thus employed in consulting him, and opening to him as
far as was practicable my prospects and fears, I did not less succeed
in dissipating or suspending the despair of his melancholy. It was of
benefit to him in this respect, that, by opening to him my affairs,
I from time to time called off his attention from his personal
misfortunes. I proposed to him the rebuilding his castle, and I at
length obtained his permission to send off a corps of workmen for
that purpose. Beside the castle in which his wife and children had
been murdered, and which the marauders had nearly destroyed, he had
one considerably stronger, though void of all recommendation from
cheerfulness or beauty, in the more northerly part of the kingdom.
This we visited together. I restored the condition of his fields; with
considerable difficulty I replaced the cattle he had lost, by purchases
in Poland; and I revived his dilapidated revenues. At first he felt an
invincible repugnance to the receiving any advantage from the bounty
of another; but by continual remonstrances I was able to persuade him,
that he owed me nothing, and that what I did was no more than was
required from me by a regard for my own safety.
If ever on the face of the earth there lived a misanthrope, Bethlem
Gabor was the man. Never for a moment did he forget or forgive the
sanguinary catastrophe of his family; and for his own misfortunes he
seemed to have vowed vengeance against the whole human race. He almost
hated the very face of man; and, when expressions of cheerfulness,
peace, and contentment discovered themselves in his presence, I
could see, by the hideous working of his features, that his spirit
experienced intolerable agonies. To him such expressions were tones
horribly discordant; all was uproar and havoc within his own bosom,
and the gaiety of other men inspired him with sentiments of invincible
antipathy. He never saw a festive board without an inclination to
overturn it; or a father encircled with a smiling family, without
feeling his soul thrill with suggestions of murder. Something, I
know not what, withheld his hand: it might be some remaining atom of
humanity: it might be--for his whole character was contemplative and
close--it might be that he regarded that as a pitiful and impotent
revenge, which should cause him the next hour to be locked up as a
madman, or put to death as criminal. Horrible as was his personal
aspect, and wild and savage as was his mind, yet, as I have already
said, I felt myself attached to him. I knew that all the unsocial
propensities that animated him, were the offspring of love, were
the sentiments of a lioness bereaved of her young; and I found an
undescribable and exhaustless pleasure in examining the sublime
desolation of a mighty soul.
Bethlem Gabor had at first regarded me with some degree of partiality.
Kindness in almost all cases begets kindness; he could not see how
much I interested myself about and how much I courted him, without
feeling for me a sentiment different from that he confessed for other
men. I saw however after some time, with inexpressible grief, that his
regard for me, instead of increasing, suffered perceptible diminution.
Our propensities were opposed to each other. He rejoiced in disorder
and desolation as in his congenial element; my present pursuit
was the restoration of public order and prosperity. He repeatedly
expostulated with me on this. I had sometimes in our conversations, in
the bitterness of my recollections, exclaimed on myself as the most
unfortunate and most persecuted of men, though without entering into an
explanation of my sufferings. He reminded me of these exclamations. He
reproached me as a contemptible and pusillanimous wretch, that I did
not, like him, resolve amply and memorably to revenge my own sufferings
upon my species at large. In his estimate, the poorest and most servile
of all maxims was, that of the author of the christian religion, to
repay injury with favour, and curses with benediction.
I perceived with grief that the kindness towards me that had been
excited in Bethlem Gabor’s mind, rather declined than augmented;
but I was very far from being aware of the degree in which, as I
afterwards found, this sentiment had relapsed into its opposite. It
seems, I inflicted on him a daily torture by my daily efforts for
the dissemination of happiness. Of these he had not been at first
completely aware. His mind had been too much absorbed in its own
feelings to attend very distinctly to any thing I did, unless it were
done in his presence. But, in proportion as I soothed his sorrows, and
made him my confidant, the film was removed; and all that he saw had
the peculiar misfortune to excite at once his contempt and his rage.
The finishing stroke that I gave to the animosity which, unknown
to me, was now brooding and engendering in his breast, consisted
in my bestowing an important benefit upon one, against whom he had
entertained a long and eternal feud.