I
At the beginning of the summer of 1850, a Russian nobleman, Count
Kostia Petrovitch Leminof, had the misfortune to lose his wife
suddenly, and in the flower of her beauty. She was his junior by
twelve years. This cruel loss, for which he was totally
unprepared, threw him into a state of profound melancholy; and some
months later, seeking to mitigate his grief by the distractions of
travel, he left his domains near Moscow, never intending to return.
Accompanied by his twin children, ten years of age, a priest who
had served them as tutor, and a serf named Ivan, he repaired to
Odessa, and then took passage on a merchant ship for Martinique.
Disembarking at St. Pierre, he took lodgings in a remote part of
the suburbs. The profound solitude which reigned there did not at
first bring the consolation he had sought. It was not enough that
he had left his native country, he would have changed the planet
itself; and he complained that nature everywhere was too much
alike. No locality seemed to him sufficiently a stranger to his
experience, and in the deserted places, where the desperate
restlessness of his heart impelled him, he imagined the
reappearance of the obtrusive witnesses of his past joys, and of
the misfortune by which they were suddenly terminated.
He had lived a year in Martinique when the yellow fever carried off
one of his children. By a singular reaction in his vigorous
temperament, it was about this time that his somber melancholy gave
way to a bitter and sarcastic gayety, more in harmony with his
nature. From his early youth he had had a taste for jocularity, a
mocking turn of spirit, seasoned by that ironical grace of manner
peculiar to the great Moscovite nobleman, and resulting from the
constant habit of trifling with men and events. His recovery did
not, however, restore the agreeable manners which in former times
had distinguished him in his intercourse with the world. Suffering
had brought him a leaven of misanthropy, which he did not take the
trouble of disguising; his voice had lost its caressing notes and
had become rude and abrupt; his actions were brusque, and his smile
scornful. Sometimes his bearing gave evidence of a haughty will
which, tyrannized over by events, sought to avenge itself upon
mankind.
Terrible, however, as he sometimes was to those who surrounded him,
Count Kostia was yet a civilized devil. So, after a stay of three
years under tropical skies, he began to sigh for old Europe, and
one fine day saw him disembark upon the quays of Lisbon. He
crossed Portugal, Spain, the south of France and Switzerland. At
Basle, he learned that on the borders of the Rhine, between Coblenz
and Bonn, in a situation quite isolated, an old castle was for
sale. To this place he hurried and bought the antique walls and
the lands which belonged to them, without discussing the price and
without making a detailed examination of the property. The bargain
concluded, he made some hasty and indispensable repairs on one of
the buildings which composed a part of his dilapidated manor, and
which claimed the imposing name of the fortress of Geierfels, and
at once installed himself therein, hoping to pass the rest of his
life in peaceable and studious seclusion.
Count Kostia was gifted with a quick and ready intellect, which he
had strengthened by study. He had always been passionately fond of
historical research, but above everything, knew and wished to know,
only that which the English call "the matter of fact." He
professed a cold scorn for generalities, and heartily abandoned
them to "dreamers;" he laughed at all abstract theories and at the
ingenuous minds which take them seriously. He held that all system
was but logical infatuation; that the only pardonable follies were
those which were frankly avowed; and that only a pedant could
clothe his imagination in geometrical theories. In general,
pedantry to his eyes was the least excusable of vices; he
understood it to be the pretension of tracing back phenomena to
first causes, "as if," said he, "there were any 'first causes,' or
chance admitted of calculation!" This did not prevent him however
from expending much logic to demonstrate that there was no such
thing as logic, either in nature or in man.
These are inconsistencies for which skeptics never dream of
reproaching themselves; they pass their lives in reasoning against
reason. In short, Count Kostia respected nothing but facts, and
believed that, properly viewed, there was nothing else, and that
the universe, considered as an entirety, was but a collection of
contradictory accidents.
A member of the Historical and Antiquarian Society of Moscow, he
had once published important memoirs upon Slavonic antiquities and
upon some of the disputed questions in the history of the Lower
Empire. Hardly was he installed at Geierfels, before he occupied
himself in fitting up his library, but a few volumes of which he
had carried to Martinique. He at once ordered from Moscow most of
the books he had left, and also sent large orders to German
bookstores. When his "seraglio," as he called it, was nearly
complete, he again became absorbed in study, and particularly in
that of the Greek historians of the Byzantine Empire, of whose
collective works he had the good fortune to possess the Louvre
edition in thirty-six volumes folio; and he soon formed the
ambitious project of writing a complete history of that Empire from
Constantine the Great to the taking of Constantinople. So absorbed
did he become in this great design, that he scarcely ate or drank;
but the further he advanced in his researches the more he became
dismayed by the magnitude of the enterprise, and he conceived the
idea of procuring an intelligent assistant, upon whom he could
shift a part of the task. As he proposed to write his voluminous
work in French, it was in France this living instrument which he
needed must be sought, and he therefore broached the project to Dr.
Lerins, one of his old acquaintances in Paris. "For nearly three
years," he wrote to the Doctor, "I have dwelt in a veritable owl's
nest, and I should be much obliged to you if you would procure for
me a young night bird, who could endure life two or three years in
such an ugly hole without dying of ennui. Understand me, I must
have a secretary who is not contented with writing a fine hand and
knowing French a little better than I do: I wish him to be a
consummate philologist, and a hellenist of the first order,--one of
those men who ought to be met with in Paris,--born to belong to the
Institute, but so dependent upon circumstances as to make that
position impossible. If you succeed in finding this priceless
being, I will give him the best room in my castle and a salary of
twelve thousand francs. I stipulate that he shall not be a fool.
As to character, I say nothing about it; he will do me the favor to
have such as will suit me."
M. Lerins was intimate with a young man from Lorraine named Gilbert
Saville, a savant of great merit, who had left Nancy several years
before to seek his fortune in Paris. At the age of twenty-seven he
had presented, in a competition opened by the Academy of
Inscriptions, an essay on the Etruscan language, which took the
prize and was unanimously declared a masterpiece of sagacious
erudition. He had hoped for some time that this first success,
which had gained him renown among learned men, would aid him in
obtaining some lucrative position and rescue him from the
precarious situation in which he found himself. Nothing resulted
from it. His merits compelled esteem; the charm of his frank and
courteous manner won him universal good will; his friends were
numerous; he was well received and caressed; he even obtained,
without seeking it, the entree to more than one salon, where he met
men of standing who could be useful to him and assure him a
successful future. All this however amounted to nothing, and no
position was offered. What worked most to his prejudice was an
independence of opinion and character which was a part of his
nature. Only to look at him was to know that such a man could not
be tied down, and the only language which this able philologist
could not learn was the jargon of society. Add to this that
Gilbert had a speculative, dreamy temperament and the pride and
indolence which are its accessories. To bestir himself and to
importune were torture to him. A promise made to him could be
forgotten with impunity, for he was not the man to revive it; and
besides, as he never complained himself, no one was disposed to
complain for him. In short, among those who had been desirous of
protecting and advancing him, it was said: "What need has he of our
assistance? Such remarkable talent will make its own way." Others
thought, without expressing it: "Let us be guarded, this is another
Letronne,--once 'foot in the stirrup,' God only knows where he will
stop." Others said and thought: "This young man is charming,--he
is so discreet,--not like such and such a person." All those cited
as not "discreet," were provided for.
The difficulties of his life had rendered Gilbert serious and
reflective, but they had neither hardened his heart nor quenched
his imagination. He was too wise to revolt against his fate, but
determined to be superior to it. "Thou art all thou canst be,"
said he to himself; "but do not flatter thyself that thou hast
reached the measure of my aspirations."
After having read M. Leminof's letter, Dr. Lerins went in search of
Gilbert. He described Count Kostia to him according to his remote
recollections, but he asked him, before deciding, to weigh the
matter deliberately. After quitting his young friend he muttered
to himself--
"After all, I hope he will refuse. He would be too much of a prize
for that boyard. Of his very Muscovite face, I remember only an
enormous pair of eyebrows,--the loftiest and bushiest I ever saw,
and perhaps there is nothing more of him! There are men who are
all in the eyebrows!"