"I was born," she said, "in the same land as Virginia (for the poet's
fancy has given a real birthplace to his dream), in an island of the
tropics. You may have guessed it from the color of my hair, and from my
complexion, which is paler than that of European women. You must have
perceived, too, the accent which still lingers on my lips. In truth, I
rather wish to preserve that accent as my only memento of my native
land; it recalls to my mind the plaintive and harmonious sounds of the
sea-breeze that are heard at noon beneath the lofty palms. You may also
have noticed that incorrigible indolence of walk and attitude, so
different from the vivacity of French women, which indicates in the
Creole a wild and natural frankness that knows not how to feign or to
dissemble.
"My family name is D----, and my own is Julie. My mother was lost in a
boat in attempting to leave our native island during an insurrection of
the blacks. I was washed ashore and saved by a black woman, who took
care of me for several years, and then delivered me over to my father.
He brought me to France when I was six years old, with an elder sister,
and a short time after he died in poverty and exile in the house of
some poor relations, who had hospitably received us in Brittany. The
second mother whom I had found in exile provided for my education until
her death, and, at twelve years old, I was adopted by the government as
being the daughter of a man who had done some service to his country.
"I was brought up in all the luxurious splendor, and amid the choice
friendships of those sumptuous houses, in which the State receives the
daughters of those who die for their country. I grew in years, in
talent, and also, it was said, in beauty. Mine was a grave and saddened
grace, like the flower of some tropical plant blooming awhile beneath a
foreign sky. But my useless beauty and my unavailing talents gladdened
no eye or heart beyond the narrow precincts in which I was confined. My
companions, with whom I had formed those close intimacies which make
the friends of childhood the kindred of the heart, had all left, one by
one, to join their mothers, or to follow their husbands. No mother took
me home; no relation came to visit me; no young man heard of me, or
sought me for his wife. I was saddened by these successive departures
of all my friends, and felt sorrowful to think I was forsaken by the
whole world, and doomed to an eternal bereavement of the heart without
ever having loved. I often wept in secret, and regretted that the poor
black woman had not allowed me to perish in the waves of my native
shore, more merciful to me than the ocean, of the world on which I was
cast.
"Now and then, an old man of great celebrity would come to visit, in
the name of the Emperor, the national house of education, and inquire
into the progress of the pupils in the arts and sciences, which were
taught by the first masters of the capital; I was always pointed out to
him as the brightest example of the education bestowed on the orphans.
He invariably treated me with peculiar predilection from my childhood.
'How I regret,' he would sometimes say, loud enough for me to hear,
'that I have no son!'
"One day I was called down to the parlor of the Superior. I found there
my illustrious and venerable friend, who seemed as discomposed as I was
myself. 'My child,' said he, at length, 'years roll on for every
one,--slowly for you, swiftly for me. You are now seventeen; in a few
months you will have attained the age at which you must leave this
house for the world; but there is no world to receive you. You have no
country, no home, no fortune, and no family in France; your unprotected
and dependent situation has made me feel anxious on your account for
many years. The life of a young girl who earns her livelihood by her
labor is full of snares and bitterness, and a home offered by friends
is both precarious and humiliating to the spirit. The extreme beauty
that Nature has bestowed upon you will, by its brightness, dispel the
obscurity of your fate and attract vice, as the brightness of gold
induces theft. Where do you mean to take shelter from the sorrows and
dangers of life?' 'I know not,' I answered; 'and I have thought
sometimes that death alone can save me from my fate!' 'Oh,' he replied,
with a sad and irresolute smile, 'I have thought of another mode of
escape, but I scarcely dare propose it.' 'Speak without fear, sir,' I
answered; 'you have during so many years spoken to me with the look and
accent of a father, that I shall fancy I am obeying mine, in obeying
you.' 'Ah, he would be happy indeed,' he replied, 'who had a daughter
such as you! Forgive me if I have sometimes indulged in such a dream!
Listen to me,' he added in a more tender and serious tone; 'and answer
me in thorough frankness and liberty of heart.
"'My life is drawing to a close; the grave will soon open to receive
me, and I have no relations to whom to bequeath my only wealth,--the
unaspiring celebrity of my name, and the humble fortune that I have
acquired by my labors. Hitherto I have lived alone, completely absorbed
by the studies that have consumed and dignified my life. I draw near to
the close of my existence, and I am painfully aware that I have not
commenced to live, since I have not thought of loving. It is too late
to retrace my steps, and follow the path of happiness instead of that
of glory, which I have unfortunately chosen; and yet I would not die
without leaving in some memory that prolongation of existence in the
existence of another, which is called affection,--the only immortality
in which I believe. I cannot hope for more than gratitude, and I feel
that it is from you that I should wish to obtain it. But,' added he,
more timidly, 'for that, you must consent to accept, in the eyes of the
world, and for the world only, the name, the hand, and the affection of
an old man who would he a father under the name of husband, and who, as
such, would merely seek the right of receiving you into his house, and
loving you as his child.'
"He stopped, and refused that day to hear the answer which was already
hovering on my lips. He was the only man among all the visitors of the
house who had evinced any feeling towards me, beyond that vulgar and
almost insolent admiration which shows itself in looks and
exclamations, and is as much an offence as an homage. I knew nothing of
love; I only felt an absence of all family ties which I thought the
tenderness of my adoptive father would replace. I was offered a safe
and honorable refuge against the dangers of the life in which I was to
enter in a few months; and a name which would be as a diadem to the
woman who bore it. His hair had grown white, it was true, but under the
touch of Fame, which bestows eternal youth upon its favorites; his
years would have numbered four times mine, but his regular and majestic
features inspired respect for time, and no disgust for old age, and his
countenance, where genius and goodness were combined, possessed that
beauty of declining age which attracts the eye and affection even of
childhood."
* * * * *
"The very day I quitted forever the Orphan Establishment, I entered my
husband's house, not as his wife, but as his daughter. The world gave
him the name of husband, but he never suffered me to call him anything
but father, and he was such to me in care and tenderness. He made me
the adored and radiating centre of a select and distinguished circle,
composed for the greater part of those old men, eminent in letters,
politics, or philosophy, who had been the glory of the preceding
century and had escaped the fury of the Revolution, and the voluntary
servitude of the Empire. He selected for me friends and guides among
those women of the same period who were most remarkable for their
talents or virtues; he promoted and encouraged all those connections
most likely to interest my mind or heart, and to diversify the
monotonous life I led in an old man's house; and far from being severe
or jealous in respect of my acquaintances, he sought by the most
courteous attention to attract all those distinguished men whose
society might have charms for me. He would have liked whomever I had
chosen, and would have been pleased if I had shown preference to any
one among the crowd. I was the worshipped idol of the house, and the
general idolatry of which I was the object went far, perhaps, to guard
me against any individual predilection. I was too happy and too much
flattered to inquire into the state of my own heart, and besides, there
was so much paternal tenderness in my husband's manner towards me,
although he only showed his fondness by sometimes holding me to his
heart, and kissing my forehead, from which he gently parted my hair,
that I should have feared to disturb my happiness by seeking to render
it complete. He would sometimes, however, playfully rally me on my
indifference, and tell me that all that tended to add to my happiness
would increase his own.
"Once, and once only, I thought I loved and was beloved. A man whose
genius had rendered him illustrious, who was powerful from his high
favor with the Emperor, and who was doubly captivating by his renown
and appearance, although he had passed the meridian of life, sought me
with a signal devotion that deceived me. I was not elated with pride,
but rather with gratitude and surprise. I loved him for a time, or
rather I loved a self-created delusion under his name. I might have
yielded to the charm of such a feeling, had I not discovered that what
I supposed to be a passionate attachment of the heart was on his part
only an infatuation of the senses. When I perceived the real nature of
his love, it became odious to me, and I blushed to think how I had been
deceived; I took back my heart, and wrapped myself once more in the
cold monotony of my happiness.
"The morning was spent in deep and engaging studies with my husband,
whose willing disciple I was. During the day we took long and solitary
walks in the woods of St. Cloud or of Meudon; and in the evening a few
grave, and for the most part elderly, friends would meet and discourse
on various topics, with all the freedom of intimacy. These cold but
indulgent hearts inclined toward my youth, from that natural bias which
makes the love of the aged descend on the youthful, as the streams of
snow-covered summits flow downwards to the plain. But these hoary heads
seemed to shed their snows on me, and my youth pined and wasted away in
the ungenial atmosphere of age. There lay too great a space of years
between their hearts and mine! Oh, what would I not have given to have
had one friend of my own age, by the contact of whose warm heart I
might have dissolved the thoughts that froze within me, as the dew of
morning congeals upon the plants that grow too near these mountain
glaciers!
"My husband often looked sadly at me, and seemed alarmed at my pale
face and languid voice. He would have desired, at any cost, to give air
and motion to my heart. He continually tried to induce me to mingle in
diversions which might dispel my melancholy, and would use gentle force
to oblige me to appear at balls and theatres, in the hope that the
natural pride which my youth and beauty might have given me would have
made me share in the pleasure of those around me. The next morning, as
soon as I was awake, he would come into my room and make me relate the
impression I had produced, the admiration I had attracted, and even
speak of the hearts that I had seemed to touch. 'And you,' would he
say, in a tone of gentle interrogation, 'do you share none of these
feelings that you inspire? Is your young heart at twenty as old as
mine? Oh, that I could see you single out from among all these admirers
one superior being, who might one day, by his love, render your
happiness complete, and when I am gone, continue my affection for you
under a younger and more tender form!' 'Your affection suffices me,' I
would answer; 'I feel no pain; I desire nothing; I am happy!' 'Yes,' he
would rejoin, 'you are happy, but you are growing old at twenty! Oh,
remember that it is your task to close my eyes! Live and love! oh, do
but live, that I may not survive you!
"He called in one doctor after another; they wearied me with questions,
and all agreed in saying that I was threatened with spasm of the heart.
The fainting fits, incident to the disease, had begun to show
themselves. I required, it was said, to break through the usual routine
of my life, to relinquish for some time my sedentary habits, and seek a
complete change of air and scene, in order to give me that stimulus and
energy that my tropical nature required, and which it had lost in the
cold and misty atmosphere of Paris. My husband did not hesitate one
moment between the hope of prolonging my life and the happiness of
keeping me near him. As he could not, by reason of his age and
occupations, accompany me, he confided me to the care of friends who
were travelling in Switzerland and Italy, with two daughters of my own
age. I travelled with that family two years; I have seen mountains and
seas that reminded me of those of my native land; I have breathed the
balmy and stimulating air of the waves and glaciers; but nothing has
restored to me the youth that has withered in my heart, although it
sometimes appears to bloom on my face, so as to deceive even me. The
doctors of Geneva have sent me here, as the last resource of their art;
they have advised me to prolong my stay as long as one ray of sun
lingers in the autumnal sky; then I shall rejoin my husband. Alas, that
I could have shown him his daughter, once more young, and radiant with
health and hope! But I feel that I shall return only to sadden his
latter days, and perhaps to expire in his arms! Well," she rejoined in
a resigned and almost joyful tone, "I shall not now leave earth without
having seen my long-expected brother,--the brother of the soul, that
some secret instinct taught me to expect, and whose image, foreshadowed
in my fancy, had made me indifferent to all real beings. Yes," she
said, covering her eyes with her rosy taper fingers between which I saw
one or two tears trickle; "oh, yes, the dream of all my nights was
embodied in you this morning, when I awoke! ... Oh, if it were not too
late to live on, I would wish to live for centuries, to prolong the
consciousness of that look, which seemed to weep over me, of that heart
that pitied me, of that voice," she added, unveiling her eyes which
were raised to heaven,--"of that voice that called me sister! ... That
tender name will never more be taken from me," she added with a look
and tone of gentle interrogation, "during life, or after death?"