days beforehand of the approach of his turn to mount guard. Early one
morning, on the very day on which this duty fell to the Count, a
corporal awoke him, and announced the disagreeable news. But the idea of
getting up there and then, putting on his gaiters, and turning out
without having thought about it the evening before, so disturbed him
that he preferred reporting himself sick and staying at home all day. So
he put on his dressing-gown, and sent away his barber. This made him
look pale and ill, and frightened his wife and family. He really _did_
feel a little poorly.
He told every one he was not very well, partly for the sake of
appearances, and partly because he positively believed himself to be
indisposed. Gradually the influence of the dressing-gown began to work.
The slops he was obliged to take upset his stomach. His relations and
friends sent to ask after him. He was soon quite ill enough to take to
his bed.
In the evening Dr. Ranson[11] found his pulse hard and feverish, and
ordered him to be bled next day.
If the campaign had lasted a month longer, the sick man’s case would
have been past cure.
Now, who can doubt about the influence of travelling-coats upon
travellers, if he reflect that poor Count de ---- thought more than once
that he was about to perform a journey to the other world for having
inopportunely donned his dressing-gown in this?
[Illustration]
XLII.
_Aspasia’s Buskin._
I was sitting near my fire after dinner, enveloped in my “habit de
voyage,” and freely abandoning myself to its influence: the hour for
starting was, I knew, drawing nigh; but the fumes generated by digestion
rose to my brain, and so obstructed the channels along which thoughts
glide on their way from the senses, that all communication between them
was intercepted. And as my senses no longer transmitted any idea to my
brain, the latter, in its turn, could no longer emit any of that
electric fluid with which the ingenious Doctor Valli resuscitates dead
frogs.
After reading this preamble, you will easily understand why my head fell
on my chest, and why the muscles of the thumb and forefinger of my right
hand, being no longer excited by the electric fluid, became so relaxed
that a volume of the works of the Marquis Caraccioli, which I was
holding tightly between these two fingers, imperceptibly eluded my
grasp, and fell upon the hearth.
I had just had some callers, and my conversation with the persons who
had left the room had turned upon the death of Dr. Cigna, an eminent
physician then lately deceased. He was a learned and hard-working man, a
good naturalist, and a famous botanist. My thoughts were occupied with
the merits of this skillful man. “And yet,” I said to myself, “were it
possible for me to evoke the spirits of those whom he has, perhaps,
dismissed to the other world, who knows but that his reputation might
suffer some diminution?”
I travelled insensibly to a dissertation on medicine and the progress it
has made since the time of Hippocrates. I asked myself whether the
famous personages of antiquity who died in their beds, as Pericles,
Plato, the celebrated Aspasia, and Hippocrates, died, after the manner
of ordinary mortals, of some putrid or inflammatory fever; and whether
they were bled, and crammed with specifics.
To say why these four personages came into my mind rather than any
others, is out of my power; for who can give reasons for what he dreams?
All that I can say is that my soul summoned the doctor of Cos, the
doctor of Turin, and the famous statesman who did such great things, and
committed such grave faults.
But as to his graceful friend, I humbly own that it was the OTHER who
beckoned her to come. Still, however, when I think of the interview, I
am tempted to feel some little pride, for it is evident that in this
dream the balance in favor of reason was as four to one. Pretty fair
this, methinks, for a lieutenant.
However this may be, whilst giving myself up to the reflections I have
described, my eyes closed, and I fell fast asleep. But upon shutting my
eyes, the image of the personages of whom I had been thinking, remained
painted upon that delicate canvas we call memory; and these images,
mingling in my brain with the idea of the evocation of the dead, it was
not long before I saw advancing in procession Hippocrates, Plato,
Pericles, Aspasia, and Doctor Cigna in his bob-wig.
I saw them all seat themselves in chairs ranged around the fire.
Pericles alone remained standing to read the newspapers.
“If the discoveries of which you speak were true,” said Hippocrates to
the doctor, “and had they been as useful to the healing art as you
affirm, I should have seen the number of those who daily descend to the
gloomy realm of Pluto decrease; but the ratio of its inhabitants,
according to the registers of Minos which I have myself verified,
remains still the same as formerly.”
Doctor Cigna turned to me and said: “You have without doubt heard these
discoveries spoken of. You know that Harvey discovered the circulation
of the blood; that the immortal Spallanzani explained the process of
digestion, the mechanism of which is now well understood;” and he
entered upon a long detail of all the discoveries connected with physic,
and of the host of remedies for which we are indebted to chemistry: in
short, he delivered an academical discourse in favor of modern
medicine.
“But am I to believe,” I replied, “that these great men were ignorant of
all you have been telling them, and that their souls, having shuffled
off this mortal coil, still meet with any obscurities in nature?”
“Ah! how great is your error!” exclaimed the _proto-physician_[12] of
the Peloponnesus. The mysteries of nature are as closely hidden from the
dead as from the living. Of one thing we who linger on the banks of the
Styx are certain, that He who created all things alone knows the great
secret which men vainly strive to solve. “And,” added he, turning to the
doctor, “do be persuaded by me to divest yourself of what still clings
to you of the party-spirit you have brought with you from the sojourn of
mortals. And since, seeing that Charon daily ferries over in his boat as
many shades as heretofore, the labors of a thousand generations and all
the discoveries men have made have not been able to prolong their
existence, let us not uselessly weary ourselves in defending an art
which, among the dead, cannot even profit its practitioners.”
Thus, to my great amazement, spoke the famous Hippocrates.
Doctor Cigna smiled; and as spirits can neither withstand evidence, nor
silence truth, he not only agreed with Hippocrates, but, blushing after
the manner of disembodied intelligences, he protested that he had
himself always had his doubts.
Pericles, who had drawn near the window, heaved a deep sigh, the cause
of which I divined. He was reading a number of the “Moniteur,” which
announced the decadence of the arts and sciences. He saw illustrious
scholars desert their sublime conceptions to invent new crimes, and
shuddered at hearing a rabble herd compare themselves with the heroes
of generous Greece; and this, forsooth, because they put to death,
without shame or remorse, venerable old men, women, and children, and
coolly perpetrated the blackest and most useless crimes.
Plato, who had listened to our conversation without joining in it, and
seeing it brought to a sudden and unexpected close, thus spoke: “I can
readily understand that the discoveries great men have made in the
various branches of natural science do not forward the art of medicine,
which can never change the course of nature, except at the cost of life.
But this will certainly not be so with the researches that have been
made in the study of politics. Locke’s inquiries into the nature of the
human understanding, the invention of printing, the accumulated
observations drawn from history, the number of excellent books which
have spread sound information even among the lower orders,--so many
wonders must have contributed to make men better, and the happy republic
I conceived, which the age in which I lived caused me to regard as an
impracticable dream, no doubt now exists upon the earth?” At this
question the honest doctor cast down his eyes, and only answered by
tears. In wiping them with his pocket-handkerchief, he involuntarily
moved his wig on one side, so that a part of his face was hidden by it.
“Ye gods!” exclaimed Aspasia, with a scream, “how strange a sight! And
is it a discovery of one of your great men that has led you to the idea
of turning another man’s skull into a head-dress?”
Aspasia, from whom our philosophical dissertations had elicited nothing
but gapes, had taken up a magazine of fashions which lay on the
chimney-piece, the leaves of which she had been turning over for some
time when the doctor’s wig made her utter this exclamation. Finding the
narrow, ricketty seat upon which she was sitting uncomfortable, she had,
without the least ceremony, placed her two bare legs, which were adorned
with bandelets, on the straw-bottomed chair between her and me, and
rested her elbow upon the broad shoulders of Plato.
“It is no skull,” said the doctor, addressing her, and taking off his
wig, which he threw on the fire, “it is a wig, madam; and I know not why
I did not cast this ridiculous ornament into the flames of Tartarus when
first I came among you. But absurdities and prejudices adhere so closely
to our miserable nature that they even follow us sometimes beyond the
grave.” I took singular pleasure in seeing the doctor thus abjure his
physic and his wig at the same moment.
“I assure you,” said Aspasia, “that most of the head-dresses represented
in the pages I have been turning over deserve the same fate as yours,
so very extravagant are they.”
The fair Athenian amused herself vastly in looking over the engravings,
and was very reasonably surprised by the variety and oddity of modern
contrivances. One figure, especially struck her. It was that of a young
lady with a really elegant head-dress which Aspasia only thought
somewhat too high. But the piece of gauze that covered the neck was so
very full you could scarcely see half her face. Aspasia, not knowing
that these extraordinary developments were produced by starch, could not
help showing a surprise which would have been redoubled (but inversely),
had the gauze been transparent.
“But do explain,” she said, “why women of the present day seem to wear
dresses to hide rather than to clothe them. They scarcely allow their
faces to be seen, those faces by which alone their sex is to be
guessed, so strangely are their bodies disfigured by the eccentric folds
of their garments. Among all the figures represented in these pages, I
do not find one with the neck, arms, and legs bare. How is it your young
warriors are not tempted to put an end to such a fashion? It would
appear,” she added, “that the virtue of the women of this age, which
they parade in all their articles of dress, greatly surpasses that of my
contemporaries.”
As she ended these words, Aspasia turned her eyes on me as if to ask a
reply. I pretended not to notice this, and in order to give myself an
absent air, took up the tongs and pushed away among the embers the
shreds of the doctor’s wig which had escaped the flames. Observing
presently afterwards that one of the bandelets which clasped Aspasia’s
buskin had come undone, “Permit me,” said I, “charming lady,”--and
eagerly stooping, stretched out my hands towards the chair on which I
had fancied I saw those legs about which even great philosophers went
into ecstacies.
I am persuaded that at this moment I was very near genuine somnambulism,
so real was the movement of which I speak. But Rose, who happened to be
sleeping in the chair, thought the movement was meant for her, and
jumping nimbly into my arms, she drove back into Hades the famous shades
my travelling-coat had summoned.
_Liberty._
Delightful realm of Imagination, which the benevolent Being has bestowed
upon man to console him for the disappointments he meets with in real
life.
This day, certain persons on whom I am dependent affect to restore me to
liberty. As if they had ever deprived me of it! As if it were in their
power to snatch it from me for a single moment, and to hinder me from
traversing, at my own good pleasure, the vast space that ever lies open
before me! They have forbidden me to go at large in a city, a mere
speck, and have left open to me the whole universe, in which immensity
and eternity obey me.
I am now free, then; or rather, I must enter again into bondage. The
yoke of office is again to weigh me down, and every step I take must
conform with the exigencies of politeness and duty. Fortunate shall I be
if some capricious goddess do not again make me forget both, and if I
escape from this new and dangerous captivity.
O why did they not allow me to finish my captivity! Was it as a
punishment that I was exiled to my chamber, to that delightful country
in which abound all the riches and enjoyments of the world? As well
might they consign a mouse to a granary.
Still, never did I more clearly perceive that I am double than I do now.
Whilst I regret my imaginary joys, I feel myself consoled. I am borne
along by an unseen power which tells me I need the pure air, and the
light of heaven, and that solitude is like death. Once more I don my
customary garb; my door opens; I wander under the spacious porticos of
the Strada della Po; a thousand agreeable visions float before my eyes.
Yes, there is that mansion, that door, that staircase! I thrill with
expectation.
In like manner the act of slicing a lemon gives you a foretaste that
makes your mouth water.
Poor ANIMAL! Take care!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Bête_ is not translatable here. The English word _animal_ is
hardly nearer than _beast_. _Bête_ is a milder word than _beast_, and
when used metaphorically, implies silliness rather than brutality. In
some cases our _creature_ would translate it, _Pauvre bête!_ _Poor
creature!_
[2] Vide _Werther_, chapter xxviii.
[3] The reader will probably have been reminded of the “Sentimental
Journey” before reaching this proof of our author’s acquaintance with
the writings of Sterne.
H. A.
[4] A fashionable milliner of the time.
[5] This work was not published.
[6] The botanical garden of Turin.
[7] Richardson’s _Clarissa Harlowe_.
[8] Goethe’s _Werther_.
[9] _Cleveland_, by the Abbé Prévost.
[10] Some freedom of translation is, perhaps, pardonable here. Our
author, depending, it would seem, upon his memory, gives Satan wings
large enough “to cover a whole army.” It was “the extended wings” of
the gates of hell, not of Satan, that Milton describes as wide enough
to admit a “bannered host.” _Paradise Lost_, ii. 885.
H. A.
[11] A popular Turin physician when the _Voyage_ was written.
[12] A title known at the Sardinian court.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Journey Round My Room, by Xavier de Maistre