These events occupied so much time, that June had numbered more than
half its days, before we again commenced our long-protracted journey.
The day after my return to Versailles, six men, from among those I had
left at Villeneuve-la-Guiard, arrived, with intelligence, that the rest
of the troop had already proceeded towards Switzerland. We went forward
in the same track.
It is strange, after an interval of time, to look back on a period,
which, though short in itself, appeared, when in actual progress, to be
drawn out interminably. By the end of July we entered Dijon; by the end
of July those hours, days, and weeks had mingled with the ocean of
forgotten time, which in their passage teemed with fatal events and
agonizing sorrow. By the end of July, little more than a month had gone
by, if man’s life were measured by the rising and setting of the sun:
but, alas! in that interval ardent youth had become grey-haired;
furrows deep and uneraseable were trenched in the blooming cheek of the
young mother; the elastic limbs of early manhood, paralyzed as by the
burthen of years, assumed the decrepitude of age. Nights passed, during
whose fatal darkness the sun grew old before it rose; and burning days,
to cool whose baleful heat the balmy eve, lingering far in eastern
climes, came lagging and ineffectual; days, in which the dial, radiant
in its noon-day station, moved not its shadow the space of a little
hour, until a whole life of sorrow had brought the sufferer to an
untimely grave.
We departed from Versailles fifteen hundred souls. We set out on the
eighteenth of June. We made a long procession, in which was contained
every dear relationship, or tie of love, that existed in human society.
Fathers and husbands, with guardian care, gathered their dear relatives
around them; wives and mothers looked for support to the manly form
beside them, and then with tender anxiety bent their eyes on the infant
troop around. They were sad, but not hopeless. Each thought that
someone would be saved; each, with that pertinacious optimism, which to
the last characterized our human nature, trusted that their beloved
family would be the one preserved.
We passed through France, and found it empty of inhabitants. Some one
or two natives survived in the larger towns, which they roamed through
like ghosts; we received therefore small encrease to our numbers, and
such decrease through death, that at last it became easier to count the
scanty list of survivors. As we never deserted any of the sick, until
their death permitted us to commit their remains to the shelter of a
grave, our journey was long, while every day a frightful gap was made
in our troop—they died by tens, by fifties, by hundreds. No mercy was
shewn by death; we ceased to expect it, and every day welcomed the sun
with the feeling that we might never see it rise again.
The nervous terrors and fearful visions which had scared us during the
spring, continued to visit our coward troop during this sad journey.
Every evening brought its fresh creation of spectres; a ghost was
depicted by every blighted tree; and appalling shapes were manufactured
from each shaggy bush. By degrees these common marvels palled on us,
and then other wonders were called into being. Once it was confidently
asserted, that the sun rose an hour later than its seasonable time;
again it was discovered that he grew paler and paler; that shadows took
an uncommon appearance. It was impossible to have imagined, during the
usual calm routine of life men had before experienced, the terrible
effects produced by these extravagant delusions: in truth, of such
little worth are our senses, when unsupported by concurring testimony,
that it was with the utmost difficulty I kept myself free from the
belief in supernatural events, to which the major part of our people
readily gave credit. Being one sane amidst a crowd of the mad, I hardly
dared assert to my own mind, that the vast luminary had undergone no
change—that the shadows of night were unthickened by innumerable shapes
of awe and terror; or that the wind, as it sung in the trees, or
whistled round an empty building, was not pregnant with sounds of
wailing and despair. Sometimes realities took ghostly shapes; and it
was impossible for one’s blood not to curdle at the perception of an
evident mixture of what we knew to be true, with the visionary
semblance of all that we feared.
Once, at the dusk of the evening, we saw a figure all in white,
apparently of more than human stature, flourishing about the road, now
throwing up its arms, now leaping to an astonishing height in the air,
then turning round several times successively, then raising itself to
its full height and gesticulating violently. Our troop, on the alert to
discover and believe in the supernatural, made a halt at some distance
from this shape; and, as it became darker, there was something
appalling even to the incredulous, in the lonely spectre, whose
gambols, if they hardly accorded with spiritual dignity, were beyond
human powers. Now it leapt right up in the air, now sheer over a high
hedge, and was again the moment after in the road before us. By the
time I came up, the fright experienced by the spectators of this
ghostly exhibition, began to manifest itself in the flight of some, and
the close huddling together of the rest. Our goblin now perceived us;
he approached, and, as we drew reverentially back, made a low bow. The
sight was irresistibly ludicrous even to our hapless band, and his
politeness was hailed by a shout of laughter;—then, again springing up,
as a last effort, it sunk to the ground, and became almost invisible
through the dusky night. This circumstance again spread silence and
fear through the troop; the more courageous at length advanced, and,
raising the dying wretch, discovered the tragic explanation of this
wild scene. It was an opera-dancer, and had been one of the troop which
deserted from Villeneuve-la-Guiard: falling sick, he had been deserted
by his companions; in an access of delirium he had fancied himself on
the stage, and, poor fellow, his dying sense eagerly accepted the last
human applause that could ever be bestowed on his grace and agility.
At another time we were haunted for several days by an apparition, to
which our people gave the appellation of the Black Spectre. We never
saw it except at evening, when his coal black steed, his mourning
dress, and plume of black feathers, had a majestic and awe-striking
appearance; his face, one said, who had seen it for a moment, was ashy
pale; he had lingered far behind the rest of his troop, and suddenly at
a turn in the road, saw the Black Spectre coming towards him; he hid
himself in fear, and the horse and his rider slowly past, while the
moonbeams fell on the face of the latter, displaying its unearthly hue.
Sometimes at dead of night, as we watched the sick, we heard one
galloping through the town; it was the Black Spectre come in token of
inevitable death. He grew giant tall to vulgar eyes; an icy atmosphere,
they said, surrounded him; when he was heard, all animals shuddered,
and the dying knew that their last hour was come. It was Death himself,
they declared, come visibly to seize on subject earth, and quell at
once our decreasing numbers, sole rebels to his law. One day at noon,
we saw a dark mass on the road before us, and, coming up, beheld the
Black Spectre fallen from his horse, lying in the agonies of disease
upon the ground. He did not survive many hours; and his last words
disclosed the secret of his mysterious conduct. He was a French noble
of distinction, who, from the effects of plague, had been left alone in
his district; during many months, he had wandered from town to town,
from province to province, seeking some survivor for a companion, and
abhorring the loneliness to which he was condemned. When he discovered
our troop, fear of contagion conquered his love of society. He dared
not join us, yet he could not resolve to lose sight of us, sole human
beings who besides himself existed in wide and fertile France; so he
accompanied us in the spectral guise I have described, till pestilence
gathered him to a larger congregation, even that of Dead Mankind.
It had been well, if such vain terrors could have distracted our
thoughts from more tangible evils. But these were too dreadful and too
many not to force themselves into every thought, every moment, of our
lives. We were obliged to halt at different periods for days together,
till another and yet another was consigned as a clod to the vast clod
which had been once our living mother. Thus we continued travelling
during the hottest season; and it was not till the first of August,
that we, the emigrants,—reader, there were just eighty of us in
number,—entered the gates of Dijon.
We had expected this moment with eagerness, for now we had accomplished
the worst part of our drear journey, and Switzerland was near at hand.
Yet how could we congratulate ourselves on any event thus imperfectly
fulfilled? Were these miserable beings, who, worn and wretched, passed
in sorrowful procession, the sole remnants of the race of man, which,
like a flood, had once spread over and possessed the whole earth? It
had come down clear and unimpeded from its primal mountain source in
Ararat, and grew from a puny streamlet to a vast perennial river,
generation after generation flowing on ceaselessly. The same, but
diversified, it grew, and swept onwards towards the absorbing ocean,
whose dim shores we now reached. It had been the mere plaything of
nature, when first it crept out of uncreative void into light; but
thought brought forth power and knowledge; and, clad with these, the
race of man assumed dignity and authority. It was then no longer the
mere gardener of earth, or the shepherd of her flocks; “it carried with
it an imposing and majestic aspect; it had a pedigree and illustrious
ancestors; it had its gallery of portraits, its monumental
inscriptions, its records and titles.”[24]
This was all over, now that the ocean of death had sucked in the
slackening tide, and its source was dried up. We first had bidden adieu
to the state of things which having existed many thousand years, seemed
eternal; such a state of government, obedience, traffic, and domestic
intercourse, as had moulded our hearts and capacities, as far back as
memory could reach. Then to patriotic zeal, to the arts, to reputation,
to enduring fame, to the name of country, we had bidden farewell. We
saw depart all hope of retrieving our ancient state—all expectation,
except the feeble one of saving our individual lives from the wreck of
the past. To preserve these we had quitted England—England, no more;
for without her children, what name could that barren island claim?
With tenacious grasp we clung to such rule and order as could best save
us; trusting that, if a little colony could be preserved, that would
suffice at some remoter period to restore the lost community of
mankind.
But the game is up! We must all die; nor leave survivor nor heir to the
wide inheritance of earth. We must all die! The species of man must
perish; his frame of exquisite workmanship; the wondrous mechanism of
his senses; the noble proportion of his godlike limbs; his mind, the
throned king of these; must perish. Will the earth still keep her place
among the planets; will she still journey with unmarked regularity
round the sun; will the seasons change, the trees adorn themselves with
leaves, and flowers shed their fragrance, in solitude? Will the
mountains remain unmoved, and streams still keep a downward course
towards the vast abyss; will the tides rise and fall, and the winds fan
universal nature; will beasts pasture, birds fly, and fishes swim, when
man, the lord, possessor, perceiver, and recorder of all these things,
has passed away, as though he had never been? O, what mockery is this!
Surely death is not death, and humanity is not extinct; but merely
passed into other shapes, unsubjected to our perceptions. Death is a
vast portal, an high road to life: let us hasten to pass; let us exist
no more in this living death, but die that we may live!
We had longed with inexpressible earnestness to reach Dijon, since we
had fixed on it, as a kind of station in our progress. But now we
entered it with a torpor more painful than acute suffering. We had come
slowly but irrevocably to the opinion, that our utmost efforts would
not preserve one human being alive. We took our hands therefore away
from the long grasped rudder; and the frail vessel on which we floated,
seemed, the government over her suspended, to rush, prow foremost, into
the dark abyss of the billows. A gush of grief, a wanton profusion of
tears, and vain laments, and overflowing tenderness, and passionate but
fruitless clinging to the priceless few that remained, was followed by
languor and recklessness.
During this disastrous journey we lost all those, not of our own
family, to whom we had particularly attached ourselves among the
survivors. It were not well to fill these pages with a mere catalogue
of losses; yet I cannot refrain from this last mention of those
principally dear to us. The little girl whom Adrian had rescued from
utter desertion, during our ride through London on the twentieth of
November, died at Auxerre. The poor child had attached herself greatly
to us; and the suddenness of her death added to our sorrow. In the
morning we had seen her apparently in health—in the evening, Lucy,
before we retired to rest, visited our quarters to say that she was
dead. Poor Lucy herself only survived, till we arrived at Dijon. She
had devoted herself throughout to the nursing the sick, and attending
the friendless. Her excessive exertions brought on a slow fever, which
ended in the dread disease whose approach soon released her from her
sufferings. She had throughout been endeared to us by her good
qualities, by her ready and cheerful execution of every duty, and mild
acquiescence in every turn of adversity. When we consigned her to the
tomb, we seemed at the same time to bid a final adieu to those
peculiarly feminine virtues conspicuous in her; uneducated and
unpretending as she was, she was distinguished for patience,
forbearance, and sweetness. These, with all their train of qualities
peculiarly English, would never again be revived for us. This type of
all that was most worthy of admiration in her class among my
countrywomen, was placed under the sod of desert France; and it was as
a second separation from our country to have lost sight of her for
ever.
The Countess of Windsor died during our abode at Dijon. One morning I
was informed that she wished to see me. Her message made me remember,
that several days had elapsed since I had last seen her. Such a
circumstance had often occurred during our journey, when I remained
behind to watch to their close the last moments of some one of our
hapless comrades, and the rest of the troop past on before me. But
there was something in the manner of her messenger, that made me
suspect that all was not right. A caprice of the imagination caused me
to conjecture that some ill had occurred to Clara or Evelyn, rather
than to this aged lady. Our fears, for ever on the stretch, demanded a
nourishment of horror; and it seemed too natural an occurrence, too
like past times, for the old to die before the young. I found the
venerable mother of my Idris lying on a couch, her tall emaciated
figure stretched out; her face fallen away, from which the nose stood
out in sharp profile, and her large dark eyes, hollow and deep, gleamed
with such light as may edge a thunder cloud at sun-set. All was
shrivelled and dried up, except these lights; her voice too was
fearfully changed, as she spoke to me at intervals. “I am afraid,” said
she, “that it is selfish in me to have asked you to visit the old woman
again, before she dies: yet perhaps it would have been a greater shock
to hear suddenly that I was dead, than to see me first thus.”
I clasped her shrivelled hand: “Are you indeed so ill?” I asked.
“Do you not perceive death in my face,” replied she, “it is strange; I
ought to have expected this, and yet I confess it has taken me unaware.
I never clung to life, or enjoyed it, till these last months, while
among those I senselessly deserted: and it is hard to be snatched
immediately away. I am glad, however, that I am not a victim of the
plague; probably I should have died at this hour, though the world had
continued as it was in my youth.”
She spoke with difficulty, and I perceived that she regretted the
necessity of death, even more than she cared to confess. Yet she had
not to complain of an undue shortening of existence; her faded person
shewed that life had naturally spent itself. We had been alone at
first; now Clara entered; the Countess turned to her with a smile, and
took the hand of this lovely child; her roseate palm and snowy fingers,
contrasted with relaxed fibres and yellow hue of those of her aged
friend; she bent to kiss her, touching her withered mouth with the
warm, full lips of youth. “Verney,” said the Countess, “I need not
recommend this dear girl to you, for your own sake you will preserve
her. Were the world as it was, I should have a thousand sage
precautions to impress, that one so sensitive, good, and beauteous,
might escape the dangers that used to lurk for the destruction of the
fair and excellent. This is all nothing now.
“I commit you, my kind nurse, to your uncle’s care; to yours I entrust
the dearest relic of my better self. Be to Adrian, sweet one, what you
have been to me—enliven his sadness with your sprightly sallies; sooth
his anguish by your sober and inspired converse, when he is dying;
nurse him as you have done me.”
Clara burst into tears; “Kind girl,” said the Countess, “do not weep
for me. Many dear friends are left to you.”
“And yet,” cried Clara, “you talk of their dying also. This is indeed
cruel —how could I live, if they were gone? If it were possible for my
beloved protector to die before me, I could not nurse him; I could only
die too.”
The venerable lady survived this scene only twenty-four hours. She was
the last tie binding us to the ancient state of things. It was
impossible to look on her, and not call to mind in their wonted guise,
events and persons, as alien to our present situation as the disputes
of Themistocles and Aristides, or the wars of the two roses in our
native land. The crown of England had pressed her brow; the memory of
my father and his misfortunes, the vain struggles of the late king, the
images of Raymond, Evadne, and Perdita, who had lived in the world’s
prime, were brought vividly before us. We consigned her to the
oblivious tomb with reluctance; and when I turned from her grave, Janus
veiled his retrospective face; that which gazed on future generations
had long lost its faculty.
After remaining a week at Dijon, until thirty of our number deserted
the vacant ranks of life, we continued our way towards Geneva. At noon
on the second day we arrived at the foot of Jura. We halted here during
the heat of the day. Here fifty human beings—fifty, the only human
beings that survived of the food-teeming earth, assembled to read in
the looks of each other ghastly plague, or wasting sorrow, desperation,
or worse, carelessness of future or present evil. Here we assembled at
the foot of this mighty wall of mountain, under a spreading walnut
tree; a brawling stream refreshed the green sward by its sprinkling;
and the busy grasshopper chirped among the thyme. We clustered together
a group of wretched sufferers. A mother cradled in her enfeebled arms
the child, last of many, whose glazed eye was about to close for ever.
Here beauty, late glowing in youthful lustre and consciousness, now wan
and neglected, knelt fanning with uncertain motion the beloved, who lay
striving to paint his features, distorted by illness, with a thankful
smile. There an hard-featured, weather-worn veteran, having prepared
his meal, sat, his head dropped on his breast, the useless knife
falling from his grasp, his limbs utterly relaxed, as thought of wife
and child, and dearest relative, all lost, passed across his
recollection. There sat a man who for forty years had basked in
fortune’s tranquil sunshine; he held the hand of his last hope, his
beloved daughter, who had just attained womanhood; and he gazed on her
with anxious eyes, while she tried to rally her fainting spirit to
comfort him. Here a servant, faithful to the last, though dying, waited
on one, who, though still erect with health, gazed with gasping fear on
the variety of woe around.
Adrian stood leaning against a tree; he held a book in his hand, but
his eye wandered from the pages, and sought mine; they mingled a
sympathetic glance; his looks confessed that his thoughts had quitted
the inanimate print, for pages more pregnant with meaning, more
absorbing, spread out before him. By the margin of the stream, apart
from all, in a tranquil nook, where the purling brook kissed the green
sward gently, Clara and Evelyn were at play, sometimes beating the
water with large boughs, sometimes watching the summer-flies that
sported upon it. Evelyn now chased a butterfly—now gathered a flower
for his cousin; and his laughing cherub-face and clear brow told of the
light heart that beat in his bosom. Clara, though she endeavoured to
give herself up to his amusement, often forgot him, as she turned to
observe Adrian and me. She was now fourteen, and retained her childish
appearance, though in height a woman; she acted the part of the
tenderest mother to my little orphan boy; to see her playing with him,
or attending silently and submissively on our wants, you thought only
of her admirable docility and patience; but, in her soft eyes, and the
veined curtains that veiled them, in the clearness of her marmoreal
brow, and the tender expression of her lips, there was an intelligence
and beauty that at once excited admiration and love.
When the sun had sunk towards the precipitate west, and the evening
shadows grew long, we prepared to ascend the mountain. The attention
that we were obliged to pay to the sick, made our progress slow. The
winding road, though steep, presented a confined view of rocky fields
and hills, each hiding the other, till our farther ascent disclosed
them in succession. We were seldom shaded from the declining sun, whose
slant beams were instinct with exhausting heat. There are times when
minor difficulties grow gigantic —times, when as the Hebrew poet
expressively terms it, “the grasshopper is a burthen;” so was it with
our ill fated party this evening. Adrian, usually the first to rally
his spirits, and dash foremost into fatigue and hardship, with relaxed
limbs and declined head, the reins hanging loosely in his grasp, left
the choice of the path to the instinct of his horse, now and then
painfully rousing himself, when the steepness of the ascent required
that he should keep his seat with better care. Fear and horror
encompassed me. Did his languid air attest that he also was struck with
contagion? How long, when I look on this matchless specimen of
mortality, may I perceive that his thought answers mine? how long will
those limbs obey the kindly spirit within? how long will light and life
dwell in the eyes of this my sole remaining friend? Thus pacing slowly,
each hill surmounted, only presented another to be ascended; each
jutting corner only discovered another, sister to the last, endlessly.
Sometimes the pressure of sickness in one among us, caused the whole
cavalcade to halt; the call for water, the eagerly expressed wish to
repose; the cry of pain, and suppressed sob of the mourner—such were
the sorrowful attendants of our passage of the Jura.
Adrian had gone first. I saw him, while I was detained by the loosening
of a girth, struggling with the upward path, seemingly more difficult
than any we had yet passed. He reached the top, and the dark outline of
his figure stood in relief against the sky. He seemed to behold
something unexpected and wonderful; for, pausing, his head stretched
out, his arms for a moment extended, he seemed to give an All Hail! to
some new vision. Urged by curiosity, I hurried to join him. After
battling for many tedious minutes with the precipice, the same scene
presented itself to me, which had wrapt him in extatic wonder.
Nature, or nature’s favourite, this lovely earth, presented her most
unrivalled beauties in resplendent and sudden exhibition. Below, far,
far below, even as it were in the yawning abyss of the ponderous globe,
lay the placid and azure expanse of lake Leman; vine-covered hills
hedged it in, and behind dark mountains in cone-like shape, or
irregular cyclopean wall, served for further defence. But beyond, and
high above all, as if the spirits of the air had suddenly unveiled
their bright abodes, placed in scaleless altitude in the stainless sky,
heaven-kissing, companions of the unattainable ether, were the glorious
Alps, clothed in dazzling robes of light by the setting sun. And, as if
the world’s wonders were never to be exhausted, their vast immensities,
their jagged crags, and roseate painting, appeared again in the lake
below, dipping their proud heights beneath the unruffled waves—palaces
for the Naiads of the placid waters. Towns and villages lay scattered
at the foot of Jura, which, with dark ravine, and black promontories,
stretched its roots into the watery expanse beneath. Carried away by
wonder, I forgot the death of man, and the living and beloved friend
near me. When I turned, I saw tears streaming from his eyes; his thin
hands pressed one against the other, his animated countenance beaming
with admiration; “Why,” cried he, at last, “Why, oh heart, whisperest
thou of grief to me? Drink in the beauty of that scene, and possess
delight beyond what a fabled paradise could afford.”
By degrees, our whole party surmounting the steep, joined us, not one
among them, but gave visible tokens of admiration, surpassing any
before experienced. One cried, “God reveals his heaven to us; we may
die blessed.” Another and another, with broken exclamations, and
extravagant phrases, endeavoured to express the intoxicating effect of
this wonder of nature. So we remained awhile, lightened of the pressing
burthen of fate, forgetful of death, into whose night we were about to
plunge; no longer reflecting that our eyes now and for ever were and
would be the only ones which might perceive the divine magnificence of
this terrestrial exhibition. An enthusiastic transport, akin to
happiness, burst, like a sudden ray from the sun, on our darkened life.
Precious attribute of woe-worn humanity! that can snatch extatic
emotion, even from under the very share and harrow, that ruthlessly
ploughs up and lays waste every hope.
This evening was marked by another event. Passing through Ferney in our
way to Geneva, unaccustomed sounds of music arose from the rural church
which stood embosomed in trees, surrounded by smokeless, vacant
cottages. The peal of an organ with rich swell awoke the mute air,
lingering along, and mingling with the intense beauty that clothed the
rocks and woods, and waves around. Music—the language of the immortals,
disclosed to us as testimony of their existence—music, “silver key of
the fountain of tears,” child of love, soother of grief, inspirer of
heroism and radiant thoughts, O music, in this our desolation, we had
forgotten thee! Nor pipe at eve cheered us, nor harmony of voice, nor
linked thrill of string; thou camest upon us now, like the revealing of
other forms of being; and transported as we had been by the loveliness
of nature, fancying that we beheld the abode of spirits, now we might
well imagine that we heard their melodious communings. We paused in
such awe as would seize on a pale votarist, visiting some holy shrine
at midnight; if she beheld animated and smiling, the image which she
worshipped. We all stood mute; many knelt. In a few minutes however, we
were recalled to human wonder and sympathy by a familiar strain. The
air was Haydn’s “New-Created World,” and, old and drooping as humanity
had become, the world yet fresh as at creation’s day, might still be
worthily celebrated by such an hymn of praise. Adrian and I entered the
church; the nave was empty, though the smoke of incense rose from the
altar, bringing with it the recollection of vast congregations, in once
thronged cathedrals; we went into the loft. A blind old man sat at the
bellows; his whole soul was ear; and as he sat in the attitude of
attentive listening, a bright glow of pleasure was diffused over his
countenance; for, though his lack-lustre eye could not reflect the
beam, yet his parted lips, and every line of his face and venerable
brow spoke delight. A young woman sat at the keys, perhaps twenty years
of age. Her auburn hair hung on her neck, and her fair brow shone in
its own beauty; but her drooping eyes let fall fast-flowing tears,
while the constraint she exercised to suppress her sobs, and still her
trembling, flushed her else pale cheek; she was thin; languor, and
alas! sickness, bent her form. We stood looking at the pair, forgetting
what we heard in the absorbing sight; till, the last chord struck, the
peal died away in lessening reverberations. The mighty voice, inorganic
we might call it, for we could in no way associate it with mechanism of
pipe or key, stilled its sonorous tone, and the girl, turning to lend
her assistance to her aged companion, at length perceived us.
It was her father; and she, since childhood, had been the guide of his
darkened steps. They were Germans from Saxony, and, emigrating thither
but a few years before, had formed new ties with the surrounding
villagers. About the time that the pestilence had broken out, a young
German student had joined them. Their simple history was easily
divined. He, a noble, loved the fair daughter of the poor musician, and
followed them in their flight from the persecutions of his friends; but
soon the mighty leveller came with unblunted scythe to mow, together
with the grass, the tall flowers of the field. The youth was an early
victim. She preserved herself for her father’s sake. His blindness
permitted her to continue a delusion, at first the child of
accident—and now solitary beings, sole survivors in the land, he
remained unacquainted with the change, nor was aware that when he
listened to his child’s music, the mute mountains, senseless lake, and
unconscious trees, were, himself excepted, her sole auditors.
The very day that we arrived she had been attacked by symptomatic
illness. She was paralyzed with horror at the idea of leaving her aged,
sightless father alone on the empty earth; but she had not courage to
disclose the truth, and the very excess of her desperation animated her
to surpassing exertions. At the accustomed vesper hour, she led him to
the chapel; and, though trembling and weeping on his account, she
played, without fault in time, or error in note, the hymn written to
celebrate the creation of the adorned earth, soon to be her tomb.
We came to her like visitors from heaven itself; her high-wrought
courage; her hardly sustained firmness, fled with the appearance of
relief. With a shriek she rushed towards us, embraced the knees of
Adrian, and uttering but the words, “O save my father!” with sobs and
hysterical cries, opened the long-shut floodgates of her woe.
Poor girl!—she and her father now lie side by side, beneath the high
walnut-tree where her lover reposes, and which in her dying moments she
had pointed out to us. Her father, at length aware of his daughter’s
danger, unable to see the changes of her dear countenance, obstinately
held her hand, till it was chilled and stiffened by death. Nor did he
then move or speak, till, twelve hours after, kindly death took him to
his breakless repose. They rest beneath the sod, the tree their
monument;—the hallowed spot is distinct in my memory, paled in by
craggy Jura, and the far, immeasurable Alps; the spire of the church
they frequented still points from out the embosoming trees; and though
her hand be cold, still methinks the sounds of divine music which they
loved wander about, solacing their gentle ghosts.
[24] Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.