* * * * * *
----And the twain were playing dice.
* * * * * *
The game is done, I’ve won, I’ve won,
Quoth she, and whistled thrice.
COLERIDGE--_Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner_.
The Tale of Guzman’s Family.
“Of what I am about to read to you,” said the stranger, “I have
witnessed part myself, and the remainder is established on a basis as
strong as human evidence can make it.
“In the city of Seville, where I lived many years, I knew a wealthy
merchant, far advanced in years, who was known by the name of Guzman the
rich. He was of obscure birth,--and those who honoured his wealth
sufficiently to borrow from him frequently, never honoured his name so
far as to prefix Don to it, or to add his surname, of which, indeed,
most were ignorant, and among the number, it is said, the wealthy
merchant himself. He was well respected, however; and when Guzman was
seen, as regularly as the bell tolled for vespers, to issue from the
narrow door of his house,--lock it carefully,--view it twice or thrice
with a wistful eye,--then deposit the key in his bosom, and move slowly
to church, feeling for the key in his vest the whole way,--the proudest
heads in Seville were uncovered as he passed,--and the children who were
playing in the streets, desisted from their sports till he had halted by
them.
“Guzman had neither wife or child,--relative or friend. An old female
domestic constituted his whole household, and his personal expences were
calculated on a scale of the most pinching frugality; it was therefore
matter of anxious conjecture to many, how his enormous wealth would be
bestowed after his death. This anxiety gave rise to inquiries about the
possibility of Guzman having relatives, though in remoteness and
obscurity; and the diligence of inquiry, when stimulated at once by
avarice and curiosity, is indefatigable. Thus it was at length
discovered that Guzman had formerly a sister, many years younger than
himself, who, at a very early age, had married a German musician, a
Protestant, and had shortly after quitted Spain. It was remembered, or
reported, that she had made many efforts to soften the heart and open
the hand of her brother, who was even then very wealthy, and to induce
him to be reconciled to their union, and to enable her and her husband
to remain in Spain. Guzman was inflexible. Wealthy, and proud of his
wealth as he was, he might have digested the unpalatable morsel of her
union with a poor man, whom he could have made rich; but he could not
even swallow the intelligence that she had married a Protestant. Ines,
for that was her name, and her husband, went to Germany, partly in
dependence on his musical talents, which were highly appreciated in that
country,--partly in the vague hope of emigrants, that change of place
will be attended with change of circumstances,--and partly, also, from
the feeling, that misfortune is better tolerated any where than in the
presence of those who inflict it. Such was the tale told by the old, who
affected to remember the facts,--and believed by the young, whose
imagination supplied all the defects of memory, and pictured to them an
interesting beauty, with her children hanging about her, embarking, with
a heretic husband, for a distant country, and sadly bidding farewell to
the land and the religion of her fathers.
“Now, while these things were talked of at Seville, Guzman fell sick,
and was given over by the physicians, whom with considerable reluctance
he had suffered to be called in.
“In the progress of his illness, whether nature revisited a heart she
long appeared to have deserted,--or whether he conceived that the hand
of a relative might be a more grateful support to his dying head than
that of a rapacious and mercenary menial,--or whether his resentful
feelings burnt faintly at the expected approach of death, as artificial
fires wax dim at the appearance of morning;--so it was, that Guzman in
his illness bethought himself of his sister and her family,--sent off,
at a considerable expence, an express to that part of Germany where she
resided, to invite her to return and be reconciled to him,--and prayed
devoutly that he might be permitted to survive till he could breathe his
last amid the arms of her and her children. Moreover, there was a report
at this time, in which the hearers probably took more interest than in
any thing that related merely to the life or death of Guzman,--and this
was, that he had rescinded his former will, and sent for a notary, with
whom, in spite of his apparent debility, he remained locked up for some
hours, dictating in a tone which, however clear to the notary, did not
leave one distinct impression of sound on the ears that were strained,
even to an agony of listening, at the double-locked door of his chamber.
“All Guzman’s friends had endeavoured to dissuade him from making this
exertion, which, they assured him, would only hasten his dissolution.
But to their surprise, and doubtless their delight, from the moment his
will was made, Guzman’s health began to amend,--and in less than a week
he began to walk about his chamber, and calculate what time it might
take an express to reach Germany, and how soon he might expect
intelligence from his family.
“Some months had passed away, and the priests took advantage of the
interval to get about Guzman. But after exhausting every effort of
ingenuity,--after plying him powerfully but unavailingly on the side of
conscience, of duty, of fear, and of religion,--they began to understand
their interest, and change their battery. And finding that the settled
purpose of Guzman’s soul was not to be changed, and that he was
determined on recalling his sister and her family to Spain, they
contented themselves with requiring that he should have no communication
with the heretic family, except through them,--and never see his sister
or her children unless they were witnesses to the interview.
“This condition was easily complied with, for Guzman felt no decided
inclination for seeing his sister, whose presence might have reminded
him of feelings alienated, and duties forgot. Besides, he was a man of
fixed habits; and the presence of the most interesting being on earth,
that threatened the slightest interruption or suspension of those
habits, would have been to him insupportable.
“Thus we are all indurated by age and habit,--and feel ultimately, that
the dearest connexions of nature or passion may be sacrificed to those
petty indulgences which the presence or influence of a stranger may
disturb. So Guzman compromised between his conscience and his feelings.
He determined, in spite of all the priests in Seville, to invite his
sister and her family to Spain, and to leave the mass of his immense
fortune to them; (and to that effect he wrote, and wrote repeatedly and
explicitly). But, on the other hand, he promised and swore to his
spiritual counsellors, that he never would see one individual of the
family; and that, though his sister might inherit his fortune, she
never--never should see his face. The priests were satisfied, or
appeared to be so, with this declaration; and Guzman, having propitiated
them with ample offerings to the shrines of various saints, to each of
whom his recovery was exclusively attributed, sat down to calculate the
probable expence of his sister’s return to Spain, and the necessity of
providing for her family, whom he had, as it were, rooted from their
native bed; and therefore felt bound, in all honesty, to make them
flourish in the soil into which he had transplanted them.
“Within the year, his sister, her husband, and four children, returned
to Spain. Her name was Ines, her husband’s was Walberg. He was an
industrious man, and an excellent musician. His talents had obtained for
him the place of _Maestro di Capella_ to the Duke of Saxony; and his
children were educated (according to his means) to supply his place when
vacated by death or accident, or to employ themselves as musical
teachers in the courts of German princes. He and his wife had lived with
the utmost frugality, and looked to their children for the means of
increasing, by the exercise of their talents, that subsistence which it
was their daily labour to provide.
“The eldest son, who was called Everhard, inherited his father’s musical
talents. The daughters, Julia and Ines, were musical also, and very
skilful in embroidery. The youngest child, Maurice, was by turns the
delight and the torment of the family.
“They had struggled on for many years in difficulties too petty to be
made the subject of detail, yet too severe not to be painfully felt by
those whose lot is to encounter them every day, and every hour of the
day,--when the sudden intelligence, brought by an express from Spain, of
their wealthy relative Guzman inviting them to return thither, and
proclaiming them heirs to all his vast riches, burst on them like the
first dawn of his half-year’s summer on the crouching and squalid inmate
of a Lapland hut. All trouble was forgot,--all cares postponed,--their
few debts paid off,--and their preparations made for an instant
departure to Spain.
“So to Spain they went, and journeyed on to the city of Seville, where,
on their arrival, they were waited on by a grave ecclesiastic, who
acquainted them with Guzman’s resolution of never seeing his offending
sister or her family, while at the same time he assured them of his
intention of supporting and supplying them with every comfort, till his
decease put them in possession of his wealth. The family were somewhat
disturbed at this intelligence, and the mother wept at being denied the
sight of her brother, for whom she still cherished the affection of
memory; while the priest, by way of softening the discharge of his
commission, dropt some words of a change of their heretical opinions
being most likely to open a channel of communication between them and
their relative. The silence with which this hint was received spoke more
than many words, and the priest departed.
“This was the first cloud that had intercepted their view of felicity
since the express arrived in Germany, and they sat gloomily enough under
its shadow for the remainder of the evening. Walberg, in the confidence
of expected wealth, had not only brought over his children to Spain, but
had written to his father and mother, who were very old, and wretchedly
poor, to join him in Seville; and by the sale of his house and
furniture, had been enabled to remit them money for the heavy expences
of so long a journey. They were now hourly expected, and the children,
who had a faint but grateful recollection of the blessing bestowed on
their infant heads by quivering lips and withered hands, looked out with
joy for the arrival of the ancient pair. Ines had often said to her
husband, “Would it not be better to let your father and mother remain in
Germany, and remit them money for their support, than put them to the
fatigue of so long a journey at their far advanced age?”--And he had
always answered, “Let them rather die under my roof, than live under
that of strangers.”
“This night he perhaps began to feel the prudence of his wife’s
advice;--she saw it, and with cautious gentleness forbore, for that very
reason, to remind him of it.
“The weather was gloomy and cold that evening,--it was unlike a night in
Spain. Its chill appeared to extend to the party. Ines sat and worked in
silence--the children, collected at the window, communicated in whispers
their hopes and conjectures about the arrival of the aged travellers,
and Walberg, who was restlessly traversing the room, sometimes sighed as
he overheard them.
“The next day was sunny and cloudless. The priest again called on them,
and, after regretting that Guzman’s resolution was inflexible, informed
them, that he was directed to pay them an annual sum for their support,
which he named, and which appeared to them enormous; and to appropriate
another for the education of the children, which seemed to be calculated
on a scale of princely munificence. He put deeds, properly drawn and
attested for this purpose, into their hands, and then withdrew, after
repeating the assurance, that they would be the undoubted heirs of
Guzman’s wealth at his decease, and that, as the interval would be
passed in affluence, it might well be passed without repining. The
priest had scarcely retired, when the aged parents of Walberg arrived,
feeble from joy and fatigue, but not exhausted, and the whole family sat
down to a meal that appeared to them luxurious, in that placid
contemplation of future felicity, which is often more exquisite than its
actual enjoyment.
“I saw them,” said the stranger, interrupting himself,--“I saw them on
the evening of that day of union, and a painter, who wished to embody
the image of domestic felicity in a group of living figures, need have
gone no further than the mansion of Walberg. He and his wife were seated
at the head of the table, smiling on their children, and seeing them
smile in return, without the intervention of one anxious thought,--one
present harassing of petty difficulty, or heavy presage of future
mischance,--_one fear of the morrow_, or aching remembrance of the past.
Their children formed indeed a groupe on which the eye of painter or of
parent, the gaze of taste or of affection, might have hung with equal
delight. Everhard their eldest son, now sixteen, possessed too much
beauty for his sex, and his delicate and brilliant complexion, his
slender and exquisitely moulded form, and the modulation of his tender
and tremulous voice, inspired that mingled interest, with which we
watch, in youth, over the strife of present debility with the promise of
future strength, and infused into his parent’s hearts that fond anxiety
with which we mark the progress of a mild but cloudy morning in spring,
rejoicing in the mild and balmy glories of its dawn, but fearing lest
clouds may overshade them before noon. The daughters, Ines and Julia,
had all the loveliness of their colder climate--the luxuriant ringlets
of golden hair, the large bright blue eyes, the snow-like whiteness of
their bosoms, and slender arms, and the rose-leaf tint and peachiness of
their delicate cheeks, made them, as they attended their parents with
graceful and fond officiousness, resemble two young Hebes ministering
cups, which their touch alone was enough to turn into nectar.
“The spirits of these young persons had been early depressed by the
difficulties in which their parents were involved; and even in childhood
they had acquired the timid tread, the whispered tone, the anxious and
inquiring look, that the constant sense of domestic distress painfully
teaches even to children, and which it is the most exquisite pain to a
parent to witness. But now there was nothing to restrain their young
hearts,--that stranger, a _smile_, fled back rejoicing to the lovely
home of their lips,--and the timidity of their former habits only lent a
grateful shade to the brilliant exuberance of youthful happiness. Just
opposite this picture, whose hues were so bright, and whose shades were
so tender, were seated the figures of the aged grandfather and
grandmother. The contrast was very strong; there was no connecting link,
no graduated medium,--you passed at once from the first and fairest
flowers of spring, to the withered and rootless barrenness of winter.
“These very aged persons, however, had something in their looks to
soothe the eye, and Teniers or Wouverman would perhaps have valued their
figures and costume far beyond those of their young and lovely
grandchildren. They were stiffly and quaintly habited in their German
garb--the old man in his doublet and cap, and the old woman in her ruff,
stomacher, and head-gear resembling a skull-cap, with long depending
pinners, through which a few white, but very long hairs, appeared on her
wrinkled cheeks; but on the countenances of both there was a gleam of
joy, like the cold smile of a setting sun on a wintry landscape. They
did not distinctly hear the kind importunities of their son and
daughter, to partake more amply of the most plentiful meal they had ever
witnessed in their frugal lives,--but they bowed and smiled with that
thankfulness which is at once wounding and grateful to the hearts of
affectionate children. They smiled also at the beauty of Everhard and
their elder grandchildren,--at the wild pranks of Maurice, who was as
wild in the hour of trouble as in the hour of prosperity;--and finally,
they smiled at all that was said, though they did not hear half of it,
and at all they saw, though they could enjoy very little--and that
_smile of age_, that placid submission to the pleasures of the young,
mingled with undoubted anticipations of a more pure and perfect
felicity, gave an almost heavenly expression to features, that would
otherwise have borne only the withering look of debility and decay.
“Some circumstances occurred during this family feast, which were
sufficiently characteristic of the partakers. Walberg (himself a very
temperate man) pressed his father repeatedly to take more wine than he
was accustomed to,--the old man gently declined it. The son still
pressed it heartfully, and the old man complied with a wish to gratify
his son, not himself.
“The younger children, too, caressed their grandmother with the
boisterous fondness of children. Their mother reproached them.--“Nay,
let be,” said the gentle old woman. “They trouble you, mother,” said the
wife of Walberg.--“They cannot trouble me long,” said the grandmother,
with an emphatic smile. “Father,” said Walberg, “is not Everhard grown
very tall?”--“The last time I saw him,” said the grandfather, “I stooped
to kiss him; now I think he must stoop to kiss me.” And, at the word,
Everhard darted like an arrow into the trembling arms that were opened
to receive him, and his red and hairless lips were pressed to the snowy
beard of his grandfather. “Cling there, my child,” said the exulting
father.--“God grant your kiss may never be applied to lips less
pure.”--“They never shall, my father!” said the susceptible boy,
blushing at his own emotions--“I never wish to press any lips but those
that will bless me like those of my grandfather.”---- “And do you wish,”
said the old man jocularly, “that the blessing should _always_ issue
from lips as rough and hoary as mine?” Everhard stood blushing behind
the old man’s chair at this question, and Walberg, who heard the clock
strike the hour at which he had been always accustomed, in prosperity or
adversity, to summon his family to prayer, made a signal which his
children well understood, and which was communicated in whispers to
their aged relatives.--“Thank God,” said the aged grandmother to the
young whisperer, and as she spoke, she sunk on her knees. Her
grandchildren assisted her. “Thank God,” echoed the old man, bending his
stiffened knees, and doffing his cap--“Thank God for this ‘shadow of a
great rock in a weary land!’”--and he knelt, while Walberg, after
reading a chapter or two from a German Bible which he held in his hands,
pronounced an extempore prayer, imploring God to fill their hearts with
gratitude for the temporal blessings they enjoyed, and to enable them
“so to pass through things temporal, that they might not finally lose
the things eternal.” At the close of the prayer, the family rose and
saluted each other with that affection which has not its root in earth,
and whose blossoms, however diminutive and colourless to the eye of man
in this wretched soil, shall yet bear glorious fruit in the garden of
God. It was a lovely sight to behold the young people assisting their
aged relatives to arise from their knees,--and it was a lovelier
hearing, to listen to the happy good-nights exchanged among the parting
family. The wife of Walberg was most assiduous in preparing the comforts
of her husband’s parents, and Walberg yielded to her with that proud
gratitude, that feels more exaltation in a benefit conferred by those we
love, than if we conferred it ourselves. He loved his parents, but he
was proud of his wife loving them because they were his. To the repeated
offers of his children to assist or attend their ancient relatives, he
answered, “No, dear children, your mother will do better,--your mother
always does best.” As he spoke, his children, according to a custom now
forgot, kneeled before him to ask his blessing. His hand, tremulous with
affection, rested first on the curling locks of the darling Everhard,
whose head towered proudly above those of his kneeling sisters, and of
Maurice, who, with the irrepressible and venial levity of joyous
childhood, laughed as he knelt. “God bless you!” said Walberg--“God
bless you all,--and may he make you as good as your mother, and as happy
as--your father is this night;” and as he spoke, the happy father turned
aside and wept.