During the remainder of that and the following day Charney exhibited
the depression of mind and body which results from every great physical
crisis. But on the third day he resumed his powers of thought and action;
and, if still detained by weakness on his pillow, the time was not far
distant when he was likely to resume his former habits of life.
What delight to renew his acquaintance with his benefactress! All his
thoughts were now turned towards Picciola! There seemed to be something
beyond the common course of events in the fact that a seed, accidentally
shed within the precincts of his prison, should have germinated in order
to cure in the first instance his moral disorder—ennui: and in the
second, the perilous physical disease to which he had been about to fall
a victim. He, whom the splendour of wealth had failed to enliven—he,
whom the calculations of human learning had failed to restore—had been
preserved, first and last, by a plant! Enfeebled by illness, he was no
longer able to apply his full force of reasoning to the development
of the question; and a superstitious feeling, accordingly, began to
attach him with redoubled force to the mysterious PICCIOLA. It was
impossible to ground upon a rational basis his sentiments of gratitude
towards a non-sentient being; nevertheless Charney found it impossible
to refuse his affection in exchange for the existence bestowed upon him.
Where reason is paralysed, imagination exercises her influence without
restraint. Charney’s regard for his benefactress now became exalted into
a religious feeling, or rather into a blind superstition. Between him
and his favourite there existed a mysterious sympathy of nature, like
the attraction which draws together certain inanimate substances. He
even fancied himself under a charm—a spell of enchantment. Who knows?
Perhaps the arrogant refuter of the existence of a GOD is about to fall
into the puerilities of judicial astrology. For in the secrecy of his
cell, Charney does not hesitate to apostrophize Picciola as his star—his
destiny—his talisman of light and life!
It is a curious fact that scarcely one illustrious man, remarkable for
knowledge or genius, convicted of doubt in the agency of a Providence,
but has been in his own person the slave of superstition; while
attempting to throw off the yoke of servitude, submitting to become
threefold slaves. In the blind eagerness of their pride to arrogate to
their own merit the power or glory they have attained—those deep-seated
instincts of religion which they have attempted to stifle in their
souls—thrust out of their natural channel—force a way of their own
towards daylight, and acquire a wild and irregular character. The
homage they arrest in its course to heaven, falls back upon the earth.
They would fain judge, though they refuse to believe; and the genius
whose horizon they have circumscribed, requites the forced contraction
by seeing things in part instead of a whole, and losing all power of
estimating the homogeneous design of the great Master of all! They attach
themselves to details, because an isolated fact is within the scope of
their judgment, and do not so much as notice the points of union which
connect it with universal nature. For what is the whole creation—earth,
air, water—the winds, the waves, the stars—mankind—the universe, but an
infinite being, complete, premeditated, varied into inscrutable details,
and breathing and palpitating under the omnipresent hand of GOD?
Subdued, however, by the strength of his pride and the weakness of
his health, Charney saw nothing to admire in nature but his weed—his
plant—his Picciola; and, as if to justify his folly by analogy, dived
into the vast stores of his memory for a precedent.
[Illustration]
He called to mind all the miraculous plants recorded from the earliest
times, by poet or historian; the _holly_ of Homer—the palm-tree of
Latona—the oak of Odin—nay, even the golden herb which shines before
the eyes of the ignorant peasants of Brittany, and the May-flower,
which preserves from evil thoughts the simple shepherdess of La Brie.
He recollected the sacred fig-tree of the Romans—the olive of the
Athenians—the Teutatés of the Celts—the vervain of the Gauls—the lotus of
the Greeks—the beans of the Pythagoreans—the mandrake of the Hebrews. He
remembered the green campac which blossoms everlastingly in the Persian’s
paradise; the touba tree which overshadows the celestial throne of
Mahomet; the magic camalata, the sacred amreet on whose branches the
Indians behold imaginary fruits of Ambrosia and of voluptuous enjoyment.
He recurred with pleasure to the symbolical worship of the Japanese,
who elevate the altars of their divinities on pedestals of heliotropes
and water-lilies, assigning the throne of Love himself to the corolla
of a nenuphar. He admired the religious scruples of the Siamese, which
make it sacrilege to exterminate or even mutilate certain consecrated
shrubs. A thousand superstitions which in former times excited his pity
and contempt toward the short-sightedness of human nature, tended now
to elevate his fellow-creatures in his estimation. For the Count had
discovered that, from the vegetation of an humble flower, may emanate
lessons of wisdom; and doubted not, that all these idolatrous customs
must have originated in sentiments of gratitude unexampled by tradition.
“From his imperial throne of the west,” thought Charney, “Charlemagne did
not disdain to exhort the nation submitted to his rule, to the culture of
flowers. And have not Ælian and Herodotus recorded that the great Xerxes
himself took such delight in the beauty of an oriental plane-tree, as to
caress its stem—press it tenderly in his arms—sleep enraptured under its
shade—decorating it with bracelets and chains of gold, when compelled to
bid adieu to his verdant favourite!”
As the convalescence of the Count proceeded, he was seated one morning
reclining absorbed in thought in his own chamber, of which he had not yet
ventured to cross the threshold, when his door was suddenly burst open,
and Ludovico, with a radiant countenance, hastened towards him.
“Vittoria!” cried he. “The creature is in bloom. _Picciola! Piccioletta!
figlioccia mia!_”
“In bloom?” cried Charney, starting up. “Let me see her. I _must_ see the
blossom.”
In vain did the worthy jailer represent the imprudence of going too soon
into the air, and implore the Count to delay the undertaking for a day or
two. The morning was uncertain—the atmosphere chilly. A relapse might
bring the invalid once more to the gates of death. But Charney was deaf
to all remonstrance! He consented only to wait an hour, in order that the
sun might become one of the party.
“Picciola is in bloom!” repeated Charney to himself. And how long, how
tedious did that hour appear, which was still to divide him from the
darling of his imagination! For the first time since his illness, he
judged it necessary to dress. He chose to dedicate his first toilet to
Picciola in bloom. He actually looked into his pocket-glass while he
arranged his hair to do honour to his visit to a flower! A _flower_?
Nay! surely something more? His visit is that of the convalescent to
his physician—of the grateful man to his benefactress—_almost_ of the
lover to his mistress! He was surprised to notice in the glass the
ravages which care and sickness had wrought in his appearance. He began
to suspect, for the first time, that bitter and venomous thoughts may
tend to canker the human frame; and milder contemplations produce a more
auspicious temperament.
At the appointed moment Ludovico reappeared, to offer to the Count de
Charney the support of his arm down the steep steps of the winding
stone staircase; and scarcely had the sick man emerged into the court,
when the emotion caused by a sudden restoration to light and air,
operating on the sensitiveness of an easily excitable nervous system,
produced a conviction on his mind that the whole atmosphere was vivified
and embalmed by the emanations of his flower. It was to Picciola he
attributed the delightful emotions which agitated his bosom.
The enchantress had, indeed, attired herself in all her charms! The
coquette was shining in all her beauty. Her brilliant and delicately
streaked corolla, in which crimson, pink, and white were blended by
imperceptible gradations, her large transparent petal bordered by a
little silvery fringe or ciliation, which the scattered rays of the sun
seemed to brighten into a halo encircling the flower, exceeded the utmost
anticipations of the Count, as he stood gazing with transport upon his
queen! He feared, indeed, to tarnish the delicacy of the blossom by the
contact of his hand or breath. Analysis or investigation seemed out of
the question, engrossed as he was by love and admiration for the delicate
thing whose fragrance and beauty breathed enchantment upon every sense!
But he was soon startled from his reveries! The Count noticed, for the
first time, traces of the mutilation by which he had been restored to
health; branches half cut away, and fading leaves still wounded by
contact with the scissors of Ludovico. Tears started into his eyes!
Instead of admiration for the delicate lines and perfumes of those
expanding blossoms, he experienced only gratitude for the gift of life!
He beheld a benefactress in his Picciola.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]