The scene changes to an apartment of a very different style. We enter
the house of the chancellor; but it is not the chancellor himself who
is first presented to our view. In an antique Gothic chamber, in the
decoration and structure of which the most costly material had been
studiously united with the severest simplicity of taste, sat Maria,
the only daughter and child of Count Laski. She sat at her embroidery.
The embroidery, however, had fallen upon her lap; she leaned back,
resigned to her meditations, in a massive arm-chair covered with
purple velvet, which it is impossible not to think must have felt
something like pride and pleasure as her slight and lovely form sank
into it. It was a long reverie.
In an angle of this lofty room, at some distance, but not out of the
range of clear vision, stood, motionless as a statue, the slave Hakem.
His arms were folded on his breast, his eye rested, without, as it
seemed, a power to withdraw it, on the beautiful figure of the young
girl before him. It was one of those long intense looks which show
that the person on whom it is fixed is still more the object of
meditation than of vision--where it is the soul that looks. Hakem
gazed like a devotee upon the sacred image of his saint.
Maria, quite unconscious of this gaze, pursued her meditations. Her
eye caught the hour-glass that stood on a small table beside her.
"Sand after sand," said she, musing to herself--"Sand after sand,
thought after thought. The same sand ever trickling there; the same
thought ever coursing through my mind. Oh, love! love! They say it
enlarges the heart; I think it contracts it to a single point."
"Hakem," she said, after a pause, and turning towards the slave, "you
are true to my father, will you be true also to me?"
"To her father!" he murmured to himself, "as if"----And then,
checking himself and speaking aloud, he answered--"The Christians are
not so true to your sweet namesake, the Holy Virgin, whom they adore,
as I will be to you."
"A simple promise will suffice," said Maria. "You have, Hakem--let me
say it without offence--a style of language--Eastern, I
suppose--hyperbolical--which either I must learn to pardon, or you
must labour to reform. It does not suit our northern clime."
"I am mute. Yet, lady, you have sometimes chid me for my long
silence."
"And is it for your _much_ speaking that I chide you now?" said the
maiden, with a smile. "You will stand half the day like a statue
there; and, when spoken to, answer with a gesture only--so that many
have thought you really dumb. Much speaking is certainly not thy
fault."
"I understand. The slave speaks as one who felt the indescribable
charm of thy presence. It is a presumption worthy of death. Shall I
inflict the punishment?"
"Is this amendment of thy fault, good Hakem, or repetition of it?"
"I await your commands. What service can Hakem render?"
But Maria relapsed again into silence. She seemed to hesitate in
making the communication she had designed. Meantime, the arrival of
her father was announced, and the slave left the apartment.
Never man felt more tender love for his daughter than did the proud,
high-minded minister for this his beautiful Maria. His demeanour
towards her, from childhood upwards, had been one of unalterable,
uninterrupted fondness. He knew no other mood, no other tone, in which
he could have addressed her. Did the grave chancellor, then--some one,
who in his way, also, is very grave, may ask--did he, by constant
fondness, _spoil_ his child? No. It is the fondness which is _not_
constant that spoils. It is the half-love of weak and irritable
natures, who are themselves children amongst their children, who can
themselves be petulant, selfish, and capricious--it is this that mars
a temper. But calm and unalterable love--oh, believe it not that such
ever spoilt a child! Maria grew up under the eye of affection, and the
ever-open hand of paternal love; and she herself seemed to have
learned no other impulses but those of affection and generosity.
Alas for fathers! when the child grows into the budding woman, and by
her soft, intelligent companionship fills the house with gladness, and
the heart with inappreciable content, then comes the gay, permitted
spoiler--comes the lover with his suit--his honourable suit--and robs
them of their treasure. The world feels only with the lover--with the
youth, and the fair maiden that he wins. For the bereaved parent, not
a thought! No one heeds the sigh that breaks from him, as, amidst
festivities and mirth, and congratulatory acclamations, he sees his
daughter, with all her prized affections, borne off from him, in
triumph, for ever.
There was, on this occasion, in the manner of Laski towards his child,
an evident sadness. It was not that the political horizon was
darkening; he had never permitted _that_ to throw its gloom over his
companionship with his daughter. It was because he had grounds to
believe that the events which threatened the tranquillity of Poland
threatened also the peace of his daughter, whose affections he had
divined were no longer exclusively his own.
She, observing his emotion, and attributing it to some untoward event
in the political world, could not refrain from expressing the wish
that he would quit the harassing affairs of state, and live wholly in
his home.
"I would long since have done so," he replied, "if personal happiness
had been the sole aim of my existence. But I have a taskwork to
accomplish--one, I think, which God, by fitting me thereto, has
pointed out as mine. Else it is indeed here, with thee beside me, that
I find all that can bear the name of happiness. The rest of life is
but sternest duty--strife, hostility, contempt. But away with this
gloomy talk--what gossip is there stirring in your idle world, Maria?"
"Pray, is there war forward?"
"I hope not. Why do you ask?"
"A maid of mine, who in the city gathers news as busily as bees, in
the open fields, their honey"----
"Your simile, I fear, would scarce hold good as to the _honey_."
"No, in faith; and there is no honey in the news she brings. She tells
me that a camp is forming in the frontiers between Poland and
Lithuania, and that Augustus Glinski is sent there to command the
troops. Is this true?"
"It is; and she might have added that the duke himself secretly left
the city last night, to place himself at their head."
"Is it a dangerous service?"
"The service on which the duke has entered, and into which he misleads
his son, _is_ dangerous. You tremble, Maria. It was no maiden, nor the
tattle of the town, that brought you this. When did you last see or
hear from him--from Augustus Glinski?"
"Believe me," said Maria, while a crimson blush suddenly spread over
her countenance, "if I have concealed any thing from you, it was not
from craft, nor subtlety, nor fear, but from"----
"From a mere delicacy, a simple bashfulness," said the father, coming
to her assistance. "I know it well. Had you a mother living, I would
bid you confide these sentiments of your heart to her, and to her
only; but, having no other parent, make me your confidant. Trust me,
you shall not find a woman's heart more open to your griefs, your
fears, your joys, than mine shall be. Make me your sole confidant--you
love this young Augustus?"
"When I was at my aunt's we met each other often--but to you, my
father, I have ever referred him as our final arbiter. I need not say
that the known political rivalry between his father and yourself has
made him backward in addressing you."
"All men speak well of Augustus Glinski. I blame you not, my child; I
only tremble for you. The duke, his father, is a restless, bold
ambitious man, who will lead him--honourable as he is, but too young
to judge, or to resist his parent--into treasonable enterprises. Both
father and son--if they will play the rebel, and bring down war on
Poland--I stand prepared to meet. The sword of justice shall sweep
them from the earth. But if thy heart, my child, is doomed to bleed in
this encounter, the wound will not be more yours than mine. There
shall be no secrets between us. I will protect thee all I can; and if
I cannot prevent thy sorrows, I will at least share them."
A low tap was here heard at the door, and a page made his appearance.
On seeing the minister, the stripling was about to retire. Maria,
however, called him in, and bade him deliver his message. "You come,"
she said to the youth, who still hesitated to speak--"you come from
the younger Glinski: speak openly--what is it he has commissioned you
to say?"
"This, my lady," answered the page, "that he has ridden in all haste
from the camp--that he must quit the city again before nightfall, and
craves an audience if only for one minute."
Maria looked towards her father, and thus referred the answer to him.
Count Laski was silent.
"Will you not," said his daughter, "tell this messenger, whether his
master may come here or not?"
"My child, he _cannot!_ he is at this moment under my arrest. Return,
sir page," and he motioned him from the room--"but return to the
fortress of----; you will find your master there a prisoner, under
charge of high treason."
"Oh, spare him! spare him!" cried Maria, as she sank back almost
senseless with terror and alarm.
"My child! my child!" exclaimed the minister in heart-breaking
anguish, as he bent over his weeping daughter.