On the road we met the tyrant:"Ah ha, ma belle!"cried he, "where are now your green spectacles?"
I haughtily demanded my liberty; but he said I was a dangerous person—and to prison I was borne. To such a prison too! My husband's cell was a palace to mine; but I immediately concluded that they wished to make my confinement so horrible that I should be glad to leave it on any conditions.
Two days after, and while I had been, I found, forbidden to see any one, I received a letter informing me that my decree of arrest should instantly becassé, my husband set at liberty and sent with a safe-conduct out of the frontiers, if I would promise to smile on a man who adored me, and who had power to do whatever he promised, and would perform it before he claimed one approving glance from my fine eyes.
I have kept this letter as a specimen of Jacobin love-making. It was not signed with any name, except that of mydévoué serviteur; and I never knew from whom it came.
It told me an answer would be called forin personthe day after the next; and anxiously did I await this interview—await it in horrors unspeakable. There was, however, one comfort which I derived from this letter: till it was answered, I felt assured that my husband was safe. Dreadful was the morrow: more dreadful still the day after it; for hourly now did I expect the visit of the wretch. But that day, and the next day passed, and I saw no one but my taciturn and brutal gaoler, and heard nothing but the closing of the prison doors.
The next day too I expected him still in vain; but that night I marked an unusual emotion, and, as I thought, a look of alarm in my gaoler; and my wretched scanty meals were not given me till a considerable time after the usual hour. That night too I and the other prisoners, I found, were locked up two hours before the customary time.
All that night I heard noises in the street of the most frightful description; and as my cell was near the front gates of the prison, I could even distinguish what the sounds were; and I heard the horrible tocsin sound to arms: I heard the report of fire-arms, I heard the shouts of the people, I heard the cry of 'Liberty,' I heard 'Down with the tyrant!' and all these mingled with execrations, shrieks, and, as I fancied, groans; while I sunk upon my knees, and committed myself in humble resignation to the awful fate which might then be involving him I loved, and which might soon reach me, and drag me from the dungeon to the scaffold!
At this moment of horrible suspense and alarm, and soon after the day had risen on this theatre of blood, my door was thrown open, not by my brutal gaoler, but by De Walden and Juan! My gaoler, one of the tools of despotism, had fled; the twenty-eighth of July had freed the country from the fetters of the tyrant; he wasthenat that moment on his way to the guillotine with his colleagues; and I, Pendarves, and hundreds else, were saved!
Oh! what had not my poor servants and De Walden endured during the four days of my imprisonment! Painful as that was, they feared worse evils might ensue; while Pendarves, confined with the utmost strictness, was not allowed to see even Juan!
But where was Pendarves? and why did I not seehim, if he was indeed at liberty? De Walden looked down and replied, "He is at liberty, I know; but we have heard and seen nothing of him."
By this time we had reached my home, where I was received with tears of joy by my agitated attendants. But, alas! my joy was changed into mortification and bitterness: and when my happy friends called on me to rejoice with them, I replied, in the agony of my heart, "Iamthankful, but I shall never rejoice again!" and for some minutes I laid my head on the table, and never spoke but by the deepest sighs.
"I understand you," replied De Walden; "and if I can bring you any welcome intelligence, depend on it that I will."
He then hastily departed; and worn out with anxiety, want of sleep, and sorrow, I retired to my bed, and fortunately sunk into a deep and quiet slumber.
When I went down to breakfast the next day, I found De Walden waiting for me. His cheek was pale, and his look dejected; but he smiled when I entered the room, and told me he brought me tidings of my husband.
"Indeed!" cried I with eagerness.
"Yes; I have seen him. He is at a lodging on the Italian Boulevards—and alone."
"Alone! And—and does he not mean to see me; to call and—"
"How could he? Have you forgotten how you last parted? You resenting deeply his then only seeming delinquency; and he wounded by, yet resigned to, your evident resentment."
"True, true: yet still—"
"No; I had a long conversation with Pendarves,—for after his late behaviour, and being convinced that he was alone, I had no objection to call on him,—and he received me as I wished. He even was as open on every subject as I could desire; and I found him, though still persecuted by the letters of La Beauvais, resolved never to renew any correspondence with her."
"If so, and if sure of himself, why not write to me, if he does not like to visit me? I am sure I have not proved myself unforgiving."
"Shall I tell you why? A feeling that does him honour; a consciousness that, fallen as he is from the high estate he once held in your esteem and that of others, he cannot presume to require of you, though you are his wife, a re-instatement in your love and your society; and he very properly feels that the first advance should come from you: for though, as I told him, the relaxed principles of the world allow husbands a latitude which they deny to wives; still, in the eyes of God, and in those of nicely feeling men, the fault is in both sexes equal; and an offender like Pendarves is no longer entitled, as he was before, to the tenderness of a virtuous wife. Nay, Pendarves, penitent and self-judged, agrees with me in this opinion, and is thereby raised in my estimation."
"What! does Pendarves feel and think thus?"
"Yes; therefore I will myself entreat for him entire forgiveness; but not directly, and as if a husband who has so grossly erred were as dear to you as one without error."
Here De Walden's voice failed him; but he soon after added, in a low voice, "And I trust that to have aided in bringing about your re-union will support me under the feelings which the sight of it may occasion me."
"But does Pendarves think I shall be always inexorable?"
"He cannot think so; from your oft experienced kindness."
"Then why prolong his anxiety? Why not offer to return with him to England directly?"
"Because I think there would be an indelicacy in offering so soon to re-unite yourself to him. I would have you, though a wife, 'be wooed, and not unsought be won;' but I should not dare to give you this advice, were I not convinced that this is the feeling of Pendarves. Besides, I also feel that he would be less oppressed by your superior virtue, if he found it leavened by a little female pride and resentment."
"Well, well, I will consider the matter," said I.
The next day, and the day after, De Walden called and saw Pendarves. "He is very unhappy," said he; "though he might be the envy of all the first men in Paris. The most beautiful woman in it, who lives in the first style, is fallen in love with him; but he refuses all invitations to her house, does not answer herbillets-doux, and rejects all her advances."
"He does not love her, I suppose?" I replied, masking my satisfaction in a scornful smile.
"No, Helen. He says, and I believe him, that he never really loved any one but you; and for La Beauvais, who persecutes him with visits as well as letters, he has a kind of aversion. Believe me, that at this moment he has all my pity, and much of my esteem; and could I envy the man who, having called you his, is conscious of the guilt of having left you, I trust I should soon have an opportunity of envying Pendarves."
Oh! the waywardness of the human heart; or, was it only the waywardness of mine? Now that I found my husband was anxious to return to me, I felt less anxious for the re-union; and having gained my point, I began to consider with more severity the faults which I was called upon to overlook; and though I had reclaimed my wanderer, I began to consider whether the reward was equal to the pains bestowed. And also I felt a little mortified to find De Walden so willing to effect our union, and so active in his endeavours to further it. These obliquities of feeling were, however, only temporary; and I had actually written to Pendarves, by the advice of De Walden, assuring him, all was so much forgiven and forgotten, that I was prepared to quit Paris with him, and go with him the world over—when the most dreadful intelligence reached me! even at this hour I cannot recall that moment without agony. I must lay down my pen—
Pendarves continued to resist the repeated importunities of La Beauvais to visit her; but at length she sent a friend to tell him she was dying, and trusted he would not refuse to bid her farewell.—Pendarves could not, dared not refuse to answer this appeal to his feelings, and he repaired to her hotel; in which, though he knew it not, she was maintained by one of the new Members of the Convention, whom she had inveigled to marry her according to the laws of the republic. When he arrived, he found her scarcely indisposed; and reproaching her severely with her treachery, he told her that all her artifices were vain; that his heart had always been his wife's though circumstances had enabled her to lure him from me; that now I had shone upon him in the moments of danger more brightly than ever; and that he conjured her to forget a guilty man, who, though never likely perhaps to be happy again with the woman he adored, yet still preferred his present solitary but guiltless situation to all the intoxicating hours which he had passed withher.
La Beauvais, who really loved him, was overcome with this solemn renunciation, and fell back in a sort of hysterical affection on the couch; and while he held her hand, and was bathing her temples with essences, her husband rushed in, and exclaiming, "Villain, defend yourself!" he gave a pistol into the hand of Pendarves; then firing himself, the ball took effect; and while De Walden was waiting his return at his lodgings to give him my letter of recall and of forgiving love, he was carried thither a bleeding and a dying man! But he was conscious; and while Juan, who called by accident, remained with him, De Walden came to break the dread event to me, and bear me to the couch of the sufferer.
He was holding my letter to his heart.
"It has healed every wound there," said he, "except those by conscience made; and it shall lie there till all is over."
Silent, stunned, I threw myself beside him, and joined my cold cheek to his.
"O Helen! and is it thus we meet? Isthisour re-union?"
"Live! do but live," cried I, in a burst of salutary tears; "and you shall find how dearly I love you still; and we shall be so happy!—happier than ever!"
He shook his head mournfully, and said he did not deserve to live, and to be so happy; and he humbly bowed to that chastising hand which, when he had escaped punishment for real errors, made him fall the victim of an imaginary one.
The surgeons now came to examine the wound a second time, and confirmed their previous sentence, that the wound was mortal; on which he desired to be left alone with me, and I was able to suppress my feelings that I might sooth his during this overwhelming interview.
These moments are some of the dearest and most sacred in the stores of memory—but I shall not detail them; suffice that I was able, in default of better aid, to cheer the death-bed of the beloved sufferer, and breathe over him, from the lips of agonizing tenderness, the faltering but fervent prayer.
That duty done, my fortitude was exhausted, I saw before me, not the erring husband—the being who had blighted my youth by anxiety, and wounded all the dearest feelings of my soul; but the playfellow of my childhood, the idolized object of my youthful heart, and the husband of my virgin affections! and I was going to lose him! and he lay pale and bleeding before me! and his last fond lingering look of unutterable love was now about to close on me for ever!
"She has forgiven me!" he faltered out; "and Oh! mayst Thou forgive my trespasses against thee!—Helen! it is sweet and consoling, my only love, to die here," said he, laying his cheek upon my bosom:—and he spoke no more!
Alas! I could not have the sad consolation, when I recovered my recollection, to carry his body to England, to repose by those dear ones already in the grave; but I do not regret it now. Since then, the hands of piety have planted the rough soil in which he was laid; flowers bloom around his grave; and when five years ago I visited Paris, with my own hands I strewed his simple tomb with flowers that spring from the now hallowed soil around.
Object of my earliest and my fondest love never, no never, have forgotten thee! nor can I ever forget! But, like one of the shades of Ossian, thou comest over my soul, brightly arrayed in the beams of thy loveliness; but all around thee is dark with mists and storms!
To conclude.—I have only to add, that after two years of seclusion, and I may say of sorrow, and one of that dryness and desolation of the heart, when it seems as if it could love no more, that painful feeling vanished, and I became the willing bride of De Walden; that my beloved uncle lived to see me the happy mother of two children; and that my aunt gossips, advises and quotes, as well and as constantly as usual; that on the death of his uncle and his mother, my husband and I came to reside entirely in England; that Lord Charles Belmour, with a broken constitution and a shattered fortune, was glad at last to marry for a nurse and a dower, and took to wife a first cousin who had loved him for years,—a woman who had sense enough to overlook his faults in his good qualities, and temper enough to bear with the former; and he grows every day more happy, more amiable, and more in love with marriage.
For myself, I own with humble thankfulness the vastness of the blessings I enjoy; and though I cannot repent that I married the husband of my own choice, I confess I have never been so truly happy as with the husband of my mother's:—for though I feel that it is often delightful to forgive a husband's errors, she, and she alone, is truly to be envied, whose husband has no errors to forgive.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Missing punctuation has been added and superfluous punctuation removed (most frequently quotation marks). Period spellings have been retained, although a number of obvious typographical errors were corrected. Hyphenation is inconsistent throughout, and a number of words occur in various spellings.
The name of one historical figure appears both as Hebert and as Herbert in the original, and has been changed to Hébert. Otherwise, no corrections have been made to the French.
The following additional changes have been made and can be identified in the body of the text by a grey dotted underline.
One passage had a line of text out of sequence:
returned in much agitation from his walk, but Iexperienced at sight of Pendarves; and on inquirysaw it was of an opposite nature to that which heI found that he had, as he said, met that goodyoung man, Count De Walden.
The corrected passage reads:
returned in much agitation from his walk, but Isaw it was of an opposite nature to that which heexperienced at sight of Pendarves; and on inquiryI found that he had, as he said, met that goodyoung man, Count De Walden.