“One mistake however that I see you make respecting my purposes, I will remove. You seem to suppose that, if you were to communicate to me your secret, I would then set you at liberty. No, by heavens! This cavern is your abode for ever. You shall never go forth from it alive; and, when you are dead, here your flesh shall moulder, and your skeleton shall rest, as long as the world remains. Look round your walls! Enter fully into possession of your final home! I know that to keep you here and alive my prisoner, I must in a certain sense imprison myself. But at that I do not murmur. I shall have the gratification of beholding my foe, and seeing him daily wither in disappointment. You wish to be a father to the human race; and I shall deem the scope of my misanthropy almost satisfied, while, in your restraint, I image myself as making the human race an orphan. Never shall Bethlem Gabor set at large a man of your unnatural and gall-less disposition, and your powers for the indulgence of that disposition.
“Sieur de Chatillon, I do not want your secret: it suffices that I know you possess it. Have I not yourself in my keeping? It will be more joy to me rudely to issue my commands, and to see you complying with them in spite of the most heartfelt reluctance, than to possess therichest gift on earth in the fullest independence. Think you Bethlem Gabor incompetent to tame the tenant of this wretched cavern? Boy, youaremy prisoner; youshall bemy creature. I will humble you at my feet, and teach you to implore my bounty for the most miserable pittance. Look to it! You know your destiny! Do not provoke my fury, without a foresight of the consequences!”
I will enter into little further detail of this my wretched imprisonment in the wilds of Hungary. It was not destitute of its varieties; and I could, if I pleased, fill a volume with the artifices and the violence of my gloomy superintendent. I could fill volumes with the detail of the multiplied expedients, the furious menaces, the gigantic starts and rhapsodies of passion, by which he alternately urged me to compliance and concession. But I will not. I will bring to an end the history of Bethlem Gabor; and then, having detailed the surprising events that immediately followed it, will close the page of St. Leon’s history for ever. I stood like a rock. Shut out from all other gratifications, I at least resolved to accumulate in my own person all the energies of resistance. If I were to unfold the story, I could command the reader’s astonishment, his admiration; but the object of these papers is to record, not my merits, but my fate.
How different was my imprisonment in the cavern of the man-abhorring palatine, from that which I had experienced in the dungeons of the inquisition! There an inexorable apathy prevailed: my tyrants were indifferent whether I died or lived; filled with the sense of their religious elevation, they held on the even gravity of their course, and counted my groans and my tears neither for remorse nor pleasure. The variety I experienced in their dungeons was the growth of my own thoughts: from without I encountered no interruption; it was not to be ascribed to those who held me in durance, if my faculties were not lethargied into death. Bethlem Gabor possessed no share of their apathy; his malice was ever alive, his hatred ever ingenious and new in its devices. He had a purpose to answer,—to extort from me the supply of his necessities and projects. It was not so much perhaps that he stood in need of this, as that he placed a pride in it, and had fiercely resolved to showme that I was unreservedly his slave. His animosity against me was so fixed and insatiable, that nothing that was pain to me was indifferent to him. If at any time he saw me subsiding into insensibility, he failed not to exert himself to sting me into life again.
The consequence of this was somewhat different from what Bethlem Gabor expected. Desponding as I was, weary of life, and almost finally alienated from the all-coveted gift of the philosopher’s stone, if he had left me to myself, I should very probably have sought in insensibility relief from the torment of my own thoughts. But he taught me a better lesson. Refusing me the indulgence of torpor, he obliged me to string myself to resistance. He gave me a passion; he gave me an object; he gave me comparative happiness. I was roused to opposition; I was resolved that, placed, as I seemed to be, at his mercy, I would yield him no atom of his desires. Thus employed, I found in my employment pride. Perpetual occasion presented itself for fortitude; and I gradually ascended to the sweets of consistency, perseverance, and self-gratulation. I had for years been inured to satisfy myself with a sparing stock of pleasures; and I was less at a loss to expand and ramify those which I now possessed, than almost any other man would have been in my situation. If my attendant train of sensations was scanty, Bethlem Gabor took care to afford them a perpetual supply of food and employment, and I was comparatively little exposed to the pain of vacuity. When he saw that I was inflexible, and that he could no longer gain from me the smallest compliance with his will, he raged against me with terrifying fury. Was it a crime in me, that this fury in my tyrant produced the operation of a sedative and a cordial? There was no malignity in the joy it gave me. I had much aversion for Bethlem Gabor, but no hatred. I took no pleasure in his agonies, because they were agonies. My sympathies towards him now, I confess, were small; but the joy I felt was because his fury told me, was the unwilling evidence of my own value. I left him to assail the mound I opposed to his desires as he pleased; it remained strong and unaffected as the sea-beaten promontory.—From the inefficacy of hisefforts, I sometimes took occasion to remonstrate with my jailor, and demand the restoration of my liberty; but Bethlem Gabor was not a man whom arguments and expostulations like these could move. In spite of himself however I commanded his wonder, if not his esteem. He regarded the contrast as almost incredible, between the boy-aspect under which he saw me, and the inflexibility and resources of my time-instructed mind.
The contentment that I have here described in myself, was however a creature of the imagination, the forced progeny of uncommon effort. It was no natural state of the soul. My mind would sometimes wander beyond the limits of my cavern, and remember that there were other persons beside Bethlem Gabor and myself in the world. I recollected the situation in which I had left my great project for the reviviscence of Hungary, and rejoiced to remember that it was already in such forwardness, as, I hoped, no longer to stand in absolute need of my assistance. Yet what I had done was but a small portion, a dismembered branch, of what I had meditated to do, and what every person of a generous and enterprising mind, who had been in possession of the philosopher’s stone, would have designed. Why was I thus stopped in the commencement of a career so auspiciously begun, and to which an ardent fancy, would prescribe no limits? Why was every power of the social constitution, every caprice of the multitude, every insidious project of the noble, thus instantly in arms against so liberal and grand an undertaking? Nor could I help repining at the perverseness of my fate, which had decreed that I should savour all the bitterness incidentally resulting from my plan, and not be permitted so much as to taste the applause and reward that ought to grow out of its completion. Thousands of men were at this instant indebted to my generosity and exertions for every blessing they enjoyed; and I was cast forth as the refuse of the earth, pining under the alternate succession of solitude, negligence, and malice, my very existence and the manner of it unknown, except to one individual, who had, from the strangest and most unexpected motives, sworn eternal hostility to me.
Bethlem Gabor had resolved that, so long as he lived, I should remain a prisoner: when he died, if he continued my only jailor, the single individual acquainted with the place of my confinement, the probable issue was that I should perish with hunger. Twelve years before, I should have contemplated this attitude and condition of existence with indescribable horror. But within that time I had been better taught. I had received an education, I thank them, in the dungeons of the Spanish inquisition; and, if that be properly considered, it will not be wondered at that I was superior to ordinary terrors. Early in my present situation the presentiment had suggested itself to me that, by some striking event, I should be rescued from my present confinement; and, improbable as the suggestion was, it made an indelible impression on my mind. I had originated in, or it had produced, a dream, the scenes of which had appeared particularly luminous and vivid. I imagined I saw a knight, cased complete in proof, enter my prison. A smile of angelic kindness beamed on his countenance. He embraced me with ardour; he made a sign to me to follow him. I felt that I had seen him somewhere, that he had been my intimate friend. Yet all the efforts I made in sleep, or afterwards when I was awake, were unavailing to remove the mystery that hung upon his features. I rose to obey him; the ground trembled under my feet like an earthquake. Presently, with the incoherency usually attendant on a dream, the figure changed to that of a female of unblemished grace and beauty; it unfolded a pair of radiant wings; we ascended together in the air; I looked down, and saw the castle of Bethlem Gabor a prey to devouring flames.—Here ended my dream. I soon felt that I could reason myself out of all confidence in the presages of this wild and incongruous vision. But I refused to do it; my consolations were not so plenteous in this frightful solitude as that I should willingly part with one so delicious. Reason, thus applied, I contemplated as an abhorred intruder. It was, for a long time, part of my occupation in every day to ruminate on this vision, not with the sternness of a syllogist, but with the colouring of a painter, and the rapture of a bard. From thus obstinatelydwelling on it in the day, it happened that it became again and again and again my vision of the night. Slumbers like these were truly refreshing, and armed and nerved me for the contentions of my tyrant. Sacred and adorable power of fancy, that can thus purify and irradiate the damps of a dungeon, and extract from midnight glooms and impervious darkness perceptions more lovely and inspiriting than noontide splendour!
I had now continued here for several months, and in all that time had received no external impressions but such as related to the cell I inhabited, and the misanthropical savage by whom it was visited. One evening that Bethlem Gabor entered my dungeon, I observed in him an air of unusual disturbance. Where apathy reigns, the intercourse between those over whom it presides will be marked with a death-like uniformity; but wherever the furious passions take their turn, they will occasionally subside into a semblance of familiarity and benevolence. There was something in the countenance of my tyrant that made me for a moment forget the complicated injuries I had received from him. “What is it that has disturbed you?” cried I. There was no answer. There was a knitting in his brow, and a contraction in his features, that showed me his silence was an effort. He departed however, and had already passed the threshold of my dungeon. The door was in his hand. He returned. “Chatillon,” said he, “perhaps you will never see me more!”
“My castle is besieged. I have passed through dangers of a thousand names, and I ought not to be made serious by that which now assails me. But a gloomy presentiment hangs upon my mind. The busy phantom of life has lasted too long, and I am sick at heart. In the worst event I will not be made a prisoner; I will die fighting.
“I feel as if this were the last day of my existence; and, upon the brink of the grave, animosity and ferociousnessdie away in my soul. In this solemn moment, my original character returns here (striking his heart) to take possession of its native home; a character, stern and serious, if you will; but not sanguinary, not cruel, not treacherous or unjust. Between you and me there is a deadly antipathy; but you did not make yourself; you intended me friendship and advantage; the sufferings you have experienced from me in return have been sufficiently severe. If I die defending my walls, and you remain thus, you will perish with hunger. I had intended it should be so; but I am now willing to remit this part of your fate. I will enter into a compromise with you; I will trust to your fidelity, and your honour. I will take off your chains; I will bring you a timepiece and torches; I will leave with you the key of the spring lock of your cavern,—provided you will engage your word to me that you will not attempt to make use of your advantages till the expiration of twenty-four hours.”
To these terms I assented without hesitation. The chains fell from my wrists and my ancles; I stood up once more unshackled, and in respect of my limbs a free man. When Bethlem Gabor was on the point to depart, my soul melted within me. I took hold of his hand; my fingers trembled; I grasped and pressed the fingers of my tyrant. I cannot describe what then passed in my bosom. No man can understand my sensations, who had not been in my situation, who had not passed through a treatment, arbitrary, ferocious, and inhuman, and had not then seen the being who had wounded him so unpardonably, suddenly changing his character, commiserating his fate, and rescuing him from destruction.
From this time I saw Bethlem Gabor no more; he died, as he had sworn to do, in the last dike of his fortress. His self-balanced and mighty soul could not submit to the condition of a prisoner; he was nothing, if he were not free as the air, and wild as the winds. I may be mistaken; but this appears to me to have been a great and admirable man. He had within him all the ingredients of sublimity; and surely the ingredients of sublimity are the materials of heroic virtue. I have much cause of complaintagainst him; he conceived towards me an animosity the most barbarous and unprovoked; but, in writing this narrative, I have placed my pride in controlling the suggestions of resentment, and I have endeavoured to do him justice.
I had engaged to wait twenty-four hours; I waited only six. I know not how the reader will decide upon the morality of my conduct; but I own I had not the force, I believe I may call it the insensibility, to remain in my dungeon any longer. There was no doubt that, if Bethlem Gabor returned a conqueror, the term of my imprisonment would be renewed, and all his former menaces continued in force. What should I deserve to have thought of me, if I could sit down idly, and tamely wait the return of my jailor? No! liberty is one of the rights that I put on when I put on the form of a man, and no event is of power to dissolve or abdicate that right. Of what validity was the promise that Bethlem Gabor extorted from me by compulsion, and as the condition of that which he had no title to withhold? What gratitude did I owe to this man, who treated me with every contumely, and shrunk from nothing but the thought of causing me to perish with hunger? Whatever became of my attempt to escape, I could at least in this vast subterranean hide myself from the face of him who had injured me. I had a provision of phosphorus in my chest; and could therefore extinguish my torch upon the slightest alarm, and relume it at pleasure. What was the value of life, situated as I was situated? It was better to perish in the attempt to escape, than linger on for ever in perpetual imprisonment. As a further resource I left a billet in my dungeon (for for this also I had implements) intreating Bethlem Gabor by every motive of compassion and humanity to provide for me the means of sustenance as usual. Having taken these precautions, I lighted a fresh torch; and, unlocking the door, and thrusting the key into my girdle, set out upon my expedition. Though Bethlem Gabor had stipulated for twenty-four hours, the siege might even now be over, and I trembled every instant lest my jailor should return.
I wandered for a considerable time among the alleys andwindings of this immeasurable cavern. I had the precaution to mark the sides of the vault with characters and tokens as I passed, that, if necessary, I might be able to find the way back to my dungeon: this might prove an indispensable resource, to prevent me from perishing with hunger. Once or twice I changed my route, inferring from a comparison of circumstances, the best I could make, that I was not in the direction of the castle from which Bethlem Gabor had led me to my imprisonment. In all this wandering I had seen nothing, I had heard nothing, which could demonstrate to me that I was approaching the habitation of man. I had groped my way for near two hours, when on a sudden I heard a loud and tremendous shout that almost stunned me, and that from its uncommon shock could be at no great distance from the place where I stood. This was succeeded by a terrifying glare of light. I extinguished my torch, both that I might be better qualified to observe, and that I might be less in danger of discovery by any one who should approach me unawares. The shouts were several times repeated. The light I found to proceed from that end of the vault towards which I had been advancing, and, by the best conjectures I could form, I concluded the outlet into the castle to be at no great distance. I heard the crackling of the flames, and the fall of rafters and beams. Presently I discerned a volume of smoke approaching me, and found that, if I remained long in my present station, I should incur the risk of being suffocated. I formed my resolution. I concluded that Bethlem Gabor’s castle was taken, and set on fire by the Austrians. I believed that my persecutor was already no more: to this faith I was undoubtedly prompted by the presentiment which he had communicated to me. I saw that it would be impossible for me to emerge into light, till the flames should abate. I once more therefore lighted my torch, and returned by the straightest road I could find to my dungeon. Arrived there, I proposed to pass the interval quietly, in the cavern where I had so long felt the weight of the Hungarian’s chains. Suddenly however the suggestion occurred to me, may not my conjectures be false? may not Bethlem Gabor yet repel the enemy, andreturn to me from amidst the ruins of his falling castle? The thought was sickness and extinction to my heart. Hope! beautiful as are thy visions, in how much anguish and agony do they clothe the terrors of disappointment! Never had Bethlem Gabor been half so dreadful to me as now. I shrunk away; I took with me the fragments of provision that yet remained; I hid myself; I deemed no cell remote enough to conceal me from the inhuman persecution of my tyrant.
I continued in the subterranean all that day and all the succeeding night. Once in this period I attempted to reconnoitre the avenue of my escape, but I found the situation still so heated and suffocating that I did not venture to proceed. At length I came forth from this den of horrors, and again beheld the light of the sun. The path had already been sufficiently explored by me, and I no longer found any material obstacles. I now saw that my conjectures were true: the castle of my ferocious adversary was a pile of ruins. The walls indeed for the most part remained, but choked with fragments of the falling edifice, blackened with the flames, and penetrated in every direction by the light of day. With difficulty I climbed over the ruins, which opposed my egress from the subterranean, and rendered my passage to the outside of the castle an affair of peril and caution. Here the first object that struck me was some tents, probably of the soldiers who had been employed in this work of destruction. I was hailed by a sentinel, and I demanded that he would conduct me to his commander. He led me to the centre of the little encampment, and I stood in the presence of his chief. I lifted my eye to behold him, and was petrified with such astonishment as till that hour I had never felt. It was Charles, my son, my only son, the darling of his mother, the idol of my soul!
It may seem extraordinary that I should instantly have known him. He was sitting at a table, covered withpapers, and with one or two aides-de-camp waiting to receive his orders. He was clothed in complete armour, and his casque was resting on the ground by his side. When I entered, his eye was fixed on a despatch that day received from the great palatine of Hungary; but, in little more than a minute, he raised his head, and his countenance was completely presented to my view. It was fifteen years since I had beheld it; he was then scarcely above half his present age, a mere stripling, in whom the first blush of manhood had awakened the sentiment of independence and an honour impatient of a shade; he was now a leader of warlike bands, his complexion olived over with service, and his eye rendered steady with observation and thought. But I knew him; I knew him in a moment. My soul, with the rapidity of lightning, told me who he was. Not all the arts in the world could have hid him from me; not all the tales that delusion ever framed could have baffled me; I could have challenged him against the earth!
I have already had occasion to explain the complexity of my feelings, when, after a long absence, I visited the heiresses of the house of St. Leon. The sweets of recognition, that transporting effervescence of the mind, where the heart bounds to meet a kindred heart, where emotions and tears mingle in speechless encounter, where all is gazing love and strict embrace,—these pleasures were denied me. I stood stiff and motionless in the presence of my child. My heart might burst; but it must not, and it could not communicate its feelings.
After an instant’s pause of overwhelming sensation, I sunk back on myself, and considered my own figure. It happened that, exactly opposite to me, in the tent of my son, hung his armour, and over the rest his polished shield, in which I saw my own person clearly reflected. The youth of my figure indeed was still visible; but the hardships of my dungeon had imprinted themselves in glaring characters on my face. My beard was neglected, my hair was matted and shaggy, my complexion was of a strong and deadly yellow. My appearance to a considerable degree told my story without the need of words. Charles enquired ofthose who brought me, where they had found this wretched and unhappy figure; and was told that I had been seen a few minutes before coming out from the ruins of Bethlem Gabor’s castle. He humanely and naturally concluded, that I was a victim on whom the tyrant had exercised his ferocity, and that I had been shut up in some dungeon of the fortress: it was impossible that any person above ground in the castle should have come out alive from the operation of the flames. He commanded that I should be led to a neighbouring tent and taken care of. After having been refreshed with food and rest, and attired with other apparel, he directed that I should be brought to him again, that he might hear my story.
Under these circumstances there was nothing for which I was more anxious, than that I might recruit myself, and shake off as quickly as possible the effects of my confinement. Cordials were brought me, and I tasted of them: I bathed in a neighbouring stream: one of my son’s attendants removed my beard, and arranged my hair. I now desired to be left alone, that I might take some needful repose. I could not sleep; but I reclined my limbs upon a couch, and began to collect my thoughts.
I saw myself in one hour the sport of the most complete reverse of fortune that could happen to a mortal. I had been the prisoner of a cavern so wild and pathless, as almost to defy the utmost extent of human sagacity to explore its recesses. From this cavern, but for the sudden and extraordinary event which had just occurred, I could never have come forth alive. All sober calculation would have taught me to expect that I should have remained there, chained up like a savage tiger in his cage, as long as Bethlem Gabor existed; and that, when he died, I should perish, unheard, unknown; no creature that lived suspecting my situation, no lapse of ages ever bringing to light my dismal catastrophe. The remorse and relenting of Bethlem Gabor towards me seemed so little to accord with any thing that I had personally witnessed of his habits and his mind, that even now I feel myself totally unable to account for it. As it was however, I was once again free. From the state of an outlaw imprisoned for life, I suddenly saw myself atlarge, inspirited by the light of the sun, and refreshed by his genial rays, in the full possession of youth and all its faculties, enabled to return amidst my clients of Buda, or to seek some new adventure, in any corner of the earth to which my inclination led me. There is no man, however overwhelmed with calamities, however persecuted with endless disappointment, however disgusted with life and all its specious allurements, to whom so sudden and admirable a change would not convey some portion of elasticity and joy.
But there was one thought that entirely occupied me. I cannot describe how my soul yearned towards this my only son: the sentiment, even now as I write, is an oppression I am scarcely able to sustain. Willingly, most willingly, would I have traversed every region of the globe, if so I might have discovered his unknown retreat: and now suddenly, without the smallest effort on my part, he was placed before me. His last solemn parting, his abjuration of my society and intercourse for ever, rose to my memory, and gave a zest inexpressible to our present encounter. At the thought that my son was in the neighbouring tent, all earthly objects beside faded from my mind, and appeared uninteresting and contemptible. I instantly resolved to devote myself to his service, and to place all my enjoyment in the contemplation of his happiness, and the secret consciousness of promoting it. He had, if I may so express myself, in my own person forbidden me his presence: in my now altered figure I might disobey his injunction without fearing his rebuke. Let not the reader condemn me, that, endowed as I was with unlimited powers of action, I preferred a single individual, my own son, to all the world beside. Philanthropy is a godlike virtue, and can never be too loudly commended, or too ardently enjoined; but natural affection winds itself in so many folds about the heart, and is the parent of so complicated, so various and exquisite emotions, that he who should attempt to divest himself of it, will find that he is divesting himself of all that is most to be coveted in existence. It is not a selfish propensity; on the contrary, I will venture to affirm that the generosity it breathes is its greatest charm. Beside, inmy case I considered my own existence as blasted; and I could therefore find nothing better than to forget myself in my son. I had made a sufficient experiment of the philosopher’s stone, and all my experiments had miscarried. My latest trials in attempting to be the benefactor of nations and mankind, not only had been themselves abortive, but contained in them shrewd indications that no similar plan could ever succeed. I therefore discarded, for the present at least, all ambitious and comprehensive views, and believed that I ought to be well content, if I could prove the unknown benefactor of the son of Marguerite de Damville. I entered into a solemn engagement with myself that I would forget and trample upon every personal concern, and be the victim and the sacrifice, if need were, of the happiness of my child. Dismissing my project of becoming a factor for the Hungarian people, I determined to lay aside the name of Chatillon, and cut off every indication that might connect my present existence with that of the rich stranger of Buda. One of the advantages I possessed for that purpose was, that no creature in Hungary had the slightest suspicion that the sieur de Chatillon had ever been the prisoner of Bethlem Gabor.
Having thus arranged my thoughts, I now called for the garments that had been assigned me. They were supplied me from the stock of my son; and, when I had put them on, I overheard the attendants whispering to each other their astonishment, at the striking resemblance between their master and myself. When I came once more into the tent of their captain, and stood as in the former instance before his shield, I did not wonder at their remark. The coincidence of our features was so great, that, had we passed through a strange place in each other’s company, I should infallibly have been regarded as his younger brother. Yet there was something of Marguerite in the countenance of Charles that I wanted. When I recovered, as in a short time afterwards I did, my vigour and health, I was more blooming than he; but there was something graceful, ingenuous and prepossessing in his aspect, which I could by no means boast in an equal degree, and which might have carried him unhurt and honoured through the world. Weshall see some of the effects of this in what I shall presently have occasion to relate.
When my son required of me to declare who I was, I told him, as I had already determined to do, that I was a cadet of the house of Aubigny in France; that, after having passed through several other countries, I had come into Poland with the floating and half formed purpose of entering as a volunteer against the Turk; but that, before my plan was completely arranged, having been led, by my juvenile ardour in a hunting party, far within the frontier of Hungary, I had been so unfortunate as to become a prisoner to the troopers of Bethlem Gabor. I added that, when introduced to their chief, I had given him so much offence, by the firmness of my manner, and my refusing to comply with certain propositions he made me, that he had thrust me into a dungeon, from which, but for the gallant exertions of the present detachment, I should never have come out alive.
Charles heard my story with attention and interest. He called on me to resume my courage and my hopes, and to be confident that my sufferings were now at an end. He told me, that he was a Frenchman as well as myself, and like myself, had been a soldier of fortune. He felt, he said, a powerful sympathy in my tale; there was something in my countenance that irresistibly won his kindness; and, if I would put myself under his protection, he did not doubt to be the means of my future success. He spoke with great asperity of Bethlem Gabor, who, as an intrepid, indefatigable and sanguinary partisan, had been the author of greater mischiefs to the Christian cause, than any of the immediate servants of the sultan of Constantinople. He congratulated himself that the same action that had delivered the world from so murderous a renegado, had rendered him the preserver of a youth of so much enterprise and worth, as he doubted not I should prove. He said, there was but one other man in Hungary, who had been so effectual an enemy to the cause of truth and Christianity as Bethlem Gabor. The name of this man he understood was Chatillon, and he grieved to saythat he bore the appellation of a Frenchman. To the eternal disgrace of the nation that gave him birth, he had joined the Turkish standard, and, by exertions difficult to be comprehended, had rescued the infidels from famine at a time when, but for his inauspicious interference, Buda, and perhaps every strong town in Hungary, were on the point of falling into the hands of the Christians. It was this same man who had revived the resources of Bethlem Gabor, after they had once before, by his own fortunate exertions, been routed out; and whom I might therefore in some sense consider as the author of my calamities, as well as the inveterate foe of Christendom. Such a wretch as this was scarcely entitled to the common benefit of the laws of war: and he would not answer for himself if Chatillon had fallen into his power, to what extremity his holy resentment against this degenerate fellow-countryman might have hurried him. Providence however had overtaken him in his impious career; and he had fallen obscurely, as he had lived basely, in a night skirmish with a party of marauders from the Austrian camp.—The reader may believe that I did not a little rejoice that, in announcing myself a few moments before, I had taken the name, not of Chatillon, but D’Aubigny. What I heard however occasioned in me a profound reflection on the capriciousness of honour and fame, and the strange contrarieties with which opposite prejudices cause the same action to be viewed. I could not repress the vehemence of my emotions, while I was thus calumniated and vilified for actions, which I had firmly believed no malice could misrepresent, and fondly supposed that all sects and ages, as far as their record extended, would agree to admire.
In another point of view, the invective which my son thus unconsciously poured in my ears, had the effect of making me regard with a more complacent satisfaction the plan I had formed of devoting myself to his service. Here I pursued no delusive meteor of fame; the very essence of my project lay in its obscurity. Kings and prelates, armies and churches, would no longer find an interest in disputing about my measures; I should indulge the secret promptings of my soul, undisturbed alike by the censure of theworld, and its applause. It was thus that, under every change of fortune, I continued to soothe my soul with delusive dreams.
Meanwhile my project went on with the happiest auspices. The friendship between me and Charles continued hourly to increase. As a Frenchman, whom chance had introduced to his acquaintance in a distant country, it was natural that he should feel a strong bias of affection towards me. But that sort of fraternal resemblance which the most inattentive spectator remarked in us, operated forcibly to the increase of Charles’s attachment. He would often, in the ingenuous opening of his soul towards me, call me his brother, and swear that I should for ever experience from him a brother’s love. Charles had by this time completed the thirty-second year of his age; I was, in appearance, at least ten years younger than he. There is something in this degree of disparity, that greatly contributes to the cultivation of kindness, and is adapted to the engendering a thousand interesting sentiments. Frequently would he exclaim, “Our fortunes, my dear Henry,” that was the name I assumed, “have been in a considerable degree similar: we were both of us early cast on the world; I indeed at the immature age of seventeen. I entered the world without an adviser or a friend; but my destiny was favourable, and I escaped its quicksands and its rocks. I have now by a concurrence of happy circumstances obtained a place among honourable men and soldiers, and for what is to come may reasonably regard myself with some degree of confidence. You are yet in one of the most dangerous periods of human life; your work is all to do; your battles are yet to fight. Suffer me, my dear friend, to represent your better genius, and act an elder brother’s part. You shall find me no ignorant Mentor, and no ungentle one.”
Nothing could be more gratifying to me than to see the shoots of affection thus springing up spontaneously in Charles’s bosom. I willingly humoured the generous deception that he was putting on himself, and heard with transports inconceivable his assurances of kindness and protection. We rode, and we walked together; we were in a manner inseparable. When he went out to reconnoitre, Iwas his chosen companion; when he inspected the discipline and condition of his soldiers, he applied that opportunity to initiate me in the science of war; when he expected to encounter the enemy, he placed me immediately by his side.
Sometimes he would open his heart to me, and dwell with a melancholy delight upon his secret sorrows. “It is no wonder, my Henry,” he would say, “that I feel this uncommon attachment to you. I am alone in the world. I have no father, no mother, and no brethren. I am an exile from my country, and cut off for ever from those of my own lineage and blood. It is with inexpressible delight that I thus cheat the malice of my fate, and hold you to my bosom as if you were indeed my brother. I would not part with the fiction for the mines of Peru; and I know not whether I do not cultivate it more assiduously, and regard it with a sentiment of more anxiety and zeal, because it is a fiction, than I should do if it were a reality. I had indeed,” added Charles, “a mother!”—And, when he had started this theme, he would dwell for ever on her praises. I easily saw that never son loved a mother more cordially, than Charles loved the all-accomplished Marguerite. With what sentiments did I hear her eulogium? I could not join in her praises; I could not be supposed to know her. I stood there, as the statue of Prometheus might have done, if, after being informed with a living soul, the Gods had seen fit to chain its limbs in everlasting marble. The passion within me panted and laboured for a vent; but I was invincibly silent. With what sentiments did I hear her eulogium? Every word of it was a dagger to my heart; every word said, “And thou, villain, wert not thou her murderer?” more painfully, than the fiercest reproaches could have done.
When Charles had celebrated with an eloquence truly divine this incomparable mother, a sudden pang of memory would make him start into rage.——“And this mother I left! Of this mother I cannot tell whether she is alive or dead! What shall I say? the crime, or the not less fatal error of my father, separated me from this mother! I loved my father: I loved him because he was my father; I had great obligations to him; he once had virtues. Butmy mother,—if I could have found her in the wildest desert of Africa, and have known her virtues, a stranger to my blood, descended from the remotest tribe of the human race, I should have chosen her for my friend, my preceptress and my guide, beyond all that youth and beauty, with their most radiant charms, could tender to my acceptance!”
Thus unconsciously, yet ingeniously, did my dear son from time to time torture his father’s heart. I could not even deliver him from the gloomy and wretched uncertainty, whether this mother were alive or dead. With one word I could have composed his soul into a sober grief; I could have said, Your adorable mother at length rests from her sorrows; she is no longer the victim of a misguided and a cruel father; you have no longer occasion to brood over that most disconsolate of reflections, “I know not what anguish may be at this moment suffered by her who is entitled to all my duty and all my affection.” With one word I might have told this; and that word I dared not utter.
My son related to me his history, and made me the depository of his feelings and reflections. The name of St. Leon indeed never passed his lips; I felt that he had consigned that to inviolable oblivion. The appellation he bore in the army was the chevalier de Damville. Soon after he abandoned me at Dresden, he had entered as a volunteer in the imperial army. Charles the Fifth was at that time assembling forces to encounter the confederates of the league of Smalcalde. In this situation my son was eminently fortunate. He was distinguished for uncommon enterprise and courage in some of the first actions of the war, and early attracted the notice of Gian-Battista Castaldo, count of Piadena, who held an eminent command under the emperor. In this army my son was a party tothe decisive battle of Muhlberg, in April, 1547. Four years afterwards, Castaldo was appointed commander in chief against the Turks in Hungary, and the French chevalier accompanied his patron to this new scene of military enterprise. Charles had felt dissatisfied with the grounds and motives of war between the Catholics and Protestants of Germany, men worshipping the same Saviour, and appealing to the same authorities, but many of them at least, from the most upright and ingenuous scruples, differing in their interpretation of those authorities. But, in their contentions between the crescent and the cross, he entered with unbounded enthusiasm into all the feelings that constitute a champion or a martyr. He conceived that whatever was dear to the human race in this world or the next hung on the issue; he regarded the grandeur of the cause as purifying his efforts and consecrating his name; and, when he lifted his sword in vindication of an expiring God, he felt himself steeled with more than mortal energy.
My son dwelt on the merits of his patron with a degree of veneration and love that knew no bounds. Castaldo was ranked by the consenting voice of mankind with the most accomplished generals of the age in which he lived. “I knew him,” said Charles, “in his most private hours, and stood next to and observed him in the greatest and most critical occasions of his life. It was the least of his merits that he distinguished me, that he took me up friendless and an orphan, that under every circumstance he was more than a father to me; that he corrected my faults, that he guided me with his advice, that he instructed me with his wisdom, and supported me by his countenance. Castaldo was the most persevering and indefatigable of mankind; no difficulties could undermine his apparent serenity; no accumulation of dangers could appal or perplex him. Victory never robbed him of his caution; misfortune and defeat never destroyed the grandeur and elasticity of his soul. I firmly believe that no general had ever a more discouraging variety of counteractions to struggle with. The enemy was barbarous and sanguinary, yet firm and undismayed, in the full vigour of their political health, under the rule of the ablest of their sovereigns. The nobles ofthe country Castaldo had to defend had almost all of them been alienated, one after another, by the tricking and ill-judged politics of the house of Austria. The nation was ruined, houseless and starving. Many of the officers who served under my general were the basest of poltroons; but they were imposed upon him by his court; he was compelled to place them in important trusts; and, even when in the most dastardly way they betrayed those trusts, they were by some pitiful intrigue sheltered from his discipline and his justice. The forces of Castaldo were mutinous and ungovernable; and he was almost constantly denied the funds requisite for their pay.
“For two years the count of Piadena struggled with these complicated difficulties. When he had obtained a hard-earned advantage at one extremity of the kingdom, he found it rendered useless by some treachery or incapacity in the other extremity, which it was instantly necessary he should hasten to repair. He quelled four alarming mutinies by his firmness, his resources, and the prudent combination of his calmness and severity. In the midst of one of his most arduous situations he suddenly received intelligence that the states of Hungary, which were at that time assembled, were debating whether they should enter into a treaty with Solyman for the purpose of placing their country under the Turkish sceptre. He immediately flew to the place of council; the decision in favour of Solyman was drawn up and ready to be adopted; but Castaldo, by his presence, his authority, and his eloquence, recalled the states to their duty, and prevented them from eternally staining the Christian name. Surrounded with these difficulties, opposed to an enemy many times more numerous than the forces he could bring against them, and whose wants were all plentifully supplied, Castaldo by his single abilities kept the balance even, or rather caused it to incline in favour of the Christian scale. But what,” added Charles, “avails the most consummate merit! How may the most incessant and undaunted exertions be shadowed by the veil of obscurity! The world judges by events; success is necessary to procure the palm of fame. After two years of such labours as I witnessed and glory to describe, a mutinybroke out among the mercenary troops, more formidable than any that preceded; it was no longer even in the abilities of Castaldo to quell. ‘We honour and respect you,’ said the mutineers, ‘but we will no more serve without pay: we have been baffled two years; we will march to the gates of Vienna, and demand from Ferdinand, our sovereign, why we are thus denied the arrears that are due to us.’ They chose leaders for this expedition among themselves. The great Castaldo, whose peculiar talent it is to accommodate himself to events, and never by any misfortune to be deprived of his invention and resources, saw what it was that became him. Having in vain tried every method for retaining his troops in Hungary, he offered himself to lead them to Vienna. Then was seen the true ascendancy of a noble mind. Goaded with want and distress, they had been deaf to the remonstrances of their general when he sought to direct them against the enemy. But, when they saw him submitting himself to their rage and impatience, and fearlessly intrusting his safety to those who had before refused even to listen to him, and who had reason to fear his retribution as their accuser and judge, they were awed and speechless. They almost repented of their frenzy, and were half determined to return to their duty. Their remorse indeed was imperfect and ineffectual; but Castaldo led this band of mutineers through the heart of the kingdom, with as many symptoms of regularity, modesty, and order, as if they had been the best paid, the promptest and most loyal army in the world.”
My son spoke in terms of the warmest enthusiasm of the defence of Erlau, in the period of Castaldo’s last and most arduous campaign against the Turks. In respect of fortifications the town was scarcely competent to resist the feeblest enemy; but its deficiency in this point was supplied by the constancy and valour of its garrison and inhabitants. The very women displayed an enterprise, that the more vigorous sex have seldom exhibited. In one instance, a heroine of this sort was seen fighting in the presence of her mother and her husband. Her husband fell dead by her side. “Let us, my daughter,” said the mother,“remove the body, and devote the rest of our care to its honourable funeral.”—“May God,” returned the impassioned widow, “never suffer the earth to cover my husband’s corse, till his death has been amply revenged; this is the hour of battle, not a time for funeral and for tears!” So speaking, and seizing the sword and shield of the breathless champion, she rushed upon the enemy; nor did she quit the breach till, by the slaughter of three Turks who were ascending the scaling ladders, she had appeased the fury in her breast, and the ghost of her departed husband. Then raising the corpse, and pressing it to her bosom, she drew it to the great church of the city, and paid to it the last honours with all possible magnificence.[9]Many other examples of a heroism not inferior to this were displayed on the same occasion. “And shall I,” added Charles, in a sally of glorious enthusiasm, “ever desert a cause which has been thus honoured? Shall I betray a soil which has been immortalised by such illustrious actions? Shall I join myself to the renegado Bethlem Gabor, and the execrable Chatillon? No: such virtue as I have described never could have been conceived, but in the bosom of truth! Great as is the pious devotion I feel for that God who died on the cross for the salvation of mankind, I own my weakness, if it be a weakness, his cause is scarcely less endeared to me by the sublime exertions of his heroic followers, than by his own adorable condescension and mercy.
“When the glorious Castaldo departed with his rebellious army for the metropolis of Germany, there was nothing I more earnestly desired than to accompany his march. For seven years he had conferred on me the benefits, and shown towards me the affection, of a father; and I could not think of being separated from him without the extremest anguish. Beside, I regarded it as little less than sacrilege, to quit his side at a time that he was exposed to the furious suggestions of a host of robbers and banditti. But he would not allow me to abandon my post. ‘Some time,’ said he, ‘we mustseparate, and you must stand alone. I have been long enough your instructor; and, if my lessons or my example can produce improvement in you, they must have performed that office already.’ He treated with disdain the thought of the danger to which he might be exposed, and his need of a faithful guard; a thought which he had detected in the midst of my anxieties, but which I had not the courage to mention. ‘This,’ said he, ‘is your genuine sphere. You are a young man, burning with the zeal of truth and religion. You are inspired with the enthusiasm of a champion and a martyr. Heaven knows how willingly I would have spent my blood for the overthrow of Mahomet and his blasphemous impieties. To me this is not permitted; to you it is. I shall be engaged in the painful scenes of civil contention between Christian and Christian, misguided and inflamed by the human inventions of Luther and of Calvin. You have before you a clearer and a brighter field; and, I confidently persuade myself, you will be found worthy of your happier destiny.’—The count of Piadena bestowed me, so he was pleased to express himself, upon Nadasti, the great palatine of the realm, as the most precious pledge of his friendship that it was in his power to confer.
“Since the retreat of Castaldo, the Christian standard has obtained little more either of attention or aid from our lawful sovereign, now the possessor of the imperial throne. Ferdinand for a great part of this time has had his negotiators at Constantinople, whom the insulting Turk has condescended neither sincerely to treat with, nor to dismiss. The Christian army in Hungary has been left to its own resources; but zeal has supplied the place of magazines, and religious ardour has taught us to omit no occasion of annoying and distressing the enemy. The most considerable occurrence of this period, has been the siege of Ziget about four years ago. Solyman, taking advantage of certain factious broils among our hereditary nobility, appointed at that time one of his eunuchs bashaw of Buda; and, having placed a numerous army under his command, dismissed him from the foot of his throne with this arrogant injunction, not to enter the capital of his province, till he had first sent the keys of Ziget as an offering to his royalmaster. Horvati, the Christian governor of this fortification, is one of the most accomplished and the bravest of our native commanders; and, Nadasti having sent him a reinforcement the better to enable him to support the threatened siege, I was in the number of the soldiers appointed on this service. The trenches were opened early in June, and the siege continued for the space of seven weeks. The bashaw, though an eunuch, in person stunted, and of monstrous deformity, was distinguished for an uncommon degree of audacity and perseverance. Four times he filled the dikes of the fortification with wood and earth; and as often, by means of a furious sally of the besieged, the materials, which had thus with vast expense of industry and labour been accumulated, were set fire to and consumed. On the twelfth day of the siege he gained possession of the town, and drove us back into the citadel; but on the day following we recovered the ground we had lost, and from that time the town was his no more. The actions of these days were the severest of the whole siege; we fought the enemy street by street, and inch by inch; the great fountain in the market-place ran with blood; we ascended hills of the dead, which the infidels opposed as a barrier to our further progress; I seized two Turkish standards; and, though wounded, pursued the enemy through the eastern gate, and returned in triumph. Nadasti in the sixth week of the siege marched to our relief; but he was met and worsted by the bashaw, who returned victorious to the foot of the walls. During the whole of the siege mutual animosity was cherished by every species of contrivance, and the heads of the distinguished dead were exhibited on both sides as spectacles of abhorrence and terror. The inflamed passions of the combatants several times found a vent in listed duels: Horvati, the governor, killed in one of these encounters a gigantic Turk, who had sent a proud defiance to our host. I procured myself honour upon a similar occasion; and the scarf which I now wear, composed the turban of the infidel I slew. At length the disappointed bashaw was obliged to raise the siege; and he soon after died of grief and mortification in his palace at Buda. I confess I recollect theChristian exploits in the defence of Ziget, in which I also had a share, with rapture and delight; they will serve to awaken in me new animation, when hereafter the coldness of ordinary life might strike palsy to my soul. I shall never think I have lived in vain, after having contributed, in however humble a place, to arrest the career of insolence and impiety which, under the standard of the crescent, threatened to over-run the whole Christian world.”
Such were the adventures and such the sentiments of the gallant chevalier de Damville. I had been a warrior in my youth, and the discourse he held was sufficiently congenial to my earliest propensities. I saw indeed that he had gained, in the zeal of a soldier of the cross, a source of martial heroism, to which my military history had been a stranger. But, though I could not entirely enter into this sentiment of his, and indeed regarded it as an infatuation and delusion, I did not the less admire the grandeur of soul with which this heroic fable inspired him. There was no present propensity in my heart that led me to delight in deeds of blood and war; I saw them in their genuine colours without varnish or disguise; I hated and loathed them from my very inmost soul; but, notwithstanding this, I was sensible to the lustre which military zeal cast round the character of my son. Nor is this incredible or absurd; the qualities of a generous and enterprising champion are truly admirable, though the direction they have received should be worthy of eternal regret.
Charles de Damville was my friend; and, when I say this, I cannot help stopping a moment for the indulgence of reflecting on the contrast between my present intercourse with my son, and my late connection with Bethlem Gabor. I had sought the friendship of the Hungarian partisan, partly because I wanted a protector and an ally, but partly also because in my soul I looked up to and admired the man. I called Bethlem Gabor my friend; I persuaded myself that I had cogent reasons for calling him so. But there was little sympathy between us; he was wrapped up in his own contemplations; he was withered by his own calamities; our souls scarcely touched in a single point. No, no; this is not friendship.
Friendship is a necessity of our nature, the stimulating and restless want of every susceptible heart. How wretched an imposture in this point of view does human life for the most part appear! With boyish eyes, full of sanguine spirits and hope, we look round us for a friend; we sink into the grave, broken down with years and infirmities, and still have not found the object of our search. We talk to one man, and he does not understand us; we address ourselves to another, and we find him the unreal similitude only of what we believed him to be. We ally ourselves to a man of intellect and of worth; upon further experience we cannot deny him either of these qualities; but the more we know each other, the less we find of resemblance; he is cold, where we are warm; he is harsh, where we are melted into the tenderest sympathy; what fills us with rapture, is regarded by him with indifference; we finish with a distant respect, where we looked for a commingling soul: this is not friendship. We know of other men, we have viewed their countenances, we have occasionally sat in their society: we believe it is impossible we should not find in them the object we sought. But disparity of situation and dissimilitude of connections prove as effectual a barrier to intimacy, as if we were inhabitants of different planets.
It is one of the most striking characteristics of the nature of man, that we are eternally apt to grow dead and insensible to the thing we have not. Half our faculties become palsied, before we are in the slightest degree aware that we are not what we were, and what we might be. There are philosophers who regard this as the peculiar privilege of man, a wise provision of Providence to render us contented and easy with our lot in existence. For my part, I do not envy, and I have never aspired to, the happiness of ignorance and stupidity. But, be it a blessing or a curse, the phenomenon is undoubted. Present me with some inestimable benefit, that my nature fitted me to enjoy, but that my fortune has long denied me to partake, and I instantly rise as from an oppressive lethargy. Before, it may be, I felt myself uneasy; but I knew of no remedy, I dreamed it was my nature, I did not put forth a finger for relief. But now, that I have drawn the unexpected prize,I grow astonished at my former blindness; I become suddenly sensible of my powers and my worth; the blood that slept in my heart, circulates, and distends every vein; I tread on air; I feel a calm, yet ravishing delight; I know what kind of an endowment life is, to a being in whom sentiment and affection are awakened to their genuine action.
This was the effect of the mutual attachment produced between me and Charles. I looked into him, and saw a man; I saw expansive powers of intellect and true sensibility of heart. To be esteemed and loved and protected by such a man; to have him to take one by the hand, to enquire into one’s sorrows, to interest himself in one’s anxieties, to exult in one’s good fortune and one’s joys; this and this only deserves the name of existence.
I had however a painful drawback upon my satisfaction. It was my fate since the visit of the stranger of the lake of Constance, to rejoice for moments and to lament for years. I could not at first ascend to that purity and eminence of friendship to forget myself; I could not but painfully feel the contrast between me and my son. How happy was Charles, how respectable, how self-approving, how cheerful of heart: I shall presently have occasion to speak of a still further addition to his happiness! I looked indeed young, fair, blooming, a stranger to care: but I had a secret worm gnawing at my vitals. This very deceitfulness of my countenance was a bitter aggravation to my remorse. I never saw my features reflected in the polished shield without feeling myself struck to the core. Charles had walked right onward in the paths of honour; he feared no detection; he had no secret consciousness that gave the lie to the voice of applause, partiality, and friendship. But I was all a lie; I was no youth; I was no man; I was no member of the great community of my species. The past and the future were equally a burthen to my thoughts. To the eye that saw me I was a youth flushed with hope, and panting for existence. In my soul I knew, and I only knew, that I was a worn out veteran, battered with the storms of life, having tried every thing and rejected every thing, and discarded for ever by hope and joy. When I walked forth leaningon the arm of him who delighted to call me his younger brother, this was the consciousness that hunted my steps and blasted me with its aspect whichever way we turned.
Among the various confidences reposed in me by my son, one was his love. The object of his attachment was a young lady of quality, named Pandora, niece to Nadasti, great palatine of Hungary. In consequence of the earnest recommendation of Castaldo in 1553, Nadasti had taken my son under his particular protection, and Charles’s principal home at the periods when the army was dispersed in winter-quarters was at the palatine’s house in the city of Presburg. Here his manners had become more polished, and his taste more refined. Till then, bred in tents, and living amidst the clangour of arms, he had been a mere soldier, rough, generous, manly, and brave. But Nadasti was an elegant scholar, smitten with that ardent love of classical and ancient lore which has so eminently distinguished the sixteenth century. He assembled round him men of letters from various parts of Europe; and, under his auspices, the days of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, seemed to be revived, whose love of literature was such, that he kept three hundred transcribers in his house, constantly employed in multiplying copies of the precious relics of Roman and Athenian learning. The consort of Nadasti was one of the most accomplished matrons of the age in which she lived, and her three daughters were patterns of every polite and amiable accomplishment. Such was the school into which the chevalier de Damville entered at the age of twenty-five, immediately after the retreat of Castaldo. This may seem an age somewhat late for new-modelling the character, but Charles had an enterprising and aspiring temper; and he soon became a distinguished ornament of courts and the society of ladies. Castaldo had taught him all he knew,the temper, the manners, and the science of a military chieftain: the palace of Nadasti finished and completed the education of my son.
Pandora was only fourteen years of age when Charles de Damville first became a sort of inmate of the house of her uncle. She at that time lived with her father; but he being afterwards killed in the battle which Nadasti fought for the relief of Ziget, Pandora occupied an apartment in the palatine palace. From the first hour he saw her, a mere child as it were, accompanied by her governess, Charles confessed to me that he had beheld her with eyes of distinction. He had said to himself, This little girl will hereafter be a jewel worthy of the crown of an emperor. He had found something inexpressibly attractive in the starry brightness of her complexion; her air he regarded as both lighter and more graceful than any thing he had ever before seen; and her speaking and humid eye seemed to him the very emblem of sensibility and sweetness. If, at the girlish and immature season of fourteen, he had ascribed to her all these perfections, it will easily be supposed that, as she increased in stature as the beauties of form unfolded themselves in her, and she advanced in sentiment and a lovely consciousness of her worth, the partiality of Charles became more deep and unalterable. But the orphan niece of Nadasti was altogether without a portion; and the great palatine would have seen with more complacency the chevalier de Damville addressing his pretensions to one of his daughters.
Charles confessed to me that the passion he nourished had been fruitful of pleasures and griefs, of hope and perplexity. It was now almost a year since Pandora and himself had confessed a mutual affection. The confession had not been the result of design on either side: both had wished to suppress it; Pandora from virgin dignity and reserve; and Charles, because he saw not how their affection could be crowned with success, and he dreaded, more than any misery to himself, to be the author of degradation and misery to her he loved. But what is ever uppermost in the heart will at some time or other betray itself. Their sympathetic and accordant feelings upon a point so deeplyinteresting to both, rendered them eagle-eyed to discern the smallest indications. They had had a thousand opportunities, and a thousand opportunities had been resisted. They became more than usually silent and reserved towards each other; they shunned to meet, and, when they met, avoided each other’s eyes. One day a casual encounter in a solitary retreat, which each had sought principally with intention to escape the presence of the other, had taken them off their guard. They were mutually hesitating and perplexed; each discerned more unequivocal indications than had ever occurred before of the state of the other’s sentiments; the entire accord snapped as it were at once the chains of reserve; and each, after a short interval of hesitation, spoke with an eloquence, hitherto untried, the language of love. The difference of years between them gave a zest to the communication. Pandora seemed to be throwing herself upon the protection of an elder brother, of a guardian, one in whose prudence she confided as the antidote of her inexperience; Charles felt his maturer years as imposing on him more severely that sacred integrity, the obligation of which, at least as society is at present constituted, seems in the majority of cases to grow out of the relative situation of the sexes, of the protectorship of the one, and the dependence of the other.
“And now,” exclaimed Charles, “what am I to do? what am I to desire? It would be affectation in me to conceal from myself on an occasion like this, that the reputation I have acquired both in the arts of peace and war is such, as to have caused Nadasti to set his heart upon my becoming his son-in-law. The great palatine, though in many respects generous and liberal, has that inflexibleness of opinion, which is perhaps more apt to grow up in the hearts of scholars, than in other departments of society. He is grave and solemn; all his habits are of a majestic and lordly nature; and I have small reason to hope that I shall find him accessible to my representations. He is little subject to sallies of passion; his own propensities are wholly under the control of his judgment; and it is not likely that he will make allowance for the ardent affections of other minds. Pandora is entirely dependent on him; inany case the portion she would receive from him would be very inadequate to her worth; but, discarded and discountenanced by him who has the absolute rule of Christian Hungary, what can she expect? I am myself destitute of fortune; my provision as a soldier will be very inadequate to the wants of the first and softest of her sex. But even of that provision Nadasti will deprive me, if I marry in opposition to his pleasure. Shall I make Pandora the inhabitant of tents and encampments; shall I expose her to all the changes and hazards of a military life; shall I drag her as the attendant of a soldier of fortune through every climate of Europe? No, by heavens! I should regard myself as the most selfish and the basest of mankind, if I could deliberate on such a question. Never shall the charmer of my soul owe a single privation to her Charles. I love her with so pure and entire a passion, that I prefer her prosperity to every earthly good. Nor is it merely necessary to my attachment that she should live in plenty and ease; I require that my Pandora should be seen in her native lustre, that she should be surrounded with every appendage due to her merit, that she should command applause from the mercenary, and homage from the superficial. Her praise is the only music I enjoy. I could not bear to hear her name coupled with levity and scorn. I could not bear that, where she appeared, every eye should not be turned to her with reverence and honour. My passion, I confess it, is that of a disciple of liberal arts and a nobleman, not that of an Arcadian.”
The period of the campaign now drew to an end, and Charles, having requested me to accompany him, set out for his usual winter retreat in the city of Presburg. I saw Pandora. Never in my life had I beheld any thing so sweetly simple. I had always been an admirer of the sex; but the perfections of Pandora were of a nature that I had not observed in any other woman. Her symmetry was so perfect, the pearly lustre of her skin so admirable, and her form and carriage so light and ethereal, that at first view it was difficult to persuade one’s self that she was framed of the same gross materials as the rest of the species. She seemed not constructed to endure the shocks of the world, and the rude assaults of ill humour or neglect, of censure oradversity. Her voice was of the sweetest, the clearest and softest tone I ever heard. There was a peculiarnaïvetéin her accents, that riveted your soul in irresistible fetters. Her conversation, for in the sequel I enjoyed much of her conversation, had a very uncommon zest. She seemed to have no art, and what she uttered appeared as if wholly unchecked by consideration or reserve. You were persuaded that she always delivered without restraint the first thing that occurred to her mind; yet in what she said there was so much good sense, so much true feeling, and, as the occasion allowed, so much whim and imagination, that you could not discover how any of her words could be changed but for a worse. This circumstance strikingly contrasted with the childish simplicity, or rather the feminine softness and sylph-like delicacy, of her manner and her tone. The opposition of appearance between her and my son made a strong impression upon me. He was a perfect soldier, with an ample chest, broad shoulders, and a figure, though graceful and well proportioned, yet so strong, that it seemed framed to contend with and to conquer the wrestlers in the Grecian games. His complexion, shaded with luxuriant curls of manly hair, was itself made brown with the rigours of climate. Pandora was so heavenly fair, so sweetly delicate and slender, that you would have thought she would be withered and destroyed in his embrace, like the frailest ornament of the garden before the northern breeze. But courage to choose what is rugged and manlike is often characteristic of the softest of her sex.
I speedily contracted an intimate commerce with the beautiful Pandora. I was naturally desirous to be as consummate a judge as possible of those perfections, which I believed fated to determine the future happiness of my son. When sufficiently satisfied in that respect, I still continued the indulgence, and found a pure and exquisite pleasure in the daily contemplation of accomplishments that were to prove the materials of his gratification and delight, whose gratification I preferred to my own. I had a still further view in this commerce. I was anxious to be perfectly informed of the connections and family of Pandora, that upon them I might build a project I had deeply at heart, of bestowingon her, in the least questionable and exceptionable manner, a dowry, that should place her upon an equality with her cousins, the daughters of Nadasti, and deliver my son from all apprehension of the unpleasing consequences to result from the resentment of the great palatine. Nadasti was opulent, and the portions of his daughters very considerable; and, however inclined, I could not exceed this limit without risking the entire miscarriage of my project. Charles thought nothing too rich either in situation or income to do honour to the mistress of his soul; but, separately from this enthusiastic sentiment, both he and Pandora had too just a taste, not to prefer the simple majesty of ancient nobility, to the expensive ostentations of modern refinement.
Having digested my plan I was obliged to travel as far as Venice for the execution of it. The mother of Pandora had been a Venetian, and the uncle of her mother was one of the adventurers who had sailed with Pizarro for the conquest of Peru. He had died before the completion of that business, and had left behind him no relative so near to him in blood as the lovely Pandora. By a singular piece of good fortune, I encountered at Venice an individual who had sailed in the same ship with the young lady’s uncle. The uncle having died prematurely, the share he might otherwise have obtained of the spoils of Peru was sunk in the shares of the rest, and nothing was allowed to remain that might have descended to his heirs. His friend and countryman I found, though once rich with the booty he made, had by a series of calamities, before he reached his native home, been reduced to a state of poverty. The vicissitudes he experienced, had produced in him the effect of a very uncommon eagerness for acquisition. This man I fixed on for my instrument; I opened to him my plan, and offered him a very ample gratification, provided he acted successfully the part I assigned him. In concert with each other we digested and forged the various documents that were best calculated to give credibility to the tale. Having completed our arrangement, I set out for Presburg without a moment’s delay, and directed my Venetian not to follow till after a stipulated interval. He was not to enterinto full possession of his reward till he had completed the task he had undertaken. It was fixed that no person in Hungary should be acquainted with my visit to Venice, but only be allowed to understand generally, that I had been engaged for a certain time in an excursion of amusement. So hard is the fate of the possessor of the philosopher’s stone, and so limited his power, as to have rendered all these precautions on my part indispensably necessary. Had not the various circumstances concurred, the detail of which is here stated, the birth of Pandora’s mother in a maritime state, the expedition of Pizarro to Peru, her uncle’s engaging in this expedition and dying before it was completed, and my own casual rencounter with hiscompagnon du voyage, my project would too probably have been baffled. A direct gift of the fortune I designed would never have been admitted of; and, had not the coincidence been eminently favourable, even though I should have succeeded in misleading every other party, I could not hope to have eluded the perspicacity and jealous honour of my son.
When I returned to Presburg, I again renewed my intercourse with Pandora. The passion entertained by Damville for the beautiful orphan was a secret to every person at court; they had managed so discreetly as to have avoided every hint of suspicion; and, as it was universally known that the great palatine had an eye on this gallant soldier for one of his daughters, few persons entertained a doubt that my son would speedily declare his election among the co-heiresses of Nadasti. On the other hand, in the friendly intercourse between me and Pandora, neither she nor myself felt that there was any thing to conceal, and it was therefore a matter of complete notoriety. My blooming youth of appearance was remarked; by the majority of bystanders we were judged formed for each other; and, before I was aware, the beautiful Hungarian was awarded to me by the general voice as my destined bride. When however I became acquainted with the rumour, I was contented to smile at it; the consciousness in my own breast how far the public sagacity had wandered in its guess, gave to that guess, in my apprehension, a certain air of whimsical and amusing.