Such was the situation of the affair of Pandora, and I daily looked for the arrival of my Venetian confederate, when suddenly I remarked an alteration in the carriage of my beautiful ally. She had hitherto, on all occasions, sought my conversation; she now appeared sedulously to avoid me. Her manner had been characterised by the gaiety, the sprightliness and general good humour, incident to her age, and congenial to her disposition. She was now melancholy. Her melancholy assumed a tone correspondent to the habits of her mind, and was peculiar and individual. It had an ingenuous and defenceless air, inexpressibly calculated to excite interest. It seemed to ask, what have I done to deserve to be melancholy? You felt for her, as for a spotless lily depressed by the unpitying storm. You saw, that those enchanting features were never made for a face of sorrow, and that that bewitching voice ought never to have been modulated into an expression of heaviness.
I was in the highest degree anxious to learn the cause of this revolution, and was the farthest in the world from suspecting its real foundation. I pursued Pandora with so much importunity, and demanded an interview with such irresistible earnestness, that she at length consented to grant it. We met in a remote part of the garden. “Why, Henry,” said she, “do you thus persecute me? You are my evil genius, the cause of the greatest calamity that could ever have overtaken me.”
I started. “For heaven’s sake, beautiful Pandora, what do you mean?”
“I love the chevalier de Damville. I have loved him long; he is dearer to me than life; and he has cast me off for ever!”
“And am I the cause?”
“Yes, you, and you alone. I had for some time observed a change in his behaviour, that he was uncommonly grave, serious, and reserved. I endeavoured to soothe him; I redoubled my blandishments in our next season of unreserveddiscourse; I tenderly enquired into the source of his grief.
“For a long time he resisted my importunity. At length, ‘Faithless girl,’ said he, ‘have you the cruelty to ask the meaning of my depression? This is the extremity of insult. Is it not enough that I know your inconstancy? Is it not enough that I have found you, like the rest of your frivolous sex, the mere slave of your sense of sight, regardless of vows, regardless of an affection which despised all interests but that of tenderness and love, caught by the first appearance of something younger, softer, and more courtly, than I pretend or desire to be? Will nothing satisfy you but the confession of my unhappiness from my own mouth? Do you require expostulation, intreaty, and despair, from your discarded lover, to fill up the measure of your triumph?’
“For a long time I was totally at a loss to apprehend my dear chevalier’s meaning.
“‘No,’ continued he, ‘I am not jealous. There is no temper I hold in such sovereign contempt as jealousy. I am not of a disposition easily to conceive umbrage, or lightly to doubt the protestations of the woman I adore. I have been blind too long. But I see that you are eternally together. I see that you take advantage of the distance at which the despotic temper of Nadasti keeps us from each other, to give all your time to my favoured rival. You seem never to be happy out of his society. I was first led to throw off the dulness of my unsuspecting security, by the general voice of the public. The whole court gives you to each other. Not a creature it holds, but has discerned that passion, which you have the insolence to expect to conceal from me. Since I have been awakened from my security, I have seen it a thousand times. I have seen your eyes seek and encounter each other. I have seen them suddenly lighted up by your interchanging glances. I have seen the signs of your mutual intelligence. I have seen with what impatience, the moment you could escape from the crowded circle, you have joined each other, and retired together. Ungenerous Pandora!
“‘But do not imagine I will enter the lists with the gaudybutterfly who has now attracted your favour. I have told you already that I am not formed for jealousy. I am not the sort of man you have supposed me to be. I have loved you much; I have loved you long. But I would tear out my heart from my manly breast, if I believed it yet retained an atom of passion for you. I know what it was I loved; I loved a character of frankness, of ingenuousness, of simplicity, which I fondly imagined was yours, but which I now find was the creature of my own fancy. The Pandora that stands before me; the child of art; the base wretch that could take advantage of my forbearance in regard to her uncle, which was adopted purely out of love to her; the unfeeling coquette that would wish to retain me in her chains when she had discarded me from her affections; this creature I never did love, and I never will. I know how deeply rooted the habit has been in my bosom of regarding you as the thing you are not; I know how bitter it is to a temper like mine to detect so unlooked-for a delusion; I know what it will cost me to cast you off for ever. But I never yet proposed to myself a conquest over my own weakness that I did not gain, nor will I now. If you were to discard this wretched D’Aubigny to-morrow, if you were convinced of and contrite for your error, I must ingenuously tell you, no time, no penitence could restore you to my admiration. I had set up an imaginary idol in my bosom; but you have convinced me of its brittleness, and dashed it to pieces.’
“I endeavoured,” continued Pandora, “by every imaginable protestation to convince my late faithful lover of his mistake. But it was to no purpose; all I could say only tended to swell the tide of his fearful resentment.”
“‘Be silent,’ cried he: ‘add no further to the catalogue of your wanton and causeless delusions. Do not make me hate too much what I once so blindly and ardently adored. I feel that I have an enemy within me, that would fain co-operate with your deceptions and hypocrisy. I find that man, treacherous to himself, is formed by nature to be the fool of your artful sex. But I will subdue this propensity in me, though I die for it. I may be wretched; but I will not despise myself. Have I not seen your falsehood?Have not all my senses been witnesses of your guilt? The miracle is that I could have been duped so long. I have heard this stripling lover of yours inexhaustible in your praises, and dwelling upon them with an ardour that nothing but passion could have inspired. I have seen, as I have already told you, the intelligence of your eyes. I have seen those melting glances, I have heard those tender and familiar tones between you, that bespoke the most perfect confidence and the most entire mingling of heart. If I did not believe this, I should believe worse of you. I should think your heart not merely capricious, but an absolute prostitute; prepared to bestow upon hundreds those sweet, those nameless tendernesses of accent and countenance, which I fondly imagined were reserved for me alone. I should regard you as the worst and most pernicious acquisition that could fall to the lot of a man. ‘Go, Pandora,’ added he: ‘my heart is chaste; my soul is firm. I can no longer be deceived by you; I will not dispute your charms with the idle boy you have now thought proper to favour.’ And, saying thus, he burst from me in an agony of impatience.
“Alas!” continued the sweet and ingenuous Pandora, “my dear Henry, what shall I do? How shall I remove the unreasonable imaginations of this noble mind? Bear me witness, Heaven! nothing could be more innocent than the correspondence I allowed myself to hold with you. My adorable Charles was continually calling you brother; I scarcely ever heard him speak of you by any other appellation. I regarded Charles as my husband; I already viewed you in anticipation as the brother of my lord. Excluded as I was from frequent conversation with him whom I most loved, I endeavoured to supply the deficiency by an unreserved communication with you. The extreme resemblance of your persons increased my gratification. You were his picture, his speaking image. While I looked at you, I said, ‘Such once was my Charles, before he was the great man, the gallant soldier, the accomplished cavalier, the adored object, that now engrosses my affections.’ Beside, I knew that Charles loved you as much as he did any man on earth, and that knowledge made you dear to me. Youwere constantly eager to dwell upon and describe his excellences; could I fail to be pleased with your conversation? I own that the pleasure I took in it was unbounded, and the emotions it awakened in my affectionate heart delicious. But all this, candidly explained, was only an additional proof of the tenderness and constancy of my earliest attachment.
“And now, ever since the fatal day in which this conversation passed with my Charles, he is absent from court, and I know not whither he is gone. He has disdained to seek any further explanation, nor do I know how to appeal to his calmer feelings and more deliberate mind. One thing however I had determined on, and that was, Henry, strictly to avoid your society.
“I trust, wherever my Charles is, he will hear of this. I owe this expiation to his agonised feelings, and to the appearances that in some degree justify his misconstruction. I will wait patiently, till the simplicity and singleness of my conduct have cleared my faith. If I should otherwise have found pleasure and relief in your society, I will make a merit with myself of sacrificing this to the apprehensive delicacy of my Charles’s mind. In this single instance your importunity has prevailed with me to dispense with my rule: you were not to blame, and I thought upon more mature reflection that I owed you an explanation. But henceforth, if you have any kindness for me, or value for him who has acted and felt towards you like a brother, I must entreat you to co-operate with me in this, and that, whether in public or private, we may bestow no notice on each other, and avoid all opportunities of communication. To persuade you to this, was indeed a principal inducement with me so far to deviate from the rule I had laid down to myself, as to admit this conversation.”
I was extremely affected with the unhappiness of Pandora. I exerted myself to console her. I promised that nothing on my part should be wanting to remove every shadow of doubt that hung upon her fidelity, and I exhorted her to believe that every thing would infallibly terminate in the way most honourable and gratifying to herself. Pandora listened to me, and dried her tears. The conversationwas interesting and soothing to us both; we regarded it as the last unreserved and sympathetic communication we should ever have with each other; it insensibly grew longer and longer, and we knew not how to put an end to it. We were still in this state of irresolution when, looking up, I perceived Charles de Damville approaching from the further end of the walk that led to the alcove.
I would have withdrawn. I was anxious to remove the unjust suspicion that hung upon his mind; but the instant that presented to him so strong an apparent confirmation of them, the instant that by so doing must have worked up his soul into tumult, did not appear a favourable one for explanation. To withdraw was impossible. Pandora had discerned her lover at the same moment with myself. She was seized with a faintness. She would have sunk to the ground; but I caught her in my arms. I rested with one knee on the earth; her head was reclined on my bosom. Charles approached with a quicker pace.
“Rise,” said he. “This is beyond my hopes. I left Presburg with the purpose of not revisiting it for years; but, as I proceeded further and further from a place which had lately been the centre of my affections, I began to doubt whether I had not acted with precipitation, and to believe that there was yet some uncertainty hanging on my fate. The seemingly earnest protestations of this delusive syren rung in my ears; mechanically, without any formed resolution, I changed my course, and returned on my steps. My doubts are now at an end. I find you taking instant advantage of my absence to throw yourselves into each other’s arms. The feelings I so lately uttered in your presence, Pandora, would have kept you apart, if my feelings had been in the least sacred in your eyes, if all my surmises had not been too true.”—He took by the hand the weeping Pandora, and led her to the seat which a little before she had quitted.
“Why all this artifice? Why all this deceit? It is said that we are not masters of our own hearts, and that no human passion is formed to endure for ever. Influenced by these maxims, I could have pardoned your inconstancy, too fair, too fickle Pandora! but why strain every nerve,to make me believe you still retained a passion you had discarded, to subject me to the lingering torture of deceit, instead of communicating to me a truth, agonising indeed to human frailty, but calculated to inspire fortitude and decision? This I cannot excuse: this racks me with the bitterest of disappointments, disappointment in the virtues I had ascribed to you; and convinces me, that you are neither worthy of me, nor worthy of happiness.
“And you too, D’Aubigny, you have acted a part in this unworthy plot, I rescued you from prison, from a dungeon from which, a few hours before, you had no hope of coming forth alive. I took you under my protection, when you had no friend; I placed you next myself; I conceived for you the affection of a brother; I loved you, next in degree to the mistress of my soul. In return for all that I have done, and all that I felt for you, you have with insidious heart and every base disguise, seduced from me the woman of my choice. Why not frankly and ingenuously have demanded her at my hands? The heart is free; your reciprocal passion, though I might have regretted it, I should have been unable to blame; it is the cloak that you have drawn over it, that proves the baseness of its origin. Do you think I had not the courage cheerfully and without a murmur to resign to you this illustrious fair one? I feel that I was worthy to be openly treated. Had I seen in you a mutual and ingenuous passion, I would not have been the bar to its just consummation. I would not have sought the person of a woman, whose heart, in spite perhaps of her better resolutions, was given to another. I should loathe myself for ever, were I capable of such a part. It was the sympathetic sentiment towards me, beating in accord to the sentiment of my own bosom, that I once saw in Pandora, and not either her peerless beauties, or the excellences I imputed to her mind, that formed the master-charm which fascinated my soul. I feel that I had the force, in the negation of my own happiness, to have drawn comfort and compensation from the happiness of two creatures I so dearly loved, as D’Aubigny and Pandora.
“But this alleviation in the midst of what you have condemned me to suffer, you have ungenerously denied me.”——
I sought to interrupt my son. I could no longer bear to see him involved in so painful an error, and not exert every nerve to rescue him from it. But his passions were wrought higher than mine: he would not suffer me to speak.
“Be silent, D’Aubigny! I cannot brook to be interrupted now. My heart is full; and I must have leave to utter the sentiments that agitate and distend it.”
He advanced towards Pandora. He took hold of her hand.
“Rise, madam. I shall not long trouble you with the boisterous impetuousness of my passions. Do not resist me now!”
She rose, and followed him; her face still covered with her handkerchief, and drowned in tears. He led her to the front of the alcove: he motioned me to approach; with his other hand he took hold of mine. He seemed to lift Pandora’s hand to his lips, as if to kiss it; with a sudden start he put it down again; he held it below the level of his breast.
During this scene, Pandora and myself were speechless. Most women, in the situation of Pandora, would, I suppose, have spoken, and have been eager to vindicate themselves from so groundless an imputation. But what she did was peculiar to the delicacy and defencelessness of her personal character. She was overwhelmed, and incapable of effort. For my own part, my feelings were uncommonly complicated. My apparent situation was a plain one, the situation of a youth mistaken by his friend for the seducer of the mistress of that friend; and had my feelings been merely relative to this situation, I could undoubtedly have spoken without embarrassment. But with this were involved the sentiments originating in my secret character, the sentiments of a man anxious to benefit, and who had devoted himself to the interests of another; of a father tremblingly alive to the happiness of his son, and eager to dive into his soul, that he might the more sensibly admire his virtues, and with a more enlightened skill secure his fortune. I was silent: Charles de Damville proceeded:—
“Thus,” said he, “I join your hands; thus I withdrawall my claims upon Pandora; thus I remove every impediment to your wishes. This, Pandora,—this, D’Aubigny, I was capable of, if you had treated me honourably, and avowed an honest passion. You do not know Charles de Damville. You have treated me, as none but the most groveling soul could deserve to be treated. Had you been ingenuous, I should have a consolation in what I am doing, that now I cannot have. I can no longer persuade myself that I am joining two worthy hearts to each other. I can no longer relieve the bitterness of my own disappointment, by the image of your future felicity. May I be mistaken! May you be truly happy in each other! You cannot be happy beyond the wishes formed in your favour, by him who will remember, to the latest hour of his existence, how much his heart was devoted to you both.”
Saying this, he burst away from us abruptly, and disappeared. At first, as I listened to the heroic language of my son, I asked myself whether it were the expression of a warm heart or a cold one. It costs nothing to a cold heart to ape the language of heroism, and to pretend to make the greatest sacrifices, when its constitution has rendered all effort unnecessary to the feat. But I looked in the face of Charles, and forgot my doubts. His voice he had indeed wound up to the tone of his speech; it was a little tremulous, but in the main firm, serious, deliberate, and elevated. But his countenance was the picture of distress. There sat enthroned, defying all banishment and disguise, the anguish of his soul. His eye was haggard; his complexion was colourless and wan. He had been absent several days from Presburg; his appearance told me that he could scarcely either have eaten or slept during the period of his absence. He might talk of the generosity with which he could resign Pandora; I read in his face what that resignation had cost, and would go on to cost him. Ingenuous, noble-hearted Charles! I doubted whether, but for a reverse of the events he apprehended, he would be able to survive it.
He had no sooner left us, than I applied myself to comfort Pandora. I swore to her that, in spite of every temporary cloud, I would yet witness the union of her and heradored chevalier. I assured her that I would not rest, till I had forced Damville to hear me, and compelled him to credit the sincerity of my tale.
How many things were there, that, in the scene which had just passed, I might have urged in answer to Damville, but respecting which my situation imposed upon me the most rigorous silence! I might have said, “You call yourself my protector, my benefactor, my patron; the real relation between us is the reverse of the picture you have drawn. I want not your protection; I am qualified, if I please, to be a patron to all the world. I am meditating the most generous things in your behalf: this perfidious friend, as you deem him, has devoted all his thoughts, and postponed all his gratifications, that he might prove himself substantially and in the most important particulars your friend.”
More than this I might have said. I might have said, “I am your father. I have no inclinations, no passions contravening your gratification. I love you with more than a father’s love; I transfer to you all the affection I entertained for your peerless, murdered mother! All my study is your happiness. You are to me the whole world, and more than the whole world. Extensive and singular as are my prerogatives, I fold them up; I forget them all; and think of you alone.”
I cannot give a stronger proof than is contained in what I have here stated, of the misery of my condition. I was cheated, as I have once before remarked, with the form of a man, but had nothing of the substance. I was endowed with the faculty of speech, but was cut off from its proper and genuine use. I was utterly alone in the world, separated by an insurmountable barrier from every being of my species. No man could understand me; no man could sympathise with me; no man could form the remotest guess at what was passing in my breast. I had the use of words; I could address my fellow-beings; I could enter into dialogue with them. I could discourse of every indifferent thing that the universe contained; I could talk of every thing but my own feelings. This, and not the dungeon ofBethlem Gabor, is the true solitude. Let no man, after me, pant for the acquisition of the philosopher’s stone!
Charles de Damville had again left Presburg, the very instant he quitted the alcove. When I inquired for him in the palace, I received this afflicting intelligence. I did not hesitate a moment in resolving that I would pursue his steps. It was of the utmost consequence that I should overtake him; all that was most interesting to me hung upon our interview. The preparations however of my journey, though followed with ardour, inevitably reduced me to the being some hours in the rear of my son. I was continually in his track, but could not come up with him: to judge from events, you would have supposed that he had as strong a motive to fly, as I had to pursue. He led me along the course of the Danube, to the source of that far-famed and munificent river.
I reached the passage of the Rhine, and was on the point of crossing into Alsace. But here I lost all notice of Charles; no enquiry I could make was effectual to procure me the slightest intelligence. He had not crossed the river; he had proceeded neither to the right nor the left along its banks. I was disappointed, mortified, and distressed. What was I to do next? Could I return to Pandora? What tale must I relate to this adorable creature, whom I had urged to depend upon my exertions? Could I leave her however to the anguish and uncertainty that must follow upon her hearing no more either from her lover or myself?
I think I never felt more truly depressed than in this conjuncture. Most amply, most critically did the curse of theopus magnumattend upon my projects, and render all my exertions abortive. It was the same, whether my plans were formed upon a larger or a smaller scale. When I endeavoured to live in total obscurity in Madrid, when I undertook to be the steward and the father of the people of Hungary, and now that, with a chastised ambition I sought, what is permitted to all other human creatures, to provide for the honourable settlement of my only son, still, still my evil genius pursued me, and blasted every concern in which I presumed to interfere. I had intruded between two faithful lovers: unfortunate they had been indeed, and considerableobstacles were interposed to their felicity; but obstacles are commonly found to yield to firmness and constancy; and, without my fatal interference, Charles and Pandora would one day have been happy. If by adverse fates they had hitherto been kept asunder, still they understood each other, and rejoiced in their mutual confidence and attachment. This, the consolation of all their sorrows and disappointments, it was mine to have destroyed. The globe, for aught I knew, would speedily be interposed between them, and here I stood in the middle point, like one of those invincible repulsive powers hid in the storehouse of nature, forbidding to them all future retrogression to each other.
The picture which my distracted fancy thus set before the eye of my mind, was not altogether verified in the event. After a thousand fruitless inquiries and perquisitions, I found, to my utter astonishment, that Charles, arresting his career at the town of Fribourg, had returned upon his steps, and sought a second time the metropolis of Austrian Hungary. This was of the class of those events which we sometimes meet with in the world, that baffle all calculation, and strike us like magic, or like madness, in their authors.
I had nothing to do, as I conceived, on this occasion, but to follow the example of my son, and like him to resume the route of Presburg. I yet hoped to witness, if not to co-operate in, the reconciliation of Charles and Pandora. My spirits in this respect were revived, and my prospects made brighter, by the thoughts that these virtuous and meritorious lovers were at last likely to be once again inclosed within the cincture of the same city. Add to which, my Venetian confederate had not yet made his appearance at Presburg; and not only was I under engagements to give him the meeting there, but it was also clear that hiserrand could not be brought to its proper close without my assistance.
I once more entered the city to which Pandora owed her birth. Charles de Damville had preceded my arrival several days. I should without delay have repaired to his apartments, but that I found at my own lodgings a letter from Benedetto Cabriera of Venice, informing me that he was now in Presburg, and to avoid all cause for suspicion, had taken up his residence in a remote quarter of the town. From the enquiries I made, I became satisfied that my son had in some degree resumed his usual occupations, and that there was no appearance of his again immediately quitting the metropolis. I therefore felt my transaction with Cabriera more urgent than an immediate conference with Charles. Though I had sought that conference with earnest expedition, yet I dreaded it. It might require the maturest consideration and the nicest management, to render it effectual for the purposes I sought. I found from certain intelligence that Damville and Pandora had yet had no explanation with each other. I therefore regarded my exertions for that purpose as a final effort; and I was willing that every thing should be in train, and the portion of Pandora fully adjusted, before I entered upon that interesting scene. With Cabriera I had little difficulty. The documents and evidences of his tale we had concerted at Venice; and I presently found that he told his story so plausibly, and supported it so consistently, that it was admitted by every one without the smallest suspicion.
No sooner had Cabriera opened his business to the parties to whom the cognisance of it most properly belonged, than I once more presented myself to the beautiful and engaging niece of Nadasti. The instant I entered her apartment, I was shocked with the extreme change of her personal appearance. All the airiness, alertness and vivacity, that had once so exquisitely adorned her, were gone. The roses in her cheek were faded, and had given place to a delicate, but sickly paleness. Her arms, though always what is called white, had before been round, and had been distinguished by the purest hue of health. They were nowemaciated, skinny, and colourless. Her eyes were hollow, and her eyelids inflamed with weeping. All these changes had taken place in about five weeks that had elapsed since I saw her last. I was so struck with the sight, that I involuntarily started, and could scarcely command myself enough to refrain from tears. It was plain that she carried an arrow in her bosom, which one hand only in the universe could extract with safety. As I approached, she raised her lovely head that had been depressed with grief, and lifted her white arms with an expression of despair.
“Come nearer, my sweet Henry,” said she, “I rejoice to see you; though you have proved my worst enemy, the destroyer of my peace. But your intentions, my kind boy, my brother, for such I will still call you, have always been good and innocent. But, ah, Henry, you have deluded me; you urged me to banish despair; and every day I see more reason to despair.”
I asked if she had not seen the chevalier since his return to Presburg.
“It were better for me,” replied Pandora, “if I had not seen him. What has really happened, is worse than if I had been denied to see him. I have met him every day in the apartments of my aunt. To an indifferent eye it would have appeared as if he neither sought nor avoided me. He carries himself towards me with a cold and constrained civility. But he neither demands an interview, nor allows me the opportunity to utter a word to him in private. Oh, D’Aubigny, I see too well that I have lost him for ever. When he fled my presence, when he resolved to seek some distant region, cruel as that conduct was, it convinced me that I was of some importance to him. But now he passes by me in stern neglect; he has utterly driven me from his heart. Indeed, my brother, this last blow is too much; I feel that I shall never recover it.”
“And does the chevalier,” cried I, “appear at his ease? Does he exhibit the wonted symptoms of his health and triumphant spirit?”
“Away; too pleasing deluder!” replied Pandora. “Cheat me not with false hopes! flatter me not with unreal expectations! Damville does not appear to be well orhappy. But you have deceived me too much; the disappointments that you prepared for me are too excruciating. I feel now at no time so high a degree of gloomy satisfaction and composure, as when I press despair firmly to my breast.
“But you, Henry,” continued she, “are probably uninformed of my last and severest misfortune. I had a great uncle in the list of the adventurers that achieved the conquest of Peru; he has died, and unexpectedly bequeathed me a fortune, that sets the portionless Pandora upon a level with the wealthy heiresses of the great palatine himself. For a long time want of fortune was the only obstacle that stood between me and all my hopes of happiness. Now that poverty is no longer an evil to me, and wealth no longer desirable, I have obtained this unwelcome acquisition. You can have no conception how painful a sensation is produced by this mockery, the gift of ample possessions to the votary of despair.”
I endeavoured somewhat to encourage Pandora; but she obstinately rejected my soothings. I was the less importunate on this subject, as, since the return of my son, I persisted to persuade myself that I should soon have something more substantial to offer her on his part, than mere guesses and conjectures. The day after this conversation, I boldly sought the presence of the chevalier. Till then, I had, since our return to Presburg, avoided to meet him. I now resolved to force from him a hearing; to assure him, with the most solemn asseverations, of my own innocence, and the constancy of his mistress; to represent to him in how eminent a degree the newly acquired estate of Pandora was calculated to facilitate their mutual wishes; and finally, to offer him any pledge he should desire of the sincerity of my declarations, even to the banishing myself from the presence and intercourse of him and the lovely Pandora for ever.
When I saw my son, his appearance and air advanced a forcible claim on my compassion. I will not now describe them. Suffice it, that they completely proved, how true was the sympathy, even to the minutest particulars, between him and his mistress. The difference was only inkind, and not in degree: hers a defenceless, a delicate and truly feminine grief; while his, amidst all its aggravations, had something in it of the champion and the hero. When he felt most severely, he seemed to disdain himself for what he felt; and, though his struggles were excruciating, he resolutely smoothed his manly front, and the loftiness of his spirit produced on his cheek a generous and a settled blush.
I have just said that I had resolved to force from him a hearing. I was mistaken in my calculations on this point. Dejected as his habits had lately been, he no sooner saw me, than he advanced towards me with a fierce and imperative demeanour, that absolutely startled me.
“How is it, man!” cried he, “that you are at this hour out of custody?”
“Custody!” interdicted and astonished, repeated I.
“Yes, custody! If such a wretch as thou art, be permitted to go at large, what human institution, what human possessions, shall ever be secure?”
“Good God,” said I, “what am I to understand by your present rage? I know that you have considered me as your personal enemy and the underminer of your happiness. But, when first you accused me of this crime, you treated me in a manner less violent and disdainful than that which you now employ.”
“I brook not to explain. Read that letter. I received it at Fribourg. That letter brought me back from the confines of France to the spot where now we meet.”
I took up the letter. Its contents were nearly as follow:—
LETTER.“My dear Friend,—You will permit me to call you so, since to me, and me only, you have recently thought proper to confide your projects, and your unfortunate passion for the charming Pandora. What you related to me on the subject convinced me how much she was unworthy of your love, and how basely she has conducted herself towards you. Yet you will yourself feel some compassion for her, when you learn who it is upon whom she hasbestowed this unmerited preference. Know then that this wretched D’Aubigny is no other than the notorious Chatillon, the infamous impostor, who, by his machinations about a year ago preserved the Turkish provinces of Hungary from being conquered by the christian arms. The man is moreover a magician, the pretended or real possessor of the philosopher’s stone. He is therefore doubly worthy of death, first as a traitor, the abettor and comforter of the common enemy of the christian faith, and, secondly, as a dealer in the black art, and a man notoriously sold and delivered over to the devil.“I have received this information from the most unquestionable authority. A soldier in my old corps, who has lately escaped from a Turkish prison, no sooner saw him than he identified his person. I happened to be near the fellow at the moment, when, by an unexpected exclamation, he betrayed his discovery. It immediately struck me that the circumstance might be of importance to your interests; and, therefore, taking the soldier aside, I charged him not to mention to any one what he had observed. To render his secrecy the more secure, I have since removed him to a garrison at some distance from Presburg; and I have myself mentioned the circumstance to no living creature, that I might first receive your instructions on the subject, and act in all respects concerning it as you shall judge proper. The blackness of the character of the man sets all exaggeration at defiance. This very individual, whom you liberated from the bowels of the earth, who by the most treacherous arts won your confidence, and upon whom you lavishly heaped every imaginable distinction, was all the while conscious to himself, that he was the character that of all that live you hated most; in one word, the renegado Chatillon. He acted consistently with his preceding conduct and his recent disingenuousness, when he seduced from you the affections of the woman of your choice.“I am concerned to add, that, on the very day that I made this discovery, this Chatillon D’Aubigny disappeared from Presburg, nor can I by any effort learn whither he is gone. It is impossible he should have been informed by any human means of the detection that had happened. But indeedit is vain to attempt to form any reasonable conjecture, respecting a character so mysterious and inexplicable.“Your devoted friend,“Andrew, count ofBathori.”
LETTER.
“My dear Friend,—You will permit me to call you so, since to me, and me only, you have recently thought proper to confide your projects, and your unfortunate passion for the charming Pandora. What you related to me on the subject convinced me how much she was unworthy of your love, and how basely she has conducted herself towards you. Yet you will yourself feel some compassion for her, when you learn who it is upon whom she hasbestowed this unmerited preference. Know then that this wretched D’Aubigny is no other than the notorious Chatillon, the infamous impostor, who, by his machinations about a year ago preserved the Turkish provinces of Hungary from being conquered by the christian arms. The man is moreover a magician, the pretended or real possessor of the philosopher’s stone. He is therefore doubly worthy of death, first as a traitor, the abettor and comforter of the common enemy of the christian faith, and, secondly, as a dealer in the black art, and a man notoriously sold and delivered over to the devil.
“I have received this information from the most unquestionable authority. A soldier in my old corps, who has lately escaped from a Turkish prison, no sooner saw him than he identified his person. I happened to be near the fellow at the moment, when, by an unexpected exclamation, he betrayed his discovery. It immediately struck me that the circumstance might be of importance to your interests; and, therefore, taking the soldier aside, I charged him not to mention to any one what he had observed. To render his secrecy the more secure, I have since removed him to a garrison at some distance from Presburg; and I have myself mentioned the circumstance to no living creature, that I might first receive your instructions on the subject, and act in all respects concerning it as you shall judge proper. The blackness of the character of the man sets all exaggeration at defiance. This very individual, whom you liberated from the bowels of the earth, who by the most treacherous arts won your confidence, and upon whom you lavishly heaped every imaginable distinction, was all the while conscious to himself, that he was the character that of all that live you hated most; in one word, the renegado Chatillon. He acted consistently with his preceding conduct and his recent disingenuousness, when he seduced from you the affections of the woman of your choice.
“I am concerned to add, that, on the very day that I made this discovery, this Chatillon D’Aubigny disappeared from Presburg, nor can I by any effort learn whither he is gone. It is impossible he should have been informed by any human means of the detection that had happened. But indeedit is vain to attempt to form any reasonable conjecture, respecting a character so mysterious and inexplicable.
“Your devoted friend,
“Andrew, count ofBathori.”
“Well, sir,” seeing I had finished the perusal, “and what have you now to allege? When I saw you simply as the favoured lover of Pandora, however treacherous and dishonourable I might deem your conduct towards me, I quitted the field. I did not trust myself to be a judge in my own cause. I did not confide in my estimate of your unworthiness, when I was myself wholly concerned. I had some time before received an invitation from the duke d’Aumale, who was collecting a number of generous and high-spirited nobles to accompany Mary queen of Scots to the barbarous fields of her native realm. I at first declined, I now accepted, the invitation; I set out for Paris to join him. I found that letter waiting my arrival at Fribourg, and I returned. Deeply as Pandora has sunk in my esteem, I determined I would never allow her to be thrown away upon the infamous Chatillon.
“You haunt my steps. I heard of you again and again on my route as I returned from Fribourg. I arrive at Presburg, and presently after you again make your appearance. What further villanies have you to act? What new treacheries have you devised against me? This morning I consented to the representations of count Bathori, and agreed that you should be delivered up to justice. Why then are you not in custody?
“When I consider the mystery and inscrutableness of your character, I am lost in conjecture. You are said to be a magician, a dealer in the unhallowed secrets of alchymy and theelixir vitæ. In cases like this, all the ordinary rules of human sagacity and prudence are superseded, the wisest man is a fool, and the noblest spirit feels the very ground he stood on struck from under his feet. How can I know that the seduction of Pandora’s affections is not owing to magical incantations, who in that case is rather an object for compassion than for censure? How can I tell that the fraternal resemblance borne by your features tomy own, and the sudden and ardent partiality that rose in my breast when first I saw you, have not been produced by the most detested arts? Magic dissolves the whole principle and arrangement of human action, subverts all generous enthusiasm and dignity, and renders life itself loathsome and intolerable.
“This is to me the most painful of all subjects. I had a father whom I affectionately loved: he became the dupe of these infernal secrets. I had a mother, the paragon of the creation: that father murdered her. All the anguish I ever felt, has derived its source from alchymy and magic. While the infamous Chatillon thus stands before me, I feel all the long-forgotten wounds of my heart new opened, and the blood bursting afresh from every vein. I have rested, and been at peace; and now the red and venomed plague, that tarnished the years of my opening youth, returns to blast me. Begone, infamous, thrice-damned villain! and let me never see thee more!
“Wretch that you are!” continued Charles; for he saw me motioning to withdraw,—I felt that all further expostulation and discussion on my part was useless,—“wretch that you are! what is it that you are about to do? Think no to escape my vengeance! In the midst of all the tumultuous passions you waken in my breast, I still feel in myself the soldier and the man of honour. I am not a thief-taker or a bailiff. You are within my power, and that is your present protection. I will not now deliver you up to the justice of the state, but will hurl against you my personal defiance. I am willing to meet you man to man: I thirst to encounter you as my worst and most mortal foe, who has perpetrated against me the basest injuries, and excited in my bosom the most hateful sensations. Though you were fenced with all the legions of hell, I fear you not; and seeing that, after all that is past, you have once again intruded into my presence, I here bind myself by all that is sacred to pursue you to the death.”
What could I answer to such an attack? I saw at once that the case, as to all future harmony between me and my son was desperate and irremediable. What hope could I entertain further? What had hitherto been the result ofour ill-fated intercourse? Every offence and prejudice that can gall the human mind had been brought forward in it in turn. I had wounded Damville in the most sensible point of private life, and had blasted his hopes there where he stored them all. I had offended his most rooted political prepossessions, by aiding the Turk, and feeding a nation that perished with hunger. I was an equivocal character, assuming different names, and wandering over the world with different pretences. Last of all, I had revived in his mind the images of his father and his mother,—all that had once been most dear, and now was most painful, to his recollection; and had tortured his fancy with nameless horrors. These sentiments could never be removed. All the explanations in the world could never reconcile me to his mind; and I felt that I had that within, which, in what was to come, as it had in what was past, must for ever annihilate all confidence between us. At once therefore I accepted his challenge, arranged with him the terms of a hostile encounter on the following morning, and immediately after bid adieu to Presburg, and to the sight of every soul contained within its walls, for ever.
This is, I powerfully feel, the last adventure that I shall ever have the courage to commit to writing. A few minutes more, and I will lay down my pen, and resolve in the most solemn and sacred manner never to compose another line. Indeed, all other adventures must necessarily be frigid and uninteresting, compared with that which I have now described. Great God, what a fate was mine! Anxious as I had been to prove myself in the most momentous respects the benefactor of my son, dismissing all other thoughts and cares from my mind, journeying with this sole object in view, from Presburg to Venice, and from Venice to Presburg, from Hungary to the banks of the Rhine, and from the banks of the Rhine back again to Hungary,—the whole scene was now terminated by a declaration on his part, that nothing could appease the animosity he cherished against me, short of rioting in the blood of his father’s heart. I was reduced to the necessity either of lifting my sword against my son, of running myself upon the point of his weapon, or of forfeiting the engagement between us,and suffering him to brand me as a coward in the face of Christendom. I mention not this, because the variety of objects of choice produced in me the slightest hesitation. Weary as I was of life, I could cheerfully have consented to die, but not to stain the sword of Charles de Damville with my vital blood. I prevented him from being the assassin of his father’s life; I could not prevent him from being the assassin of his father’s character. He was assiduous and indefatigable in spreading against me the blackest invectives, which he regarded as the most unerring truths. All Hungary has resounded for thirty years with the atrocities of the sieur de Chatillon; what is here recorded contains the whole and unvarnished truth on the subject. This narrative however shall never see the light, till the melancholy hour when Charles de Damville shall be no more.
Yet in the midst of the anguish, the disappointment of every cherished hope, which rends my soul, I have one consolation, and that an invaluable one, in the virtues, the glory, and the happiness of my son. I said I would forget every gratification and sentiment of my own in him; I am now more than ever instigated to do so. When I quitted Presburg, I left Cabriera behind me in that city, and I took care to obtain a parting interview with him. He afterwards gave me the meeting, as we then concerted, at Trieste in the duchy of Carniola. It happened, as I had flattered myself the event would prove, that, the visible source of umbrage being removed, Charles and Pandora in no long time came to a mutual understanding, and were finally made happy in each other. I had been the fortunate means of supplying to this excellent and incomparable creature the only defect under which she laboured, a want of fortune; her uncle, having no longer a pretence to oppose their mutual passion, united their hands; and, at the time of which I am speaking, they were regarded as the most graceful and accomplished couple in the whole Hungarian dominions. The chevalier de Damville is considered in that country as the great bulwark of the Christian frontier, and the most generous and illustrious pupil in the school of the Bayards and the Scanderbegs. Cabriera,worn out with years and fatigues, but still grasping and avaricious to his latest hour, expired in my arms in the city of Trieste; and by his death yielded me this contentment, that henceforth the only obvious means for detecting my beneficent fraud in securing the dower of Pandora was for ever removed.
That the reader may enter the more fully into my sentiment of congratulation upon the happiness of my son, and rise from the perusal of my narrative with a more soothing and pleasurable sensation, I will here shortly recapitulate the good qualities that had been unfolded in this truly extraordinary young man from his earliest infancy. He was a child, only nine years of age, at the period of the truly affecting and exemplary behaviour the reader may remember him to have displayed, while I was at Paris squandering the property of my family at the gaming-table. In the alienation of mind produced in me by that dreadful catastrophe, he was my constant attendant, my careful nurse, and my affectionate friend. When, twelve months after, we were driven by our calamities out of Switzerland, and I lay extended to all human appearance on the bed of death, Charles was the comforter of his mother, the friend of his sisters, and even, young as he was, contributed to the maintenance of my starving family by the labour of his infant hands. At Dresden, as yet no more than seventeen years of age, he was assailed by one of the severest trials with which the mind of man can in any case be beset. But he hesitated not a moment. Obliged to choose between poverty and innocence, with the sacrifice of all his habitudes, and the loss of every friend, on the one side, and wealth, new to his enjoyment, with ignominy or an equivocal character, on the other, his determination was instant and unalterable. Cast, at so immature an age, alone and portionless, upon the world, he almost immediately, by his gallantry, his winning qualities, and his virtues, gained to himself a friend in one of the greatest captains of the age. Unaided by the brilliancy of family or fortune, he acquired the character of the bravest soldier in Hungary, where all were brave. This last trial, to which I had been the undesigning means of subjecting him, was none of the leastarduous. Love often entails imbecility on the noblest of mankind: but Charles surmounted the most perilous attacks of this all-conquering passion. When he thought Pandora unworthy, he tore himself from her, and would not admit a struggle. When he believed she loved another, he disdained to claim a heart that seemed alienated from him, and himself joined the hands of his mistress and his rival. He might have died; he could not disgrace himself. I was the hero’s father!—but no! I am not blinded by paternal partiality;—but no! he was indeed what I thought him, as near the climax of dignity and virtue as the frailty of our nature will admit. His virtue was at length crowned with the most enviable reward the earth has to boast,—the faithful attachment of a noble-minded and accomplished woman. I am happy to close my eventful and somewhat melancholy story with so pleasing a termination. Whatever may have been the result of my personal experience of human life, I can never recollect the fate of Charles and Pandora without confessing with exultation, that this busy and anxious world of ours yet contains something in its stores that is worth living for.
THE END.