To return to the thread of my narrative, which in stating these particulars I have in some points anticipated.—I sat down, as I have already said, in the environs of the city of Pisa. Marguerite, as well as myself, had a powerful attachment to the retirement of rural life, and I judged it equally eligible for the health and intellectual improvement of my daughters. I accordingly purchased a small domain, delightfully situated, but of simple appearance, on the banks of the Arno. Here I proposed to remain during the indisposition of my wife, which I flattered myself retirement, tranquillity, attention and kindness, would in no long time be able to cure. To this object I resolved to devote my exertions. Well did she merit this return from me, whohad restored me in the guilty ruin of my fortunes, and raised me from the abyss of insanity. Odious and detestable in the utmost degree should I have appeared in my own eyes, if I could have neglected any means I was able to devise, to heal a mischief of which my own precipitation, selfishness, and folly were the only causes. Every little, continual, nameless care I exerted, was as a drop of healing balm to the burning fever and remorse of my conscience. Nothing indeed could eradicate my distemper; I felt the ever-living worm of perpetrated guilt gnawing at my heart. But my solicitudes for Marguerite, at least during the moments they were in action, mitigated my anguish; and this transitory relief, however insignificant it may appear in the eyes of others, I cherished beyond the wealth of kingdoms.
Marguerite and myself appeared at this time to have changed characters. She was languid, indisposed in body and mind, her thoughts gloomy, her hopes blasted, her wishes bankrupt. Still however she maintained her superiority to what I had been in a similar condition. She endeavoured to make the best of what yet remained to her, though she declined the vain attempt of forgetting what she had lost. She hung over her daughters with inexpressible endearment. She consoled them; she reasoned with them; she endeavoured to steel their minds for whatever ill might be yet in store. She cultivated their understandings; she breathed into them mingled sentiments of resignation and energy. There was in her conversation with them a striking tone of celestial and divine. Her eloquence was copious; her manner rich, unaffected, and flowing; her speech simple, free from exaggeration and turbulence, but mild, affectionate, and winning. It sank deep into the hearts of her hearers, and seemed to give a new turn to their tempers and disposition. It rendered the character of Julia at once more distinctive, and yet more chastised; it inspired an unwonted mildness and sensibility to that of Louisa; and rendered the cadette of the family unusually grave, thoughtful, and sedate.
But upon me were devolved the more active occupations of our establishment. Marguerite had formerly been, I was now, the steward. Every kind of superintendence, fromwhich the distinction of sex did not unavoidably exclude me, was resigned to me by the lovely victim of my indiscretions. Marguerite had been my nurse, I was now ambitious to be hers. I made myself the schoolmaster of my children; Marguerite confined her communications to general topics and the culture of the heart. I initiated them in music, drawing, geography, several different languages of Europe, and in every accomplishment that I believed would be really ornamental or improving to them. I might, it is true, have hired different masters to instruct them in each of these branches, and it is not impossible that they might then have been better taught, though I was myself no incompetent preceptor. But I had an honest artifice for my guide in the plan I adopted: I was desirous of removing out of the sight of my wife every thing that might remind her of the fatal legacy, the effects of which she was induced so bitterly to deplore. In some particulars I may affirm of myself that I was now a better and a kinder husband, than I had been in the days of our gayest prosperity, or the scene of our infant loves. I studied with assiduity the temper of Marguerite; I watched her looks; I endeavoured to anticipate her every wish. I meditated with care the plan of life, which her simple and feeling heart, if solely consulted, would have led her originally to have chosen; and I copied out in the whole arrangement of our household the idea painted in my mind. Far from us were now the ostentation and pomp of the family-château on the banks of the Garonne. We lived now, not to awaken admiration and envy in the bosom of guests and spectators: we lived for ourselves. Every thing was elegant; every thing was tasteful; but not an article found its place in our residence, that did not rest its claim to be there upon a plea of usefulness. Though, by the nature of my situation, I was superior to all restraint from a consideration of expense, yet our competent board and orderly habitation approached nearer in their appearance to the honest plainness of a rustic, than to the sumptuousness of hereditary nobility. A table set out with striking propriety and neatness was preferred to the richness of plate and the splendour of porcelain and lustres. I was anxious that Marguerite should forget the change ofour situation and the extent of my resources. The objects of my present pursuit were obscurity and content. That Marguerite might forget my acquisition, I was studious to appear to have forgotten it myself. If a stranger had entered our habitation, and surveyed our economy, he would have judged that our revenues amounted to a decent competence, and that we disbursed them with a judicious discretion. Nothing was to be seen that would have betrayed the possessor of the powder of projection.
We had no guests. We cultivated no acquaintance. We were formed to suffice to each other within our little circle; and, but for the importunate recurrence of disquieting reflections, we should have done so. To look at the exterior of our household, it might have been thought that we had arrived at that sweet forgetfulness of anxious care, that delicious leisure and unbroken retreat, which have in all ages been the theme of panegyric to poets and philosophers. But it was not so. Our reciprocal relations were changed; and the hope of the house of St. Leon was no longer in the midst of us, to cheer, to enlighten, and to warm our bosoms.
A life of leisure is often an active and a busy life. The grand, I might almost say the single, object of present attention to me, was the restoration of the health and tranquillity of Marguerite. For that I watched with unwearied assiduity. Subordinate to this occupation were the different arts and accomplishments in which I instructed my daughters. Yet neither the former nor the latter of these engagements filled up all the time of a mind so restless and rapid as mine was. Intervals occurred, in which my attentions to Marguerite would have been, not soothing, but troublesome, and in which I could no longer impart a lesson to my daughters, without relaxing and weakening the spring of progression in their minds. These intervals I sometimes dedicated to chemistry and the operations of natural magic. The more effectually to hide these pursuits from the eye of Marguerite, I occupied, unknown to her, a sort of grotto, buried almost from human observation in a hollow on the banks of the river, and which was connected, by a winding path and a concealed subterraneanpassage, with the garden of my own habitation. The secrets of the stranger had given me a particular relish for this kind of pursuit. There are habits of the mind and modes of occupying the attention, in which, when once we have engaged, there seems a sort of physical impossibility of ever withdrawing ourselves. This was my case in the present instance. My habit was of no long standing. But no reading of my story, no mere power of language and words, can enable a bystander to imagine how deep it was sunk into my heart, how inextricably it was twisted with all the fibres of my bosom. That he may in some degree enter into my situation, I entreat the reader to consider what are the most imperious passions of the human mind. They have rudely been described to be wealth, power, and pleasurable sensation. How alluring to every one of us are the visionary conceptions of the mind respecting these most potent excitements! But mine were no visions. I had grasped them in my hand, and known their reality. I had felt that the wealth of the whole world was at my disposal, and that I held my life by a tenure independent and imperial. These are not of the class of conceptions that fade and perish from the mind. We cannot wake from them as from a dream, and forget that ever such things were. They had changed the whole constitution of my nature. It would have required a miracle, greater than all the consecrated legends of our church record, to have restored me to what I formerly was. If then I could have resolved never henceforth to use the gifts I had received, I yet firmly believe that I never could have refrained from the composition and decomposition of simples, and from experiments on the nature of substances, chemical and metallic. I was however far from having formed any such resolution as that I have named. My present forbearance to bring forth the secret treasure of my powers was purely an accommodation to the unhappy condition of my wife; and I felt it as a meritorious exertion thus to postpone the use of the faculties I possessed. In the mean time the amusement I sought, that I regarded as properly and entirely my own, consisted in these experiments. While I was busied with my crucible, I was able morevividly to present to myself my seeming superiority to the rest of my species. I used the employments of my grotto, as a sort of starting-post from which to set forth in a series of intoxicating reveries; not to mention that to improve in the facility of my secret operations might become a valuable subsidiary to the pursuits of my future life.
I took occasionally as my companion at these periods the negro of the prison of Constance. I found him sufficiently adapted for my purpose; his innocence and implicit obedience to whomever he served, rendering me secure that he would anticipate nothing, that he would conjecture nothing, that he would rest in what he saw, that I might almost exhibit my whole process under his eye, without once awakening the busy fiend of curiosity in a mind to which science had never unveiled her charms. He was formed to be a pure, passive machine in the hands of his employer, only with this singular difference from the lifeless machine of the engineer or mechanical inventor, that he was susceptible of attachment and affection, as well as of a certain species of contentment and a certain species of goodness and virtue.
A feature of my individual character which has already frequently presented itself to the attention of the reader is the love of admiration and spontaneous deference. I am at this moment ashamed of my vices and my follies; but it must be recollected, in the first place, that they are human, and in the second that I am writing, not their vindication, but their history. In the midst of my experiments and chemical lucubrations, I could not help sometimes ostentatiously exhibiting to Hector the wonders of my art, and those extraordinary effects which have in all ages drawn upon the more eminent operators of natural magic the reproach of being necromancers and conjurers. This I did, partly perhaps that my attendant might learn to look up to me with a kind of nameless respect and awe, but partly also that I might divert myself with the simplicity of his nature, and the gaping and motionless astonishment with which he viewed my performances. If I had not done this, or digressed into idle and ostentatious experiments, he would otherwise have seen enough,in the operations in which his assistance, if not absolutely necessary, was extremely convenient, to have induced a person, so void of the meanest European information, to regard me as assisted by and in league with invisible powers.
The prejudice against me, with which this poor fellow had been impressed at the commencement of our intercourse did not long hold out, in his ingenuous mind, against the more favourable sentiments which my present situation and mode of living were calculated to inspire. The specimens he had hitherto seen of European society were of the most unfavourable kind. His first master was a wretch of brutal disposition, ferocious and insolent; disdaining to reason himself, and impatient of remonstrance in others. This man had exercised the temper of his humble and honest attendant with every variety of savage caprice; and, having tired the restlessness of his own gloomy tyranny, without being able to exhaust the modest and unexampled patience of his servant, had finished by throwing him into gaol, upon a wanton and groundless charge of dishonesty. This, which was intended as a further exercise of tyranny, deserved to be hailed by the poor sufferer as a period of jubilee and deliverance. His innocence, as I have already related, was speedily recognised by his new task-master, who accordingly exerted himself to obtain justice for the friendless victim; and from a reputed thief proposed to elevate him to the rank of a turnkey. Hector had neither kindred nor patron to assist him; the outcast of a gaol, he must again have entered the world with a blasted character. Thus circumstanced, and influenced beside by gratitude to the unlooked-for liberality of his deliverer, he willingly accepted the situation proposed to him. With his new master, who, not less unprincipled, was less tyrannical than his predecessor, the humbleness of his hopes taught him to be contented. Yet in the bosom of the gaoler all his fidelity and regard could not enable him to detect one positive virtue; and, within the walls of the prison, there had existed nothing that could by any possibility cherish and refresh the human heart.
The scene presented to Hector’s observation in our littleretreat, on the banks of the Arno, was of a very different nature. To his frank and affectionate spirit, it appeared a perfect paradise. He had yet scarcely been acquainted with any but the refuse of mankind, from the infection of whose vices his unapprehensive and invincible simplicity had been his only safeguard; and he was now suddenly introduced to the presence and intercourse of the most perfect of her sex. He loved her as a benefactor, and he worshipped her as a god. There is no receipt for begetting affection in others, so infallible as a warm and susceptible heart. Hector accordingly soon became in a remarkable degree the favourite of my daughters. His temper was naturally cheerful and gay; and, warmed by their encouragement, it became a thousand times more so. When he had completed the occupations of the day, the lightness of his spirit would prompt him to sing and dance for ever. He exhibited the whole circle of his sportive games for their amusement. The infantine innocence of his understanding remarkably adapted him to be the butt of their little waggeries and mischiefs. Whatever tricks were played upon him, were however tempered by the forbearance and regard his worth demanded; while the obstreperous cheerfulness with which he would second their mirth, when most ignorant of its occasion, gave uncommon zest to the amusement, and furnished eternal provocation to the prolonging and varying its features.
Let not the fastidious reader complain of the inconsistency of this part of my picture, or censure the levity of my daughters. I am not writing a tragedy, but a history. Sad grief and melancholy cannot, and ought not, for ever to reign in the human face or the human heart. No daughters ever loved a mother more entirely, more fervently, than Marguerite was loved by her children. They were unwearied in their attention to her: often was their pillow watered with tears, occasioned by the sad presentiment of the loss they were destined to sustain. But the human mind, particularly in the season of youth, has an unconquerable principle of elasticity in its frame. The bow cannot be kept for ever on the stretch; and, when the whole soul appears to be bent down by calamity to the grave, it will often surprisinglyrecover its vigour and renew its strength. The ingenuous nature of these poor girls led them indeed occasionally to reproach themselves with these moments of cheerfulness as with a crime. But it was no crime. None but the uncharitably rigorous and morose will charge it upon them as a crime. It interfered with no duty; it diminished no affection; it had no tendency to harden their hearts. It was a tax they paid to the imperfectness of our nature; it was a tribute of gratitude to that God who, while he deals out to us the most terrible calamities, fails not to mix with the copious draught some solitary drops of beneficence. Julia alone, whose temper was constitutionally serious and soft, entered little into these sports, of which her youngest sister was the eternal leader and untired partaker. Yet even upon the grave countenance of Julia they would sometimes provoke an unwilling smile, which upon her countenance sat with uncommon lustre.
The hilarity and loveliness which Hector found in the midst of my family instigated and increased the attachment he began to feel for myself. He could not believe that the father of such daughters, and the chosen husband of such a consort, could be destitute of a title to be loved. He reasoned in his own way upon the attempt I had made to corrupt his fidelity, an attack which he never thoroughly digested. I have reason to believe that his attendance upon my chemical processes, and the wonders I occasionally showed to excite his astonishment, did not tend to elevate me in his good opinion. But he could not avoid witnessing in me many of the virtues of a good husband and a good father, and these, so new to his observation, strongly impressed him in my favour. The regularity of my habits and the mildness of my carriage were also calculated to win his affection and esteem. Never had the poor fellow’s affections been so forcibly called out as they were in his new situation; and he would cheerfully have stretched out his neck to the assassin’s knife, to have warded off impending evil from the meanest of us.
Prosperity and ease have often been found the parents of wishes and inclinations unfelt before. Adversity is the season of sober thought, calls home the erratic mind, andteaches us to be cheaply satisfied. But the man who has many gratifications is apt to wander in imagination from daily and familiar joys, and confidently to reach after things yet untried. Such was the situation of Hector: Hector was in love. Our sweet and simple mansion was distant scarcely more than two hundred yards from a characteristic Italian village. The maid of a littlealbergoin this place had caught his inexperienced heart. He had been invited by some peasants to a moonlight festivity on the lawn of thealbergo; and, though I should have been better pleased that my servants should decline this sort of amusement, I could not have the heart to deny him. It was, so far as I knew, the first and the last time that Hector had ever resorted to it. But I was deceived. Hector had proved the gayest and most amusing of the whole circle. His cheerfulness was inexhaustible, and his mirth in the utmost degree harmless and good humoured. He had played a thousand antics, and danced with an agility that knew no end. In a word, the accomplishments of Hector, in spite of the jetty hue that stained his face, had won the heart, or roused the coquetry, of the plump and rosy bar-maid. The overtures she made and the lures she threw out were too glaring to escape the notice even of the modest Hector. He felt himself flattered, such is human nature, at suddenly becoming an object of admiration and preference to a woman, whom his imagination, stimulated by her visible partiality, attired in a hundred charms. He owned himself hers, in all fair and honest fealty, to the world’s end.
Love taught Hector a lesson which he had never learned before. In nature he was frank, and, as far as fidelity to his master permitted it, wore his heart as naked as his face. Love taught him dissimulation. A vulgar footman or clown is as forward as the most empty beau, in boasting of the triumphs he has gained over the female heart, and in sacrificing the reputation of those who have loved him at the shrine of his vanity. Not such was Hector. He shut Up his new sensations and reveries as a sacred deposit in his bosom. Nature worked within him, and he would have been ashamed to speak, and distressed to hear, of emotions, now felt, till now never experienced. His artless and ingenuoustemper in this one particular assumed the guise of cunning. Never did he tell his love in the ear of any indifferent auditor; assiduously did he avoid pronouncing even the name of her to whom he was attached. In any other case he would have announced to me his inclinations, and previously demanded my leave of absence for his excursions. But love seemed to him imperiously to command privacy, and he employed every imaginable precaution to prevent me and all human beings from knowing whither he went, or that he was absent at all.
In one of his visits to his fairdonzella, he happened incautiously to drop some very remote hint of the scenes in which he had just been engaged with me in my secret grotto. The curiosity of the girl was strongly roused; she questioned him further. He started, and was terrified to recollect what he had said. I had strictly enjoined him secrecy towards every member of my family: my precaution had extended no further; for, as I have said, I scarcely knew that he had the most casual intercourse with any person beyond my own roof. But Hector naturally dreaded that what I was so earnest to conceal from every one in my house he would be highly to blame to communicate to a stranger. He therefore peremptorily refused, and with many signs of distress, to say another word on the subject.
Thedonzella, piqued at his resistance, had recourse to female arts. She was cruel; she uttered words of sharp displeasure and disdain; she knew that a person who refused her such a trifle could not have an atom of regard for her; she commanded him never to see her more. Unsuccessful in these expedients, she had recourse to expedients of a different sort. She wept; she called him base, false-hearted and unkind; she saw he was determined to be the death of her; she was seized with strong fits of sobbing and hysterical affection. In the midst of all this he was as unmoved as a rock of marble. He interpreted every thing that passed in its most literal form; he felt more severely her unkindness, and sympathised more truly in her distress, than perhaps any human creature would have done. But no further could she gain upon him. The confidenceof his master was in question, and he would sooner have died upon the rack, than run the slightest risk of betraying it.
From these arts she descended to arts more congenial to the habits of her life. She summoned all her skill to perplex him with cunning and insidious questions. From her questions he ought to have fled; but of this Hector was incapable. He was distressed by her severity, he grieved for the unintentional pain he had caused her. All these circumstances melted his heart; and he could not resolve upon any thing that was not considerate and respectful towards her. As the framing of artful questions was the strong-hold of thedonzella, and she might have challenged in this article the most hoary practitioner of the quibbling bar, so it was exactly the weakest side upon which poor Hector could be attacked. His simplicity yielded him up a defenceless prey to the assailant; least of all human undertakings was he capable of detecting the various faces of a doubtful question, and of guarding himself against the traps of an insidious foe. It was not till the fourth interview from Hector’s original hint, that thedonzellahad recourse to this species of attack; and she did not withdraw her forces, till she had extorted from him all he knew.
When Hector found that all his guards were baffled and put to flight, he had then recourse to the only expedient that remained, conjuring her by every thing sacred and every thing tremendous, not to betray a trust she had so ungenerously obtained from him. She readily promised every thing he desired. Soothed by her compliance, he determined not to mention to me the lapse of which he had been guilty. It would in his opinion have been little less than treason, to suspect his Dulcinea of indiscretion or frailty. In the breast of this miracle of nature was not his loyalty as secure as it could be even in his own? Why then should he betray the secret of his love, which had never yet been confided even to the senseless air? Why should he subject himself to the inconceivable anguish and confusion, of owning, where my interests, or where my wishes were concerned, that he had been found tripping and imperfect? Why should he inflict a pain, or causein me a fear, which he knew, and he only could know, was groundless? Thus it happened that I had one more confident of what I purposed should be secret, than I was myself in the smallest degree advertised of.
The consequences of this indiscretion of my servant were not slow in rendering themselves visible. Thedonzellawas by no means so scrupulous or delicate in her sentiments, as my humble, but faithful, attendant. As she had given her company to Hector, she had had an opportunity of observing in him such integrity and goodness of heart, as could not fail to extort the esteem of any human being. She really honoured him; she was unwilling to give him any cause of uneasiness. But she had another lover; perhaps she had more. The laws of chastity she regarded as prejudices, and believed they were never formed for persons in her situation in society. She was of opinion that the more lovers she had, provided she satisfied them all, the more completely did she improve the talents with which Heaven had endowed her. Few women have any secrets for the man they admit to their embraces. In an hour of amorous dalliance she communicated to Agostino, the ostler, all that she knew of the conjurations and spells of Monsieur Boismorand, such was the name I had assumed upon my entrance into Italy. Her communication was probably attended with cautions, imitated from those with which Hector had so industriously loaded thedonzellain the preceding example. Perhaps theillustrissimo Agostinohad another mistress, with whom he thought it would be unjust to practise greater reserves than thedonzellahad done with him. Be that as it will, the rumours which were whispered to my prejudice speedily got air; and, it may be, were repeated with the greater avidity, on account of the mystery that attended them, and the injunctions of secrecy with which they were accompanied.
Italy may be considered as the very focus and parent of superstitious credulity. The materials which Hector had furnished, after all the interrogations of the donzella, were slight compared with the superstructure which was presently erected on them. My grotto was said to be the appropriated haunt where a thousand devils held their infernal sabbath. The terrified imagination of the rustics, listening with a temper horribly distracted between curiosity and alarm, created to itself fictitious howlings and shrieks, and saw pale and sulphureous flames dancing upon the surface of the stream. Poor Hector was early the victim of their cruel and untamed ignorance; they believed that the peculiarity of his complexion rendered him a singularly agreeable intercessor between me and my infernal familiars. The colour of Charon was similar to that of my confidential attendant; and he, like Hector, fell under the calumnious misconstructions of the affrighted villagers. Conspicuously noble, affectionate and useful as he was, the jaundiced eye of superstition metamorphosed him into a devil. The storms of thunder and lightning to which the climate in which I resided is particularly subject acquired new terror from the ill fame which now pursued the name of Monsieur Boismorand. At those times the shapeless form of monsters vomiting smoke and flames were visible to the neighbourhood, sometimes scudding along the blue tops of the distant hills, and at others, with audaciousness incredible, brushing even at the elbow of the almost lifeless clowns and dairy-maids, and then suddenly dissolving into air, their place no longer marked but by the noisome and deadly stench they left behind. All the misfortunes of the district were imputed to me, the mortality of cattle, the convulsions and death of children, and the pale and lingering decay of persons recently advanced to an age of puberty. Innocent and blameless was my conduct to all around us; often was I forward and eager for the relief ofthe poor and afflicted; never was I the author of the slightest inconvenience or prejudice to any. Yet nothing merely human could be hated in the degree in which I was hated; few were daring and intrepid enough to repeat the very name I bore; and, when it was inadvertently pronounced, it produced through the whole extent of the astonished circle an involuntary and supernatural shudder.
Agostino, the first lover who had made an impression on the heart of Hector’s donzella, was, as I afterwards found, a fellow of a gloomy and ferocious disposition, a true Italianspadaccino, determined that none should perpetrate an affront against him with impunity, but should expiate, in some refined and cruel vengeance, the levity by which they had been so unfortunate as to give birth to his hatred. He by no means relished or approved the liberal and good-humoured sentiments of the donzella; often had they inflicted on him the darkest torments of jealousy; nor had he failed, at least in one preceding instance, to make his rival the victim of his resentment. The donzella however went on in her career; she was light of heart, gay in temper, and careless of consequences. She had always hitherto succeeded, by playful blandishments, or more serious demonstrations of contrition, in mollifying the temper of her brute; and every pardon she received operated with her as a new permission to offend. She did not sufficiently consider that she was thus continually raising to a higher pitch the frenzy of his malice. Hector in the mean time was utterly unconscious and ignorant of the perilous situation in which he stood; while, to the apprehension of Agostino, the giving him a negro for a rival, whom his pride regarded as belonging to an inferior species of beings, and his devout ignorance likened to the leader of the infernal squadrons, was the last and most intolerable insult.
His malice was ingenious and subtle. He disdained the vulgar revenge of stabbing his antagonist in the dark, and supposing that his enmity could be gorged by a blow. When the venom of his nature was thoroughly put in motion, nothing could restore it to quietness and tranquillity but some mighty stroke, to excite the wonder of every bystander, and that should leave behind it a track of desolation,never to be filled up again and erased. He heard therefore with unsated appetite and eager joy the tale of necromancy and infernal machination repeated to him from Hector by the donzella. The impression which the narrative produced upon him was a mixed sentiment of transport at the apprehension of such an instrument of vengeance and of palpitating hatred; superstition teaching him to believe and to view with abhorrence that which he desired to render tenfold more an object of faith and aversion to his neighbours. He struck an auspicious and august alliance between his revenge and his religion; his religion exciting him to exterminate that, the destruction of which would produce inexpressible gratification to his revenge. The darkness of his spirit led him to proceed with double caution and vigilance in his correspondence with the donzella. He discovered nothing to her of the dark project which was engendering in his mind; and only betrayed so much of his superstitious feelings and fears as, by giving new emotion, might stimulate her to gratify his curiosity and her own by a detection of further particulars. He was assiduous in the underhand and sinister propagation of the tale, to which he did not fail to give his own colouring and affix his own feelings. He was desirous that the train should be laid in silence, and that the explosion he designed should be free from all pre-signification of the event. Thus an individual, of whose animosity I had no apprehension, and the meanness of whose appearance would probably have made me neglect all precaution against him, gave method and direction to an evil, of which however, upon a review, I am not inclined to doubt I should have been the victim, if the enmity and industry of this individual had been wholly withdrawn.
The mischief was long in preparation, before I received in any way the slightest intimation of the predicament in which I stood. The first circumstance at all calculated to excite alarm in my mind, was the singular manner in which I found myself regarded, if I entered any of the neighbouring villages, or met the rustics and their dames, as I strayed along the roads or the fields. They fled my approach, deserted the streets, and carefully shut themselves up in theirhouses, till I had passed. Where it was impossible to avoid me, they bowed themselves to the earth in the most submissive guise before me, while the most lively terror was painted in their countenances, dreading lest they should excite the resentment of a tremendous and inexorable foe. These tokens however were far from inspiring me with a conception of the truth. They perplexed, they astonished, they distressed me. Sore as I was with my recent afflictions, my mind was but too fully prepared for anticipations of evil. I had suffered from suspicions, I had suffered from calumnious imputations, I had suffered from the malignant effects of popular rumour. Had I yielded my confidence to any person but such a one as Hector, it is probable my suspicions would have turned on that side. But my reliance on him was not less than that which Alexander the Great yielded to Philip the physician: I knew his rectitude, his simplicity, his fidelity, and the singleness of his heart; and I could not harbour the shadow of a doubt respecting him. My reliance was of that entire and perfect sort, which did not express itself by a recollection of the physical possibility and an acquittal founded in deliberation, but by a total vacancy of doubt, or of retrospect that way directed, just such as the state of my mind would have appeared, if the thing had been naturally impossible.
I was not however ignorant and raw enough to be deceived by the exterior of homage I have described; I sufficiently knew that what I beheld was the offspring of hatred. To feel one’s self hated is in all instances a painful and humiliating state of the human mind. To me it was especially so. I was not formed to retaliate this species of injury; I could not hate in my turn. I was formed to love. I could not look upon my species with dark and gloomy contemplations; I was prompt to admire their virtues, and perhaps even too prompt to extenuate their errors. It may, I believe, be laid down as a rule, that they who cannot hate can least endure to be made objects of hatred. Fettered however as I now was, by the tenderest consideration for the health and tranquillity of Marguerite, I thought it best to temporise and submit in silence. My principal anxiety was to hide these symptoms from thenotice of my family. This I could not completely effect; some of them were too glaring and obtrusive, entirely to escape the observation of my daughters in their walks. But the filial forbearance they felt towards their mother led them implicitly and without any concerted plan to concur with me in my exertions for her quiet.
The animosity of Agostino was restless and inextinguishable. His plans did not terminate in exciting against me a secret and covered abhorrence; they aimed at nothing less than my utter destruction. The next exertion of the conspiracy which was engendering against me was of a tragical nature.
It happened one night, after all my family was retired to rest, and I was myself sunk into a slumber, that I was suddenly alarmed at the report of a musket, which seemed to be fired almost under the window of my chamber. This was a very singular circumstance, and calculated to convey an impression of danger. I leaped from my bed, and ran to the window. The night was extremely dark, and every thing seemed perfectly quiet. Presently I discerned a glimmering light, like that of a lantern, which however appeared to be gradually retiring to a greater distance. I was not thus satisfied, but determined to hasten down stairs, and investigate the cause of the disturbance. Marguerite, who had heard the firing of the musket as well as myself, now called me to her, and entreated me not to expose myself to unnecessary danger. In compliance with her remonstrances I promised, though unwillingly, not to go out into the court or upon the lawn, but to content myself with examining the state of every part of the house. When I came to the staircase and the hall, I found that the alarm had communicated to almost every person in the family, who presently assembled round me. We patroled the house, but found every thing in the situation in which it had been left, and nowhere any appearance of violence. I opened several of the windows, but all was darkness and silence. Having thus far satisfied myself, I listened with a degree of amusement to the conjectures and sage remarks of several of the servants, a rank of society who may usually be found to derive a degree of enjoyment from incidents of this sort,which, for the moment, strikingly tend to level all artificial distinctions, and confer on every one the liberty of uttering his reflections without apprehension or constraint. I did not however feel myself entirely easy; the circumstance which had just occurred, combined with the forebodings which had lately impressed me, had filled me with undefinable terror and alarm. Hector would willingly have gone over the grounds contiguous to the house, to see if he could discover any thing that related to or could explain the incident; but I had promised Marguerite that I would search no further, and the temper of my mind would not suffer me to expose another to a danger, which I abstained from encountering in my own person. It was more than an hour before the conclave in which we were assembled broke up, and every one retired, fatigued with attention, and prepared to fall into the soundest sleep. My dreams were uneasy and disturbed; my mind was in a tumult of imaginary calamities; and I passed the greater part of the night in a state of singular anxiety.
In the morning I was scarcely sunk into a refreshing slumber, before I was suddenly roused from sleep by a repetition of shrieks of astonishment and distress. I put on my clothes as quickly as I could, and hastened towards the spot from which the sounds appeared to proceed. The first object I beheld was the little boy of ten years’ old, whom Charon had a short time before dragged out of the river, stretched along upon the lifeless body of this faithful and generous animal. The musket, the report of which had alarmed us the night before, had no doubt been aimed against Charon, and the greater part of its contents appeared to be lodged in his body. As no further sound had succeeded the firing, he had probably been killed on the spot. He was at a small distance from the house, near a private footpath, where he had been found in the morning by the lad whose life he had recently preserved. The poor boy had not at first understood what had happened to his benefactor, but only thought him asleep, and, prompted by affection for the generous creature, had quietly sat down by him till he should awake. He had not sat long however, before he discerned about him the marks of blood. Heput his hand to the wound; the animal stirred not. He passed to his head; he saw his eyes fiery and starting, and his lips distorted. He endeavoured to awake him, as one would awake a human being to whom some mischief had happened of which he was not aware. All his efforts were fruitless. He found his body motionless, and his joints stiff in death. The apprehension of what had occurred then suddenly flashed on his mind. He burst out into shrieks of astonishment and anguish. Hector was the first person who caught the sound, and hastened to the spot; I immediately followed. The poor negro, who, in the innocence of his heart was uninitiated in the proud distinctions by which civilised man is taught to place so vast a barrier between the human nature and the brute, was struck speechless with sorrow and amazement. He recognised the dead being before him for his fellow-creature. He recollected in him his friend, his companion, his intimate acquaintance, between whom and himself there had for some time passed an uninterrupted reciprocation of acts of kindness and assistance.
A morose and fastidious reader perhaps will ask me why I lay so great a stress upon so petty and insignificant an incident as the death of a dog. It might have been little to other persons; it was not little to us. Let the reader recollect his ingenuity in procuring aid for his dying master, his gratitude to the person by whom that aid was afforded, and his unconquerable antipathy to his master’s murderer. These are not common traits. There are many men whose premature fate has been the most unrelentingly avenged, that in moral and useful qualities could not have stood the comparison with my generous Charon. It surely was no common cause for regret, that a creature who had distinguished himself by a conduct so peculiarly admirable, should have encountered so premature and unmerited a fate. His conduct the reader may in some degree comprehend and appreciate; but I should in vain attempt to delineate those admirable qualities in this faithful domestic, which do not fall within the province of narrative, and which to have justly appreciated you must have been personally and familiarly acquainted with him. Beside, ours was a familyof love. As we were affectionately attached to each other, so we never admitted a servant under our roof, who did not prove himself by his conduct utterly unworthy, to whom we did not extend a share of that friendship and affection, which seemed to be the right of every one that dwelt in our family. Feeling does not stay to calculate with weights and a balance the importance and magnitude of every object that excites it; it flows impetuously from the heart, without consulting the cooler responses of the understanding.
There was another circumstance which rendered the catastrophe of this generous animal of great moment to us. It was a clear proof that there was somewhere a strong animosity at work against his master. It was impossible he could himself have provoked his fate. Never was a creature more gentle and inoffensive. Though his bulk was great, and his strength uncommon, the energies he possessed were always employed in acts of justice and beneficence, never in acts of aggression. But if a hatred were at work so busy and fierce as to prompt an action like this, how were we to estimate it? What was its source, and whither did it tend? These were very interesting and serious considerations. We however dwelt for some time longer in the centre of general antipathy and abhorrence, without being able in the smallest degree to explain to ourselves what we saw. As we knew not in what we had offended, we were unable to atone for our fault, or even to guard ourselves against the repetition of it; nor were we by any means prepared to comprehend the extent of our danger. Happily Marguerite, whose health was now in a rapid decline, was least exposed to the observation of this new mischief; though she felt enough of it to confirm her in the sentiment, that she had nothing fortunate and happy to look forward to in the small remainder of her existence. There was indeed one idea perpetually present to her, which rendered the impression of ordinary occurrences extremely feeble upon her mind:—Charles, Charles, wandering alone in the world, unknowing and unknown, without a friend, a relative, a counsellor, or a protector, without money and without a name! This melancholy image followedher wherever she went, haunted her nightly in her dreams, attended her in all her occupations, filled all her intervals of leisure; and, though she laid it down as a law to herself never to repeat his beloved name in my presence, she could think of nothing else.
It was no long time after the death of Charon, that Hector came home one evening in a state of the most violent anxiety and trepidation. He burst upon me in my study, where I was sitting alone, buried in one of those deep reveries which, especially since the legacy of the stranger, had been among the most frequent habits of my mind. His perturbation was such as to render it impossible for him to impose on himself the smallest degree of caution and restraint. The noise he made in entering the apartment startled me. I looked up, and perceived his features swelled, his face bruised, and his garments disfigured with blood.
“For heaven’s sake, Hector,” exclaimed I, “what is the matter?”
He answered not. He advanced towards the upper end of the room, he took down a pistol, one of those which I always kept loaded in my apartment, he came towards me, he fell upon his knees, he tendered the pistol to my acceptance.
“Hector!” cried I, “what am I to understand? what is the meaning of this?”
“Kill me, dear master! For Christ’s sake I entreat you to kill me!”
I took the pistol from his hand; it pointed towards the floor.
“And will you not kill me?” in a mournful accent exclaimed he.
“What have you done, that deserves that I should kill you?”
“Kill me! only kill me! pray kill me!” He spread out his hands towards me with a gesture of intreaty.
“Hector, what means this agitation? what has happened? You terrify me beyond expression.”
“Must I speak?” replied he. “Must I be the accuser of my guilty self?” He burst into an agony of tears.
“Would I were dead! Would I had been torn into a thousand pieces, before this had happened! Indeed, sir, I am innocent! I thought no harm! Indeed it is not my fault!”
“What have you done? Whence come these bruises and this wound?”
“It is all my fault! It is all my doing,—nobody else! Why will you not kill me?”
“Hector, I cannot bear this uncertainty. Recollect yourself! Be pacified! and tell your story!”
“Will you forgive me?”
“Forgive you what? What have you done to deserve my anger?”
“No, no, I do not wish to be forgiven! I only wish you to abhor, to detest, to curse and to kill me!”
“This is beyond all patience.”
“I never loved any body but you, and my mistress, and my dear young ladies. I never did any body else the least atom of mischief; and now my folly will be the ruin of you all!
“Pardon me, sir! I will torment you no longer. I will get the better of myself, and tell you all that has happened.”
He then informed me, though with many breaks and passionate interruptions, of what he had just discovered, my evil repute as a necromancer, the many strange and terrible stories that were circulated of me, the antipathy universally entertained against me, the active ferociousness with which this antipathy was accompanied, and the consequences that he feared would result. He ascribed the whole to his own imprudence, and to the particulars which the superior cunning of the donzella, in spite of his invincible refusal to acquaint her with a single circumstance, had wrung from him. Hector had collected severalof these particulars accidentally from a neighbouring rustic, and had been vehement in my defence. While they were eager in debate, others had joined them, but Hector had found them all opponents, not one a supporter. Irritated with the contest, and the opprobrious language heaped upon himself and his master, Hector had been provoked to strike the most insolent of the disputants. Immediately several had fallen upon him at once, and it was owing to the uncommon strength and dexterity he possessed, that he had escaped alive out of their hands. Beside innumerable blows with fist, foot, and stick, he had received two or three stabs in different parts of the body, from the knives with which the Italian is too much accustomed to assail his adversary. It was easy to see that the gallant and generous defence of Hector had considerably augmented the danger of my situation. They dismissed him with a thousand execrations against both him and myself, and vows that they would signalise their vengeance by setting fire to my house. Having related his story, Hector concluded with again earnestly conjuring me to kill him, that so he might expiate the imprudence and folly by which he had made himself the author of my calamity.
The excessiveness of the poor fellow’s distress excited me to employ every effort to pacify his mind. “Hector,” said I, “you have been very imprudent, but I foresee no such consequences as your terrified imagination has led you to forebode. The idle threats of clowns in the midst of their brawls are entitled to little regard. I am not so weak and infirm of soul as to be moved from my tranquillity by their senseless prate. I entertain no doubt of your fidelity and affection. I am not angry with you. The fault you have been guilty of, arose from no defect of vigilance or attachment. You did what you could, and where you failed, it was only in that to which your powers were not commensurate. You have done well and wisely now, in acquainting me with particulars and the whole extent of the danger: doubt not but I will employ such precautions and be so awake to my situation, as to forestall the possibility of mischief.”
Thus I endeavoured to assuage honest Hector’s perturbation,but with no adequate effect. He hung his head in sorrow, and refused to be comforted. Shame and terror assailed him together, and he knew not how to support their united pressure. He intreated me not to lull myself in fancied security, and fall blindfold on my ruin. He entreated me not to forgive him. My clemency and forbearance served only to make him regard with greater horror the crime of which he had been guilty. If however I refused to punish him, and by penance or death to lighten the remorse that hung upon his heart, he would at least devote himself in opposition to the evil he had created, and die rather than it should touch a hair of our heads. This idea he seemed to view with some complacency; but the pleasure it gave was a glimmering and momentary light; he could not remain in any place for an instant; he wrung his hands with anguish, and exhibited every feature of the deepest despair. I examined his bruises and wounds, the latter of which, though attended with a copious effusion of blood, did not appear to be dangerous. I warned him to be guilty of no further indiscretion, to betray nothing of what had happened to any one of my family, and to engage in no further controversies and broils in my vindication.
Though I endeavoured to make light of what I heard in compassion to the distress of my servant, yet, when I came to reconsider the subject in solitude, it by no means appeared to me in a light and trivial point of view. One part of Hector’s story had related to the death of Charon, who, I now found, had owed his fate to the superstition of my uncultivated neighbours. I had always entertained a formidable idea of the character of an Italian populace, whom I regarded as more suspicious, sanguinary, and violent than any other race of men in the world. I deplored my fate that exposed me to their rage. I deplored my folly that had admitted any confidant into my individual pursuits, though my confidence had been so limited, and its receiver so trustworthy, that I could not have imagined any evil would have resulted. I determined that I would not expose myself to the risk of such sinister consequences, as in my opinion might in my presentsituation easily overtake me. I grieved for the tender health and the doubtful state of mind of my beloved Marguerite, which alone opposed themselves to the adoption of an immediate change of scene. In the state of her health I had been grievously disappointed. I had looked for amendment; I found decay. The decay however was gradual, almost imperceptible; from time to time I had even flattered myself that the progress was in an opposite direction; but the delusion was soon banished. Another difficulty arose in addition to the rest; Marguerite appeared pregnant; a circumstance that now first presented itself after a cessation of ten years.
The morning after the accident and disclosure of Hector I went to Pisa, determined to consult with the marchese Filosanto, elder brother of the unfortunate Andrea, who was probably more accurately acquainted with the Italian character than myself, and understood the shades of that character, as they were modified in the particular territory in which I resided. The marchese was a man universally admired for subtlety of reasoning, vigorousness of comprehension, and refinement of taste. In the structure of his mind he was scarcely an Italian. He had resided several years in England, and was the intimate friend of Henry Howard earl of Surrey, who some time after fell a victim to the jealous tyranny of his native sovereign, king Henry the Eighth. The marchese was frank, generous and disinterested, and possessed more fully the affections of every one within the circle of his friendship than any other man I ever knew. He was of a sanguine temper, always contemplating the world on its brightest side; and, from the generosity of his own heart, incapable of crediting a distant danger, or of discerning the storm in the embryo cloud where it was silently engendering.
In the conference we held, I was influenced too implicitly by my consciousness of his integrity and the gigantic powers of his mind, and did not sufficiently advert to those peculiarities in his temper which I have now described. The external facts with which the narrative of Hector had furnished me I fully detailed to him; as to my particular pursuits, I contented myself with stating that I indulgedfreely in the study of chemistry, and was of those persons, ordinarily accounted visionaries, who amused themselves with the expectation of finding the philosopher’s stone. Having heard my story to an end, the marchese ridiculed my apprehensions. He saw nothing in the facts that alarmed me, but a cowardly superstition whose utmost flight reached no higher than the shooting a dog, and a squabble between a boisterous rustic, and a servant too acutely sensitive for the reputation of his master. He assured me that the days of such superstition as I contemplated were long since past, and that his countrymen less deserved the imputation than any others, as, living at the very centre and source of catholic imposition, they saw deeper into the mystery, and were not exposed to the advantage which distance possesses for augmenting our reverence. He expatiated with great eloquence on the vice of a suspicious temper. A spirit of alarm and continual apprehension, like the jealousy of lovers, he said, made the meat it fed on. It brooded over plots that had no existence but in the wanderings of a disturbed imagination. It was continually interrupting the quiet of its owner, and the tranquillity of society; and, for the sake of avoiding imaginary evils, often plunged into such as were real. He advised me to go home and be contented. He recommended to me to clear up the clouds of my mind, and cultivate a light heart, a cheerful temper, and a generous confidence in the honest sympathies of mankind. In fine, he bade me continue my pursuits, avoid éclat, and trust in his sagacity that no ill consequences would ensue.
The remonstrances of the marchese Filosanto led me to suspect that I had been idly credulous. I had too easily participated the feelings and apprehensions of a poor uninstructed negro, and had suffered the secret griefs that brooded in my heart, to discolour my perceptions, and aggravate the features of circumstances in themselves trifling or indifferent. I began to be half ashamed of the gloominess of my conceptions. I could not, alas! follow the advice of the marchese as to the cheerfulness of my heart; but I could exert myself to prevent my present melancholy from disfiguring to me every thing I saw. Theinfluence exercised over my conceptions by persons of eminent intellect has always been great. Not that the judgment I formed of the powers of my own mind was peculiarly humble; but I reasoned thus. Perhaps the person I consult is as well informed in the subject under consideration as I am, in that case his decision is as fully entitled to attention as my own; and thus, without cowardly self-contempt on my part, the general balance of the argument was materially altered. Perhaps, without being on the whole my superior, he may be more competent to this particular question. In either case my idea of its merits became perceptibly modified. I never listened to the sentiments of a man of talents when they differed from my own, unless where he was evidently visionary and irrational, without being shaken as to the credit due to my own view of the subject.
Such then was the effect produced on me by the marchese’s expostulation. I shook off my apprehensions, and laughed at my fears. I was ashamed of the want of gallantry that had possessed me, when I meditated flight from so trivial a menace. I concluded that dangers, particularly such as arise from the irrational passions of a capricious multitude, were increased when symptoms of apprehension discovered themselves, and abated, when received with neglect or repelled with a magnanimous serenity.
Meanwhile the unrelenting Agostino was fixed in his purpose and incessant in his machinations. He believed that the destructive mine was now sufficiently prepared, and that he might proceed in all surety to the ultimate explosion. He apprehended that he had advanced too far to retract, that the death of Charon and the assault upon Hector were calculated sufficiently to announce what was to follow, and that it would be injudicious and idle to grant me much respite for reflection. The passions of his associates were wrought up to a frenzy of horror, and neededonly a bold and artful director to urge them to any point of fury and destruction.
Implicitly as I had confided in the decision of the marchese, I had speedily reason to know that it was the dictate of too sanguine and presumptuous a spirit. On my return from his palace, and, on several subsequent occasions, I found the manners of the populace altered respecting me. They no longer viewed me with a sort of reverential awe, or fled my approach. They insulted me with their eyes, they muttered curses upon me in a voice sufficiently audible to be understood, they broke forth in gestures of abhorrence and derision. They regarded me with looks of ferocious hatred; and when I had passed them, their murmurs gradually swelled into shouts of triumphant contumely. These symptoms however were progressive; each day became more odious and intolerable than the last. They who have never been placed in a situation like mine, will never be able to do justice to my grievance. They will perhaps say, that the calamity I now endured was a trifling one, and that a weak mind only can be elevated by the acclamations and huzzas of the multitude, or depressed by their hisses and scorn. I did not, and I could not, feel it so. There is no pleasure more congenial to the human heart, than the approbation and affection of our fellows. I call heaven to witness that I could mount the scaffold, surrounded with an innumerable multitude to applaud my fortitude, and to feel as it were on their own neck the blow that ended me, and count it a festival. But I cannot bear to be surrounded with tokens of abhorrence and scorn. I cannot bear to look round me through an extended circle, and see the impatience of despite in every face. Man was not born to live alone. He is linked to his brethren by a thousand ties; and, when those ties are broken, he ceases from all genuine existence. Their complacence is a food more invigorating than ambrosia; their aversion is a torment worse than that of the damned. While I write, I seem again to hear resounding in my ears the hootings and clamours of these infatuated peasants. When heard indeed, they went to my heart, and sat there colder than the aspic’s venom: they rose to my throat with a sensation bitterer than wormwood.They unstrung all my muscles and nerves. I could not stay; I could not fly. I wished myself buried deep in the centre of the earth. I felt something worse, more revolting, more opposite to all the prejudices and propensities of the soul, than annihilation. I have known in various situations and conditions of human life, what it was to be distressed, to be dejected, to be miserable; but never in any other situation have I felt a misery so concentrated, so gnawing and insufferable.
I began however, like the critics I am figuring to myself, to despise the pusillanimity of my submission, and to believe that, if I would only make a stand and turn round upon my enemy, I should subdue him. This resolution I could with difficulty have taken in the moment of attack; it was formed in an interval of retrospect and reflection. Having formed it, the contempt I should have felt for myself would have been too exquisite, if I had failed to put it in execution. I was not long at a loss for an opportunity. In one of my walks I found myself pursued by a numerous populace with a peculiar degree of inveteracy. I yielded for some time, till I came to a place that appeared convenient for the purpose of haranguing them. It was a bench, placed upon a rising ground and sheltered behind by a thicket, which had been erected for the purpose of commanding a neighbouring prospect. I stopped; I stepped upon the bench; I waved my hand towards the multitude. They perceived my purpose with some degree of confusion and surprise; they drew nearer. “Do not listen to him! Do not hear a word he has to say!” cried some of them. “Oh, hear him! hear him!” exclaimed others. I obtained an audience.
“What is the cause,” said I, “of all this hatred and persecution?”
“Because you are a wizard, a necromancer, a dealer in the black art; because you are in league with hell, and have sold yourself to the devil!” answered twenty voices at once.
“Hear me,” replied I, “and I will convince you of my innocence: but hear me in silence, and do not interrupt me.”
“For myself, I have no belief in the existence of such an art.”
This remark produced a general groan.
“Why should I have sold myself to the foe of mankind? What could he give me, that should compensate me for consigning myself over to him for ever hereafter? The power of exhibiting strange and extraordinary tricks. What a pitiful recompence? But, if I had bought this power at so dear a price, should I hide it? Should I not take every opportunity of exciting your reverence and astonishment? Who has seen me perform any wonderful feat? I live quietly among you, and give no cause of offence to any. I live retired in the midst of my family. I form no party or connections. I do not intrude into any of your affairs, political or private. I do not even enter into conferences with any of you, unless induced by the apparent occasion of doing some good and benevolent action.
“Quit then this ungenerous persecution! Do not turn the fury of your resentment upon a harmless stranger! You are Italians, the most polished and ingenious people on the face of the earth: the most glorious monuments of art, in building, in statuary, and in painting, are to be found in the midst of you: ancient Italy governed the world by her arms; modern Italy governs the world through the medium of that pure and sublime religion of which Providence has graciously made her the repository. Do not stain the glory of this character! Show yourselves worthy of the honour with which your name is heard in every corner of the habitable world!”
While I was yet speaking, a large clot of mud reached me, and struck me on the face and the upper part of my breast. I calmly endeavoured to free myself from its effects with my handkerchief; and, looking round me, demanded, in the sacred spirit of conscious innocence, “How have I deserved this treatment?”
Thus far I had been heard with a doubtful sentiment of murmur and approbation, and I began to feel that I was rather gaining ground upon my audience. But this new insult seemed to turn the tide of popular impression in an instant.
“Villain, renegado, accursed of God!” I heard from every side; “did not you bewitch my cow? did not you enchant my child? have not you killed my daughter? Down with him! exterminate him! do not suffer him to live!”
I continued my efforts to be heard. It was a critical moment, a last experiment upon the power of firmness and innocence to control the madness of infuriated superstition. It was in vain. I was deafened with the noise that assailed me. It was no longer shouts and clamours of disapprobation. It was the roaring of tigers, and the shriek of cannibals. Sticks, stones, and every kind of missile weapon that offered itself, fell in showers around me. It seemed a sort of miracle that I escaped instant destruction. I eluded their pursuit: after some time I ventured to return to my own house. I had in the interval terrified myself with the idea that, having missed my person, they might have hurried thither, and executed some terrible vengeance on my helpless family. I found them however in safety: the mob had for this time contented itself to disperse without further mischief.
As soon as it was dark, I hastened to Pisa, and related what had just occurred to my friend the marchese. He was surprised; but he still adhered to his opinion. He had never supposed, he told me, that a noisy and clamorous mob was a proper subject upon which to make experiment of the energy of truth; and he laughed at my attempt to reason them out of their superstition. But they meant nothing by all that had passed. It was the mere foam and fury of a moment, poured out with vehemence, and then dissipated in air. A certain set of politicians had for their particular ends represented a mob as a terrific and formidable engine: alas! they were rather to be pitied than condemned. There was no malice in their hearts. They were in reality a mere material machine, led on without reflection, and, when they had committed a momentary ravage, astonished themselves the most at the injury they had perpetrated. They were as light and variable as a feather, driven with every breath; and nothing could argue greater obliquity of intellect than to suppose, because theywere in a certain temper and sentiment to-day, that they would be found in a similar temper and sentiment to-morrow. The marchese however wished, he said, to relieve me from the apprehension of this imaginary danger, and therefore offered me the whole suite of his servants for the defence of my house. He added that, among his friends and retainers in the city of Pisa, he did not doubt in an hour’s time to be able to raise a troop of four hundred men; and, whatever power of that sort he possessed, he assured me was wholly at my service. I was not convinced by the marchese’s arguments, but I declined his offer. I could not bear to think that blood should be spilled, and the lives of these poor ignorant wretches sacrificed, for the preservation of a thing so worthless in my eyes as the local property I possessed. I therefore told the marchese, that I might perhaps wait yet a day or two longer before I formed my resolution; but that, the instant I saw one fresh symptom of the hostility of the villagers, I was determined to take my family with me, and remove far beyond the reach both of their terrors and their hatred.
I staid two hours with the marchese, and then set out to my own house. The way I took was by a private road, open only to the neighbouring gentry, but of which my servant carried the key. It led along the higher ground, and commanded a view of the common highway. Considerably before I reached my own habitation, I was struck with the appearance of persons passing, in considerable numbers, and in a tumultuous manner, along the public road. Some of them were armed with clubs, and others with torches. Their march however led, not towards my house, but in an opposite direction. I mended my pace, terrified with a sort of vague apprehension of what might have happened, though I did not disguise to myself that what I saw was not precisely that which I might have expected to see, if they had been returned from demolishing my property, and burning my house.
When I arrived, I found indeed that no mischief had been actually committed, but that I was indebted for the preservation of my house, and perhaps for the lives of my wife and children, to the sagacity and presence of mind ofBernardin, the servant of my early years. My residence had been the object against which the march of the populace had been directed. Bernardin, perceiving their intentions, had with great difficulty prevailed upon Hector to keep out of sight. Nothing could be more adverse to the feelings and inclination of my faithful negro; but, Bernardin having convinced him that his appearance would only exasperate the rage of the assailants, and that perhaps every thing of importance to his master’s service and happiness depended at present upon his concealment, Hector yielded to his representations. This accomplished, Bernardin next assembled the gardener and one or two labourers in my employment, who happened to be at hand; and, having furnished them with fire-arms, stationed them at different windows, in the front of the house. With these preparations, when the mob arrived he resolutely told them that he would fire on the first person that attempted to break in. They were staggered: furious as they appeared the moment before, this threat held them in awe. They paraded two or three times round the house, clattering their arms, and pouring out vehement execrations; and then withdrew, solemnly promising that they would return the following night, and level the house with the ground.
I no longer yielded the smallest degree of credit to the unsuspicious and confiding philosophy of the marchese Filosanto. I sent off my wife and children before daybreak for Lucca, determined to take shipping at the first convenient port, and pass over into Spain. I was little solicitous, for reasons with which the reader is already acquainted, about my property and moveables: I had no motive to induce me to fetter and clog my retreat, at this hour of peril and terror, with a single article of rarity and price. My furniture indeed was not splendid, but it was handsome and valuable; and the indifference with which I resigned the whole to the mercy of chance, was a matter of some surprise to the persons around me. My servants offered to defend my possessions, at the peril of their lives; but I peremptorily forbade it. I would not even consent to their taking away certain articles, by way of appropriating them to their personal use. I believed that if I admitteda single act of that sort, I should find it no easy matter to set limits to their avidity; and, as I had determined to take none of my present servants with me, the negro and Bernardin excepted, I feared that the apparent possession of a single article that had been mine might hereafter mark its proprietor a victim to the senseless rage of blindfold superstition. I could easily make up to these honest and faithful dependants the injury they might sustain from the seeming severity of this order. I determined to shut up my house, with all its present contents, as Joshua, the captain of the Jews, drew a line of separation round the profane possessions of Achan; and to leave the villagers, if so it seemed good to them, to make of the whole a burnt-offering, to propitiate the wrath of their avenging divinity.
The directions I issued being unhesitating and peremptory, met with a ready submission from all my other domestics: Hector only, the mild and complying Hector, of whom obedience had hitherto appeared to constitute the very soul, met my commands with a resolute refusal. The present distressed appearance of my fortunes seemed to have worked the poor fellow’s mind to a paroxysm of insanity. He considered himself as the sole author of my calamity. He reviled himself in the bitterest terms of compunction and abhorrence. The language which the agony of his soul forced from his lips, was such as could not fail to impress upon my other servants a conviction of the justice of the imputations that were now brought against us. This however was of little importance. I must at all events have been contented to leave behind me, in my present neighbourhood, a name loaded with the execrations of religious fanaticism. Hector imprecated upon himself a thousand curses, if, so long as he continued to live, the populace should lay hands upon a straw of my property. He would not move so much as an inch from the defence of my house. He would either, by preserving it, expiate in some degree the mischief in which he had involved me, or fall and be crushed to death in the midst of its ruins. Arguments and expostulations were useless here: his mind was worked up to too high a tone, to be susceptible of the patience necessary for hearing or understanding any reasoning that wasaddressed to him. Authority itself was of no avail: for the first and the last time he threw off the character of a servant, and appeared obstinate, self-willed, and ungovernable. It was only by direct violence that he could be forced from the spot. I gave him in charge, with the most strict orders not to suffer him to escape from their custody, to two of his fellows.