I perceived that this was the first essay of his artifice. I informed him which I have no doubt he knew well enough before, that I had no desire to go to Constantinople. I wished to remain where I was, and to finish what I had begun.
“What, you have not done then?” suddenly and with an abrupt voice exclaimed the bashaw. “By Mahomet, a man of a reasonable appetite in your place might be satisfied. Have not you filled the streets with riots, and the country with rebellion? Do not the populace assemble in crowds, insulting every one they meet, and talking of nothing but fire and devastation, the bowstring and the cimeter? Be so good, my dear sir; as to inform me what further you may have in view?”
“Reverend bashaw,” cried I with submission, yet with firmness, “I have none of these things in view. But a moment ago you did justice to my intentions. They are those of beneficence, and beneficence only.”
“I know nothing about that. I have nothing to do with honest men’s blunders; I look to the effects they produce.”
“These effects, most mighty sir, are temporary; they are the clouds that will often obscure for an instant the brightest sunshine. Condescend to lend me your generous assistance, and all will be well.”
“Do not tell me of clouds and sunshine. This is, to my thinking, not an April shower, but an earthquake and a hurricane. If we are all to be swallowed up or whirled into the air, it is no consolation to me, that the day afterwe are gone, every thing shall be as fair and serene as paradise itself.”
“Remember, sir, that when I came into Hungary, I found its inhabitants in the most desperate condition, miserable, wasted and starving. Have I not already suspended this evil for months?”
“Yes, I do remember. You are one of those busy-bodies, who never see an evil without imagining they are the persons to correct it, intruding into every thing, and subverting every thing. The superintendence of the public welfare is a mystery to which none are competent, but those whom Mahomet has raised to the situation of statesmen. Your interference is blasphemy against the spirit of our religion, and deserves to be encountered with the most exemplary punishment.”
“Good God! then, is it in this country a crime to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and shelter the houseless?”
“Sieur de Chatillon,” retorted the bashaw, “you appear to be unacquainted with the maxims of Turkish policy, the wisest and most beneficent in the world. If none of the disturbances had happened at which I have so much reason to be alarmed, still, in relieving the people in the manner you have done, you have incurred the guilt of high treason against the sultan. Know, sir, that, through the whole extent of his dominions, there is but one proprietor, and that is our illustrious monarch. You say, that you wish to be the benefactor of his subjects, and the judge of your own proceedings: such sentiments are direct rebellion against the glorious constitution of Ottoman. The sovereign of Constantinople will have no benefactor in the countries he presides over, but himself. Like the invisible ruler of the universe, he acts by second causes; he allows his ministers to be the instruments of his beneficence; but all must be ascribed to him, must flow from his will, and be placed under his control. You, who have formed a plan of public benefit without consulting him, and have presumed, like a luminary of the world, to move in an orbit of your own, have in strictness of construction forfeited your life to his justice; and I consult rather the clemency of hisnature than the maxims of his policy, if I suffer you to go from this palace with your head upon your shoulders.”
Without permitting myself to be too much moved by the imperious language addressed to me, I complained to the bashaw of the rigorous and arbitrary character of what he stated to be the maxims of the Turkish government. I solemnly protested that I had no private or personal object in view. The effect of my operations would be to give new strength and energy to his master’s dominions. By diffusing happiness among his subjects, by reviving industry, and scattering plenty, prosperity, and ease, all disaffection would be rooted out; and the people, who are never minute in scanning the cause of their enjoyments, would bless the sceptre under which they were made to participate such manifold benefits. If the policy of the divan led them in any degree to interfere, they ought rather to crown my measures with their applause, than wantonly to throw obstacles in the way of what I purposed. I asked however no reward, I demanded no favour for myself; all I desired was that the sultan would assist me in securing to his people those benefits, the dissemination of which I had so auspiciously begun.
The bashaw, without taking any direct notice of this expostulation, answered, that I was not aware of the maxims of his government, to which, in consideration of my seeming generosity and rectitude, he was willing to give the mildest interpretation. “It is however,” continued he, “to the last degree idle in you to imagine, that you can be permitted to go on unobserved, and that the sultan and his representatives are to take no account of your proceeding. The great instrument for ruling mankind is by their passions and their opinions. The man from whom they believe they have the most to fear and the most to hope, will always be their master. Whatever be your secret or your professed designs, you go on from day to day making yourself partisans, and enlisting the subjects of the sultan among your personal retainers. What security has he for your submission and loyalty? How shall he know that, when you have acquired the advantages of a powerful leader, you will not go over to the enemy, or, in the present distracted conditionof the province, even have the audacity to set up for yourself? If therefore, by an unexampled clemency of construction, I decline to reduce you into the passive machine of my master’s will, it is at least incumbent on me, that I should take account of your powers, and possess myself of the schedule of your property. By this means only can I watch your progress, and take care that you do not suddenly become too powerful for a subject. Are you prepared to satisfy me on this head?”
On this question I hesitated for a moment; I had not exactly anticipated the enquiry; at length I requested the delay of a few days, and then I promised that all his demands should be satisfied. The bashaw resumed:—
“Sieur de Chatillon, I remark your hesitation, and I draw from it no favourable augury. These indirect and involuntary indications are more worthy of my attention than all the studied and elaborate information you shall think proper to give me. Sir, you are a man of darkness, and every thing that relates to you is enveloped in mystery. You come hither with no apparent motive; you have no connections of blood in Hungary; you have no acquaintance with any eminent person of the Hungarian nation. I have had my spies on you, though I have not hitherto thought proper to summon you to my presence. You have purchased no property in the province; I cannot learn that you have any correspondences or resources from abroad. I have been at the pains to procure an account of your expenditure during the three months you have resided among us; much of that expenditure has been obscure, clandestine, and indirect; but I believe you will find my estimate, which you are at liberty to inspect and remark upon, tolerably correct. Your disbursements for three months, exceed the amount of two years’ income of the richest subject that even the credulous monarchs of Christendom suffer within their dominions. What am I to think of this? How can I be sufficiently vigilant respecting a man, whose expenditure is immense, and whose wealth can neither be traced to its source, nor ascertained in its amount?”
I was not slow in conjecturing the result which the bashaw proposed to himself from our present conference. Iwas confirmed in my conjecture by the circumstance of his choosing that the discussion between us should be apart from all witnesses. He regarded me as a boy, and had therefore practised upon me all those arts which might most effectually excite in me fear and alarm. He found however that, under the external indications of youth and inexperience, I possessed the wariness that added years most powerfully inculcate, and the self-possession of a mind thoroughly awake to its situation and its resources. This must have been to the minister before whom I stood a memorable phenomenon. But curiosity is not a Turkish passion; and the single object of the bashaw in the present instance, was to make the mysteriousness of my circumstances a pretext for extorting money. I submitted with as little seeming reluctance as possible to the necessity of the case; I requested the good offices of Muzaffer to protect my benefactions; and begged permission to make him the compliment of a handsome sum of money, by way of convincing him that I was worthy of his friendship.
This business was easily adjusted between us. I found him perfectly skilled in the duties of a public office, and by no means under the dominion of visionary scruples. He told me he was now convinced that I was a well meaning man, and a good subject; he said, that nothing could tend more effectually to demonstrate my innocence, than my showing that I understood the duties and concerns of a minister of state; and that for his own part he was never so happy, as when he was thus able to reconcile his private interests with the good and faithful service of his master. There was nothing that demanded a more unremitted vigilance, or a more skilful management, than such a situation as his; and it would be most unreasonable, either in the sovereign that appointed him, or the subjects over whom he was placed, to expect him to be indifferent to the emoluments and perquisites of his function. He complimented me warmly upon the disinterestedness and liberality of my exertions. He thought himself particularly fortunate in having so public-spirited an individual within the circuit of his jurisdiction. In fine, he hoped he should be honoured with my personal acquaintance, and assured me thatnothing could make him more happy than the frequent repetition of my visits.
We now perfectly understood one another; and it was apparent that I had to do with a man, who, for what he deemed an adequate consideration, would willingly lend me the authority and countenance of his office, and suffer me to guide him in any of the functions I might conceive necessary for the execution of my projects. Guards were agreed to be placed upon the magazines where corn was still contained, and from place to place on the banks of the rivers, where the depredations of a misguided populace were most to be apprehended. Finding the bashaw so perfectly willing to comply with my requisitions, I further obtained from him the direction of several squadrons of cavalry for the protection of the crops, which from the consequences of my interference now began on all sides to variegate the scene. This was a most important service. When the corn was first committed to the earth, it was out of the reach of military devastation. But, as time glided silently on, the case became materially altered; the enemy might from forecast desire to reap the harvest of what he had not sown, or from malice to destroy that without which the Turk would perhaps be unable to retain his newly acquired territory. This had in reality been the principal cause, before my arrival in Hungary, of the very general neglect into which agriculture had fallen. Muzaffer, than whom no person could now be more polite and condescending, allowed me to determine the number and nature of the troops I required; and added that, though he could not openly put them under my direction, the slightest intimation I might think proper to convey to him, should at any time decide their march, and regulate their quarters.
In my conference with the bashaw I may seem to have secured more than one point of material importance;yet it was difficult for any man to be in a state less consolatory or more full of danger and menace, than I was at this moment. By my vigilance and the power which thus I had acquired, I prevented indeed the inhabitants from wantonly destroying the means of their own subsistence; but, the more I was their benefactor, the more I appeared to become odious to their thoughts. My negotiation with the bashaw, whatever other benefit might accrue from it, did not tend to increase the resources of the country; I was obliged to witness many scenes of wretchedness. He that would assist mankind in their adversity, must harden his heart to be the spectator of the distress that he can, and that he cannot, relieve. But whatever I beheld of this sort, the majority of the bystanders obstinately persisted to ascribe to my deliberate malignity. The military aid I found myself necessitated to introduce by no means tended to disarm the prejudices of my clients. In one or two instances, but no more, slight tumults arose, and a few of the rioters fell a prey to their own wickedness and folly. These misfortunes were cast as reproach upon me; and I was pursued with clamours and curses. I found it requisite to obtain a guard for my person. I was abhorred by those for whom all my vigilance was exerted, and insulted by the mouths that I supplied with the necessaries of existence.
Nor was this my only source of alarm and uneasiness in my present situation. I was by no means a dupe to the ostentatious civility of the bashaw. I perfectly understood his insinuation when he invited the frequent repetition of my visits. I knew that, however dearly I purchased his friendship and patronage, I should still have to purchase them again and again. His extortions upon me admitted of no limits, except from his own modesty, or the estimate he might form of my invisible resources. Bribery itself afforded me no complete security; and, now that I had become an object of curiosity and remark, he had sufficiently shown me I was at the mercy of his caprice, or that of his master, for my liberty, and even for my life.
Yet, could I have resolved to quit Hungary, and seek the protection of some more regular government, what benefit should I derive from a removal? Mystery was the greatand unconquerable bane of my situation, and from the poisonous influence of mystery, the most regular system of government was not competent to protect me. It would be idle to imagine that, in any country on earth, a stranger would be permitted to launch into such expenses as those in which I was engaged, without becoming an object of suspicion, and being made liable to continual interruption in his measures. Yet, unless allowed to use the resources I possessed, of what advantage was it to be the depository of wealth without a bound? Was it to be wished for a man under my circumstances, to have a family, or to be without a family? When I had one, I found the legacy of the stranger robbing me of every comfort of that sort, with the most calamitous aggravations. When I was stripped of wife and children, though no man could prize those benefits more dearly than I prized them, I took to myself the consolation, that at least now I should risk no one’s happiness but my own; and that, for a person exercising my endowments, it was perhaps requisite to be free from every shackle and incumbrance. I found however the topic from which I had consoled myself, in reality the source of a new misfortune. I had the wealth of a nobleman; but I was deprived of his adventitious attributes. I had no illustrious ancestry to boast; I had neither lineage nor parent; I had neither wife nor children, in whom mutually to reflect and see reflected the elevatedness and generosity of my station. I had not even the ordinary advantage, which is within the reach of almost every man, of connections and acquaintance, friends handed down to me as a branch of my patrimonial inheritance, friends whose value experience enabled me to ascertain, and friends with whom long habits of familiarity had given birth to reciprocal endearment. The bashaw had imputed to me the design of forming a party. Alas! these, which are the great materials for cementing party attachments, were totally denied me. I had no bonds of alliance but those which money afforded, the coarsest, the meanest, the least flattering, and the most brittle of those ligatures, that afford the semblance of uniting man with man.
Aware of the difficulties which unavoidably sprung out of the nature of my situation, I resolved immediately to endeavour to supply them to the best of my power. I conceived that there was no consideration so urgent upon me at the present moment, as that I should without loss of time create to myself connections that might balance and keep at bay the sallies of arbitrary rule, and that I should weave with my own hand the cords of friendship.
I had no sooner formed this project, than an individual suggested himself to my reflections, whom I judged to be, by a singular concurrence of circumstances, happily fitted to be the subject of my experiment, and admirably qualified to afford me protection in the most unfavourable events. The name of this man was Bethlem Gabor. He had been some time before brought to me by one of his friends, and he was a man whom for a thousand reasons it was impossible to see and converse with, without receiving the most indelible impression. He was the lineal representative of one of the most illustrious houses in Hungary. His vocation, like that of the majority of the Hungarian nobility, had been arms; but, in the midst of a fraternity all of whom were warlike, he stood conspicuous and alone. His courage, though cool and deliberate, almost mounted to a degree of desperate rashness; and the fertility of his invention, and the variety of his stratagems did not fall short of his courage. The celerity of his measures was equally distinguished; distance was no bar to him; and he had no sooner conceived a project, however arduous, than it was executed. He had formed under his own eye a band of men like himself, impetuous yet deliberate, swift in execution, silent in march, invincible to hardship, contemners of fatigue, of difficulties, of hunger, and of thirst. When introduced to me, he was upwards of fifty years of age. He was more than six feet in stature; and yet he was built as if it had been a colossus, destined to sustain the weight of the starry heavens. His voice was like thunder; and henever uttered a word, but it seemed to shake his manly chest. His head and chin were clothed with a thick and shaggy hair, in colour a dead black. He had suffered considerable mutilation in the services through which he had passed; of one of his hands three fingers were gone; the sight of his right eye was extinguished, and the cheek half shot away, while the same explosion had burned his complexion into a colour that was universally dun or black. His nose was scarred, and his lips were thick and large. Bethlem Gabor, though universally respected for the honour and magnanimity of a soldier, was not less remarkable for habits of reserve and taciturnity. But these habits misfortune had caused to become more deeply ingrafted in his nature. During one of his military excursions, a party of marauders had in his absence surprised his castle, burned it to the ground, and savagely murdered his wife and children, and every living creature within the walls. The same stroke that rendered him childless made him also a beggar. He had been regarded for his proceedings as an adherent to the Turkish standard, but he had always tenaciously maintained the most complete independence. The adversity that had now fallen upon him was too great. He would not become a pensioner of the sultan; despair had taken fast possession of his heart. He disbanded the body of men he had formed, and wandered a solitary outcast upon the face of his country. For some time he seemed to have a savage complacence in conceiving that the evil he had suffered was past all remedy, and in spurning at those palliations and disguises with which vulgar souls are accustomed to assuage their woe. Yet the energy of his nature would not suffer him to rest: he wandered an outcast; but every day engendered some new thought or passion: and it appeared probable that he would not yet quit the stage of existence till he had left behind him the remembrances of a terrible and desolating revenge.
It may seem strange that such a man as I have described should be the individual I selected out of the whole Hungarian nation to make my friend. It may seem that his qualities were better adapted to repel than attract. My choice would not appear strange, if the reader could haveconversed with him, as I did. He was hideous to the sight; and he never addressed himself to speak, that I did not feel my very heart shudder within me. Seldom did he allow himself to open his thoughts; but, when he did, great God! what supernatural eloquence seemed to inspire and enshroud him! Not that upon such occasions he was copious and Ciceronian, but that every muscle and every limb seemed to live, and to quiver with the thoughts he expressed. The hearer could not refuse to venerate, as well as fear him. I never pitied him; Bethlem Gabor’s was a soul that soared to a sightless distance above the sphere of pity; I can scarcely say I sympathised with him; but, when I listened to his complaints, rather let me say his invectives, I was astonished, overwhelmed, and motionless. The secret of the effects he thus produced, lay in his own way of feeling the incidents he described. Look at him, when he sat alone, wrapped in meditation, you would say, “That is a man of iron; though adversity pour her fiercest darts upon him, he is invulnerable; he is of too colossal a structure to be accessible to human feelings and human affections.” Listen to his narrative, or rather to the bursts of passion, which with him supplied the place and performed the functions of narrative, you would soon confess your mistake. While he spoke, he ceased to be a man, and became something more amazing. When he alluded to what he had endured, you did not compassionate him, for you felt that he was a creature of another nature; but you confessed, that never man seemed to have suffered so much, or to savour with such bitterness the cup of woe. He did not love his wife or his children as any other man would do; he probably never dandled or fondled them; his love was speechless; and disdaining the common modes of exhibition, it might sometimes be mistaken for indifference. But it brooded over and clung round his heart; and, when it was disturbed, when the strong ties of domestic charity were by the merciless hand of war snapped asunder, you then saw its voluminous folds spread and convulsed before you, gigantic and immeasurable. He cursed their murderers; he cursed mankind; he rose up in fierce defiance of eternal providence; and your blood curdled within youas he spoke. Such was Bethlem Gabor: I could not help admiring him: his greatness excited my wonder and my reverence; and, while his manners awed and overwhelmed me, I felt an inexplicable attachment to his person still increasing in my bosom.
On his part, my kindness and partiality appeared scarcely less pleasing to Bethlem Gabor, than his character and discourse were fascinating to me. He had found himself without a confidant or a friend. His wife and his children in a certain degree understood him; and, though he had an atmosphere of repulsion beyond which no mortal ever penetrated, they came to the edge of that, and rested there; they trembled involuntarily at his aspect, but at the same time they adored and they loved him. The rest of the world viewed him from a more fearful distance; respected him, but dared not even in fancy be familiar with him. When therefore he lost his family, he lost his all. He roamed the earth in solitude, and all men made room for him as he passed. I was the first who, since the fatal event that had made him childless and a beggar, had courted his society, and invited his communications. I had dared to take the lion by the paw, and seat myself next him in his den. There was a similarity in our fortunes that secretly endeared him to me. We had each by the malice of a hostile destiny, though in a very different manner, been deprived of our families; we were each of us alone. Fated each to be hereafter for ever alone; we blended ourselves the one with the other as perfectly as we could. Often over our gloomy bowl we mingled groans, and sweetened our draught as we drank it with maledictions. In the school of Bethlem Gabor I became acquainted with the delights of melancholy—-of a melancholy, not that contracted, but that swelled the soul—of a melancholy that looked down upon the world with indignation, and that relieved its secret load with curses and execrations. We frequently continued whole nights in the participation of these bitter joys; and were surprised, still at our serious board, by the light of the morrow’s sun.
I have now, I believe, fully accounted for our intimacy, and displayed the ligatures that secretly bound us to eachother. It is scarcely necessary to add, that my understanding confirmed what my heart impelled. Bethlem Gabor appeared to me the fittest man in the world upon whom to fix for my friend. We were qualified mutually to benefit each other. My kindness, my unremitted attentions, the earnestness with which I listened to and soothed his griefs, mitigated their agony. I proposed, when I could once more reconcile and incite him to activity, to repair his castle, and restore his fortune. On the other hand, he was, of all the persons I could have pitched upon, the ablest to protect me. By his birth he ranked among the first men of his country; by his ability, at least as a partisan soldier, a character at that time highly esteemed, he rose above them all.
For some time I regarded Bethlem Gabor as entirely my friend, and I consulted him in every thing, in which, compatibly with the legacy of the stranger of the summer-house, I could consult him. I told him of the suspicions of the bashaw, and the precariousness of my safety. I demanded his advice as to the best method of securing it. Ought I to regard it as a more effectual or as a cheaper expedient, to attempt to purchase the countenance of the sultan, instead of condescending to bribe his minister? Ought I to set up for myself, and by rendering myself the independent prince of one of the Hungarian provinces, defy the Turk, or at least endeavour to negotiate with him from a more respectable and commanding situation? I said more than enough under these heads, as it afterwards appeared, to awaken strange imaginations in a mind of so much penetration as that of Bethlem Gabor. In fine, I demanded of him whether, in case of any great and formidable danger falling on me, he would to the utmost of his power afford me protection? When the question was first started, he swore to me with his customary impressiveness and energy that he would.
While I was thus employed in consulting him, and opening to him as far as was practicable my prospects and fears, I did not less succeed in dissipating or suspending the despair of his melancholy. It was of benefit to him in this respect, that, by opening to him my affairs, I fromtime to time called off his attention from his personal misfortunes. I proposed to him the rebuilding his castle, and I at length obtained his permission to send off a corps of workmen for that purpose. Beside the castle in which his wife and children had been murdered, and which the marauders had nearly destroyed, he had one considerably stronger, though void of all recommendation from cheerfulness or beauty, in the more northerly part of the kingdom. This we visited together. I restored the condition of his fields; with considerable difficulty I replaced the cattle he had lost, by purchases in Poland; and I revived his dilapidated revenues. At first he felt an invincible repugnance to the receiving any advantage from the bounty of another; but by continual remonstrances I was able to persuade him, that he owed me nothing, and that what I did was no more than was required from me by a regard for my own safety.
If ever on the face of the earth there lived a misanthrope, Bethlem Gabor was the man. Never for a moment did he forget or forgive the sanguinary catastrophe of his family; and for his own misfortunes he seemed to have vowed vengeance against the whole human race. He almost hated the very face of man; and, when expressions of cheerfulness, peace, and contentment discovered themselves in his presence, I could see, by the hideous working of his features, that his spirit experienced intolerable agonies. To him such expressions were tones horribly discordant; all was uproar and havoc within his own bosom, and the gaiety of other men inspired him with sentiments of invincible antipathy. He never saw a festive board without an inclination to overturn it; or a father encircled with a smiling family, without feeling his soul thrill with suggestions of murder. Something, I know not what, withheld his hand: it might be some remaining atom of humanity: it might be—for his whole character was contemplative and close—it might be that he regarded that as a pitiful and impotent revenge, which should cause him the next hour to be locked up as a madman, or put to death as criminal. Horrible as was his personal aspect, and wild and savage as was his mind, yet, as I have already said, I felt myself attached to him. Iknew that all the unsocial propensities that animated him, were the offspring of love, were the sentiments of a lioness bereaved of her young; and I found an undescribable and exhaustless pleasure in examining the sublime desolation of a mighty soul.
Bethlem Gabor had at first regarded me with some degree of partiality. Kindness in almost all cases begets kindness; he could not see how much I interested myself about and how much I courted him, without feeling for me a sentiment different from that he confessed for other men. I saw however after some time, with inexpressible grief, that his regard for me, instead of increasing, suffered perceptible diminution. Our propensities were opposed to each other. He rejoiced in disorder and desolation as in his congenial element; my present pursuit was the restoration of public order and prosperity. He repeatedly expostulated with me on this. I had sometimes in our conversations, in the bitterness of my recollections, exclaimed on myself as the most unfortunate and most persecuted of men, though without entering into an explanation of my sufferings. He reminded me of these exclamations. He reproached me as a contemptible and pusillanimous wretch, that I did not, like him, resolve amply and memorably to revenge my own sufferings upon my species at large. In his estimate, the poorest and most servile of all maxims was, that of the author of the christian religion, to repay injury with favour, and curses with benediction.
I perceived with grief that the kindness towards me that had been excited in Bethlem Gabor’s mind, rather declined than augmented; but I was very far from being aware of the degree in which, as I afterwards found, this sentiment had relapsed into its opposite. It seems, I inflicted on him a daily torture by my daily efforts for the dissemination of happiness. Of these he had not been at first completely aware. His mind had been too much absorbed in its own feelings to attend very distinctly to any thing I did, unless it were done in his presence. But, in proportion as I soothed his sorrows, and made him my confidant, the film was removed; and all that he saw had the peculiar misfortune to excite at once his contempt and his rage. Thefinishing stroke that I gave to the animosity which, unknown to me, was now brooding and engendering in his breast, consisted in my bestowing an important benefit upon one, against whom he had entertained a long and eternal feud.
While Bethlem Gabor became every day more confirmed in his antipathy against me, I reposed in him an unsuspecting confidence—a confidence more extensive than I had, since the singular and fatal acquisition I had made, reposed in any other man. Frequently for a considerable time together he resided under my roof; frequently we went forth together in those excursions which either my projects or his views rendered it necessary for us to make. In his character of a nobleman of great consideration in his native country, he was now rising like a phœnix from its ashes. His castles were repairing; his property was restored; the list of his retainers daily became more numerous; he revived and carefully recruited the martial band, which, in the first exacerbations of his despair, he had dismissed from his service. My purse and all that I had were his; he never made a demand upon me that I did not instantly supply; I reaped a particular pleasure from the largeness and frequency of his requisitions; there was nothing for which I was more anxious, than to bind him to me in indissoluble ties of gratitude and affection.
Little, alas! did I understand the compound of tenderness and ferocity, of decisiveness and inscrutability, with which I was now concerned. My friend, such I esteemed him, had been absent some time; I expected his return to my residence at Buda; and anxious to pay him every mark of attention and respect, I set out to meet him. It was scarcely safe, during the existing hostilities between the Austrians and the Turks, to travel any where without a guard; I had the precaution in the present instance to take with me an attendance of twenty men.
It was after having partaken of a slight and early dinner that I set out on my excursion. The season was remarkably fine, and the air genial and balsamic. I scarcely ever commenced any tour with more agreeable sensations. The harvest was already ripe; and, as I passed along, I saw reapers from time to time entering upon the first essay of their interesting occupation. I felt that I had at length surmounted one of those difficulties, with which I had been so strongly assailed, and to which I had refused to yield. If I were not free from apprehensions from the arbitrary nature of the government under which I lived, I believed however that I had nothing further to dread from the misconstruction and animosity of the nation I preserved. My anxiety as to whether I should be able to substantiate the benefit I had sought to confer, was at an end; and I had little doubt that, with the plenteous crops which were on the point of being gathered, my popularity would return, and the gratitude of my clients become more ardent than ever. It was a delicious enjoyment that I now experienced; the pleasures that the eye unavoidably takes in from the spectacle of a luxuriant autumn, became blended in my mind with the ideas of famine put to flight, my own rectitude vindicated, and the benevolent purposes realised, the prosecution of which had cost me so profound a heartache.
We at length passed the lines of the soldiers planted for the defence of the soil against the depredations of the enemy. I had calculated that I should meet my guest a few leagues from Buda; I was deceived in my estimate. The day however of his arrival was fixed; I could not be mistaken in his route; I resolved not to turn back without meeting him. The road I took led upon the borders of that part of Hungary which owned the Austrian yoke; the shades of night were fast gathering round us, and we heard at a distance the alarm-guns and the drums of the enemy. I was not however a novice in the appearances of a country, the seat of military excursions and war; and, if my mind were not wholly free from perturbation and uncertainty, I at least resolved not to be turned aside from my purpose. We travelled two hours longer; still nonotice of the approach of Bethlem Gabor. At length a question was started whether we were still in the right road, and I thought it advisable to hold a sort of council of war to deliberate respecting our further proceedings. Having assembled my attendants for that purpose, I was now first struck with the apprehensions and timidity which they unanimously betrayed. They had been drawn out rather for show, and to keep accidental stragglers in awe, than with the expectation of actual service. I became sensible that nothing was to be hoped from their resistance in the event of an action; and the utmost I could aim at was in the mean time to hold them together by the sentiment of a common danger.
It was resolved to return; I began to be apprehensive that Bethlem Gabor had been prevented by some unexpected occurrence from observing his appointment. Scarcely had we faced about, before we heard a body of cavalry approaching us. I called to my party to halt. I soon discerned, from symptoms not difficult to be remarked by a careful observer, that the party at hand was composed of Austro-Hungarians. We had every thing to fear from them. I held myself bound under these circumstances first to make experiment of the fleetness of our horses. I however charged my people to keep together, and not to suffer the enemy, by means of our inadvertence and folly, to make an easy prize of us one after another. In a short time I found that our pursuers sensibly gained ground upon us. I was mounted upon an excellent beast, and could easily have rode away from my troop, while they would have been placed as a sort of intercepting object between me and the enemy. But I had too much of a military spirit not instantly to reject so inglorious an expedient. I called a second time to my attendants to halt. I judged that the party of our antagonists was less numerous than ours. I was convinced that our common safety depended upon our concerted resistance. Filled with the gallantry that my situation inspired, I did not perceive, till it was too late, that my present call to halt was attended to by few; even those few rather hung back, divided between apprehension and shame. I was the foremost, and, before I wasaware, I found myself, through the means of the darkness, enveloped by the enemy. From my appearance they judged that I was the master, and the rest my attendants; they contented themselves therefore with the prize they had made, and did not give themselves the trouble to pursue the fugitives. They eagerly enquired of me who I was; and, comparing my answers with various circumstances which rumour had brought to their ear, they easily concluded that I was the rich stranger of Buda. The character they had heard of me did not produce in these freebooters any sentiments of forbearance, or demonstrations of respect; the only point about which persons of their habits were concerned, was how they should make the greatest advantage of what the fortune of war had thrown in their way.
While they were consulting, and various expedients were started by one and another for this purpose, a second alarm was given, and one of the party being despatched to reconnoitre, presently returned with intelligence, that the persons approaching were horsemen of the enemy, and that they amounted, as he guessed, to forty in number. Upon this information the party whose prisoner I was, agreed to return with all expedition by the way they had come, and commanded me upon pain of death to proceed in their company. This menace had not the effect to deprive me of courage or presence of mind; and I easily conceived that the readiest way to deliver myself from my embarrassment would be to join at the first opportunity the band of Turco-Hungarians, whose approach had occasioned our sudden retreat. The darkness of the night was favourable to my purpose; and, taking advantage of a sudden winding in the road, I slackened all at once the pace of my horse without being observed by my companions, who, as the enemy approached, had now their thoughts almost wholly intent upon the safety of their retreat. They passed me; and I no sooner perceived that to be the case, than, covered from their observation by the intervening inclosure, I turned my horse, and gradually, as my distance from my keepers increased, urged him to a fuller speed. It was not long before I came up with the band which had produced ouralarm; and hailing them with the acclamation, “Long live the mighty sultan!” was without difficulty admitted into their troop. I instantly understood to my great joy that this was the party of Bethlem Gabor that I had come out to meet.
He received me with much cordiality, and seemed greatly rejoiced that fortune had made him the instrument of my rescue. He proposed however that, having met on the road, I should now, instead of proceeding to Buda, return with him to his northern castle, from which our distance was scarcely greater than from the metropolis. The proposal was such as I had not expected, nor could I well comprehend the purpose with which it was made. But the habitual demeanour of Bethlem Gabor neither accorded with his minutely assigning a reason for what he did, nor was calculated to encourage enquiry in another. I saw no material objection, and therefore felt little scruple in yielding to his desires. Our brief consultation on this point passed at some little distance from the rest of the troop.
When the morning broke, the first thing that excited my attention was the appearance of his followers. They were full forty in number, well mounted, of a large and athletic figure, with sun-burnt faces, immense whiskers and a ferocious countenance. I thought I had never seen so tremendous a band. To me they were every one of them strangers; of all the persons that surrounded me, the only one of whom I had the slightest knowledge was Bethlem Gabor himself. I know not why it was, but I no sooner beheld my situation than I was struck with alarm. I saw myself completely in the power of a man who three months before was ignorant even of my existence. I had not a single attendant of my own, not an individual with me over whom I had personal authority or command. I had no reason to distrust my host; towards me his demeanour had ever been frank, confidential, and manly; I had every imaginable claim upon his generosity and his gratitude. But our senses are often the masters of our mind, and reason vainly opposes itself to the liveliness of their impressions. Every time that I lifted my eyes, and saw myself hemmed in by these barbarians, my heart seemed involuntarilyto fail me. Bethlem Gabor too appeared to neglect me; he had never shown himself so little obliging and attentive as at this moment; and, aided by the rest of the scene, I thought I had never beheld him so deformed or so tremendous. I was more than half inclined to wish myself again a prisoner with the Austrians.
When we arrived at the castle, we were all of us fatigued and hungry; we had roamed during the whole night. A repast was prepared; we sat down to partake of it. “Excuse me,” said Bethlem Gabor, in a low voice as he passed me, “that I this night offer you the fare of a soldier; to-morrow you shall be accommodated in a different manner.” The words were innocent; the proceeding natural; but there was a mysterious gloom, at least as I thought, in the tone in which he spoke, that electrified me. The hall in which we supped was spacious and lofty; the naked walls and rafters were imbrowned with age. Though it was daybreak as we entered, the windows were still darkened, and the apartment was illuminated only by the partial glare of lamps depending from the roof. As I sat at table with the troop of my host, I appeared to myself as if inclosed in a cavern of banditti. Though excellent partisans, skilful in execution, and perfect in their discipline, they were unpolished in their manners and brutal in their conversation. I had been inured from infancy to all the refinement that the age in which I lived had any where to boast; and, amidst the various evils I had suffered, that of being associated with the vulgar and the base had never presented itself. While they uttered, now a loathsome jest, and now a sanguinary ejaculation, I became ashamed of my species, and the pride of manhood perished within me. They however paid little attention either to my feelings or my person; and, accustomed as I had been, whether with friends or enemies, to be regarded as of some importance, I found myself unaccountably and suddenly dwindled into a cipher. I felt it like a release from the state of a galley-slave, when Bethlem Gabor proposed that we should break up our meeting and retire to rest.
A succession of gloomy thoughts revolved in my mind for some time after I was left to myself. I was however overcome with fatigue, and, after an interval of harassing meditations, insensibly fell asleep. I was awakened after some hours’ repose, by the presence of Bethlem Gabor standing by the side of my couch. He invited me to rise, and, when I had attired myself, started the plan of our visiting together the various apartments of the castle, a small part of which only had been seen by me when I was last at this place. Among other things, he told me, there was a subterranean of most wonderful extent, interspersed with a variety of cells and lurking places, of which no man had to his knowledge ever ascertained the number.
The same dreary complexion of thought followed me to-day, which had been first produced in me upon my reception into the troop of Bethlem Gabor the preceding night. My sensations were of the most depressing and discomfiting nature; I felt as if I were the slave of some dark, mysterious tyrant, and dragged along supinely wherever he motioned me to go. I tasked myself seriously; I reasoned with myself. I felt that it was no idle and every-day part that I was called to sustain; and I resolved that I would not be ruined by my own inactivity and cowardice. Yet, when I examined the question dispassionately, I could not find that I had any occasion for courage, and I confessed that it was not less censurable, to discover a useless spirit of mistrust and defiance, than to desert one’s preservation where resistance was demanded. What reason had I to suspect a man between whom and myself there had prevailed so much mutual confidence? None, none, I replied, but the causeless and superstitious misgivings of my own mind! Even if I had ground to distrust him, what remedy had I against his ill faith, placed as I was in the midst of his own domains, and surrounded by men devoted to his service? To discover apprehension under such circumstances, was to excite animosity.—These reasoningsparticularly occurred to my mind, as I stood waiting for the torch, which he had himself gone to procure that he might attend me to the subterranean caverns.—I had as yet seen no one, since we broke up from our nightly repast, but my host. “We will breakfast,” said he, “when we return from viewing these curiosities.”
We crept along a succession of dark and gloomy vaults, almost in silence. Bethlem Gabor, though he led me on, and discharged the office of a guide, seemed to have small inclination to assume that of an interpreter. This was sufficiently in unison with his ordinary character, to have little claim to excite surprise. Yet the reader will not on reflection greatly wonder that my present situation was far from agreeable. I was alone in passages which, to judge from any discoverable token, you would scarcely imagine had for ages been trod by a human creature. The voice was lost amidst the damps of these immense caverns; nor was it possible by any exertion to call the hand of man to your aid. My guide was an individual whom calamity had prompted to quarrel with the world; of strong feelings indeed, of capacious thought; but rugged, ferocious, brutal, and inaccessible to prayer. I had chosen him for my protector and ally; I had never intended to put myself in his power. There was a mystery in his carriage, a something not to be explained, a shell that no human forces could penetrate, that was mortal to confidence, and might quail the stoutest.
I thought there would be no end to our pilgrimage. At length we came to a strong door, cross-barred and secured with a frame of iron. Bethlem Gabor unlocked it. We had no sooner entered, that it impetuously closed behind us. “What is that?” said I, startled at the loudness of the report. “Come on,” cried my host; “it is only the wind whistling through the caverns: the spring-bolt is shot, but I have the key in my hand!” At the opposite end of the apartment was another door with an ascent of five steps leading to it. Bethlem Gabor unlocked that also, and then faced about with the torch in his hand: I was close behind him. “Stay where you are!” said he with a furious accent, and thrust me violently from him.The violence was unexpected: I staggered from the top of the steps to the bottom. This door closed with as loud a report as the other; Bethlem Gabor disappeared; I was left in darkness.
For an instant I doubted whether the situation in which I thus found myself were the result of design or of accident. The shutting of the door might be ascribed to the latter: the action however, and the words of my host did not admit of that interpretation. I stood motionless, astonished, and almost incapable of reflection. What an incredible reverse was thus the creature of a moment! Yesterday I possessed unbounded treasures, and the hearts of the whole Turco-Hungarian nation. Yesterday, as I rode forth on this fatal excursion, I beheld the food of a mighty people, mature for consumption, the growth of my exertions; and it will not be thought surprising that my heart leaped within me at the sight. Who would not have envied the unparalleled eminence at which I had arrived? My triumphs were attended with no melancholy exceptions to damp their joy. They were the children of no intrigue; they were manly, frank, ingenuous, and honourable. My laurels were stained with no drop of blood, were tarnished with no tears of the widow and the orphan. How much more noble to rescue mankind from famine and death, than to violate the honest pride of their nature with the exhibition of victories and trophies!
Yet, truly considered, there was nothing abrupt in the reverse under which I was now suffering. The whole was a chain, every link of which was indissolubly connected from one end to the other. My attempt to rescue a people from the horrors of famine necessarily exposed me to unfavourable accidents and misconstruction. It inevitably led to my application to the government for its aid. It could not fail to excite the alarms and jealousies of government as to the tendency of my proceedings. By exhibiting me as the possessor of immense wealth, with very limited means for the protection of that wealth, it marked me a prey to a rapacious viceroy or his more despotic master. When I became sensible of the precarious situation in which I stood towards the powers of the state, could I have fallen upon a morenatural expedient, than the endeavour to cover myself with the shield of friendship and gratitude in the person of one of its nobles? But this expedient would almost infallibly lead to the placing myself sooner or later in the power of the man whose friendship I sought. I had done so, and this was the termination of my views and my projects!
I now well understood the purpose of that inattention and neglect with which Bethlem Gabor had treated me the preceding evening, the uneasiness resulting from which I had blamed in myself at the time, as the dictate of weakness and unworthy suspicion. Yesterday I had been placed under the safeguard of a nation; every man in Buda and its environs was familiar with my person; every man would have been ready almost to sacrifice his life to procure my safety. Now I was far from the scene of my philanthropical exertions; no one in the troop of Bethlem Gabor knew who I was; he had appeared to treat me the preceding evening with indifference and contempt; if they saw me no more, no curiosity would by that circumstance be excited in their minds. My clients on the other hand in the vicinity of the metropolis, however great an interest they might take in my fortune, had no clue that could lead them to the knowledge of it. They must suppose me a prisoner with the Austrians, or that I had been killed, in resisting to become their prisoner. I was cut off from all assistance and discovery, and left as much in the power of my treacherous ally, as if I had been alone with him, oppressed with the utmost disparity of personal force, in the remotest island of the Pacific Ocean.
Such were the reflections that early suggested themselves to my mind in the solitude and darkness in which I was thus unexpectedly involved. Meanwhile one tedious hour succeeded to another, and I remained unintruded on and unnoticed. I could form no conjecture as to the object of Bethlem Gabor in the atrocious perfidy he had committed. Could he have any resentment against me, and did he meditate revenge? He had received from me nothing but benefits. Did he employ restraint on my person as the means of extortion? I could not conceive that he could have any clue leading him to the discovery of my grandsecret; and, short of this, my bounties had been so exuberant, as, I imagined, left him nothing to wish. In this wilderness of conjecture I however fixed upon extortion as a motive less incredible than revenge. I impatiently waited, till the appearance of my tyrant should free me from some part of my present uncertainty.
He did not appear. In the mean time I was in a condition feeble and exhausted. The exercise of yesterday, the hourly-baffled expectation of meeting him whom I had called my friend, the alternation of being first taken prisoner and afterwards rescued, had extremely fatigued me. We had travelled during the whole night. Yet the unaccountable dejection of mind under which I laboured on our arrival at Bethlem Gabor’s castle had prevented me from taking almost any share in the coarse repast that had then been set before us. The entrance of my host in the morning had rendered my slumbers short. As I followed him to my dungeon, unconscious whither I went, my limbs ached, and my heart ached still more. I was ill prepared for a fast of thirty-six hours which the brutality of my jailor inflicted upon me. After having long expected him in vain, I gave myself up to despair. What a termination of life for him who possessed the philosopher’s stone!
I cannot do justice to the sensations that now took possession of my mind. It was not the deadly calm of despair, for I still expected every moment when Bethlem Gabor would appear. I believed than he would, and I believed that he would not, leave me to perish. I listened with eager attention to every sound, and my soul floated on the howling winds. In vain! nothing came of it; there was no alteration in the sound, or only those vicissitudes to which the howling of the wind is unavoidably subject. I then turned away in anguish; I cursed; I stamped with my feet; I smote my forehead with my closed hand; I tore my hair. Anon another sound arrested my attention; it was a different howling; it seemed to be like a human voice; my fancy created to me the tread of a human foot. I listened with more intentness of soul than ever. It was again in vain!
No, no; he will not come! he will never come. Whyshould I agitate myself to no purpose? Let me lie down and die!—I reasoned with myself. Why should I wish to live? I am nothing to any human being: I am alone in the boundless universe; I have no tie to existence. St. Leon has no wife; St. Leon has no child; he has neither connection nor friend in the world. Even in this wretched vision of the philosopher’s stone, have I not tried it enough? have I any hopes from it? is it not time that I should throw away that and existence together?—My meditations were ineffectual. I suppose it is the case with all men thus violently thrust out of life in the full possession of their faculties—I know it was the case with me,—the more peremptory was my summoner, the more obstinately I clung to the worthless toy.
At length I laid myself down on the floor; and, if I occasionally listened, I no longer ran to the walls and the doors to catch the uncertain sounds. The gnawings I now felt within were intolerable. They were at one period so severe, that I can compare them to nothing, but the sensation of having swallowed a glowing ember. Afterwards, the weakness of nature would no longer feed this excruciating pain, and it subsided into a starting and convulsive throb; the pain was diversified with intervals of a death-like and insupportable sickness.—But, no; I will not attempt to describe the horrors of hunger sublimed by despair, where the torture of the mind gives new pungency and uproar to the corporeal anguish. The image, as it now presents itself to my recollection, is too dreadful.
At last I sunk into a state of insensibility; and the agony I had suffered seemed drawn to its final close. The busy turmoil, the feverish dream of human existence was at an end. I shut my eyes, and I believed I should open them no more.
How long I endured this suspension of the vital faculties I cannot tell. The next impression on my sensorium, subsequent to those I have described, was a sort of externaltwitching and violence that seemed to persecute me. It was an importunity from which I felt desirous to escape; I longed to be undisturbed and at rest. The intruder on my quiet would not leave me; and I at length roused myself, as if to put away my cause of molestation. My thoughts were all confounded and obscure; I knew not where, I could scarcely be said to know who, I was. A little more effort brought with it a further capacity of perception; I saw before me, what was now the chief object of my mortal aversion, the figure of Bethlem Gabor. It was some time longer, before I became aware that he had been employed in taking up my apparently lifeless corpse, placing it on a stone-bench in the side of the cave, and chaining it to the wall. He observed the motions that indicated in me returning life: he remarked the stare of my glassy and rayless eyes; he now spoke with a stern and unpitying voice—“There is food; there is a light; eat!” Having thus said, he left me.
What a cruel and remorseless treatment! He cared not for my life; he disdained to make the slightest exertion to restore me; he left it to chance whether I should revive or perish. The figure of a dying man that I presented, did not make one fibre of his bosom bend or quiver.
I revived; I ate. By degrees I recovered from the deadly languor which had invaded my senses. In about twelve hours longer Bethlem Gabor returned with a new supply of sustenance. I was now strong enough to be able to converse with him. I heard the heavy sound of opening locks and removing bolts before he entered, and I summoned my faculties to expostulate with him.
“Why am I here? What is the meaning of the unworthy way in which you treat me?”
“It is,”—he regarded me with a truculent aspect, as if he would pierce through my heart,—“because I hate you!”
“You hate me? Good God! is it possible? What evil have I done to you? What good have I not done you? What supplies have I refused you? What occasions have I neglected of studying your advantage, your interest, and your honour? If thus your hatred is purchased, how shall that man demean himself who is to purchase your love?”
“Oh, think not my hatred idle or capricious! Heaven knows, I would have refrained from hating you if I had been able; I struggled against it with all the energies of my soul. But you have committed towards me the most mortal offences that man ever endured. There is an antipathy between your nature and mine, that all the menstruums in the world could never bring to coalesce.”
“Eternal Providence! and what is the source of this antipathy?”
“And do you profess ignorance? Have you not gone on day after day with the full consciousness and will to torment me? Have I not warned you, and expostulated with you times without number?”
“Of what have you warned me?”
“I hate mankind. I was not born to hate them. I have no native obliquity of character. I have no diabolical maliciousness of constitution. But they have forced me to hate them, and the debt of abhorrence shall be amply paid.
“I loved as never mortal loved. No human heart was ever so devoted, and centred, and enveloped in the kindly affections of family and parentage as mine has been. Was not my wife, were not my children, murdered? When I came home to feast my eyes and tranquillise my soul with the sight of them, did I not find all waste and desolation? Did I not find their bodies naked, pale, disfigured with wounds, plunged in blood, and already putrid? This was the welcome I looked for! This was the object I so speeded to see! No, never was a moment like that! My whole nature was changed in an instant. My eyes were blasted and dried to horn. My blood froze in my well stored veins. I have no longer delight but in human misery.
“My revenge is not causeless; this was not the act of individuals. All men, in the place of these murderers, would have done as they did. They are in a league together. Human pity and forbearance never had a harbour but in my breast; and I have now abjured them. With something more of inwrought vigour and energy, I will become like to my brethren. All men are excited by the same motives, urged by the same temptations, influencedby the same inducements. Why should I attempt a futile distinction, when nature had made none? All men bear the same figure; I cannot view the human figure without a torture the most dreadful.”
“I always knew,” answered I, “your general hatred of mankind; but your manners and your behaviour persuaded me that you exempted me from the general censure.”
“I wished to do so; you made the attempt impossible. You told me, that you had suffered the same misfortunes which I had; that you, by the injustice and persecutions of men, had also lost your wife and your children. I hailed you as a brother; in my heart I swore to you eternal friendship; I said, we will carry on this holy warfare together. We communicated to each other our mutual sorrows; with you, and you only, I found moments of consolation.
“Soon I discovered my mistake. Instead of, like me, seeking occasions of glorious mischief and vengeance, you took upon yourself to be the benefactor and parent of mankind. What vocation had you to the task? With the spirit of a slave who, the more he is beaten, becomes the more servile and submissive, you remunerated injuries with benefits. I found that there was not within you one atom of generous sentiment, one honest glow of fervent indignation. Chicken-hearted wretch! poor, soulless poltroon! to say the best of you, to your insensate heart it was the same whether you were treated with reverence or scorn. I saw you hunted, hooted at, and pursued by the people you fed; you held on your course, and fed them still. I was compelled to witness or to hear of your senseless liberalities every day I lived. Could I submit to this torment, and not endeavour to remove it? I hate the man in whom kindness produces no responsive affection, and injustice no swell, no glow of resentment. I hated you the more, because, having suffered what I had suffered, your feelings and conduct on the occasion have been the reverse of mine. Your character, I thank God! is of all beings the most opposite to that of Bethlem Gabor.
“At length you filled up the measure of the various thwartings with which you daily insulted me. There wasone native of Hungary between whom and me there subsisted an open and eternal war. I relate in no human ear the cause of my animosity to that man. Suffice it, that it was deep, immeasurable, inexpiable. With a refinement of cruelty and insult difficult to conceive, you chose that man for one of the objects of your beneficence. Would I consent to see my name joined in pension list with my mortal enemy? The injury you inflicted on me would have been less if you had stabbed me to the heart. Less? That would have been a blessing. I impose on myself the task of living for my revenge: but never shall I deem that man my foe, who should rid me of all this tumult of passions, and this insupportable load of existence together.
“You have heard my motives. You may wonder at, you may censure them: but they are human. I have nothing further to say to you now: you have no need to recur to expostulation; expostulation never moved the heart of Bethlem Gabor. Hereafter you shall hear more!”
Thus speaking, he left me; and I must confess, with whatever disgrace to my sagacity, he opened upon me a new world. I conceived not, till now, the faintest suspicion of what had been labouring in his bosom. Amidst all my experience of the varieties of human character, this was a species that had never fallen under my observation before. What a painful and mortifying occurrence is it in human life, when we have lived with a man from day to day, when we have conversed with him familiarly, and seen him in all the changes of circumstance, and when we flatter ourselves we have penetrated all the recesses of his heart, suddenly to start upon something portentous that brooded there, of which to that moment we had not the lightest suspicion! I am not the only individual to whom this event has occurred.
In a subsequent visit of Bethlem Gabor to my cell (for he only attended me with provisions, he would intrust the secret of my confinement to no other mortal), I intreated him to inform me with what intention he retained me a prisoner, and to fix a price on my ransom. To this overture he appeared to yield some degree of attention. He made no explicit answer, but asked with an inquisitive andsevere tone, in what manner I imagined I could procure money in my dungeon?
“Let us agree upon the terms, and set me at large. You have never found me deceitful, and you shall not find me deceitful now.”
“Do not hope I will consent to that. I ask you again, in what manner do you imagine you can procure money in your dungeon?”
I reflected for a moment. Liberty is ineffably sweet; and whatever followed, upon the present overture, I was determined not to neglect the faintest prospect that led to a termination of my confinement.
“There is,” answered I, “in my mansion at Buda, a chest which, if it can be brought to me hither, will enable me to supply your demands. I have the key in my custody, and no key but my own will unlock the treasure.”
“Give me the key!” replied Bethlem Gabor.
“No,” rejoined I, “it is in my custody; it is not upon my person: I have taken care of that. No human hand shall touch it but my own.”
“And how can I cause this chest to be brought to you without risking a discovery of your situation, or that I had a concern in your disappearance?”
“Of that,” said I, “judge for yourself. I have made a proposition to you, and I have done enough. I will have no share in the detail of its execution.”
“Well,” said Bethlem Gabor, after having ruminated a moment, “the chest you shall have; I undertake that. Describe it.”
I described the chest, and its situation in my house, with a minuteness that made mistake impossible.
After a considerable time it was brought to me. It was too bulky and ponderous to be introduced into my cell by a single arm. But Bethlem Gabor, having first caused me unconsciously to swallow a powerful opiate, found no difficulty, either to conceal my person in the dark shadows of this ragged subterranean, or to cause some of his followers to place the chest within my reach, believing that they placed it in a vacant apartment. I awoke, and found it at hand. I was secure that the lock was such a one as could not be forced;but I examined the different surfaces, to see whether violence of any other sort had been exercised on it. There were marks of damage, but not sufficiently unequivocal to enable me to form a certain judgment on this point. The chest contained, not gold, but the implements for making and fashioning gold. Allowing for the distance from which it was brought, they appeared to be pretty exactly in the state in which I left them. I had never placed much confidence in this expedient for softening the heart of Bethlem Gabor; but I perceived that it would serve at worst to divert my thoughts, and, by exciting in me some share of expectation, might call off my attention from the miseries of my present condition. Embracing the occasions when I was most secure against the intrusion of my jailor, I provided myself with the sum that had been previously agreed on between us. My task being finished, I carefully displayed the produce of my labour, against the next time Bethlem Gabor should visit my cell. He viewed it with an air of sullen and gloomy triumph; he removed it from the cave which was my habitation, to an apartment of this subterraneous abode, little distant from my own. When he had concluded this employment, it seemed to be a just inference, that he was to give me my liberty. He did no such thing. Without uttering a word, he closed the door of my cavern, locked it, and departed.
When Bethlem Gabor next entered my cell, I reproached him with this, as with the breach of a solemn engagement. His first answer was an infernal laugh, expressive of derision, hard-heartedness, and contempt. By and by, however, he condescended to explain himself more fully.
“I made no engagement,” cried he. “You talked of a ransom, and I suffered you to talk. I made you no answer; I gave you no encouragement. Boy, I deceived you not! No; though my heart pants for vengeance and for misery, I will never be guilty of treachery; I will break no engagements; I am a knight and a soldier. You have given me ten thousand ducats; what are ten thousand ducats to me? Do you think I am uninformed of your secret? I opened your chest; I found no gold; its contents were crucibles, minerals, chemical preparations, and the tools ofan artist. You are possessed of the grand arcanum, the philosophers stone. If I had a doubt of it before, the transaction of yesterday converted conjecture into certainty. And did you suppose, idiot, driveller that you are, that I would take ten thousand ducats in commutation for wealth inexhaustible? No; you are my prisoner, and may choose, in this infallible dilemma, whether you will remain my slave, to supply me daily resources as I shall daily think proper to demand, or at once make over to me your whole mystery, and place me in this respect on a level with yourself.”
It was now my part to be peremptory and firm.
“I refuse,” said I, “every part of your dilemma, and all that you can propose to me. Do you talk of my remaining your slave, to supply you with daily resources? Do you imagine that, shut up in this dungeon, I will nevertheless labour for your gratification? Do you believe that that gift, which I received as the instrument of my own happiness and the benefit of mankind, shall be made the pledge of my perpetual imprisonment?
“With regard to imparting to you the secret you suppose me to possess, I answer without hesitation, that, dearly as I prize liberty, and numerous as are the motives you may think I have to prize it, I will not purchase my liberty at that rate. I would rather spend the days of eternity in this cavern, than comply with your proposal. The gift of the philosopher’s stone, the moment a man possesses it, purifies his mind from sordid and ignoble inducements. The endowment which raises him so much above his species, makes him glory in his superiority, and cherish his innocence. He cannot, if he would, mingle in the low passions and pursuits of the generality of mankind. For myself, I value too much the verdict of my own heart, ever to allow myself to be influenced in the main concerns of my existence by menaces and compulsion. Beside, this gift I received for holy and beneficent purposes; to such it is consecrated; and if I ever impart it, I must select its depository with all the assiduity and penetration it is practicable for me to exert. You I will henceforth benefit no more. You hate me; my disapprobation of you is fixedand irrevocable. I weep to think how much I have been deceived in you; I weep to think how many high and heroic qualities in your breast are now converted into malignity and venom.—You the possessor of the philosopher’s stone! You tell me, the sole pursuit of the rest of your life is revenge and human misery. What an image do you raise in my mind, if, with such dispositions, you possessed the means which the acquisition of riches inexhaustible would confer on you? And do you believe that any consideration on earth could induce me to realise such an image?”
“As you please,” replied Bethlem Gabor indignantly. “I have nothing to propose to you. Think you that, either as my enemy or my slave, and I hold you for both, I would descend to negotiate with you? I simply told you your situation. Yours be the consequences of your wilfulness and folly!