C[oe]lum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.--Horace.
It was late ere we returned to Dieppe, and we were sauntering quietly up stairs towards our own apartments, when a waiter, carrying in a portion of the evening meal to some guests in the public room, showed just sufficient of the well-lightedsalon, to tempt us in. On entering we learned that the table d'hôte supper was over, but we found seated at the hospitable board of Monsieur Petit, who never suffered any one to go away empty who was inclined to eat, an English traveller, who, like ourselves, had arrived too late. A man who wishes to make any thing of travelling ought to put all his prejudices in the lumber-room before he sets out, and if he finds them musty when he comes back, so much the better. On the road they are the most inconvenient part of his baggage, never useful, and always in the way. There are few people who adhere to their prejudices more strongly than the English. We are insular in more than geographical situation, and amongst the multitude of our countrymen, with the multitude of their feelings, character, and pursuits, one out of a thousand is not to be met with on the continent, who is not just as prejudiced as when he set out--perhaps more so, for finding a strong confirmation of many of his pre-conceived ideas, he takes it as a confirmation ofall, and intrenches himself the more firmly in his original opinions.
It may seem like heresy to say it, but, after having visited many countries, I am still inclined to think that France in its various parts, notwithstanding its proximity to our own country, retains more points of interest, more of thecouleur locale, than any other land. But an Englishman, who travels to see France and French people, ought always to dine at the table d'hôte, wherever he finds one. The higher classes of all nations are too nearly alike to offer any very striking points of difference to a casual observer, for the general principle of all is to conceal what they feel and what they think, at least in public; but the mixture of a table d'hôte affords almost always something worth studying. It is in such circumstances that we find the most legible pages in the book of human nature. The classes of Englishmen travelling in France are somewhat altered since Sterne's time. The economical traveller is not so simple as he was then: there are also travellers who go for luxury; there are travellers for novelty; there are travellers for information; and there are travellers who journey forth into the world from the mere necessity of locomotion. These last are very numerous amongst the English. One of this class, finding the disease coming on violently, builds himself a low carriage, with very substantial wheels, and plenty of room for his feet. He furnishes it with all the peculiar luxuries of London, strews the left-hand seat with novels, and, placing himself in the interior, with his servant behind, draws up the windows, and fancies he is travelling through Europe. The profound meditations which he enjoys in the inside of his painted box are seldom if ever interrupted, except when the carriage stops, and he asks, "John, where am I?" The servant holds open the door, touches his hat, and replies, "At Rome, sir!" and the traveller, yawning, walks into the inn.
There are several varieties of this class merging into others. One morning a party of them came into the aisle, when I was in the cathedral at Rouen (a very beautiful specimen of Gothic building, let criticism say what it will). The only attention they gave it was one vacant stare, which wandered heedlessly over the rich ornaments and the most magnificent combination of arches that architecture can produce--swore it wasfine,very fine, and walked out. I asked the valet-de-place who accompanied us, how long English travellers staid in general, when they visited the cathedral. He said, "About five minutes; but if they staid longer at all, they generally made it nearly as long as we had been."
I am not particularly given to cathedral hunting, nor am I fond of what Forsyth calls "picking the bare bone of antiquity," but when I meet with any thing either beautiful in itself, or which awakens in my mind a pleasing train of ideas, I am apt to give it more than five minutes.
At ---- I met with another traveller, still more decidedly locomotive. He was a very gentlemanly young man, and I think might have been something better, but habit had given his mind a sad twist. I asked him what he thought of the Pyrenees, from whence he had just arrived. He replied that "the roads were very fine;" he had gone nine miles an hour up and down hill. I inquired if he had been at Bagnères de Luchon. "Oh, yes," answered he, "I rode there from Bagnères de Bigorre in six hours." Such seemed to have been the amount of his observations on one of the most beautiful countries of Europe. He was travelling against time.
Many who travel for health, without the command of a very large fortune, lose, I am convinced, as much by the want of those comforts they are accustomed to at home, as they gain by change of air. However, I am equally certain that the mind has far greater power over the body than we generally imagine; and that the mere rapid change of scene and incident acts as powerfully as any medicine in the Pharmacop[oe]ia.
Those who come abroad for economy may certainly now find it either in France or Germany. In almost all parts of Italy they will find themselves deceived. There is one thing, however, to be observed, which is, that English people on the continent do not save by the cheapness of the country only, but they economize by living as foreigners do.
There is another class of travellers who come abroad to procure greater luxuries than they can in England on the same income. I should be sorry to censure a large portion of my countrymen, but I think that those are scarcely excusable, who have neither curiosity nor desire of information, nor limited means, nor ill-health to plead, but who, with sufficient to maintain their rank in society at home, habitually spend their fortune in a foreign country. Their virtue at all events is not patriotism.
Certes he was a most engaging wight,Of social glee and wit humane tho' keen,Turning the night to day and day to night.Castle of Indolence.
Certes he was a most engaging wight,Of social glee and wit humane tho' keen,Turning the night to day and day to night.
Castle of Indolence.
The traveller we met at Dieppe could be included in none of the classes I have just mentioned. He was a young officer of artillery returning from the Ionian Isles. He had travelled much in Italy and Greece, had a great deal of information, was willing to communicate it, and communicated it well.
I feel myself under a debt to every one who gives me an agreeable half-hour; and certainly the evening we spent in his society left a very pleasant impression behind it. For the first few days after we have quitted our native land, we feel a certain degree of loneliness, which makes us creep closer to any stray countryman we may happen to meet, than our national reserve would permit us to do under any other circumstance. On our part, therefore, there was no backwardness, and our young officer had been travelling so long, that I dare say he never remembered what the wordstrangermeant. In a foreign country, knowing no one, we were thrown upon each other for amusement, and we were not long in finding it. Each told his anecdote and his tale. We peopled the little salon at Dieppe with characters from every quarter of the globe. We forgot the place, and the time, and more than one hour had waned after midnight before we retired to rest.
Much of what passed is gone from my recollection, but, amongst other questions, I remember asking what was the state of a college which had been founded in a distant country, by a noble countryman of ours?
"The matter," replied he, "is rather oddly ordered at present, for you must know that, when I saw it, there were eleven professors and three scholars; but the most singular part of the whole is, that the professor of theology is a reputed atheist, and the professor of languages stutters so as to be unintelligible in any. We went from anecdotes to tales, and one which he said he had heard while crossing the country from Marseilles towards ---- made an impression on my mind that will not easily be effaced. He called it"
Ah chi mi taglie la mia pace antica,E Amore? Io nol distinguo, Alcun mel' dica.--Metastasio.
Ah chi mi taglie la mia pace antica,E Amore? Io nol distinguo, Alcun mel' dica.--Metastasio.
With a frame of iron, a strong fixed mind, and a dauntless determined spirit, Armand Villars went forth into the world, seemingly well calculated to sustain its sorrows, and to repel its dangers. There was a likeness in his mind and person; the beauty of his countenance was of that stern grave cast which suited his character, and his form was of the same powerful nature as his spirit.
In youth he was unlike the rest. It was not that his mind was brighter, but it was that it never bent: and the very energy of his calmness gave him command amongst his companions, if companions they may be called, for there is little companionship where there is no similarity. Yet still they courted him to be amongst them, and might have taught him to fancy himself above the common level of his kind, but Villars was proud, not vain. A vain man acts for others, a proud man for himself. And Villars thought of his own opinion, scarcely dreaming that others would judge of him at all.
It was remarked of him, even as a boy, that his passions were difficult to move; but that, like a rock hanging on a mountain's brow, their tranquillity once disturbed, they carried all before them in their course; and years, as they passed over his head, by teaching him greater endurance, rendered his anger, when excited, but the more dangerous. It was not like the quick flash of the lightning, hasty and vehement, but as short-lived as it is bright; but it was that calm, considerate, sweeping vengeance, which, like the snow that gathers silently on the edge of the precipice, descends to overwhelm all that is beneath.
He was unrelenting too, for he never dreamed that mercy might be combined with justice. He would never have pleaded for himself, and he could not be expected to feel for others.
His youth passed away as the flowing of some undiscovered river, whose strange waters are never fretted by the barks of far-exploring man. He knew nothing of any world but the world of his own mind; and his only commune was with his own feelings, which were as things apart.
And yet there was a bitterness in standing thus alone. There was a pain even in, the solitude of his own thoughts: and he strove to assimilate them to something which at leasthad been. He was fond to pore over the records of ancient virtue, and the history of those firm inflexible beings, who rooted out from their bosom all the soft verdure of the heart's kinder feelings, and raised in its place a cold shrine to unrelenting justice. Here only he seemed to have imagination: and here would he ponder and dream, till he wondered that such a state of things did not still exist. He would fain have thought that virtues like these contained within themselves the principles of immortality.
He forgot that historians, even when they do not augment the worth of what they relate, to render it the more worthy of relation, do not seek to commemorate what is petty. So that thefew great actionsalone are recorded, while the multitude of meannesses are forgotten. Like the fabled eagle, that is fond to gaze upon the sun, he fixed his eyes alone on what was bright. He would ask himself, Why might not France produce a Brutus or a Cato? Was the soul of man degenerate? Had it lost that power which sustained it in the inspiring days of ancient glory? No! He felt the same spirit stirring withinhisbosom, and he resolved that he, at least, would live a Roman.
Such were the aspirations of his youth; but they were mixed with little of that wild warm glow which animates the enthusiast. His feelings, like the waters of a deep mountain-lake, were calm and cold, though they were clear and profound. When he did feel, he felt strongly; but the lighter things of the world passed him by as if they had not been.
In the same old ill-fashioned town of Arles, which gave birth to Armand Villars, lived another youth, somewhat elder in point of years, but far younger in character. We will call him Durand. He was one out of the many--a gay, brave, thoughtless boy, with a touch of pride, a good deal of vanity, and an infinity of good-nature. He was one of those pieces of unmoulded clay, which the world forms and hardens. He might have been any thing; but in that same school of the world, he that at first may be any thing generally, at last, learns to be bad. I have said he was thoughtless; but he was by no means without talents, and those which he had were suited to his character. He was penetrating, but not profound; he was active but not industrious; he had more quickness than wit; more imagination than judgment.
As we generally over-estimate that which we do not possess, we are inclined to admire qualities opposite to our own. Durand had early fallen into society with Armand Villars. Habit did much to unite them, but the very difference of their minds did more; and dissimilar tastes often led them to the same pursuits.
They would wander together through all the remains of antiquity, with which the neighbourhood of Arles is enriched. Sometimes they would linger for hours in theChamps Élysées, poring over the tombs and sarcophagi: sometimes they would, stray near St. Jean, along the banks of the Rhone, trying to trace out the ancient palace of Constantine; and sometimes they would stand and gaze upon the river itself, and almost worship it, as it rolled on in proud magnificence towards the ocean.
But still the objects which led them, and the combinations produced in the mind Of each, were very very different. Durand did not look upon the Rhone merely as an object of picturesque beauty. He loved it as a mountaineer loves his mountains: he loved it with that instinctive affection which we feel towards all objects associated with the earlier and brighter hours of our existence, connected with the first expansion of our feelings, and commingled with all our youngest ideas. The grand and the great, in nature, are always matter for remembrance. They are the landmarks in the waste of years, that guide our memory back to every thing that is pleasing in the past.
The scene where it happened is still intimately mixed with every circumstance of happiness, and we love the spot, even when the pleasure has passed away. The Rhone was the grandest object connected with any of his infant recollections, and as such he loved it, without any further combination, or any endeavour to know why.
Villars would not have been satisfied to feel, without knowing why he felt. The Rhone was nothing to him, without its name in history; but it recalled to him the days of Cæsar, and every struggle the ancient Gauls made for the independence of their country: and there was a feeling of pride mixed with the remembrance, which seemed, in a degree, to transfer itself to the object that excited it; and he became almost proud of the Rhone, because he admired the deeds which its banks had witnessed.
It is a country fertile in ruins. It seems as if time had taken a barbarous pleasure in leaving there the wreck of mighty works as trophies of his all-destroying power; and in wandering amidst them, Durand would mark the elegance of the capital, or the fair proportion of the architrave which had once adorned some palace or some temple, whose lord and his parasites, whose idol and its worshippers, had long been forgotten in the silence of things that are no more; and he would point out the beauties to his companion who, for his part, would carry his thoughts back to the days of Rome; to the mind, whose energy had conceived, and to the men, whose labour had perfected, those giant fabrics that shame the pigmy efforts of our later times; and while Durand would laughingly contend, that the Romans were neither braver; wiser, nor better than the race of modern men, Villars would exclaim against the degeneracy of mankind, and grieve that he had not lived in those days of glory and of liberty.
They were at that period of life when passion is strongest, and imagination most vivid, and when judgment; like a young monarch, forgets his painful duties and leaves his throne vacant, while he wanders amongst the pleasures and diversions of his new estate. They were at this period of life, when the revolution began to throw a new and too strong light upon the world. In the enthusiasm of republican spirit, the revival of ancient institutions, and all the brilliant fantasies which rapidly succeeded each other, many of the wisest and the best got bewildered; nor was Durand one of the last to adore this phantasmagoria of antique forms.His courseis soon told. He quitted his native city; but before he went he embraced Villars with all the ardour of his new sect. He called him "citizen" and "brother," he vowed that their friendship should be everlasting.
He joined the army formed for the defence of the republic. His talents, his daring courage, and some of those accidental circumstances of fortune which decide not only the fate of men but of empires, combined to raise him above his compeers. His mind readily embraced every thing that was brilliant. He was naturally witty, and shrewdly perceiving that a jest would often pass where a reason would not, he raised up for himself a sort of philosophy which taught him to laugh at every thing, good or bad, and with this he passed safely and honourably through all the vicissitudes of a changing state, and found himself in the end even as he could have wished to have been--selfish, heartless, rich, respected, and in power.
The life of Armand Villars was different. For a while he looked upon the grand scene which was playing before him, and rejoiced at the revival of ancient virtues--for he hoped that it was so--but yet there was something in it that he distrusted. He looked for the great independence of soul, the generous self-devotion, the steady purpose of right, and the stern patriotism which sacrificed all private feeling to public good. He looked for Roman laws and Roman spirit, and he found but a wild chaos of idle names, and an empty mockery of ancient institutions; and, unwilling to yield the favourite illusion, he turned his eyes away.
It was then that every Frenchman was called to bleed for his country, and Villars willingly quitted the ungrateful scenes that were passing in France, to place himself in the ranks of her defenders. In the field as in the city, the same calm firm spirit still animated him. He fought as if life had for him no charms, nor death any terrors. But it was not the courage of romance. There was none of the headlong ardour of enthusiasm; there was none of the daring of thoughtless temerity; there was none of the reckless valour of despair. There was in his bosom alone the one fixed remembrance that he was doing his duty--that he was fighting for his country--together with that calm reasoning courage which knows danger and despises it.
He rose in command, but he rose slowly, and it was not till late in the campaign of Italy that he attained the rank of colonel. Italy was a land which had long been the theme of his thoughts. He was now there, amongst the ruins of that stupendous fabric, the record of whose ancient glory had been his admiration and delight. He was on the spot where Romans had dwelt, and he fought where Romans had bled; and if any thing like ardour ever entered into his nature, it was then. The habits, too, of his boyish days seemed here to resume their empire. He would wander, as he had done in youth, among the wreck of ages past, and indulge in long and deep meditations in the midst of empty palaces and neglected fanes. He would re-people them with the generations gone, and conjure up the great and wise of other days. The first and second Brutus seemed to rise before him--the men who had expelled a Tarquin, and had slain a Cæsar--he that had sacrificed his children, and he that had sacrificed his friend to his country. Virginius, too, and his daughter; and Manlius, and, in short, all the train of those whose deeds gave a splendour to the times in which they lived, and whose names history has for ever consecrated.
Italy teems with recollections of every kind: for courage, and wisdom, and power, and arts and sciences, and beauty, and music, and desolation, have all in turn made it their favourite dwelling-place; and though the train of thought which Villars followed was but of one description, there was matter enough for that; and he might have indulged it for ever, but that the more busy and Warlike occupation of the present gave him but little time to ponder over the past. Another fate too awaited him--a fate which he little dreamt of.
In a skirmish, which took place near Bologna, he was severely wounded, and carried to the house of an old Bolognese lady, whose rank was rather at variance with her fortune. For though she prized illustrious birth, as the purest and most permanent species of wealth, and perhaps valued it the more, inasmuch as it was the only sort of riches that remained to her, she nevertheless found it very difficult to make this refined treasure supply the place of that coarser material, gold; at least in the opinion of others, who obstinately continued to think, that rank must have fortune to support its pretensions, or else it is worse than nothing.
It is supposed, that sometimes their pertinacity almost persuaded her of this also: but as the old countess had not the one, she endeavoured to make the other do: and like a poor man, ostentatious of his last guinea, she contrived to render every one well aware of her rank and family. However, she was a kind-hearted woman, and though she would talk of her cousin the prince, and her nephew the duke, the poor and the sick would always share of what little she had, and when she had nothing else she would give them a tear.
She received the wounded soldier with all the kindness of her nature. It mattered not to her of what party or of what country he was. She was happy enough to have no politics, and as to country, the sick were always of her own. She received Colonel Villars, therefore, as her son--she nursed him herself--she did more, she made her daughter nurse him: and it never seemed to enter into the head of Beatrice, or her mother, or Villars, that there could be any thing dangerous in it to either. Yet Villars was handsome, strikingly handsome, and Beatrice was an Italian beauty, dark, and soft, and graceful; and it was not long before the touch of her small hand, as she fastened the bandages on his arm, made a thrill pass through the soldier's breast, which he did not understand. He fancied that Beatrice must have touched his wound, and yet her fingers went so softly, that they seemed to tremble lest they should press it too roughly. Still Villars attributed the strange thrill that passed across his bosom to that cause. "Or else what could it be?" he would ask himself. And yet by some odd perversion of reasoning, Villars always preferred that Beatrice should fasten the bandages, rather than her mother; although the old countess went so dexterously to work, that she produced no thrill at all.
Such were his feelings. Now this was the first time that Villars had ever been tended by female hands. But though this was not the first time that Beatrice had given her aid to the wounded--for a long war and its consequent miseries, bringing many calls upon their kindness, and their hearts being naturally benevolent towards all mankind, the two ladies had learnt to act almost the part of dames of romance, and unblushing to assist to their utmost all those who needed it--though this, I say, was not the first time that Beatrice had lent her aid to the wounded, it was the first time that she had ever felt that anxiety for any one, which she now experienced towards Villars. The loss of blood had weakened him much. His heart was all the softer for it, and his manner more gentle; and Beatrice began to feel pity, and admiration, and love; especially when she perceived that the being so cold and stern to all others was softened towards her. But it went on in silence in her heart, and in that of Villars, till the assurance gradually crept upon him that he loved: and he wondered at his weakness, and then he asked himself, "was it possible that his affection could be returned?" and sometimes he would hope, and sometimes he would doubt, till his feelings became too painful for endurance; and he resolved that he would conquer the passion which unmanned him, and fly for ever from the object that excited it.
Women are taught to keep their affection, like a rare gem, hidden from all eyes in the casket of their heart; and it is not till, by some mishap, the key is lost or stolen, that man finds out what a treasure there is within. Beatrice heard Villars name the day of his departure without an apparent emotion. She saw that day approach, too, as calmly as she had heard it appointed. It is true, that her cheek grew a little paler, and that her eyes would often rest upon the ground; that in singing her voice would tremble, and that she did not seem so fond of music as she had been formerly. But she would laugh when any one called her thoughtful, and assured her mother that she had never been in better health.
Villars, as I have said, had made a firm resolution to depart; but, like most other resolutions in this changeable world, it was not destined to be kept. The day previous to that which he had fixed for his departure, the mother of Beatrice was struck with apoplexy, and in two hours after, the fair creature that he loved was an orphan, alone in the wide world, drooping in sorrow, and clinging to him for support in her affliction. Could he leave her? He never asked himself the question. He stayed, and after a time Beatrice became the bride of Armand Villars.
New feelings now began to spring up in his heart. The sweeter, gentler associations of existence now began to cling round him, and mellow the harshness of his character, like the green ivy twining round the rugged bark of the oak, and softening its rude majesty. Life took a new aspect. A brighter sun seemed to have risen over the world. He forgot the past, and in the delight of the present found a boundless store of anticipation for the future.
There are few whose fate has been so desolate, that one clear day has not, at some time, shone through and brightened their existence. Oh, it is like being in a boat upon a summer sea! Every circumstance of joy dances round us, like the ripple of the waves in the morning sun. Heaven seems to smile upon us like the clear blue sky, and the breath of time wafts us gently, but swiftly, on our course, while hope points onwards to the far faint line of the horizon, and tells us of a bright and golden shore beyond.
And who is there, that, when all seems sunshine, would look around him for a cloud?
Villars dreamed; but that dream of joy was soon to be broken. The tie which linked him to social being was soon to be rent. Beatrice died, and with her every gentler feeling of his bosom; and his heart became their sepulchre, never to be opened again.
Villars became old in an hour. There is no such thing as time. It is but space occupied by incident. It is the same to eternity as matter is to infinite space--a portion out of the immense, occupied by something within the sphere of mortal sense. We ought not to calculate our age by the passing of years, but by the passing of feelings and events. It is what we have done, and what we have suffered, makes us old.
Beatrice died, and the heart of her husband became as a thing of stone. To any other, perhaps, the daughter she had left him would have recalled, in a tenderer manner, the joys he had lost, and re-illumined the bright affections which her death had extinguished. There are some persons in whose bosom the necessity of affection seems placed by nature, never to be eradicated. But with Villars it was not so. He cursed the weakness which had enthralled his heart, and made it either a prey to love or sorrow; and he fortified himself against the assault of any mortal feeling. He would do his duty strictly, fully, towards his child; but that was all which he ever proposed to his own mind.
There was, indeed, one tribute he paid to the memory of Beatrice. She had loved music. Her mind had been attuned to all harmony; and she had delighted in all that was bright and sweet in every art which softens the asperities of human existence. And Villars resolved, he scarcely knew why, to give his daughter all her mother's accomplishments. It was like writing her epitaph on the heart of her child. This only seemed to show the least spark of feeling yet unextinguished in his breast; for there was now a degree of bitterness mixed with the original sternness of his character. He looked upon the world with disappointed eyes, and gladly turned away from the view, for there was nothing but a desert round about him.
France no longer needed defenders. His duty to his country was done; and, quitting the army, he collected together his little property, and retired to dwell near his native town of Arles.
It was more probably chance than any taste for picturesque beauty, which directed him in the situation he chose for his future residence; but of all the neighbourhood it was the most lovely and the most retired. It was surrounded by wood, with the Rhone sparkling through the trees beyond, and the remains of an antique Roman arch crowning the hill above. The country was covered with olive-grounds and vineyards, and scattered with small villages: but there was not for a considerable distance round--indeed, nowhere near, except in the town of Arles--a house of any consequence, whose proximity might have disturbed the solitude of his retirement; and here, for fifteen years, lived Armand Villars, secluded from a world he despised, seeking no commune but with his own thoughts, and dividing his time between the cultivation of his ground, solitary study, and the education of the daughter which Beatrice had left him.
On their first arrival at their new dwelling, little Julie offered no particular promise of beauty. Her large, wild, Italian eyes, and the dark hair which clustered round her forehead, were all that could have saved her from being called a very plain child. But as years passed over her head, and she grew towards womanhood, a thousand latent charms sprang up in her face and person. Like a homely bud that blossoms into loveliness, her beauties expanded with time, and she became one of the fairest of nature's works.
Beauty can scarcely be well described. I know not how it is; whether imagination far exceeds nature, or whether remembrance is ever busy to recall what love once decked in adventitious charms, but every one has raised an ideal standard in his own mind, which is fairer to him than all that painter or statuary ever portrayed. Description, therefore, must fall far short of what Julie really was. Let all men, then, draw from their own mind. She was lovely as imagination can conceive; and there were few of those who, by any chance, beheld her, that were so critical or so fastidious as to find or fancy a fault in her beauty; and as the strangers who did see were ever sure to ask, among the neighbouring peasantry, who she was, and to describe her by her loveliness, she soon acquired the name of the Beauty of Arles.
It seldom happens that many perfections cluster together. If beauty be granted, wit is often denied; and if wit and beauty unite, vanity, or some other deteriorating quality, is generally superadded. But it is not always so. Nature had dealt liberally to Julie of all her stores. She might know that she was lovely, for where is the woman that is not conscious of it; but in her solitude there was none to tell her of her charms, and she was not vain of them. The bright wild genius, the warm vivid imagination, that revelled in her breast, and sparkled in the dark flashes of her eye, was guided and tempered by the softest, gentlest, heart that ever beat within a woman's bosom. She had no means of comparing her own mind with that others, and she did not know that it was superior; and all the accomplishments and knowledge that her father had taken care she should acquire appeared to her what all human knowledge really is--but little to that which may be known.
In the mean time, the mind of Armand Villars had undergone scarce any change; his feelings were the same; but, if at all altered, they were only the harder and the more inflexible. If his daughter possessed his affection, it was seldom that any trait of gentleness betrayed it; and, as if fearful of again loving any human thing, he passed the greater part of his time in utter solitude, from which even his child was excluded.
Julie feared her father, but she loved him too. Her heart, like a young plant, clung to that which it grew beside, however rugged and unbending; and in those hours which she was allowed to spend with her parent, she strove to win him from the sternness of his nature, and draw from him a smile of affection or approbation; and if she succeeded, it was a source of joy to her for many an after hour.
Her pleasures, indeed, were so few, that she was obliged to husband them well, and even to seek new ones for herself. She lost none of those unheeded blessings which nature scatters on the way of ungrateful man. She had joy in every fair sight and every sweet sound. To her the breathing of the spring air was a delight, the warbling maze of the brook a treasure. The notes of the forest birds--nature's own melody--was to her the sweetest concert; and, thankful for all that a good God had given, she would long for the wings of the lark to soar into the blue air and sing her gratitude at the gates of heaven. She would wander for hours through the fair lonely scenes around, when the prime of morning glittered over the earth, or when the calm evening, like a gentle mother, seemed soothing nature to repose; and her life passed like the waters of the broad Rhone, glittering on in one sunshiny course amidst all that is beautiful in nature.
Thus went hour after hour, and day after day, in peaceful solitude and undisturbed repose; ignorant of a corrupted world and all its arts, and blessed in her ignorance. It was one bright evening in autumn, when the world was full of luxuriance, before the grape was plucked from its branch, or the olives began to fall, and the robe of nature, though somewhat embrowned by the sun of many a summer's day, had not yet lost all its verdure. Her father had shut himself up in his solitude, and Julie wandered out towards the ruined Roman arch that crowned the hill above their dwelling. From the height the whole country round was exposed to her view. It was a gay scene, where all the rich gifts of generous nature were spread out at large. The green foliage of the vine covered all the slopes; and olive-grounds, with their white leaves glistening in the sun, skirted the vineyards, and sheltered the peasants' houses and villages that were thickly scattered over the landscape, while the bright waters of the Rhone bordered it along, and formed a glittering boundary to the very edge of the horizon.
Julie gazed on the scene for a moment, and contemplated all its wide luxuriance. But there was something too general in it. She knew not why, but she turned away with a sigh, and, descending into the valley, seated herself under some almond-trees, watching the lapse of a small brook that wound murmuring along towards the Rhone.
She was buried in contemplation, it matters not of what, when she was roused by quick footfall coming down the little path that led from the hill. It was a stranger whom she had never before seen, and one that she would have fain looked at again if it had not been for modesty's sake, for he was a sort of being not often beheld in that nook of earth. In the glance she had of him, when the sound of his footsteps first called her attention, she saw that he was young and handsome. But it was not that; there was something more. There was the grace; the elegance, the indescribable air of the high and finished gentleman; and Julie, as I have said, would fain, from curiosity, have taken another look: but, however, she turned away her eyes, and fixed them again upon the brook, as if deeply interested in the current of its waters. The stranger passed close by her, and whether he turned to look at her or not, matters little, but somehow it happened that before he had got ten yards, he stopped and returned, and, pulling off his hat with a low inclination of the head, asked her the way to Arles.
The direction was very simple, and Julie gave it as clearly as she could; but, nevertheless, the stranger seemed not quite to comprehend, and lingered as if for further information. So, seeing his embarrassment, she told him if he would come to the top of the hill, she would show him the line of the high road, and then he could not mistake; and accordingly she led the way, and the stranger followed: and, as he went, he told her that he had sent forward his carriage to Arles, intending to walk straight on, but he had been induced to quit the high road, in order to see the beauties of the country.
It was but a few steps to the top of the hill, and could but afford time for a conversation of five minutes; but, for some reasons which he did not very well stop to analyze, the stranger would not have lost them for all the world; therefore he had begun at once, and he continued with ease, but with a diffidence of manner which showed he was afraid of offending. He spoke rapidly, as if he feared to lose a moment, but with that smooth eloquence which wins its way direct to the sources of pleasure within us; and to Julie's timid and simple replies he listened as if they contained his fate. When he spoke, in turn, there was something in his manner perhaps too energetic, but yet it was pleasing, and Julie attended with no small degree of admiration and surprise; and before they had reached the top of the hill, she had settled it in her own mind that he was a being of a superior order.
The high road lay at a little distance, and she pointed it out to him. The stranger thanked her for the kindness she had shown him again and again, and still he was inclined to linger; but there was no excuse for it. Julie afforded him none, and, taking his leave, he bent his steps towards the road. When he reached it, he turned his head to take one more glance of the object that had so much interested him, but Julie was no longer there.
The stranger hurried on to the town, and his first question on reaching it was directed to ascertain who it was that he had seen.
"Oh!" cried the aubergiste, half interrupting the stranger, though respectfully, for he had sent forward a splendid Parisian carriage, with servants and saddle-horses, and more travelling luxuries than visited that part of the country in a hundred years--"Oh, it must have been Mademoiselle Villars, the beauty of Arles."--"It could be no one less," echoed the garçon.
"Villars!" said the stranger--"Villars! It is very extraordinary!"
Now; why it was extraordinary nobody at the inn knew. But it so happened that early the next morning the young stranger ordered his horses to be saddled, and his groom to attend him, and setting of with that kind of ardour which characterized all he did, galloped along the road towards the spot where he had seen Julie the day before. He gave a glance towards the hill. She was not there; and, turning his horse into a road which led down towards the Rhone, he rode straight to the dwelling of Armand Villars. It had been an old French country-seat, or château; one of the smaller kind, indeed, but still it possessed its long avenue of trees, its turrets with their conical slated roofs, and a range of narrow low building in front, with small loophole windows, through the centre of whichavant-corpswas pierced the low dark arch that admitted into the court-yard. The stranger contrived to make himself heard, by striking his riding-whip several times against the gate, which was at length opened by an old man who had long served with Colonel Villars in Italy, and had followed him to his solitude.
"Could he see Colonel Villars?" the stranger asked. The old grenadier glanced him over with his eye, and seemed half inclined to refuse him admittance; but on the young stranger's breast hung several crosses, which told of deeds done against the enemy, and the heart of the old soldier warmed at the sight. "Colonel Villars," he said, "was not much given to seeing strangers, but if Monsieur would ride into the court he would ask."
The young stranger turned his horse to pass in, but his horse was not so well inclined to go through the low dark arch as his master, and showed symptoms of resistance. The stranger again reined him round, and spurred him towards the gate. The beast became restive, and, plunging furiously, endeavoured to throw his rider; but the stranger was too good a horseman, and, angry at his obstinacy, he urged him on with whip and spur. Unfortunately he did so. The horse plunged, reared, and threw himself over to the ground, with his master under him.
His own servant and the old grenadier came immediately to his assistance, and disengaged him from his horse; but it seemed as if their aid had been too late. The stranger was wholly insensible. At first they thought him dead, and it was some minutes before the yet lingering animation again made itself visible; but as soon as the old grenadier saw it, he went into the apartment where Villars and his daughter were, and simply told them that a young gentleman had been thrown from his horse at the gate, and he believed he was dying.
Pity's purest dwelling is in a woman's breast. Without thinking, Julie started up, and in a moment had flown to the assistance of the stranger. Villars followed more slowly. It was a duty to aid a fellow-citizen, and he proceeded to obey it.
Every man who has fallen off a horse, stunned himself, and broken his arm, must, or at least ought to, undergo the same treatment. Let us suppose, then, the duties of humanity paid; let us also imagine that the stranger, in some degree recovered from his fall, had told that his name was Charles Durand, the only son of Villars's old friend and early companion,--and there was a softness even in the memory of those young days which melted, in a degree, the sternness of the old soldier. It was more so when he found that Durand, though in place and in power, and basking in the beams of courtly favour, had not forgotten him, and had directed his son in passing by Arles to inquire for his former companion--andoffer him his services at court, the young man added, but his voice, rather faltered as he said it. It might be that he knew the emptiness of such promises in general, or perhaps that he was too well acquainted with his father's character, or it might be that his hurt pained him at the moment. But however it was, when he saw Julie standing by the couch on which he was stretched, and attending him with the kindness of a sister, he almost blessed the accident which had given him a title to her care.
I know not how it is, but amongst all the wild theories and dreams that have been formed about the human heart and its passions, none ever suited itself to my fancy so well as that--it is an eastern one, I believe--which supposes the hearts of two persons destined to love each other formed, by the angel whose task it is, out of the same clay: so that in whatever regions they may be placed, and in whatever different state of life, when they do meet, there is always a world of undefinable sympathies between them, and affections apart from all the rest of the earth. Perhaps it is only a few, and those by especial favour, that the angel forms of these twin hearts; all the rest must wander about the world without any soft companionship of feeling. Be that as it may, from the very first moment that Charles Durand had met Julie Villars new sensations had been born in his bosom. She was lovely, the loveliest perhaps he had ever seen, though he had been long accustomed to mingle with the bright and the fair; but in her there was the beauty of simplicity, the charm of native unaffected innocence, and that was what he had seldom met with at all, and certainly never before so rarely combined. There were many more----
But what is the use of searching any further for that which made him love her from the first. Grant but the eastern supposition to be true, that their hearts were formed of one clay, and the matter is settled at once. A little superstition, and a few good broad theories, save man a great deal of trouble and research, and, perhaps, lead him as right as any of the hundred roads which philosophers and moralists are always busy paving for him.
During his illness, which was severe from the accident he had met with, his attachment had time to become fixed; and he did not lose the opportunity of endeavouring to excite a return. In truth, it was not very difficult; Julie's heart was cast in nature's gentlest mould, and this was the first time that any thing like affection had approached it. From her infancy she had formed for herself companionship from whatever was near her. She had watched each individual flower as it blossomed, till she loved it, and loved it only to mourn the fall of its fragile beauty! She had taught the birds to know her, and to sing their wild notes in her path without fear. But now, it was something far far beyond anything she had ever felt or ever dreamt of. What a new bright state of existence became hers, when Charles Durand's love first flashed upon her mind. She painted to herself all the charms of reciprocal attachment in its brightest state. She knew nothing of the world and its falsehood. She knew nothing of human nature and its weakness, and she fancied it all without a cloud. She invested every thing in the verdant colouring of her own heart, and lighted it up with the sunshine of her own mind, and it made a picture she could have gazed on for ever.
Before she was aware of his affection, she had looked forward to his recovery with mingled emotions. There was certainly a good deal of pleasure, on his account, in the speculation; but she did not like to think of his departure, which would be the natural consequence. Now that she knew herself loved, and that she could look upon her own attachment for him without feat or shame, she never dreamt that a separation was possible; she yielded her whole soul to the delight of the moment, and saw nothing before her but one bright interminable track.
Durand's mind was not so much at ease. There were some blighting thoughts would come and wither his opening happiness. He knew his father's ambitious nature, and feared to ask himself how, it would brook his union with the simple girl of Arles. Brought up amidst scenes of profligacy and vice, though with a heart naturally good and pure, Charles might have formed some less honourable scheme for obtaining Julie, but there was a purity in her every thought that spread a holy light around her, and he felt that the very idea was profanation.
In youth, we seldom let foresight give us much annoyance, and Charles Durand's resource was not to think upon the subject at all. He loved Julie as deeply as man can love. The idea of losing her was insupportable, and while the hours slipped away in her society, he would not debase such unalloyed happiness by one sordid care for the future.
Whether he heeded not or saw it not, or, from his long seclusion from the world and natural slowness of affection, did not perceive its consequences, Armand Villars took no notice of the growing intimacy between his daughter and the young Durand, probably he never saw it; for, continuing to live in the same retirement, he suffered the presence of Charles to make scarce any change in his conduct. He had merely accorded him a dwelling in his house because he considered it a duty, and once in the course of each day he paid him a calm, cold visit, inquired after his health, and recommended him to the care of his daughter; for, he said, "that was more a woman's task than a man's;" and the rest of the day he passed in utter solitude.
In the mean time, Durand's health rapidly improved, and he was soon enabled to accompany Julie in her rambles along the banks of the Rhone. Oh, what a new world was now opened to her! Nature had acquired a brighter hue, pleasure a richness it never owned before. All, all delight was doubled by having some one to participate. There was a new state of being sprung up for her--the existence of mutual affection--an existence totally apart from every thing else of earth.
A great change, too, had taken place in all the feelings of Charles Durand. As he wandered on with Julie, he wondered that the beauties of nature had never before struck him as they did now. He asked himself what madness could have taught him to enjoy the false brightness, the unmeaning whirl, the lying gaiety of such a place as Paris; and, as he looked at the fair simple girl by his side, he learnt heartily to despise the artificial beings with whom he had been accustomed to mingle.
One bright summer evening, they passed by the spot where they had first met. The same colouring was on the trees, the same bright hues were glowing in the west, but every thing was richer and lovelier in their eyes.
"Oh, Julie," said Charles, "how I shall ever bless this spot! I remember standing by yon old triumphal arch on the hill, and looking over the wide scene of abundance displayed below. It was rich, it was beautiful; but as I descended into this valley there was a sweet calmness, a lovely repose, which left the heart nothing to wish for, and far more than compensated for the expanse of the other landscape. Surely it was a type of what I was to feel after having seen you. Before, the gay world of the capital and its wide indistinct society seemed to offer a life of delight not to be met with any where else. But now, to be with you thus constantly, and separated from all the world but you, is a happiness far beyond my brightest dreams. It has made me a miser. I would admit none to share it with me for worlds."
Julie answered nothing, but she looked up in Charles's face with a glance that he had no difficulty in translating. A moment after the beam in her eye passed away, and was followed by a slight sigh. Charles would needs have it translated too, and as he could not do it himself, he applied, to its author. Julie said that she did not know that she had sighed. Charles assured her that she certainly had.
"I was thinking at that moment," answered Julie, "that I ought as soon as possible to communicate this to my father. Perhaps it was that which made me sigh; for though I am sure he loves me, yet he is naturally so stern that sometimes he frightens me."
A cloud came over Charles Durand's brow, for she forcibly recalled his thoughts to the point from which he had long essayed to banish them, and he begged that she would delay the communication she proposed until he had time to write to his father and ask his consent to their union. Julie looked down, and contending emotions called the blood into her cheek. There was something in the idea of the least concealment repugnant to the bright candour of her mind; and she told Charles that she was sure it never could be right.
Concealment! Charles assured her that he never proposed such a thing. No, let their affection be as open as day. If her father himself perceived it, it was at once avowed; but if he did not, it would be better to wait till his authorized him to demand her hand. He added several reasons, to which Julie replied nothing. She was not used to contend with any one, much less with one she loved; but her heart was not at ease. It was the first cloud which had obscured the morning of her life, and it cast a deeper shadow than she had fancied any thing could throw over her mind! They walked up the hill to the ruined arch of triumph, and gazed for a moment on the plain below; but Julie's heart did not expand to the scene. They turned again and wandered down to the brook, but the valley hid lost a portion of its peace.
Charles expressed a wish to rest there ere they returned. Julie seated herself in silence where she had been placed when first they met, and Charles, casting himself down by her side, tried to convince her that he was right, for he saw that she was not yet satisfied.
"I suppose," said she, turning to him with a smile, though it was rather a melancholy one--"I suppose I ought to be convinced, for I have nothing to say in reply. But, at all events, be it as you think fit. Of course I shall say nothing to my father until you approve of it. I have never yet wanted confidence in any one."
If the last sentence implied any thing reproachful, Charles did not or would not perceive it. He took Julie's hand and pressed it to his lips, while the colour mounted more deeply in her cheek, and her dark eyes were bent down upon the ground. What she had said, however, was overheard by another, whose presence neither Julie nor Charles had observed. Her father, by some chance, had that night, turned his steps in the same direction that they had, and he now stood before them.
Charles was the first who raised his eyes, and they instantly encountered the fixed stern glance of Villars.
"Well, young man," said he, in a deep, bitter tone of voice, "you have rested with me long enough. You have accepted of my care, you have betrayed my hospitality, you have recovered from your illness, and now begone."
Charles exculpated himself boldly, but to one that did not attend. He declared again and again that his every intention was most pure and honourable.
"Honourable!" repeated Villars, with a scoff. "Whatever were your intentions, he who could teach a child to deceive her father is unworthy of my daughter. Begone, sir! I hear no more; never let me see your face again. Come, weak girl," he added, turning to Julie, down whose cheeks the tears were rolling in silent bitterness, "wipe away those tears, and do not let me think you unworthy of your race;" and he led her back to the château; passing on straight to his own library.
Julie covered her face with her hands. The tears were still running down her cheeks, and though she knew her father's inflexible nature, there was a remonstrance struggling in her heart, to which she would have fain given utterance, but the stern glance of Villars, which never left her for a moment, frightened her and took away her words.
An instant after the old servant came in, and told them that M. Durand desired to see him. Julie clasped her hands and extended them with an imploring look towards her father. "Silence, child!" cried he; "Julie, not a word!" and followed the servant from the room.
Whatever might have passed between him and Charles, when he returned there was a deeper spot upon his brow, and his step had something of angry haste in it as he advanced to where his daughter sate.
"Julie," said he, "on your duty to me as your father, I command you never to see that young man again." Julie paused.
"Do you hesitate? Disobedient girl! Mark me, one moment more, and I cast you off for ever. Julie, you know me. I am not used to say what I do not perform. Promise me instantly never again willingly to see Charles Durand, or we are no longer father and child."
It was a dreadful alternative, and Julie promised.
How blighting is the loss of what we love! Affection is as the sunshine of existence, and when it is gone, the rest is all darkness. The flowers of life, the beauties of being, are all obscured, and we wander blindly on through an unseen world, which might as well be a desert as a garden, in the deep shadow of that starlight night.
It is not so much that which we have not as that which we lose, that we sigh for. Had Julie never known the charm of mutual affection, all would still have been bright, but now day after day went by, the blank of passing existence.
At length the news reached her father that Charles had left Arles, and, sinking into his usual habits, he permitted Julie to pursue the rambles she had been accustomed to take. But nature to her had lost its loveliness. The flowers seemed withered, the song of the lark sounded harsh, and she wandered slowly on, occupied with sad thoughts. She raised her eyes to the arch of triumph on the hill above. There was a figure standing by it, which passed quickly away, but it recalled to Julie the time she had first seen Charles Durand, and the hours they had spent there together, and, placing the past happiness with the present sorrow, the contrast was too strong, and she wept bitterly.
Though she found no pleasure in the scenes she had formerly loved, yet she had no inducement to return home. All there was cold, and she wandered on farther than had been her wont. She had proceeded nearly an hour, when she heard a quick step behind her. She knew not why, but it caused her an emotion of fear, and she hurried her pace. "Julie!" said a voice she could not mistake; "Dear Julie! It is I." She turned, and Charles caught her in his arms, and pressed her fondly but gently to his bosom.
Julie said nothing, but hid her eyes upon his shoulder and wept; but the dreadful promise she had made her father was to be told; and at length, summoning all her resolution, she did so.
Charles did not appear so much surprised as she expected. "Julie," said he, "after the promise you have made, if we part, we part for ever. Let us never part!"
It was a scheme he had formed immediately on quitting her father's house, and he now displayed it to Julie in the brightest colours it would admit of. He had been wandering about the country ever since, he said. His carriage had been always on the road prepared for a journey. He had counted much upon his Julie's love. He had procured a passport for Paris. The moment they arrived she should give him her hand at the altar. His father should use all means to soften hers, and there could be no doubt that Villars would soon relent. He pleaded with all the eloquence of love and hope. Even despair lent him arguments. He had strong allies, too, in Julie's own breast: her love for him, her fear of her father, and the dreadful overwhelming thought, that if she once parted from him she should never see him again. A doubt of him never entered into her mind; but there was something in the idea of accompanying him alone to Paris, which made the blood rush into her cheek. All the delicacy of a pure mind, and the fear of doing wrong, caused her to shrink from the very thought: a thousand opposing feelings came one after another through her breast, and gazing anxiously in the face of her lover, "Oh no, no, Charles!" she replied, "do not ask me;" and, striving to call up all her sense of duty, she added, more firmly, "Impossible!"
A deep settled gloom came over Charles's countenance--a calm impressive look of despair. He took both Julie's hands in his, and pressed them twice to his lips. "Cruel girl!" he said, in a low voice, which He strove to command to steadiness; "you love me less than I thought. Hear me," he continued, seeing her about to speak, "hear me to the end; for your reply will be my doom. I am not rash, but I can never live without you. My fate is on your lips. Am I to live or die? for within an hour after you have quitted me, I shall have ceased to exist. Speak, Julie! Do you bid me die? for that is the alternative."
Julie gazed on him for a moment, as if she scarcely comprehended the import of his words; and then again hid her eyes upon his shoulder and wept. "Speak, speak, Julie!" cried Charles.
"What would you have me say?" she asked. "You force me to do what I think wrong. How can I refuse what you wish, when such is the alternative? Oh! Charles, it is you that are cruel now!"
Charles caught eagerly at the concession. He thanked her again and again; and he seemed so happy, that Julie could scarce repent that she had yielded. Yet still she would have lingered; and as Charles led her gently on towards the spot where his carriage stood, he was obliged to display a thousand reasons to prove to her that she was doing right; for, at every step she hung back; and though she wished much to believe herself justified, yet still the tears trickled down her cheeks, and her eyes dared not rise from the ground. But hesitation was now too late, and in a few minutes she was on the way to Paris.
During their whole journey, Charles's conduct was a course of quiet respectful attention. He strove to soothe Julie's mind; he sought to amuse it, but he never suffered any gaiety to jar with the sorrowful tone of her feelings. He seemed to feel, as painfully as she did, the want of her father's approbation, but he endeavoured to oppose to that the bright prospect of their future happiness. He spoke of quitting all the luxuries of Paris for the sole delight of her society; to let their lives glide away in some beautiful part of the country, love gilding with its sunshine even the winter of their days. In short, he called up all the dreams that man is wont to form in the brighter stage of his existence, when young imagination fashions out every distant object into some fair shape of its own; and so well did he image his wishes as hopes, and paint his hopes as certainties, that Julie suffered her mind to be carried a stage beyond reality, and forgot the uncomforts of the present in the bright future which he depicted.
It was night when they arrived in Paris, and an undefinable feeling of terror and loneliness spread over Julie's mind as she felt herself a stranger amongst the multitude. Charles seemed instinctively to enter into her feelings, and gently pressed her hand to his lips, as if he wished to tell her that there was at least one heart that beat warmly with hers.
After passing along several long dimly-lighted streets, the carriage stopped at the hotel to which it had been directed, and Charles applied himself to make all those arrangements for Julie's comfort, which she was hardly able to do for herself.
"And now, Julie," said he, "there remains but one thing more; I will instantly go to my father's hotel, end bring you his consent to our union."
"Oh, Charles! wait a moment, do not leave me yet," cried Julie; "I can bear any thing but solitude."
Charles pressed her to his bosom, and, sitting down beside her, gazed fondly over every lovely feature as she sat with her eyes bent upon the ground. She saw that he waited merely to gratify her, and that his mind was fixed upon the interview with his father, and at length, conquering her feelings, she bade him go.
Charles promised that he would instantly return, and left her, but at the same time he ordered his servant to stay at the hotel. "Show Mademoiselle Villars," he said, "the same service as if she were your mistress, and my wife, which she will soon become."
As soon as Charles was gone, Julie burst into tears. She knew not why, but there was a deep depression of spirits hung over her which she could not dissipate, and she wept profusely. She had scarcely reasoned herself out of giving way to her grief, when Charles returned.
"My father," said he, "is absent a few leagues, from Paris, but he comes back to-morrow evening. So, dear Julie, my hopes must be delayed."
Charles saw that she had been weeping, but he took no notice, and applied himself, during the evening, to wean her thoughts from every subject of sorrow, and he succeeded, if not in entirely calming, at least in greatly soothing, her mind. The journey had much fatigued her, and Charles left her at an early hour. "For your sake, Julie," he said, "I must not stay in the same hotel with you, but I will be with you early to-morrow."
It was Charles's task, during the whole succeeding day, to occupy Julie's thoughts by various subjects of interest, so as to prevent them ever recurring to her own situation. He gave her mind no time to fall back upon itself. Neither did he himself wish to think the approaching interview with his father offered much that he dreaded, and he would not let his thoughts rest upon it.
At length, however, the evening came, and he again left Julie upon the same errand that he had done the night before. In going to his father's hotel, he, walked with extraordinary rapidity, as if he were afraid that reflection should intrude upon him by the way; but, on being informed that his father had returned some time, he paused to collect his thoughts, took two or three turns in the court, and then entered the room where his parent was.
Far different from the sprightly lad that long ago consorted with Armand Villars, old Durand, in passing through life, had lost many of the better qualities which had distinguished him in boyhood: circumstances had so often induced him to glide from one opinion to another, that he had but small pretensions to sincerity. Fortune had made him proud, and the lesser points of morality had gradually become effaced, in mingling with corrupted society. He was still a man of courage, of wit, of talent, and, as he had never cried very loud for any particular party, his changes in political opinion had never been criticised very severely. He was also a man of pleasure, an Epicurean, but one that forgot some of the best tenets of his sect. Every thing was to be sacrificed to pleasure except interest; and all was to yield to that. His affection for his son was strong, but there was much of it pride; and though on his return he received him kindly, it was more like the reception of an old companion than a son.
"Well, Charles," said he, after the first few minutes, "so your broken arm is whole again: and what has become of the beautiful little nurse you wrote to me about? You owe her a good deal, in truth."
"I owe her everything, sir," replied Charles, "and as to what has become of her, she is at this moment in Paris, and----"
"Ha, ha, ha! so that is the way you repay her," interrupted his father, laughing. "Charles, Charles, you, are a sad libertine. But take care what you are about; you will certainly get your throat cut. That sulky old Roman, her father, will not take it quietly, depend upon it. I remember him when a boy; his anger was not easily moved, but, when once excited, his vengeance was not like that of a child."
"I rather think, sir, that you mistake me," replied Charles. "Julie is purity itself. I love her beyond everything on earth, and I have now come to ask you to sanction my immediate union with her."
The astonishment, the anger, the scorn, which gradually gathered over old Durand's countenance while his son was speaking, is beyond expression. "Young man!" cried he, "are you mad? Have you become a driveller and a fool?"
Charles had expected opposition, and now he used all the eloquence he possessed, all the entreaties most likely to move. He expressed himself firm in his resolution of marrying Julie; but declared that he never could be happy without his father's approbation. But it was in vain. His father listened to him for a moment, and then, without any answer whatever, but a look of mingled pity and contempt, left the room. Charles's heart burned with indignation, and, darting from the house, he passed rapidly to the hotel. He did not, he would not think, and he had entered the room where Julie sat, before the first irritation had passed from his mind.
She was sitting directly opposite, and as he entered she raised her eyes with such a look of glad expectation, that it quite overwhelmed him, and, striking his hand against his forehead, he walked up and down the room for a moment, without speaking.
"In the name of heaven, Charles!" exclaimed Julie, "what is the matter?"
Charles took her hand, and led her back to the sofa from which she had risen. "Julie," said he, "my father is as cruel as yours. He refuses his consent to our union; but be assured----"
At that moment the deadly paleness, the wild despair, of Julie's countenance, stopped him as he spoke. Charles had deceived himself, and still more deceived her, with respect to his father. She had never imagined the possibility of his refusing, and now it came like the stroke of death. All the horror, all the desolation of her situation flashed upon her mind. It stunned, it stupified her. Every sense, every thought was overwhelmed in the wild tempest of her disappointed hopes, and she sat gazing in the face of her lover in dumb inanimate despair.
Charles at first attempted to call her to herself, but in vain. She sat like marble. At length, starting up, "Julie," he cried, "I go again to my father, and be sure I will bring you his consent, or I will die at his feet!"--and he quitted the room.
But Julie heard him not. She sat with her hands clasped, and her eyes fixed upon the door. Her senses were bewildered. A sudden panic seized her, she knew not of what. She started up, and, as if she flew from something which pursued her, she ran down the stairs of the hotel into the street. She passed rapidly along the Rue Royale to the Place Louis Quinze. The cool air revived her, and thought began to return, when some one caught her by the arm with a grasp of iron; she turned and cast herself at his feet.
"My father! Oh heaven, my father!" cried Julie. Villars answered nothing, but held her tight by the wrist, while he drew a poniard from his bosom.
"Disgrace your father's name!" said he at length. "If you have a prayer to offer to heaven, offer it now, for the blood of Villars shall never flow in impure veins!"
Julie strove to speak, but terror left her no voice. At length she cried, "Indeed, indeed, I am innocent!"
"Art thou aliartoo?" cried Villars, casting his cloak over her head, and raising his hand. "Thus I wipe out your infamy!"
He plunged the dagger in her bosom--he raised it again, but no--he could not repeat it--there was a faint smothered cry--a shudder like the flutter of a dying bird, and then it lay a cold inanimate weight upon his bosom--It was done! But then the implacable unyielding spirit which had thus far sustained him forsook him for a moment, and he stood stupified, without thought, without feeling, without remembrance.
"I have done my duty!" he cried at last, and hurrying down to the banks of the river, descended to the very edge, and laid his lifeless burden in the water--gently, and cautiously, as if he were afraid of waking her. He gazed upon her--smote his hand upon his breast. "I have done my duty!" he said, "I have done my duty!" But hell was in his heart, and he fled.
When the Union American merchantman was lost on her passage from Havre to Charleston, there was one man who refused to enter any of the boats. He had taken his passage at Havre the very day the ship sailed, and, during the five days which elapsed between her leaving the port and her being wrecked, he was never heard to proffer a word to any one. He passed the days and the greater part of the nights, in walking backwards and forwards, with his eyes fixed upon the deck, and at that awful moment, when tempest and destruction surrounded them all, the deadly strife within his own bosom seemed to have rendered him insensible to the war of elements without.
Some one kindly pressed him to enter one of the boats. "Leave me, leave me," said he in French; "my grave is made!"
God knows whether it was he, but the passengers who escaped represent him as of the same age and form as Armand Villars.