The night--the night--the solemn night!The silent time of thought;The kingdom of the pale moonlightAnd mem'ry, when things gone and brightAre back to mortals brought.The night--the night--the brilliant nightClothed in her starry robe:When sweet to Hope's ecstatic sight,Come future dreams that day's hard lightHad banished from the globe.The night--the night--the peaceful night!The pause, when each calm joy,Which Time, that oft unpitying wight,Has spared or granted in his flight,Is known without alloy.The night--the night--how dear the night!Since now its dreams are sweet;Since Hope and Love have made it bright,And changing darkness into light,Have bade its shadows fleet.
The night--the night--the solemn night!
The silent time of thought;
The kingdom of the pale moonlightAnd mem'ry, when things gone and bright
Are back to mortals brought.
The night--the night--the brilliant night
Clothed in her starry robe:
When sweet to Hope's ecstatic sight,Come future dreams that day's hard light
Had banished from the globe.
The night--the night--the peaceful night!
The pause, when each calm joy,
Which Time, that oft unpitying wight,Has spared or granted in his flight,
Is known without alloy.
The night--the night--how dear the night!
Since now its dreams are sweet;
Since Hope and Love have made it bright,And changing darkness into light,
Have bade its shadows fleet.
"Take another sheet of paper, my dear boy," said Mr. Somers, when he saw that I had done, "and be kind enough to write a note for me." I did as he requested, when, to the surprise of Emily, and myself, he dictated a letter to the chaplain of the embassy, expressing his wish that he would perform the marriage ceremony between his daughter and myself on the morning of the Thursday following. It was then Tuesday, and a few words of astonishment rather than opposition broke from Emily's lips, but he added at once, "Let it be so, my dear child! It is your father's particular request."
Emily said no more; but hid her eyes for a moment on his bosom, and the note was dispatched. With the greatest possible privacy the ceremony was performed, and Mr. Somers, who had made an effort to be present, was lifted into the carriage, and proceeded with us to a house we had taken for the time, in the Val de Montmorency. The next day he appeared greatly better; but at night, about half an hour after he had left us, his servant came suddenly to call us, and, running to his room with Emily, we found him with the last breath of life hanging on his lips. All medical aid proved vain, and when it was all over, Emily and I both felt that it must have been some presentiment of approaching fate that had caused him to hurry our marriage.
Emily has now been long my own, linked to me for life by that sweet indissoluble bond which no two hearts worthy of happiness ever wished less firm and permanent than it is. Changes may come over my destiny, misfortunes may fall upon me again, but I look calmly on to the future; and fear not that such sorrows will ever darken the autumn of my days as those which frowned upon their spring, and which it has been my task to detail in the foregoing pages.[23]
Footnote 1: N.B.--Many more of the tales contained in these volumes have since been published in periodicals, and I believe I may say without presumption that they have been uniformly favourably received, though the author's name was withheld. Thus, as near as possible, two-thirds of the work have been already before the public.
Footnote 2: Such was the original title of this tale, though it was altered without my being consulted, when It first appeared, to that of The Lovers of Vire.
Footnote 3: The tourniquet consists of two triangular pieces of wood fixed at about three yards distance from each other on a horizontal pole, which serves for an axle-tree; from each angle of the one to the corresponding angle of the other is drawn a rope; and the whole machine is suspended at about four feet from the ground. At one end is placed a pole, on which hang the prizes; and at the other is a ladder for the aspirant to mount. The tourniquet is held steady till he is firmly fixed, with each of his feet resting on one of the side ropes, and his hands clasping the centre one; and then he is left to make his way to the prizes at the other end. As long as he can keep himself exactly balanced all is well; but the least pressure more to one side than the other, destroys the equilibrium, and round goes the tourniquet.
Footnote 4: Be it remarked, that this is not entirely the case. In all parts at France frogs are still in high repute. The snail,escargot, is a favourite food of the people of Lorraine; and, in the south of France, I have been asked whether I likedanguille de haieoranguille de rivière; meaning, whether I preferred eels or snakes.
Footnote 5: The name of brigand was the common term applied by the revolutionists to the Vendeans.
Footnote 6: These two remarkable speeches are upon record.
Footnote 7: I have left the above passage exactly as it was written many years ago, though I perceive that the same ideas have returned to me in writing another work, and have clothed themselves in very nearly the same language. I did not perceive the fact till one work was printed and the other in the press; but the accident was sufficiently interesting to me to leave the passage here, where I could blot it out.
Footnote 8: She told me the story herself, heaven rest her soul! and I use her own phraseology as nearly as a faulty memory will permit.
Footnote 9: Some circumstances were discovered afterwards in regard to a traveller for some mercantile house, who had been murdered in the Landes, which threw greater suspicion on my friend the miller, and caused him to betake himself elsewhere.
Footnote 10: Those who imagine this to be a jest deceive themselves; I have seen the same more than once since.
Footnote 11: These passages were written thirteen or fourteen years ago, since which time France has made the most extraordinary progress that any country in Europe can boast. England has also advanced, but the change is certainly not so striking between what she is now and what she was then, as that which has taken place in France in the same period; but it may be taken as a proof of the justice of these remarks, that France has become much more English than England has become French.
Footnote 12: This appears somewhat exaggerated now, but it was very little so when the passage was written; and opinions as absurd have a thousand times been uttered by men otherwise well informed in my presence. Some late books of travels in this country, however, would tend to show that the French have not yet much enlarged their knowledge of England and the English.
Footnote 13: This was written before the discoveries of Sir John Ross.
Footnote 14: "Gave" signifies water; and in the Pyrennees this name is given to all the mountain-streams.
Footnote 15: The chamois of the Pyrennes.
Footnote 16: "To Louis XIV., king of France and Navarre, grandson of our great Henry." The force of the satire is not to be rendered in an English translation.
Footnote 17: He afterwards explained that he had been admitted once to the making of a new word by the French Academy, and left it in the middle.
Footnote 18: My worthy friend maintains that our knowledge of astronomy is very inferior to that possessed by the ancient tribes of Asia.
Footnote 19: See Procopiusde Edificiis, lib. iv. cap. xi. Several reasons have induced me to place Azimantium on the very shores of the Euxine.
Footnote 20: Gibbon.>/p>
Footnote 21: The hero of this tale is, or rather was, a real character (like all the other true heroes in the true tales of this true history). His name was Peter Fish, a waterman, plying at Hungerford Stairs, and many a time has his wherry borne me over the Thames, when I was a reckless schoolboy. He was a good-humoured soul as ever lived, rather fond of the bottle and of a little rhodomontade.
Footnote 22: Bridge of Snow.
Footnote 23: To guard against all mistakes, it may be as well to state, that all the tales, etc., which appear in the preceding pages, are the productions of one author, whether they be placed in the mouths of various persons or not, with the single exception of that called a "Young Lady's Story," which occupies ten pages, and is placed here principally to convince her that the efforts of her pen lose nothing by comparison with those of an old and practised writer.
It was my intention to have given a list of errata which the reader will have perceived are exceedingly numerous in the preceding pages. Their numbers indeed prevent me from fulfilling that purpose, and I think it but fair to remark, that though at least one half of them may perhaps be attributable to the printers, the other half must rest upon my own shoulders, as nothing has so soporific an effect upon me, as the reading of my own works, and the very dullest work of another will keep me awake, when two pages of what I call my wittiest compositions will send me sound asleep. Heaven forbid that they should have the same effect upon others, at any time but that at which "nature's sweet restorer" may be especially requisite to the refreshment of the mental or corporeal faculties of my readers.