Only ye who have felt what it is after long years of absence, after buffeting with the wild waves of life, and learning by heart that bitter lesson they call the world, to come back to what was once a home, can form some notion of the mingled emotions of joy and sorrow with which I drew near Reichenau.
As the road grew gradually more steep, and the mountain gorge became narrower and wilder, I found myself at each moment in sight of some well-remembered object. Now it was a well beside which I had often rested; now a cross or a shrine beneath which I had knelt. Here was a rocky eminence I had climbed, to gain a wider view of the winding valley before me; here was a giant oak under which I had sheltered from a storm. Every turn of the way brought up some scene, some incident, or some train of long-forgotten thought of that time when, as a boy, I wandered all alone, weaving fancies of the world, and making myself the hero of a hundred stories. Sad and sorrowful as it is to reckon scores with our hopes and mark how little life has borne out the promises of our youth, yet I cannot help thinking that our grief is nobly recompensed by the very memory of that time, that glorious time, when, shadowed by no scepticism, nor darkened by any distrust, we were happy and hopeful and confiding. It is not alone that we recur to those memories with pleasure, but we are actually better for the doing so. They tell of a time when our hearts were yet uncorrupted, our ambitions were noble, and our aspirations generous. They remind us of a period when the episodes of life rarely outlived the day, and our griefs never endured through half the night. And so comes it that when, in after years, we are tired and careworn by the world, it is not to our experience of mankind we look for support and comfort, but to the time when, in happy innocence, we wandered all alone, peopling space with images of kindness and goodness, and making for ourselves an ideal world, so much better than the real one!
It was sunset. The “Angelus” was ringing as I entered Reichenau, and the postilion—a mountaineer—reverently descended from the saddle, and knelt upon the roadside in silent prayer. How long was it since I had witnessed even so much of devotion! The world in which I had mixed had its occupations of intrigue and plot, its schemes of greatness and wealth and power, but no space for thoughts like those of this poor peasant. Alas! and was I not myself corrupted by their contact? That penitent attitude—that prayerful look—those clasped hands—were now all objects of astonishment to me, when once I had deemed them the fit accompaniment of the hour. Too truly was I changed from what I had been!
Night was falling fast as we reached the bridge, and a light twinkled in the little window which had once been the Herr Robert's. A little further on, I saw the chateau and the terrace; then came the tower of the old church; and as we turned into the Platz, I beheld the arched gateway, and the small diamond-paned window of the little inn. How sadly did they all remind me of my solitary existence! for here, in the midst of every object of my childish memory, was I, friendless and alone. A little crowd gathered around the carriage as I got out. The staring rustics little thought that he who then descended had been, perhaps, their playfellow and companion. The postilion had styled me an “Excellency,” and the landlord received me with all his deference.
I pretended that I should stay a day or two, in expectation of a friend's arrival, and ordered the best rooms in the house; and, as was not unusual in those days, begged the favor of my host's company at supper. The invitation was gladly accepted, and Herr Kirschler entertained me till past midnight with an account of Reichenau and its inhabitants. I affected to know the village as a mere traveller who had passed through it some years back, on my way to Italy; and the host, with true innkeeper memory, remembered me perfectly. I was fatter, or thinner, or browner, or somewhat paler than before, but in other respects little changed. So, at least, he told me, and I accepted the description. I reminded him that when I last came through, the château had been a school: was it so still?
“Yes; and Monsieur Jost was still the master, although now very old and infirm, and, of course, little able to direct it. In fact, he devoted his time far more to beetles and butterflies than to the boys; and so most of the scholars had left him, and the school was rapidly declining.”
I turned the conversation on Reichenau itself, and asked in a careless tone if strangers ever sought it as a residence. He shook his head sorrowfully, and said rarely, if ever.
“There had,” he added, “been one or two families who had fled thither on the outbreak of the French Revolution, but they had long since taken their departure. One of them,” added he, rising, and opening the window, “one of them lived yonder, where your Excellency sees that old tower; and mean as it looks without, I can assure you it is still poorer within; and yet they were noble,—at least, so it was said here.”
“You cannot remember the name?” said I.
“No; but it is written in one of my old ledgers.”
“Will you do me the kindness to look for it?” said I, “as these things have a deep interest for me, since I have known so many of the exiled families.”
It was in no spirit of curiosity that I made this request; I needed nothing to aid me. There stood the old tower which contained my play-room; there, the little window at which I have sat, silent and alone, whole nights long. It was to conceal my emotion that I wished him away; and scarcely had he left the room, when I hid my face within my hands and sobbed aloud. The search occupied him some time; and when he returned, I had recovered myself sufficiently to escape his notice.
“Well, have you found it?” said I.
“Yes, your Excellency, here it is,—in the lady's own writing too.”
The words were simply the routine entry of travellers in the “police-sheet” of the hotel, stating that Madame la Comtesse de Gabriac, accompanied by son secrétaire. Monsieur Raper, had passed two days there, and then departed for———. The word had been written, and then blotted out.
“For where?” asked I.
“That is the strangest point of all,” said he; “for after having taken the places for Milan, and their passports all vised for that city, when day broke they were not to be found. Some peasants, who came to market that day, thought they had seen them on the mountains taking the path to Feldkirch; but wherever they went, they were never heard of more.”
“Do you mean that they had to set out on foot?”
“Parbleu! your Excellency; the route they took can be travelled in no other fashion.”
“But their baggage, their effects”
“They were of the lightest, I assure you,” said he, laughing. “Madame la Comtesse carried hers in a kerchief, and Monsieur le Secrétaire had a common soldier's knapsack, and a small bundle in his hand, when he came here.”
I suppose the expression of my face at the ribald tone of this remark must have intimated what I felt, but 'tried to conceal, since he speedily corrected himself, and said, in a voice of apology,—
“It is not, assuredly, at their poverty I would sneer, your Excellency; but for persons of their condition this was not the suitable way to travel.”
“Did they leave no friends behind them who might give a clew to their mysterious departure?”
“Friends! No, your Excellency, they were too proud and too highly born for us of Reichenau,—at least, the Comtesse was; as for Monsieur Raper, poor fellow, he was a teacher at Monsieur Jost's yonder, and rarely seen amongst us.”
“And how do you explain it?—I mean, what explanation was the common one in vogue in the village?”
“As for that, there were all manner of rumors. Some said they had fled from their debts, which was false; for they had sold the little they possessed, and came to pass the two last days here while paying whatever they owed in the village. Some thought that they had been hiding from justice, and that their refuge had been at last discovered; and some, among whom I confess myself one, think that it was with reference to the Count's affairs that they had taken to flight.”
“How do you mean?” asked I.
“Oh, De Gabriac was a 'bad subject,' and, if report speak truly, was implicated in many crimes. One thing is certain: before they had been gone a week, the gensdarmes were here in search of him; they ransacked the lodging for some clew to his hiding-place, and searched the post for letters to or from him.”
“And so you think that it was probably to avoid him that she fled?” said I, hazarding a question, to obtain a fuller admission than he had made.
“That is precisely my opinion; and when I tell your Excellency that it was on receiving a letter from Paris, most probably from him, that she hastily sold off everything, you will possibly be of my mind also.”
“And Gabriac, did he ever appear here again?”
“Some say he did; but it is doubtful. One thing, however, is certain: there was a teacher here in Monsieur Jost's academy, a certain Monsieur Augustin, who gave lessons in mathematics, and the secret police gave him some tidings that made him also leave this; and the report is, that Gabriac was somehow the cause of this. Nobody ever thought ill of Augustin, and it is hard to believe he was Gabriac's accomplice.”
I could perceive, from this reply of the host, that he was “all abroad” as to any real knowledge of events, and had only got some faint glimmerings of the truth. I now suffered him to run on about people and occurrences of which I knew nothing, so as to divert him from any attention to myself, and then betook me to my bed with an anxious mind and a wearied one.
I was up early the next morning, and hastened to the château, where I found my old master already up, and walking in the garden. He was, indeed, much changed. Time had told heavily on him too, and he seemed far more feeble than I expected to find him. The letter with which I was charged for him invited him to make me any confidential communication he desired to impart, and to regard me as trustworthy in all respects. He read it over, I should think, several times; for he sat down on a bench, and seemed to study it profoundly.
“You shall have the papers,” said he at length; “but I doubt that they will be found of use now. Dumourier's influence is at an end with his old adherents. The party is broken up; and, so far as human foresight can go, the cause is lost.”
“I ought to tell you, Monsieur Jost,” then broke I in, “that although you are speaking to one who will not abuse your confidence, that it is also one who knows nothing of the plan you speak of.”
He appeared to reflect some minutes over my words, and then said,—
“These are matters, however, not for my judgment. If the Prince think well of the scheme, it is enough.”
I saw that this was said unconsciously and to himself, and so I made no remark on it.
“At all events, Monsieur Gervois,” continued he, “let them not build upon many whose names are here. We saw what Dejaunay became t' other day. Jussard is little better than a spy for the First Consul; and as for Gabriac, to whom we all trusted, he would have been even worse than a spy, if his villany had succeeded.”
“You knew him, then, sir?” asked I.
“Knew him! Parbleu! I did know him; and better, too, than most did! I always said he would play the traitor,—not to one, but to every cause. He was false to all, sir,” said he, with increasing bitterness,—“to his King; to that King's enemies; to the Convention; to the 'Emigration;' to the nobles; to the people: false everywhere and to every one! False to her who bore his name, and to her whom he led away to ruin,—that poor girl, whose father's chivalrous loyalty alone might have protected her—How do you call him?—the Marquis de Bresinart? No, not him; I mean that old loyalist leader who lived near Valence.”
“Not the Marquis de Nipernois?” said I, in trembling eagerness.
“The same; the Marquis de Nipernois, to whose daughter he was once betrothed, and whose fair fame and name he has tarnished forever!”
“You do not mean that Gabriac was the seducer of Madame de Bertin?” said I.
“The world knows it as well as I do; and although one alone ever dared to deny it, and branded the tale with the epithet of base scandal, she came at last to see its truth; and her broken heart was the last of his triumphs!”
“You speak of the Countess,—his wife?”
He grasped my hand within one of his own, and pressed the other across his eyes, unable to speak, through emotion. Nor were my feelings less moved. What a terrible revelation was this! Misfortune upon misfortune, and De Gabriac the cause of all!
For a moment I thought of declaring myself to be his old pupil, and the child who had called that dear Comtesse “mother;” but the morbid shame with which I remembered what I then was, stopped me, and I was silent.
“You know, of course, whither she went from this, and what became of her?” asked I, anxiously.
“Yes. I had two letters from her,—at long intervals, though; the last, when about to sail for Halifax—”
“For Halifax!—gone to America?”
“Even so. She said that the Old World had been long unkind to her, and that she would try the New! and then as their only friend in Hamburg was dead—”
“They were at Hamburg!—you did not say that?” said I.
“Yes, to be sure. Monsieur Raper, who was a worthy, good man, and a smart scholar besides, had obtained the place of correspondence clerk in a rich mercantile house in that city, where he lived with credit, till the death of the head of the firm. After that, I believe the house ceased business, or broke up. At all events, Raper was thrown on the world again, and resolved to emigrate. I suppose if Monsieur Geysiger had lived—”
“Geysiger!—is that the name you said?”
“Ay; Adam Geysiger,—the great house of Geysiger, Mersman, and Dorth, of Hamburg, the first merchants of that city.”
Though he continued to talk on, I heard no more; my thoughts become confused, and my head felt turning with the intense effort to collect myself. Geysiger? thought I; the very house where I had been at Hamburg,—where I had overheard the project of a plan against myself! Could it be, that through all my disguise of name and condition, that they knew me? With what increase of terror did this discovery come upon me! If they have, indeed, recognized me, it may be that some scheme is laid against my life. I could not tell how or whence this suspicion came; but, doubtless, some chance word let drop before me in my infancy, and dormant since in my mind, now rushed forth to my recollection with all the power of a fact!
I questioned the old man about this Geysiger,—where he had lived, whom he had married, and so on; but he only knew that his wife had been an actress. I did not ask for more. The identity was at once established. I next tried to find out if any relations of friendship or intimacy had subsisted between the Comtesse and Madame de Geysiger; but, on the contrary, he told me they had not met nor known each other when she wrote to him; and her stay after that in Hamburg was very brief. I wearied him with asking to repeat for me several circumstances of these strange revelations; nor was it till I saw him fatigued and half exhausted that I could prevail on myself to cease. I had now loitered here to the last limit of my time; and, with an affectionate leave of my kind old master, I left Reichenau to make my way with all speed to England.
My first care on arriving in England was to resign my post as an “Agent secret.” This was not, however, so easily accomplished as I thought; for the Royalists had more than once before discovered that those in their employment had been seduced into the service of their enemies, whose rewards were greater, and who had a large field of patronage at their disposal. Unable to prevent these desertions by the inducements of profit, they had resorted to a system of secret intimidation and menace which unquestionably had its influence over many.
I have not space here to dwell on a theme, some of whose details might, however, prove amusing, illustrating as they did the mysterious working of that Jesuit element which labored so zealously and so long in the cause of the Restoration. There is a little work still extant, called “L'Espionage et ses Dangers,” by Jules Lacoste, published at Bruxelles, in 1802, which gives, if not a perfectly authentic, at least a very graphic, description of this curious system. The writer distinctly alleges that five of his colleagues met their deaths by poison, on mere suspicion of their disloyalty, and gives the names of several whose impaired faculties and shattered health showed that they had narrowly, but perhaps not more fortunately, escaped a similar fate.
For my own part I must own that such perils were not mine. It is true, I was asked to reconsider my determination. It was at first hinted vaguely, and then positively assured me, that my long and faithful services were on the eve of a high and substantial recognition. I was even told that my own wishes would be consulted as to the nature of my reward, since I was not to be treated like one of the mere herd. When all these temptations were found to fail, I was left, as it were, to reflect on the matter, while in reality a still more ingenious and artful scheme was drawn around me; the Abbé being employed as its chief agent. Affecting, in a measure, to coincide with and even encourage my determination, he invited me constantly to his lodgings, and by degrees insinuated himself into my confidence. At least he learned that it was in pure disgust of the career itself that I desired to forsake it, and not with any prospect of other advancement in life. He sought eagerly to discover the secret subject which engaged my thoughts, for I could not succeed in concealing my deep pre-occupation; but he cautiously abstained from ever obtruding even a word of question or inquiry. Nor did his ardor stop here; he studied my tastes, my passions, and my disposition, as subjects for successful temptation. I was young, high-couraged, and enthusiastic; and yet he found me indifferent to pleasure, and indisposed to society and its amusements. He knew me to be poor, and yet saw clearly that wealth did not dazzle me. I was humble and unknown; yet no recognition of the high and great could stir my heart nor awaken my ambitions. He was too well read in human nature to accept these as signs of an apathetic and callous disposition: he recognized them rather as evidences of a temperament given up to some one and engrossing theme.
I own that in my utter destitution there was a pleasing flattery to me in this pursuit; and I could not but feel gratified at the zeal with which he seemed to devote himself to comprehend me. He exposed me to the various subjects of temptation which so successfully assail youth; but he perceived that not one could touch the secret cord of my nature. To some I was averse; I was indifferent to others. He took me into society,—that circle of his intimates, which really in conversational excellence surpassed anything I had ever met before; and although I enjoyed it at the time, I could refrain from frequenting it without a regret.
“You are a puzzle to me, Bernard,” said he, addressing me by my former “sobriquet,” which he always used in private; “I want to see you take interest in something, and show that humanity is not dead within you; but nothing seems to touch, nothing to attract you; and yet it was not thus that Sister Ursule first represented you to me. She spoke of you as one that could be warmed by the zeal of a great cause, and whose faculties would expand when once engaged in it. If the monarchy be too mean for your ambition, what say you to the church?”
I pleaded my unworthiness, but he stopped me, saying:
“The career it is that creates the man. Only resolve firmly to fulfil a duty, and mark how capacity comes of mere volition! Ursule herself is an instance of what I say. Bred up amidst those who only cared for the world and its vanities, see what she became by the working of noble devotion, and see what has Margot sunk to for want of it!”
“Margot! what of her?” asked I, eagerly. “You did not tell me that you had tidings of her.”
The sallow cheek of the Abbé seemed tinged with a faint color as I uttered these words with unusual warmth. Whatever his feelings, however, they were quickly under control, as he said,—
“Margot has fallen,—fallen as never before fell one of her high estate!”
I could not speak from emotion, but by my anxious look I entreated him to continue. The recital, as he gave it, was a long one, but briefly told was this: Margot had been “prepared” by her sister for admission into the restored convent of the “Chaise Dieu,” and at length had entered upon her novitiate. This being completed, she had returned home, in compliance with the precepts of the order, to mix in the world and its pleasures for three months,—the abandonment of such temptation being accepted as the best evidence of fitness for the last solemn vow. Dangerous as such an ordeal would seem, yet scarcely ever is one found to fail under it. The long previous training of the mind, the deep impression made by a life of unbroken devotion, and that isolation that comes of a conventual existence, joined to the sense of disgrace attendant on desertion, all combined to make the novice faithful to her first pledge. The trial is, therefore, little other than a formality, and she who goes through it seems rather a martyr suffering torture, than a youthful spirit taking its last fleeting glimpse of joy forever!
To fulfil this accustomed ceremonial—for it was simply such—Margot came home to her father's house. The violent spirit of the Revolutionary period had given way to a more calm and dispassionate tone, and already the possessors of ancient names and titles were returning to the respect they once were held in. In the little village of Linange the old Marquis was now esteemed a high personage,—by some, indeed, was he placed above the “Maire” himself. To do his daughter honor was, therefore, a duty; and every one whose rank gave them the pretension, endeavored to show her some mark of respect and attention. Small as the community was, it had its dignitaries and its leaders, and they vied with each other on this occasion.
Margot had been a favorite, she was about to be a nun,—two claims which appeal to the heart by separate roads; for, while one exacts admiration, the other disarms jealousy. Thus, even they who would have felt the rivalry of her beauty as a subject of irritation, could now bestow their praises on her without a pang. This flattery of admiration from every quarter was too much for the brain of one whose chief fault was vanity. The splendor of her dress, the presents lavished on her, the worship which reached her wherever she went, all served to heighten the fascination; and while Ursule prayed and entreated her to remember that these were but as the flowers that deck the victim at the altar, she would not heed her. How could she? Was not the swell of approving voices which met her in society louder than the faint whisperings of her sister's admonition? How could the cold warnings of prudence stem the torrent of adulation that swept through her heart? She was conscious, too, of her beauty; and, for the first time, felt that its influence was experienced by others. The reputation of the lovely novice spread far and near, and strangers came to Linange to see and speak with her. The little weekly receptions at the “Mairie” were crowded with new faces. Officers from the garrison at Valence, and travellers, were continually arriving; and “La Belle Margot” was a toast pledged by hundreds who never saw her.
From Ursule alone came words of warning. The world of her acquaintance met her with nothing but flattery, and flattery, too, more palpably expressed than is usual, since used to one upon whom, in a few days, life was to close forever.
Margot was told that, to waste her charms on the dull world of a little village was an insult to her own beauty, and that Valence, which so long had heard of should certainly see her. She believed this, and accordingly insisted on going there. At Valence her triumphs were greater than ever; but there she heard that Paris alone could rightly appreciate loveliness such as hers. They told her, too, that it was an age in which beauty was sovereign; and the nation, wearied of a monarchy, had accepted military glory and female loveliness as the true elements of command. The will of the novice is a law at this period, and the old Marquis, who had now regained some remnant of his fortune, set out for Paris.
The most hackneyed in the world's ways knows well with what a sense of enjoyment he finds himself in Paris, the most brilliant of all the cities of the earth. The gorgeous panorama of life that passes there before his eyes has nowhere its equal. What, then, must it have appeared to the fresh enthusiasm of that young girl, eager for pleasure, for excitement and admiration!
At first her whole soul was bent upon the gorgeous spectacle before her,—the splendor of a scene such as she in imagination had never realized. The palaces, the military pomp, the equipages, the dress, were far above all she had conceived of magnificence and display; but the theatres imparted a delight to her beyond all the rest. The ideal world that she saw there typified a world of passionate feeling, of love, joy, ambition, and triumph! What a glorious contrast to the grave-like stillness of the convent,—to the living death of a poor nun's existence! It is true, she had been taught to regard these things as sinful, and as the base conceptions of a depraved nature; she had even come to witness them to confirm the abhorrence in which she held them, and show that they appealed to no one sentiment of her heart. Alas! the experiment was destined to prove too costly.
The splendor, the beauty, the glowing language of the scene, the strains of music, softer and more entrancing than ever swept across her senses,—the very picturesque effect of everything,—varied with every artifice of light and shadow, carried her away, and bore her to an ideal world, where she, too, had her homage of devotion, where her beauty had its worshippers, and she was herself loved. It was in vain that she tried to reason herself out of these fancies, and regard such displays as unreal and fictitious. Had they been so, thought she, they could not appeal, as I see and know they do, to the sympathies of those thousands whose breasts are heaving in suspense, and whose hearts are throbbing in agony. But more than that, she beheld the great actress of the day received with all the homage rendered to a queen in the real world.
If ever there was one calculated to carry with her from the stage into society all the admiration she excited, it was that admirable actress who was then at the very outset of that brilliant career which for nigh half a century adorned the French stage, and rendered it the most celebrated in Europe. Young, beautiful in the highest sense of the word, with a form of perfect mould, gifted and graceful in every gesture, with a voice of thrilling sweetness and a manner that in the highest circles found no superior, Mademoiselle Mars brought to her profession traits and powers, any one of which might have insured success. I remember her well! I can bring to mind the thundering applause that did not wait for her appearance on the boards, but announced her coming; that gorgeous circle of splendid and apparelled beauty, stimulated to a momentary burst of enthusiasm; that waving pit, rocking and heaving like a stormy sea,—the hoarse bray of ten thousand voices, rude and ruthless enough many of them, and yet all raised in homage of one who spoke to the tenderest feelings of the heart, and whose accents were the softest sounds that ever issued from human lips. And I remember, too, how, at the first syllable she uttered, that deafening clamor would cease, and, by an impulse that smote every one of that vast assemblage in the same instant of time, the stillness was like the grave!
Margot became so fascinated by her that she would not lose one single night when she performed. It was at first a pleasure,—it then became a passion with her. The real life she mixed in became poor, weak, and uninteresting beside the world of intense feeling the stage presented. The one seemed all false, unreal, and fictitious; the other truthful, and addressing itself to the heart direct.
Mademoiselle Mars herself at length remarked the lovely girl who, with eager gaze and steadfast, sat each night in the same place, indifferent to everything save the business of the scene. She felt the power she exercised over her, and saw how her whole nature was her captive. Once or twice their eyes actually met, and Margot felt at the moment that she was beneath the glance of one who read her very thoughts, and knew each working of her heart.
A few nights after this, they met in society, and Mademoiselle Mars, without introduction of any kind, approached and spoke to her. The words were few and commonplace,—some half apology for a liberty, an expression of pleasure at meeting her, and a kind of thankful return for the attention by which she marked her. She saw the attraction which the stage possessed for her, and made it the subject of their conversation. The great actress was herself an enthusiast about her art, and when she spoke of it, her genius kindled at once, and her words rose to high eloquence. She told Margot the whole story of her own devotion to the stage,—how she had been destined to the cloister, and that an accidental visit to the theatre at Nancy had determined the entire fortunes of her life. “I felt within me,” said she, “a power of expression that I could not bear to bury beneath the veil of the nun. The poetry that stirred my heart should find its utterance; nor could I endure the stormy conflict of passion that raged within me, save in giving it a form and a shape. I became an actress for myself; and hence perhaps why I have met with the applause of others.”
Margot's acquaintance thus casually formed ripened into intimacy, and quickly into a close friendship. The ritual that prescribed the ordeal through which she was going, ordained that it should be restricted by scarcely a limit. The novice was really to be her own mistress for a brief season in that world she was to leave so soon and forever.
She now accompanied Mademoiselle Mars not only into the wide circle of Parisian society, but into that far more seductive one which consisted of her most intimate friends. Here she met all that boasted of artistic excellence in the capital,—the brilliant dramatist, the witty reviewer of the “Débats,” the great actor,—it was Talma in those days,—the prima donna who was captivating all Europe, and a host of lesser celebrities, all brimful of spirits, joy, and gayety, as people with whom the world went well, and whose very business in it was that of pleasure and amusement. I need not trace the course by which Margot grew to a perfect infatuation with such company. Wiser and calmer heads than hers have been unable to resist the charms of a society made up of such elements, nor was she herself to pass without admiration from them. Her beauty and her youth, the mingled gentleness and energy of her temperament, her girlish modesty, blended with a highly-wrought enthusiasm, were exactly the qualities which they could value and appreciate.
“What gifts for the stage!” said one of the greatest amongst them, one night; “if Mademoiselle was not a Marchioness, she might be a Mars.”
“But I am going to be a nun,” said she, innocently; and a joyous burst of laughter received the speech. “It is quite true,” said she, “and most unkind of you to laugh at me.”
“By Saint Denis, I'll go and turn Trappist or Carmelite to-morrow,” cried one, “if only to pay you a visit in your convent.”
“I wish they'd accept me as almoner to your cloister, Mademoiselle,” said Breslot, the comedian; “I'm getting tired of serious parts, and would like a little light business.”
“Am I the style of thing for a superior, think ye?” said Jossard, the life of the “Français,” throwing over his head a lace scarf of one of the ladies, and assuming a demure look of indescribable drollery.
“How I should like to hear Mademoiselle recite those lines in your play of 'Cécile,' Monsieur Bertignac,” said a famous actress of tragedy. “Her face, figure, voice, and air are perfect for them. I mean the farewell the novice takes of her sister as day is just breaking, and the distant bells of the cloister announce the approach of the ceremony.”
“Where's the book?—who has it?” called out three or four together.
“The copies have been all seized by the police,” said one. “Bertignac was suspected of a covert satire on the authorities.”
“Or they have been bought up for distribution by the Society of 'Bons Livres,'” said another; “and Bertignac is to be made Gentleman of the Pope's Antechamber.”
“Here is one, however, fortunately rescued,” said Mademoiselle Mars, producing the volume, which Jossard quickly snatched from her, and began, in pompous tones, reciting the lines, beginning,—
“An abominable line,” cried one, “and perfectly impossible to give without a bassoon accompaniment for the last word.”
“The epithet, too, is downright nonsense. Why sister of her infancy? Did she cease to be so as she grew up?” said another.
“I wrote the lines after supping with Breslot,” said the author. “One is not accountable for words uttered in moments of debility and hunger.”
“Be the lines what they may, let us hear Mademoiselle read them,” said Talma; “and I mistake greatly but, with all our studied accuracy, we shall learn something from one whose nature is not bound by our trammels.”
To have adventured on such a task, before such an audience, was more than Margot could dare to contemplate, and she grew faint and sick at the bare thought. They were not, however, of that mould which listens to excuses and refusals. The great familiarity which existed amongst them excluded all deference to individual likings or dislikings, and if servants of the public on the stage, off the boards they were the slaves of each other. Margot, almost lifeless with terror, was therefore obliged to comply. At first the words fell from her lips almost inaudibly; by degrees her voice gained strength, and only a tremulous accent betrayed the struggle within her. But at last, when she came to the part where the nun, as if asking herself whether the world and its fascinations had taken no hold upon her heart, confesses, with a burst of spirit-wrung misery, that it was so, and that to leave that joyous sunlight for the gloomy sepulchre of the cloister was worse than death itself, her utterance grew full and strong, her dark eyes flashed, her color heightened, her bosom heaved, and she gave the passage with such a burst of thrilling eloquence that the last words were drowned in thunders of applause, only hushed as they beheld her fall back fainting, and perfectly overcome by her emotions.
“And you think you can take the veil, child?” asked Mademoiselle Mars, when they were alone.
But Margot made no answer.
“You believe, Margot, that it will be possible for you to stifle within you feelings such as these, and that the veil and the cord can change your nature? No, no! If the heart be not dead, it is cruelty to bury it. Yours is not so, and shall have another destiny.”
Mademoiselle Mars at once communicated with the old Marquis, and endeavored to dissuade him from his purpose regarding his granddaughter; but he would not listen to her arguments, nor heed her counsels. At first, indeed, he could not be brought to believe that Margot herself could concur in them. It seemed incredible to him that a child of his house could so far forget her station and self-respect as to avow herself unequal to any sacrifice or any trial, much less one in itself the noblest and the highest of all martyrdom.
“You will see,” cried he, eagerly, “that it is you—not I—have mistaken her. These gauds of the fashionable world have no real attraction for her. Her heart is within those walls, where, in a few days more, she will herself be forever. She shall come and tell you so with her own lips.”
He sent a servant to call her, but she was not to be found! He searched everywhere, but in vain. Margot was gone! From that day forth she was not to be met with. No means were spared in prosecuting the search. Mademoiselle Mars herself, deeply afflicted at any inducements she might have held forth to her, joined eagerly in the pursuit, but to no end.
“But you cannot mean, Abbé,” said I, as he completed the narrative, “that to this very hour no trace of her has been discovered?”
“I will not say so much,” said he; “for once or twice tidings have reached her friends that she was well and happy. The career she had chosen, she well knew would be regarded by her family as a deep degradation; and she only said to one who saw her, 'Tell them that their name shall not be dishonored. As for her who bears it, she deems herself ennobled by the stage!' She was in Italy when last heard of, and in the Italian theatres; and in some of Alfieri's pieces had earned the most triumphant successes. Poor girl! from her very cradle her destiny marked her for misfortune. What a mockery, then, these triumphs if she but recalls the disgrace by which they are purchased!”
Shall I own that Margot's story affected me in a very different manner from what the good Abbé had intended it should? I could neither sympathize with the outraged pride of the old Marquis, the offended dignity of family, nor with the insulted honor of the sacred vocation she had abandoned. My reflections took a very different form, and turned entirely upon the dangers of the career she had adopted,—perils which, from what I could collect of her character, were extremely likely to assail her. She was young, beautiful, gifted, and ambitious; and, above all, she was friendless. What temptations would not assail her,—by what flatteries would she not be beset! Would she be endowed with strength to resist these? Would the dignity of her ancient descent guard her, or would the enthusiasm for her art protect her? These were questions that I could not solve, or, rather, I solved them in many and different ways. For a long time had she occupied a great share in my heart; sometimes I felt towards her as towards a sister. I thought of the hours we had passed side by side over our books,—now working hard and eagerly, now silent and thoughtful, as some train of ideas would wile us away from study, and leave us forgetful of even each other,—till a chance word, a gesture, a sigh, would recall us, and then, interchanging our confessions,—for such they were,—we turned to our books again. But at other times I thought of her as one dearer still than this,—as of one to win whose praise I would adventure anything; whose chance words lingered in my memory, suggestive of many a hope, and, alas! many a fear. It is no graceful reflection to dwell upon, however truthful, that our first loves are the emanations of our self-esteem. They who first teach us to be heroes to our own hearts are our earliest idols. Ay, and with all the changes and chances of life, they have their altars within us to our latest years. Why should it not be so? What limit ought there to be to our gratitude to those who first suggested noble ambitions, high-soaring thoughts, and hopes of a glorious future,—who instilled in us our first pride of manhood, and made us seem worthy of being loved!
Margot had done all this for me when but a child, and now she was a woman, beautiful and gifted! The fame of her genius was world-wide. Did she still remember me?—had she ever a thought for the long past hours when we walked hand-in-hand together, or sat silently in some summer arbor? I recalled all that she had ever said to me, in consolation of the past, or with hope for the future. I pondered over little incidents, meaningless at the time, but now full of their own strong significance; and I felt at last assured that, when she had spoken to me of ambitious darings and high exploits, she had been less exhorting me than giving utterance to the bursting feelings of her own adventurous spirit.
Her outbreaks of impatience, her scarcely suppressed rebellion against the dull ritual of our village life, her ill-disguised suspicion of priestly influence, now rose before me; and I could see that the flame which had burst forth at last, had been smouldering for many a year within her. I could remember, too, the temper, little short of scorn, in which she saw me devote myself to Jesuit readings, and labor hard at the dry tasks the Sister Ursule had prescribed for me. And yet then all my ambitions were of the highest and noblest. I could have braved any dangers, or met any perils, in the career of a missionary! Labor, endurance, suffering, martyrdom itself, had no terror for me. How was it that this spirit did not touch her heart? Were all her sympathies so bound up with the world that every success was valueless that won no favor with mankind? Had she no test for nobility of soul save in recognition of society? When I tried to answer these questions, I suddenly bethought me of my own shortcomings. Where had this ambition led me,—what were its fruits? Had I really pursued the proud path I once tracked out for myself? or, worse thought again, had it no existence whatever? Were devotion, piety, and single-heartedness nothing but imposition, hypocrisy, and priestcraft? Were the bright examples of missionary enterprise only cheats? were all the narratives of their perilous existence but deception and falsehood? My latter experiences of life had served little to exalt the world in my esteem. I had far more frequently come into contact with corruption than with honesty. My experiences were all those of fraud and treachery,—of such, too, from men that the world reputed as honorable and high-minded. There was but one step more, and that a narrow one, to include the priest in the same category with the layman, and deem them all alike rotten and corrupted. I must acknowledge that the Abbé himself gave no contradiction to this unlucky theory. Artful and designing always, he scrupled at nothing to attain an object, and could employ a casuistry to enforce his views far more creditable to his craft than to his candor. I was no stranger to the arts by which he thought to entrap myself. I saw him condescend to habits and associates the very reverse of those he liked, in the hope of pleasing me; and even when narrating the story of Margot's fall,—for such he called it,—-I saw him watching the impression it produced upon me, and canvassing, as it were, the chances that here at length might possibly be found the long-wished-for means of obtaining influence over me.
“I do not ask of you,” said he, as he concluded, “to see all these things as I see them. You knew them in their days of poverty and downfall; you have seen them the inhabitants of an humble village, leading a life of obscurity and privation,—their very pretension to rank and title a thing to conceal; their ancient blood a subject of scorn and insult. But I remember the Marquis de Nipernois a haughty noble in the haughtiest court of Europe; I have see that very Marquis receiving royalty on the steps of his own château, and have witnessed his days of greatness and grandeur.”
“True,” said I, “but even with due allowance for all this, I cannot regard the matter in the same light that you do. To my eyes, there is no such dignity in the life of a nun, nor any such disgrace in that of an actress.”
I said this purposely in the very strongest terms I could employ, to see how he would reply to it.
“And you are right, Gervois,” said he, laying his hand affectionately on mine. “You are right. Genius and goodness can ennoble any station, and there are few places where such qualities exert such influence as the stage.”
I suffered him to continue without interruption in this strain, for every word he spoke served to confirm me in my suspicion of his dishonesty. Mistaking the attention with which I listened for an evidence of conviction, he enlarged upon the theme, and ended at last by the conclusion that to judge of Margot's actions fairly we should first learn her motives.
“Who can tell,” said he, “what good she may not have proposed to herself!—by what years of patient endurance and study—by what passages of suffering and sorrow—she may have planned some great and good object! It is a narrow view of life that limits itself to the day we live in. They who measure their station by the task they perform, and not by its results on the world at large, are but shortsighted mortals; and it is thus I would speak to yourself, Gervois. You are dissatisfied with your path in life. You complain of it as irksome, and even ignoble. Have you never asked yourself, is not this mere egotism? Have I the right to think only of what suits me, and accommodates itself to my caprices? Are there no higher objects than my pleasure or my convenience? Is the great fabric of society of less account than my likings or dislikings? Am I the judge, too, of the influence I may exert over others, or how my actions may sway the destinies of mankind? None should be more able to apply these facts than yourself,—you that in a rank of which you were, I must say unjustly, ashamed, and yet were oftentimes in possession of secrets on which thrones rested and dynasties endured.”
He said much more in the same strain; some of his observations being true and incontestable, and others the mere outpouring of his crafty and subtle intellect. They both alike fell unheeded by me now. Enough for me that I had detected, or fancied I had detected, him. I listened only, from curiosity, and as one listens for the last time.
Yes! I vowed to myself that this should be our last meeting. I could not descend to the meanness of dissimulation, and affect a friendship I did not feel; nor could I expose myself to the chances of a temptation which assailed me in so many shapes and forms. I resolved, therefore, that I would not again visit the Abbé; and my only doubt was, whether I should not formally declare my determination.
He had ceased to speak; and I sat, silently pondering this question in my own mind. I forgot that I was not alone, and was only conscious of my error when I looked up and saw his small and deep-set eyes firmly fixed upon me.
“Well, be it so, Gervois,” said he, calmly; “but let us part friends.”
I started, and felt my face and forehead burning with a sudden flush of shame. There are impulses that sway us sometimes stronger than our reason; but they are hurricanes that pass away quickly, and leave the bark of our destiny to sail on its course unswervingly.
“You 'll come back to me one of these days, and I will be just as ready to say, 'Welcome!' as I now say 'Good-bye! good-bye!'” and, sorrowfully repeating the last word as he went, he waved his hand to me, and withdrew.
For a moment I wished to follow him, to say I know not what; but calmer thoughts prevailed, and I left the house and wandered homewards. That same evening I sent in my demand of resignation, and the next morning came the reply according it. My first thought was a joyful sense of liberty and freedom from a bondage I had long rebelled against; my next was a dreary consciousness of my helpless and friendless condition in life. I opened my little purse upon the table, and spread out its contents before me. There were seven pounds and a few shillings. A portion of my salary was still due to me, but now I would have felt it a degradation to claim it, so odious had the career become in my eyes.
I began to think over the various things for which my capacity might fit me. They seemed a legion when I stood in no need of them, and yet none now rose to my mind without some almost impassable barrier. I knew no art nor handicraft. My habits rendered me unequal to daily labor with my hands. I knew many things en amateur, but not as an artist. I could ride, draw, fence, and had some skill in music; but in not one of these could I compete with the humblest of those who taught them. Foreign languages, too, I could speak, read, and write well; but of any method to communicate their knowledge I had not the vaguest conception. After all, these seemed my best acquirements, and I determined to try and teach them.
With this resolve I went out and spent two pounds of my little capital in books. It was a scanty library, but I arrayed it on a table next my window with pride and satisfaction. I turned over the leaves of my dictionary with something of the feeling with which a settler in a new region of the globe might have wandered through his little territory.
My grammars I regarded as mines whose ores were to enrich me; and my well-thumbed copy of Telemachus, and an odd volume of Lessing's comedies, were in themselves stores of pleasure and amusement. I suppose it is a condition of the human mind that makes our enjoyments in the ratio of the sacrifices they have cost us. I know of myself, that since that day I now speak of, it has been my fortune to be wealthy, to possess around me every luxury my wish could compass, and yet I will own it, that I have never gazed on the well-filled shelves of a costly library, replete with every comfort, with a tithe of the satisfaction I then contemplated the two or three dog-eared volumes that lay before me.
My first few days of liberty were passed in planning out the future. I studied the newspapers in hope of meeting something adapted to my capacity; but though in appearance no lack of these, I invariably found some fatal obstacle intervened to prevent my success. At one place, the requirements were beyond my means; at another, the salary was insufficient for bare support; and at one I remember my functions of teacher were to be united with menial offices against which my pride revolted. I resolved to adventure at last, and opened a little school,—an evening school for those whose occupations made the day too valuable to devote any part of it to education.
At the end of some five weeks I had three pupils; hard-working and hard-worked men they were, who, steadily bent upon advancement in life, now entered upon a career of labor far greater than all they had ever encountered.
Two were about to emigrate, and their studies were geography, with some natural history, and whatever I could acquire for them of information about the resources of a certain portion of Upper Canada. The third was a weaver, and desired to learn French in order to read the works of French mathematicians, at that time sparingly translated into English. He was a man of superior intellect, and capable of a high cultivation, but poor to the very last degree. The thirst for knowledge had possessed him exactly as the passion for gambling lays hold of some other men; he lived for nothing else. The defeats and difficulties he encountered but served to brace him to further efforts, and he seemed to forget all his privations and his poverty in the aim of his glorious pursuit.
To keep in advance of him in his knowledge, I found impossible. All that I could do was to aid him in acquiring French, which, strange to say, presented great difficulties to him. He however made me a partaker of his own enthusiasm, and I worked hard and long at pursuits for which my habits of mind and thought little adapted me. I need scarcely say that all this time my worldly wealth made no progress. My scholars were very poor themselves, and the pittance I earned from them I had oftentimes to refuse accepting. Each day showed my little resources growing smaller, and my hopes held out no better prospect for the future.
Was I to struggle on thus to the last, and sink under the pressure? was now the question that kept perpetually rising to my mind. My poverty had now descended to actual misery; my clothes were ragged; my shoes scarcely held together; more than once an entire day would pass without my breaking my fast.
I lost all zest for life, and wandered about in lonely and unfrequented places, in a half-dreamy state, too vague to be called melancholy. My mind, at this time, vacillated between a childish timidity and a species of almost savage ferocity. At some moments tears would steal along my cheeks, and my heart vibrated to the very finest emotions; at others, I was possessed with an almost demoniac fierceness, that seemed only in search of some object to wreak its vengeance upon. A strange impression, however, haunted me through both these opposite states, and this was, that my life was menaced by some one or other, and that I went in hourly peril of assassination. This sense of danger impressed me with either a miserable timidity, or a reckless, even an insolent, intrepidity.
By degrees, all other thoughts were merged in this one, and every incident, no matter how trifling, served to strengthen and confirm it. Fortunately for my reader, I have no patience to trace out the fancies by which I was haunted. I imagined that kings and emperors were in the conspiracy against me, and that cabinets only plotted how to entrap me. I sold the last remnant of my wardrobe and my few remaining books, and quitted my dwelling, to forsake it again for another, after a few days. Grim want was, at length, before me, and I found myself one morning—it was a cold one of December—with only a few pence remaining. It chanced to be one of my days of calmer temperament; for some previous ones I had been in a state bordering on frenzy; and now the reaction had left me weak and depressed, but reasonable.
I went over, to myself, as well as I was able, all my previous life; I tried to recall the names of the few with whom my fate seemed to connect me, and of whose whereabouts I knew nothing; I canvassed in my own mind how much might be true of these stories which I used to hear of my birth and parentage, and whether the whole might not possibly have been invented to conceal some darker history. Such doubts had possibly not assailed me in other times; but now, with broken hopes and shattered strength, they took a bold possession of me. I actually possessed nothing which might serve to confirm my pretension to station. Documents or papers I had none; nor was there, so far as I knew, a living witness to bear testimony to my narrative. In pondering thus I suddenly remembered that, in the letter which I once had addressed to Mr. Pitt, were enclosed some few memoranda in corroboration of my story.
What they were exactly, and to what extent they went, I could not recall to memory; but it was enough that they were, in some shape, evidences of that which already to my own mind was assuming the character of a delusion.
To this faint chance I now attached myself with a last effort of desperation. Some clew might possibly be found in these papers to guide my search, and my whole thoughts were now bent upon obtaining them. With this object I sat down and wrote a few most respectful lines to the minister, stating the nature of my request, and humbly excusing myself for the intrusion on his attention. A week passed over,—a week of almost starvation,—and yet no reply reached me. I now wrote again more pressingly than before, adding that my circumstances did not admit of delay, and that if, by any mischance, the papers had been lost or mislaid, I still would entreat his Excellency's kindness to—I believe I said recall what he could remember of these documents, and thus supply the void left by their loss. This letter shared the same fate as my former one. I wrote a third time, I knew not in what terms, for I wrote late at night, after a day of mad and fevered impatience. I had fasted for nigh two entire days. An intense thirst never ceased to torture me; and as I wandered wildly here and there, my state alternated between fits of cold shuddering, and a heat that seemed to be burning my very vitals. The delusions of that terrible interval were, doubtless, the precursors of actual madness. I bethought me of every torture I had ever heard of,—of all the sufferings martyrdom had ever borne, but to which death came at last as the comforter; but to me no such release seemed possible. I felt as though I had done all that should invoke it. “Want—sickness—suffering—despair,—are these not enough,” I asked myself,—“must guilt and self-murder be added to the terrible list?” And it was, I remember, with a kind of triumphant pride I determined against this. “If mankind reject me,” said I,—“if they make of me an outcast and a victim, on them shall lie all the shame and all the sin. Enough for me the misery,—I will not have the infamy of my death!”
I have said I wrote a third letter; and to make sure of its coming to hand, I walked with it to Hounslow. The journey occupied me more than half the night, for it was day when I arrived. I delivered it into the hands of a servant, and, saying that I should wait for the answer, I sat down upon a stone bench beside the door. Overcome with fatigue, and utterly exhausted, I fell off asleep,—a sound and, strange to say, delicious sleep, with calm and pleasant dreams. From this I was aroused by a somewhat rude shake, and on looking up saw that a considerable number of persons were around me.
“Stand up, my good fellow,” cried a man, who, though in plain clothes and unarmed, proclaimed by his manner of command that he was in authority; “stand up, if you please.”
I made an effort to obey, but sank down again upon the bench, faint and exhausted.
“He wants a drink of water,” cried one.
“He wants summut to eat,—that's what he wants,” said a laboring man in front of me.
“We'll take him where he'll be properly looked after,” said the first speaker. “Just stand back, good people, and leave me to deal with him.” The crowd retired as he spoke, while, coming nearer, he bent down towards me and said, “Is your name Paul Gervois?”
“I have gone by that name,” I replied.
“And is this in your handwriting?—Mind, you need n't say so if you don't like; I only ask the question out of curiosity.”
“Yes,” said I, eagerly; “what does Mr. Pitt say?—what reply does he make me?”
“Oh, you 'll hear all that time enough. Just try now if you could n't come along with me as far as the road; I 've a carriage there a-waiting.”
I did my best to rise, but weakness again overcame me, and I could only stammer out a few faint words of excuse.
“Don't you see that the man is dying?” said some one, half indignantly; but the constable—for such he was—made some rough answer, and then, stooping down, he passed his arm round me, and lifted me to my feet at once. As he half carried, half pushed me along, I tried to obtain an answer to my former question, “What reply had the minister made me?”
“You 'll know all that time enough, my good friend,” was all the answer I could obtain, as, assisting me into the carriage, he took his place at my side, and gave the word to proceed “to town.”
Not a word passed between us as we went along; for my part, I was too indifferent to life itself to care whither he was conducting me, or with what object. As well as utter listlessness would permit me to think, I surmised that I had been arrested. Is it not a strange confession, that I felt a sense of pleasure in the thought that I had not been utterly forgotten by the world, and that my existence was recognized, even at the cost of an accusation. I conclude that to understand this feeling on my part, one must have been as forlorn and desolate as I was. I experienced neither fear nor curiosity as to what might be the charge against me; nor was my indifference that of conscious innocence,—it was pure carelessness!
I slept that night in a prison, and ate of prison fare,—ravenously and eagerly too; so much so that the turnkey, compassionating me, fetched me some of his own supper to satisfy my cravings. I awoke the next day with a gnawing sense of hunger, intensely painful, far more so than my former suffering from want. That day, and I believe the two following ones, I spent in durance, and at last was conveyed in the prison-cart to the office of a magistrate.
The court was densely crowded, but the cases called seemed commonplace and uninteresting,—at least so they appeared to me, as I tried in vain to follow them. At length the crier called out the name of Paul Gervois, and it was less the words than the directed looks of the vast assembly, as they all turned towards me, showed that I was the representative of that designation.
My sense of shame at this moment prevented my observing accurately what went forward; but I soon rallied, and perceived that my case was then before the court, and my accuser it was who then addressed the bench.
The effort to follow the speaker, to keep up with the narrative that fell from his lips, was indescribably painful to me. I can compare my struggle to nothing save the endeavor of one with a shattered limb to keep pace with the step of his unwounded comrades. The very murmurs of indignation that at times stirred the auditory, increased this feeling to a kind of agony. I knew that it was all-important I should hear and clearly understand what was said, and yet my faculties were unequal to the effort.
The constable who arrested me came forward next, and spoke as to the few words which passed between us, affirming how I had confessed to a certain letter as being written by myself, and that I alone was to be held responsible for its contents. When he left the table, the judge called on me for my defence. I stared vaguely from side to side, and asked to what charge?
“You have been present, prisoner, during the whole of this examination, and have distinctly heard the allegation against you,” replied he. “The charge is for having written a threatening letter to one of his Majesty's ministers of state,—a letter which in itself constitutes a grave offence, but is seriously aggravated as being part of a long-pursued system of intimidation, and enforced by menaces of the most extreme violence.”
I was now suddenly recalled to a clearness of comprehension, and able to follow him as he detailed how a certain Mr. Conway—the private secretary of the minister—proved the receipt of the letter in question, as well as two others in the same hand. The last of these—which constituted the chief allegation against me—was then read aloud; and anything more abominable and detestable it would be hard to conceive. After recapitulating a demand for certain documents,—so vaguely worded as to seem a mere invented and trumped-up request,—it went to speak of great services unrewarded, and honorable zeal not only neglected but persecuted. From this—which so far possessed a certain degree of coherency and reason—it suddenly broke off into the wildest and most savage menaces. It spoke of one who held life so cheaply that he felt no sacrifice in offering it up for the gratification of his vengeance.
“Houseless, friendless, and starving; without food, without a name,—-for you have robbed me of even that,—I have crawled to your door to avenge myself and die!”
Such were the last words of this epistle; and they ring in my ears even yet, with shame and horror.
“I never uttered such sentiments as these,—words like those never escaped me!” cried I, in an agony of indignation.
“There is the letter,” said the magistrate; “do you deny having written it?”
“It is mine,—it is in my own hand,” muttered I, in a voice scarcely audible; and I had to cling to the dock to save myself from falling.
Of what followed I know nothing, absolutely nothing. There seemed to be a short debate and discussion of some kind; and I could catch, here and there, some chance phrase or word that sounded compassionately towards me. At last I heard the magistrate say,—
“If you tell me, Mr. Conway, that Mr. Pitt does not wish to press the charge, nor do more than protect himself from future molestation, I am willing to admit the prisoner to bail—good and sufficient bail—for his conduct hereafter. In default of this, however, I shall feel bound to commit him.”
Again some discussion ensued, terminated by some one asking me if I could produce the required securities.
By this time a slight reaction to my state of debility had set in,—that fevered condition in which passion assumed the ascendant; and I answered, haughtily,—
“Bail for whom? Is it for him to whom they refused bread that they will go surety? Look at these rags, sir,—see these wasted arms,—hear this voice, hoarse as it is with hunger,—and ask yourself who could pledge himself for such misery?”
He uttered some commonplaces—at least so they sounded to me—about there being no necessary connection between want and crime; but I stopped him short, saying,—
“Then you have never fasted, sir,—never known what it was to struggle against the terrible temptations that arise in a famished heart; to sink down upon a bed of straw, and think of the thousands at that moment in affluence, and think of them with hate! No link between want and crime! None, for they are one. Want is envy—want is malice. Its evil counsellors are everywhere,—in the plash of the wave at midnight; in the rustle of the leaves in a dark wood; in the chamber of the sick man: wherever guilt can come, a whispering voice will say, 'Be there!'”
Some friendly bystander here counselled me to calm myself, and not aggravate my position by words of angry impatience. The air of sympathy touched me, and I said no more.
I was committed to prison—remanded, I believe they said—to be called up at some future day, when further inquiries had been made into my mode of life and habits. The sentence—so well as I could understand it—was not a severe one,—imprisonment without labor or any other penalty. I was told that I had reason to be grateful! but gratitude was then at a low ebb within me; for whatever moralists may say, it is an emotion that never thrives on misery. As I was led away, I overheard some comments that were passed upon me. One called me mad, and pitied me; another said I was a practised impostor, far too leniently dealt with; a third classed me with the vile herd of those who live by secret crimes, and hoped for some stringent act against such criminals.
There was not one to ask, Why has he done this thing? and how shall others be saved from his example?
They who followed me with looks of contempt and aversion never guessed that the prison was to me a grateful home; that if the strong door shut out liberty, it excluded starvation too; and that if I could not stray at will through the green lanes, yet my footsteps never bore me to the darksome pond where the black depth whispered—oblivion!