CHAPTER VI.
A LONG INTERVAL OF YEARS.--A CHANGE OF MIND AND ITS CAUSES.
THE last accounts received of the Czar reported him to be at Dantzic. Hehad, however, quitted that place when I arrived there. I lost no timein following him, and presented myself to his Majesty one day afterhis dinner, when he was sitting with one leg in the Czarina's lap and abottle of the best _eau de vie_ before him. I had chosen my time well;he received me most graciously, read my letter from the Regent--aboutwhich, remembering the fate of Bellerophon, I had had certainapprehensions, but which proved to be in the highest degreecomplimentary--and then declared himself extremely happy to see meagain. However parsimonious Peter generally was towards foreigners, Inever had ground for personal complaint on that score. The very next dayI was appointed to a post of honour and profit about the royal person;from this I was transferred to a military station, in which I rosewith great rapidity; and I was only occasionally called from mywarlike duties to be intrusted with diplomatic missions of the highestconfidence and importance.
It is this portion of my life--a portion of nine years to the time ofthe Czar's death--that I shall, in this history, the most concentrateand condense. In truth, were I to dwell upon it at length, I should makelittle more than a mere record of political events; differing, in somerespects, it is true, from the received histories of the time, butcontaining nothing to compensate in utility for the want of interest.That this was the exact age for adventurers, Alberoni and Dubois aresufficient proofs. Never was there a more stirring, active, restlessperiod; never one in which the genius of intrigue was so pervadingly atwork. I was not less fortunate than my brethren. Although scarcely fourand twenty when I entered the Czar's service, my habits of intimacy withmen much older; my customary gravity, reserve, and thought; my freedom,since Isora's death, from youthful levity or excess; my early entranceinto the world; and a countenance prematurely marked with the lines ofreflection and sobered by its hue,--made me appear considerably olderthan I was. I kept my own counsel, and affected to be so: youth is agreat enemy to one's success; and more esteem is often bestowed upon awrinkled brow than a plodding brain.
All the private intelligence which during this space of time I hadreceived from England was far from voluminous. My mother still enjoyedthe quiet of her religious retreat. A fire, arising from the negligenceof a servant, had consumed nearly the whole of Devereux Court (the fineold house! till _that_ went, I thought even England held one friend).Upon this accident, Gerald had gone to London; and, though there was nowno doubt of his having been concerned in the Rebellion of 1715, he hadbeen favourably received at court, and was already renowned throughoutLondon for his pleasures, his excesses, and his munificent profusion.
Montreuil, whose lot seemed to be always to lose by intrigue what hegained by the real solidity of his genius, had embarked very largely inthe rash but gigantic schemes of Gortz and Alberoni; schemes which, hadthey succeeded, would not only have placed a new king upon the Englishthrone, but wrought an utter change over the whole face of Europe.With Alberoni and with Gortz fell Montreuil. He was banished France andSpain; the penalty of death awaited him in Britain; and he was supposedto have thrown himself into some convent in Italy, where his name andhis character were unknown. In this brief intelligence was condensedall my information of the actors in my first scenes of life. I return tothat scene on which I had now entered.
At the age of thirty-three I had acquired a reputation sufficientto content my ambition; my fortune was larger than my wants; I wasa favourite in courts; I had been successful in camps; I had alreadyobtained all that would have rewarded the whole lives of many mensuperior to myself in merit, more ardent than myself in desires. I wasstill young; my appearance, though greatly altered, manhood had ratherimproved than impaired. I had not forestalled my constitution byexcesses, nor worn dry the sources of pleasure by too large a demandupon their capacities; why was it then, at that golden age, in the veryprime and glory of manhood, in the very zenith and summer of success,that a deep, dark, pervading melancholy fell upon me? a melancholy sogloomy that it seemed to me as a thick and impenetrable curtain drawngradually between myself and the blessed light of human enjoyment. Atorpor crept upon me; an indolent, heavy, clinging languor gathered overmy whole frame, the physical and the mental: I sat for hours withoutbook, paper, object, thought, gazing on vacancy, stirring not, feelingnot,--yes, feeling, but feeling only one sensation, a sick, sad,drooping despondency, a sinking in of the heart, a sort of gnawingwithin as if something living were twisted round my vitals, and, findingno other food, preyed, though with a sickly and dull maw, upon _them_.This disease came upon me slowly: it was not till the beginning of thesecond year, from its obvious and palpable commencement, that it grew tothe height that I have described. It began with a distaste to all thatI had been accustomed to enjoy or to pursue. Music, which I had alwayspassionately loved, though from some defect in the organs of hearing, Iwas incapable of attaining the smallest knowledge of the science,music lost all its diviner spells, all its properties of creating a newexistence, a life of dreaming and vain luxuries, within the mind: itbecame only a monotonous sound, less grateful to the languor of myfaculties than an utter and dead stillness. I had never been what isgenerally termed a boon companion; but I had had the social vanities,if not the social tastes; I had insensibly loved the board which echoedwith applause at my sallies, and the comrades who, while they deprecatedmy satire, had been complaisant enough to hail it as wit. One of myweaknesses is a love of show, and I had gratified a feeling not theless cherished because it arose from a petty source, in obtaining for myequipages, my mansion, my banquets, the celebrity which is given no lessto magnificence than to fame: now I grew indifferent alike to the signsof pomp, and to the baubles of taste; praise fell upon a listless ear,and (rare pitch of satiety!) the pleasures that are the offspring ofour foibles delighted me no more. I had early learned from Bolingbrokea love for the converse of men, eminent, whether for wisdom or for wit:the graceful _badinage,_ or the keen critique; the sparkling flight ofthe winged words which circled and rebounded from lip to lip, or thedeep speculation upon the mysterious and unravelled wonders of man, ofNature, and the world; the light maxim upon manners, or the sage inquiryinto the mines of learning, all and each had possessed a link to bind mytemper and my tastes to the graces and fascination of social life. Now anew spirit entered within me: the smile faded from my lip, and the jestdeparted from my tongue; memory seemed no less treacherous than fancy,and deserted me the instant I attempted to enter into those contestsof knowledge in which I had been not undistinguished before. I grewconfused and embarrassed in speech; my words expressed a sense utterlydifferent to that which I had intended to convey; and at last, as myapathy increased, I sat at my own board, silent and lifeless, freezinginto ice the very powers and streams of converse which I had once beenthe foremost to circulate and to warm.
At the time I refer to, I was Minister at one of the small Continentalcourts, where life is a round of unmeaning etiquette and wearisomeceremonials, a daily labour of trifles, a ceaseless pageantry ofnothings. I had been sent there upon one important event; the businessresulting from it had soon ceased, and all the duties that remainedfor me to discharge were of a negative and passive nature. Nothing thatcould arouse, nothing that could occupy faculties that had for yearsbeen so perpetually wound up to a restless excitement, was left for mein this terrible reservoir of _ennui_. I had come thither at once fromthe skirmishing and wild warfare of a Tartar foe; a war in which, thoughthe glory was obscure, the action was perpetual and exciting. I had comethither, and the change was as if I had passed from a mountain stream toa stagnant pool. Society at this court reminded me of a state funeral:everything was pompous and lugubrious, even to the drapery--even tothe feathers--which, in other scenes, would have been consecrated toassociations of levity or of grace; the hourly pageant swept on slow,tedious, mournful, and the object of the attendants was only to entombthe Pleasure which they affected celebrate. What a change for
the wild,the strange, the novel, the intriguing, the varying life, which, whetherin courts or camps, I had hitherto led! The internal change that cameover myself is scarcely to be wondered at; the winds stood still, andthe straw they had blown from quarter to quarter, whether in anger or insport, began to moulder upon the spot where they had left it.
From this cessation of the aims, hopes, and thoughts of life I wasawakened by the spreading, as it were, of another disease: the dead,dull, aching pain at my heart was succeeded by one acute and intense;the absence of thought gave way to one thought more terrible, more dark,more despairing than any which had haunted me since the first year ofIsora's death; and from a numbness and pause, as it were, of existence,existence became too keen and intolerable a sense. I will enter into anexplanation.
At the court of------, there was an Italian, not uncelebrated for hiswisdom, nor unbeloved for an innocence and integrity of life rarelyindeed to be met with among his countrymen. The acquaintance of thisman, who was about fifty years of age, and who was devoted almostexclusively to the pursuit of philosophical science, I had sedulouslycultivated. His conversation pleased me; his wisdom improved; and hisbenevolence, which reminded me of the traits of La Fontaine, it was soinfantine, made me incline to love him. Upon the growth of the fearfulmalady of mind which seized me, I had discontinued my visits and myinvitations to the Italian; and Bezoni (so was he called) felt a littleoffended by my neglect. As soon, however, as he discovered my stateof mind, the good man's resentment left him. He forced himself uponmy solitude, and would sit by me whole evenings,--sometimes withoutexchanging a word, sometimes with vain attempts to interest, to arouse,or to amuse me.
At last, one evening--it was the era of a fearful suffering to me--ourconversation turned upon those subjects which are at once the mostimportant and the most rarely discussed. We spoke of _religion_. Wefirst talked upon the theology of revealed religion. As Bezoni warmedinto candour, I perceived that his doctrines differed from my own, andthat he inly disbelieved that divine creed which Christians profess toadore. From a dispute on the ground of faith, we came to one upon themore debatable ground of reason. We turned from the subject of revealedto that of natural religion; and we entered long and earnestly into thatgrandest of all earthly speculations,--the metaphysical proofs of theimmortality of the soul. Again the sentiments of Bezoni were opposed tomine. He was a believer in the dark doctrine which teaches that man isdust and that all things are forgotten in the grave. He expressed hisopinions with a clearness and precision the more impressive becausetotally devoid of cavil and of rhetoric. I listened in silence, but witha deep and most chilling dismay. Even now I think I see the man as hesat before me, the light of the lamp falling on his high forehead anddark features; even now I think I hear his calm, low voice--the silvervoice of his country--stealing to my heart, and withering the only pureand unsullied hope which I yet cherished there.
Bezoni left me, unconscious of the anguish he bequeathed me, to thinkover all he had said. I did not sleep nor even retire to bed. I laidmy head upon my hands, and surrendered myself to turbulent yet intensereflection. Every man who has lived much in the world, and conversedwith its various tribes, has, I fear, met with many who, on thismomentous subject, profess the same tenets as Bezoni. But he was thefirst person I had met of that sect who had evidently thought long anddeeply upon the creed he had embraced. He was not a voluptuary nor aboaster nor a wit. He had not been misled by the delusions either ofvanity or of the senses. He was a man pure, innocent, modest, fullof all tender charities and meek dispositions towards mankind: it wasevidently his interest to believe in a future state; he could have hadnothing to fear from it. Not a single passion did he cherish which thelaws of another world would have condemned. Add to this, what I haveobserved before, that he was not a man fond of the display of intellect,nor one that brought to the discussions of wisdom the artillery of wit.He was grave, humble, and self-diffident, beyond all beings. I wouldhave given a kingdom to have found something in the advocate by which Icould have condemned the cause: I could not, and I was wretched.
I spent the whole of the next week among my books. I ransacked whateverin my scanty library the theologians had written or the philosophershad bequeathed upon that mighty secret. I arranged their arguments in mymind. I armed myself with their weapons. I felt my heart spring joyouslywithin me as I felt the strength I had acquired, and I sent to thephilosopher to visit me, that I might conquer and confute him. He came;but he spoke with pain and reluctance. He saw that I had taken thematter far more deeply to heart than he could have supposed it possiblein a courtier and a man of fortune and the world. Little did he know ofme or my secret soul. I broke down his reserve at last. I unrolled myarguments. I answered his, and we spent the whole night in controversy.He left me, and I was more bewildered than ever.
To speak truth, he had devoted years to the subject: I had devoted onlya week. He had come to his conclusions step by step; he had reachedthe great ultimatum with slowness, with care, and, he confessed, withanguish and with reluctance. What a match was I, who brought a hastytemper, and a limited reflection on that subject to a reasoner likethis? His candour staggered and chilled me even more than his logic.Arguments that occurred not to me, upon my side of the question, _he_stated at length and with force; I heard, and, till he replied tothem, I deemed they were unanswerable: the reply came, and I had nocounter-word. A meeting of this nature was often repeated; and when heleft me, tears crept into my wild eyes, my heart melted within me, and Iwept!
I must now enter more precisely than I have yet done into my state ofmind upon religious matters at the time this dispute with the Italianoccurred. To speak candidly, I had been far less shocked with hisopposition to me upon matters of doctrinal faith than with that uponmatters of abstract reasoning. Bred a Roman Catholic, though pride,consistency, custom, made me externally adhere to the Papal Church, Iinly perceived its errors and smiled at its superstitions. And in thebusy world, where so little but present objects or _human_ anticipationsof the future engross the attention, I had never given the subject thatconsideration which would have enabled me (as it has since) to separatethe dogmas of the priest from the precepts of the Saviour, and thusconfirmed my belief as the Christian by the very means which wouldhave loosened it as the Sectarian. So that at the time Bezoni knew me acertain indifference to--perhaps arising from an ignorance of--doctrinalpoints, rendered me little hurt by arguments against opinions which Iembraced indeed, but with a lukewarm and imperfect affection. But it wasfar otherwise upon abstract points of reasoning, far otherwise, whenthe hope of surviving this frail and most unhallowed being was to bedestroyed: I might have been indifferent to cavil upon _what_ was theword of God, but never to question of the justice of God Himself. Inthe whole world there was not a more ardent believer in our imperishablenature, nor one more deeply interested in the belief. Do not let it besupposed that because I have not often recurred to Isora's death (orbecause I have continued my history in a jesting and light tone) thatthat event ever passed from the memory which it had turned to bitternessand gall. Never in the masses of intrigue, in the festivals of pleasure,in the tumults of ambition, in the blaze of a licentious court, orby the rude tents of a barbarous host,--never, my buried love, had Iforgotten thee! That remembrance, had no other cause existed, wouldhave led me to God. Every night, in whatever toils or whatever objects,whatever failures or triumphs, the day had been consumed; every nightbefore I laid my head upon my widowed and lonely pillow,--I had kneltdown and lifted my heart to Heaven, blending the hopes of that Heavenwith the memory and the vision of Isora. Prayer had seemed to me acommune not only with the living God, but with the dead by whom Hisdwelling is surrounded. Pleasant and soft was it to turn to one thought,to which all the holiest portions of my nature clung between thewearying acts of this hard and harsh drama of existence. Even thebitterness of Isora's early and unavenged death passed away when Ithought of the heaven to which she was gone, and in which, though Ijourneyed now through sin and travail and re
cked little if the paths ofothers differed from my own, I yet trusted with a solemn trust thatI should meet her at last. There was I to merit her with a love asundying, and at length as pure, as her own. It was this that at thestated hour in which, after my prayer for our reunion, I surrendered myspirit to the bright and wild visions of her far, but _not impassable_home,--it was this which for that single hour made all around me aparadise of delighted thoughts! It was not the little earth, nor thecold sky, nor the changing wave, nor the perishable turf,--no, nor thedead wall and the narrow chamber,--which were around me then! No dreamerever was so far from the localities of flesh and life as I was in thatenchanted hour: a light seemed to settle upon all things around me; hervoice murmured on my ear, her kisses melted on my brow; I shut my eyes,and I fancied that I beheld her.
Wherefore was this comfort? Whence came the spell which admitted me tothis fairy land? What was the source of the hope and the rapture and thedelusion? Was it not the deep certainty that _Isora yet existed_; thather spirit, her nature, her love were preserved, were inviolate, werethe same? That they watched over me yet, that she knew that in that hourI was with her, that she felt my prayer, that even then she anticipatedthe moment when my soul should burst the human prison-house and be oncemore blended with her own?
What! and was this to be no more? Were those mystic and sweet revealingsto be mute to me forever? Were my thoughts of Isora to be henceforthbounded to the charnel-house and the worm? Was she indeed _no more_? _Nomore_, oh, intolerable despair! Why, there was not a thing I had onceknown, not a dog that I had caressed, not a book that I had read,which I could know that I should see _no more_, and, knowing, notfeel something of regret. No more! were we, indeed, parted forever andforever? Had she gone in her young years, with her warm affections, hernew hopes, all green and unwithered at her heart, at once into dust,stillness, ice? And had I known her only for one year, one little year,to see her torn from me by a violent and bloody death, and to be left amourner in this vast and eternal charnel, without a solitary consolationor a gleam of hope? Was the earth to be henceforth a mere mass conjuredfrom the bones and fattened by the clay of our dead sires? Were thestars and the moon to be mere atoms and specks of a chill light, nolonger worlds, which the ardent spirit might hereafter reach and befitted to enjoy? Was the heaven--the tender, blue, loving heaven, inwhose far regions I had dreamed was Isora's home, and had, therefore,grown better and happier when I gazed upon it--to be nothing but cloudand air? and had the love which had seemed so immortal, and so springingfrom that which had not blent itself with mortality, been but a grosslamp fed only by the properties of a brute nature, and placed in a darkcell of clay, to glimmer, to burn, and to expire with the frail wallswhich it had illumined? Dust, death, worms,--were these the heritage oflove and hope, of thought, of passion, of all that breathed and kindledand exalted and _created_ within?
Could I contemplate this idea; could I believe it possible? _I couldnot_. But against the abstract, the logical arguments for this idea,had I a reply? I shudder as I write that at that time I had not! Iendeavoured to fix my whole thoughts to the study of those subtlereasonings which I had hitherto so imperfectly conned: but my mind wasjarring, irresolute, bewildered, confused; my stake seemed too vast toallow me coolness for the game.
Whoever has had cause for some refined and deep study in the midst ofthe noisy and loud world may perhaps readily comprehend that feelingwhich now possessed me; a feeling that it was utterly impossible toabstract and concentrate one's thoughts, while at the mercy of everyintruder, and fevered and fretful by every disturbance. Men early andlong accustomed to mingle such reflections with the avocations of courtsand cities have grown callous to these interruptions, and it has been inthe very heart of the multitude that the profoundest speculations havebeen cherished and produced; but I was not of this mould. The world,which before had been distasteful, now grew insufferable; I longed forsome seclusion, some utter solitude, some quiet and unpenetrated nook,that I might give my undivided mind to the knowledge of these things,and build the tower of divine reasonings by which I might ascend toheaven. It was at this time, and in the midst of my fiercest internalconflict, that the great Czar died, and I was suddenly recalled toRussia.
"Now," I said, when I heard of my release, "now shall my wishes befulfilled!"
I sent to Bezoni. He came, but he refused, as indeed he had for sometime done, to speak to me further upon the question which so wildlyengrossed me. "I forgive you," said I, when we parted, "I forgive youfor all that you have cost me: I feel that the moment is now at handwhen my faith shall frame a weapon wherewith to triumph over yours!"
Father in Heaven! thanks be to Thee that my doubts were at last removed,and the cloud rolled away from my soul.
Bezoni embraced me, and wept over me. "All good men," said he, "have amighty interest in your success; for me there is nothing dark, even inthe mute grave, if it covers the ashes of one who has loved and servedhis brethren, and done, with a wilful heart, no living creature wrong."
Soon afterwards the Italian lost his life in attending the victims of afearful and contagious disease, whom even the regular practitioners ofthe healing art hesitated to visit.
At this moment I am, in the strictest acceptation of the words, abeliever and a Christian. I have neither anxiety nor doubt upon thenoblest and the most comforting of all creeds, and I am grateful, amongthe other blessings which faith has brought me,--I am grateful thatit has brought me CHARITY! Dark to all human beings was Bezoni'sdoctrine,--dark, above all, to those who have mourned on earth; sowithering to all the hopes which cling the most enduringly to theheart was his unhappy creed that he who knows how inseparably,though insensibly, our moral legislation is woven with our supposedself-interest will scarcely marvel at, even while he condemns, theunwise and unholy persecution which that creed universally sustains!Many a most wretched hour, many a pang of agony and despair, did thosedoctrines inflict upon myself; but I know that the intention of Bezoniwas benevolence and that the practice of his life was virtue: andwhile my reason tells me that God will not punish the reluctant andinvoluntary error of one to whom all God's creatures were so dear, myreligion bids me hope that I shall meet him in that world where no error_is_, and where the Great Spirit to whom all human passions are unknownavenges the momentary doubt of His justice by a proof of the infinity ofHis mercy.
BOOK VI.