Chapter 1
“And thou art far,
Asia! who, when my being overflowed,
Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine,
Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.”
Shelley's Promotheus.
Our tents were pitched in the vestibule of the house
of Crœsus, on the natural terrace which was once the
imperial site of Sardis. A humpbacked Dutch artist,
who had been in the service of Lady Hester Stanhope
as a draughtsman, and who had lingered about between
Jerusalem and the Nile till he was as much at
home in the East as a Hajji or a crocodile; an Englishman
qualifying himself for “The Travellers';”
a Smyrniote merchant in figs and opium; Job Smith
(my inseprable shadow) and myself, composed a
party at this time, (August, 1834), rambling about
Asia Minor in turbans and Turkish saddles, and pitching
our tents, and cooking our pilau, wherever it
pleased Heaven and the inexorable Suridji who was
our guide and caterer.
I thought at the time that I would compound to
abandon all the romance of that renowned spot, for a
clean shirt and something softer than a marble frustrum
-- 004 --
[figure description] Page 004.[end figure description]
for a pillow; but in the distance of memory, and myself
at this present in a deep morocco chair in the
library at “The Travellers',” that same scene in the
ruins of Sardis does not seem destitute of interest.
It was about four in the lazy summer afternoon.
We had arrived at Sardis at mid-day, and after a
quarrel whether we should eat immediately or wait till
the fashionable hour of three, the wooden dish containing
two chickens buried in a tumulus of rice,
shaped (in compliment to the spirit of the spot) like
the Mound of Alyattis in the plain below, was placed
in the centre of a marble pedestal; and with Job and
the Dutchman seated on the prostrate column dislodged
for our benefit, and the remainder of the party squatted
in the high grass, which grew in the royal palace as if
it had no memory of the foot-prints of the Kings of
Lydia, we spooned away at the saturated rice, and
pulled the smothered chickens to pieces with an independence
of knives and forks that was worthy of the
“certain poor man in Attica.” Old Solon himself,
who stood, we will suppose, while reproving the ostentatious
monarch, at the base of that very column now
ridden astride by an inhabitant of a country of which
he never dreamed,—(at least it strikes me there is no
mention of the Yankees in his philosophy,)—the old
greybeard of the Academy himself, I say, would have
been edified at the primitive simplicity of our repast.
The salt (he would have asked if it was Attic) was
contained in a ragged play-bill, which the Dutchman
had purloined as a specimen of modern Greek, from
the side of a house in Corfu; the mustard was in a
cracked powder-horn, which had been slung at the
breast of old Whalley the regicide, in the American
revolution, and which Job had brought from the Green
Mountains, and held, till its present base uses, in religious
veneration; the ham (I should have mentioned
-- 005 --
[figure description] Page 005.[end figure description]
that respectable entremet before) was half enveloped
in a copy of the “Morning Post;” and the bread,
which had been seven days out from Smyrna, and had
been kept warm in the Suridji's saddle bags twelve
hours in the twenty-four, lay in disjecta membra around
the marble table, with marks of vain but persevering
attacks in its nibbled edges. The luxury of our larder
was comprised in a flask which had once held Harvey's
sauce, and though the last drop had served as a
condiment to a roasted kid some three months before,
in the Acropolis at Athens, we still clung to it with
affectionate remembrance, and it was offered and refused
daily around the table for the melancholy pleasure
of hearing the mention of its name. It was unlucky
that the only thing which the place afforded of the
best quality, and in sufficient quantities, was precisely
the one thing in the world for which no individual of
the party had any particular relish—water! It was
brought in a gourd from the bed of the “golden-sanded
Pactolus,” rippling away to the plain within pistolshot
of the dining-room; but, to the shame of our simplicity
I must record, that a high-shouldered jug of
the rough wine of Samos, trodden out by the feet of
the lovely slaves of the ægean, and bought for a farthing
the bottle, went oftener to the unclassical lips of
the company. Methinks, now, (the wind east in London,
and the day wet and abominable,) I could barter
the dinner that I shall presently discuss, with its suite
of sherries and anchovy, to kneel down by that golden
river in the sunshine, and drink a draught of pure
lymph under the sky of effeminate Asia. Yet, when
I was there—so rarely do we recognise happiness till
she is gone—I wished myself (where I had never been)
in “merry England.” “Merry,” quotha? Scratch
it out, and write comfortable, I have seen none
“merry” in England, save those who have most cause
-- 006 --
[figure description] Page 006.[end figure description]
to be sad—the abandoned of themselves and the
world!
Out of the reach of ladies and the laws of society,
the most refined persons return very much to the natural
instincts from which they have departed in the
progress of civilization. Job rolled off the marble
column when there was nothing more to eat, and went
to sleep with the marks of the Samian wine turning
up the corners of his mouth like the salacious grin of
a satyr. The Dutchman got his hump into a hollow,
and buried his head in the long grass with the same obedience
to the prompting of nature, and idem the Suridji
and the fig-merchant, leaving me seated alone among the
promiscuous ruins of Sardis and the dinner. The
dish of philosophy I had with myself on that occasion
will appear as a rechauffe in my novel; (I intend to
write one;) but meantime I may as well give you the
practical inference; that, as sleeping after dinner is
evidently Nature's law, Washington Irving is highly
excusable for the practice, and he would be a friend of
reason who should introduce couches and coffee at that
somnolent period, the digestive nap taking the place
of the indigestible politics usually forced upon the company
on the disappearance of the ladies. Why should
the world be wedded for ever to these bigoted inconveniences!
The grand track from the south and west of Asia
Minor passes along the plain between the lofty Acropolis
of Sardis and the tombs of her kings; and with
the snore of travellers from five different nations in
my ear, I sat and counted the camels in one of the
immense caravans never out of sight in the valley of
the Hermus. The long procession of those brown
monsters wound slowly past on their way to Smyrna,
their enormous burthens covered with colored trappings
and swaying backward and forward with their
-- 007 --
[figure description] Page 007.[end figure description]
disjointed gait, and their turbaned masters dozing on the
backs of the small asses of the East, leading each a
score by the tether at his back; the tinkling of their
hundred bells swarmed up through the hot air of the
afternoon with the drowsiest of monotones; the native
oleanders, slender-leaved and tall, and just now in all
their glory, with a color in their bright flowers stolen
from the bleeding lips of Houris, brightened the plains
of Lydia like the flush of sunset lying low on the earth;
the black goats of uncounted herds browsed along the
ancient Sarabat, with their bearded faces turned every
one to the faintly coming wind: the eagles (that abound
now in the mountains from which Sardis and a hundred
silent cities once scared their bold progenitors) sailed
slowly and fearlessly around the airy citadel that flung
open its gates to the Lacedæmonian; and, gradually,
as you may have lost yourself in this tangled paragraph
dear reader, my senses became confused among the
objects it enumerates, and I fell asleep with the speech
of Solon in my ears, and my back to the crumbling
portico of Crœsus.
The Dutchman was drawing my picture when I
awoke, the sun was setting, and Job and the Suridji
were making tea. I am not a very picturesque object,
generally speaking, but done as a wild Arab lying at
the base of a column in a white turban, with a stork's
nest over my head, I am not so ill-looking as you would
suppose. As the Dutchman drew for gelt, and hoped
to sell his picture to some traveller at Smyrna who
would take that opportunity to affirm in his book that
he had been at Sardis, (as vide his own sketch,) I do
not despair of seeing myself yet in lithograph. And,
talking of pictures, I would give something now if I
had engaged that hump-backed draughtsman to make
me a sketch of Job, squat on his hams before a fire in
the wall, and making tea in a tin pot with a “malig
-- 008 --
[figure description] Page 008.[end figure description]
nant and turbaned Turk,” feeding the blaze with the
dry thorn of Syria.[1] It would have been consolation
to his respectable mother, whom he left in the Green
Mountains, (wondering what he could have to do with
following such a scapegrace as myself through the
world,) to have seen him in the turban of a Hajji taking
his tea quietly in ancient Lydia. The green turban,
the sign of the Hajji, belonged more properly to
myself; for though it was Job who went bodily to Jerusalem,
(leaving me ill of a fig-fever at Smyrna,) the
sanctity of the pilgrimage by the Mahomedan law falls
on him who provides the pilgrim with scallop-shell and
sandals, aptly figured forth in this case, we will suppose,
by the sixty American dollars paid by myself for
his voyage to Jaffa and back. The Suridji was a
Hajji, too, and it was amusing to see Job, who respected
every man's religious opinions, and had a little
vanity besides in sharing with the Turk† the dignity of
a pilgrimage to the sacred city, washing his knees and
elbows at the hour of prayer, and considerately, but
very much to his own inconvenience, transferring the
ham of the unclean beast from the Mussulman's saddlebags
to his own. It was a delicate sacrifice to a pagan's
prejudices worthy of Socrates or a Christian.
-- 009 --
[figure description] Page 009.[end figure description]
In all simple states of society, sunset is the hour of
better angels. The traveller in the desert remembers
his home,—the sea-tost boy his mother and her last
words,—the Turk talks, for a wonder, and the chattering
Greek is silent, for the same,—the Italian forgets
his moustache, and hums la patria,—and the Englishman
delivers himself of the society of his companions,
and “takes a walk.” It is something in the influences
of the hour, and I shall take trouble, some day, to
maintain that morn, noon, and midnight have their ministry
as well, and exercise each an unobserved but salutary
and peculiar office on the feelings.
We all separated “after tea;” the Suridji was off to
find a tethering place for his horses; the Englishman
strolled away by himself to a group of the “tents of
Kedar” far down in the valley with their herds and
herdsmen; the Smyrniote merchant sat by the cameltrack
at the foot of the hill waiting for the passing of a
caravan; the Green Mountaineer was wandering around
the ruins of the apostolic church; the Dutchman was
sketching the two Ionic shafts of the fair temple of
Cybele; and I, with a passion for running water which
I have elsewhere alluded to, idled by the green bank
of the Pactolus, dreaming sometimes of Gyges and Alexander,
and sometimes of you, dear Mary!
I passed Job on my way, for the four walls over
which the “Angel of the Church of Sardis” kept his
brooding watch in the days of the Apocalypse stand
not far from the swelling bank of the Pactolus, and
nearly in a line between it and the palace of Crœsus. I
must say that my heart almost stood still with awe as I
stepped over the threshold. In the next moment, the
strong and never-wasting under-current of early
-- 010 --
[figure description] Page 010.[end figure description]
religious feeling rushed back on me, and I involuntarily
uncovered my head, and felt myself stricken with the
spell of holy ground. My friend, who was never without
the Bible that was his mother's parting gift, sat on
the end of the broken wall of the vestibule with the sacred
volume open at the Revelations in his hand.
“I think, Philip,” said he, as I stood looking at him
in silence, “I think my mother will have been told by
an angel that I am here.”
He spoke with a solemnity that, spite of every other
feeling, seemed to me as weighty and true as prophecy.
“Listen, Philip,” said he, “it will be something to
tell your mother as well as mine, that we have read the
Apocalypse together in the Church of Sardis.”
I listened with what I never thought to have heard
in Asia—my mother's voice loud at my heart, as I had
heard it in prayer in my childhood:—
“Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have
not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with
me in white: for they are worthy.”
I strolled on. A little farther up the Pactolus stood
the Temple of Cybele. The church to which “He”
spoke “who hath the seven Spirits of God and the seven
stars,” was a small and humble ruin of brick and mortar;
but, of the Temple of the Heathen Mother of the
World, remained two fair columns of marble with their
curiously carved capitals, and the earth around was
strewn with the gigantic frusta of an edifice, stately
even in the fragments of its prostration. I saw for a
moment the religion of Jupiter and of Christ with the
eyes of Crœsus and the philosopher from Athens; and
then I turned to the living nations that I had left to
wander among these dead empires, and looking still
on the eloquent monuments of what these religions
were, thought of them as they are, in wide-spread Christendom!
-- 011 --
[figure description] Page 011.[end figure description]
We visit Rome and Athens, and walk over the ruined
temples of their gods of wood and stone, and take pride
to ourselves that our imaginations awake the “spirit of
the spot.” But the primitive church of Christ, over
which an angel of God kept watch, whose undefiled
members, if there is truth in holy writ, are now “walkking
with him in white” before the face of the Almighty—
a spot on which the Saviour and his Apostles prayed,
and for whose weal, with the other churches of Asia,
the sublime revelation was made to John—this, the
while, is an unvisited shrine, and the “classic” of Pagan
idolatry is dearer to the memories of men than the
holy antiquities of a religion they profess!
The Ionic capitals of the two fair columns of the fallen
temple were still tinged with rosy light on the side
towards the sunset, when the full moon, rising in the
east, burnished the other like a shaft of silver. The
two lights mingled in the sky in a twilight of opal.
“Job,” said I, stooping to reach a handful of sand
as we strolled up the western bank of the river, “can
you resolve me why the poets have chosen to call this
pretty stream the `golden-sanded Pactolus?' Did you
ever see sand of a duller grey?”
“As easy as give you a reason,” answered Job “why
we found the turbidus Hermus, yesterday, the clearest
stream we have forded—why I am no more beautiful
than before, though I have bathed like Venus in the
Scamander—why the pumice of Naxos no longer reduces
the female bust to its virgin proportions—and why
Smyrna and Malta are not the best places for figs and
oranges!”
“And why the old King of Lydia, who possessed
the invisible ring, and kept a devil in his dog's collar,
-- 012 --
[figure description] Page 012.[end figure description]
lies quietly under the earth in the plain below us, and
his ring and his devil were not bequeathed to his successors.
What a pleasant auxiliary to sin must have
been that invisible ring! Spirit of Gyges, thrust thy
finger out of the earth, and commit it once more to a
mortal! Sit down, my dear monster, and let us speculate
in this bright moonshine on the enormities we
would commit.”
As Job was proceeding, in a cautious periphrasis, to
rebuke my irreverent familiarity with the Prince of
Darkness and his works, the twilight had deepened, and
my eye was caught by a steady light twinkling far
above us in the ascending bed of the river. The green
valley wound down from the rear of the Acropolis, and
the single frowning tower stood in broken and strong
relief against the sky, and from the mass of shadow below
peered out, like a star from a cloud-rack, the steady
blaze of a lamp.
“Allons! Job!” said I, making sure of an adventure,
“let us see for whose pleasure a lamp is lit in the
solitude of this ruined city.”
“I could not answer to your honored mother,” said
my scrupulous friend, “if I did not remind you that
this is a spot much frequented by robbers, and that
probably no honest man harbors at that inconvenient
altitude.”
I made a leap over a half-buried frieze that had served
me as a pillow, and commenced the ascent.
“I could as ill answer to your anxious parent,” said
Job, following with uncommon alacrity, “if I did not
partake your dangers when they are inevitable.”
We scrambled up with some difficulty in the darkness,
now rolling into an unseen hollow, now stumbling
over a block of marble, held fast one moment by the
lacerating hooked thorn of Syria, and the next brought
to a stand-still by impenetrable thickets of brushwood.
-- 013 --
[figure description] Page 013.[end figure description]
With a half-hour's toil, however, we stood on a clear
platform of grass, panting and hot, and as I was suggesting
to Job that we had possibly got too high, he
laid his hand on my arm, and, with a sign of silence,
drew me down on the grass beside him.
In a small fairy amphitheatre, half-encircled by a
bend of the Pactolus, and lying a few feet below the
small platform from which we looked, lay six low tents,
disposed in a crescent opposite to that of the stream,
and enclosing a circular area of bright and dewy grass,
of scarce ten feet in diameter. The tents were round,
and laced neatly with wicker work, with their curtain
doors opening inward upon the circle. In the largest
one, which faced nearly down the valley, hung a small
iron lamp of an antique shape, with a wick alight in
one of its two projecting extremities, and beneath it
swung a basket cradle suspended between two stakes,
and kept in motion by a woman apparently of about
forty, whose beauty, but for another more attractive object,
would have rewarded us alone for our toil. The
other tents were closed, and seemed unoccupied, but the
curtain of the one into which our eyes were now straining
with intense eagerness, was looped entirely back to
give admission to the cool night-air, and, in and out,
between the light of the lamp and the full moon, stole
on naked feet a girl of fifteen, whose exqisite symmetry
and unconscious but divine grace of movement filled
my sense of beauty as it had never been filled by the
divinest chisel of the Tribune. She was of the height
and mould of the younger water-nymph in Gibson's
Hylas,[2] with limbs and lips that, had I created and
warmed her to life like Pygmalion, I should have just
-- 014 --
[figure description] Page 014.[end figure description]
hesitated whether or not they wanted another half-shade
of fulness. The large shawl of the East, which
was attached to her girdle, and in more guarded hours
concealed all but her eyes, hung in loose folds from her
waist to her heels, leaving her bust and smoothly-rounded
shoulders entirely bare; and, in strong relief
even upon her clear brown skin, the flakes of her glossy
and raven hair floated over her back, and swept around
her with a grace of a cloud in her indolent motions. A
short petticoat of striped Brusa silk stretched to her
knees, and below appeared the full trowser of the East,
of the same material, narrowed at the ankle, and bound
with what looked in the moonlight an anklet of silver.
A profusion of rings on her fingers, and a gold sequin
on her forehead, suspended from a colored fillet, completed
her dress, and left nothing to be added by the
prude or the painter. She was at that ravishing and
divinest moment of female life, when almost the next
hour would complete her womanhood—like the lotus
ere it lays back to the prying moonlight the snowy leaf
nearest its heart.
She was employed in filling a large jar which stood
at the back of the tent, with water from the Pactolus,
and as she turned with her emptied pitcher, and came
under the full blaze of the lamp in her way outward,
treading lightly lest she should disturb the slumber of
the child in the cradle, and pressing her two round
hands closely to the sides of the vessel, the gradual compression
of my arm by the bony hand which still held
it for sympathy, satisfied me that my own leaping pulse
of admiration found an answering beat in the bosom of
my friend. A silent nod from the woman, whose Greek
profile was turned to us under the lamplight, informed
the lovely water-bearer that her labors were at an end;
and with a gesture expressive of heat, she drew out the
shawl from her girdle, untied the short petticoat, and
-- 015 --
[figure description] Page 015.[end figure description]
threw them aside, and then tripping out into the moonlight,
with only the full silken trowsers from her waist
to her ankles, she sat down on the brink of the small
stream, and with her feet in the water, dropped her
head on her knees, and sat as motionless as marble.
“Gibson should see her now,” I whispered to Job,
“with the glance of the moonlight on that dimpled and
polished back, and her almost glittering hair veiling
about her in such masses, like folds of gossamer!”
“And those slender fingers clasped over her knees,
and the air of melancholy repose which is breathed into
her attitude, and which seems inseparable from those
indolent Asiatics. She is probably a gipsy.”
The noise of the water dashing over a small cascade
a little farther up the stream had covered our approach
and rendered our whispers inaudible. Job's conjecture
was probably right, and we had stumbled on a small
encampment of gipsies,—the men possibly asleep in
those closed tents, or possibly absent at Smyrna. After
a little consultation, I agreed with Job that it would be
impolitic to alarm the camp at night, and resolving on
a visit in the morning, we quietly and unobserved withdrew
from our position, and descended to our own tents
in the ruins of the palace.
eaf415v2.n1[1] It has the peculiarity of a hooked thorn alternating with the
straight, and it is difficult to touch it without lacerating the hands. It
is the common thorn of the East, and it is supposed that our Saviour's
crown at his crucifixion was made of it.
eaf415v2.dag1† The Musselmen make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and pray at all
the places consecrated to our Saviour and the Virgin, except only the
tomb of Christ, which they do not acknowledge. They believe that
Christ did not die, but ascended alive into heaven, leaving the likeness
of his face to Judas, who was crucified for him.
eaf415v2.n2[2] A group that will be immortal in the love and wonder of the world,
when the divine hand of the English Praxiteles has long passed from
the earth. Two more exquisite shapes of women than those lilycrowned
nymphs never lay in the womb—of marble or human mother.
Rome is brighter for them.
The Suridji had given us our spiced coffee in the
small china cups and filagree holders, and we sat discussing,
to the great annoyance of the storks over our
heads, whether we should loiter another day at Sardis,
or eat melons at noon at Casabar on our way to Constantinople.
To the very great surprise of the Dutchman,
who wished to stay to finish his drawings, Job and
myself voted for remaining—a view of the subject which
was in direct contradiction to our vote of the preceding
evening. The Englishman, who was always in a
-- 016 --
[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]
hurry, flew into a passion, and went off with the phlegmatic
Suridji to look after his horse, and having disposed of our
Smyrniote, by seeing a caravan (which was not to be
seen) coming southward from Mount Tmolus, I and my
monster started for the encampment of the gipsies.
As we rounded the battered wall of the Christian
church, a woman stepped out from the shadow. Through
a tattered dress, and under a turban of soiled cotton set
far over her forehead, and throwing a deep shadow into
her eyes, I recognized at once the gipsy woman whom
we had seen sitting by the cradle.
“Buon giorno, Signori,” she said, making a kind of
salaam, and relieving me at once by the Italian salutation
of my fears of being unintelligible.
Job gave her the good morning, but she looked at
him with a very unsatisfactory glance, and coming close
to my car, she wished me to speak to her out of the
hearing of “il mio domestico!”
“Amico piu tosto!” I added immediately with a consideration
for Job's feelings, which, I must do myself the
justice to say, I always manifested, except in very elegant
society. I gave myself the greater credit in this
case, as, in my impatience to know the nature of the gipsy's
communication, I might be excused for caring little
at the moment whether my friend was taken for a gentleman
or a gentleman's gentleman.
The gipsy looked vexed at her mistake, and with a
half-apologetic inclination to Job, she drew me into the
shade of the ruin, and perused my face with great earnestness.
The same to yourself, thought I, as I gave
back her glance, and searched for her meaning in two
as liquid and loving eyes as ever looked out of the gates
of the Prophet's Paradise for the coming of a young
believer. It was a face that had been divine, and in the
hands of a lady of fashion would have still made a bello
rifacimento.
-- 017 --
[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]
“Inglese?” she said at last.
“No, Madre—Americano.”
She looked disappointed.
“And where are you going, filio mio?”
“To Stamboul.”
“Benissimo!” she answered, and her face brightened.
“Do you want a servant?”
“Unless it is yourself, no!”
“It is my son.”
It was on my lips to ask if he was like her daughter,
but an air of uneasiness and mystery in her manner put
me on the reserve, and I kept my knowledge to myself.
She persevered in her suit, and at last the truth came
out, that her boy was bound on an errand to Constantinople,
and she wished safe-conduct for him. The rest
of the troop, she said, were at Smyrna, and she was left
in care of the tents with the boy and an infant child. As
she did not mention the girl, who, from the resemblance,
was evidently her daughter—I thought it unwise to
allude to our discovery, and promising that, if the boy
was mounted, every possible care should be taken of
him, I told her the hour on the following morning
when we should be in the saddle, and rid myself of her
with the intention of stealing a march on the camp.
I took rather a circuitous route, but the gipsy was
there before me, and apparently alone. She had sent
the boy to the plains for a horse, and though I presumed
that the loveliest creature in Asia was concealed
in one or the other of those small tents, the curtains
were closely tied, and I could find no apology for intruding
either my eyes or my inquiries. The handsome
Zingara, too, began to look rather becomingly
fiere, and as I had left Job behind, and was always
naturally afraid of a woman, I reluctantly felt myself
under the necessity of comprehending her last
-- 018 --
[figure description] Page 018.[end figure description]
injunction, and with a promise that the boy should join us
before we reached the foot of Mount Sypilus, she fairly
bowed me off the premises. I could have forsworn
my complexion and studied palmistry for a gipsy, had
the devil then tempted me!
We struck our tents at sun-rise, and were soon
dashing on through the oleanders upon the broad plain
of the Hermus, the dew lying upon their bright vermeil
flowers like the pellucid gum on the petals of the
ice-plant, and nature, and my five companions, in their
gayest humor. I was not. My thoughts were of
moonlight and the Pactolus, and two round feet ankledeep
in running water. Job rode up to my side.
“My dear Phil! take notice that you are nearing
Mount Sypilus, in which the magnetic ore was first
discovered.”
“It acts negatively on me, my dear chum! for I
drag a lengthening chain from the other direction.”
Silence once more, and the bright red flowers still
fled backward in our career. Job rode up again.
“You must excuse my interrupting your reverie, but
I thought you would like to know that the town where
we sleep to night is the residence of the `Beys of Oglou,
' mentioned in the `Bride of Abydos.”'
No answer, and the bright red blossoms still flew
scattered in our path as our steeds flew through the
coppice, and the shovel-like blades of the Turkish
stirrups cut into them right and left in the irregular
gallop. Job rode again to my side.
“My dear Philip, did you know that this town of
Magnesia was once the capital of the Turkish empire—
the city of Timour the Tartar?”
-- 019 --
[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]
“Well!”
“And did you know that when Themistocles was
in exile, and Artaxerxes presented him with the tribute
of three cities to provide the necessaries of life,
Magnesia[3] found him in bread?”
“And Lampascus in wine. Don't bore me, Job!”
We sped on. As we neared Casabar toward noon,
and (spite of romance) I was beginning to think with
complacency upon the melons, for which the town is
famous, a rattling of hoofs behind put our horses upon
their mettle, and in another moment a boy dashed into
the midst of our troop, and reining up with a fine display
of horsemanship, put the promised token into my
hand. He was mounted on a small Arabian mare, remarkable
for nothing but a thin and fiery nostril, and
a most lavish action, and his jacket and turban were
fitted to a shape and head that could not well be disguised.
The beauty of the gipsy camp was beside me!
It was as well for my self-command that I had sworn
Job to secrecy in case of the boy's joining us, and
that I had given the elder gipsy, as a token, a very
voluminous and closely-written letter of my mother's.
In the twenty minutes which the reading of so apparently
“lengthy” a document would occupy, I had
leisure to resume my self-control, and resolve on my
own course of conduct toward the fair masquerader.
My travelling companions were not a little astonished
to see me receive a letter by courier in the heart of
Asia, but that was for their own digestion. All the
information I condescended to give was, that the boy
was sent to my charge on his road to Constantinople;
and as Job displayed no astonishment, and entered
-- 020 --
[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]
simply into my arrangements, and I was the only person
in the company who could communicate with the
Suridji, (I had picked up a little modern Greek in the
Morea,) they were compelled (the Dutchman, John
Bull, and the fig-merchant) to content themselves with
such theories on the subject as Heaven might supply
them withal.
How Job and myself speculated apart on what could
be the errand of this fair creature to Constantinople—
how beautifully she rode and sustained her character
as a boy—how I requested her, though she spoke Italian
like her mother, never to open her lips in any
Christian language to my companions—how she slept
at my feet at the khans, and rode at my side on the
journey, and, at the end of seven days, arriving at Scutari,
and beholding across the Bosphorus the golden
spires of Stamboul, how she looked at me with tears
in her unfathomable eyes, and spurred her fleet Arab
to his speed to conceal her emotion, and how I felt
that I could bury myself with her in the Vizier's tomb
we were passing at the moment, and be fed on rice
with a goule's bodkin, if so alone we might not be
parted—all these are matters which would make sundry
respectable chapters in a novel, but of which you
are spared the particulars in a true story. There was
a convenience both to the dramatist and the audience
in the “cetera intus agentus” of the Romans.
eaf415v2.n3[3] Not pronounced as in the apothecary's shop. It is a fine large
town at the foot of Mount Sypilus.
We emerged from the pinnacled cypresses of the
cemetery overlooking Constantinople, and dismounting
from my horse, I climbed upon the gilded turban
crowning the mausoleum of a royal Ichoglan, (a sultan's
page, honored more in his burial than in his life,)
and feasted my eyes on the desecrated but princelyfair
birth-right of the Palæologi. The Nekropolis—
-- 021 --
[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]
the city of the dead—on the outermost tomb of whose
gloomy precincts I had profanely mounted, stands
high and black over the Bosphorus on one side, while
on the other, upon similar eminences, stand the gleaming
minarets and latticed gardens of a matchless city
of the living—as if, while Europe flung up her laughing
and breathing child to the sun, expiring Asia, the
bereaved Empress of the world, lifted her head to the
same heavens in majestic and speechless sorrow.
But oh! how fairer than Venice in her waters,—
than Florence and Rome in their hills and habitations,
than all the cities of the world in that which is most
their pride and glory,—is this fairest metropolis of the
Mahomets! With its two hundred mosques, each
with a golden sheaf of minarets laying their pointed
fingers against the stars, and encircled with the fretted
galleries of the callers to prayer, like the hand of a
cardinal with its costly ring,—with its seraglio gardens
washed on one side by the sea, and on the other by the
gentle stream that glides out of the “Valley of Sweet
Waters;”—men-of-war on one side, flaunting their red
pennants over the nightingale's nest which sings for
the delight of a princess, and the swift caique on the
other gliding in protected waters, where the same imprisoned
fair one might fling into it a flower, (so slender
is the dividing cape that shuts in the bay,)—with
its Bosphorus, its radiant and unmatched Bosphorus—
the most richly-gemmed river within the span of the
sun, extending with its fringe of palaces and castles
from sea to sea, and reflecting in its glassy eddies a
pomp and sumptuousness of costume and architecture
which exceeds even your boyish dreams of Bagdad
and the caliphs—Constantinople, I say, with its turbaned
and bright-garmented population,—its swarming
sea and rivers,—its columns, and aqueducts, and
strange ships of the East,—its impenetrable seraglio,
and its close-shuttered harems,—its bezestein and its
-- 022 --
[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]
Hippodrome,—Constantinople lay before me! If the
star I had worshipped had descended to my hand out
of the sky,—if my unapproachable and yearning dream
of woman's beauty had been bodied forth warm and
real—if the missing star in the heel of Serpentarius,
and the lost sister of the Pleiades had waltzed back
together to their places,—if poets were once more
prophets, not felons, and books were read for the good
that is in them, not for the evil,—if Love and Truth
had been seen again, or any impossible or improbable
thing had come to pass,—I should not have felt more
thrillingly than now the emotions of surprise and wonder!
While I stood upon the marble turban of the Ichoglan,
my companions had descended the streets of
Scutari, and I was left alone with the gipsy. She sat
on her Arab with her head bowed to his neck, and
when I withdrew my eye from the scene I have faintly
described, the tear-drops were glistening in the flowing
mane, and her breast was heaving under her embroidered
jacket with uncontrollable grief. I jumped
to the ground, and taking her head between my hands,
pressed her wet cheek to my lips.
“We part here, Signor,” said she, winding around
her head the masses of hair that had escaped from her
turban, and raising herself in the saddle as if to go on.
“I hope not, Maimuna!”
She bent her moist eyes on me with a look of earnest
inquiry.
“You are forbidden to intrust me with your errand
to Constantinople, and you have kept your word to
your mother. But, whatever that errand may be, I
hope it does not involve your personal liberty?”
She looked embarrassed, but did not answer.
“You are very young to be trusted so far from your
mother, Maimuna!”
“Signor, si!”
-- 023 --
[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]
“But I think she can scarce have loved you so well
as I do to have suffered you to come here alone!”
“She intrusted me to you, Signor.”
I was well reminded of my promise. I had given
my word to the gipsy that I would leave her child at
the Persian fountain of Tophana. Maimuna was
evidently under a control stronger than the love I half-hoped
and half-feared I had awakened.
“Andiamo!” she said, dropping her head upon her
bosom with the tears pouring once more over it like
rain; and driving her stirrups with abandoned energy
into the sides of her Arabian, she dashed headlong
down the uneven streets of Scutari, and in a few minutes
we stood on the limit of Asia.
We left our horses in the “silver city,”[4] crossing to
the “golden” in a caique, and with Maimuna in my
bosom, and every contending emotion at work in my
heart, the scene about me still made an indelible impression
on my memory. The star-shaped bay, a
mile perhaps in diameter, was one swarm of boats of
every most slender and graceful form, the caikjis, in
their silken shirts and vari-colored turbans, driving
them through the water with a speed and skill which
put to shame the gondolier of Venice, and almost the
Indian in his canoe; the gilded lattices and belvideres
of the seraglio, and the cypresses and flowering trees
that mingle their gay and sad foliage above them, were
already so near that I could count the roses upon the
bars, and see the moving of the trees in the evening
wind; the muezzins were calling to sunset-prayer,
their voices coming clear and prolonged over the
water; the men-of-war in the mouth of the Bosphorus
were lowering their blood-red flags; the shore we
-- 024 --
[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]
were approaching was thronged with veiled women,
and bearded old men, and boys with the yellow slipper
and red skull-cap of the East; and, watching our approach,
stood apart, a group of Jews and Armenians,
marked by their costume for an inferior race, but looking
to my cosmopolite eye as noble in their black robes
and towering caps as the haughty Mussulman that
stood aloof from their company.
We set foot in Constantinople. It was the suburb
of Tophana, and the Suridji pointed out to Maimuna,
as we landed, a fountain of inlaid marble and brass,
around whose projecting frieze were traced inscriptions
in the Persian. She sprang to my hand.
“Remember, Maimuna!” I said, “that I offer you
a mother and a home in another and a happier land.
I will not interfere with your duty, but when your errand
is done, you may find me if you will. Farewell.”
With a passionate kiss in the palm of my hand, and
one beaming look of love and sorrow in her large and
lustrous eyes, the gipsy turned to the fountain, and
striking suddenly to the left around the mosque of
Sultan Selim, she plunged into the narrow street running
along the water-side to Galata.
eaf415v2.n4[4] Galata, the suburb on the European side, was the Chrysopolis,
and Scutari, on the Asian, the Argentopolis of the ancients.
We had wandered out from our semi-European,
semi-Turkish lodgings on the third morning after our
arrival at Constantinople, and picking our way listlessly
over the bad pavement of the suburb of Pera,
stood at last in the small burying-ground at the summit
of the hill, disputing amicably upon what quarter
of the fair city beneath us we should bestow our share
in the bliss of that June morning.
“It is a heavenly day,” said Job, sitting down unthinkingly
upon a large sculptured turban that formed
the head-stone to the grave of some once-wealthy
-- 025 --
[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]
Pagan, and looking off wistfully toward the green
summit of Bulgurlu.
The difference between Job and myself was a mania,
on his part for green fields, and on mine for human
faces. I knew very well that his remark was a leader
to some proposition for a stroll over the wilder hills of
the Bosphorus, and I was determined that he should
enjoy, instead, the pleasure of sympathy in my nevertiring
amusement of wandering in the crowded bazaars
on the other side of the water. The only way to accomplish
it, was to appear to yield the point, and then
rally upon his generosity. I had that delicacy for his
feelings (I had brought him all the way from the Green
Mountains at my own expense) never to carry my
measures too ostentatiously.
Job was looking south, and my face was as resolutely
turned north. We must take a caique in
any case at Galata, (lying just below us) but if we
turned the prow south in the first instance, farewell at
every stroke to the city! Whereas a northern course
took us straight up the Golden Horn, and I could appear
to change my mind at any moment, and land immediately
in a street leading to the bazaars. Luckily,
while I was devising an errand to go up the channel
instead of down, a small red flag appeared gliding
through the forest of masts around the curve of the
water-side at Tophana, and, in a moment more, a
high-pooped vessel, with the carved railings and out-landish
rigging of the ships from the far East, shot out
into the middle of the bay with the strong current of
the Bosphorus, and squaring her lattine sail, she
rounded a vessel lying at anchor with the flag of Palestine,
and steered with a fair wind up the channel of the
Golden Horn. A second look at her deck disclosed
to me a crowd of people, mostly women, standing
amid-ships, and the supposition with which I was about
-- 026 --
[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]
inducing Job to take a caique and pull up the harbor
after her seemed to me now almost a certainty.
“It is a slave-ship from Trebizond, ten to one, my
dear Job!”
He slid off the marble turban which he had profaned
so unscrupulously, and the next minute we
passed the gate that divides the European from the
commercial suburb, and were plunging down the steep
and narrow straits of Galata with a haste that, to the
slippered and shuffling Turks we met or left behind,
seemed probably little short of madness. Of a hundred
slender and tossing caiques lying in the disturbed
waters of the bay, we selected the slenderest and best
manned; and getting Job in with the usual imminent
danger of driving his long legs through the bottom of
the egg-shell craft, we took in one of the obsequious
Jews who swarm about the pier as interpreters, coiled
our legs under us in the hollow womb of the caique,
and shot away like a nautilus after the slaver.
The deep-lying river that coils around the throbbing
heart of Constantinople is a place of as delicate navigation
as a Venetian lagoon on a festa, or a soiree of
middling authors. The Turk, like your plain-spoken
friend, rows backward, and with ten thousand eggshells
swarming about him in every direction, and his
own prow rounded off in a pretty iron point, an extra
piastre for speed draws down curses on the caikji and
the Christian dogs who pay him for the holes he lets
into his neighbors' boats, which is only equalled in bitterness
and profusion by the execrations which follow
what is called “speaking your mind.” The Jew
laughed, as Jews do since Shylock, at the misfortunes
of his oppressors; and, in the exercise of his vocation,
translated us the oaths as they came in right and left—
most of them very gratuitous attacks on those, (as
Job gravely remarked,) of whom they could know
very little,—our respected mothers.
-- 027 --
[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]
The slackening vessel lost her way as she got opposite
the bazaar of dried fruits, and, as her yards came
down by the run, she put up her helm, and ran her
towering prow between a piratical-looking Egyptian
craft, and a black and bluff English collier, inscribed
appropriately on the stern as the “Snow-drop” from
Newcastle. Down plumped her anchor, and in the
next moment the Jew hailed her by our orders, and
my conjecture was proved to be right. She was from
Trebizond, with slaves and spices.
“What would they do if we were to climb up her
side?” I asked of the Israelite.
He stretched up his crouching neck till his twisted
beard hung clear off like a waterfall from his chin,
and looked through the carved railing very intently.
“The slaves are Georgians,” he answered, after
awhile, “and if there were no Turkish purchasers on
board, they might simply order you down again.”
“And if there were—”
“The women would be considered damaged by a
Christian eye, and the slave merchant might shoot you
or pitch you overboard.”
“Is that all?” said Job, evolving his length very
deliberately from its coil, and offering me a hand the
next moment from the deck of the slaver. Whether
the precedence he took in all dangers arose from affection
for me, or from a praiseworthy indifference to the
fate of such a trumpery collection as his own body and
limbs, I have never decided to my own satisfaction.
In the confusion of port-officers and boats alongside,
all hailing and crying out together, we stood on the
outer side of the deck unobserved, and I was soon intently
occupied in watching the surprise and wonder
of the pretty toys who found themselves for the first
time in the heart of a great city. The owner of their
charms, whichever of a dozen villanous Turks I saw
about them it might be, had no time to pay them very
-- 028 --
[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]
particular attention, and dropping their dirty veils
about their shoulders, they stood open-mouthed and
staring—ten or twelve rosy damsels in their teens, with
eyes as deep as a well, and almost as large and liquid.
Their features were all good, their skins without a
flaw, hair abundant, and figures of a healthy plumpness—
looking, with the exception of their eyes, which
were very oriental and magnificent, like the great, fat,
pie-eating, yawning, boarding-school misses one sees
over a hedge at Hampstead. It was delicious to see
their excessive astonishment at the splendors of the
Golden Horn—they from the desert mountains of
Georgia or Circassia, and the scene about them,
(mosques, minarets, people, and men-of-war all together,)
probably the most brilliant and striking in the
world. I was busy following their eyes and trying to
divine their impressions, when Job seized me by the
arm. An old Turk had just entered the vessel from
the land-side, and was assisting a closely-veiled female
to mount after him. Half a glance satisfied me that it
was the Gipsy of Sardis—the lovely companion of our
journey to Constantinople.
“Maimuna!” I exclaimed, darting forward on the
instant.
A heavy hand struck me back as I touched her, and
as I returned the blow, the swarthy crew of Arabs
closed about us, and we were hurried with a most unceremonious
haste to the side of the vessel. I scarce
know, between my indignation and the stunning effect
of the blow I had received, how I got into the caique,
but we were pulling fast up the Golden Horn by the
time I could speak, and in half an hour were set ashore
on the green bank of the Barbyses, bound on a solitary
ramble up the Valley of Sweet Waters.
-- 029 --
[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]
The art of printing was introduced into the Mohammedan
Empire in the reigns of Achmet III. and
Louis XV. I seldom state a statistical fact, but this is
one I happen to know, and I mention it because the
most fanciful and romantic abode with which I am acquainted
in the world was originally built to contain
the first printing-press brought from the Court of Versailles
by Mehemet Effendi, Ambassador from the
“Brother of the Sun.” It is now a maison de plaisance
for the Sultan's favorite women, and in all the
dreams of perfect felicity which visit those who have
once seen it, it rises as the Paradise of retreats from
the world.
The serai of Khyat-Khana is a building of gold
and marble, dropped down unfenced upon the greensward
in the middle of a long emerald valley, more
like some fairy vision, conjured and forgotten to be
dissolved, than a house to live in, real, weather-proof,
and to be seen for the value of one and sixpence. The
Barbyses falls over the lip of a sea-shell, (a marble
cascade sculptured in that pretty device,) sending up
its spray and its perpetual music close under the gilded
lattice of the Sultana, and, following it back with the
eye, like a silver thread in a broidery of green velvet,
it comes stealing down through miles of the tenderest
verdure, without tree or shrub upon its borders, but
shut in with the seclusion of an enchanted stream and
valley by mountains which rise in abrupt precipices
from the edges of its carpet of grass, and fling their
irregular shadows across it at every hour save high
noon—sacred in the East to the sleep of beauty and
idleness.
In the loving month of May it is death to set foot in
the Khyat-Khana. The ascending caique is stopped
-- 030 --
[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]
in the Golden Horn, and on the point of every hill is
stationed a mounted eunuch with drawn sabre. The
Arab steeds of the Sultan are picketed on the low-lying
grass of the valley, and his hundred Circassians
come from their perfumed chambers in the seraglio,
and sun their untold loveliness on the velvet banks of
the Barbyses. From the Golden Horn to Belgrade,
twelve miles of greensward, (sheltered like a vein of
ore in the bosom of the earth, and winding away after
the course of that pebbly river, unseen, save by the
eye of the sun and stars,) are sacred in this passionborn
month from the foot of man, and, riding in their
scarlet arubas with the many-colored ribbons floating
back from the horns of their bullocks, and their own
snowy veils dropped from their guarded shoulders and
deep-dyed lips, wander, from sunrise to sunset, these
caged birds of a Sultan's delight, longing as wildly,
(who shall doubt?) to pass that guarded barrier into
the forbidden world, as we, who sigh for them without,
to fly from falsehood and wrong, and forget that same
world in their bosoms!
How few are content! How restless are even the
most spoiled children of Fortune! How inevitably
the heart sighs for that which it has not, even though
its only want is a cloud on its perpetual sunshine!
We were not of those—Job and I—for we were of
that school of philosophers[5] who “had little and
wanted nothing;” but we agreed, as we sat upon the
marble bridge sprung like a wind-lifted cobweb over
the Barbyses, that the envy of a human heart would
poison even the content of a beggar! He is a fool
who is sheltered from hunger and cold and still complains
of fortune; but he is only not a slave or a seraph,
-- 031 --
[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]
who, feeling on the innermost fibre of his sensibility the
icy breath of Malice, utters his eternal malison on the
fiend who can neither be grappled with nor avoided.
I could make a paradise with loveliness and sunshine,
if Envy could be forbidden at the gate!
We had walked around the Serai and tried all its
entrances in vain, when Job spied, under the shelter
of the southern hill, a blood-red flag flying at the top
of a small tent of the Prophet's green—doubtless concealing
the Kervas, who kept his lonely guard over
the precincts. I sent my friend with a “pinch of piastres”
to tempt the trowsered infidel to our will, and
he soon came shuffling in his unmilitary slippers, with
keys, which, the month before, were guarded like the
lamp of Aladdin. We entered. We rambled over
the chambers of the chosen Houris of the East; we
looked through their lattices, and laid the palms of
our hands on the silken cushions dimmed in oval spots
by the moisture of their cheeks as they slept; we could
see by the tarnished gold, breast-high at the windows,
where they had pressed to the slender lattices to look
forth upon the valley; and Job, more watchfully alive
to the thrilling traces of beauty, showed me in the diamond-shaped
bars the marks of their moist fingers and
the stain as of lips between, betraying where they had
clung and laid their faces against the trellice in the indolent
attitude of gazers from a wearisome prison.
Mirrors and ottomans were the only furniture; and
never, for me, would the wand of Cornelius Agrippa
have been more welcome, than to wave back into
those senseless mirrors the images of beauty they had
lost.
I sat down on a raised corner of the divan, probably
the privileged seat of the favorite of the hour. Job
stood with his lips apart, brooding in speechless poeticalness
on his own thoughts.
-- 032 --
[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]
“Do you think, after all,” said I, reverting to the
matter-of-fact vein of my own mind, which was paramount
usually to the romantic; “do you think really,
Job, that the Zuleikas and Fatimas who have by turns
pressed this silken cushion with their crossed feet were
not probably inferior in attraction to the most thirdrate
belle of New-England? How long would you
love a woman that could neither read, nor write, nor
think five minutes on any given theme? The utmost
exertion of intellect in the loveliest of these deep-eyed
Circassians is probably the language of flowers, and,
good heavens! think how one of your della Cruscan
sentiments would be lost upon her! And yet here you
are, ready to go mad with romantic fancies about
women that were never taught even their letters.”
Job began to hum a stave of his favorite song,
which was always a sign that he was vexed and disenchanted
of himself.
“How little women think,” said I, proceeding with
my unsentimental vein, while Job looked out of the
window and the Kervas smoked his pipe on the Sultana's
ottoman; “how little women think that the
birch and the dark closet, and the thumbed and dogeared
spelling-book, (or whatever else more refined
torments their tender years in the shape of education,)
was, after all, the ground-work and secret of their fascination
over men! What a process it is to arrive at
love! `D-o-g, dog,—c-a-t,cat!' If you had not
learned this, bright Lady Melicent, I fear Captain Augustus
Fitz-Somerset would never have sat, as I saw
him last night, cutting your initials with a diamond
ring on the purple claret-glass which had just poured
a bumper to your beauty!”
“You are not far wrong,” said Job, after a long
pause, during which I had delivered myself, unheard,
of the above practical apostrophe; “you are not far
-- 033 --
[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]
wrong, quoad the women of New-England. They
would be considerable bores if they had not learned,
in their days of bread-and-butter, to read, write, and
reason. But, for the woman of the softer South and
East, I am by no means clear that education would
not be inconsistent with the genius of the clime. Take
yourself back to Italy, for example, where, for two
mortal years, you philandered up and down between
Venice and Amalfi, never out of the sunshine or away
from the feet of women, and, in all that precious episode
of your youth, never guilty, I will venture to presume,
of either suggesting or expressing a new thought.
And the reason is, not that the imagination is dull, but
that nobody thinks, except upon exigency, in these
latitudes. It would be violent and inapt to the spirit
of the hour. Indolence, voluptuous indolence of body
and mind, (the latter at the same time lying broad
awake in its chamber, and alive to every pleasurable
image that passes uncalled before its windows,) is the
genius, the only genius, of the night and day. What
would be so discordant as an argument by moonlight
in the Coliseum? What so ill-bred and atrocious as
the destruction by logic of the most loose-spun theory
by the murmuring fountains of the Pamfili? To live
is enough in these lands of the sun. But merely to live,
in ours, is to be bound, Prometheus-like, to a rock,
with a vulture at our vitals. Even in the most passionate
intercourse of love in your northern clime, you
read to your mistress, or she sings to you, or you think
it necessary to drive or ride; but I know nothing that
would more have astonished your Venetian bionda
than, when the lamp was lit in the gondola that you
might see her beauty on the lagune in the starless
night, to have pulled a book from your pocket, and
read even a tale of love from Boccaccio. And that is
why I could be more content to be a pipe-bearer in
-- 034 --
[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]
Asia than a schoolmaster in Vermont, or, sooner than
a judge's ermine in England, to wear a scrivener's
rags, and sit in the shade of a portico, writing love-letters
for the peasant-girls of Rome. Talk of republics,—
your only land of equality is that in which to breathe
is the supreme happiness. The monarch throws open
his window for the air that comes to him past the brow
of a lazzaroni, and the wine on the patrician's lip intoxicates
less than the water from the fountain that is
free to all, though it gush from the marble bosom of a
nymph. If I were to make a world, I would have the
climate of Greece, and no knowledge that did not
come by intuition. Men and women should grow
wise enough, as the flowers grow fair enough, with
sunshine and air, and they should follow their instincts
like the birds, and go from sweet to sweet with as little
reason or trouble. Exertion should be a misdemeanor,
and desire of action, if it were not too monstrous
to require legislation, should be treason to the
state.”
“Long live King Job!”
eaf415v2.n5[5] With a difference, “Nihil est, nihil deest,” was their motto.
-- 035 --
Chapter
[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]
I had many unhappy thoughts about Miamuna. The
glance I had snatched on board the Trebizond slaver
left in my memory a pair of dark eyes full of uneasiness
and doubt, and I knew her elastic motions so well,
that there was something in her single step as she came
over the gang-way which assured me that she was dispirited
and uncertain of her errand. Who was the
old Turk who dragged her up the vessel's side with so
little ceremony? What could the child of a gipsy be
doing on the deck of a slaver from Trebizond?
With no very definite ideas as to the disposal of this
lovely child should I succeed in my wishes, I had insensibly
made up my mind that she could never be
happy without me, and that my one object in Constantinople
was to get her into my possession. I had a
delicacy in communicating the full extent of my design
to Job, for, aside from the grave view he would take
of the morality of the step, and her probable fate as a
woman, he would have painful and just doubts of my
ability to bear this additional demand upon my means.
Though entirely dependent himself, Job had that natural
contempt for the precious metals, that he could
-- 036 --
[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]
not too freely assist any one to their possession who
happened to set a value on the amount in his pocket;
and this, I may say, was the one point which, between
my affectionate monster and myself, was not discussed
as harmoniously as the loves of Corydon and Alexis.
The account of his expenditure, which I regularly exacted
of him before he tied on his bandana at night,
was always more or less unsatisfactory; and though
he would not have hesitated to bestow a whole scudo
unthinkingly on the first dirty dervish he should meet,
he was still sufficiently impressed with the necessity
of economy to remember it in an argument of any
length or importance; and for this and some other
reasons I reserved my confidence upon the intended
addition to my suite.
Not far from the Burnt Column, in the very heart
of Stamboul, lived an old merchant in attar and jessamine,
called Mustapha. Every one who has been at
Constantinople will remember him and his Nubian
slave in a small shop on the right, as you ascend to
the Hippodrome. He calls himself essence-seller to
the Sultan, but his principal source of profit is the
stranger who is brought to his divans by the interpreters
in his pay; and to his credit be it said, that for the
courtesy of his dealings, and for the excellence of his
extracts, the stranger could not well fall into better
hands.
It had been my fortune, on my first visit to Mustapha,
to conciliate his good will. I had laid in my
small stock of spice-woods and essences on that occasion,
and the call which I made religiously every time
I crossed the Golden Horn was purely a matter of
friendship. In addition to one or two trifling presents,
which (with a knowledge of human nature) I
had returned in the shape of two mortal sins—a keg
of brandy and a flask of gin, bought out of the
-- 037 --
[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]
English collier lying in the bay; in addition to his kind
presents, I say, my large-trowsered friend had made
me many pressing offers of service. There was little
probability, it was true, that I should ever find occasion
to profit by them; but I nevertheless believed
that his hand was laid upon his heart in earnest sincerity,
and in the course of my reflections upon the fate of
Maimuna, it had occurred to me more than once that
he might be of use in clearing up the mystery of her
motions.
“Job!” said I, as we were dawdling along the street
of confectioners with our Jew behind us one lovely
morning, “I am going to call at Mustapha's.”
We had started to go to the haunt of the opium-eaters,
and he was rather surprised at my proposition,
but, with his usual amiableness, (very inconvenient
and vexatious in this particular instance,) he stepped
over the gutter without saying a word, and made for
the first turning to the right. It was the first time
since we had left New-England that I wished myself
rid of his company.
“But, Job,” said I, calling him back to the shady
side of the street, and giving him a great lump of candy
from the nearest stall (its Oriental name, by the way,
is “peace-to-your-throat,”) “I thought you were bent
on eating opium to-day?”
My poor friend looked at me for a minute, as if to
comprehend the drift of my remark, and as he arrived
by regular deduction at the result, I read very clearly
in his hideous physiognomy the painful embarrassment
it occasioned him. It was only the day before, that,
in descending the Bosphorus, we had seen a party of
the summary administrators of justice quietly suspending
a Turkish woman and her Greek paramour from
the shutters of a chamber window—intercourse with a
Christian in that country of liberal legislation being
punishable without trial or benefit of dervish. From
-- 038 --
[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]
certain observations on my disposition in the course of
my adventures, Job had made up his mind, I well
knew, that my danger was more from Dalilah than the
Philistines; and while these victims of love were kicking
their silken trowsers in the air, I saw, by the look
of tender anxiety he cast upon me from the bottom of
the caique, that the moral in his mind would result in
an increased vigilance over my motions. While he
stood with his teeth stuck full of “peace-to-your-throat,”
therefore, forgetting even the instinct of mastication
in his surprise and sorrow, I well understood
what picture was in his mind, and what construction
he put upon my sudden desire to solitude.
“My dear Philip!” he began, speaking with difficulty
from the stickiness of the candy in his teeth,
“your respected mother—”
At this instant a kervas, preceding a Turk of rank,
jostled suddenly against him, and as the mounted Mussulman,
with his train of runners and pipe-bearers,
came sweeping by, I took the opportunity of Job's surprise
to slip past with the rest, and, turning down an
alley, quietly mounted one of the saddle-horses standing
for hire at the first mosque, and pursued my way
alone to the shop of the attar-merchant. To dismount
and hurry Mustapha into his inner and private apartment,
with an order to the Nubian to deny me to everybody
who should inquire, was the work of a minute,
but it was scarcely done before I heard Job breathless
at the door.
“Ha visto il signore?” he exclaimed, getting to the
back of the shop with a single stride.
“Effendi, no!” said the imperturbable Turk, and he
laid his hand on his heart, as he advanced, and offered
him with grave courtesy the pipe from his lips.
The Jew had come puffing into the shop with his
slippers in his hand, and dropping upon his hams near
the door, he took off his small grey turban, and was
-- 039 --
[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
wiping the perspiration from his high and narrow forehead,
when Job darted again into the street with a
sign to him to follow. The look of despair and exhaustion
with which he shook out his baggy trowsers
and made after the striding Yankee, was too much even
for the gravity of Mustapha. He laid aside his pipe,
and, as the Nubian struck in with the peculiar cackle
of his race, I joined myself in their meriment with a
heartiness to which many a better joke might have
failed to move me.
While Mustapha was concluding his laugh between
the puffs of his amber pipe, I had thrown myself along
the divan, and was studying with some curiosity the
inner apartment in which I had been concealed. A
curtain of thick but tarnished gold cloth (as sacred
from intrusion in the East as the bolted and barred
doors of Europe) separated from the outer shop a
small octagonal room, that, in size and furniture, resembled
the Turkish boudoirs, which, in the luxurious
palaces of Europe, sometimes adjoin a lady's chamber.
The slippered foot was almost buried in the rich carpets
laid, but not fitted to the floor. The divans were
covered with the flowered and lustrous silk of Brusa,
and piled with vari-colored cushions. A perpetual
spice-lamp sent up its thin wreaths of smoke to the
black and carved ceiling, diffusing through the room a
perfume which, while it stole to the innermost fibres of
the brain with a sense of pleasure, weighed on the eyelids
and relaxed the limbs; and as the eye became more
accustomed to the dim light which struggled in from a
window in the arched ceiling, and dissolved in the luxurious
and spicy atmosphere, heaps of the rich shawls
of the East became distinguishable with their sumptuous
dyes, and, in a corner, stood a cluster of crystal
narghiles, faintly reflecting the light in their dim globes
of rose water, while costly pipes, silver-mounted
-- 040 --
[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
pistols, and a rich Damascus sabre in a sheath of red velvet,
added gorgeousness to the apartment.
Mustapha was a bit of a philosoper in his way, and
he had made his own observations on the Europeans
who came to his shop. The secluded and oriental luxuriousness
of the room I have described was one of
his lures to that passion for the picturesque which he
saw in every traveler; and another was his gigantic
Nubian, who, with bracelets and anklets of gold, a
white turban, and naked legs and arms, stood always
at the door of his shop, inviting the passers-by---not to
buy essences and pastilles---but to come in and take
sherbet with his master. You will have been an hour
upon his comfortable divans, have smoked a pipe or
two, and eaten a snowy sherbet or a dish of rice-paste
and sugar, before Mustapha nods to his slave, and produces
his gold-rimmed jars of essences, from which,
with his fat forefinger, he anoints the palm of your
hand, or, with a compliment to the beauty of your hair,
throws a drop into the curl on your temples. Meanwhile,
as you smoke, the slave lays in the bowl of your
pipe a small pastille wrapped in gold leaf, from which
presently arrives to your nostrils a perfume that might
delight a Sultan; and then, from the two black hands
which are held to you full of cubical-edged phials with
gilded stoppers, you are requested with the same bland
courtesy to select such as in size or shape suit your
taste and convenience---the smallest of them, when
filled with attar, worth near a gold piastre.
This is not very ruinous, and your next temptation
comes in the shape of a curiously-wrought censer,
upon the filagree grating of which is laid strips of odorent
wood which, with the heat of the coals beneath,
give out a perfume like gums from Araby. This,
Mustapha swears to you by his beard, has a spell in its
spicy breath provocative as a philtre, and is to be burnt
in your lady's chamber. It is worth its weight in
-- 041 --
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
gold, and for a handful of black chips you are persuaded
to pay a price which would freight a caique
with cinnamon. Then come bracelets, and amulets,
and purses, all fragrant and precious, and, while you
hesitate, the Nubian brings you coffee that would open
the heart of Shylock, and you drink and purchase.
And when you have spent all your money, you go away
delighted with Mustapha, and quite persuaded that you
are vastly obliged to him. And, all things considered,
so you are!
When Mustapha had finished his prayers, (did I say
that it was noon?) he called in the Nubian to roll up
the sacred carpet, and then closing the curtain between
us and the shop, listened patiently to my story of the
Gipsy, which I told him faithfully from the beginning.
When I arrived at the incident on board the slaver, a
sudden light seemed to strike upon his mind.
“Pekhe, filio mio! pekhe!” he exclaimed, running
his forefinger down the middle of his beard, and pouring
out a volume of smoke from his mouth and nostrils
which obscured him for a moment from my sight.
(I dislike the introduction of foreign words into a
story, but the Turkish dissyllable in the foregoing sentence
is as constantly on an Eastern lip as the amber
of the pipe.)
He clapped his hands as I finished my narration,
and the Nubian appeared. Some conversation passed
between them in Turkish, and the slave tightened his
girdle, made a salaam, and, taking his slippers at the
outer door, left the shop.
We shall find her at the slave market,” said Mustapha.
I started. The thought had once or twice passed
through my mind, but I had as often rejected it as impossible.
A freeborn Zingara, and on a confidential
errand from her own mother!---I did not see how her
-- 042 --
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
freedom, if there were danger, should have been so
carelessly put in peril.
“And if she is there!” said I; remembering, first,
that it was against the Mahommedan law for a Christian
to purchase a slave, and next, that the price, if it did
not ruin me at once, would certainly leave me in a situation
rather to lessen than increase my expenses.
“I will buy her for you,” said Mustapha.
The Nubian returned at this moment, and laid at my
feet a bundle of wearing apparel. He then took from
a shelf a shaving apparatus, with which he proceeded
to lather my forehead and temples, and after a short
argument with Mustapha, in which I pleaded in vain
for two very seducing clusters of curls, those caressed
minions dropped into the black hand of the slave, and
nothing was left for the petits soins of my thumb and
forefinger in their leisure hours save a well-coaxed and
rather respectable moustache. A skull-cap and turban
completed the transformation of my head, and then,
with some awkardness, I got into a silk shirt, big trowsers,
jacket, and slippers, and stood up to look at myself
in the mirror. I was as like one of the common Turks
of the street as possible, save that the European cravat
and stockings had preserved an unoriental whiteness in
my neck and ankles. This was soon remedied with
a little brown juice, and after a few cautions from
Mustapha as to my behavior, I settled my turban and
followed him into the street.
It is a singular sensation to be walking about in a
strange costume, and find that nobody looks surprised.
I could not avoid a slight feeling of mortification at
the rude manner with which every dirty Mussulman
took the wall of me. After long travel in foreign
lands, the habit of everywhere exciting notice as a
stranger, and the species of consequence attached to
the person and movements of a traveler, become
rather pleasures than otherwise, and it is not without
-- 043 --
[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
pain that one finds oneself once more like common
people. I have not yet returned to my own land,
(Slingsby is an American, gentle reader,) and cannot
judge, therefore, how far this feeling is modified by
the pleasures of a recovered home; but I was vexed
not to be stared at when playing the Turk at Constantinople,
and, amusing as it was to be taken for an
Englishman on first arriving in England, (different as
it is from every land I have seen, and still more different
from my own,) I must confess to have experienced
again a feeling of lessened consequence, when, on my
first entrance into an hotel in London, I was taken for
an Oxonian “come up for a lark” in term time. Perhaps
I have stumbled in this remark upon one of those
unconfessed reasons why a returned traveler is proverbially
discontented with his home.
Whether Mustapha wished to exhibit his new pipe-bearer
to his acquaintances, or whether there was fun
enough in his obese composition to enjoy my difficulties
in adapting myself to my new circumstances, I
cannot precisely say; but I soon found that we were
not going straight to the slave-market. I had several
times forgotten my disguise so far as to keep the narrow
walk till I stood face to face with the bearded
Mussulmen, who were only so much astonished at my
audacity that they forgot to kick me over the gutter;
and passing, in the bazaar of saddle-cloths, an English
officer of my acquaintance, who belonged to the
corvette lying in the Bosphorus, I could not resist the
temptation of whispering in his ear the name of his
sweetheart, (which he had confided to me over a bottle
at Smyrna,) though I rather expected to be seized
by the turban the next moment, with the pleasant consequences
of a mob and an exposure. My friend was
so thoroughly amazed, however, that I was deep in
the crowd before he had drawn breath, and I look
daily now for his arrival in England, (I have not seen
-- 044 --
[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
him since,) with a curiosity to know how he supposes
a “blackguard Turk” knew anything of the lock of
hair he carried in his waistcoat pocket.
The essence-seller had stopped in the book-bazaar,
and was condescendingly smoking a pipe, with his
legs crossed on the counter of a venerable Armenian,
who sat buried to the chin in his own wares, when
who should come pottering along (as Mrs. Butler would
say) but Job with his Jew behind him. Mustapha
(probably unwilling to be seen smoking with an Armenian)
had ensconced himself behind a towering
heap of folios, and his vexed and impatient pipe-bearer
had taken his more humble position on the narrow
base of one of the chequered columns which are peculiar
to the bazaar devoted to the bibliopolists. As
my friend came floundering along “all abroad” with
his legs and arms, as usual, I contrived, by an adroit
insertion of one of my feet between his, to spread him
over the musty tomes of the Armenian in a way calculated
to derange materially the well-ordered sequence
of the volumes.
“Allah! Mashallah!” exclaimed Mustapha, whose
spreading lap was filled with black-letter copies of the
Khoran, while the bowl of his pipe was buried in the
fallen pyramid.
“Bestia Inglese!” muttered the Armenian, as Job
put one hand in the inkstand in endeavoring to rise,
and with the next effort laid his blackened fingers on
a heap of choice volumes bound in snowy vellum.
The officious Jew took up the topmost copy, marked
like a cinq-foil with his spreading thumb and fingers,
and quietly asked the Armenian what Il Signore would
be expected to pay. As I knew he had no money in
his pocket, I calculated safely on this new embarrassment
to divert his anger from the original cause of his
overthrow.
“Tre colonati,” said the bookseller.
-- 045 --
[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
Job opened the book, and his well-known guttural
of surprise and delight assured me that I might come
out from behind the column and look over his shoulder.
It was an illuminated copy of Hafiz, with a
Latin translation,—a treasure which his heart had
been set upon from our first arrival in the East,
and for which I well knew he would sell his coat
off his back without hesitation. The desire to give
it him passed through my mind, but I could see
no means, under my present circumstances, either
of buying the book or relieving him from his embarrassment;
and as he buried his nose deeper between
the leaves, and sat down on the low counter,
forgetful alike of his dilemma and his lost friend, I
nodded to Mustapha to get off as quietly as possible,
and, fortunately slipping past both him and the
Jew unrecognized, left him to finish the loves of
Gulistan and settle his account with the incensed
Armenian.
As we entered the gates of the slave-market, Mustapha
renewed his cautions to me with regard to my conduct,
reminded me that, as a Christian, I should see the
white female slaves at the peril of my life, and immediately
assumed, himself, a sauntering and poco-curante
manner, equally favorable to concealment and to his
interests as a purchaser. I followed close at his heels
with his pipe, and, as he stopped to chat with his acquaintances,
I now and then gave a shove with the bowl
between his jacket and girdle, rendered impatient to the
last degree by the sight of the close lattices on every side
of us, and the sounds of the chattering voices within.
I should have been interested, had I been a mere
spectator, in the scene about me, but Mustapha's unnecessary
and provoking delay, while, (as I thought
-- 046 --
[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]
possible, if she really were in the market,) Maimuna might
be bartered for at that moment within, wound my rage
to a pitch at last scarcely endurable.
We had come up from a cellar to which one of Mustapha's
acquaintances had taken him to see a young
white lad he was about to purchase, and I was hoping
that my suspense was nearly over, when a man came forward
into the middle of the court, ringing a hand-bell,
and followed by a black girl, covered with a scant blanket.
Like most of her race (she was an Abyssinian,) her
head was that of a brute, but never were body and limbs
more exquisitely moulded. She gazed about without
either surprise or shame, stepping after the crier with
an elastic, leopard-like tread, her feet turned in like
those of the North American Indian, her neck bent
gracefully forward, and her shoulders and hips working
with that easy play so lost in the constrained dress and
motion of civilized women. The Mercury of Giovanni
di Bologna springs not lighter from the jet of the fountain
that did this ebon Venus from the ground on which
she stood.
I ventured to whisper to Mustapha, that, under cover
of the sale of the Abyssinian, we might see the white
slaves more unobserved.
A bid was made for her.
“Fifteen piastres!” said the attar-seller, wholly absorbed
in the sale, and not hearing a syllable I said to
him, “She would be worth twice as much to gild my
pastilles!” And handing me his pipe, he waddled into
the centre of the court, lifted the blanket from the slave's
shoulders, turned her round and round, like a Venus
on a pivot, looked at her teeth and hands, and after a
conversation aside with the crier, he resumed his pipe,
and the black disappeared from the ground.
“I have bought her!” he said, with a salacious grin,
-- 047 --
[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
as I handed him his tobacco-bag, and muttered a round
Italian execration in his ear.
The idea that Maimuna might have become the
property of that gross and sensual monster just as easily
as the pretty negress he had bought, sent my blood boiling
for an instant to my cheek. Yet I had seen this
poor savage of seventeen sold without a thought, save
mental congratulation that she would be better fed and
clad. What a difference one's private feelings make
in one's sympathies!
I was speculating, in a kind of tranquil despair, on
the luxurious evils of slavery, when Mustapha called to
him an Egyptian, in a hooded blue cloak, whom I remembered
to have seen on board the Trebisondian.
He was a small-featured, black-lipped, willowy Asiatic,
with heavy-lidded eyes, and hands as dry and rusty as
the claws of a harpy. After a little conversation, he
rose from the platform on which he had crossed his
legs, and taking my pro-tempore master by the sleeve,
traversed the quadrangle to a closed door in the bestlooking
of the miserable houses that surrounded the
court. I followed close upon his heels with a beating
heart. It seemed to me as if every eye in the crowded
market-place must penetrate my disguise. He knocked,
and answering to some one who spoke from within,
the door was opened, and the next moment I found myself
in the presence of a dozen veiled women, seated in
various attitudes on the floor. At the command of our
conductor, carpets were brought for Mustapha and himself;
and, as they dropped upon their hams, every veil
was removed, and a battery of staring and unwinking
eyes was levelled full upon us.
“Is she here?” said Mustapha to me in Italian, as I
stooped over to hand him his eternal pipe.
“Dio mio! no!”
I felt insulted, that with half a glance at the
-- 048 --
[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
Circassian and Georgian dolls sitting before us, he could ask
me the question. Yet they were handsome! Red
cheeks, white teeth, black eyes, and youth could scarce
compose a plain woman; and thus much of beauty
seemed equally bestowed on all.
“Has he no more?” I asked, stooping to Mustapha's
ear.
I looked around while he was getting the information
I wanted in his own deliberate way; and, scarce
knowing what I did, applied my eye to a crack in the
wall, through which had been coming for some time a
strong aroma of coffee. I saw at first only a small dim
room, in the midst of which stood a Turkish manghal,
or brazier of coals, sustaining the coffee-pot from which
came the agreeable perfume I had inhaled. As my
eye became accustomed to the light, I could distinguish
a heap of what I took to be shawls lying in the centre
of the floor; and presuming it was the dormitory of one
of the slave-owners, I was about turning my head away,
when the coffee on the manghal suddently boiled over,
and at the same instant started, from the heap at which
I had been gazing, the living form of Maimuna!
“Mustapha!” I cried, starting back, and clasping
my hands before him.
Before I could utter another word, a grasp upon my
ankle, that drew blood with every nail, restored me to
my self-possession. The Circassians began to giggle,
and the wary old Turk, taking no apparent notice of
my agitation, ordered me, in a stern tone, to fill his
pipe, and went on conversing with the Egyptian.
I leaned with an effort at carelessness against the
wall, and looked once more through the crevice. She
stood by the manghal, filling a cup with a small filagree-holder
from the coffee-pot, and by the light of the
fire I could see every feature of her face as distinctly
as daylight. She was alone, and had been sitting
-- 049 --
[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
with her head on her knees, and the shawl, which had
now fallen to her shoulders, drawn over her till it concealed
her feet. A narrow carpet was beneath her,
and as she moved from the fire, a slight noise drew my
attention downward, and I saw that she was chained by
the ankle to the floor. I stooped to the ear of Mustapha,
told him in a whisper of my discovery, and implored
him, for the love of heaven, to get admission
into her apartment.
“Pekhe! pekhe! filio mio!” was the unsatisfactory
answer to my impatience, while the Egyptian rose and
proceeded to turn round, in the light of the window,
the fattest of the fair Circassians, from whom he had
removed every article of dress save her slippers and
trousers.
I returned to the crevice. Maimuna had drunk her
coffee, and stood, with her arms folded, thoughtfully
gazing on the fire. The expression in her beautiful
and youthful face was one I could scarcely read to my
satisfaction. The slight lips were firmly but calmly
compressed, the forehead untroubled, the eye alone
strained, and unnaturally fixed and lowering. I
looked at her with the heart beating like a hammer in
my bosom, and an impatience in my trembling limbs
which it required every consideration of prudence to
suppress. She moved slowly away at last, and sinking
again to her carpet, drew out the chain from beneath
her, and drawing the shawl once more over her
head, lay down, and sunk apparently to sleep.
Mustapha left the Circassian, whose beauties he had
risen to examine more nearly, and came to my side.
“Are you sure that it is she?” he asked, in an almost
inaudible whisper.
“Si!”
He took the pipe from my hand, and requested me,
in the same suppressed voice, to return to his shop.
-- 050 --
[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]
“And Maimuna”—
His only answer was to point to the door, and thinking
it best to obey his orders implicitly, I made the
best of my way out of the slave-market, and was soon
drinking a sherbet in his inner apartment, and listening
to the shuffle of every passing slipper for the coming
of the light step of the Gipsy.
The rules of good-breeding discountenance in society
what is usually called “a scene.” I detest it as
well on paper. There is no sufficient reason, apparent
to me, why my sensibilities should be drawn upon
at sight, as I read, any more than when I please myself
by following my own devices in company. Violent
sensations are, abstractly as well as conventionally,
ill-bred. They derange the serenity, fluster the manner,
and irritate the complexion. It is for this reason
that I forbear to describe the meeting between Maimuna
and myself after she had been bought for forty
pounds by the wily and worthy seller of essences and
pastilles—how she fell on my neck when she discovered
that I, and not Mustapha, was her purchaser and master—
how she explained, between her hysterical sobs,
that the Turk who had sold her to the slave-dealer was
a renegade gipsy, and her mother's brother (to whom
she had been on an errand of affection)—and how she
sobbed herself to sleep with her face in the palms of
my hands, and her masses of raven hair covering my
knees and feet like the spreading fountains of San Pietro—
and how I pressed my lips to the starry parting
of those raven tresses on the top of her fairest head,
and blessed the relying child as she slept—are circumstances,
you will allow, my dear Madam! that could
not be told passably well without moving your amiable
tenderness to tears. You will consider this paragraph,
-- 051 --
[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]
therefore, less as an ingenious manner of disposing of
the awkward angles of my story, than as a polite and
praise-worthy consideration of your feelings and complexion.
Flushed eyelids are so very unbecoming!
My confidential interviews with Job began to take
rather an unpleasant coloring. The forty pounds I
had paid for Miamuna's liberty, with the premium to
Mustapha, the suit of European clothes necessary to
disguise my new companion, and the addition of a third
person in our European lodgings at Pera, rather
drove my finances to the wall. Job cared very little
for the loss of his allowance of pocket-money, and
made no resistance to eating kibaubs at a meat-shop,
instead of his usual silver fork and French dinner at
Madame Josepino's. He submitted with the same resignation
to a one-oared caique on the Bosphorus, and
several minor reductions in his expenses, thinking
nothing a hardship, in short, which I shared cheerfully
with him. He would have donned the sugar-loaf hat
of a dervish, and begged his way home by Jerusalem
or Mecca, so only I was content. But the morality of
the thing!
“What will you do with this beautiful girl when
you get to Rome? how will you dispose of her in
Paris? how will your friends receive a female, already
arrived at the age of womanhood, who shall have traveled
with you two or three years on the continent?
how will you provide for her? how educate her? how
rid yourself of her, with any Christian feeling of compassion,
when she has become irrevocably attached to
you?”
We were pulling up to the Symplegades while my
plain-spoken Mentor thrust me these home questions,
and Maimuna sat coiled between my feet in the bottom
-- 052 --
[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]
of the caique, gazing into my face with eyes that
seemed as if they would search my very soul for the
cause of my emotion. We seldom spoke English in
her presence, for the pain it gave her when she felt
excluded from the conversation amounted in her all-expressive
features to a look of anguish that made it
seem to me a cruelty. She dared not ask me, in
words, why I was vexed; but she gathered from Job's
tone that there was reproof in what he said, and
flashing a glance of inquiring anger at his serious face,
she gently stole her hand under the cloak to mine, and
laid the back of it softly in my palm. There was a
delicacy and a confidingness in the motion that started
a tear into my eye; and as I smiled through it, and
drew her to me and impressed a kiss on her forehead,
I inwardly resolved, that, as long as that lovely creature
should choose to eat of my bread, it should be
free to her in all honor and kindness, and, if need
were, I would supply to her, with the devotion of my
life, the wrong and misconstruction of the world.
As I turned over that leaf in my heart, there crept
through it a breath of peace, and I felt that my
good angel had taken me into favor. Job began
to fumble for the lunch, and the dancing caique shot
forth merrily into the Black Sea.
“My dearest chum!” said I, as we sat round our
brown paper of kibaubs on the highest point of the
Symplegades, “you see yourself here at the outermost
limit of your travels.”
His mouth was full, but as soon as he could conveniently
swallow, he responded with the appropriate sigh.
“Six thousand miles, more or less, lie between you
and your spectacled and respectable mother; but
nineteen thousand, the small remainder of the earth's
circumference, extending due east from this paper
of cold meat, remain to you untraveled!”
-- 053 --
[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]
Job fixed his eye on a white sea-bird apparently
asleep on the wing, but diving away eastward into the
sky, as if it were the heart within us sped onward with
our boundless wishes.
“Do you not envy him?” he asked enthusiastically.
“Yes; for nature pays his traveling expenses, and
I would our common mother were as considerate to
me! How soon, think you, he will see Trebisond,
posting at that courier speed?”
“And Shiraz, and Isaphan, and the valley of Cashmere!
To think how that stupid bird will fly over
them, and, spite of all that Hafiz, and Saadi, and Tom
Moore have written on the lands that his shadow may
glide through, will return, as wise as he went, to Marmora!
To compound natures with him were a nice
arrangement, now!”
“You would be better looking, my dear Job!”
“How very unpleasant you are, Mr. Slingsby! But
really, Philip, to cast the slough of this expensive and
il-locomotive humanity, and find yourself afloat with
all the necessary apparatus of life stowed snugly into
breast and tail, your legs tucked quietly away under you,
and, instead of coat and unmentionables to be put off
and on and renewed at such inconvenient expense, a
self-renewing tegument of cleanly feathers, brushed
and washed in the common course of nature by wind
and rain—no valet to be paid and drilled—no dressing-case
to be supplied and left behind—no tooth-brushes
to be mislaid—no tight boots—no corns—no passports
nor posthorses! Do you know, Phil, on reflection, I
find this `mortal coil' a very inferior and inconvenient
apparatus!
“If you mean your own, I quite agree with you.”
“I am surprised, Mr. Slingsby, that you, who value
yourself on knowing what is due from one highly-civilized
individual to another, should indulge in these
very disagreeable reflections!”
-- 054 --
[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]
Maimuna did not quite comprehend the argument,
but she saw that the tables were turned, and, without
ill-will to Job, she paid me the compliment of always
taking my side. I felt her slender arm around my
neck, and as she got upon her knees behind me and
put forward her little head to get a peep at my lips, her
clear bird-like laugh of enjoyment and triumph added
visibly to my friend's mortification. A compunctious
visiting stole over me, and I began to feel that I should
scarce have revenged myself for what was, after all,
but a kind severity;
“Do you know, Job,” said I, (anxious to restore his
self-complacency without a direct apology for my rudeness,)
“do you know there is a very deep human truth
hidden in the familiar story of `Beauty and the Beast?'
I really am of opinion, that, between the extremes of
hideousness and the highest perfection of loveliness,
there is no face which, after a month's intercourse,
does not depend exclusively on its expression (or, in
other words, on the amiable qualities of the individual)
for the admiration it excites. The plainest features
become handsome unaware when associated only with
kind feelings, and the loveliest face disagreeable when
linked with ill-humor or caprice. People should remember
this when selecting a face which they are to
see every morning across the breakfast-table for the remainder
of their natural lives.”
Job was appeased by the indirect compliment contained
in this speech; and, gathering up our kibaubs,
we descended to the caique, and pulling around the
easternmost point of the Symplegades, bade adieu to
the Orient, and took the first step westward with the
smile of conciliation on our lips.
We were soon in the strong current of the Bosphorus,
and shot swiftly down between Europe and Asia,
by the light of a sunset that seemed to brighten the
West for our return. It was a golden path homeward.
-- 055 --
[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
The East looked cold behind; and the welcome of
our far-away kinsmen seemed sent to us on those purpling
clouds, winning us back. Beneath that kindling
horizon---below that departed sun---lay the fresh and
free land of our inheritance. The light of the world
seemed gone over to it. These, from which the day
had declined, were countries of memory---ours, of
hope. The sun, that was setting on these, was dawning
gloriously on ours.
On ordinary occasions, Job would have given me a
stave of “Hail, Columbia!” after such a burst of patriotism.
The cloud was on his soul, however.
“We have turned to go back,” he said, in a kind of
musing bitterness, “and see what we are leaving behind!
In this fairly-shaped boat you are gliding like a
dream down the Bosphorus. The curving shore of
Therapia yonder is fringed for miles with the pleasureloving
inhabitants of this delicious land, who think a
life too short, of which the highest pleasure is to ramble
on the edge of these calm waters with their kinsmen
and children. Is there a picture in the world
more beautiful than that palace-lined shore? Is there
a city so magnificent under the sun as that in which it
terminates? Are there softer skies, greener hills,
simpler or better people, to live among, than these?
Oh, Philip! ours, with all its freedom, is a `workingday'
land. There is no idleness there! The sweat is
ever on the brow, the `serpent of care' never loosened
about the heart! I confess myself a worshipper of leisure:
I would let no moment of my golden youth go by
unrecorded with a pleasure. Toil is ungodlike, and unworthy
of the immortal spirit, that should walk unchained
through the world. I love these idle Orientals.
Their sliding and haste-forbidding slippers, their flowing
and ungirded habiliments, are signs most expressive
of their joy in life. Look around, and see how on
every hill-top stands a maison de plaisance; how every
-- 056 --
[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]
hill-side is shelved into those green platforms,[6] so expressive
of their habits of enjoyment! Rich or poor,
their pleasures are the same. The open air, freedom
to roam, a caique at the water-side, and a sairgah on
the hill---these are their means of happiness, and they
are within the reach of all; they are nearer Utopia
than we, my dear Philip! We shall be more like
Turks than Christians in Paradise!”
“Inglorious Job!”
“Why? Because I love idleness? Are there
braver people in the world than the Turks? Are there
people more capable of the romance of heroism?
Energy, though it sound a paradox, is the child of idleness.
All extremes are natural and easy; and the
most indolent in peace is likely to be the most fiery in
war. Here we are, opposite the summer serai of Sultan
Mahmoud; and who more luxurious and idle?
Yet the massacre of the Janissaries was one of the
boldest measures in history. There is the most perfect
Orientalism in the description of the Persian beauty by
Hafiz:---
`Her heart is full of passion, and her eyes are full of sleep.'
Perhaps nothing would be so contradictory as the true
analysis of the character of what is called an indolent
man. With all the tastes I have just professed, my
strongest feeling on leaving the Symplegades, for example,
was, and is still, an unwillingness to retrace my
steps. `Onward! onward!' is the perpetual cry of
-- 057 --
[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]
my heart. I could pass my life in going from land to
land, so only that every successive one was new. Italy
will be old to us; France, Germany, can scarce lure
the imagination to adventure, with the knowledge we
have; and England, though we have not seen it, is so
familiar to us from its universality that it will not seem,
even on a first visit, a strange country. We have satiety
before us, and the thought saddens me. I hate to
go back. I could start now, with Maimuna for a
guide, and turn gipsy in the wilds of Asia.”
“Will you go with him, Maimuna?”
“Signor, no!”
I am the worst of story-tellers, gentle reader; for I
never get to the end. The truth is, that in these rambling
papers, I go over the incidents I describe, not as
they should be written in a romance, but as they occurred
in my travels: I write what I remember. There
are, of course, long intervals in adventure, filled up
sometimes by feasting or philosophy, sometimes with
idleness or love; and, to please myself, I must unweave
the thread as it was woven. It is strange how, in the
memory of a traveler, the most wayside and unimportant
things are the best remembered. You may
have stood in the Parthenon, and, looking back upon
it through the distance of years, a chance word of the
companion who happened to be with you, or the attitude
of a Greek seen in the plain below, may come up
more vividly to the recollection than the immortal
sculptures on the frieze. There is a natural antipathy
in the human mind to fulfil expectations. We wander
from the thing we are told to admire, to dwell on
something we have discovered ourselves. The child
in church occupies itself with the fly on its prayerbook,
and “the child is father of the man.” If I indulge
in the same perversity in story-telling, dear
reader,---if, in the most important crisis of my tale, I
-- 058 --
[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]
digress to some trifling vein of speculation,---if, at the
close even, the climax seem incomplete, and the moral
vain,---I plead, upon all these counts, an adherence to
truth and nature. Life---real life---is made up of half-finished
romance. The most interesting procession of
events is delayed, and travestied, and mixed with the
ridiculous and the trifling, and at the end, oftenest left
imperfect. Who ever saw, off the stage, a five act
tragedy, with its proprieties and its climax?
eaf415v2.n6[6] All around Constantinople are seen what are called sairgahs—
small greensward platforms levelled in the side of a hill, and usually
commanding some lovely view, intended as spots on which those who
are abroad for pleasure may spread their carpets. I know nothing so
expressive as this of the simple and natural lives led by these gentle
Orientals.
-- --
Chapter
[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]
Ten o'clock a.m., and the weather like the Prophet's
Paradise,
“Warmth without heat, and coolness without cold.”
Madame Josepino stood at the door of her Turco-Italian
boarding-house in the nasty and fashionable main
street of Pera, dividing her attention between a handsome
Armenian, with a red button in the top of his
black lamb's-wool cap,[7] and her three boarders, Job,
Maimuna, and myself, at that critical moment about
mounting our horses for a gallop to Belgrade.
We kissed our hands to the fat and fair Italian, and
with a promise to be at home for supper, kicked our
shovel-shaped stirrups into the sides of our horses, and
pranced away up the street, getting many a glance of
-- 060 --
[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]
curiosity, and one or two that might be more freely
translated, from the dark eyes that are seen day and
night at the windows of the leaden-colored houses of
the Armenians.
We should have been an odd-looking cavalcade for
the Boulevard or Bond-street, but, blessed privilege of
the East! we were sufficiently comme il faut for Pera.
To avoid the embarrassment of Maimuna's sex, I had
dressed her, from an English “slop-shop” at Galata,
in the checked shirt, jacket, and trowsers of a sailorboy,
but as she was obstinately determined that her
long black hair should not be shorn, a turban was her
only resource for concealment, and the dark and
glossy mass was hidden in the folds of an Albanian
shawl, forming altogether as inharmonious a costume
as could well be imagined. With the white duck
trowsers tight over her hips, and the jacket, which was
a little too large for her, loose over her shoulders and
breast, the checked collar tied with a black silk cravat
close round her throat, and the silken and gold fringe
of the shawl flowing coquetishly over her left cheek
and ear, she was certainly an odd figure on horseback,
and, but for her admirable riding and excessive grace of
attitude, she might have been as much a subject for a
caricature as her companion. Job rode soberly along
at her side, in the green turban of a Hajji, (which he
had persisted in wearing ever since his pilgrimage to
Jerusalem,) and, as he usually put it on askew, the
gaillard and rakish character of his head-dress, and the
grave respectability of his black coat and salt-and-pepper
trowsers, produced a contrast which elicited a
smile even from the admiring damsels at the windows.
Maimuna went caracoling along till the road entered
the black shadow of the Cemetery of Pera, and then,
pulling up her well-managed horse, she rode close to
my side, with the air of subdued respect which was
-- 061 --
[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]
more fitting to the spirit of the scene. It was a lovely
morning, as I said, and the Turks, who are early risers,
were sitting on the graves of their kindred with their
veiled wives and children, the marble turbans in that
thickly-sown nekropolis less numerous than those of the
living, who had come, not to mourn the dead who lay
beneath, but to pass a day of idleness and pleasure on
the spot endeared by their memories.
“I declare to you,” said Job, following Maimuna's
example in waiting till I came up, “that I think the
Turks the most misrepresented and abused people on
earth. Look at this scene! Here are whole families
seated upon graves over which the grass grows green
and fresh, the children playing at their feet, and their
own faces the pictures of calm cheerfulness and enjoyment.
They are the by-word for brutes, and there is
not a gentler or more poetical race of beings between
the Indus and the Arkansaw!”
It was really a scene of great beauty. The Turkish
tombs are as splendid as white marble can make them,
with letters and devices in red and gold, and often the
most delicious sculptures, and, with the crowded closeness
of the monuments, the vast extent of the burialground
over hill and dale, and the cypresses (nowhere
so magnificent) veiling all in a deep religious shadow,
dim, and yet broken by spots of the clearest sunshine,
a more impressive and peculiar scene could scarce be
imagined. It might exist in other countries, but it
would be a desert. To the Mussulman death is not
repulsive, and he makes it a resort when he would be
happiest. At all hours of the day you find the
tombs of Constantinople surrounded by the living.
They spread their carpets, and arrange their simple
repast around the stone which records the name and
virtues of their own dead, and talk of them as they do
of the living and absent,—parted from them to meet
again, if not in life, in paradise.
-- 062 --
[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]
“For my own part,” continued Job, “I see nothing
in scripture which contradicts the supposition that we
shall haunt, in the intermediate state between death
and heaven, the familiar places to which we have been
accustomed. In that case, how delightful are the habits
of these people, and how cheeringly vanish the horrors
of the grave! Death, with us, is appalling! The
smile has scarce faded from our lips, the light scarce
dead in our eye, when we are thrust into a noisome
vault, and thought of but with a shudder and a fear.
We are connected thenceforth, in the memories of our
friends, with the pestilent air in which we lie, with the
vermin that infest the gloom, with chillness, with darkness,
with disease; and, memento as it is of their own
coming destiny, what wonder if they chase us, and the
forecast shadows of the grave, with the same hurried
disgust from their remembrance. Suppose, for an instant,
(what is by no means improbable,) that the
spirits of the dead are about us, conscious and watchful!
Suppose that they have still a feeling of sympathy
in the decaying form they have so long inhabited,
in its organs, its senses, its once-admired and longcherished
grace and proportion; that they feel the
contumely and disgust with which the features we professed
to love are cast like garbage into the earth, and
the indecent haste with which we turn away from the
solitary spot, and think of it but as the abode of festering
and revolting corruption!”
At this moment we turned to the left, descending to
the Bosphorus, and Maimuna, who had ridden a little
in advance during Job's unintelligible monologue, came
galloping back to tell us that there was a corpse in the
road. We quickened our pace, and the next moment
our horses started aside from the bier, left in a bend of
the highway with a single individual, the grave-digger,
sitting cross-legged beside it. Without looking up at
our approach, the man mumbled something between
-- 063 --
[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]
his teeth, and held up his hand as if to arrest us in our
path.
“What does he say?” I asked of Maimuna.
“He repeats a verse of the Koran,” she replied,
“which promises a reward in paradise to him who
bears the dead forty steps on its way to the grave.”
Job sprang instantly from his horse, threw the bridle
over the nearest tombstone, and made a sign to the
grave-digger that he would officiate as bearer. The
man nodded assent, but looked down the road without
arising from his seat.
`You are but three,” said Maimuna, “and he waits
for a fourth.”
I had dismounted by this time, not to be behind my
friend in the humanities of life, and the grave-digger,
seeing that we were Europeans, smiled with a kind
of pleased surprise, and uttering the all-expressive
“Pekkhe!” resumed his look-out for the fourth
bearer.
The corpse was that of a poor old man. The coffin
was without a cover, and he lay in it, in his turban
and slippers, his hands crossed over his breast, and
the folds of his girdle stuck full of flowers. He might
have been asleep, for any look of death about him.
His lips were slightly unclosed, and his long beard was
combed smoothly over his breast. The odor of the
pipe and the pastille struggled with the perfume of the
flowers, and there was in his whole aspect a life-likeness
and peace, that the shroud and the close coffin,
and the additional horrors of approaching death, perhaps,
combine, in other countries, utterly to do away.
“Hitherto,” said Job, as he gazed attentively on the
calm old man, “I have envied the Scaligers their uplifted
and airy tombs in the midst of the cheerful street
of Verona, and, next to theirs, the sunny sarcophagus
of Petrarch, looking away over the peaceful Campagna
of Lombardy; but here is a Turkish beggar who will
-- 064 --
[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]
be buried still more enviably. Is it not a paradise of
tombs,—a kind of Utopia of the dead?”
A young man with a load of vegetables for the
market of Pera, came toiling up the hill behind his
mule. Sure of his assistance, the grave-digger arose,
and as we took our places at the poles, the marketer
quietly turned his beast out of the road, and assisted
us in lifting the dead on our shoulders. The grave
was not far off, and having deposited the corpse on its
border, we returned to our horses, and, soon getting
clear of the cemetery, galloped away with light hearts
toward the Valley of Sweet Waters.
eaf415v2.n7[7] The Armenians at Constantinople are despised by the Turks,
and tacitly submit, like the Jews, to occupy a degraded position as a
people. A few, however, are employed as interpreters by the embassies,
and these are allowed to wear the mark of a red worsted button
in the high black cap of the race,—a distinction which just serves to
make them the greatest possible coxcombs.
We were taking breath on the silken banks of the
Barbyses,—Maimuna prancing along the pebbly bed,
up to her barb's girths in sparkling water, and Job and
myself laughing at her frolics from either side, when
an old woman, bent double with age, came hobbling
toward us from a hovel in the hill-side.
“Maimuna,” said Job, fishing out some trumpery
paras from the corner of his waistcoat pocket, “give
this to that good woman, and tell her that he who gives
it is happy, and would share his joy with her.”
The gipsy spurred up the bank, dismounted at a
short distance from the decrepit creature, and after a
little conversation returned, leading her horse.
“She is not a beggar, and wishes to know why you
give her money?”
“Tell her, to buy bread for her children,” said my
patriarchal friend.
Maimuna went back, conversed with her again, and
returned with the money.
“She says she has no need of it. There is no human
creature between her and Allah!”
The old woman hobbled on, Job pocketed his rejected
paras, and Maimuna rode between us in silence.
-- 065 --
[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]
It was a gem of natural poetry that was worthy of
the lips of an angel.
We kept up the Valley of Sweet Waters, tracing
the Barbyses through its bosom, to the hills; and then
mounting a steep ascent, struck across to the east, over
a country, which, though so near the capital of the
Turkish empire, is as wild as the plains of the Hermus.
Shrubs, forest-trees, and wild grass, cover the apparently
illimitable waste, and save a half-visible horsepath
which guides the traveler across, there is scarce
an evidence that you are not the first adventurer in the
wilderness.
What a natural delight is freedom! What a bound
gives the heart at the sight of the unfenced earth, the
unseparated hill-sides, the unhedged and unharvested
valleys! How thrilling it is—unlike any other joy—
to spur a fiery horse to the hill-top, and gaze away
over dell and precipice to the horizon, and never a
wall between, nor a human limit to say “Thus far
shalt thou go, and no farther!” Oh, I think we have
an instinct, dulled by civilization, which is like the
caged eaglet's, or the antelope's that is reared in the
Arab's tent; an instinct of nature that scorns boundary
and chain; that yearns to the free desert; that would
have the earth, like the sea or the sky, unappropriated
and open; that rejoices in immeasurable liberty of foot
and dwelling-place, and springs passionately back to
its freedom even after years of subduing method and
spirit-breaking confinement! I have felt it on the sea,
in the forests of America, on the desolated plains of
Asia and Roumelia; I should feel it till my heart
burst, had I the wings of a bird!
The house once occupied by Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu stands on the descent of a hill in the little village
of Belgrade, some twelve or fourteen miles from
-- 066 --
[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]
Constantinople. It is a common-place two-story affair,
but the best house of the dozen that form the village,
and overlooks a dell below that reminds one of the
“Emerald valleys of Cashmeer.” We wandered
through its deserted rooms, discussed the clever woman
who has described her travels so graphically, and
then followed Maimuna to the narrow street, in search
of kibaubs. The butcher's shop in Turkey is as open
as the trottoir to the street, and with only an entire
sheep hanging between us and a dozen hungry beggars,
attracted by the presence of strangers, we crossed
our legs on the straw carpet, and setting the wooden
tripod in the centre, waited patiently the movements of
our feeder, who combined in his single person the
three vocations of butcher, cook, and waiter. One
must have traveled east of Cape Colonna to relish a
dinner so slightly disguised, but, once rid of European
prejudices, there is nothing more simple than the fact
that it is rather an attractive mode of feeding—a traveler's
appetite subauditur.
Our friend was a wholesome-looking Turk, with a
snow-white turban, a black, well-conditioned beard, a
mouth incapable of a smile, yet honest, and a most
trenchant and janissaresque style of handling his
cleaver. Having laid open his bed of coals with a
kind of conjurer's flourish of the poker, he slapped the
pendent mutton on the thigh in a fashion of encouragement,
and waiting an instant for our admiration to subside,
he whipped his knife from its sheath, and had out
a dozen strips from the chine (as Job expressed it in
Vermontese) “in no time.” With the same alacrity
these were cut into bits “of the size of a piece of
chalk,” (another favorite expression of Job's,) run
upon a skewer, and laid on the coals, and in three
minutes, more or less, they appeared smoking on the
trencher, half lost in a fine green salad, well peppered,
and of a most seducing and provocative savor. If you
-- 067 --
[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]
have performed your four ablutions A.M., like a devout
Mussulman, it is not conceived in Turkey that you
have occasion for the medium of a fork, and I frankly
own, that I might have been seen at Belgrade, cross-legged
in a kibaub-shop, between my friend and the
gipsy, and making a most diligent use of my thumb
and fore-finger. I have dined since at the Rocher de
Cancale and the Traveler's with less satisfaction.
Having paid something like sixpence sterling for
our three dinners, (rather an overcharge, Maimuna
thought,) we unpicketed our horses from the long
grass, and bade adieu to Belgrade, on our way to the
Aqueducts. We were to follow down a verdant valley,
and, exhilarated by a flask of Greek wine, (which
I forgot to mention,) and the ever-thrilling circumstances
of unlimited greensward and horses that wait
not for the spur, we followed the daring little Asiatic
up hill and down, over bush and precipice, till Job
cried us mercy. We pulled up on the edge of a sheet
of calm water, and the vast marble wall, built by the
Sultans in the days of their magnificence and crossing
the valley from side to side, burst upon us like a scene
of enchantment in the wilderness.
Those same sultans must have lived a great deal at
Belgrade. Save these vast aqueducts, which are splendid
monuments of architecture, there is little in the
first aspect to remind you that you are not in the wilds
of Missouri; but a further search discloses, in the recesses
of the hidden windings of the valley, circular
staircases of marble leading to secluded baths, now
filled with leaves and neglected, but evidently on a
scale of the most imperial sumptuousness. From the
perishable construction of Turkish dwelling-houses, all
traces even of the most costly serai may easily have
disappeared in a few years, when once abandoned to
ruin; and I pleased myself with imagining, as we
slackened bridle, and rode slowly beneath the
-- 068 --
[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]
gigantic trees of the forest, the gilded pavilions, and gay
scenes of Oriental pleasure that must have existed
here in the days of the warlike yet effeminate Selims.
It is a place for the enchantments of the “Arabian
Nights” to have been realized.
I have followed the common error in giving these
structures in the forest of Belgrade the name of aqueducts.
They are rather walls built across the deep
valleys, of different altitudes, to create reservoirs for
the supply of aqueducts, but are built with all the
magnificence and ornament of a façade to a temple.
We rode on from one to the other, arriving at last at
the lowest, which divides the valley at its wildest part,
forming a giddy wall across an apparently bottomless
ravine, as dark and impracticable as the glen of the
Cauterskill in America. Our road lay on the other
side, but though with a steady eye one might venture
to cross the parapet on foot, there were no means of
getting our horses over, short of a return of half a mile
to the path we had neglected higher up the valley.
We might swim it, above the embankment, but the opposite
shore was a precipice.
“What shall we do?” I asked.
Job made no answer, but pulled round his beast,
and started off in a sober canter to return.
I stood a moment, gazing on the placid sheet of
water above, and the abyss of rock and darkness below,
and then calling to Maimuna, who had ridden
farther down the bank, I turned my horse's head after
him.
“Signore!” cried the gipsy from below.
“What is it, Carissima?”
“Maimuna never goes back!”
“Silly child!” I answered, “you are not going to
cross the ravine?”
“Yes!” was the reply, and the voice became more
-- 069 --
[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]
indistinguishable as she galloped away. “I will be
over before you!”
I was vexed, but I knew the self-will and temerity
of the wild Asiatic, and, very certain that, if there
were danger, it would be run before I could reach
her, I drove the stirrups into my horse's sides, and
overtook Job at the descent into the valley. We ascended
again, and rode down the opposite shore to the
embankment, at a sharp gallop. Maimuna was not
there.
“She will have perished in the abyss,” said Job.
I sprang from my horse to cross the parapet on foot,
in search of her, when I heard her horse's footsteps,
and the next moment she dashed up the steep, having
failed in her attempt, and stood once more where we
had parted. The sun was setting, and we had ten
miles to ride, and impatient of her obstinacy, I sharply
ordered her to go up the ravine at speed, and cross as
we had done.
I think I never shall forget, angry as I was at the
moment, the appearance of that lovely creature, as
she resolutely refused to obey me. Her horse, the
same fiery Arabian she had ridden from Sardis, (an
animal that, except when she was on his back, would
scarce have sold for a gold sequin,) stood with head
erect, and panting nostrils, glancing down with his
wild eyes upon the abyss into which he had been
urged,—the whole group, horse and rider, completely
relieved against the sky from the isolated mound they
occupied, and, at this instant, the gold flood of the setting
sun pouring full on them through a break in the
masses of the forest. Her own fierce attitude, and
beautiful and frowning face, the thin lip curled resolutely,
and the brown and polished cheek deepened
with a rosy glow, her full and breathing bosom swelling
beneath its jacket, and her hair, which had escaped
from the turban, flowing over her neck and shoulders,
-- 070 --
[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]
and mingling with the loosened fringes of red and gold
in rich disorder—it was a picture which the pencil of
Martin (and it would have suited his genius) could
scarce have exaggerated. The stately, half-Arabic,
half-Grecian architecture of the aqueducts, and the
cold and frowning tints of the abyss and the forest
around, would have left him nothing to add to it as a
composition.
I was crossing the giddy edge of the parapet, looking
well to my feet, with the intention of reasoning
with the obstinate being, who, vexed at my reproaches
and her own failure, was now in as pretty a rage as
myself, when I heard the trampling of horses in the
forest. I stopped mid-way to listen, and presently
there sprang a horseman up the bank in an Oriental
costume, with pistols and ataghan flashing in the sun,
and a cast of features that at once betrayed his origin.
“A Zingara!” I shouted back to Job.
The gipsy, who was about nineteen, and as wellmade
and gallant a figure for a man as Maimuna for a
woman, seemed as much astonished as ourselves, and
sat in his saddle gazing on the extraordinary figure I
have described, evidently recognizing one of his own
race, but probably puzzled with the mixture of costumes,
and struck at the same time with Maimuna's
excessive beauty. Lovely as she always was, I had
never seen her to such advantage as now. She might
have come from fairy-land, for the radiant vision she
seemed in the gold of that burning sunset.
I gazed on them both a moment, and was about
finishing my traverse of the parapet, when a troop of
mounted gipsies and baggage-horses came up the bank
at a quick pace, and in another minute Maimuna was
surrounded. I sprang to her bridle, and apprehensive
of, I scarce knew what danger, gave her one of the
two pistols I carried always in my bosom.
-- 071 --
[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]
The gipsy chief (for such he evidently was) measured
me from head to foot with a look of dislike, and
speaking for the first time, addressed Maimuna in his
own language with a remark which sent the blood to
her temples with a suddenness I had never before
seen.
“What does he say?” I asked.
“It is no matter, Signore, but it is false!” Her
black eyes were like coals of fire, as she spoke.
“Leave your horse,” I said to her, in a low tone,
“and cross the parapet. I will prevent his following
you, and will join you on your own before you can
reach Constantinople. Turn the horses' heads homeward!”
I continued in English to Job, who was crying
out to me from the other side to come back.
Maimuna laid her hand on the pommel to dismount,
but the gipsy, anticipating her motion, touched his
horse with the stirrup, and sprang with a single leap
between her and the parapet. The troop had gathered
into a circle behind us, and seeing our retreat
thus cut off, I presented my pistol to the young chief,
and demanded, in Italian, that he should clear the
way.
A blow from behind, the instant that I was pulling
the trigger, sent the discharged pistol into the ravine,
and, in the same instant, Maimuna dashed her horse
against the unguarded gipsy, nearly overturning him
into the abyss, and spurred desperately upon the parapet.
One cry from the whole gipsy troop, and then
all was silent as the grave, except the click of her
horse's hoofs on the marble verge, as, trembling palpably
in every limb, the terrified animal crossed the
giddy chasm at a half trot, and, in the next minute,
bounded up the opposite bank, and disappeared with
a snort of fear and delight amid the branches of the
forest.
What with horror and wonder, and the shock of the
-- 072 --
[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]
blow which had nearly broken my arm, I stood motionless
where Maimuna had left me, till the gipsy, recovering
from his amazement, dismounted and put his
pistol to my breast.
“Call her back!” he said to me, in very good Italian,
and with a tone in which rage and determination
were strangely mingled, “or you die where you stand.”
Without regarding his threat, I looked at him with
a new thought stealing into my mind. He probably
read the pacific change in my feelings, for he dropped
his arm, and the frown on his own features moderated
to a stedfast and inquisitive regard.
“Zingara!” I said, “Maimuna is my slave.”
A clutch of his pistol-stock, and a fiery and impatient
look from his fine eyes, interrupted me for an instant.
I proceeded to tell him briefly how I had obtained
possession of her, while the troop gradually
closed around, attracted by his excessive look of interest
in the tale, though they probably did not understand
the language in which I spoke, and all fixing
their wild eyes earnestly on my face.
“And now, Zingara,” I said, “I will bring her
back on one condition—that, when the offer is fairly
made her, if she chooses still to go with me, she shall
be free to do so. I have protected her, and sworn still
to protect her as long as she should choose to eat of
my bread. Though my slave, she is pure and guiltless
as when she left the tent of her mother, and is worthy
of the bosom of an emperor.”
The Zingara took my hand, and put it to his lips.
“You agree to our compact, then?” I asked.
He put his hand to his forehead, and then laid it,
with a slight inclination, on his breast.
“She cannot have gone far,” I said, and stepping on
the mound above the parapet, I shouted her name till
the woods rang again with the echo.
A moment, and Job and Maimuna came riding to
-- 073 --
[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]
the verge of the opposite hill, and with a few words
of explanation, fastened their horses to a tree, and
crossed to us by the parapet.
The chief returned his pistols to his girdle, and
stood aside while I spoke to Maimuna. It was a difficult
task, but I felt that it was a moment decisive of
her destiny, and the responsibility weighed heavily on
my breast. Though excessively attached to her—
though she had been endeared to me by sacrifices, and
by the ties of protection---though, in short, I loved
her, not with a passion, but with an affection—as a
father more than as a lover—I still felt it to be my duty
to leave no means untried to induce her to abandon
me, to return to her own people and remain in her own
land of the sun. What her fate would be in the state
of society to which I must else introduce her, had
been eloquently depicted by Job, and will readily be
imagined by the reader.
After the first burst of incredulity and astonishment
at my proposal, she folded her arms on her bosom,
and, with the tears streaming like rain over her jacket,
listened in silence and with averted eyes. I concluded
with representing to her, in rather strong colors,
the feelings with which she might be received by my
friends, and the difficulty she would find in accomodating
herself to the customs of people, to whom not
only she must be inferior in the accomplishments of
a woman, but who might find, even in the color of that
loveliest cheek, a reason to despise her.
Her lip curled for an instant, but the grief in her
heart was stronger than the scorn for an imaginary
wrong, and she bowed her head again, and her tears
flowed on.
I was silent at last, and she looked up into my face.
“I am a burthen to you,” she said.
“No, dearest Maimuna! no! but if I were to see
you wretched hereafter, you would become so. Tell
-- 074 --
[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]
me! the chief will make you his wife; will you rejoin
your people?”
She flung herself upon the ground, and wept as if
her heart would break. I thought it best to let her
feelings have way, and walking apart with the young
gipsy, I gave him more of the particulars of her history,
and exacted a promise that, if she should finally
be left with the troop, he would return with her to the
tribe of her mother, at Sardis.
Maimuna stood gazing fixedly into the ravine when
we turned back, and there was an erectness in her attitude,
and a fierte in the air of her head, that, I must
acknowledge, promised more for my fears than my
wishes. Her pride was roused, it was easy with half
a glance to see.
With the suddenness of Oriental passion, the young
chief had become already enamored of her, and, with
a feeling of jealousy which, even though I wished him
success, I could not control, I saw him kneel at her
feet and plead with her in an inaudible tone. She had
been less than woman if she had been insensible to
that passionate cadence, and the imploring earnestness
of the noble countenance on which she looked.
It was evident that she was interested, though she
began with scaree deigning to lift her eyes from the
ground.
I felt a sinking of the heart which I cannot describe
when he rose to his feet and left her standing alone.
The troop had withdrawn at his command, and Job,
to whom the scene was too painful, had re-crossed the
parapet, and stood by his horse's head waiting the result.
The twilight had deepened, the forest looked
black around us, and a single star sprang into the sky,
while the west was still glowing in a fast purpling gold
and crimson.
“Signore!” said Maimuna, walking calmly to my
-- 075 --
[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]
hand, which I stretched instinctively to receive her,
“I am breaking my heart; I know not what to do.”
At this instant a faint meteor shot over the sky, and
drew its reflection across the calm mirror whose verge
we were approaching.
“Stay!” she cried; “the next shall decide the fate
of Maimuna! If it cross to the East, the will of Allah
be done! I will leave you!”
I called to the gipsy, and we stood on the verge of
the parapet in breathless expectation. The darkness
deepened around us, the abyss grew black and indistinguishable,
and the night-birds flitted past like audible
shadows. I drew Maimuna to my bosom, and
with my hands buried in her long hair, pressed her to
my heart, that beat as painfully and as heavily as her
own.
A sudden shriek! She started from my bosom, and
as she fell upon the earth, my eye caught, on the face
of the mirror from which I had forgetfully withdrawn
my gaze, the vanishing pencil of a meteor, drawn like
a beam of the sunset, from west to east!
I lifted the insensible child, impressed one long kiss
on her lips, and flinging her into the arms of the gipsy,
crossed the parapet, and rode, with a speed that tried
in vain to outrun my anguish, to Constantinople.
-- --
[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
-- --
TOM FANE AND I.
[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]
-- --
[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
-- -- p415-346
[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]
“Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.”
Shelley.
Tom Fane's four Canadian ponies were whizzing
his light phaeton through the sand at a rate that would
have put spirits into any thing but a lover absent from
his mistress. The “heaven-kissing” pines towered on
every side like the thousand and one columns of the
Palæologi at Constantinople; their flat and spreading
tops shutting out the light of heaven almost as effectually
as the world of Mussulmen, mosques, kiosks,
bazaars, and Giaours sustained on those innumerable
capitals, darkens the subterranean wonder of Stamboul.
An American pine forest is as like a temple,
and a sublime one, as any dream that ever entered into
the architectural brain of the slumbering Martin.
The Yankee methodists, in their camp-meetings, have
but followed an irresistible instinct to worship God in
the religious dimness of these interminable aisles of
the wilderness.
Tom Fane and I had stoned the storks together in
the palace of Crœsus at Sardis. We had read
-- 080 --
[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]
Anastasius on a mufti's tomb in the Nekropolis of Scutari.
We had burned with fig fevers in the same caravanserai
at Smyrna. We had cooled our hot foreheads
and cursed the Greeks in emulous Romaic in the dim
tomb of Agamemnon at Argos. We had been grave
at Paris, and merry at Rome; and we had pic-nic'd
with the beauties of the Fanar in the valley of Sweet
Waters in pleasant Roumelia; and when, after parting
in France, he had returned to England and his regiment,
and I to New England and law, whom should I
meet in a summer's trip to the St. Lawrence but Captain
Tom Fane of the — —th, quartered at the cliffperched
and doughty garrison of Quebec, and ready
for any “lark” that would vary the monotony of duty!
Having eaten seven mess dinners, driven to the
Falls of Montmorenci, and paid my respects to Lord
Dalhousie, the hospitable and able Governor of the
Canadas, Quebec had no longer a temptation, and
obeying a magnet, of which more anon, I announced
to Fane that my traps were packed, and my heart sent
on a l'avant courier, to Saratoga.
“Is she pretty?” said Tom.
“As the starry-eyed Circassian we gazed at through
the grill in the slave-market at Constantinople!”
(Heaven and my mistress forgive me for the comparison!—
but it conveyed more to Tom Fane than a folio
of more respectful similitudes.)
“Have you any objection to be drawn to your lady-love
by four cattle that would buy the soul of Osbaldiston?”
“`Objection!' quotha?”
The next morning four double-jointed and wellgroomed
ponies were munching their corn in the bow
of a steamer, upon the St. Lawrence, wondering possibly
what, in the name of Bucephalus, had set the
hills and churches flying at such a rate down the river.
The hills and churches came to a stand-still with the
-- 081 --
[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]
steamer opposite Montreal, and the ponies were landed
and put to their mettle for some twenty miles, where
they were destined to be astonished by a similar flying
phenomenon in the mountains girding the lengthening
waters of Lake Champlain. Landed at Ticonderoga,
a few miles trot brought them to Lake George and a
third steamer, and, with a winding passage among
green islands and overhanging precipices loaded like a
harvest wagon with vegetation, we made our last landing
on the edge of the pine-forest, where our story
opens.
“Well, I must object,” says Tom, setting his whip
in the socket and edging round upon his driving box,
“I must object to this republican gravity of yours. I
should take it for melancholy, did I not know it was
the `complexion' of your never-smiling countrymen.”
“Spare me, Tom! `I see a hand you cannot see.'
Talk to your ponies, and let me be miserable if you
love me.”
“For what, in the name of common sense? Are
you not within five hours of your mistress? Is not
this cursed sand your natal soil? Do not
`The pine-boughs sing
Old songs with new gladness?'
and in the years that we have dangled about, `here-and-there-ians'
together, were you ever before grave,
sad, or sulky? and will you without a precedent, and
you a lawyer, inflict your stupidity upon me for the
first time in this waste and being-less solitude? Half
an hour more of the dread silence of this forest, and
it will not need the horn of Astolpho to set me irremediably
mad!”
“If employment will save your wits, you may invent
a scheme for marrying the son of a poor gentleman
to the ward of a rich trader in rice and molasses.”
-- 082 --
[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]
“The programme of our approaching campaign, I
presume?”
“Simply.”
“Is the lady willing?”
“I would fain believe so?”
“Is Mr. Popkins unwilling?”
“As the most romantic lover could desire.”
“And the state of the campaign?”
“Why thus. Mr. George Washington Jefferson
Frump, whom you have irreverently called Mr. Popkins,
is sole guardian to the daughter of a dead West
Indian planter, of whom he was once the agent. I fell
in love with Kate Lorimer from description, when she
was at school with my sister, saw her by favor of a
garden-wall, and after the usual vows—”
“Too romantic for a Yankee, by half!”
“—Proposed by letter to Mr. Frump.”
“Oh, bathos!”
“He refused me.”
“Because—”
“Imprimis, I was not myself in the `Sugar line,' and
in secundis, my father wore gloves and `did nothing
for a living,'—two blots in the eyes of Mr. Frump,
which all the waters of Niagara would never wash from
my escutcheon.”
“And what the devil hindered you from running off
with her?”
“Fifty shares in the Manhattan Insurance Company,
a gold mine in Florida, heaven knows how many hogsheads
of treacle, and a million of acres on the banks
of the Missouri.”
“`Pluto's flame-colored daughter' defend us! what
a living El Dorado!”
“All of which she forfeits if she marries without old
Frump's consent.”
“I see—I see! And this Io and her Argus are now
drinking the waters at Saratoga?”
-- 083 --
[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]
“Even so.”
“I'll bet you my four-in-hand to a sonnet, that I get
her for you before the season is over.”
“Money and all?”
“Mines, molasses, and Missouri acres!”
“And if you do, Tom, I'll give you a team of Virginian
bloods that would astonish Ascot, and throw you
into the bargain a forgiveness for riding over me with
your camel on the banks of the Hermus.”
“Santa Maria! do you remember that spongy foot
stepping over your frontispiece? I had already cast
my eyes up to Mont Sypilus to choose a clean niche
for you out of the rock-hewn tombs of the kings of
Lydia. I thought you would sleep with Alyattis,
Phil!”
We dashed on through dark forest and open clearing,
through glens of tangled cedar and wild vine, over
log bridges, corduroy marshes and sand-hills, till, towards
evening, a scattering shanty or two, and an occasional
sound of a woodman's axe, betokened our
vicinity to Saratoga. A turn around a clump of tall
pines brought us immediately into the broad street of
the village, and the flaunting shops, the overgrown, unsightly
hotels, riddled with windows like honeycombs,
the fashionable idlers out for their evening lounge to
the waters, the indolent smokers on the colonnades,
and the dusty and loaded coaches driving from door to
door in search of lodgings, formed the usual evening
picture of the Bath of America.
As it was necessary to Tom's plan that my arrival
at Saratoga should not be known, he pulled up at a
small tavern at the entrance of the street, and dropping
me and my baggage, drove on to Congress Hall,
with my best prayers, and a letter of introductionh to
my sister, whom I had left on her way to the Springs
with a party at my departure for Montreal. Unwilling
to remain in such a tantalizing vicinity, I hired a
-- 084 --
[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]
chaise the next morning, and despatching a note to
Tom, drove to seek a retreat at Barhydt's---a spot that
cannot well be described in the tail of a paragraph.
Herr Barhydt is an old Dutch settler, who, till the
mineral springs of Saratoga were discovered some five
miles from his door, was buried in the depth of a forest
solitude, unknown to all but the prowling Indian. The
sky is supported above him (or looks to be) by a wilderness
of straight, columnar pine-shafts, gigantic in
girth, and with no foliage except at the top, where they
branch out like round tables spread for a banquet in
the clouds. A small ear-shaped lake, sunk as deep
into the earth as the firs shoot above it, black as Erebus
in the dim shadow of its hilly shore and the obstructed
light of the trees that nearly meet over it, and
clear and unbroken as a mirror, save the pearl-spots
of the thousand lotuses holding up their cups to the
blue eye of heaven that peers through the leafy vault,
sleeps beneath his window; and, around him in the
forest lies, still unbroken, the elastic and brown carpet
of the faded pine tassels, deposited in yearly layers
since the continent rose from the flood, and rooted a
foot beneath the surface to a rich mould that would
fatten the Symplegades to a flower-garden. With his
black tarn well stocked with trout, his bit of a farm
in the clearing near by, and an old Dutch Bible, Herr
Barhydt lived a life of Dutch musing, talked Dutch to
his geese and chickens, sung Dutch psalms to the
echoes of the mighty forest, and, except on his farbetween
visits to Albany, which grew rarer and rarer
as the old Dutch inhabitants dropped faster away, saw
never a white human face from one maple-blossoming
to another.
A roving mineralogist tasted the waters of Saratoga,
and, like the work of a lath-and-plaster Aladdin, up
sprung a thriving village around the fountain's lip, and
hotels, tin tumblers and apothecaries, multiplied in the
-- 085 --
[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]
usual proportion to each other, but out of all precedent,
with every thing else for rapidity. Libraries,
newspapers, churches, livery stables, and lawyers, followed
in their train, and it was soon established, from
the plains of Abraham to the Savannahs of Alabama,
that no person of fashionable taste or broken constitution
could exist through the months of July and August
without a visit to the chalybeate springs and populous
village of Saratoga. It contained seven thousand
inhabitants before Herr Barhydt, living in his
wooded seclusion only five miles off, became aware of
its existence. A pair of lovers, philandering about the
forest on horseback, popped in upon him one June
morning, and thenceforth there was no rest for the
soul of the Dutchman. Every body rode down to eat
his trout and make love in the dark shades of his mirrored
lagoon, and at last, in self-defence, he added a
room or two to his shanty, enclosed his cabbage-garden,
and put a price upon his trout-dinners. The
traveler now-a-days who has not dined at Barhydt's
with his own champagne cold from the tarn, and the
white-headed old settler “gargling” Dutch about the
house, in his manifold vocation of cook, ostler, and
waiter, may as well not have seen Niagara.
Installed in the back-chamber of the old man's last
addition to his house, with Barry Cornwall and Elia,
(old fellow-travelers of mine,) a rude chair, a ruder,
but clean bed, and a troop of thoughts so perpetually
from home, that it mattered very little what was the
complexion of anything about me, I waited Tom's operations
with a lover's usual patience. Barhydt's visitors
seldom arrived before two or three o'clock, and the
long, soft mornings, quiet as a shadowy Elysium on the
rim of that ebon lake, were as solitary as a melancholy
man could desire. Didst thou but know, oh! gentle
Barry Cornwall, how gratefully thou hast been read
and mused upon in those dim and whispering aisles of
-- 086 --
[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]
the forest, three thousand and more miles from thy
smoky whereabout, methinks it would warm up the
flush of pleasure around thine eyelids, though the
“golden-tressed Adelaide” were waiting her good-night
kisses at thy knee!
I could stand it no longer. On the second evening
of my seclusion, I made bold to borrow old Barhydt's
superannuated roadster, and getting up the steam with
infinite difficulty in his rickety engine, higgled away
with a pace to which I could not venture to affix a
name, to the gay scenes of Saratoga.
It was ten o'clock when I dismounted at the stable
in Congress Hall, and, giving der Teufel, as the old
man ambitiously styled his stee, to the hands of the
ostler, stole round through the garden to the eastern
colonnade.
I feel called upon to describe “Congress Hall.”
Some fourteen or fifteen millions of white gentlemen
and ladies consider that wooden and windowed Babylon
as the proper Palace of Delight—a sojourn to be
sighed for, and sacrificed for, and economised for—
the birth-place of Love, the haunt of Hymen, the
arena of fashion—a place without which a new lease
of life were valueless—for which, if the conjuring cap
of King Erricus itself could not furnish a season ticket,
it might lie on a lady's toilet as unnoticed as a bride's
night-cap a twelvemonth after marriage. I say to myself,
sometimes, as I pass the window at White's, and
see a worldsick worldling with the curl of satiety
and disgust on his lip, wondering how the next hour
will come to its death, “If you but knew, my friend,
what a campaign of pleasure you are losing in America—
what belles than the bluebell slighter and fairer—
what hearts than the dew-drops fresher and clearer—
are living their pretty hour, like gems undived for in
the ocean—what loads of foliage, what Titans of trees,
what glorious wildernesses of rocks and waters, are
-- 087 --
[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]
lavishing their splendors on the clouds that sail over
them, and all within the magic circle of which Congress
Hall is the centre, and which a circling dove
would measure to get an appetite for his breakfast—if
you but knew this, my Lord, as I know it, you would
not be gazing so vacantly on the steps of Crockford's,
nor consider `the greybeard' such a laggard in his
hours!”
Congress Hall is a wooden building, of which the
size and capacity could never be definitely ascertained.
It is built on a slight elevation, just above the strongly
impregnated spring whose name it bears, with little attempt
at architecture, save a spacious and vine-covered
colonnade, serving as a promenade on either side, and
two wings, the extremities of which are lost in the distance.
A relic or two of the still-astonished forest
towers above the chimneys, in the shape of a melancholy
group of firs; and, five minutes' walk from the
door, the dim old wilderness stands looking down on
the village in its primeval grandeur, like the spirits of
the wronged Indians, whose tracks are scarce vanished
from the sand. In the strength of the summer solstice,
from five hundred to a thousand people dine together
at Congress Hall, and after absorbing as many
bottles of the best wines of the world, a sunset promenade
plays the valve to the sentiment thus generated,
and, with a cup of tea, the crowd separates to dress
for the nightly ball. There are several other hotels
in the village, equally crowded and equally spacious,
and the ball is given alternately at each. Congress
Hall is the “crack” place, however, and I expect that
Mr. Westcott, the obliging proprietor, will give me
the preference of rooms, on my next annual visit, for
this just and honorable mention.
The dinner-tables were piled into an orchestra, and
draped with green baize and green wreaths, the floor
of the immense hall was chalked with American flags
-- 088 --
[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]
and the initials of all the heroes of the Revolution, and
the band were playing a waltz in a style that made
the candles quiver, and the pines tremble audibly in
their tassels. The ball-room was on the ground floor,
and the colonnade upon the garden side was crowded
with spectators, a row of grinning black fellows edging
the cluster of heads at every window, and keeping
time with their hands and feet in the irresistible sympathy
of their music-loving natures. Drawing my hat
over my eyes, I stood at the least-thronged window,
and concealing my face in the curtain, waited impatiently
for the appearance of the dancers.
The bevy in the drawing-room was sufficiently
strong at last, and the lady patronesses, handed in by
a state Governor or two, and here and there a Member
of Congress, achieved the entree with their usual
intrepidity. Followed beaux, and followed belles.
Such belles! Slight, delicate, fragile-looking creatures,
elegant as Retzsch's angels, warm-eyed as Mahommedan
houris, yet timid as the antelope whose
hazel orbs they eclipse, limbed like nothing earthly
except an American woman—I would rather not go
on! When I speak of the beauty of my country-women
my heart swells. I do believe the new world
has a newer mould for its mothers and daughters. I
think I am not prejudiced. I have been years away.
I have sighed in France; I have loved in Italy; I
have bargained for Circassians in an Eastern bezestein,
and I have lounged at Howell and James's on a
sunny day in the season; and my eye is trained and
my perceptions quickened—but I do think (honor
bright! and Heath's Book of Beauty forgiving me)
that there is no such beautiful work of God under the
arch of the sky as an American girl in her bellehood.
Enter Tom Fane in a Stultz coat and Sparding
tights, looking as a man who had been the mirror of
-- 089 --
[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]
Bond-street might be supposed to look, a thousand
leagues from his club-house. She leaned on his arm.
I had never seen her half so lovely. Fresh and calm
from the seclusion of her chamber, her transparent
cheek was just tinged with the first mounting blood,
from the excitement of lights and music. Her lips
were slightly parted, her fine-lined eyebrows were
arched with a girlish surprise, and her ungloved arm
lay carelessly and confidingly within his, as white,
round, and slender as if Canova had wrought it in Parian
for his Pysche. If you have never seen a beauty
of northern blood nurtured in a southern clime, the
cold fairness of her race warmed up as if it had been
steeped in some golden sunset, and her deep blue eye
darkened and filled with a fire as unnaturally resplendant
as the fusion of crysoprase into a diamond, and
if you have never known the corresponding contrast
in the character, the intelligence and constancy of the
north kindling with the enthusiasm and impulse, the
passionateness and the abandon of a more burning latitude,
you have seen nothing, let me insinuate, though
you “have been i' the Indies twice,” that could give
you an idea of Kate Lorimer.
She waltzed, and then Tom danced with my sister,
and then, resigning her to another partner, he offered
his arm again to Miss Lorimer, and left the ball-room
with several other couples for a turn in the fresh air of
the colonnade. I was not jealous, but I felt unpleasantly
at his returning to her so immediately. He was
the handsomest man, out of all comparison, in the
room, and he had dimmed my star too often in our
rambles in Europe and Asia, not to suggest a thought,
at least, that the same pleasant eclipse might occur in
our American astronomy. I stepped off the colonnade,
and took a turn in the garden.
Those “children of eternity,” as Walter Savage
Landor poetically calls “the breezes,” performed their
-- 090 --
[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]
soothing ministry upon my temples, and I replaced
Tom in my confidence with an heroic effort, and turned
back. A swing hung between two gigantic pines, just
under the balustrade, and flinging myself into the cushioned
seat, I abandoned myself to the musings natural
to a person “in my situation.” The sentimentalizing
promenaders lounged backwards and forwards above
me, and not hearing Tom's drawl among them, I presumed
he had returned to the ball-room. A lady and
gentleman, walking in silence, stopped presently, and
leaned upon the railing opposite the swing. They
stood a moment, looking into the dim shadow of the
pine-grove, and then a voice, that I knew better than
my own, remarked in a low and silvery tone upon the
beauty of the night.
She was not answered, and after a moment's pause,
as if resuming a conversation that had been interrupted,
she turned very earnestly to her companion, and asked,
“Are you sure, quite sure, that you could venture to
marry without a fortune?”
“Quite, dear Miss Lorimer!”
I started from the swing, but before the words of execration
that rushed choking from my heart could
struggle to my lips, they had mingled with the crowd
and vanished.
I strode down the garden-walk in a frenzy of passion.
Should I call him immediately to account?
Should I rush into the ball-room and accuse him of his
treachery to her face? Should I drown myself in old
Barhydt's tarn, or join an Indian tribe and make war
upon the whites?—or should I—could I—be magnanimous—
and write him a note immediately, offering to
be his groomsman at the wedding?
I stepped into the punch-room, asked for pen, ink,
and paper, and indited the following note:—
-- 091 --
[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]
“Dear Tom,
“If your approaching nuptials are to be sufficiently
public to admit of a groomsman, you will make me the
happiest of friends by selecting me for that office.
“Yours ever truly,
“Phil.”
Having despatched it to his room, I flew to the stable,
roused der Teufel, who had gathered up his legs in the
straw for the night, flogged him furiously out of the
village, and giving him the rein as he entered the forest,
enjoyed the scenery in the humor of mad old Hieronymo
in the Spanish tragedy:—“the moon dark, the
stars extinct, the winds blowing, the owls shrieking,
the toads croaking, the minutes jarring, and the clock
striking twelve!”'
Early the next day Tom's “tiger” dismounted at
Barhydt's door with an answer to my note as follows:
“Dear Phil,
“The devil must have informed you of a secret I
supposed safe from all the world. Be assured I should
have chosen no one but yourself to support me on the
occasion, and however you have discovered my design
upon your treasure, a thousand thanks for your generous
consent. I expected no less from your noble
nature.
“Yours devotedly,
“Tom.
“P. S.—I shall endeavor to be at Barhydt's, with
materials for the fifth act of our comedy, to-morrow
morning.”
“Comedy!” call you this, Mr. Fane! I felt my
heart turn black as I threw down the letter. After a
thousand plans of revenge formed and abandoned,
-- 092 --
[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]
borrowing old Barhydt's rifles, loading them deliberately,
and discharging them again into the air, I flung myself
exhausted on the bed, and reasoned myself back to my
magnanimity. I would be his groomsman!
It was a morning like the burst of a millenium on
the world. I felt as if I should never forgive the birds
for their mocking enjoyment of it. The wild heron
swung up from the reeds, the lotuses shook out their
dew into the lake as the breeze stirred them, and the
senseless old Dutchman sat fishing in his canoe, singing
one of his unintelligible psalms to a quick measure that
half maddened me. I threw myself upon the yielding
floor of pine-tassels on the edge of the lake, and with
the wretched school philosophy, “Si gravis est, brevis
est,” endeavored to put down the tempest of my
feelings.
A carriage rattled over the little bridge, mounted the
ascent rapidly, and brought up at Barhydt's door.
“Phil!” shouted Tom, “Phil!”
I gulped down a choking sensation in my throat, and
rushed up the bank to him. A stranger was dismounting
from his horse.
“Quick!” said Tom, shaking my hand hurriedly,
“there is no time to lose. Out with your inkhorn,
Mr. Poppletree, and have your papers signed while I
tie up my ponies.”
“What is this, Sir?” said I, starting back as the
stranger deliberately presented me with a paper, in
which my own name was written in conspicuous letters.
The magistrate gazed at me with a look of astonishment.
“A contract of marriage, I think, between
Mr. Philip Slingsby and Miss Katherine Lorimer, spinster.
Are you the gentleman named in that instrument,
Sir?”
At this moment my sister, leading the blushing girl
by the hand, came and threw her arms about my neck,
-- 093 --
[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]
and drawing her within my reach, ran off and left us
together.
There are some pure moments in this life that description
would only profane.
We were married by the village magistrate in that
magnificent sanctuary of the forest, old Barhydt and
his lotuses the only indifferent witnesses of vows as
passionate as ever trembled upon human lips.
I had scarce pressed her to my heart and dashed the
tears from my eyes, when Fane, who had looked more
at my sister than at the bride during the ceremony, left
her suddenly, and thrusting a roll of parchment into
my pocket, ran off to bring up his ponies. I was on
the way to Saratoga, a married man, and my bride on
the seat beside me, before I had recovered from my astonishment.
“Pray,” said Tom, “if it be not an impertinent
question, and you can find breath in your ecstasies,
how did you find out that your sister had done me the
honor to accept the offer of my hand?”
The resounding woods rung with his unmerciful
laughter at the explanation.
“And pray,” said I, in my turn, “if it is not an impertinent
question, and you can find a spare breath in
your ecstasies, by what magic did you persuade old
Frump to trust his ward and her title-deeds in your
treacherous keeping?”
“It is a long story, my dear Phil, and I will give you
the particulars when you pay me the `Virginia bloods'
you wot of. Suffice it for the present, that Mr. Frump
believes Mr. Tom Fane (alias Jacob Phipps, Esq.,
sleeping partner of a banking-house at Liverpool) to
be the accepted suitor of his fair ward. In his extreme
delight at seeing her in so fair a way to marry into a
bank, he generously made her a present of her own
fortune, signed over his right to control it by a document
in your possession, and will undergo as agreeable
-- 094 --
[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]
a surprise in about five minutes as the greatest lover of
excitement could desire.”
The ponies dashed on. The sandy ascent by the
Pavilion Spring was surmounted, and in another minute
we were at the door of Congress Hall. The last
stragglers from the breakfast-table were lounging down
the colonnade, and old Frump sat reading the newspaper
under the portico.
“Aha! Mr. Phipps,” said he, as Tom drove up,
“back so soon, eh? Why, I thought you and Kitty
would be billing it till dinner-time!”
“Sir!” said Tom, very gravely, “you have the honor
of addressing Captain Thomas Fane, of his Majesty's—
th Fusileers, and whenever you have a moment's
leisure I shall be happy to submit to your perusal a
certificate of the marriage of Miss Katherine Lorimer
to the gentleman I have the pleasure to present to you.
Mr. Frump, Mr. Slingsby!”
At the mention of my name, the blood in Mr.
Frump's ruddy complexion turned suddenly to the color
of the Tiber. Poetry alone can express the feeling
pictured in his countenance:—
“If every atom of a dead man's flesh
Should creep, each one with a particular life,
Yet all as cold as ever—'twas just so:
Or had it drizzled needle-points of frost,
Upon a feverish head made suddenly bald.”
George Washington Jefferson Frump, Esq., left
Congress Hall the same evening, and has since ungraciously
refused an invitation to Captain Fane's wedding—
possibly from his having neglected to invite him
on a similar occasion at Saratoga. This last, however,
I am free to say, is a gratuitous supposition of my own.
-- --
LARKS IN VACATION.
[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]
-- --
[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
-- -- p415-364
CHAPTER I. DRIVING STANHOPE PRO. TEM.
[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]
In the edge of a June evening in the summer vacation
of 1827, I was set down by the coach at the gate
of my friend Horace Van Pelt's paternal mansion; a
large, old-fashioned, comfortable Dutch house, clinging
to the side of one of the most romantic dells on
the North River. In the absence of his whole family
on the summer excursion to the Falls and Lakes,
(taken by almost every “well-to-do” citizen of the
United States,) Horace was emperor of the long-descended,
and as progressively enriched domain of one
of the earliest Dutch settlers, a brief authority which
he exercised more particularly over an extensive stud,
and bins No. 1 and 2.
The West was piled with gold castles, breaking up
the horizon with their burnished pinnacles and turrets,
the fragrant dampness of the thunder-shower that had
followed the heat of noon was in the air, and in a low
room, whose floor opened out so exactly upon the
shaven sward, that a blind man would not have known
when he passed from the heavily piled carpet to the
grass, I found Horace sitting over his olives and claret,
-- 098 --
[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]
having waited dinner for me till five, (long beyond the
latest American hour,) and in despair of my arrival,
having dined without me. The old black cook was
too happy to vary her vacation by getting a second
dinner, and when I had appeased my appetite, and
overtaken my friend in his claret, we sat with the
moonlight breaking across a vine at our feet, and coffee
worthy of a filagree cup in the Bezestein, and debated,
amid a true embarras des richesses, our plans for the
next week's amusement.
The seven days wore on, merrily at first, but each
succeeding one growing less merry than the last. By
the fifth eve of my sojourn, we had exhausted variety.
All sorts of headaches and megrims in the morning,
all sorts of birds, beasts, and fishes for dinner, all sorts
of accidents in all sorts of vehicles, left us on the
seventh day out of sorts altogether. We were too discontended
Rasselases in the Happy Valley. Rejoicing
as we were in vacation, it would have been a relief to
have had a recitation to read up, or a prayer-bell to
mark the time. Two idle Sophomores in a rambling,
lonely old mansion, were, we discovered, a very insufficient
dramatis personœ for the scene.
It was Saturday night. A violent clap of thunder
had interrupted some daring theory of Van Pelt's on
the rising of champagne bubbles, and there we sat,
mum and melancholy, two sated Sybarites, silent an
hour by the clock. The mahogany was bare between
us. Any number of glasses and bottles stood in their
lees about the table; the thrice-fished juice of an
olive-dish and a solitary cigar in a silver case had been
thrust aside in a warm argument, and, in his father's
sacred gout-chair, buried to the eyes in his loosened
cravat, one leg on the table, and one somewhere in
the neighborhood of my own, sat Van Pelt, the cidolon
of exhausted amusement.
-- 099 --
[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]
“Phil!” said he, starting suddenly to an erect position,
“a thought strikes me!”
I dropped the claret-cork, from which I was at the
moment trying to efface the “Margaux” brand, and
sat in silent expectation. I had thought his brains as
well evaporated as the last bottle of champagne.
He rested his elbows on the table, and set his chin
between his two palms.
“I'll resign the keys of this mournful old den to the
butler, and we'll go to Saratoga for a week. What
say?”
“It would be a reprieve from death by inanition,” I
answered, “but, as the rhetorical professor would
phrase it, amplify your meaning, young gentleman.”
“Thus: To-morrow is Sunday. We will sleep till
Monday morning to purge our brains of these cloudy
vapors and restore the freshness of our complexions.
If a fair day, you shall start alone in the stanhope,
and, on Monday night, sleep in classic quarters at Titus's
in Troy.”
“And you!” I interrupted, rather astonished at his
arrangement for one.
Horace laid his hand on his pocket with a look of
embarrassed care.
“I will overtake you with the bay colts in the
drosky, but I must first go to Albany. The circulating
medium—”
“I understand.”
We met on Monday morning in the breakfast-room
in mutual spirits. The sun was two hours high, the
birds in the trees were wild with the beauty and elasticity
of the day, the dew glistened on every bough,
and the whole scene, over river and hill, was a heaven
of natural delight. As we finished our breakfast, the
light spattering of a horse's feet up the avenue, and
-- 100 --
[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]
the airy whirl of quick-following wheels, announced
the stanhope. It was in beautiful order, and what
would have been termed on any pave in the world a
tasteful turn-out. Light cream-colored body, black
wheels and shafts, drab lining edged with green, deadblack
harness, light as that on the panthers of Bacchus—
it was the last style of thing you would have
looked for at the “stoup” of a Dutch homestead.
And Tempest! I think I see him now! his small inquisitive
ears, arched neck, eager eye, and fine, thin
nostril—his dainty feet flung out with the grace of a
flaunted ribbon—his true and majestic action and his
spirited champ of the bit, nibbling at the tight rein with
the exciting pull of a hooked trout—how evenly he
drew! how insensibly the compact stanhope, just
touching his iron-grey tail, bowled along on the road
after him!
Horace was behind with the drosky and black boy,
and with a parting nod at the gate, I turned northward,
and Tempest took the road in beautiful style. I
do not remember to have been ever so elated. I was
always of the Cyrenaic philosophy that “happiness is
motion,” and the bland vitality of the air had refined
my senses. The delightful feel of the reins thrilled me
to the shoulder. Driving is like any other appetite,
dependent for the delicacy of its enjoyment on the
system, and a day's temperate abstinence, long sleep,
and the glorious perfection of the morning, had put
my nerves “in condition.” I felt the air as I rushed
through. The power of the horse was added to my
consciousness of enjoyment, and if you can imagine a
centaur with a harness and stanhope added to his living
body, I felt the triple enjoyment of animal exercise
which would then be his.
It is delightful driving on the Hudson. The road is
very fair beneath your wheels, the river courses away
under the bold shore with the majesty inseparable
-- 101 --
[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]
from its mighty flood, and the constant change of outline
in its banks gives you, as you proceed, a constant
variety of pictures, from the loveliest to the most sublime.
The eagle's nest above you at one moment, a
sunny and fertile farm below you at the next,—rocks,
trees, and waterfalls, wedded and clustered as, it
seems to me, they are nowhere else done so picturesquely—
it is a noble river, the Hudson! And every
few minutes, while you gaze down upon the broad
waters spreading from hill to hill like a round lake, a
gaily-painted steamer with her fringed and white awnings
and streaming flag, shoots out as if from a sudden
cleft in the rock, and draws across it her track of
foam.
Well—I bowled along. Ten o'clock brought me
to a snug Dutch tavern, where I sponged Tempest's
mouth and nostrils, lunched and was stared at by the
natives, and continuing my journey, at one I loosed
rein and dashed into the pretty village of —, Tempest
in a foam, and himself and his extempore master
creating a great sensation in a crowd of people, who
stood in the shade of the verandah of the hotel, as if
that asylum for the weary traveler had been a shop for
the sale of gentlemen in shirt sleeves.
Tempest was taken round to the “barn,” and I ordered
rather an elaborate dinner, designing still to go
on some ten miles in the cool of the evening, and having,
of course, some mortal hours upon my hands.
The cook had probably never heard of more than
three dishes in her life, but those three were garnished
with all manner of herbs, and sent up in the best
china as a warranty for an unusual bill, and what with
coffee, a small glass of new rum as an apology for a
chasse cafe, and a nap in a straight back'd chair, I
killed the enemy to my satisfaction till the shadows of
the poplars lengthened across the barn-yard.
I was awoke by Tempest, prancing round to the
-- 102 --
[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]
door in undiminished spirits, and as I had begun the
day en grand seigneur, I did not object to the bill,
which considerably exceeded the outside of my calculation,
but giving the landlord a twenty-dollar note,
received the change unquestioned, doubled the usual
fee to the ostler, and let Tempest off with a bend forward
which served at the same time for a gracious
bow to the spectators. So remarkable a coxcomb
had probably not been seen in the village since the
passing of Cornwallis's army.
The day was still hot, and as I got into the open
country, I drew rein and paced quietly up hill and
down, picking the road delicately, and, in a humor of
thoughtful contentment, trying my skill in keeping the
edges of the green sod as it leaned in and out from the
walls and ditches. With the long whip I now and
then touched the wing of a sulphur butterfly hovering
over a pool, and now and then I stopped and gathered
a violet from the unsunn'd edge of the wood.
I had proceeded three or four miles in this way,
when I was overtaken by three stout fellows, galloping
at speed, who rode past and faced round with a
peremptory order to me to stop. A formidable pitchfork
in the hand of each horseman left me no alternative.
I made up my mind immediately to be robbed
quietly of my own personals, but to show fight, if necessary,
for Tempest and the stanhope.
“Well, gentlemen,” said I, coaxing my impatient
horse, who had been rather excited by the clatter of
hoofs beside him, “what is the meaning of this?”
Before I could get an answer, one of the fellows
had dismounted and given his bridle to another, and
coming round to the left side, he sprang suddenly into
the stanhope. I received him as he rose with a well-placed
thrust of my heel which sent him back into the
road, and with a chirrup to Tempest, I dashed through
the phalanx and took the road at a top speed. The
-- 103 --
[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]
short lash once waved round the small ears before me,
there was no stopping in a hurry, and away sped the
gallant grey, and fast behind followed my friends in
their short sleeves, all in a lathering gallop. A couple
of miles was the work of no time, Tempest laying his
legs to it as if the stanhope had been a cobweb at his
heels; but at the end of that distance there came a
sharp descent to a mill-stream, and I just remember
an unavoidable mile-stone and a jerk over a wall, and
the next minute, it seemed to me, I was in the room
where I had dined, with my hands tied and a hundred
people about me. My cool white waistcoat was matted
with mud, and my left temple was, by the glass
opposite me, both bloody and begrimed.
The opening of my eyes was a signal for a closer
gathering around me, and between exhaustion and the
close air I was half suffocated. I was soon made to
understand that I was a prisoner, and that the three
white-frock'd highwaymen, as I took them to be, were
among the spectators. On a polite application to the
landlord, who, I found out, was a justice of the peace
as well, I was informed that he had made out my mittimus
as a counterfeiter, and that the spurious note I
had passed upon him for my dinner was safe in his
possession! He pointed at the same time to a placard
newly stuck against the wall, offering a reward for the
apprehension of a notorious practiser of my supposed
craft, to the description of whose person I answered,
to the satisfaction of all present.
Quite too indignant to remonstrate, I seated myself
in the chair considerately offered me by the waiter,
and listening to the whispers of the persons who were
still permitted to throng the room, I discovered, what
might have struck me before, that the initials on the
pannel of the stanhope and the handle of the whip had
been compared with the card pasted in the bottom of
my hat, and the want of correspondence was taken as
-- 104 --
[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]
decided corroboration. It was remarked also by a by-stander
that I was quite too much of a dash for an
honest man, and that he had suspected me from first
seeing me drive into the village! I was sufficiently
humbled by this time to make an inward vow never
again to take airs upon myself if I escaped the county
jail.
The justice meanwhile had made out my orders,
and a horse and cart had been provided to take me to
the next town. I endeavored to get speech of his
worship as I was marched out of the inn parlor, but
the crowd pressed close upon my heels, and the dignitary-landlord
seemed anxious to rid his house of me.
I had no papers, and no proofs of my character, and
assertion went for nothing. Besides, I was muddy,
and my hat was broken in on one side, proofs of villany
which appeal to the commonest understanding.
I begged for a little straw in the bottom of the cart,
and had made myself as comfortable as my two rustic
constables thought fitting for a culprit, when the vehicle
was quickly ordered from the door to make way
for a carriage coming at a dashing pace up the road.
It was Van Pelt in his drosky.
Horace was well known on the road, and the stanhope
had already been recognized as his. By this
time it was deep in the twilight, and though he was instantly
known by the landlord, he might be excused
for not so readily identifying the person of his friend
in the damaged gentleman in the straw.
“Ay, ay! I see you don't know him,” said the landlord,
while Van Pelt surveyed me rather coldly; “on
with him, constables! he would have us believe you
knew him, Sir! walk in, Mr. Van Pelt! Ostler, look
to Mr. Van Pelt's horses! Walk in, Sir!”
“Stop!” I cried out in a voice of thunder, seeing
that Horace really had not looked at me, “Van Pelt!
stop, I say!”
-- 105 --
[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]
The driver of the cart seemed more impressed by
the energy of my cries than my friends the constables,
and pulled up his horse. Some one in the crowd cried
out that I should have a hearing or he would “wallup
the comitatus,” and the justice, called back by this expression
of an opinion from the sovereign people, requested
his new guest to look at the prisoner.
I was preparing to have my hands untied, yet feeling
so indignant at Van Pelt for not having recognised
me that I would not look at him, when, to my surprise,
the horse started off once more, and looking back, I
saw my friend patting the neck of his near horse, evidently
not having thought it worth his while to take
any notice of the justice's observation. Choking with
rage, I flung myself down upon the straw, and jolted
on without further remonstrance to the county town.
I had been incarcerated an hour when Van Pelt's
voice, half angry with the turnkey and half ready to
burst into a laugh, resounded outside. He had not
heard a word spoken by the officious landlord, till after
the cart had been some time gone. Even then, believing
it to be a cock-and-bull story, he had quietly
dined, and it was only on going into the yard to see
after his horses that he recognized the debris of his
stanhope.
The landlord's apologies, when we returned to the
inn, were more amusing to Van Pelt than consolatory
to Philip Slingsby.
-- 106 -- p415-373
CHAPTER II. SARATOGA SPRINGS.
[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]
It was about seven o'clock of a hot evening when
Van Pelt's exhausted horses toiled out from the Pine
Forest, and stood, fetlock deep in sand, on the brow
of the small hill overlooking the mushroom village of
Saratoga. One or two straggling horsemen were returning
late from their afternoon ride, and looked at
us, as they passed on their fresher hacks, with the curiosity
which attaches to new-comers in a wateringplace;
here and there a genuine invalid, who had
come to the waters for life, not for pleasure, took advantage
of the coolness of the hour and crept down
the foot-path to the Spring; and as Horace encouraged
his flagging cattle into a trot to bring up gallantly
at the door of “Congress Hall,” the great bell
of that vast caravanserai resounded through the dusty
air, and by the shuffling of a thousand feet, audible as
we approached, we knew that the fashionable world
of Saratoga were rushing down, en masse, “to tea.”
Having driven through a sand-cloud for the preceding
three hours, and, to say nothing of myself, Van
Pelt being a man, who, in his character as the most
considerable beau of the University, calculated his first
impression, it was not thought advisable to encounter,
uncleansed, the tide of fashion at that moment streaming
through the Hall. We drove round to the sidedoor,
and gained our pigeon-hole quarters under cover
of the back-staircase.
The bachelors' wing of Congress Hall is a long,
-- 107 --
[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]
unsightly, wooden barrack, divided into chambers six feet
by four, and of an airiness of partition which enables
the occupant to converse with his neighbor three rooms
off, with the ease of clerks calling out entries to the
leger across the desks of a counting-house. The
clatter of knives and plates came up to our ears in a
confused murmur, and Van Pelt having refused to dine
at the only inn upon the route, for some reason best
known to himself, I commenced the progress of a long
toilet with an appetite not rendered patient by the
sounds of cheer below.
I had washed the dust out of my eyes and mouth,
and, overcome with heat and hunger, I knotted a cool
cravat loosely round my neck, and sat down in the one
chair.
“Van Pelt!” I shouted.
“Well, Phil!”
“Are you dressed?”
“Dressed! I am as pinguid as a pate foie gras—
greased to the eyelids in cold cream!”
I took up the sixpenny glass and looked at my own
newly washed physiognomy. From the temples to the
chin it was one unmitigated red—burned to a blister
with the sun! I had been obliged to deluge my head
like a mop to get out the dust, and not naturally remarkable
for my good looks, I could, much worse than
Van Pelt, afford these startling additions to my disadvantages.
Hunger is a subtle excuse-finder, however,
and, remembering there were five hundred people in
this formidable crowd, and all busy with satisfying their
appetites, I trusted to escape observation, and determined
to “go down to tea.” With the just-named
number of guests, it will easily be understood why it
is impossible to obtain a meal at Congress Hall, out of
the stated time and place.
In a white roundabout, a checked cravat, my hair
plastered over my eyes a la Mawworm, and a face like
-- 108 --
[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]
the sign of the “Rising Sun,” I stopped at Van Pelt's
door.
“The most hideous figure my eyes ever looked
upon!” was his first consolatory observation.
“Handsome or hideous,” I answered, “I'll not
starve! So here goes for some bread and butter!”
and leaving him to his “appliances,” I descended to the
immense hall which serves the comers to Saratoga, for
dining, dancing, and breakfasting, and in wet weather,
between meals, for shuttlecock and promenading.
Two interminable tables extended down the hall,
filled by all the beauty and fashion of the United States.
Luckily, I thought, for me, there are distinctions in this
republic of dissipation, and the upper end is reserved
for those who have servants to turn down the chairs
and stand over them. The end of the tables nearest
the door, consequently, is occupied by those whose
opinion of my appearance is not without appeal, if they
trouble their heads about it at all, and I may glide in,
in my white roundabout, (permitted in this sultry
weather,) and retrieve exhausted nature in obscurity.
An empty chair stood between an old gentleman
and a very plain young lady, and seeing no remembered
faces opposite, I glided to the place, and was soon lost
to apprehension in the abysm of a cold pie. The table
was covered with meats, berries, bottles of chalybeate
water, tea appurtenances, jams, jellies, and radishes,
and, but for the absence of the roast, you might have
doubted whether the meal was breakfast or dinner,
lunch or supper. Happy country! in which any one
of the four meals may serve a hungry man for all.
The pigeon-pie stood, at last, well quarried before
me, the debris of the excavation heaped upon my plate;
and, appetite appeased, and made bold by my half
hour's obscurity, I leaned forward and perused with
curious attention the long line of faces on the opposite
side of the table, to some of whom, doubtless I was to
-- 109 --
[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]
be indebted for the pleasures of the coming fortnight.
My eyes were fixed on the features of a talkative
woman just above, and I had quite forgotten the fact
of my dishabille of complexion and dress, when two
persons entered who made considerable stir among
the servants, and eventually were seated directly opposite
me.
“We loitered too long at Barhydt's,” said one of
the most beautiful women I had ever seen, as she
pulled her chair nearer to the table and looked around
her with a glance of disapproval.
In following her eyes to see who was so happy as
to sympathize with such a divine creature even in the
loss of a place at table, I met the fixed and astonished
gaze of my most intimate friend at the University.
“Ellerton!”
“Slingsby!”
Overjoyed at meeting him, I stretched both hands
across the narrow table, and had shaken his arm nearly
off his shoulders, and asked him a dozen questions, before
I became conscious that a pair of large wondering
eyes were coldly taking an inventory of my person
and features. Van Pelt's unflattering exclamation
upon my appearance at his door, flashed across my
mind like a thunderstroke, and, coloring through my
burned skin to the temples, I bowed and stammered I
know not what, as Ellerton introduced me to his
sister!
To enter fully into my distress, you should be apprized
that a correspondence arising from my long and
constant intimacy with Tom Ellerton, had been carried
on for a year between me and his sister, and that, being
constantly in the habit of yielding to me in matters of
taste, he had, I well knew, so exaggerated to her my
personal qualities, dress, and manners, that she could
not in any case fail to be disappointed in seeing me.
-- 110 --
[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]
Believing her to be at that moment two thousand miles
off in Alabama, and never having hoped for the pleasure
of seeing her at all, I had foolishly suffered this
good-natured exaggeration to go on, pleased with seeing
the reflex of his praises in her letters, and, Heaven
knows, little anticipating the disastrous interview upon
which my accursed star would precipitate me! As I
went over, mentally, the particulars of my unbecomingness,
and saw Miss Ellerton's eyes resting inquisitively
and furtively on the mountain of pigeon bones
lifting their well-picked pyramid to my chin, I wished
myself an ink-fish at the bottom of the sea.
Three minutes after, I burst into Van Pelt's room,
tearing my hair and abusing Tom Ellerton's good nature,
and my friend's headless drosky, in alternate
breaths. Without disturbing the subsiding blood in his
own face by entering into my violence, Horace coolly
asked me what the devil was the matter.
I told him.
“Lie down here!” said Van Pelt, who was a small
Napoleon in such trying extremities; “lie down on
the bed, and anoint your phiz with this unguent. I see
good luck for you in this accident, and you have only
to follow my instructions. Phil Slingsby, surnburnt,
in a white roundabout, and Phil Slingsby, pale and well
drest, are as different as this potted cream and a dancing
cow. You shall see what a little drama I'll work
out for you!”
I lay down on my back, and Horace kindly anointed
me from the trachea to the forelock, and from ear to
ear.
“Egad,” said he, warming with his study of his proposed
plot as he slid his fore-fingers over the bridge of
my nose, “every circumstance tells for us. Tall man
as you are, you are as short-bodied as a monkey, (no
offence, Phil!) and when you sit at table, you are rather
an under-sized gentleman. I have been astonished
-- 111 --
[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]
every day these three years, at seeing you rise after
dinner in Commons' Hall. A thousand to one, Fanny
Ellerton thinks you a stumpy man.”
“And then, Phil,” he continued, with a patronising
tone, “you have studied minute philosophy to little
purpose if you do not know that the first step in winning
a woman to whom you have been overpraised, is
to disenchant her at all hazards, on your first interview.
You will never rise above the ideal she has formed, and
to sink below it gradually, or to remain stationary, is
not to thrive in your wooing.”
Leaving me this precocious wisdom to digest, Horace
descended to the foot of the garden to take a warm
bath, and overcome with fatigue, and the recumbent
posture, I soon fell asleep and dreamed of the great
blue eyes of Fanny Ellerton.
The soaring of the octave flute in “Hail Columbia,”
with which the band was patriotically opening the ball,
woke me from the midst of a long apologetic letter to
my friend's sister, and I found Van Pelt's black boy
Juba waiting patiently at the bed-side with curlingtongs
and Cologne water, ordered to superintend my
toilet by his master, who had gone early to the drawing-room
to pay his respects to Miss Ellerton. With
the cold cream disappeared entirely from my face the
uncomfortable redness to which I had been a martyr,
and, thanks to my ebony coiffeur, my straight and plastered
locks soon grew as different to their “umquhile
guise” as Hyperion's to a satyr's. Having appeared
to the eyes of the lady, in whose favor I hoped to
prosper, in red and white, (red phiz and white jacket,)
I trusted that in white and black, (black suit and pale
viznomy,) I should look quite another person. Juba
was pleased to show his ivory in a complimentary
smile at my transformation, and I descended to the
-- 112 --
[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]
drawing-room, on the best terms with the coxcomb in
my bosom.
Horace met me at the door.
“Proteus redivivus!” was his exclamation. “Your
new name is Wrongham. You are a gentle Senior,
instead of a bedeviled Sophomore, and your cue is to
be poetical. She will never think again of the monster
in the white jacket, and I have prepared her for
the acquaintance of a new friend, whom I have just
described to you.
I took his arm, and with the courage of a man in a
mask, went through another presentation to Miss Ellerton.
Her brother had been let into the secret by
Van Pelt, and received me with great ceremony as his
college superior; and, as there was no other person
at the Springs who knew Mr. Slingsby, Mr. Wrongham
was likely to have an undisturbed reign of it.
Miss Ellerton looked hard at me for a moment, but
the gravity with which I was presented and received,
dissipated a doubt if one had arisen in her mind, and
she took my arm to go to the ball-room, with an undisturbed
belief in my assumed name and character.
I commenced the acquaintance of the fair Alabamian
with great advantages. Received as a perfect
stranger, I possessed, from long correspondence with
her, the most minute knowledge of the springs of her
character, and of her favorite reading and pursuits,
and, with the little knowledge of the world which she
had gained on a plantation, she was not likely to penetrate
my game from my playing it too freely. Her
confidence was immediately won by the readiness
with which I entered into her enthusiasm and anticipated
her thoughts; and before the first quadrille was
well over, she had evidently made up her mind that
she had never in her life met one who so well “understood
her.” Oh! how much women include in that
apparently indefinite expression, “he understands me!”
-- 113 --
[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]
The colonnade of Congress Hall is a long promenade
laced in with vines and columns, on the same
level with the vast ball-room and drawing-room, and,
(the light of heaven not being taxed at Saratoga,)
opening at every three steps by a long window into
the carpeted floors. When the rooms within are lit in
a summer's night, that cool and airy colonnade is
thronged by truants from the dance, and collectively
by all who have any thing to express that is meant for
one ear only. The mineral waters of Saratoga are no
less celebrated as a soporific for chaperons than as a
tonic for the dyspeptic, and while the female Argus
dozes in the drawing-room, the fair Io and her Jupiter
(represented in this case, we will say, by Miss Ellerton
and myself) range at liberty the fertile fields of
flirtation.
I had easily put Miss Ellerton in surprised good-humor
with herself and me during the first quadrille, and
with a freedom based partly upon my certainty of
pleasing her, partly on the peculiar manners of the
place, I coolly requested that she would continue to
dance with me for the rest of the evening.
“One unhappy quadrille excepted,” she replied,
with a look meant to be mournful.
“May I ask with whom?”
“Oh, he has not asked me yet; but my brother has
bound me over to be civil to him—a spectre, Mr.
Wrongham! a positive spectre.”
“How denominated?” I inquired, with a forced indifference,
for I had a presentiment I should hear my
own name.
“Slingsby—Mr. Philip Slingsby—Tom's fidus Achates,
and a proposed lover of my own. But you don't
seem surprised!”
“Surprised! E-hem! I know the gentleman!”
“Then did you ever see such a monster! Tom
told me he was another Hyperion. He half admitted
-- 114 --
[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]
it himself, indeed; for to tell you a secret, I have corresponded
with him a year!”
“Giddy Miss Fanny Ellerton!—and never saw
him!”
“Never till to-night! He sat at supper in a white
jacket and red face, with a pile of bones upon his plate
like an Indian tumulus.”
“And your brother introduced you?”
“Ah you were at table! Well, did you ever see in
your travels a man so unpleasantly hideous?”
“Fanny!” said her brother, coming up at the moment,
“Slingsby presents his apologies to you for not
joining your cordon to night—but he's gone to bed with
a head-ache.”
“Indigestion, I dare say,” said the young lady.
“Never mind, Tom, I'll break my heart when I have
leisure. And now, Mr. Wrongham, since the spectre
walks not forth to-night, I am yours for a cool hour on
the colonnade.”
Vegetation is rapid in Alabama, and love is a weed
that thrives in the soil of the tropics. We discoursed
of the lost Pleiad and the Berlin bracelets, of the five
hundred people about us, and the feasibility of boiling
a pot on five hundred a year—the unmatrimonial sum
total of my paternal allowance. She had as many negroes
as I had dollars, I well knew, but it was my cue
to seem disinterested.
“And where do you mean to live, when you marry,
Mr. Wrongham?” asked Miss Ellerton, at the two
hundreth turn on the colonnade.
“Would you like to live in Italy?” I asked again, as
if I had not heard her.
“Do you mean that as a sequitur to my question,
Mr. Wrongham?” said she, half stopping in her walk;
and though the sentence was commenced playfully,
dropping her voice at the last word, with something, I
thought, very like emotion.
-- 115 --
[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]
I drew her off the colonnade to the small garden
between the house and the spring, and in a giddy dream
of fear and surprise at my own rashness and success,
I made, and won from her, a frank avowal of preference.
Matches have been made more suddenly.
Miss Ellerton sat in the music-room the next morning
after breakfast, preventing pauses in a rather interesting
conversation, by a running accompaniment
upon the guitar. A single gold thread formed a fillet
about her temples, and from beneath it, in clouds of
silken ringlets, floated the softest raven hair that ever
grew enamored of an ivory shoulder. Her's was a
skin that seemed woven of the lilly-white, but opaque
fibre of the magnolia, yet of that side of its cup turned
toward the fading sunset. There is no term in painting,
because there is no touch of pencil or color, that
could express the vanishing and impalpable breath that
assured the healthiness of so pale a cheek. She was
slight as all southern women are in America, and of a
flexile and luxurious gracefulness equalled by nothing
but the movings of a smoke curl. Without the elastic
nerve remarkable in the motions of Taglioni, she appeared,
like her, to be born with a lighter specific gravity
than her fellow-creatures. If she had floated
away upon some chance breeze you would only have
been surprised upon reflection.
“I am afraid you are too fond of society,” said Miss
Ellerton, as Juba came in hesitatingly and delivered
her a note in the hand-writing of an old correspondent.
She turned pale on seeing the superscription, and
crushed the note up in her hand, unread. I was not
sorry to defer the denouement of my little drama, and
taking up the remark which she seemed disposed to
forget, I referred her to a scrap-book of Van Pelt's,
-- 116 --
[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]
which she had brought home with her, containing
some verses of my own, copied (by good luck) in that
sentimental Sophomore's own hand.
“Are these yours, really and really?” she asked,
looking pryingly into my face, and showing me my
own verses, against which she had already run a pencil
line of approbation.
“Peccavi!” I answered. “But will you make me
in love with my offspring by reading them in your own
voice.”
They were some lines written in a balcony at day-break,
while a ball was still going on within, and contained
an allusion (which I had quite overlooked) to
some one of my ever-changing admirations. As well
as I remember they ran thus:—
Morn in the East! How coldly fair
It breaks upon my fever'd eye!
How chides the calm and dewy air!
How chides the pure and pearly sky!
The stars melt in a brighter fire,
The dew in sunshine leaves the flowers;
They from their watch, in light retire,
While we in sadness pass from ours!
I turn from the rebuking morn,
The cold, grey sky and fading star,
And listen to the harp and horn,
And see the waltzers near and far;
The lamps and flowers are bright as yet,
And lips beneath more bright than they,—
How can a scene so fair beget
The mournful thoughts we bear away!
'Tis something that thou art not here,
Sweet lover of my lightest word!
'Tis something that my mother's tear
By these forgetful hours is stirr'd!
But I have long a loiterer been
In haunts where Joy is said to be;
And though with Peace I enter in,
The nymph comes never forth with me!
-- 117 --
[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]
“And who was this `sweet lover,' Mr. Wrongham?
I should know, I think, before I go farther with so expeditious
a gentleman.”
“As Shelley says of his ideal mistress,
`I loved—oh, no! I mean not one of ye,
Or any earthly one—though ye are fair!'
It was but an apostrophe to the presentiment of that
which I have found, dear Miss Ellerton! But will you
read that ill-treated billet-doux, and remember that
Juba stands with the patience of an ebon statue waiting
for an answer.”
I knew the contents of the letter, and I watched the
expression of her face, as she read it, with no little
interest. Her temples flushed, and her delicate lips
gradually curled into an expression of anger and scorn,
and having finished the perusal of it, she put it into
my hand, and asked me if so impertinent a production
deserved an answer.
I began to fear that the eclaircissement would not leave
me on the sunny side of the lady's favor, and felt the
need of the moment's reflection given me while running
my eye over the letter.
“Mr. Slingsby,” said I, with the deliberation of an
attorney, “has been some time in correspondence with
you.”
“Yes.”
“And, from his letters and your brother's commendations,
you had formed a high opinion of his character,
and had expressed as much in your letters.”
“Yes—perhaps I did.”
“And from this paper intimacy he conceives himself
sufficiently acquainted with you to request leave to
pay his addresses.”
A dignified bow put a stop to my catechism.
“Dear Miss Ellerton,” I said, “this is scarcely a
-- 118 --
[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]
question upon which I ought to speak, but by putting
this letter into my hand, you seemed to ask my opinion.”
“I did—I do,” said the lovely girl, taking my hand,
and looking appealingly into my face; “answer it for
me! I have done wrong in encouraging that foolish
correspondence, and I owe perhaps to this forward man
a kinder reply than my first feeling would have dictated.
Decide for me—write for me—relieve me from the first
burden that has lain on my heart since”—
She burst into tears and my dread of an explanation
increased.
“Will you follow my advice implicitly,” I asked.
“Yes—oh, yes!”
“You promise?”
“Indeed, indeed!”
“Well, then, listen to me! However painful the
task, I must tell you that the encouragement you have
given Mr. Slingsby, the admiration you have expressed
in your letters of his talents and acquirements, and the
confidences you have reposed in him respecting yourself,
warrant him in claiming as a right, a fair trial of
his attractions. You have known, and approved Mr.
Slingsby's mind for years—you know me but for a few
hours. You saw him under the most unfavorable auspices,
(for I know him intimately,) and I feel bound
in justice to assure you that you will like him much
better upon acquaintance.”
Miss Ellerton had gradually drawn herself up during
this splendid speech, and sat at last as erect and as
cold as Agrippina upon her marble chair.
“Will you allow me to send Mr. Slingsby to you?”
I continued, rising; “and suffer him to plead his own
cause?”
“If you will call my brother, Mr. Wrongham, I
shall feel obliged to you,” said Miss Ellerton.
I left the room, and hurrying to my chamber, dipped
-- 119 --
[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]
my head into a bason of water, and plastered my long
locks over my eyes, slipped on a white roundabout,
and tied around my neck the identical checked cravat
in which I had made such an unfavorable impression on
the first day of my arrival. Tom Ellerton was soon
found, and easily agreed to go before and announce
me by my proper name to his sister, and treading
closely on his heels, I followed to the door of the
music-room.
“Ah, Ellen!” said he, without giving her time for
a scene, “I was looking for you. Slingsby is better,
and will pay his respects to you presently. And, I
say—you will treat him well, Ellen, and—and, don't
flirt with Wrongham the way you did last night!
Slingsby's a devilish sight better fellow. Oh here he
is!”
As I stepped over the threshold, Miss Ellerton gave
me just enough of a look to assure herself that it was
the identical monster she had seen at the tea-table,
and not deigning me another glance, immediately commenced
talking violently to her brother on the state of
the weather. Tom bore it for a moment or two with
remarkable gravity, but at my first attempt to join in
the conversation, my voice was lost in an explosion of
laughter which would have been the death of a gentleman
with a full habit.
Indignant and astonished, Miss Ellerton rose to her
full height, and slowly turned to me.
“Peccavi!” said I, crossing my hands on my bosom,
and looking up penitently to her face.
She ran to me, and seized my hand, but recovered
herself instantly, and the next moment was gone from
the room.
Whether from wounded pride at having been the
subject of a mystification, or whether from that female
caprice by which most men suffer at one period
or other of their bachelor lives, I know not—but I
-- 120 --
[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]
never could bring Miss Ellerton again to the same interesting
crisis with which she ended her intimacy with
Mr. Wrongham. She proffered to forgive me, and
talked laughingly enough of our old correspondence,
but whenever I grew tender she referred me to the
“sweet lover,” mentioned in my verses in the balcony,
and looked around for Van Pelt. That accomplished
beau, on observing my discomfiture, began to find out
Miss Ellerton's graces without the aid of his quizzing-glass,
and I soon found it necessary to yield the pas
altogether. She has since become Mrs. Van Pelt,
and when I last heard from her was “as well as could
be expected.”
-- 121 -- p415-388
CHAPTER III. MRS. CAPTAIN THOMPSON.
[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]
The last of August came sweltering in, hot, dusty,
and faint, and the most indefatigable belles of Saratoga
began to show symptoms of weariness. The stars
disappeared gradually from the ball-room; the bar-keeper
grew thin under the thickening accounts for
lemonades; the fat fellow in the black band, who
“vexed” the bassoon, had blown himself from the
girth of Falstaff to an “eagle's talon in the waist;”
papas began to be waylaid in their morning walks by
young gentlemen with propositions; and stage-coaches
that came in with their baggageless tails in the air, and
the driver's weight pressing the foot-board upon the
astonished backs of his wheelers, went out with the
trim of a Venetian gondola, the driver's up-hoisted
figure answering to the curved proboscis of that sternladen
craft.
The vocation of tin-tumblers and water-dippers was
gone. The fashionable world (brazen in its general
habit) had drank its fill of the ferruginous waters.
Mammas thanked Heaven for the conclusion of the
chaperon's summer solstice; and those who came to
bet, and those who came to marry, “made up their
books,” and walked off (if they had won) with their
winnings.
Having taken a less cordial farewell of Van Pelt
than I might have done had not Miss Ellerton been
hanging confidingly on his arm, I followed my baggage
to the door, where that small epitome of the
-- 122 --
[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]
inheritance of the Prince of Darkness, an American stage-coach,
awaited me as its ninth inside passenger. As
the last person picked up, I knew very well the seat to
which I was destined, and drawing a final cool breath
in the breezy colonnade, I summoned resolution and
abandoned myself to the tender mercies of the
driver.
The “ray of contempt” that “will pierce through
the shell of the tortoise,” is a shaft from the horn of a
new moon in comparison with the beating of an American
sun through the top of a stage-coach. This
“accommodation,” as it is sometimes bitterly called,
not being intended to carry outside passengers, has a
top as thin as your grandmother's umbrella, black, porous,
and cracked; and while intended for a protection
from the heat, it just suffices to collect the sun's
rays with an incredible power and sultriness, and exclude
the air that makes it sufferable to the beasts of
the field. Of the nine places inside this “dilly,” the
four seats in the corners are so far preferable that the
occupant has the outer side of his body exempt from
a perspirative application of human flesh, (the thermometer
at 100° of Fahrenheit,) while, of the three
middle places on the three seats, the man in the centre
of the coach, with no support for his back, yet buried
to the chin in men, women, and children, is at the
ninth and lowest degree of human suffering. I left
Saratoga in such a state of happiness as you might
suppose for a gentleman, who, besides fulfilling this
latter category, had been previously unhappy in his
love.
I was dressed in a white roundabout and trowsers
of the same, a straw hat, thread stockings, and pumps,
and was so far a blessing to my neighbors that I looked
cool. Directly behind me, occupying the middle of
the back seat, sat a young woman with a gratis passenger
in her lap, (who, of course, did not count
-- 123 --
[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]
among the nine,) in the shape of a fat, and a very hot
child of three years of age, whom she called John,
Jacky, Johnny, Jocket, Jacket, and the other endearing
diminutives of the namesakes of the great apostle.
Like the saint who had been selected for his patron,
he was a “voice crying in the wilderness.” This little
gentleman was exceedingly unpopular with his two
neighbors at the windows, and his incursions upon
their legs and shoulders in his occasional forays for
fresh air, ended in his being forbidden to look out at
either window, and plied largely with gingerbread to
content him with the warm lap of his mother. Though
I had no eyes in the back of my straw hat, I conceived
very well the state in which a compost of soft gingerbread,
tears, and perspiration, would soon leave the
two unscrupulous hands behind me, and as the jolts
of the coach frequently threw me back upon the
knees of his mother, I could not consistently complain
of the familiar use made of my roundabout and shoulders
in Master John's constant changes of position. I
vowed my jacket to the first river, the moment I could
make sure that the soft gingerbread was exhausted—
but I kept my temper.
How an American Jehu gets his team over ten
miles in the hour, through all the variety of sand, ruts,
clay-pits, and stump-thickets, is a problem that can
only be resolved by riding beside him on the box. In
the usual time we arrived at the pretty village of Troy,
some thirty miles from Saratoga, and here, having exchanged
my bedaubed jacket for a clean one, I freely
forgave little Pickle his freedoms, for I hoped never
to set eyes on him again during his natural life. I was
going eastward by another coach.
Having eaten a salad for my dinner, and drank a
bottle of iced claret, I stepped forth in my “blanched
and lavendered” jacket to take my place in the other
coach, trusting Providence not to afflict me twice in
-- 124 --
[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]
the same day with the evil I had just escaped, and feeling,
on the whole, reconciled to my troubled dividend
of eternity. I got up the steps of the coach with as
much alacrity as the state of the thermometer would
permit, and was about drawing my legs after me upon
the forward seat, when a clammy hand caught me unceremoniously
by the shirt-collar, and the voice I was
just beginning to forget cried out with a chuckle,
“dada!”
“Madam!” I said, picking off the gingerbread from
my shirt as the coach rolled down the street, “I had
hoped that your infernal child —”
I stopped in the middle of the sentence, for a pair
of large blue eyes were looking wonderingly into mine,
and for the first time I observed that the mother of this
familiar nuisance was one of the prettiest women I
had seen since I had become susceptible to the charms
of the sex.
“Are you going to Boston, sir?” she inquired, with
a half-timid smile, as if, in that case, she appealed to
me for protection on the road.
“Yes, madam!” I answered, taking little Jocket's
pasty hand into mine, affectionately, as I returned her
hesitating look; “may I hope for your society so far?”
My fresh white waistcoat was soon embossed with a
dingy yellow, where my enterprising fellow-passenger
had thrust his sticky fist into the pockets, and my sham
shirt-bosom was reduced incontinently to the complexion
of a painter's rag after doing a sunset in gamboge.
I saw everything, however, through the blue eyes of his
mother, and was soon on such pleasant terms with
Master John, that, at one of the stopping places, I inveigled
him out of the coach and dropped him accidentally
into the horse-trough, contriving to scrub him
passably clean before he could recover breath enough
for an outcry. I had already thrown the residuum of
his gingerbread out of the window, so that his
-- 125 --
[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]
familiarities for the rest of the day were, at least, less adhesive.
We dropped one or two way-passengers at Lebanon,
and I was left in the coach with Mrs. Captain and
Master John Thompson, in both whose favors I made
a progress that, (I may as well depone,) considerably
restored my spirits—laid flat by my unthrift wooing at
Saratoga. If a fly hath but alit on my nose when my
self-esteem hath been thus at a discount, I have soothed
myself with the fancy that it preferred me—a drowning
vanity will so catch at a straw!
As we bowled along through some of the lovliest
scenery of Massachusetts, my companion, (now become
my charge,) let me a little into her history, and at the
same time, by those shades of insinuation of which women
so instinctively know the uses, gave me perfectly
to comprehend that I might as well economize my
tenderness. The father of the riotous young gentleman
who had made so free with my valencia waistcoat
and linen roundabouts, had the exclusive copyhold of
her affections. He had been three years at sea, (I think
I said before,) and she was hastening to show him the
pledge of their affections,—come into the world since
the good brig Dolly made her last clearance from Boston
Bay.
I was equally attentive to Mrs. Thompson after this
illumination, though I was, perhaps, a shade less enamoured
of the interesting freedoms of Master John.
One's taste for children depends so much upon one's
love for their mothers!
It was twelve o'clock at night when the coach rattled
in upon the pavements of Boston. Mrs. Thompson
had expressed so much impatience during the last few
miles, and seemed to shrink so sensitively from being
left to herself in a strange city, that I offered my services
till she should find herself in better hands, and, as
a briefer way of disposing of her, had bribed the
-- 126 --
[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]
coachman, who was in a hurry with the mail, to turn a little
out of his way, and leave her at her husband's hotel.
We drew up with a prodigious clatter, accordingly,
at the Marlborough Hotel, where, no coach being expected,
the boots and bar-keeper were not immediately
forthcoming. After a rap “to wake the dead,” I set
about assisting the impatient driver in getting off the
lady's trunks and boxes, and they stood in a large
pyramid on the sidewalk when the door was opened.
A man in his shirt, three parts asleep, held a flaring
candle over his head, and looked through the halfopened
door.
“Is Captain Thompson up?” I asked rather brusquely,
irritated at the sour visage of the bar-keeper.
“Captain Thompson, sir?”
“Captain Thompson, sir!!” I repeated my words
with a voice that sent him three paces back into the
hall.
“No, Sir,” he said at last, slipping one leg into his
trowsers, which had hitherto been under his arm.
“Then wake him immediately, and tell him Mrs.
Thompson is arrived.” Here's a husband, thought I,
as I heard something between a sob and a complaint
issue from the coach window at the bar-keeper's intelligence.
To go to bed when he expected his wife and
child, and after three years' separation! She might as
well have made a parenthesis in her constancy!
“Have you called the captain?” I asked, as I set master
John upon the steps, and observed the man still
standing with the candle in his hand, grinning from ear
to ear.
“No sir,” said the man.
“No!” I thundered, “and what in the devil's name
is the reason?”
“Boots!” he cried out in reply, “show this gentleman
`forty-one.' Them may wake Captain Thompson
as likes! I never hearn of no Mrs. Thompson!”
-- 127 --
[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]
Rejecting an ungenerous suspicion that flashed across
my mind, and informing the bar-keeper en passant, that
he was a brute and a donkey, I sprang up the staircase
after the boy, and quite out of breath, arrived at a
long gallery of bachelors' rooms on the fifth floor. The
boy pointed to a door at the end of the gallery, and
retreated to the bannisters as if to escape the blowingup
of a petard.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
“Come in!” thundered a voice like a hailing trumpet.
I took the lamp from the boy, and opened the door.
On a narrow bed well tucked up, lay a most formidable
looking individual, with a face glowing with carbuncles,
a pair of deep-set eyes inflamed and fiery, and hair and
eyebrows of glaring red, mixed slightly with grey; while
outside the bed lay a hairy arm, with a fist like the end
of the club of Hercules. His head tied loosely in a
black silk handkerchief, and on the light stand stood a
tumbler of brandy-and-water.
“What do you want?” he thundered again, as I stepped
over a threshold and lifted my hat, struck speechless
for a moment with this unexpected apparition.
“Have I the pleasure,” I asked, in a hesitating voice,
“to address Captain Thompson?”
“That's my name!”
“Ah! then, captain, I have the pleasure to inform
you that Mrs. Thompson and little John are arrived.
They are at the door at this moment.”
A change in the expression of Captain Thompson's
face checked my information in the middle, and as I
took a step backward, he raised himself on his elbow,
and looked at me in a way that did not diminish my embarrassment.
“I'll tell you what, Mr. Milk-and-water,” said he,
with an emphasis on every word like the descent of a
sledge hammer; “if you're not out of this room in two
-- 128 --
[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]
seconds with your `Mrs. Thompson and little John,' I'll
slam you through that window, or the devil take me!”
I reflected as I took another step backward, that if I
were thrown down to Mrs. Thompson from a fifth story
window I should not be in a state to render her the assistance
she required; and remarking with an ill-feigned
gaiety to Captain Thompson that so decided a measure
would not be necessary, I backed expeditiously over
the threshold. As I was closing his door, I heard the
gulp of his brandy-and-water, and the next instant the
empty glass whizzed past my retreating head, and was
shattered to pieces on the wall behind me.
I gave the “boots” a cuff for an untimely roar of
laughter as I reached the staircase, and descended, very
much discomfited and embarrassed, to Mrs. Thompson.
My delay had thrown that lady into a very moving state
of unhappiness. Her tears were glistening in the light
of the street lamp, and Master John was pulling away
unheeded at her stomacher, and crying as if he would
split his diaphragm. What to do? I would have offered
to take her to my paternal roof till the mystery
could be cleared up—but I had been absent two years,
and to arrive at midnight with a woman and a young
child, and such an improbable story—I did not think
my reputation at home would bear me out. The coachman,
too, began to swear and make demonstrations of
leaving us in the street, and it was necessary to decide.
“Shove the baggage inside the coach,” I said at last,
“and drive on. Don't be unhappy Mrs. Thompson!
Jocket, stop crying, you villain! I'll see that you are
comfortably disposed for the night where the coach
stops, Madam, and to-morrow I'll try a little reason
with Captain Thompson.—How the devil she can love
such a volcanic specimen!” I muttered to myself, dodging
instinctively at the bare remembrance of the glass
of brandy-and-water.
The coachman made up for lost time, and we rattled
-- 129 --
[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]
over the pavements at a rate that made Jacket's hullybaloo
quite inaudible. As we passed the door of my
own home, I wondered what would be the impression
of my respectable parent, could he see me whisking by,
after midnight, with a rejected woman and her progeny
upon my hands; but smothering the unworthy doubt
that re-arose in my mind, touching the legitimacy of
Master John, I inwardly vowed that I would see Mrs.
Thompson at all risks fairly out of her imbroglio.
We pulled up with a noise like the discharge of a load
of paving stones, and I was about saying something both
affectionate and consolatory to my weeping charge,
when a tall, handsome fellow, with a face as brown as
a berry, sprang to the coach-door, and seized her in his
arms! A shower of kisses and tender epithets left me
not a moment in doubt. There was another Captain
Thompson!
He had not been able to get rooms at the Marlborough,
as he had anticipated when he wrote, and presuming
that the mail would come first to the Post Office,
he had waited for her there.
As I was passing the Marlborough a week or two
afterwards, I stopped to inquire about Captain Thompson.
I found that he was an old West India captain,
who had lived there between his cruises for twenty
years more or less, and had generally been supposed a
bachelor. He had suddenly gone to sea, the landlord
told me, smiling at the same time, as if thereby hung a
tale if he chose to tell it.
“The fact is,” said Bonifiace, when I pushed him a
little on the subject, “he was skeared off.”
“What scared him?” I asked very innocently.
“A wife and child from some foreign port!” he answered
laughing as if he would burst his waistband,
and taking me into the back parlor to tell me the particulars.
-- --
[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
-- --
A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO.
[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]
-- --
[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
-- -- p415-400
[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]
The American frigate, in which I had cruised as the
ward-room guest for more than six months, had sailed
for winter quarters at Mahon, and my name was up at
the pier of Smyrna as a passenger in the first ship that
should leave the port, whatever her destination.
The flags of all nations flew at the crowded peaks of
the merchantmen lying off the Marina, and among them
lay two small twin brigs, loading with figs and opium
for my native town in America. They were owned by
an old schoolfellow of my own, one of the most distinguished
and hospitable of the Smyrniote merchants,
and, if nothing more adventurous turned up, he had
offered to land me from one of his craft at Malta or
Gibraltar.
Time wore on, and I had loitered up and down the
narrow street “in melancholy idleness” by day, and
smoked the narghile with those “merchant princes” by
night, till I knew every paving stone between the
beach and the bazaar, and had learnt the thrilling events
of the Greek persecution with the particularity of a historian.
My heart too, unsusceptible enough when
“packed for travel,” began to uncoil with absence of
adventure, and expose its sluggish pulses to the “Greek
fire,” still burning in those Asiatic eyes, and I felt sensibly,
that if, Telemachus-like, I did not soon throw
myself into the sea, I should yield, past praying for, to
the cup of some Smyrniote Circe. Darker eyes than
-- 134 --
[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]
are seen on that Marina swim not in delight out of paradise!
I was sitting on an opium-box in the counting-house
of my friend L—n, (the princely and hospitable merchant
spoken of above,) when enter a Yankee “skipper,”
whom I would have clapped on the shoulder for
a townsman if I had seen him on the top of the minaret
of the Mosque of Sultan Bajazet. His go-ashore black
coat and trowsers, worn only one month in twelve,
were of costly cloth, but of the fashion prevailing in the
days of his promotion to be second mate of a cod-fisher;
his hat was of the richest beaver, but getting brown
with the same paucity of wear, and exposure to the corroding
air of the ocean; and on his hands were stretched
(and they had well need to be elastic) a pair of
Woodstock gloves that might have descended to him
from Paul Jones “the pilot.” A bulge just over his
lowest rib gave token of the ship's chronometer, and,
in obedience to the new fashion of a guard, a fine chain
of the softest auburn hair—(doubtless his wife's, and,
I would have wagered my passage money, as pretty a
woman as he would seen in his v'yage,) a chain, I say,
braided of silken blond ringlets passed around his neck,
and drew its glossy line over his broad-breasted white
waistcoat—the dew drop on the lion's mane not more
entitled to be astonished.
A face of hard-weather, but with an expression of
care equal to the amount of his invoice, yet honest and
fearless as the truck of his mainmast; a round sailor's
back, that looked as if he would hoist up his deck if
you battered him beneath hatches against his will; and
teeth as white as his new foresail, completed the picture
of the master of the brig Metamora. Jolly old H—t, I
shall never feel the grip of an honester hand, nor return
one (as far as I can with the first you crippled at parting)
with a more kindly pressure! A fair wind on
your quarter, my old boy, wherever you may be trading!
-- 135 --
[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]
“What sort of accommodations have you, Captain?”
I asked, as my friend introduced me.
“Why, none to speak of, sir! There's a starboard
berth that a'n't got much in it—a few boxes of figs, and
the new sprit-sail, and some of the mate's traps---but I
could stow away a little, perhaps, sir.”
“You sail to-morrow morning?”
“Off with the land-breeze, sir.”
I took leave of the kindest of friends, laid in a few
hasty stores, and was on board at midnight. The next
morning I awoke with the water rippling beside me,
and creeping on deck, I saw a line of foam stretching
behind us far up the gulf, and the ruins of the primitive
church of Smyrna, mingled with the turrets of a Turkish
castle, far away in the horizon.
The morning was cool and fresh, the sky of an oriental
purity, and the small low brig sped on like a nautilus.
The Captain stood by the binnacle looking off
to the westward with a glass, a tarpaulin hat over his
black locks, a pair of sail cloth pumps on his feet, nnd
trowsers and roundabout of an indefinable tarriness and
texture. He handed me the glass, and, obeying his
direction, saw, stealing from behind a point of land
shaped like a cat's back, the well known topsails of the
two frigates that had sailed before us.
We were off Vourla, and the Commodore had gone
to pay his respects to Sir Pulteney Malcolm, then lying
with his fleet in this little bay, and waiting, we supposed,
for orders to force the Dardanelles. The frigates
soon appeared on the bosom of the gulf, and heading
down, neared our larboard bow, and stood for the
Archipelago, The Metamora kept her way, but the
“United States,” the fleetest of our ships, soon left
us behind with a strengthening breeze, and, following
her with the glass till I could no longer distinguish the
cap of the officer of the deck, I breathed a blessing
-- 136 --
[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]
after her, and went below to breakfast. It is strange
how the lessening in the distance of a ship in which
one has cruised in these southern seas, pulls on the
heartstrings.
I sat on deck most of the day, cracking pecan-nuts
with the Captain, and gossiping about school-days in
our native town, occasionally looking off over the hills
of Asia Minor, and trying to realize (the Ixion labor of
the imagination in travel) the history of which these
barren lands have been the scene. I know not whether
it is easy for a native of old countries to people these
desolated lands from the past, but for me, accustomed
to look on the face of the surrounding earth as mere
vegetation, unstoried and unassociated, it is with a constant
mental effort alone that I can be classic on classic
ground---find Plato in the desert wastes of the Academy,
or Priam among the Turk-stridden and prostrate
columns of Troy. In my recollections of Athens, the
Parthenon and the Theseion and the solemn and sublime
ruins by the Fount of Callirhoe stand forth prominent
enough; but when I was on the spot---a biped
to whom three meals a day, a washer-woman, and a
banker, were urgent necessities---I shame to confess
that I sat dangling my legs over the classic Pelasgicum,
not “fishing for philosophers with gold and figs,” but
musing on the mundane and proximate matters of daily
economy. I could see my six shirts hanging to dry,
close by the Temple of the Winds, and I knew my dinner
was cooking three doors from the crumbling capitals
of the Agora.
As the sun set over Ephesus, we neared the mouth
of the Gulf of Smyrna, and the Captain stood looking
over the leeward-bow rather earnestly.
“We shall have a snorter out of the nor'east,” he
said, taking hold of the tiller, and sending the helmsman
forward,---“I never was up this sea but once
-- 137 --
[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]
afore, and it's a dirty passage through these islands in
any weather, let alone a Levanter.”
He followed up his soliloquy by jamming his tiller
hard a-port, and in ten minutes the little brig was running
her nose, as it seeemed to me, right upon an inhospitable
rock at the northern headland of the Gulf.
At the distance of a biscuit-toss from the shore, however
the rock was dropped to leeward, and a small passage
appeared, opening with a sharp curve into the
miniature but sheltered Bay of Fourgas. We dropped
anchor off a small hamlet of forty or fifty houses, and
lay beyond the reach of Levanters in a circular basin
that seemed shut in by a rim of granite from the sea.
The Captain's judgment of the weather was correct,
and, after the sun set, the wind rose gradually to a violence
which sent the spray high over the barriers of
our protected position. Congratulating ourselves that
we were on the right side of the granite wall, we got out
our jolly-boat on the following morning, and ran ashore
upon the beach half a mile from town, proposing to
climb first to the peak of the neighboring hill, and then
forage for a dinner in the village below.
We scrambled up the rocky mountain side, with
some loss of our private stock of wind, and considerable
increase from the nor'-easter, and getting under the
lee of a projecting shelf, sat looking over towards Lesbos,
and ruminating in silence---I, upon the old question,
“an Sappho publica fuerit,” and the Captain probably
on his wife at Cape Cod, and his pecan-nuts, figs,
and opium, in the emerald green brig below us. I
don't know why she should have been painted green,
by-the-by, (and I never thought to suggest that to the
Captain,) being named after an Indian chief, who was
as red as her copper bottom.
The sea toward Mitylene looked as wild as an eagle's
wing ruffling against the wind, and there was that
smoke in the sky as if the blast was igniting with its
-- 138 --
[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]
speed—the look of a gale in those seas when unaccompanied
with rain. The crazy looking vessels of
the Levant were scudding with mere rags of sails for
the Gulf; and while we sat on the rock, eight or ten
of those black and unsightly craft shot into the little
bay below us, and dropped anchor, blessing, no doubt,
every saint in the Greek calendar.
Having looked toward Lesbos an hour, and come to
the conclusion, that, admitting the worst with regard
to the private character of Sappho, it would have been
very pleasant to have known her; and the captain
having washed his feet in a slender tricklet oozing
from a cleft in the rock, we descended the hill on the
other side and stole a march on the rear to the town of
Fourgas. Four or five Greek women were picking up
olives in a grove lying half way down the hill, and on
our coming in sight, they made for us with such speed
that I feared the reverse of the Sabine rape—not yet
having seen a man on this desolate shore. They ran
well, but they resembled Atalanta in no other possible
particular. We should have taken them for the Furies,
but there were five. They wanted snuff and money,—
making signs easily for the first, but attempting amicably
to put their hands in our pockets when we refused
to comprehend the Greek for “give us a para.”
The captain pulled from his pocket an American dollar-note,
(payable at Nantucket,) and offered it to the
youngest of the women, who smelt at it and returned
it to him, evidently unacquainted with the Cape Cod
currency. On farther search he found a few of the
tinsel paras of the country, which he substituted for his
“dollar-bill,” a saving of ninety-nine cents to him, if
the bank has not broke when he arrives at Massachusetts.
Fourgas is surrounded by a very old wall, very
much battered. We passed under a high arch containing
marks of having once been closed with a heavy
-- 139 --
[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]
gate, and, disputing our passage with cows, and men
that seemed less cleanly and civilized, penetrated to the
heart of the town in search of the barber's shop, cafe,
and kibaub shop—three conveniences usually united in
a single room and dispensed by a single Figaro in
Turkish and Greek towns of this description. The
word cafe is universal, and we needed only to pronounce
it to be led by a low door into a square apartment
of a ruinous old building, around which, upon a
kind of shelf, waist-high, sat as many of the inhabitants
of the town as could cross their legs conveniently.
As soon as we were discerned through the smoke by
the omnifarious proprietor of the establishment, two
of the worst-dressed customers were turned off the
shelf unceremoniously to make room for us, the fire
beneath the coffee-pot was raked open, and the agreeable
flavor of the spiced beverage of the East ascended
refreshingly to our nostrils. With his baggy trowsers
tucked up to his thigh, his silk shirt to his armpits, and
his smoke-dried but clean feet wandering at large in a
pair of red morocco slippers, our Turkish Ganymede
presented the small cups in their filagree holders, and
never was beverage more delicious or more welcome.
Thirsty with our ramble, and unaccustomed to such
small quantities as seem to satisfy the natives of the
East, the captain and myself soon became objects of
no small amusement to the wondering beards about us.
A large table-spoon holds rather more than a Turkish
coffee-cup, and one, or, at most, two of these, satisfies
the dryest clay in the Orient. To us, a dozen of them
was a bagatelle, and we soon exhausted the copper pot,
and intimated to the astonished cafidji that we should
want another. He looked at us a minute to see if we
were in earnest, and then laid his hand on his stomach,
and rolling up his eyes, made some remark to his other
customers which provoked a general laugh. It was
our last “lark” ashore for some time, however, and
-- 140 --
[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]
spite of this apparent prophecy of a colic, we smoked
our narghiles and kept him running with his fairy cups
for some time longer. One never gets enough of that
fragrant liquor.
The sun broke through the clouds as we sat on the
high bench, and, hastily paying our Turk, we hurried
to the sea-side. The wind seemed to have lulled, and
was blowing lightly off shore, and, impatient of loitering
on his voyage, the captain got up his anchor and
ran across the bay, and in half an hour was driving
through a sea that left not a dry plank on the deck of
the Metamora.
The other vessels at Fourgas had not stirred, and
the sky in the north-east looked to my eye very threatening.
It was the middle of the afternoon, and the
captain crowded sail and sped on like a sea-bird,
though I could see by his face when he looked in the
quarter of the wind, that he had acted more from impulse
than judgment in leaving his shelter. The heavy
sea kicked us on our course however, and the smart
little brig shot buoyantly over the crests of the waves as
she outran them, and it was difficult not to feel that the
bounding and obedient fabric beneath our feet was instinct
with self-confidence, and rode the waters like
their master.
I well knew that the passage of the Archipelago was
a difficult one in a storm even to an experienced pilot,
and with the advantage of daylight; and I could not
but remember with some anxiety that we were entering
upon it at nightfall, and with a wind strengthening
every moment, while the captain confessedly had made
the passage but once before, and then in a calm sea of
August. The skipper, however, walked his deck confidently,
though he began to manage his canvas with a
more wary care, and, before dark, we were scudding
under a single sail, and pitching onward with the heave
of the sea at a rate that, if we were to see Malta at all,
-- 141 --
[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]
promised a speedy arrival. As the night closed in we
passed a large frigate lying-to, which we afterwards
found out was the Superbe, a French eighty-gun ship,
(wrecked a few hours after on the island of Andros.)
The two American frigates had run up by Mitylene and
were still behind us, and the fear of being run down in
the night, in our small craft, induced the captain to scud
on, though he would else have lain-to with the Frenchman,
and perhaps have shared his fate.
I staid on deck an hour or two after dark, and before
going below satisfied myself that we should owe it
to the merest chance if we escaped striking in the
night. The storm had become so furious that we ran
with bare poles before it, and though it set us pretty
fairly on our way, the course lay through a narrow
and most intricate channel, among small and rocky islands,
and we had nothing for it but to trust to a providential
drift.
The captain prepared himself for a night on deck,
lashed everything that was loose, and filled the two
jugs suspended in the cabin, which, as the sea had been
too violet for any hope from the cook, wore to sustain
us through the storm. We took a biscuit and a
glass of Hollands and water, holding on hard by the
berths lest we should be pitched through the skylight,
and as the captain tied up the dim lantern, I got a look
at his face, which would have told me, if I had not
known it before, that though resolute and unmoved, he
knew himself to be entering on the most imminent
hazard of his life.
The waves now broke over the brig at every heave,
and occasionally the descent of the solid mass of water
on the quarter-deck, seemed to drive her under like a
cork. My own situation was the worst on board, for
I was inactive. It required a seaman to keep the deck,
and as there was no standing in the cabin without great
effort, I disembarrassed myself of all that would impede
-- 142 --
[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]
a swimmer, and got into my berth to await a wreck
which I considered almost inevitable. Braced with
both hands and feet, I lay and watched the imbroglio
in the bottom of the cabin, my own dressing-case
among other things emptied of its contents and swimming
with some of my own clothes and the captain's,
and the water rushing down the companion-way with
every wave that broke over us. The last voice I heard
on deck was from the deep throat of the captain calling
his men aft to assist in lashing the helm, and then,
in the pauses of the gale, came the awful crash upon
deck, more like the descent of a falling house than a
body of water, and a swash through the scuppers immediately
after, seconded by the smaller sea below, in
which my coat and waistcoat were undergoing a rehearsal
of the tragedy outside.
At midnight the gale increased, and the seas that
descended on the brig shook her to the very keel. We
could feel her struck under by the shock, and reel and
quiver as she recovered and rose again; and, as if to
distract my attention, the little epitome of the tempest
going on in the bottom of the cabin grew more and
more serious. The unoccupied berths were packed
with boxes of figs and bags of nuts, which “brought
away” one after another, and rolled from side to side
with a violence which threatened to drive them through
the side of the vessel; my portmanteau broke its lashings
and shot heavily backward and forward with the
roll of the sea; and if I was not to be drowned like a
dog in a locked cabin, I feared, at least, I should have
my legs broken by the leap of a fig-box into my berth.
My situation was wholly uncomfortable, yet half ludicrous.
An hour after midnight the captain came down,
pale and exhausted, and with no small difficulty
managed to get a tumbler of grog.
“How does she head?” I asked.
-- 143 --
[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]
“Side to wind, drifting five knots an hour.”
“Where are you?”
“God only knows. I expect her to strike every
minute.”
He quietly picked up the wick of the lamp as it tossed
to and fro, and watching the roll of the vessel, gained
the companion-way, and mounted to the deck. The
door was locked, and I was once more a prisoner and
alone.
An hour elapsed—the sea, it appeared to me,
strengthening in its heaves beneath us, and the wind
howling and hissing in the rigging like a hundred devils.
An awful surge then burst down upon the deck, racking
the brig in every seam: the hurried tread of feet
over head told me that they were cutting the lashings
of the helm; the seas succeeded each other quicker
and quicker, and, conjecturing from the shortness of
the pitch, that we were nearing a reef, I was half out
of my berth when the cabin door was wrenched open,
and a deluging sea washed down the companion way.
“On deck for your life!” screamed the hoarse voice
of the captain.
I sprange up through streaming water, barefoot and
bareheaded, but the pitch of the brig was so violent
that I dared not leave the ropes of the companion ladder,
and, almost blinded with the spray and wind, I
stood waiting for the stroke.
“Hard down!” cried the captain in a voice I shall
never forget, and as the rudder creaked with the strain,
the brig fell slightly off, and rising with a tremendous
surge, I saw the sky dimly relieved against the edge of
a ragged precipice, and in the next moment, as if with
the repulse of a catapult, we were flung back into the
trough of the sea by the retreating wave, and surged
heavily beyond the rock. The noise of the breakers,
and the rapid commands of the captain now drowned
the hiss of the wind, and in a few minutes we were
-- 144 --
[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]
plunging once more through the uncertain darkness,
the long and regular heavings of the sea alone assuring
us that we were driving from the shore.
The wind was cold, and I was wet to the skin.
Every third sea broke over the brig and added to the
deluge in the cabin, and from the straining of the masts
I feared they would come down with every succeeding
shock. I crept once more below, and regained my
berth, where wet and aching in every joint, I awaited
fate or the daylight.
Morning broke, but no abatement of the storm. The
captain came below and informed me (what I had already
presumed) that we had run upon the southernmost
point of Negropont, and had been saved by a
miracle from shipwreck. The back wave had taken
us off, and with the next sea we had shot beyond it.
We were now running in the same narrow channel for
Cape Colonna, and were surrounded with dangers.
The skipper looked beaten out; his eyes were protruding
and strained, and his face seemed to me to have
emaciated in the night. He swallowed his grog, and
flung himself for half an hour into his berth, and then
went on deck again to relieve his mate, where tired of
my wretched berth, I soon followed him.
The deck was a scene of desolation. The bulwarks
were carried clean away, the jolly-boat swept off, and
the long-boat the only moveable thing remaining. The
men were holding on to the shrouds, haggard and
sleepy, clinging mechanically to their support as the
sea broke down upon them, and, silent at the helm,
stood the captain and the second mate keeping the brig
stern-on to the sea, and straining their eyes for land
through the thick spray before them.
The day crept on, and another night, and we passed
it like the last. The storm never slacked, and all
through the long hours the same succession went on,
the brig plunging and rising, struggling beneath the
-- 145 --
[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]
overwhelming and overtaking waves, and recovering
herself again, till it seemed to me as if I had never
known any other motion. The captain came below
for his biscuit and grog and went up again without
speaking a word, the mates did the same with the same
silence, and at last the bracing and holding on to prevent
being flung from my berth became mechanical,
and I did it while I slept. Cold, wet, hungry and exhausted,
what a blessing from heaven were five minutes
of forgetfulness!
How the third night wore on I scarce remember.
The storm continued with unabated fury, and when
the dawn of the third morning broke upon us the captain
conjectured that we had drifted four hundred miles
before the wind. The crew were exhausted with
watching, the brig labored more and more heavily, and
the storm seemed eternal.
At noon of the third day the clouds broke up a little,
and the wind, though still violent, slacked somewhat
in its fury. The sun struggled down upon the
lashed and raging sea, and, taking our bearings, we
found ourselves about two hundred miles from Malta.
With great exertions, the cook contrived to get up a fire
in the binnacle and boil a little rice, and never gourmet
sucked the brain of a woodcock with the relish which
welcomed that dark mess of pottage.
It was still impossible to carry more than a hand's
breadth of sail, but we were now in open waters and
flew merrily before the driving sea. The pitching and
racking motion, and the occasional shipping of a heavy
wave, still forbade all thoughts or hopes of comfort,
but the dread of shipwreck troubled us no more, and I
passed the day in contriving how to stand long enough
on my legs to get my wet traps from my floating portmanteau,
and go into quarantine like a christian.
The following day, at noon, Malta became visible
from the top of an occasional mountain wave; and still
-- 146 --
[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]
driving under a reefed topsail before the hurricane, we
rapidly neared it, and I began to hope for the repose
of terra firma. The watch towers of the castellated
rock soon became distinct through the atmosphere of
spray, and at a distance of a mile, we took in sail and
waited for a pilot.
While tossing in the trough of the sea the following
half hour, the captain communicated to me some embarrassment
with respect to my landing which had not
occurred to me. It appeared that the agreement to
land me at Malta was not mentioned in his policy of
insurance, and the underwriters of course were not responsible
for any accident that might happen to the
brig after a variation from his original plan of passage.
This he would not have minded if he could have set
me ashore in a half hour, as he had anticipated, but his
small boat was lost in the storm, and it was now a question
whether the pilot-boat would take ashore a passenger
liable to quarantine. To run his brig into harbor
would be a great expense and positive loss of insurance,
and to get out the long-boat with his broken tackle
and exhausted crew was not to be thought of. I knew
very well that no passenger from a plague port (such
as Smyrna and Constantinople) was permitted to land
on any terms at Gibraltar, and if the pilot here should
refuse to take me off, the alternative was clear. I must
make a voyage against my will to America!
I was not in a very pleasant state of mind during the
delay which followed; for, though I had been three
years absent from my country and loved it well, I had
laid my plans for still two years of travel on this side
the Atlantic, and certain moneys for my “charges” lay
waiting my arrival at Malta. Among lesser reasons, I
had not a rag of clothes dry or clean, and was heartily
out of love with salt water and the smell of figs.
As if to aggravate my unhappiness, the sun broke
through a rift in the clouds and lit up the white and
-- 147 --
[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]
turreted battlements of Malta like an isle of the blessed—
the only bright spot within the limits of the stormy
horizon. The mountain waves on which we were
tossing were tempestuous and black, the comfortless
and battered brig with her weary crew looked more
like a wreck than a sea-worthy merchantman, and no
pilot appearing, the captain looked anxiously sea-ward,
as if he grudged every minute of the strong wind rushing
by on his course.
A small speck at last appeared making towards us
from the shore, and, riding slowly over the tremendous
waves, a boat manned by four men came within hailing
distance. One moment as high as our topmast, and
another in the depths of the gulf a hundred feet below
us, it was like conversing from two buckets in a well.
“Do you want a pilot?” screamed the Maltese in
English, as the American flag blew out to the wind.
“No!” roared the captain, like a thunder-peal,
through his tin-trumpet.
The Maltese, without deigning another look, put up
his helm with a gesture of disappointment, and bore
away.
“Boat ahoy!” bellowed the captain.
“Ahoy! ahoy!” answered the pilot.
“Will you take a passenger ashore?”
“Where from?”
“Smyrna!”
“No—o—o—o!”
There was a sound of doom in the angry prolongation
of that detested monosyllable that sunk to the bottom
of my heart like lead.
“Clear away the mainsail,” cried the captain getting
round once more to the wind. “I knew how it
would be, sir,” he continued, to me, as I bit my lips in
the effort to be reconciled to an involuntary voyage of
four thousand miles; “it wasn't likely he'd put
-- 148 --
[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]
himself and his boat's crew into twenty days' quarantine
to oblige you and me.”
I could not but own that it was an unreasonable expectation.
“Never mind, sir,” said the skipper, consolingly,
“plenty of salt fish in the locker, and I'll set you on
Long Wharf in no time!”
“Brig ahoy!” came a voice faintly across the waves.
The captain looked over his shoulder without losing
a cap-full of wind from his sail, and sent back the hail
impatiently.
The pilot was running rapidly down upon us, and
had come back to offer to tow me ashore in the brig's
jolly-boat for a large sum of money.
“We've lost our boat, and you're a bloody shark,”
answered the skipper, enraged at the attempt at extortion.
“Head your course!” he muttered gruffly to the
man at the helm, who had let the brig fall off that the
pilot might come up.
Irritated by this new and gratuitous disappointment,
I stamped on the deck in an ungovernable fit of rage,
and wished the brig at the devil.
The skipper looked at me a moment, and instead of
the angry answer I expected, an expression of kind
commiseration stole over his rough face. The next
moment he seized the helm and put the brig away from
the wind, and then making a trumpet of his two immense
hands, he once more hailed the returning pilot.
“I can't bear to see you take it so much to heart,
sir,” said the kind sailor, “and I'll do for you what I
wouldn't do for another man on the face o' the 'arth.
All hands there!”
The men came aft, and the captain in brief words
stated the case to them, and appealed to their sense of
kindness for a fellow-countryman, to undertake a task,
which, in the sea then running, and with their exhausted
strength, was not a service he could well
-- 149 --
[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]
demand in other terms. It was to get out the long-boat
and wait off while the pilot towed me ashore and returned
with her.
“Ay, ay! sir,” was the immediate response from
every lip, and from the chief-mate to the black cabinboy,
every man sprang cheerily to the lashings. It was
no momentary task, for the boat was as firmly set in
her place as the mainmast, and stowed compactly with
barrels of pork, extra rigging, and spars—in short, all
the furniture and provision of the voyage. In the
course of an hour, however, the tackle was rigged on
the fore and main yards, and with a desperate effort its
immense bulk was heaved over the side, and lay tossing
on the tempestous waters. I shook hands with
the men, who refused every remuneration beyond my
thanks, and, following the captain over the side, was
soon toiling heavily on the surging waters, thanking
Heaven for the generous sympathies of home and
country implanted in the human bosom. Those who
know the reluctance with which a merchant captain
lays-to even to pick up a man overboard in a fair wind,
and those who understand the meaning of a forfeited
insurance, will appreciate this instance of difficult generosity.
I shook the hard fist of the kind-hearted
skipper on the quarantine stairs, and watched his
heavy boat as she crept out of the little harbor with the
tears in my eyes. I shall travel far before I find again
a man I honor more heartily.
-- --
[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
-- --
MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS.
[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]
-- --
[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
-- -- p415-420
[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]
“Un homme capable de faire des dominos av ec les os de son pere.”
Pere Goriot.
It was in the golden month of August, not very long
ago, that the steamer which plies between St. Mark's
Stairs, at Venice, and the river into which Phaeton
turned a somerset with the horses of the Sun, started
on its course over the lagoon with an unusual Godsend
of passengers. The moon was rising from the
unchaste bed of the Adriatic, (wedded every year to
Venice, yet every day and night sending the sun and
moon from her lovely bosom to the sky,) and while the
gold of the west was still glowing on the landward side
of the Campanile, a silver gleam was brightening momently
on the other, and the Arabic domes of St.
Marc and the flying Mercury on the Dogana paled to
the setting orb and kindled to the rising with the same
Talleyrand-esque facility.
For the first hour the Mangia-foco sputtered on her
way with a silent company; the poetry of the scene,
or the regrets at leaving the delicious city lessening in
the distance, affecting all alike with a thoughtful
-- 154 --
[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]
incommunicativeness. Gradually, however, the dolphin hues
over the Brenta faded away—the marble city sank into
the sea, with its turrets and bright spires—the still lagoon
became a sheet of polished glass—and the silent
groups leaning over the rails found tongues and feet,
and began to stir and murmur.
With the usual unconscious crystallization of society,
the passengers of the Mangia-foco had yielded
one side of the deck to a party of some rank, who had
left their carriages at Ferrara in coming from Florence
to Venice, and were now upon their return to the city
of Tasso, stomaching, with what grace they might, the
contact of a vulgar conveyance, which saved them the
hundred miles of posting between Ferrara and the
Brenta. In the centre of the aristocratic circle stood
a lady enveloped in a cashmere, but with her bonnet
hung by the string over her arm—one of those women
of Italy upon whom the divinest gifts of loveliness are
showered with a profusion which apparently improverishes
the sex of the whole nation. A beautiful woman
in that land is rarely met; but when she does appear,
she is what Venus would have been after the contest
for beauty on Ida, had the weapons of her antagonists,
as in the tournaments of chivalry, been added to the
palm of victory. The Marchesa del Marmore was apparently
twenty-three, and she might have been an incarnation
of the morning-star for pride and brightness.
On the other side of the deck stood a group of young
men, who, by their careless and rather shabby dress,
but pale and intellectual faces, were of that class met
in every public conveyance of Italy.—The portfolios
under their arms, ready for a sketch, would have removed
a doubt of their profession, had one existed;
and with that proud independence for which the class
is remarkable, they had separated themselves equally
from the noble and ignoble—disqualified by inward superiority
from association with the one, and by
-- --
[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]
accidental poverty from the claims cultivation
them upon the other. Their glances at the
turned toward them from the party I have
were less constant than those of the vulgar,
not offend; but they were evidently
with it than with the fishing-boats lying
lagoon; and one of them, half-buried in
rope, and looking under the arm of
ready made a sketch of her that might some
the world wonder from what Seventh
such an angelic vision of a head had
the painter's dream.
In the rear of this group, with the air of
would conceal himself from view, stood a
who belonged to the party, but who, with
pallor of intellectual habits in his face, was
ter dressed than his companions, and had,
the portfolio under his arm, and a hat of
breadth of rim, the undisguisable air of a
customed to the best society. While
straggling conversation with his friends,
seemed a favorite, Signor Basil employed
looking over the sketch of the lovely
on at his elbow, occasionally as if to
the original, stealing a long look from be
hand and his slouched hat at the radiant
ting so unconsciously for her picture, and
voice correcting, as by the result of his gaze,
touches of the artist.
“Take a finer pencil for the nostril, caro
he; “it is as thin as the edge of a violet,
parent curve---—”
“Cospetto!” said the youth; “but you
faint light better than I; if she would but
moon------”
The Signor Basil suddenly flung his
into the lagoon, bringing its shadow between
-- 156 --
[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]
of Night and the Marchesa del Marmore; and, attracted
from her reverie by the passing object, the lady
moved her head quickly to the light, and in that
moment the spirited lip and nostril were transferred to
the painter's sketch.
“Thanks, mio bravo!” enthusiastically exclaimed
the looker on; “Giorgione would not have beaten
thee with the crayon!” and with a rudeness which
surprised the artist, he seized the paper from beneath
his hand, walked away with it to the stern, and leaning
far over the rails, perused it fixedly by the mellow
lustre of the moon. The youth presently followed
him, and after a few words exchanged in an undertone,
Signor Basil slipped a piece of gold into his
hand, and carefully placed the sketch in his own portfolio.
It was toward midnight when the Mangia-foco entered
the Adige, and keeping its steady way between
the low banks of the river, made for the grass-grown
and flowery canal which connects its waters with the
Po. Most of the passengers had yielded to the drowsy
influence of the night air, and, of the aristocratic party
on the larboard side, the young Marchesa, alone was
waking; her friends had made couches of their cloaks
and baggage, and were reclining at her feet, while the
artists, all except the Signor Basil, were stretched fairly
on the deck, their portfolios beneath their heads,
and their large hats covering their faces from the powerful
rays of the moon.
“Miladi does justice to the beauty of the night,”
said the waking artist, in a low and respectful tone,
as he rose from her with a cluster of tuberoses she
had let fall from her hand.
“It is indeed lovely, Signor pittore,” responded the
Marchesa, glancing at his portfolio, and receiving the
-- 157 --
[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]
flowers with a gracious inclination; “have you touched
Venice from the lagoon to-night?”
The Signor Basil opened his portfolio, and replied
to the indirect request of the lady by showing her a
very indifferent sketch of Venice from the island of St.
Lazzaro. As if to escape from the necessity of praising
what had evidently disappointed her, she turned the
cartoon hastily, and exposed, on the sheet beneath, the
spirited and admirable outline of her own matchless
features.
A slight start alone betrayed the surmise of the high-born
lady, and raising the cartoon to examine it more
closely, she said with a smile, “You may easier tread
on Titian's heels than Canaletti's. Bezzuoli has painted
me, and not so well. I will awake the Marquis,
and he shall purchase it of you.”
“Not for the wealth of the Medici, Madam!” said
the young man, clasping his portfolio hastily, “pray do
not disturb Monsignore! The picture is dear to me!”
The Marchesa looking into his face, and with a
glance around, which the aceomplished courtier before
her read better than she dreamed, she drew her shawl
over her blanched shoulders, and settled herself to listen
to the conversation of her new acquaintance.
“You would be less gracious if you were observed,
proud beauty,” thought Basil: “but while you think
the poor painter may while away the tediousness of a
vigil, he may feed his eye on your beauty as well.”
The Mangia-foco turned into the canal, threaded
its lily-paved waters for a mile or two, and then, putting
forth upon the broad bosom of the Po, went on
her course against the stream, and, with retarded pace,
penetrated toward the sun-beloved heart of Italy. And
while the later hours performed their procession with
the stars, the Marchesa del Marmore leaned sleepless
and unfatigued against the railing, listening with mingled
curiosity and scorn to the passionate love-murmur
-- 158 --
[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]
of the enamored painter. His hat was thrown aside,
his fair and curling locks were flowing in the night air,
his form was bent earnestly but respectfully towards
her, and on its lip, with all its submissive tenderness,
there sat a shadow of something she could not define,
but which rebuked ever and anon, as with the fierce
regard of a noble, the condescension she felt towards
him as an artist.
Upon the lofty dome of the altar in the cathedral of
Bologna stands poised an angel in marble, not spoken
of in the books of travelers, but perhaps the loveliest
incarnation of a blessed cherub that ever lay in the
veined bosom of Pentelicus. Lost and unobserved on
the vast floor of the nave, the group of artists, who had
made a day's journey from Ferrara, sat in the wicker
chairs hired for a baioch the vesper, and drew silently
from this angel, while the devout people of Bologna
murmured their Ave Marias around. Signor Basil
alone was content to look over the work of his companions,
and the twilight had already begun to brighten
the undying lamps at the shrine, when he started from
the pillar against which he leaned, and crossed hastily
toward a group issuing from a private chapel in the
western aisle. A lady walked between two gentlemen
of noble mien, and behind her, attended by an equally
distinguished company, followed that lady's husband,
the Marchese del Marmore. They were strangers
passing through Bologna, and had been attended to
vespers by some noble friends.
The companions of the Signor Basil looked on with
some surprise as their enamored friend stepped confidently
before the two nobles in attendance upon the
lady, and arrested her steps with a salutation which,
though respectful as became a gentleman, was marked
-- 159 --
[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]
with the easy politeness of one accustomed to a favorable
reception.
“May I congratulate Miladi,” he said, rising slowly
from his bow, and fixing his eyes with unembarrassed
admiration on her own liquid but now frowning orbs,
upon her safe journey over the Marches. “Bologna,”
he continued, glancing at the nobles with a courteous
smile, “welcomes her fittingly.”
The lady listened with a look of surprise, and the
Bolognese glanced from the dusty boots of the artist to
his portfolio.
“Has the painter the honor to know La Signora?”
asked the cavalier on her right.
“Signor, si!” said the painter, fiercely, as a curl
arched the lady's lip, and she prepared to answer.
The color mounted to the temples of the Marchesa,
and her hushand, who had loitered beneath the Madonna
of Domenichino, coming up at the instant, she
bowed coldly to the Signor Basil, and continued down
the aisle. The artist followed to her carriage, and
lifted his hat respectfully as the lumbering equipage took
its way by the famous statue of Neptune, and then with
a confident smile, which seemed to his companions
somewhat mistimed, he muttered between his teeth,
“Ciascuno son bel' giorno!” and strolled loitering on
with them to the trattoria.
The court of the Grand Duke of Florence is perhaps
the most cosmopolitan and the most easy of access
in all Europe. The Austrian-born Monarch himself,
adopting in some degree the frank and joyous
character of the people over whom he reigns, throws
open his parks and palaces, his gardens and galleries,
to the strangers passing through; and, in the season of
gaiety, almost any presentable person, resident at Florence,
may procure the entree to the court balls, and
-- 160 --
[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]
start fair with noble dames and gentlemen for grace in
courtly favor. The fetes at the Palazzo Pitti, albeit not
always exempt from a leaven of vulgarity, are always
brilliant and amusing, and the exclusives of the court,
though they draw the line distinctly enough to their
own eye, mix with apparent abandonment in the motley
waltz and mazurka, and either from good-nature or a
haughty conviction of their superiority, never suffer the
offensive cordon to be felt, scarce to be suspected, by
the multitude who divert them. The Grand Duke, to
common eyes is a grave and rather timid person, with
more of the appearance of the scholar than of the
sovereign, courteous in public, and benevolent and
earnest in his personal attentions to his guests at the
palace. The royal quadrille may be shared without
permission of the grand chamberlain, and the royal eye,
after the first one or two dances of ceremony, searches
for partners by the lamp of beauty, heedless of the diamonds
on the brow, or the star of nobility on the shoulder.
The grand supper is scarce more exclusive, and
on the disappearance of the royal cortege, the delighted
crowd take their departure, having seen no class more
favored than themselves, and enchanted with the gracious
absence of pretension in the nobilita of Tuscany.
Built against the side of a steep hill, the Palazzo
Pitti encloses its rooms of state within massive and
sombre walls in front, while in the rear the higher stories
of the palace open forth on a level with the delicious
gardens of the Boboli, and contain suites of
smaller apartments, fitted up with a cost and luxury
which would beggar the dream of a Sybarite. Here
lives the monarch, in a seclusion rendered deeper and
more sacred by the propinquity of the admitted world
in the apartments below; and in this sanctuary of royalty
is enclosed a tide of life, as silent and unsuspected
by the common inhabitant of Florence, as the flow of
the ocean-veiled Arethusa by the mariner of the Ionian
-- 161 --
[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]
main. Here the invention of the fiery genius of Italy
is exhausted in poetical luxury,—here the reserved and
silent sovereign throws off his maintien of royal condescension,
and enters with equal arms into the lists of
love and wit,—here burn (as if upon an altar fed with
spice-woods and precious gums) the fervent and uncalculating
passions of this glowing clime, in senses refined
by noble nurture, and hearts prompted by the
haughty pulses of noble blood,—and here—to the
threshold of this sanctuary of royal pleasure—press all
who know its secrets, and who imagine a claim to it in
their birth and attractions, while the lascia-passare is
accorded with a difficulty which alone preserves its
splendor.
Some two or three days after the repulse of the
Signor Basil in the cathedral of Bologna, the group of
traveling artists were on their way from the grand gallery
at Florence to their noon-day meal. Loitering
with slow feet through the crowded and narrow Via
Calzaiole, they emerged into the sunny Piazza, and
looking up with understanding eyes at the slender shaft
of the Campanile, (than which a fairer finger of religious
architecture points not to heaven,) they took
their way toward the church of Santa Trinita, proposing
to eat their early dinner at a house named, from its
excellence in a certain temperate beverage, La Birra.
The traveler should be advised also, that by paying an
extra paul in the bottle, he may have at this renowned
eating-house, an old wine sunned on the southern
shoulder of Fiesole, that hath in its flavor a certain redolence
of Boccaccio, scarce remarkable since it grew
in the scene of the Decameron, but of a virtue which,
to the Hundred Tales of Love, (read drinking,) is what
the Gradus ad Parnassum should be to the building of
a dithyrambic. The oil of two crazie upon the palm of
the fat waiter Giuseppe will assist in calling the vintage
to his memory.
-- 162 --
[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]
A thundering rap upon the gate of the adjoining Palazzo
arrested the attention of the artists as they were
about to enter the Birra, and in the occupant of a dark
green cabriolet, drawn by a pampered horse of the
Duke's breed, they recognised, elegantly dressed and
posed on his seat a la D'Orsay, the Signor Basil. His
coat was of an undecided cut and color, and his gloves
were of primrose purity.
The recognition was immediate, and the cordiality
of the greeting mutual. They had parted from their
companion at the gate of Florence, as travelers part,
without question, and they met without reserve to part
as questionless again. The artists were surprised at
the Signor Basil's transformation, but no follower of
their refined art would have been so ill bred as to express
it. He wished them the bon appetito, as a tall
chasseur came out to say that her ladyship was at
home; and with a slacked rein the fiery horse sprang
through the gateway, and the marble court of the
palace rang with his prancing hoofs.
He who has idled and bought flowers at the Cafe of
the Colonna at Florence will have remarked, as he sat
in his chair upon the street in the sultry evening the
richly ornamented terrace and balustrade of the Palazzo
Corsi giving upon the Piazza Trinita. The dark old
Ghibelline palace of the Strozzi lets the eye down upon
it, as it might pass from a helmeted knight with closed
vizor to his unbonneted and laughing page. The crimson
curtains of the window opening upon the terrace,
at the time of our story, reminded every passing Florentine
of the lady who dwelt within—a descendant of
one of the haughtiest lines of English chivalry—resident
in Italy since many years for health, but bearing
in her delicate frame and exquisitely transparent features,
the loftiest type of patrician beauty that had ever
filled the eye that looked upon her. In the inner heaven
of royal exclusiveness at the Pitti—in its
-- 163 --
[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]
constellation of rank and wit—the Lady Geraldine had long
been the worshipped and ascendant cynosure. Happy
in a husband without rank and but of moderate fortune,
she maintained the spotless character of an English
wife in this sphere of conventional corruption; and
though the idol of the Duke and his nobles, it would
have been like a whisper against the purity of the
brightest Pleiad, to have linked her name with love.
With her feet upon a sofa covered with a gossamer
cashmere, her lovely head pillowed on a cushion of
silk, and a slight stand within arm's length holding a
vase of flowers and the volume from which she had
been reading, the Lady Geraldine received the Count
Basil Spirifort, some time attache to the Russian embassy
at Paris, (where he had first sunned his eyes in
her beauty,) and at present the newly appointed secretary
to the minister of the same monarch near the
court of Tuscany.
Without a bow, but with the hasty step and gesture
of a long absent and favored friend, the Count Basil
ran to the proffered hand, and pressed its alabaster
fingers to his lips. Had the more common acquaintances
of the diplomate seen him at this moment, they
would have marvelled how the mask of manhood may
drop, and disclose the ingenuous features of the boy.
The secretary knew his species, and the Lady Geraldine
was one of those women for whom the soul is unwilling
to possess a secret.
After the first inquiries were over, the lady questioned
her recovered favorite of his history since they
had parted. “I left you,” she said, “swimming the
dangerous tide of life at Paris. How have you come
to shore?”
“Thanks, perhaps, to your friendship, which made
life worth the struggle! For the two extremes, however,
you know what I was at Paris—and yesterday I
was a wandering artist in velveteen and a sombrero!”
-- 164 --
[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]
Lady Geraldine laughed.
“Ah! you look at my curls—but Macassar is at a
discount! It is the only grace I cherished in my incognito.
A resumer—I got terribly out of love by the
end of the year after we parted, and as terribly in
debt. My promotion in diplomacy did not arrive, and
the extreme hour for my credit did. Pozzo di Borgo
kindly procured me conge for a couple of years, and I
dived presently under a broad-rimmed hat, got into a
vetturino with portfolio and pencils, joined a troop of
wandering artists, and with my patrimony at nurse,
have been two years looking at life witout spectacles
at Venice.”
“And painting?”
“Painting!”
“Might one see a specimen?” asked the Lady Geraldine,
with an incredulous smile.
“I regret that my immortal efforts in oils are in the
possession of a certain Venetian, who lets the fifth floor
of a tenement washed by the narrowest canal in that
fair city. But if your ladyship cares to see a drawing
or two—”
He rang the bell, and his jocki Anglais presently
brought from the pocket of his cabriolet a way-worn
and thinly furnished portfolio. The Lady Geraldine
turned over a half-dozen indifferent views of Venice,
but the last cartoon in the portfolio made her start.
“La Marchesa del Marmore!” she exclaimed, looking
at Count Basil with an inquiring and half uneasy
eye.
“Is it well drawn?” he asked quietly.
“Well drawn? It is a sketch worthy of Raphael.
Do you really draw so well as this, or”—she added,
after a slight hesitation—“is it a miracle of love?”
“It is a divine head,” soliloquized the Russian, half
closing his eyes, and looking at the drawing from a
-- 165 --
[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]
distance, as if to fill up the imperfect outline from his
memory.
The Lady Geraldine laid her hand on his arm. “My
dear Basil,” she said seriously, “I should be wretched
if I thought your happiness was in the power of this
woman. Do you love her?”
“The portrait was not drawn by me,” he answered,
“though I have a reason for wishing her to think so.
It was done by a fellow traveler of mine, whom I wish
to make a sketch of yourself, and I have brought it
here to interest you in him as an artist. Mais revenons
a nos moutons—La Marchesa was also a fellow traveler
of mine, and without loving her too violently, I owe
her a certain debt of courtesy contracted on the way.
Will you assist me to pay it?”
Relieved of her fears, and not at all suspecting the
good faith of the diplomatist in his acknowledgments of
gratitude, the Lady Geraldine inquired simply how she
could serve him.
“In the twenty-four hours since my arrival at Florence,”
he said, “I have put myself, as you will see,
au courant of the minor politics of the Pitti. Thanks
to my Parisian renown, the Duke has enrolled me already
under the back-stairs oligarchy, and to-morrow
night I shall sup with you in the Saloon of Hercules
after the ball is over. La Marchesa, as you well know,
has, with all her rank and beauty, never been able to
set foot within those guarded penetralia—soit her malicious
tongue, soit the interest against her of the men
she has played upon her hook too freely. The road
to her heart, if there be one, lies over that threshold,
and I would take the toll. Do you understand me,
most beautiful Lady Geraldine?”
The Count Basil imprinted another kiss upon the
fingers of the fair Englishwoman, as she promised to
put into his hand the following night the illuminated
ticket which was to repay, as she thought, too
-- 166 --
[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]
generously, a debt of gratitude; and plucking a flower from
her vase for his bosom, he took his leave to return at
twilight to dinner. Dismissing his cabriolet at the gate,
he turned on foot toward the church of San Gaetano,
and with an expression of unusual elation in his step
and countenance, entered the trattoria, where dined at
that moment his companions of the pencil.
The green lamps glittering by thousands amid the
foliage of the Boboli had attained their full brightness,
and the long-lived Italian day had died over the distant
mountains of Carrara, leaving its inheritance of light
apparently to the stars, who, on their fields of deepening
blue, sparkled, each one like the leader of an unseen
host in the depths of heaven, himself the foremost
and the most radaint. The night was balmy and voluptuous.
The music of the Ducal band swelled forth
from the perfumed apartments on the air. A single
nightingale, far back in the wilderness of the garden,
poured from his melodious heart a chant of the most
passionate melancholy. The sentinel of the bodyguard
stationed at the limit of the spray of the fountain
leaned on his halberd and felt his rude senses melt in
the united spells of luxury and nature. The ministers
of a monarch's pleasure had done their utmost to prepare
a scene of royal delight, and night and summer
had flung in their enchantments when ingenuity was
exhausted.
The dark architectural mass of the Pitti, pouring a
blaze of light scarce endurable from its deeply sunk
windows, looked like the side of an enchanted mountain
laid open for the revels of sorcery. The aigrette
and plume passed by; the tiara and the jewel upon
the breast; the gaily dressed courtiers and glittering
dames; and to that soldier at his dewy post, it seemed
like the realized raving of the improvisatore when he
-- 167 --
[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]
is lost in some fable of Araby. Yet within walked
Malice and Hate, and the light and perfume that might
have fed an angel's heart with love, but deepened in
many a beating bosom the consuming fires of Envy.
With the gold key of office on his cape, the Grand
Chamberlain stood at the feet of the Dowager Grand
Duchess, and by a sign to the musicians, hidden in a
latticed gallery behind the Corinthian capital of the
hall, retarded or accelerated the soft measure of the
waltz. On a raised seat in the rear of the chairs of
state, sat the ladies of honor and the noble dames
nearest allied to royal blood; one solitary and privileged
intruder alone sharing the elevated place—the
Lady Geraldine. Dressed in white, her hair wound
about her head in the simplest form, yet developing
its divine shape with the clear outline of statuary, her
eyes lambent with purity and sweetness, heavily fringed
with lashes a shade darker than the light auburn
braided on her temples, and the tint of the summer's
most glowing rose turned out from the thread-like
parting of her lips; she was a vision of loveliness to
take into the memory, as the poet enshrines in his soul
the impossible shape of his ideal, and consumes youth
and age searching in vain for its like. Fair Lady Geraldine!
thou wilt read these passionate words from
one whose worship of thy intoxicating loveliness has
never before found utterance, but if this truly told tale
should betray the hand that has dared to describe thy
beauty, in thy next orisons to St. Mary of Pity, breathe
from those bright lips a prayer that he may forget
thee!
By the side of the Lady Geraldine, but behind the
chair of the Grand Duchess, who listened to his conversation
with singular delight, stood a slight young
man of uncommon personal beauty, a stranger apparently
to every other person present. His brilliant uniform
alone betrayed him to be in the Russian
-- 168 --
[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]
diplomacy, and the marked distinction shown him both by the
reigning Queen of the court, and the more powerful
and inaccessible queen of beauty, marked him as an
object of keen and universal curiosity. By the time
the fifth mazurka had concluded its pendulous refrain,
the Grand Chamberlain had tolerably well circulated
the name and rank of Count Basil Spirifort, the renowned
wit and elegant of Paris, newly appointed to
the Court of His Royal Highness of Tuscany. Fair
eyes wandered amid his sunny curls, and beating bosoms
hushed their pulses as he passed.
Count Basil knew the weight of a first impression.
Count Basil knew also the uses of contempt. Upon
the first principle he kept his place between the Grand
Duchess and Lady Geraldine, exerting his deeply studied
art of pleasing to draw upon himself their exclusive
attention. Upon the second principle, he was perfectly
unconscious of the presence of another human
being, and neither the gliding step of the small-eared
Princess S— in the waltz, nor the stately advance
of the last female of the Medici in the mazurka, distracted
his large blue eyes a moment from their idleness.
With one hand on the eagle-hilt of his sword,
and his side leant against the high cushion of red velvet
honored by the pressure of the Lady Geraldine, he
gazed up into that beaming face, when not bending
respectfully to the Duchess, and drank steadfastly from
her beauty, as the lotus cup drinks light from the sun.
The new Secretary had calculated well. In the
deep recess of the window looking toward San Miniato,
stood a lady nearly hidden from view by the muslin
curtains just stirring with the vibration of the music,
who gazed on the immediate circle of the Grand Duchess
with an interest that was not attempted to be disguised.
On her first entrance into the hall, the Marchesa
del Marmore had recognised in the new minion
of favor her impassioned lover of the lagoon, her
-- 169 --
[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]
slighted acquaintance of the cathedral. When the first shock
of surprise was over, she looked on the form which
she had found beautiful even in the disguise of poverty,
and, forgetting her insulting repulse when he would
have claimed in public the smile she had given him
when unobserved, she recalled with delight every syllable
he had murmured in her ear, and every look she
had called forth in the light of a Venetian moon. The
man who had burned upon the altar of her vanity the
most intoxicating incense—who had broken through
the iron rules of convention and ceremony, to throw
his homage at her feet—who had portrayed so incomparably
(she believed) with his love-inspired pencil
the features imprinted on his heart---this chancewon
worshipper, this daring but gifted plebeian, as she
had thought him, had suddenly shot into her sphere
and become a legitimate object of love; and, beautified
by the splendor of dress, and distinguished by the
preference and favor of those incomparably above her,
he seemed tenfold, to her eyes, the perfection of adorable
beauty. As she remembered his eloquent devotion
to herself, and saw the interest taken in him by a woman
whom she hated and had calumniated—a woman who
she believed stood between her and all the light of existence—
she anticipated the triumph of taking him from
her side—of exhibiting him to the world as a falcon seduced
from his first quarry—and never doubting that
so brilliant a favorite would control the talisman of the
paradise she had so long wished to enter, she panted
for the moment when she should catch his eye and
draw him from his lure, and already heard the Chamberlain's
voice in her ear commanding her presence
after the ball in the saloon of Hercules.
The Marchesa had been well observed from the first
by the wily diplomate. A thorough adept in the art
(so necessary to his profession) of seeing without appearing
to see, he had scarce lost a shade of the
-- 170 --
[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]
varying expressions of her countenance; and while she
fancied him perfectly unconscious of her presence, he
read her tell-tale features as if they had given utterance
to her thoughts. He saw, with secret triumph,
the effect of his brilliant position upon her proud and
vain heart; watched her while she made use of her
throng of despised admirers to create a sensation near
him and attract his notice; and when the ball wore on,
and he was still in unwearied and exclusive attendance
upon the Lady Geraldine, he gazed after her with a
momentary curl of triumph on his lip, as she took up
her concealed position in the embayed window, and
abandoned herself to the bitter occupation of watching
the happiness of her rival. The Lady Geraldine had
never been so animated since her first appearance at
the Court of Tuscany.
It was past midnight when the Grand Duke, flushed
and tired with dancing, came to the side of the Lady
Geraldine. Count Basil gave place, and, remaining a
moment in nominal obedience to the Sovereign's polite
request which he was too politic to construe literally,
he looked down the dance with the air of one who has
turned his back on all that could interest him, and,
passing close to the concealed position of the Marchesa,
stepped out upon the balcony.
The air was cool, and the fountain played refreshingly
below. The Count Basil was one of those minds
which never have so much leisure for digression as
when they are most occupied. A love, as deep and
profound as the abysses of his soul, was weaving thread
for thread with a revenge worthy of a Mohican; yet,
after trying in vain to count eight in the Pleiades, he
raised himself upon the marble balustrade, and perfectly
anticipating the interruption to his solitude which
presently occurred, began to speculate aloud on the
dead and living at that hour beneath the roof of the
Pitti.
-- 171 --
[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]
“A painter's mistress,” he said, “immortal in the
touch of her paramour's pencil, is worshipped for centuries
on these walls by the pilgrims of art; while the
warm perfection of all loveliness---the purest and divinest
of high-born women---will perish utterly with the
eyes that have seen her! The Bella of Titian, the
Fornarina of Raffaelle---peasant-girls of Italy---have,
at this moment, more value in this royal palace than
the breathing forms that inhabit it! The Lady Geraldine
herself, to whom the Sovereign offers at this moment
his most flattering homage, would be less a loss
to him than either! Yet they despise the gods of the
pencil who may thus make them immortal! The dull
blood in their noble veins, that never bred a thought
beyond the instincts of their kind, would look down,
forsooth, on the inventive and celestial ichor that inflames
the brain, and prompts the fiery hand of the
painter! How long will this very sovereign live in the
memories of men? The murderous Medici, the ambitious
cardinals, the abandoned women of an age gone
by, hang in imperishable colors on his walls; while of
him, the lord of this land of genius, there is not a bust
or a picture that would bring a sequin in the market-place!
They would buy genius in these days like
wine, and throw aside the flask in which it ripened.
Raffaelle and Buonarotti were companions for a pope
and his cardinals;---Titian was an honored guest for
the Doge. The stimulus to immortalize these noble
friends was in the love they bore them; and the secret
of their power to do it lay half in the knowledge of their
characters, gained by daily intimacy. Painters were
princes then, as they are beggars now; and the princely
art is beggared as well!”
The Marchesa del Marmore stepped out upon the
balcony, leaning on the arm of the Grand Chamberlain.
The soliloquizing Secretary had foretold to himself
both her coming and her companion.
-- 172 --
[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]
“Monsieur le Comte,” said the Chamberlain, “La
Marchesa del Marmore wishes for the pleasure of your
acquaintance.”
Count Basil bowed low, and in that low and musical
tone of respectful devotion which, real or counterfeit,
made him irresistible to a woman who had a soul to be
thrilled, he repeated the usual nothings upon the beauty
of the night; and when the Chamberlain returned to
his duties, the Marchesa walked forth with her companion
to the cool and fragrant alleys of the garden,
and, under the silent and listening stars, implored forgiveness
for her pride; and, with the sudden abandonment
peculiar to the clime, poured into his ear the
passionate and weeping avowal of her sorrow and love.
“Those hours of penitence in the embayed window,”
thought Count Basil, “were healthy for your soul.”
And as she walked by his side, leaning heavily on his
arm, and half-dissolved in a confiding tenderness, his
thoughts reverted to another and a far sweeter voice;
and while the caressing words of the Marchesa fell on
an un-listening ear, his footsteps insensibly turned back
to the lighted hall.
As the daylight stole softly over Vallombrosa, the
luxurious chariot of the Marchesa del Marmore stopped
at the door of Count Basil. The Lady Geraldine's
suit had been successful; and the hitherto excluded
Florentine had received, from the hand of the man she
had once so ignorantly scorned, a privilege for which
she would have bartered her salvation;—she had supped
at his side in the saloon of Hercules. With many
faults of character, she was an Italian in feeling, and
had a capacity, like all her country-women, for a consuming
and headlong passion. She had better have
been born of marble.
-- 173 --
[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]
“I have lifted you to heaven,” said Count Basil, as
her chariot wheels rolled from his door; “but it is as
the eagle soars into the clouds with the serpent. We
will see how you will relish the fall!”
-- 174 --
[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]
The Grand Duke's carriages, with their six horses and
outriders, had turned down the Borg'ognisanti, and the
“City of the Red Lily,” waking from her noon-day
slumber, was alive with the sound of wheels. The sun
was sinking over the Apennine which kneels at the
gate of Florence; the streets were cool and shadowy;
the old women, with the bambina between their knees,
braided straw at the doors; the booted guardsman
paced his black charger slowly over the jeweller's
bridge; the picture-dealer brought forward his brightest
“master” to the fading light; and while the famous
churches of that fairest city of the earth called to the
Ave-Maria with impatient bell, the gallantry and beauty
of Tuscany sped through the dampening air with their
swift horses, meeting and passing with gay greetings
amid the green alleys of the Cascine.
The twilight had become grey, when the carriages
and horsemen, scattered in hundreds through the interlaced
roads of this loveliest of parks, turned by common
consent toward the spacious square in the centre, and
drawing up in thickly serried ranks, the soiree on wheels,
the reunion en plein air, which is one of the most
-- 175 --
[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]
delightful of the peculiar customs of Florence, commenced
its healthful gaities. The showy carriages of the
Grand Duke and the ex-king of Wurtemberg (whose
rank would not permit them to share in the familiarities
of the hour) disappeared by the avenue skirting the
bank of the Arno, and with much delicate and some
desperate specimens of skill, the coachmen of the more
exclusive nobility threaded the embarrassed press of
vehicles, and laid their wheels together on the southern
edge of the piazza. The beaux in the saddle, disembarrassed
of ladies and axle-trees, enjoyed their usual
butter-fly privilege of roving, and with light rein and
ready spur pushed their impatient horses to the coronetted
panels of the loveliest or most powerful; the
laugh of the giddy was heard here and there over the
pawing of restless hoofs; an occasional scream, half of
apprehension, half of admiration, rewarded the daring
caracole of some young and bold rider; and while the
first star sprang to its place, and the dew of heaven
dropped into the false flowers in the hat of the belle,
and into the thirsting lips of the violet in the field, (simplicity,
like virtue, is its own reward!) the low murmur
of calumny and compliment, of love and light-heartedness,
of politeness, politics, puns, and poetry, arose
over that assembly upon wheels: and if it was not a
scene and an hour of happiness, it was the fault neither
of the fragrant eve nor of the provisions of nature
and fortune. The material for happiness was there.
A showy caleche with pannels of dusky crimson, the
hammer-cloth of the same shade, edged with a broad
fringe of white, the wheels slightly picked out with the
same colors, and the coachman and footman in corresponding
liveries, was drawn up near the southern edge
of the piazza. A narrow alley had been left for horsemen
between this equipage and the adjoining ones,
closed up at the extremity, however, by a dark-green and
very plain chariot, placed with a bold violation of
-- 176 --
[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]
etiquette directly across the line, and surrounded just now
by two or three persons of the highest rank leaning
from their saddles in earnest conversation with the occupant.
Not far from the caleche, mounted upon an
English blood-horse of great beauty, a young man had
just drawn rein as if interrupted only for a moment on
some pressing errand, and with his hat slightly raised,
was paying his compliments to the venerable Prince
Poniatowski, at that time the Amphytrion of Florence.
From moment to moment, as the pauses occurred in
the exchange of courteous phrases, the rider, whose
spurred heel was close at his saddle-girths, stole an impatient
glance up the avenue of carriages to the dark-green
chariot, and, excited by the lifted rein and the
proximity of the spur, the graceful horse fretted on his
minion feet, and the bending figures from a hundred
vehicles, and the focus of bright eyes radiating from all
sides to the spot, would have betrayed, even to a
stranger, that the horseman was of no common mark.
Around his uncovered temples floated fair and well-cherished
locks of the sunniest auburn; and if there
was beauty in the finely-drawn lines of his lips, there
was an inexpressibly fierce spirit as well.
The Count Basil had been a month at Florence. In
that time he had contrived to place himself between the
Duke's ear and all the avenues of favor, and had approached
as near, perhaps nearer, to the hearts of the
women of his court. A singular and instinctive knowledge
of the weaknesses of human nature, perfected and
concealed by conversance with the consummate refinement
of life at Paris, remarkable personal beauty, and
a quality of scornful bitterness for which no one could
divine a reason in a character and fate else so happily
mingled, but which at the same time added to his fascination,
had given Count Basil a command over the
-- 177 --
[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]
varied stops of society, equalled by few players on that
difficult and capricious instrument. His worldly ambition
went swimmingly on, and the same wind filled
the sails of his lighter ventures as well. The love of
the Marchesa del Marmore, as he had very well anticipated,
grew with his influence and renown. A woman's
pride, he perfectly knew, is difficult to wake after
she has once believed herself adored; and, satisfied
that the portrait taken on the lagoon, and the introduction
he had given her to the exclusive penetralia of the
Pitti, would hold her till his revenge was complete, he
left her love for him to find its own food in his successes,
and never approached her, but to lay to her
heart more mordently the serpents of jealousy and
despair.
For the Lady Geraldine the Count Basil had conceived
a love, the deepest of which his nature was capable.
Long as he had known her, it was a passion
born in Italy, and while it partook of the qualities of
the clime, it had for its basis the habitual and wellfounded
respect of a virtuous and sincere friendship.
At their first acquaintance at Paris, the lovely Englishwoman,
newly arrived from the purer moral atmosphere
of her own country, was moving in the dissolute,
but skilfully disguised society of the Faubourg St. Germain,
with the simple unconsciousness of the pure in
heart, innocent herself, and naturally unsuspicious of
others. The perfect frankness with which she established
an intimacy with the clever and accomplished
attache, had soon satisfied that clear-sighted person that
there was no passion in her preference, and, giddy with
the thousand pleasures of that metropolis of delight, he
had readily sunk his first startled admiration of her
beauty in an affectionate and confiding friendship. He
had thus shown her the better qualities of his character
only, and, charmed with his wit and penetration, and
something flattered, perhaps, with the devotion of so
-- 178 --
[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]
acknowledged an autocrat of fashion and talent, she
had formed an attachment for him that had all the
earnestness of love without its passion. They met at
Florence, but the “knowledge of good and evil” had
by this time driven the Lady Geraldine from her Eden
of unconsciousness. Still as irreproachable in conduct,
and perhaps as pure in heart as before, an acquaintance
with the forms of vice had introduced into
her manners those ostensible cautions which, while they
protect, suggest also what is to be feared.
A change had taken place also in Count Basil. He
had left the vitreous and mercurial clime of France,
with its volatile and superficial occupations, for the voluptuous
and indolent air of Italy, and the study of its
impassioned deifications of beauty. That which had
before been in him an instinct of gay pleasure—a pursuit
which palled in the first moment of success, and
was second to his ambition or his vanity—had become,
in those two years of a painter's life, a thirst both of
the senses and the imagination, which had usurped the
very throne of his soul. Like the Hindoo youth, who
finds the gilded plaything of his childhood elevated in his
maturer years into a god, he bowed his heart to what he
held so lightly, and brought the costly sacrifice of time
and thought to its altars. He had fed his eyes upon
the divine glories of the pencil, and upon the breathing
wonders of love in marble, beneath the sky and in the
dissolving air in which they rose to the hand of inspiration;
and with his eye disciplined, and his blood fused
with taste and enthusiasm, that idolatry of beauty, which
had before seemed sensual or unreal, kindled its first
fires in his mind, and his senses were intoxicated with
the incense. There is a kind of compromise in the
effects of the atmosphere and arts of Italy. If the intellect
takes a warmer hue in its study of the fair models
of antiquity, the senses in turn become more refined
and intellectual. In other latitudes and lands
-- 179 --
[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]
woman is loved more coldly. After the brief reign of
a passion of instinct, she is happy if she can retain her
empire by habit, or the qualities of the heart. That
divine form, meant to assimilate her to the angels, has
never been recognised by the dull eye that should have
seen in it a type of her soul. To the love of the painter
or the statuary, or to his who has made himself conversant
with their models, is added the imperishable
enthusiasm of a captivating and exalted study. The
mistress of his heart is the mistress of his mind. She
is the breathing realization of that secret ideal which
exists in every mind, but which, in men ignorant of the
fine arts, takes another form, and becomes a woman's
rival and usurper. She is like nothing in ambition—
she is like nothing in science or business—nothing in
out-of-door pleasures. If politics, or the chase, or the
acquisition of wealth, is the form of this ruling passion,
she is unassociated with that which is nearest his heart,
and he returns to her with an exhausted interest and a
flagging fancy. It is her strongest tie upon his affection,
even, that she is his refuge when unfit for that
which occupies him most—in his fatigue, his disappointment,
his vacuity of head and heart. He thinks
of her only as she receives him in his most worthless
hours; and, as his refreshed intellects awake, she is
forgotten with the first thought of his favorite theme—
for what has a woman's loveliness to do with that?
Count Basil had not concluded his first interview
with the Lady Geraldine, without marvelling at the new
feelings with which he looked upon her. He had
never before realized her singular and adorable beauty.
The exquisitely turned head, the small and pearly ears,
the spiritual nostril, the softly moulded chin, the clear
loftiness of expression yet inexpressible delicacy and
brightness in the lips, and a throat and bust than which
those of Faustina in the delicious marble of the Gallery
of Florence might be less envied by the Queen of
-- 180 --
[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]
Love—his gaze wandered over these, and followed her
in the harmony of her motions, and the native and unapproachable
grace of every attitude; and the pictures
he had so passionately studied seemed to fade in his
mind, and the statutes he had half worshipped seemed
to descend from their pedestals depreciated. The
Lady Geraldine, for the first time, felt his eye. For
the first time in their acquaintance, she was offended
with its regard. Her embarrassment was read by the
quick diplomate, and at that moment sprang into being
a passion, which perhaps had died but for the conscious
acknowledgment of her rebuke.
Up to the evening in the Cascine, with which the second
chapter of this simply true tale commences, but
one of the two leading threads in the Count Basil's
woof had woven well. “The jealous are the damn'd,”
and the daily and deadly agony of the Marchesa del
Marmore was a dark ground from which his love to the
Lady Geraldine rose to his own eye in heightened relief.
His dearest joy forwarded with equal step his
dearest revenge; and while he could watch the working
of his slow torture in the fascinated heart of his
victim, he was content to suspend a blow to which that
of death would be a mercy. “The law,” said Count
Basil, as he watched her quivering and imploring lip,
“takes cognizance but of the murder of the body. It
has no retribution for the keener dagger of the soul.”
The conversation between the Russian Secretary and
the Prince Poniatowski ended at last in a graceful bow
from the former to his horse's neck; and the quicker
rattling of the small hoofs on the ground, as the fine
creature felt the movement in the saddle and prepared
to bound away, drew all eyes once more upon the
handsomest and most idolized gallant of Florence. The
narrow lane of carriages, commencing with the showy
-- 181 --
[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]
caleche of the Marchesa del Marmore, and closed up by
the plain chariot of the Lady Geraldine, was still open,
and with a glance at the latter which sufficiently indicated
his destination, Count Basil raised his spurred
heel, and with a smile of delight and the quickness of
a barb in the desert, galloped toward the opening. In
the same instant the Marchesa del Marmore gave a
convulsive spring forward, and, in obedience to an imperative
order, her coachman violently drew rein and
shot back the forward wheels of the caleche directly
across his path. Met in full career by this sudden obstacle,
the horse of the Russian reared high in air; but
ere the screams of apprehension had arisen from the
adjacent carriages, the silken bridle was slacked, and
with a low bow to the foiled and beautiful Marchesa as
he shot past, he brushed the hammer-cloths of the two
scarce separated carriages, and at the same instant
stood at the chariot window of the Lady Geraldine, as
calm and respectful as if he had never known danger
or emotion.
A hundred eyes had seen the expression of his face
as he leaped past the unhappy woman, and the drama
of which that look was the key was understood in Florence.
The Lady Geraldine alone, seated far back in
her chariot, was unconscious of the risk run for the
smile with which she greeted its hero; and unconscious,
as well, of the poignant jealousy and open mortification
she had innocently assisted to inflict, she
stretched her fair and transparent hand from the carriage,
and stroked the glossy neck of his horse, and
while the Marchesa del Marmore drove past with a
look of inexpressible anguish and hate, and the dispersing
nobles and dames took their way to the city gates,
Count Basil leaned close to the ear of that loveliest of
breathing creatures, and forgot, as she forgot in listening
to the bewildering music of his voice, that the
-- 182 --
[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]
stars had risen, or that the night was closing around
them.
The Cascine had long been silent when the chariot
of the Lady Geraldine took its way to the town, and,
with the reins loose upon his horse's neck, Count
Basil followed at a slower pace, lost in the reverie of a
tumultuous passion. The sparkling and unobstructed
stars broke through the leafy roof of the avenue whose
silence was disturbed by those fine and light-stepping
hoofs, and the challenge of the Duke's forester, going
his rounds ere the gates closed, had its own deepthroated
echo for its answer. The Arno rippled among
the rushes on its banks, the occasional roll of wheels
passing the paved arch of the Ponte Seraglio, came
faintly down the river upon the moist wind, the pointed
cypresses of the Convent of Bello Sguardo laid their
slender fingers against the lowest stars in the southern
horizon, and with his feet pressed, carelessly, far
through his stirrups, and his head dropped on his bosom,
the softened diplomate turned instinctively to the
left in the last diverging point of the green alleys, and
his horse's ears were already pricked at the tread, before
the gate, of the watchful and idle doganieri.
Close under the city wall, on this side Florence, the
traveler will remember that the trees are more thickly
serried, and the stone seats, for the comfort and pleasure
of those who would step forth from the hot streets
for an hour of fresh air and rest, are mossy with the
depth of the perpetual shade. In the midst of this dark
avenue, the unguided animal beneath the careless and
forgetful rider suddenly stood still, and the next moment
starting aside, a female sprang high against his
neck, and Count Basil, ere awake from his reverie, felt
the glance of a dagger-blade across his bosom.
With the slender wrist that had given the blow firmly
arrested in his left hand, the Count Basil slowly dismounted,
and after a steadfast look, by the dim light,
-- 183 --
[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]
into the face of the lovely assassin, he pressed her
fingers respectfully, and with well counterfeited emotion,
to his lips.
“Twice since the Ave-Maria!” he said in a tone of
reproachful tenderness, “and against a life that is your
own!”
He could see, even in that faint light, the stern compression
of those haughty lips, and the flash of the
darkest eyes of the Val d'Arno. But leading her gently
to a seat, he sat beside her, and with scarce ten brief
moments of low-toned and consummate eloquence, he
once more deluded her soul!
“We meet to-morrow,” she said, as after a burst of
irrepressible tears, she disengaged herself from his
neck, and looked toward the end of the avenue, where
Count Basil had already heard the pawing of her impatient
horses.
“To-morrow!” he answered; “but, mia carissima!”
he continued, opening his breast to stanch the blood of
his wound, “you owe me a concession after this rude
evidence of your love.”
She looked into his face as if answer were superfluous.
“Drive to my palazzo at noon, and remain with me
till the Ave-Maria.”
For but half a moment the impassioned Italian hesitated.
Though the step he demanded of her was apparently
without motive or reason—though it was one
that sacrificed to a whim her station, her fortune, and
her friends—she hesitated but to question her reason
if the wretched price of this sacrifice would be paid—
if the love, to which she fled from this world and heaven,
was her own. In other countries, the crime of infidelity
is punished—in Italy it is the appearance only
that is criminal. In proportion as the sin is overlooked,
the violation of the outward proprieties of life is severely
visited; and while a lover is stipulated for in the
-- 184 --
[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]
marriage-contract, an open visit to that lover's house
is an offence which brands the perpetrator with irremediable
shame. The Marchesa del Marmore well
knew that in going forth from the ancestral palace of
her husband on a visit to Count Basil, she took leave
of it for ever. The equipage that would bear her to
him would never return for her; the protection, the
fortune, the noble relations, the troops of friends,
would all drop from her. In the pride of her youth
and beauty,—from the highest pinnacle of rank,—
from the shelter of fortune and esteem—she would descend,
by a single step, to be a beggar for life and love
from the mercy of the heart she fled to!
“I will come,” she said, in a firm voice, looking
close into his face, as if she would read in his dim features
the prophetic answer of his soul.
The Count Basil strained her to his bosom, and
starting back as if with the pain of his wound, he
pleaded the necessity of a surgeon, and bade her a
hasty good-night. And while she gained her own carriage
in secrecy, he rode round to the other gate,
which opens upon the Borg'-ognisanti, and dismounting
at the Cafe Colonna, where the artists were at this
hour usually assembled, he sought out his fellow-traveler,
Giannino Speranza, who had sketched the Marchesa
upon the lagoon, and made an appointment with
him for the morrow.
While the Count Basil's revenge sped thus merrily,
the just Fates were preparing for him a retribution in
his love. The mortification of the Marchesa del Marmore,
at the Cascine, had been made the subject of
conversation at the prima sera of the Lady Geraldine;
and other details of the same secret drama transpiring
at the same time, the whole secret of Count Basil's
feelings toward that unfortunate woman flashed clearly
-- 185 --
[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]
and fully upon her. His motives for pretending to
have drawn the portrait of the lagoon, for procuring
her an admission to the exclusive suppers of the Pitti,
for a thousand things which had been unaccountable,
or referred to more amiable causes, were at once unveiled.
Even yet, with no suspicion of the extent of
his revenge, the Lady Geraldine felt an indignant pity
for the unconscious victim, and a surprised disapproval
of the character thus unmasked to her eye. Upon
further reflection, her brow flushed to remember that
she herself had been made the most effective tool of
his revenge; and as she recalled circumstance after
circumstance in the last month's history, the attention
and preference he had shown her, and which had gratified
her, perhaps, more than she admitted to herself,
seemed to her sensitive and resentful mind to have
been only the cold instruments of jealousy. Incapable
as she was of an unlawful passion, the unequalled fascinations
of Count Basil had silently found their way
to her heart, and if her indignation was kindled by a
sense of justice and womanly pity, it was fed and fanned
unaware by mortified pride. She rang, and sent
an order to the gate that she was to be denied for the
future to Count Basil Spirifort.
The servant had appeared with his silver tray in his
hand, and before leaving her presence to communicate
the order, he presented her with a letter. Well foreseeing
the eclaircissement which must follow the public
scene in the Cascine, the Count Basil had left the cafe
for his own palazzo, and, in a letter, of which the following
is the passage most important to our story, he
revealed to the lady he loved a secret, which he hoped
would anticipate the common rumor:—
“But these passionate words will have offended
your ear, dearest lady, and I must pass to a
theme on which I shall be less eloquent. You will
hear to-night, perhaps, that which, with all your
-- 186 --
[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]
imagination, will scarce prepare you for what you will
hear to-morrow. The Marchesa del Marmore is the
victim of a revenge which has only been second in my
heart to the love I have for the first time breathed to
you. I can never hope that you will either understand
or forgive the bitterness in which it springs; yet it is a
demon to which I am delivered, soul and body, and no
spirit but my own can know its power. When I have
called it by its name, and told you of its exasperation,
if you do not pardon, you will pity me.
“You know that I am a Russian, and you know the
station my talents have won me; but you do not know
that I was born a serf and a slave! If you could rend
open my heart and see the pool of blackness and bitterness
that lies in its bottom, fallen, drop by drop,
from this accursed remembrance, there would be little
need to explain to you how this woman has offended
me. Had I been honorably born, like yourself, I feel
that I could have been, like you, an angel of light: as
it is, the contumely of a look has stirred me to a revenge
which has in it, I do not need to be told, the
darkest elements of murder.
“My early history is of no importance, yet I may
tell you it was such as to expose to every wind this lacerated
nerve. In a foreign land, and holding an official
rank, it was seldom breathed upon. I wore, mostly,
a gay heart at Paris. In my late exile at Venice I
had time to brood upon my dark remembrance, and it
was revived and fed by the melancholy of my solitude.
The obscurity in which I lived, and the occasional comparison
between myself and some passing noble in the
Piazza, served to remind me, could I have forgotten it.
I never dreamed of love in this humble disguise, and
so never felt the contempt that had most power to
wound me. On receiving the letters of my new appointment,
however, this cautious humility did not wait
to be put off with my sombrero. I started for
-- 187 --
[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]
Florence, clad in the habiliments of poverty, but with the
gay mood of a courtier beneath. The first burst of
my newly-released feelings was admiration for a woman
of singular beauty, who stood near me on one of
the most love-awakening and delicious eves that I ever
remember. My heart was overflowing, and she permitted
me to breathe my passionate adoration in her
ear. The Marchesa del Marmore, but for the scorn of
the succeeding day, would, I think, have been the mistress
of my soul. Strangely enough, I had seen you
without loving you.
“I have told you, as a bagatelle that might amuse
you, my rencontre with del Marmore and his dame in
the cathedral of Bologna. The look she gave me there
sealed her doom. It was witnessed by the companions
of my poverty, and the concentrated resentment
of years sprang up at the insult. Had it been a man,
I must have struck him dead where he stood;---she
was a woman, and I swore the downfall of her
pride.”
Thus briefly dismissing the chief topic of his letter,
Count Basil returned to the pleading of his love. It
was dwelt on more eloquently than his revenge; but
as the Lady Geraldine scarce read it to the end, it need
not retard the procession of events in our story. The
fair Englishwoman sat down beneath the Etruscan
lamp, whose soft light illumined a brow, cleared, as if
by a sweep from the wing of her good angel, of the
troubled dream which had overhung it, and in brief
and decided, but kind and warning words, replied to
the letter of Count Basil.
It was noon on the following day, and the Contadini
from the hills were settling to their siesta on the steps
of the churches, and against the columns of the Piazza
del Gran' Duca. The artists alone, in the cool
-- 188 --
[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]
gallery, and in the tempered halls of the Pitti, shook off
the drowsiness of the hour, and strained sight and
thought upon the immortal canvas from which they
drew; while the sculptor, in his brightening studio,
weary of the mallet, yet excited by the bolder light,
leaned on the rough block behind him, and with listless
body but wakeful and fervent eye, studied the last
touches upon his marble.
Prancing hoofs, and the sharp quick roll peculiar to
the wheels of carriages of pleasure, awakened the aristocratic
sleepers of the Via dei Servi, and with a lash
and jerk of violence, the coachman of the Marchesa
del Marmore, enraged at the loss of his noon-day repose,
brought up her showy caleche at the door of
Count Basil Spirifort. The fair occupant of that luxurious
vehicle was pale, but the brightness of joy and
hope burned almost fiercely in her eye.
The doors flew open as the Marchesa descended,
and following a servant in the Count's livery, of whom
she asked no question, she found herself in a small saloon,
furnished with the peculiar luxury which marks
the apartment of a bachelor, and darkened like a painter's
room. The light came in from a single tall window,
curtained below, and under it stood an easel, at
which, on her first entrance, a young man stood sketching
the outline of a female head. As she advanced,
looking eagerly around for another face, the artist laid
down his palette, and with a low reverence presented
her with a note from Count Basil. It informed her
that political news of the highest importance had called
him suddenly to the cabinet of his Chef, but that he
hoped to be with her soon; and, meantime, he begged
of her, as a first favor in his newly-prospered love, to
bless him with the possession of her portrait, done by
the incomparable artist who would receive her.
Disappointment and vexation overwhelmed the heart
of the Marchesa, and she burst into tears. She read
-- 189 --
[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]
the letter again, and grew calmer; for it was laden
with epithets of endearment, and seemed to her written
in the most sudden haste. Never doubting for an
instant the truth of his apology, she removed her hat,
and with a look at the deeply-shaded mirror, while she
shook out from their confinement the masses of her
luxuriant hair, she approached the painter's easel, and
with a forced cheerfulness inquired in what attitude she
should sit to him.
“If the Signora will amuse herself,” he replied, with
a bow, “it will be easy to compose the picture, and
seize the expression without annoying her with a posse.”
Relieved thus of any imperative occupation, the unhappy
Marchesa seated herself by a table of intaglios
and prints, and while she apparently occupied herself
in the examination of these specimens of art, she was
delivered, as her tormentor had well anticipated, to
the alternate tortures of impatience and remorse. And
while the hours wore on, and her face paled, and her
eyes grew bloodshot with doubt and fear, the skilful
painter, forgetting every thing in the enthusiasm of his
art, and forgotten utterly by his unconscious subject,
transferred too faithfully to the canvas that picture of
agonized expectation.
The afternoon meantime had worn away, and the
gay world of Florence, from the side towards Fiesole,
rolled past the Via dei Servi on their circuitous way to
the Cascine, and saw, with dumb astonishment, the
carriage and liveries of the Marchesa del Marmore at
the door of Count Basil Spirifort. On they swept by
the Via Mercata Nova to the Lung' Arno, and there
their astonishment redoubled; for in the window of
the Casino dei Nobili, playing with a billiard-cue, and
laughing with a group of lounging exquisites, stood
Count Basil himself, the most unoccupied and listless
of sunset idlers. There was but one deduction to be
drawn from this sequence of events; and when they
-- 190 --
[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]
remembered the demonstration of passionate jealousy
on the previous evening in the Cascine, Count Basil,
evidently innocent of participation in her passion, was
deemed a persecuted man, and the Marchesa del Marmore
was lost to herself and the world!
Three days after this well-remembered circumstance
in the history of Florence, an order was received from
the Grand Duke to admit into the exhibition of modern
artists a picture by a young Venetian painter, an
eleve of Count Basil Spirifort. It was called “The
Lady expecting an Inconstant,” and had been pronounced
by a virtuoso who had seen it on private view,
to be a master-piece of expression and color. It was
instantly and indignantly recognised as the portrait of
the unfortunate Marchesa, whose late abandonment of
her husband was fresh on the lips of common rumor;
but ere it could be officially removed, the circumstance
had been noised abroad, and the picture had been seen
by all the curious in Florence. The order for its removal
was given; but the purpose of Count Basil had
been effected, and the name of the unhappy Marchesa
had become a jest on the vulgar tongue.
This tale had not been told, had there not been more
than a common justice in its sequel. The worst passions
of men, in common life, are sometimes inscrutably
prospered. The revenge of Count Basil, however,
was betrayed by the last which completed it; and
while the victim of his fiendish resentment finds a peaceful
asylum in England under the roof of the compassionate
Lady Geraldine, the once gay and admired Russian
wanders from city to city, followed by an evil reputation,
and stamped unaccountably as a Jattatore.[8]
eaf415v2.n8[8] A man with an evil eye.
-- -- p415-458
“Pray pardon me,
For I am like a boy that hath found money—
Afraid I dream still.”
Ford or Webster.
[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]
It was on a fine September evening, within my time,
(and I am not, I trust, too old to be loved,) that Count
Anatole L—, of the impertinent and particularly useless
profession of attache, walked up and down before the
glass in his rooms at the “Archduke Charles,” the first
hotel, as you know, if you have traveled, in the greenbelted
and fair city of Vienna. The brass ring was
still swinging on the end of the bell-rope, and, in a respectful
attitude at the door, stood the just-summoned
Signor Attilio, valet and privy councillor to one of the
handsomest coxcombs errant through the world. Signor
Attilio was a Tyrolese, and, like his master was
very handsome.
Count Anatole had been idling away three golden
summer months in the Tyrol, for the sole purpose, as
far as mortal eyes could see, of disguising his fine
Phidian features in a callow moustache and whiskers.
The crines ridentes (as Eneas Sylvius has it) being now
in a condition beyond improvement, Signor Attilio had
for some days been rather curious to know what course
-- 192 --
[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]
of events would next occupy the diplomatic talents of
his master.
After a turn or two more, taken in silence, Count
Anatole stopped in the middle of the floor, and eyeing
the well-made Tyrolese from head to foot, begged to
know if he wore at the present moment his most becoming
breeches, jacket, and beaver.
Attilio was never astonished at any thing his master
did or said. He simply answered, “Si Signore.”
“Be so kind as to strip immediately, and dress yourself
in that traveling suit lying on the sofa.”
As the green, gold-corded jacket, knee-breeches,
buckles, and stockings, were laid aside, Count Anatole
threw off his dressing-gown, and commenced encasing
his handsome proportions in the cast-off habiliments.
He then put on the conical, slouch-rimmed hat, with
the tall eagle's feather stuck jauntily on the side and the
two rich tassels pendent over his left eye, and, the toilet
of the valet being completed at the same moment, they
stood looking at one another with perfect gravity—
rather transformed, but each apparently quite at home
in his new character.
“You look very like a gentleman, Attilio,” said the
Count.
“Your Excellency has caught to admiration, l'aria
del paese,” complimented back again the sometime
Tyrolese.
“Attilio!”
“Signore?”
“Do you remember the lady in the forest of Friuli?”
Attilio began to have a glimmering of things. Some
three months before, the Count was dashing on at a
rapid post-pace, through a deep wood in the mountains
which head in the Adriatic. A sudden pull-up at a
turning in the road nearly threw him from his britska,
and looking out at the “anima di porco!” of the postillion,
he found his way impeded by an overset carriage, from
-- 193 --
[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]
which three or four servants were endeavoring to extract
the body of an old man, killed by the accident.
There was more attractive metal for the traveler,
however, in the shape of a young and beautiful woman,
leaning, pale and faint, against a tree, and apparently
about to sink to the ground, unassisted. To bring a
hat full of water from the nearest brook, and receive
her falling head on his shoulder, was the work of a
thought. She had fainted quite away, and taking her,
like a child, into his arms, he placed her on a bank by
the road-side, bathed her forehead and lips, and chafed
her small white hands, till his heart, with all the distress
of the scene, was quite mad with her perfect
beauty.
Animation at last began to return, and as the flush
was stealing into her lips, another carriage drove up
with servants in the same livery, and Count Anatole,
thoroughly bewildered in his new dream, mechanically
assisted them in getting their living mistress and dead
master into it, and until they were fairly out of sight, it
had never occurred to him that he might possibly wish
to know the name and condition of the fairest piece of
work he had ever seen from the hands of his Maker.
An hour before, he had doubled his bono mano to the
postilion, and was driving on to Vienna as if to sit at a
new Congress. Now, he stood leaning against the
tree, at the foot of which the grass and wild flowers
showed the print of a new-made pressure, and the
postilion cracked his whip, and Attilio reminded him
of the hour he was losing, in vain.
He remounted after a while; but the order was to
go back to the last post-house.
Three or four months at a solitary albergo in the
neighborhood of this adventure, passed by the Count in
scouring the country on horseback in every direction,
and by his servant in very particular ennui, brings up
the story nearly to where the scene opens.
-- 194 --
[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]
“I have seen her!” said the Count.
Attilio only lifted up his eyebrows.
“She is here, in Vienna!”
“Felice lei!” murmured Attilio.
“She is the Princess Leichstenfels, and, by the death
of that old man, a widow.”
“Veramente?” responded the valet, with a rising inflexion;
for he knew his master and French morals
too well not to foresee a damper in the possibility of
matrimony.
“Veramente!” gravely echoed the Count. “And
now, listen, The Princess lives in close retirement.
An old friend or two, and a tried servant, are the only
persons who see her. You are to contrive to see this
servant to-morrow, corrupt him to leave her, and recommend
me in his place, and then you are to take
him as your courier to Paris; whence, if I calculate
well, you will return to me before long, with important
despatches. Do you understand me?”
“Signor, si!”
In the small boudoir of a maison de plaisance, belonging
to the noble family of Leichstenfels, sat the widowed
mistress of one of the oldest titles and finest estates
of Austria. The light from a single long window
opening down to the floor and leading out upon a terrace
of flowers, was subdued by a heavy crimson curtain,
looped partially away, a pastille lamp was sending
up from its porphyry pedestal a thin and just perceptible
curl of smoke, through which the lady musingly
passed backwards and forwards one of her slender fingers,
and, on a table near, lay a sheet of black-edged
paper, crossed by a small silver pen, and scrawled over
irregularly with devices and disconnected words, the
work evidently of a fit of the most absolute and listless
idleness.
The door opened, and a servant in mourning livery
stood before the lady.
-- 195 --
[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]
“I have thought over your request, Wilhelm,” she
said. “I had become accustomed to your services,
and regret to lose you; but I should regret more to
stand in the way of your interest. You have my permission.”
Wilhelm expressed his thanks with an effort that
showed he had not obeyed the call of Mammon without
regret, and requested leave to introduce the person
he had proposed as his successor.
“Of what country is he?”
“Tyrolese, your Excellency.”
“And why does he leave the gentleman with whom
he came to Vienna?”
“Il est amoureux d'une Viennaise, madame,” answered
the ex-valet, resorting to French to express what he
considered a delicate circumstance.
“Pauvre enfant!” said the Princess, with a sigh that
partook as much of envy as of pity; let him come in!”
And the Count Anatole, as the sweet accents reached
his ear, stepped over the threshold, and in the coarse
but gay dress of the Tyrol, stood in the presence of her
whose dewy temples he had bathed in the forest, whose
lips he had almost “pried into for breath,” whose
snowy hands he had chafed and kissed when the senses
had deserted their celestial organs—the angel of his
perpetual dream, the lady of his wild and uncontrollable,
but respectful and honorable love.
The Princess looked carelessly up as he approached,
but her eyes seemed arrested in passing over his features.
It was but momentary. She resumed her occupation
of winding her taper fingers in the smoke
curls of the incense-lamp, and with half a sigh, as if
she had repelled a pleasing thought, she leaned back
in the silken fauteuil, and asked the new comer his
name.
“Anatole, your Excellency.”
The voice again seemed to stir something in her
-- 196 --
[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]
memory. She passed her hand over her eyes, and
was for a moment lost in thought.
“Anatole,” she said (Oh, how the sound of his own
name, murmured in that voice of music, thrilled through
the fiery veins of the disguised lover!) “Anatole, I
receive you into my service. Wilhelm will inform you
of your duties, and—I have a fancy for the dress of the
Tyrol—you may wear it instead of my livery, if you
will.”
And with one stolen and warm gaze from under his
drooping eyelids, and heart and lips on fire, as he
thanked her for her condescension, the new retainer
took his leave.
Month after month passed on—to Count Anatole in
a bewildering dream of ever deepening passion. It was
upon a soft and amorous morning of April, that a dashing
equipage stood at the door of the proud palace of
Leichstenfels. The arms of E— blazed on the
panels, and the insouciants chasseurs leaned against the
marble columns of the portico, waiting for their master,
and speculating on the gaiety likely to ensue from the
suit he was prosecuting within. How could a Prince
of E— be supposed to sue in vain?
The disguised footman had ushered the gay and
handsome nobleman to his mistress's presence. After
re-arranging a family of very well-arranged flowerpots,
shutting the window to open it again, changing
the folds of the curtains not at all for the better, and
looking a stolen and fierce look at the unconscious
visiter, he could find no longer an apology for remaining
in the room. He shut the door after him in a tempest
of jealousy.
“Did your Excellency ring?” said he, opening
the door again, after a few minutes of intolerable torture;
The Prince was on his knees at her feet!
-- 197 --
[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]
“No, Anatole; but you may bring me a glass of
water.”
As he entered with the silver tray trembling in his
hand, the Prince was rising to go. His face expressed
delight, hope, triumph—every thing that could madden
the soul of the irritated lover. After waiting on his
rival to his carriage, he returned to his mistress, and
receiving the glass upon the tray, was about leaving
the room in silence, when the Princess called to him.
In all this lapse of time it is not to be supposed that
Count Anatole played merely his footman's part. His
respectful and elegant demeanor, the propriety of his
language, and that deep devotedness of manner which
wins a woman more than all things else, soon gained
upon the confidence of the Princess; and before a
week was past she found that she was happier when he
stood behind her chair, and gave him, with some self-denial,
those frequent permissions of absence from the
palace which she supposed he asked to prosecute the
amour disclosed to her on his introduction to her service.
As time flew on, she attributed his earnestness
and occasional warmth of manner to gratitude; and,
without reasoning much on her feelings, gave herself
up to the indulgence of a degree of interest in him
which would have alarmed a woman more skilled in the
knowledge of the heart. Married from a convent,
however, to an old man who had secluded her from
the world, the voice of the passionate Count in the
forest of Friuli was the first sound of love that had ever
entered her ears. She knew not why it was that the
tones of her new footman, and now and then a look of
his eyes, as he leaned over to assist her at table troubled
her memory like a trace of a long lost dream.
But, oh, what moments had been his in these fleeting
months! Admitted to her presence in her most
unguarded hours—seeing her at morning, at noon, at
-- 198 --
[figure description] Page 198.[end figure description]
night, in all her unstudied and surpassing loveliness—
for ever near her, and with the world shut out,—her
rich hair blowing with the lightest breeze across his
fingers in his assiduous service—her dark full eyes, unconscious
of an observer, filling with unrepressed tears,
or glowing with pleasure over some tale of love—her
exquisite form flung upon a couch, or bending over
flowers, or moving about the room in all its native and
untrammelled grace—and her voice, tender, most tender
to him, though she knew it not, and her eyes, herself
unaware, ever following him in his loitering attendance---and
he, the while, losing never a glance nor a
motion, but treasuring all up in his heart with the avarice
of a miser---what, in common life, though it were
the life of fortune's most favored child, could compare
with it for bliss?
Pale and agitated, the Count turned back at the call
of his mistress, and stood waiting her pleasure.
“Anatole!”
“Madame!”
The answer was so low and deep it startled even
himself.
She motioned him to come nearer. She had sunk
upon the sofa, and as he stood at her feet she leaned
forward, buried her hands and arms in the long curls
which, in her retirement, she allowed to float luxuriantly
over her shoulders, and sobbed aloud. Overcome
and forgetful of all but the distress of the lovely
creature before him, the Count dropped upon the cushion
on which rested the small foot in its mourning slipper,
and taking her hand, pressed it suddenly and fervently
to his lips.
The reality broke upon her! She was beloved---
but by whom? A menial! and the appalling answer
drove all the blood of her proud race in a torrent upon
her heart, sweeping away all affection as if her nature
-- 199 --
[figure description] Page 199.[end figure description]
had never known its name. She sprang to her feet,
and laid her hand upon the bell.
“Madame!” said Anatole, in a cold proud tone.
She stayed her arm to listen.
“I leave you forever.”
And again, with the quick revulsion of youth and
passion, her woman's heart rose within her, and she
buried her face in her hands, and dropped her head in
utter abandonment on her bosom.
It was the birth-day of the Emperor, and the courtly
nobles of Austria were rolling out from the capital to offer
their congratulations at the royal palace of Schoenbrunn.
In addition to the usual attractions of the
scene, the drawing-room was to be graced by the first
public appearance of a new ambassador, whose reputed
personal beauty, and the talents he had displayed in a
late secret negociation, had set the whole court, from
the Queen of Hungary to the youngest dame d'honneur,
in a flame of curiosity.
To the Prince E------ there was another reason for
writing the day in red letters. The Princess Leichstenfels,
by an express message from the Empress, was
to throw aside her widow's weeds, and appear once
more to the admiring world. She had yielded to the
summons, but it was to be her last day of splendor.
Her heart and hand were plighted to her Tyrolese
menial, and the brightest and loveliest ornament of the
Court of Austria, when the ceremonies of the day were
over, was to lay aside the costly bauble from her shoulder,
and the glistening tiara from her brow, and forget
rank and fortune as the wife of his bosom!
The dazzling hours flew on. The plain and kind
old Emperor welcomed and smiled upon all. The
wily Metternich, in the crime of his successful manhood,
cool, polite, handsome, and winning, gathered
golden opinions by every word and look; the young
-- 200 --
[figure description] Page 200.[end figure description]
Duke of Reichstadt, the mild and gentle son of the
struck eagle of St. Helena, surrounded and caressed
by a continual cordon of admiring women, seemed forgetful
that Opportunity and Expectation awaited him,
like two angels with their wings outspread; and haughty
nobles and their haughtier dames, statesmen, scholars,
soldiers, and priests, crowded upon each other's heels,
and mixed together in that doubtful podrida, which
goes by the name of pleasure. I could moralise here
had I time!
The Princess of Leichstenfels had gone through the
ceremony of presentation, and had heard the murmur
of admiration, drawn by her beauty from all lips. Dizzy
with the scene, and with a bosom full of painful and
conflicting emotions, she had accepted the proffered
arm of Prince E— to breathe a fresher air upon the
terrace. They stood near a window, and he was pointing
out to his fair but inattentive companion the various
characters as they passed within.
“I must contrive,” said the Prince, “to show you
the new Envoy. Oh! you have not heard of him.
Beautiful as Narcissus, modest as Pastor Corydon, clever
as the prime minister himself, this paragon of diplomatists
has been here in disguise these three months,
negociating about—Metternich and the devil knows
what—but rewarded at last with an ambassador's star,
and---but here he is; Princess Leichstenfels, permit
me to present ------”
She heard no more. A glance from the diamond
star on his breast, to the Hephæstion mouth and keen
dark eye of Count Anatole, revealed to her the mystery
of months. And as she leaned against the window
for support, the hand that sustained her in the Forest of
Friuli, and the same thrilling voice, in almost the same
never-forgotten cadence, offered his impassioned sympathy
and aid, and she recognised and remembered all.
-- 201 --
[figure description] Page 201.[end figure description]
I must go back so far as to inform you, that Count
Anatole, on the morning of this memorable day, had
sacrificed a silky, but prurient moustache, and a pair
of the very sauciest dark whiskers out of Coventry.
Whether the Prince E------ recognised in the new Envoy,
the lady's gentleman who so inopportunely broke
in upon his tender avowal, I am not prepared to say. I
only know (for I was there) that the Princess Leichstenfels
was wedded to the new ambassador in the
“leafy month of June,” and the Prince E------, unfortunately
prevented by illness from attending the nuptials,
lost a very handsome opportunity of singing with
effect,
“If she be not fair for me,”
supposing it translated into German.
Whether the enamored ambassadress prefers her
husband in his new character, I am equally uncertain;
though, from much knowledge of German Courts and
a little of human nature, I think she will be happy if at
some future day she would not willingly exchange her
proud Envoy for the devoted Tyrolese, and does not
sigh that she can no more bring him to her feet with a
pull of a silken string.
-- 202 -- p415-469
[figure description] Page 202.[end figure description]
He who has not skimmed over the silvery waters of
the Lipari, with a summer breeze right from Italy in
his topsails, the smoke of Stromboli alone staining the
unfathomable looking blue of the sky, and, as the sun
dipped his flaming disk in the sea, put up his helm for
the bosom of La Concha d'Oro, the Golden Shell, as
they beautifully call the Bay of Palermo; he who has
not thus entered, I say, to the fairest spot on the face
of this very fair earth, has a leaf worth the turning in
his book of observation.
In ten minutes after dropping the anchor, with sky
and water still in a glow, the men were all out of the
rigging, the spars of the tall frigate were like lines pencilled
on the sky, the band played inspiringly on the
poop, and every boat along the gay Marina was
freighted with fair Palermitans on its way to the stranger
ship.
I was standing with the officer of the deck by the
capstan, looking at the first star which had just sprung
into its place like a thing created with a glance of the
eye.
-- 203 --
[figure description] Page 203.[end figure description]
“Shall we let the ladies aboard, sir?” said a smiling
middy, coming aft from the gangway.
“Yes, sir. And tell the boatswain's mate to clear
away for a dance on the quarter-deck.”
In most of the ports of the Mediterranean a ship of
war, on a summer cruise, is as welcome as the breeze
from the sea. Bringing with her forty or fifty gay
young officers overcharged with life and spirits, a band
of music never so well occupied as when playing for a
dance, and a deck whiter and smoother than a ball-room
floor, the warlike vessel seems made for a scene
of pleasure. Whatever her nation, she no sooner drops
her anchor, than she is surrounded by boats from the
shore; and when the word is passed for admission, her
gangway is crowded with the mirth-loving and warm
people of these southern climes, as much at home on
board, and as ready to enter into any scheme of amusement,
as the maddest-brained midshipman could
desire.
The companion-hatch was covered with its grating,
lest some dizzy waltzer should drop his partner into the
steerage, the band got out their music stand, and the
bright buttons were soon whirling round from larboard
to starboard, with forms in their clasp, and dark eyes
glowing over their shoulders, that might have tempted
the devil out of Stromboli.
Being only a passenger myself, I was contented with
sitting on the slide of a carronade, and with the music
in my ear, and the twilight flush deepening in the finetraced
angles of the rigging, abandoning myself to the
delicious listlessness with which the very air is pregnant
in these climates of paradise.
The light feet slid by, and the waltz, the gallopade,
and the mazurka, had followed each other till it was
broad moonlight on the decks. It was like a night
without an atmosphere—the radiant flood poured down
with such an invisible and moon-like clearness.
-- 204 --
[figure description] Page 204.[end figure description]
“Do you see the lady leaning on that old gentleman's
arm by the hammock-rail?” said the first lieutenant,
who sat upon the next gun, like myself, a spectator
of the scene.
I had remarked her well. She had been in the ship
five or ten minutes, and in that time, it seemed to me,
I had drunk her beauty, even to intoxication The
frigate was slowly swinging round to the land breeze,
and the moon, from drawing the curved line of a gipsey-shaped
capella di paglia with bewitching concealment
across her features, gradually fell full upon the
dark limit of her orbed forehead. Heaven! what a
vision of beauty! Solemn, and full of subdued pain
as the countenance seemed, it was radiant with an almost
supernatural light of mind. Thought and feeling
seemed steeped into every line. Her mouth was large—
the only departure from the severest model of the
Greek—and stamped with calmness, as if it had been a
legible word upon her lips. But her eyes—what can
I say of their unnatural lightning—of the depth, the
fulness, the wild and maniac-like passionateness of their
every look?
My curiosity was strongly moved. I walked aft to
the capstan, and throwing off my habitual reserve with
some effort, approached the old gentleman on whose
arm she leaned, and begged permission to lead her out
for a waltz.
“If you wish it, carissima mia!” said he, turning to
her with all the tenderness in his tone of which the
honied language of Italy is capable.
But she clung to his arm with startled closeness, and
without even looking at me, turned her lips up to his
ear, and murmured, “Mai piu!”
At my request the officer on duty paid them the compliment
of sending them ashore in one of the frigate's
boats, and after assisting them down the ladder, I stood
upon the broad stair on the level of the water, and
-- 205 --
[figure description] Page 205.[end figure description]
watched the phosphoric wake of the swift cutter till
the bright sparkles were lost amid the vessels nearer
land. The coxswain reported the boat's return; but
all that belonged to the ship had not come back in her.
My heart was left behind.
The next morning there was the usual bustle in the
gun-room preparatory to going ashore. Glittering uniforms
lay about upon the chairs and tables, sprinkled
with swords, epaulettes, and cocked hats; very well
brushed boots were sent to be re-brushed, and very
nice coats to be made, if possible, to look nicer; the
ship's barber was cursed for not having the hands of
Briareus, and no good was wished to the eyes of the
washerwoman of the last port where the frigate had
anchored. Cologne water was in great request, and
the purser had an uncommon number of “private interviews.”
Amid all the bustle, the question of how to pass the
day was busily agitated. Twenty plans were proposed;
but the sequel—a dinner at the Hotel Anglais, and a
“stroll for a lark” after it—was the only point on
which the speakers were quite unanimous.
One proposition was to go to Bagaria, and see the
Palace of Monsters. This is a villa about ten miles
from Palermo, which the owner, Count Pallagonia, an
eccentric Sicilian noble, has ornamented with some
hundreds of statues of the finest workmanship, representing
the form of woman in every possible combination,
with beasts, fishes, and birds. It looks like the
temptation of St. Anthony on a splendid scale, and is
certainly one of the most extraordinary spectacles in
the world.
Near it stands another villa, the property of Prince
Butera, (the present minister of Naples at the court of
France,) containing, in the depths of its pleasure
grounds, a large monastery, with wax monks, of the
size and appearance of life, scattered about the
-- 206 --
[figure description] Page 206.[end figure description]
passages, and cells, and engaged in every possible unclerical
avocation. It is a whimsical satire on the Order,
done to the life.
Another plan was to go to the Capuchin Convent,
and see the dried friars—six or eight hundred bearded
old men, baked, as they died, in their cowls and beards,
and standing against the walls in ghastly rows, in the
spacious vaults of the monastery. A more infernal spectacle
never was seen by mortal eyes.
A drive to Monreale, a nest of a village on the
mountain above the town, a visit to the gardens of a
nobleman who salutes the stranger with a jet d'eau at
every turning, and a lounge in the public promenade
of Palermo itself, shared the honors of the argument.
I had been in Sicily before, and was hesitating which
of these various lions was worthy of a second visit,
when the surgeon proposed to me to accompany him
on a visit to a Sicilian Count living in the neighborhood,
who had converted his chateau into a lunatic asylum,
and devoted his time and a large fortune entirely to
this singular hobby. He was the first to try the system,
now, thank God, generally approved, of winning
back reason to these most wretched of human sufferers
by kindness and gentle treatment.
We jumped into one of the rattling calesini standing
in the handsome Corso of Palermo, and fifteen minutes
beyond the gates brought us to the Casa dei Pazzi. My friend's uniform and profession were an immediate
passport, and we were introduced into a handsome
court, surrounded by a colonnade, and cooled by a
fountain, in which were walking several well-dressed
people, with books, drawing-boards, battledores, and
other means of amusement. They all bowed politely
as we passed, and at the door of the interior we were
met by the Count.
“Good God!” I exclaimed, “she was insane,
then!”
-- 207 --
[figure description] Page 207.[end figure description]
It was the old man who was on board the night before!
“E ella?” said I, seizing his arm, before he had concluded
his bow, quite sure that he must understand me
with a word.
“Era pazza.” He looked at me, as he answered,
with a scrutiny, as if he half suspected my friend had
brought him a subject.
The singular character of her beauty was quite explained.
Yet what a wreck!
I followed the old Count around his establishment in
a kind of dream, but I could not avoid being interested
at every step. Here were no chains, no whips, no
harsh keepers, no cells of stone and straw. The walls
of the long corridors were painted in fresco, representing
sunny landscapes, and gay dancing figures. Fountains
and shrubs met us at every turn. The people
were dressed in their ordinary clothes, and all employed
in some light work or amusement. It was like
what it might have been in the days of the Count's ancestors—
a gay chateau, filled with guests and dependants,
with no more apparent constraint than the ties
of hospitality and service.
We went first to the kitchen. Here were ten people,
all, but the cook, stark mad! It was one of the peculiarities
of the Count's system, that his patients led in
his house the lives to which they had previously been
accustomed. A stout Sicilian peasant girl was employed
in filling a large brasier from the basin of a fountain.
While we were watching her task, the fit began
to come on her, and after a fierce look or two around
the room, she commenced dashing the water about her
with great violence. The cook turned, not at all surprised,
and patting her on the back, with a loud laugh,
cried, “Brava, Pepina! brava!” ringing at the same
moment a secret bell.
A young girl of sixteen with a sweet, smiling
-- 208 --
[figure description] Page 208.[end figure description]
countenance, answered the summons, and immediately
comprehending the case, approached the enraged creature,
and putting her arms affectionately round her
neck, whispered something in her ear. The expression
of her face changed immediately to a look of delight,
and dropping the bucket, she followed the young
attendant out of the room with peals of laughter.
“Venite!” said the count, “you shall see how we
manage our furies.”
We followed across a garden filled with the sweetest
flowers to a small room opening on a lawn. From the
centre of the ceiling was suspended a hammock, and
Pepina was already in it, swung lightly from side to
side by a servant, while the attendant stood by, and, as
if in play, threw water upon her face at every approach.
It had all the air of a frolic. The violent
laughter of the poor maniac grew less and less as the
soothing motion and the coolness of the water took effect,
and in a few minutes her strained eyes gently
closed, the hammock was swung more and more gently,
and she fell asleep.
“This,” said the Count, with a gratified smile, “is
my substitute for a forced shower-bath and chains; and
this,” kissing his little attendant on the forehead, “for
the whip and the grim turnkey.” I blessed him in my
heart.
“Come!” said he, as we left the sleeper to her repose,
“I must show you my grounds.”
We followed him to an extensive garden, opening
from the back of the chateau, laid out originally in the
formal style of an Italian villa. The long walks had
been broken up, however, by beautiful arbors with
grottos in their depths, in which wooden figures, of the
color and size of life, stood or sat in every attitude of
gaiety or grotesqueness. It was difficult, in the deep
shadow of the vines and oleanders, not to believe them
real. We walked on through many a winding
-- 209 --
[figure description] Page 209.[end figure description]
shrubbery, perfumed with all the scented flowers of the
luxuriant climate, continually surprised with little deceptions
of perspective, or figures half concealed in the
leaves, till we emerged at the entrance of a charming
summer theatre, with sodded seats, stage, orchestra,
and scenery complete. Orange trees, roses, and clematis
were laced together for a wall in the rear.
“Here,” said the old man, bounding gaily upon the
stage, “here we act plays the summer long.”
“What! not with your patients?”
“Si Signore! Who else?” And he went on to
describe to us the interest they took in it, and the singular
power with which the odd idea seized upon their
whimsied intellects. We had been accompanied from
the first, by a grave, respectable looking man, whom I
had taken for an assistant. While we were listening to
the description of the first attempt they had made at a
play, he started out from the group, and putting himself
in an attitude upon the stage, commenced spouting
a furious passage in Italian.
The Count pointed to his forehead, and made a sign
to us to listen. The tragedian stopped at the end of
his sentence, and after a moment's delay, apparently
in expectation of a reply, darted suddenly off and disappeared
behind the scenes.
“Poveretto!” said the Count, “it is my best actor!”
Near the theatre stood a small chapel, with a circular
lawn before it, on which the grass had been lately
much trodden. It was surrounded partly by a green
bank, and here the Count seated us, saying, with a significant
look at me, that he would tell us a story.
I should like to give it you in his own words—still
more with his own manner; for never was a tale told
with more elegance of language, or a more natural and
pleasant simplicity. But a sheet of “wire-wove” is not
a Palermitan cavaliere, and the cold English has not
-- 210 --
[figure description] Page 210.[end figure description]
the warm eloquence of the Italian. He laid aside his
hat, ordered fruit and wine, and proceeded.
“Almost a year ago I was called upon by a gentleman
of a noble physiognomy and address, who inquired
very particularly into my system. I explained
it to him at his request, and he did me the honor, as
you gentlemen have done, to go over my little establishment.
He seemed satisfied, and with some hesitation
informed me that he had a daughter in a very desperate
state of mental alienation. Would I go and see
her?
“This is not, you know, gentlemen, a public institution.
I am crazy,” he said it very gravely, “quite
crazy—the first of my family of fools, on this particular
theme—and this asylum is my toy. Of course it is
only as the whim seizes me that I admit a patient; for
there are some diseases of the brain seated in causes
with which I wish not to meddle.
“However, I went. With the freedom of a physician
I questioned the father, upon the road, of the
girl's history. He was a Greek, a prince of the Fanar,
who had left his degraded people in their dirty and
dangerous suburb at Constantinople, to forget oppression
and meanness in a voluntary exile. It was just
before the breaking out of the last Greek revolution,
and so many of his kinsmen and friends had been sacrificed
to the fury of the Turks, that he had renounced
all idea of ever returning to his country.
“`And your daughter?'
“`My dear Katinka, my only child, fell ill upon receiving
distressing news from the Fanar, and her health
and reason never rallied after. It is now several years,
and she has lain in bed till her limbs are withered,
never having uttered a word, or made a sign which
would indicate even consciousness of the presence of
those about her.'
“I could not get from him that there was any
-- 211 --
[figure description] Page 211.[end figure description]
disappointment of the heart at the bottom of it. It seemed
to be one of those cases of sudden stupefaction, to
which nervously sensitive minds are liable after a violent
burst of grief; and I began, before I had seen her,
to indulge in bright hopes of starting once more the
sealed fountains of thought and feeling.
“We entered Palermo, and passing out at the other
gate, stopped at a vine-laced casino on the lip of the
bay, scarcely a mile from the city wall. It was a
pretty, fanciful place, and, on a bed in its inner chamber,
lay the most poetical-looking creature I had ever
seen out of my dreams. Her head was pillowed in an
abundance of dark hair, which fell away from her forehead
in masses of glossy curls, relieving with a striking
effect, the wan and transparent paleness of a face which
the divinest chisel could scarce have copied in alabaster.
Dio mio!—how transcendent was the beauty of
that poor girl!”
The Count stopped and fed his memory a moment
with closed eyes upon the image.
“At the first glance I inwardly put up a prayer to
the Virgin, and determined, with her sweet help, to restore
reason to the fairest of its earthly temples. I took
up her shadow of a hand, and spread out the thin fingers
in my palm, and as she turned her large wandering
eye towards me, I felt that the blessed Mary had
heard my prayer, `You shall see her well again,' said I
confidently.
“Quite overcome, the Prince Ghika fell on the bed
and embraced his daughter's knees in an agony of
tears.
“You shall not have the seccatura, gentlemen, of listening
to the recital of all my tedious experiments for
the first month or two. I brought her to my house
upon a litter, placed her in a room filled with every
luxury of the East, and suffered no one to approach
her except two Greek attendants, to whose services she
-- 212 --
[figure description] Page 212.[end figure description]
was accustomed. I succeeded in partially restoring
animation to her benumbed limbs by friction, and made
her sensible of music, and of the perfumes of the East,
which I burned in a pastille-lamp in her chamber.
Here, however, my skill was baffled. I could neither
amuse nor vex. Her mind was beyond me. After
trying every possible experiment, as it seemed to me,
my invention was exhausted, and I despaired.
“She occupied, however, much of my mind. Walking
up and down yonder orange-alley one sweet morning,
about two months ago, I started off suddenly to my
chamber with a new thought. You would have thought
me the maddest of my household, to have seen me,
gentlemen. I turned out by the shoulders the regazza,
who was making my bed, washed and scented myself,
as if for a ball, covered my white hairs with a handsome
brown wig, a relic of my coxcombical days, rouged
faintly, and, with white gloves, and a most youthful
appearance altogether, sought the chamber of my patient.
“She was lying with her head in the hollow of her
thin arm, and, as I entered, her dark eyes rested full
upon me. I approached, kissed her hand with a respectful
gallantry, and in the tenderest tones of which
my damaged voice was susceptible, breathed into her
ear a succession of delicately turned compliments to
her beauty.
“She lay as immovable as marble, but I had not calculated
upon the ruling passion of the sex in vain. A
thin flush in her cheek, and a flutter in her temple,
only perceptible to my practised eye, told me that the
words had found their way to her long-lost consciousness.
“I waited a few moments, and then took up a ringlet
that fell negligently over her hand, and asked permission
to sever it from the glossy mass in which the
arm under her head was literally buried.
-- 213 --
[figure description] Page 213.[end figure description]
“She clutched her fingers suddenly upon it, and
glancing at me with the fury of a roused tigress, exclaimed
in a husky whisper, `Lasciate me, Signore!'
“I obeyed her, and, as I left the room, I thanked
the Virgin in my heart. It was the first word she had
spoken for years.
“The next day, having patched myself up more successfully
in my leisure, in a disguise so absolute that
not one even of my pets knew me as I passed through
the corridor, I bowed myself up once more to her bed-side.
“She lay with her hands clasped over her eyes, and
took no notice of my first salutation. I commenced
with a little raillery, and under cover of finding fault
with her attitude, contrived to pay an adroit compliment
to the glorious orbs she was hiding from admiration.
She lay a moment or two without motion, but the muscles
of her slight mouth stirred just perceptibly, and
presently she drew her fingers quickly apart, and looking
at me with a most confiding expression in her pale
features, a full sweet smile broke like sudden sunshine
through her lips. I could have wept for joy.
“I soon acquired all the influence over her I could
wish. She made an effort at my request to leave her
bed, and in a week or two walked with me in the garden.
Her mind, however, seemed to have capacity
but for one thought, and she soon began to grow unhappy,
and would weep for hours. I endeavored to
draw from her the cause, but she only buried her face
in my bosom, and wept more violently, till one day,
sobbing out her broken words almost inarticulately, I
gathered her meaning. She was grieved that I did not
marry her!
“Poor girl!” soliloquized the Count after a brief
pause, “she was only true to her woman's nature. Insanity
had but removed the veil of custom and restraint.
-- 214 --
[figure description] Page 214.[end figure description]
She would have broken her heart before she had betrayed
such a secret, with her reason.
“I was afraid at last she would go melancholy mad,
this one thought preyed so perpetually on her brain—
and I resolved to delude her into the cheerfulness necessary
to her health by a mock ceremony.
“The delight with which she received my promise
almost alarmed me. I made several delays, with the
hope that in the convulsion of her feelings a ray of
reason would break through the darkness; but she
took every hour to heart, and I found it was inevitable.
“You are sitting, gentlemen, in the very scene of our
mad bridal. My poor grass has not yet recovered, you
see, from the tread of the dancers. Imagine the spectacle.
The chapel was splendidly decorated, and at
the bottom of the lawn stood three long tables, covered
with fruits and flowers, and sprinkled here and there
with bottles of colored water, (to imitate wine,) sherbets,
cakes, and other such innocent things as I could
allow my crazy ones. They were all invited.”
“Good God!” said the surgeon, “your lunatics!”
“All! all! And never was such a sensation produced
in a household since the world was created.
Nothing else was talked of for a week. My worst patients
seemed to suspend for the time their fits of violence.
I sent to town for quantities of tricksy stuffs,
and allowed the women to deck themselves entirely
after their own taste. You can conceive nothing like
the business they made of it! Such apparitions!
Santa Maria! shall I ever forget that Babel!
“The morning came. My bride's attendants had
dressed her from her Grecian wardrobe, and with her
long braid parted over her forehead, and hanging back
from her shoulders to her very heels, her close-fitted
jacket, of gorgeous velvet and gold, her costly bracelets,
and the small spangled slippers upon her
-- 215 --
[figure description] Page 215.[end figure description]
unstockinged feet, she was positively an angelic vision of
beauty. Her countenance was thoughtful, but her step
was unusually elastic, and a small red spot, like a roseleaf
under the skin, blushed through the alabaster paleness
of her cheek.
“My maniacs received her with shouts of admiration.
The women were kept from her at first with great difficulty,
and it was only by drawing their attention to
their own gaudier apparel, that their anxiety to touch
her was distracted. The men looked at her, as she
passed along like a queen of love and beauty, and their
wild, gleaming eyes, and quickened breaths, showed
the effect of such loveliness upon the unconcealed feelings.
I had multiplied my attendants, scarce knowing
how the excitement of the scene might affect them, but
the interest of the occasion, and the imposing decencies
of dress and show, seemed to overcome them effectually.
The most sane guests at a bridal could
scarce have behaved with more propriety.
“The ceremony was performed by an elderly friend
of mine, the physician to my establishment. Old as I
am, gentlemen, I could have wished that ceremony to
have been in earnest. As she lifted up her large liquid
eyes to heaven, and swore to be true to me till death, I
forgot my manhood, and wept. If I had been younger—
ma che porcheria!
“After the marriage the women were invited to salute
the bride, and then all eyes in my natural party
turned at once to the feast. I gave the word. Fruits,
cakes, and sherbets, disappeared with the rapidity of
magic, and then the music struck up from the shrubbery,
and they danced—as you see by the grass.
“I committed the bride to her attendants at sunset,
but I could with difficulty tear myself away. On the
following day I called at her door, but she refused to
see me. The next and the next I could gain no admittance
without exerting my authority. On the
-- 216 --
[figure description] Page 216.[end figure description]
fourth morning I was permitted to enter. She had resumed
her usual dress, and was sad, calm and gentle.
She said little, but seemed lost in thought to which she
was unwilling or unable to give utterance.
“She has never spoken of it since. Her mind, I
think, has nearly recovered its tone, but her memory
seems confused. I scarce think she remembers her
illness, and its singular events, as more than a troubled
dream. On all the common affairs of life she seems
quite sane, and I drive out with her daily, and have
taken her once or twice to the opera. Last night we
were strolling on the Marina when your frigate came
into the bay, and she proposed to join the crowd and
go off to hear the music. We went on board, as you
know; and now, if you choose to pay your respects to
the lady who refused to waltz with you, take another
sip of your sherbet and wine, and come with me.”
To say more would be trespassing perhaps on the
patience of my readers, but certainly on my own feelings.
I have described this singular case of madness
and its cure, because I think it contains in itself the
seeds of much philosophy on the subject. It is only
within a very few years that these poor sufferers have
been treated otherwise than as the possessors of incarnate
devils, whom it was necessary to scourge out with
unsparing cruelty. If this literal statement of a cure
in the private mad-house of the eccentric Conte —
of Palermo, induce the friends of a single unfortunate
maniac to adopt a kind and rational system for his
restoration, the writer will have been repaid for bringing
circumstances before the public, which have since
had much to do with his own feelings.
-- 217 -- p415-484
Nature there
Was with thee; she who loved us both, she still
Was with thee; and even so didst thou become
A silent poet; from the solitude
Of the vast sea didst bring a watchful heart
Still couchant, an inevitable ear,
And an eye practised like a blind man's touch.
Wordsworth.
[figure description] Page 217.[end figure description]
A summer or two since, I was wasting a college vacation
among the beautiful creeks and falls in the neighborhood
of New York. In the course of my wanderings,
up stream and down stream, sometimes on foot,
sometimes on horseback, and never without a book for
an excuse to loiter on the mossy banks and beside the
edge of running water, I met frequently a young man
of a peculiarly still and collected eye, and a forehead
more like a broad slab of marble than a human brow.
His mouth was small and thinly cut; his chin had no superfluous
flesh upon it; and his whole appearance was
that of a man, whose intellectual nature prevailed over
the animal. He was evidently a scholar. We had
met so frequently at last, that, on passing each other
one delicious morning, we bowed and smiled
-- 218 --
[figure description] Page 218.[end figure description]
simultaneously, and, without further introduction, entered
into conversation.
It was a temperate day in August, with a clear but
not oppressive sun, and we wandered down a long
creek together, mineralizing here, botanizing there, and
examining the strata of the ravines, with that sort of
instinctive certainty of each other's attainments, which
scholars always feel, and thrusting in many a little
way-side parenthesis, explanatory of each other's history
and circumstances. I found that he was one of
those pure and unambitious men, who, by close application
and moderate living while in college, become in
love with their books; and, caring little for anything
more than the subsistence, which philosophy tells them
is enough to have of this world, settle down for life
into a wicker-bottomed chair, more contentedly than if
it were the cushion of a throne.
We were together three or four days, and when I
left him, he gave me his address, and promised to write
to me. I shall give below an extract from one of his
letters. I had asked him for a history of his daily
habits, and any incidents which he might choose to
throw in—hinting to him, that I was a dabbler in literature,
and would be obliged to him if he would do it
minutely, and in a form of which I might avail myself
in the way of publication.
After some particulars, unimportant to the reader,
he proceeds:—
“I keep a room at a country tavern. It is a quiet,
out-of-the-way place, with a whole generation of elms
about it; and the greenest grass up to the very door,
and the pleasantest view in the whole country round
from my chamber window. Though it is a publichouse,
and the word `Hotel' swings in golden capitals
under a landscape of two hills and a river, painted for
a sign by some wandering Tinto, it is so orderly a
town, that not a lounger is ever seen about the door;
-- 219 --
[figure description] Page 219.[end figure description]
and the noisiest traveler is changed to a quiet man, as
if it were by the very hush of the atmosphere.
“Here, in my pleasant room, upon the second floor,
with my round table covered with choice books, my
shutters closed just so much as to admit light enough
for a painter; and my walls hung with the pictures
which adorned my college chambers, and are therefore
linked with a thousand delightful associations, I can
study my twelve hours a day, in a state of mind sufficiently
even and philosophical. I do not want for excitement.
The animal spirits, thanks to the Creator,
are enough at all times, with employment and temperate
living, to raise us above the common shadows of
life; and after a day of studious confinement, when
my mind is unbound, and I go out and give it up to
reckless association, and lay myself open unreservedly
to the influences of nature—at such a time, there
comes mysteriously upon me a degree of pure joy,
unmingled and unaccountable, which is worth years of
artificial excitement. The common air seems to have
grown rarer; my step is strangely elastic; my sense of
motion full of unwonted dignity; my thoughts elevated;
my perceptions of beauty acuter and more pleasurable;
and my better nature predominant and sublime. There
is nothing in the future which looks difficult, nothing
in my ambition unattainable, nothing in the past which
cannot be reconciled with good; I am a purer and a
better man; and though I am elevated in my own
thoughts, it will not lead to vanity, for my ideas of
God, and of my fellow men, have been enlarged also.
This excitement ceases soon; but it ceases like the
bubbling of a fountain, which leaves the waters purer
for the influence which has passed through them—not
like the mirth of the world, which ebbs like an unnatural
tide, and leaves loathsomeness and disgust.
“Let no one say, that such a mode of life is adapted
to peculiar constitutions, and can be relished by those
-- 220 --
[figure description] Page 220.[end figure description]
only. Give me the veriest worldling—the most devoted,
and the happiest of fashionable ephemera, and if
he has material for a thought, and can take pride in the
improvement of his nature, I will so order his daily
round, that, with temperance and exercise, he shall be
happier in one hour spent within himself, than in ten
wasted on folly.
“Few know the treasures in their own bosoms—
very few, the elasticity and capacity of a well-regulated
mind for enjoyment. The whole world of philosophers,
and historians, and poets, seem, to the secluded
student, to have labored but for his pleasure; and as he
comes to one new truth and beautiful thought after another,
there answers a chord of joy, richer than music,
in his heart; which spoils him for the coarser pleasures
of the world. I have seen my college chum—a
man, who from a life of mingled business and pleasure,
became suddenly a student—lean back in his chair, at
the triumph of an argument, or the discovery of a philosophical
truth; and give himself up for a few moments
to the enjoyment of sensations, which, he assured
me, surpassed exceedingly the most vivid pleasures
of his life. The mind is like the appetite; when healthy
and well-toned, receiving pleasure from the commonest
food; but becoming a disease, when pampered
and neglected. Give it time to turn in upon itself, satisfy
its restless thirst for knowledge, and it will give
birth to health, to animal spirits, to everything which
invigorates the body, while it is advancing by every
step the capacities of the soul. Oh! if the runners after
pleasure would stoop down by the wayside, they might
drink waters, better even than those which they see
only in their dreams. They will not be told, that they
have in their possession the golden key which they
covet; they will not know, that the music they look to
enchant them, is sleeping in their own untouched
-- 221 --
[figure description] Page 221.[end figure description]
instruments; that the lamp which they vainly ask from
the enchanter, is burning in their own bosoms!
“When I first came here, my host's eldest daughter
was about twelve years of age. She was, without being
beautiful, an engaging child, rather disposed to be
contemplative, and, like all children at that age, very
inquisitive and curious. She was shy at first, but soon
became acquainted with me; and would come into
my room in her idle hours, and look at my pictures
and read. She never disturbed me, because her natural
politeness forbade it; and I pursued my thoughts
or my studies just as if she were not there, till, by-and-by,
I grew fond of her quiet company, and was happier
when she was moving stealthily around, and looking
into a book here and there, in her quiet way.
“She had been my companion thus for some time,
when it occurred to me that I might be of use to her in
leading her to cultivate a love for study. I seized the
idea enthusiastically. Now, thought I, I will see the
process of a human mind. I have studied its philosophy
from books, and now I will take a single original,
and compare them, step by step. I have seen the bud,
and the flower full blown, and I am told that the change
was gradual, and effected thus---leaf after leaf. Now
I will watch the expansion, and while I water it and
let in the sunshine to its bosom, detect the secret springs
which move to such beautiful results. The idea delighted
me.
“I was aware that there was great drudgery in the
first steps, and I determined to avoid it, and connect
the idea of my own instruction with all that was
delightful and interesting in her mind. For this purpose
I persuaded her father to send her to a better
school than she had been accustomed to attend, and,
by a little conversation, stimulated her to enter upon
her studies with alacrity.
“She was now grown to a girl, and had begun to
-- 222 --
[figure description] Page 222.[end figure description]
assume the naive, womanly airs which girls do at her
age. Her figure had rounded into a flowing symmetry,
and her face, whether from associating principally with
an older person, or for what other reason I know not,
had assumed a thoughtful cast, and she was really a
girl of most interesting and striking personal appearance.
“I did not expect much from the first year of my
experiment. I calculated justly on its being irksome
and common-place. Still, I was amused and interested.
I could hear her light step on the stair, alway at
the same early hour of the evening, and it was a pleasure
to me to say `Come in,' to her timid rap, and set
her a chair by my own, that I might look over her book,
or talk in a low tone to her. I then asked her about
her lessons, and found out what had most attracted her
notice, and I could always find some interesting fact
connected with it, or strike off into some pleasant association,
till she acquired a habit of selection in her
reading, and looked at me earnestly to know what I
would say upon it. You would have smiled to see her
leaning forward, with her soft blue eye fixed on me,
and her lips half parted with attention, waiting for my
ideas upon some bare fact in geography or history;
and it would have convinced you that the natural, unstimulated
mind, takes pleasure in the simplest addition
to its knowledge.
“All this time I kept out of her way every thing
that would have a tendency to destroy a taste for mere
knowledge, and had the pleasure to see that she passed
with keen relish from her text books to my observations,
which were as dry as they, though recommended
by kindness of tone and an interested manner. She
acquired gradually, by this process, a habit of reasoning
upon everything which admitted it, which was afterwards
of great use in fixing and retaining the leading
features of her attainments.
-- 223 --
[figure description] Page 223.[end figure description]
“I proceeded in this way till she was fifteen. Her
mind had now become inured to regular habits of inquiry,
and she began to ask difficult questions and
wonder at common things. Her thoughts assumed a
graver complexion, and she asked for books upon subjects
of which she felt the want of information. She
was ready to receive and appreciate truth and instruction,
and here was to begin my pleasure.
“She came up one evening with an air of embarrassment
approaching to distress. She took her usual
seat, and told me that she had been thinking all day
that it was useless to study any more. There were so
many mysterious things—so much, even that she could
see, which she could not account for, and, with all her
efforts, she got on so slowly, that she was discouraged.
It was better, she said, to be happy in ignorance, than
to be constantly tormented with the sight of knowledge
to which she could not attain, and which she only knew
enough to value. Poor child! she did not know that
she was making the same complaint with Newton, and
Locke, and Bacon, and that the wisest of men were
only `gatherers of pebbles on the shore of an illimitable
sea! I began to talk to her of the mind. I spoke
of its grandeur, and its capacities, and its destiny. I
told her instances of high attainment and wonderful
discovery—sketched the sublime philosophies of the
soul—the possibility that this life was but a link in a
chain of existences, and the glorious power, if it were
true, of entering upon another world, with a loftier capacity
than your fellow-beings for the comprehension
of its mysteries. I then touched upon the duty of selfcultivation—
the pride of a high consciousness of improved
time, and the delicious feelings of self-respect
and true appreciation.
“She listened to me in silence, and wept. It was
one of those periods which occur to all delicate minds,
of distrust and fear; and when it passed by, and her
-- 224 --
[figure description] Page 224.[end figure description]
ambition stirred again, she gave vent to her feelings
with a woman's beautiful privilege. I had no more
trouble to urge her on. She began the next day with
the philosophy of the mind, and I was never happier
than while following her from step to step in this delightful
study.
“I have always thought that the most triumphant
intellectual feeling we ever experience, is felt upon the
first opening of philosophy. It is like the interpretation
of a dream of a lifetime. Every topic seems to
you like a phantom of your own mind, from which a
mist has suddenly melted. Every feature has a kind
of half-familiarity, and you remember musing upon it for
hours, till you gave it up with an impatient dissatisfaction.
Without a definite shape, this or that very idea
has floated in your mind continually. It was a phenomenon
without a name—a something which you could
not describe to your friend, and which, by and by, you
came to believe was peculiar to yourself, and would
never be brought out or unravelled. You read on, and
the blood rushes to your face in a tumultuous consciousness—
you have had feelings in peculiar situations
which you could not define, and here are their
very features—and you know, now, that it was jealousy,
or ambition, or love. There have been moments when
your faculties seemed blinded or reversed. You could
not express yourself at all when you felt you should be
eloquent. You could not fix your mind upon the subject,
of which, before, you had been passionately fond.
You felt an aversion for your very partialities, or a
strange warming in your heart toward people or pursuits
that you had disliked; and when the beauty of the
natural world has burst upon you, as it sometimes will,
with an exceeding glory, you have turned away from it
with a deadly sickness of heart, and a wish that you
might die.
“These are mysteries which are not all soluble,
-- 225 --
[figure description] Page 225.[end figure description]
even by philosophy. But you can see enough of the
machinery of thought to know its tendencies, and like
the listener to mysterious music, it is enough to have
seen the instrument, without knowing the cunning
craft of the player.
“I remembered my school-day feelings, and lived
them over again with my beautiful pupil. I entered
with as much enthusiasm as she, into the strength and
sublimity which I had wondered at before; and I believe
that, even as she sat reading by herself, my blood
thrilled, and my pulses quickened, as vividly as her
own, when I saw, by the deepening color of her cheek,
or the marked passages of my book, that she had found
a noble thought or a daring hypothesis.
“She proceeded with her course of philosophy rapidly
and eagerly. Her mind was well prepared for
its relish. She said she felt as if a new sense had been
given her—an inner eye which she could turn in upon
herself, and by which she could, as it were, stand aside
while the process of thought went on. She began to
respect and to rely upon her own mind, and the elevation
of countenance and manner, which so certainly
and so beautifully accompanies inward refinement, stole
over her daily. I began to feel respectful in her presence,
and when, with the peculiar elegance of a woman's
mind, she discovered a delicate shade of meaning
which I had not seen, or traced an association
which could spring only from an unsullied heart, I experienced
a sensation like the consciousness of an unseen
presence—elevating, without alarming me.
“It was probably, well, that with all this change in
her mind and manner, her person still retained its childish
grace and flexibility. She had not grown tall, and
she wore her hair yet as she used to do—falling with
a luxuriant fulness upon her shoulders. Hence she
was still a child, when, had she been taller or more
womanly, the demands upon her attention, and the
-- 226 --
[figure description] Page 226.[end figure description]
attractiveness of mature society, might have divided that
engrossing interest which is necessary to successful
study.
“I have often wished I was a painter; but never so
much as when looking on this beautful being as she sat
absorbed in her studies, or turned to gaze up a moment
to my face, with that delicious expression of inquiry
and affection. Every one knows the elevation given
to the countenance of a man by contemplative habits.
Perhaps the natural delicacy of feminine features has
combined with its rarity, to make this expression less
observable in woman; but, to one familiar with the
study of the human face, there is, in the look of a truly
intellectual women, a keen subtlety of refinement, a
separation from every thing gross and material, which
comes up to our highest dream of the angelic. For
myself, I care not to analyze it. I leave it to philosophy
to find out its secret. It is enough for me that I
can see and feel it in every pulse of my being. It is
not a peculiar susceptibility. Every man who approaches
such a woman feels it. He may not define
it; he may be totally unconscious what it is that awes
him; but he feels as if a mysterious and invisible veil
were about her, and every dark thought is quenched
suddenly in his heart, as if he had come into the atmosphere
of a spirit. I would have every woman
know this. I would tell every mother who prays
nightly for the peculiar watchfulness of good spirits
over the purity of her child, that she may weave round
her a defence stronger than steel—that she may place
in her heart a living amulet whose virtue is like a circle
of fire to pollution. I am not `stringing pearls.' I
have seen, and I know, that an empty mind is not a
strong citadel; and in the melancholy chronicle of female
ruin, the instances are rare of victims distinguished
for mental cultivation. I would my pen were the
`point of a diamond,' and I were writing on living
-- 227 --
[figure description] Page 227.[end figure description]
hearts! for when I think how the daughters of a house
are its grace and honor—and when I think how the
father and mother that loved her, and the brother that
made her his pride, and the sister in whose bosom she
slept, are all crushed, utterly, by a daughter's degradation,
I feel, that if every word were a burning coal, my
language could not be extravagant!
“My pupil had, as yet, read no poetry. I was uncertain
how to enter upon it. Her taste for the beautiful
in prose had become so decided, that I feared for
the first impression of my poetical world. I wished it
to burst upon her brilliantly—like the entrance to an
inner and more magnificent temple of knowledge. I
hoped to dazzle her with an high and unimagined
beauty, which should exceed far the massive but plain
splendors of philosophy. We had often conversed on
the probability of a previous existence, and, one evening
I opened Wordsworth, and read his sublime `Ode
upon Intimations of Immortality.' She did not interrupt
me, but I looked up at the conclusion, and she
was in tears. I made no remark, but took Byron, and
read some of the finest passages in Childe Harold, and
Manfred, and Cain—and, from that time, poetry has
been her world!
“It would not have have been so earlier. It needs
the simple and strong nutriment of truth to fit us to relish
and feel poetry. The mind must have strength
and cultivated taste, and then it is like a language from
heaven. We are astonished at its power and magnificence.
We have been familiar with knowledge as
with a person of plain garment and a homely presence—
and he comes to us in poetry, with the state of a
king, glorious in purple and gold. We have known
him as an unassuming friend who talked with us by
the wayside, and kept us company on our familiar
paths—and we see him coming with a stately step, and
a glittering diadem on his brow; and we wonder that
-- 228 --
[figure description] Page 228.[end figure description]
we did not see that his plain garment honored him not,
and his bearing were fitter for a king!
“Poetry entered to the very soul of Caroline Grey.
It was touching an unreached string, and she felt as if
the whole compass of her heart were given out. I
used to read to her for hours, and it was beautiful to
see her eye kindle, and her cheek burn with excitement.
The sublimed mysticism and spirituality of
Wordsworth were her delight, and she feasted upon
the deep philosophy and half-hidden tenderness of
Coleridge.
“I had observed, with some satisfaction, that, in the
rapid development of her mental powers, she had not
found time to study nature: She knew little of the
character of the material creation, and I now commenced
walking constantly abroad with her at sunset,
and at all the delicious seasons of moonlight and starlight
and dawn. It came in well with her poetry. I
cannot describe the effect. She became, like all who
are, for the first time, made sensible of the glories
around them, a worshipper of the external world.
There is a time when nature first loses its familiarity,
and seems suddenly to have become beautiful.
This is true, even of those who have been taught early
habits of observation. The mind of a child is too feeble
to comprehend, and does not soon learn, the scale of
sublimity and beauty. He would not be surprised if
the sun were brighter, or if the stars were sown thicker
in the sky. He sees that the flower is beautiful, and he
feels admiration at the rainbow; but he would not wonder
if the dyes of the flower were deeper, or if the sky
were laced to the four corners with the colors of a
prism. He grows up with these splendid phenomena
at work about him, till they have become common, and,
in their most wonderful forms, cease to attract his attention.
Then his senses are, suddenly, as by an invisible
influence, unsealed, and, like the proselyte of
-- 229 --
[figure description] Page 229.[end figure description]
the Egyptian pyramids, he finds himself in a magnificent
temple, and hears exquisite music, and is dazzled
by surpassing glory. He never recovers his indifference.
The perpetual changes of nature keep alive his
enthusiasm, and if his taste is not dulled by subsequent
debasement, the pleasure he receives from it flows on
like a stream—wearing deeper and calmer.
“Caroline became now my constant companion.
The changes of the natural world have always been
my chief source of happiness, and I was curious to
know whether my different sensations, under different
circumstances, were peculiar to myself. I left her,
therefore, to lead the conversation, without any expression
of my feelings, and, to my surprise and delight,
she invariably struck their tone, and pursued the same
vein of reflection. It convinced me of what I had long
thought might be true—that there was, in the varieties
of natural beauty, a hidden meaning and a delightful
purpose of good, and, if I am not deceived, it is a new
and beautiful evidence of the proportion and extent of
God's benevolent wisdom. Thus, you may remember
the peculiar effect of the early dawn—the deep, unruffled
serenity, and the perfect collectedness of your
senses. You may remember the remarkable purity
that pervades the stealing in of color, and the vanishing
of the cold shadows of grey—the heavenly quiet
that seems infused, like a visible spirit, into the pearly
depths of the East, as the light violet tints become
deeper in the upper sky, and the morning mist rises up
like a veil of silvery film, and softens away its intensity;
and then you will remember how the very beatings of
your heart grew quiet, and you felt an irresistible impulse
to pray! There was no irregular delight, no indefinite
sensation, no ecstasy. It was deep, unbroken
repose, and your pulses were free from the fever of
life, and your reason was lying awake in its chamber.
“There is a hush also at noon; but it is not like the
-- 230 --
[figure description] Page 230.[end figure description]
morning. You have been mingling in the business of
the world, and you turn aside, weary and distracted,
for rest. There is a far depth in the intense blue of
the sky which takes in the spirit, and you are content
to lie down and sleep in the cool shadow, and forget
even your existence. How different from the cool
wakefulness of the morning, and yet how fitted for the
necessity of the hour!
“The day wears on and comes to the sun-setting.
The strong light passes off from the hills, and the
leaves are mingled in golden masses, and the tips of the
long grass, and the blades of maize, and the luxuriant
grain, are all sleeping in a rich glow, as if the daylight
had melted into gold and descended upon every living
thing like dew. The sun goes down, and there is a
tissue of indescribable glory floating upon the clouds,
and the almost imperceptible blending of the sunset
color with the blue sky, is far up towards the zenith.
Presently the pomp of the early sunset passes away;
and the clouds are all clad in purple, with edges of metallic
lustre; and very far in the West, as if they were
sailing away into another world, are seen spots of intense
brightness, and the tall trees on the hilly edge of
the horizon seem piercing the sky, on fire with its consuming
heat. There is a tumultuous joy in the contemplation
of this hour which is peculiar to itself. You
feel as if you should have had wings; for there is a
strange stirring in your heart to follow on—and your
imagination bursts away into that beautiful world, and
revels among the unsubstantial clouds till they become
cold. It is a triumphant and extravagant hour. Its
joyousness is an intoxication, and its pleasure dies with
the day.
“The night, starry and beautiful, comes on. The
sky has a blue, intense almost to blackness, and the
stars are set in it like gems. They are of different
glory, and there are some that burn, and some that
-- 231 --
[figure description] Page 231.[end figure description]
have a twinkling lustre, and some are just visible and
faint. You know their nature, and their motion; and
there is something awful in so many worlds moving on
through the firmament so silently and in order. You
feel an indescribable awe stealing upon you, and your
imagination trembles as it goes up among them. You
gaze on, and on, and the superstitions of olden time,
and the wild visions of astrology steal over your memory,
till, by and by, you hear the music which they
`give out as they go,' and drink in the mysteries of their
hidden meaning, and believe that your destiny is woven
by their burning spheres. There comes on you a delirious
joy, and a kind of terrible fellowship with their
sublime nature, and you feel as if you could go up to a
starry place and course the heavens in company.
There is a spirituality in this hour, a separation from
material things, which is of a fine order of happiness.
The purity of the morning, and the noontide quietness,
and the rapture of the glorious sunset, are all human
and comprehensible feelings; but this has the mystery
and the lofty energy of a higher world, and you return
to your human nature with a refreshed spirit and an
elevated purpose—See now the wisdom of God!—the
collected intellect for the morning prayer and our daily
duty—the delicious repose for our noontide weariness,
and the rapt fervor to purify us by night from our
worldliness, and keep wakeful the eye of immortality!
They are all suited to our need; and it is pleasant to
think, when we go out at this or that season, that its
peculiar beauty is fitted to our peculiar wants, and that
it is not a chance harmony of our hearts with nature.
“The world had become to Caroline a new place.
No change in the season was indifferent to her—nothing
was common or familiar. She found beauty in
things you would pass by, and a lesson for her mind or
her heart in the minutest workmanship of nature. Her
character assumed a cheerful dignity, and an elevation
-- 232 --
[figure description] Page 232.[end figure description]
above ordinary amusements or annoyances. She was
equable and calm, because her feelings were never
reached by ordinary irritations, and, if there were no
other benefit in cultivation, this were almost argument
enough to induce it.
“It is now five years since I commenced my tutorship.
I have given you the history of two of them. In
the remaining three there has been much that has interested
my mind—probably little that would interest
yours. We have read together, and, as far as possible,
studied together. She has walked with me, and shared
all my leisure and known every thought. She is now a
woman of eighteen. Her childish graces are matured,
and her blue eye would send a thrill through you. You
might object to her want of fashionable tournure, and
find fault with her unfashionable impulses. I do not.
She is a high-minded, noble, impassioned being—with
an enthusiasm that is not without reason, and a common
sense that is not a regard to self-interest. Her
motion was not learnt at schools, but it is unembarrassed
and free; and her tone has not been educated to a
refined whisper, but it expresses the meaning of her
heart, as if its very pulse had become articulate. The
many might not admire her—I know she would be
idolized by the few.
“Our intercourse is as intimate still; and it could
not change without being less so—for we are constantly
together. There is—to be sure—lately—a
slight degree of embarrassment—and—somehow—we
read more poetry than we used to do—but it is nothing
at all—nothing.”
My friend was married to his pupil a few months
after writing the foregoing. He has written to me
since, and I will show you the letter if you will call, any
time. It will not do to print it, because there are some
domestic details not proper for the general eye; but,
-- 233 --
[figure description] Page 233.[end figure description]
to me, who am a bachelor, bent upon matrimony, it is
interesting to the last degree. He lives the same quiet,
retired life, that he did before he was married. His
room is arranged with the same taste, and with reference
to the same habits as before. The light comes in
as timidly through the half-closed window, and his pictures
look as shadowy and dim, and the rustle of the
turned leaf adds as mysteriously to the silence. He is
the fondest of husbands, but his affection does not encroach
on the habits of his mind. Now and then he
looks up from his book, and, resting his head upon his
hand, lets his eye wander over the pale cheek and
drooping lid of the beautiful being who sits reading beside
him; but he soon returns to his half-forgotten
page, and the smile of affection which had stolen over
his features fades gradually away into the habitual
soberness of thought. There sits his wife, hour after
hour, in the same chair which she occupied when she
first came, a curious loiterer to his room; and though
she does not study so much, because other cares
have a claim upon her now, she still keeps pace with
him in the pleasanter branches of knowledge, and
they talk as often and as earnestly as before on the
thousand topics of a scholar's contemplation. Her
cares may and will multiply; but she understands the
economy of time, and I have no doubt that, with every
attention to her daily duties, she will find ample time for
her mind, and be always as well fitted as now for the
companionship of an intellectual being.
I have, like all bachelors, speculated a great deal upon
matrimony. I have seen young and beautiful women,
the pride of gay circles, married—as the world
said—well! Some have moved into costly houses, and
their friends have all come and looked at their fine
furniture and their splendid arrangements for happiness,
and they have gone away and committed them to
their sunny hopes, cheerfully, and without fear. It is
-- 234 --
[figure description] Page 234.[end figure description]
natural to be sanguine for the young, and, at such
times, I am carried away by similar feelings. I love to
get unobserved into a corner, and watch the bride in
her white attire, and with her smiling face and her soft
eyes moving before me in their pride of life, weave a
waking dream of her future happiness, and persuade
myself that it will be true. I think how they will sit
upon that luxurious sofa as the twilight falls, and build
gay hopes, and murmur in low tones the now unforbidden
tenderness, and how thrillingly the allowed kiss
and the beautiful endearments of wedded life, will make
even their parting joyous, and how gladly they will
come back from the crowd and the empty mirth of the
gay, to each other's quiet company. I picture to myself
that young creature, who blushes even now, at his
hesitating caress, listening eagerly for his footsteps as
the night steals on, and wishing that he would come;
and when he enters at last, and, with an affection as
undying as his pulse, folds her to his bosom, I can feel
the very tide that goes flowing through his heart, and
gaze with him on her graceful form as she moves about
him for the kind offices of affection, soothing all his unquiet
cares, and making him forget even himself, in
her young and unshadowed beauty.
I go forward for years, and see her luxuriant hair
put soberly away from her brow, and her girlish graces
ripenened into dignity, and her bright loveliness
chastened with the gentle meekness of maternal affection.
Her husband looks on her with a proud eye,
and shows the same fervent love and delicate attention
which first won her, and fair children are growing up
about them, and they go on, full of honor and untroubled
years, and are remembered when they die!
I say I love to dream thus when I go to give the
young bride joy. It is the natural tendency of feelings
touched by lovliness that fears nothing for itself, and,
if I ever yield to darker feelings, it is because the light
-- 235 --
[figure description] Page 235.[end figure description]
of the picture is changed. I am not fond of dwelling
on such changes, and I will not, minutely, now. I allude
to it only because I trust that my simple page will
be read by some of the young and beautiful beings who
move daily across my path, and I would whisper
them as they glide by, joyously and confidingly, the secret
of an unclouded future.
The picture I have drawn above is not peculiar. It
is colored like the fancies of the bride; and many—oh
many an hour will she sit, with her rich jewels lying
loose in her fingers, and dream such dreams as these.
She believes them, too—and she goes on, for a while
undeceived. The evening is not too long while they
talk of their plans for happiness, and the quiet meal
still pleasant with the delightful novelty of mutual reliance
and attention. There comes soon, however, a
time when personal topics become bare and wearisome
and slight attentions will not alone keep up the social
excitement. There are long intervals of silence, and
detected symptoms of weariness, and the husband,
in his impatient manhood, breaks in upon the
they were to spend together. I cannot follow it
cumstantially. There come long hours of unhappy
listlessness, and terrible misgivings of each other's
and affection, till, by-and-by, they can conceal
uneasiness no longer, and go out separately to seek
lief, and lean upon a hollow world for the support which
one who was their “lover and friend” could not give
them!
Heed this, ye who are winning by your innocent
beauty, the affections of high-minded and thinking
beings! Remember that he will give up the brothers
of his heart with whom he has had, ever, a fellowship
of mind—the society of his cotemporary runners in
the race of fame, who have held with him a stern companionship—
and frequently, in his passionate love, he
will break away from the arena of his burning ambition
-- 236 --
[figure description] Page 236.[end figure description]
to come and listen to the “voice of the charmer.” It
will bewilder him at first, but it will not long; and then,
think you that an idle blandishment will chain the mind
that has been used, for years, to an equal communion?
Think you he will give up, for a weak dalliance, the
animating themes of men, and the search into the fine
mysteries of knowledge!—Oh! no, lady!—believe
me—no! Trust not your influence to such light fetters!
Credit not the old-fashioned absurdity that woman's
is a secondary lot—ministering to the necessities
of her lord and master! It is a higher destiny I would
award you. If your immortality is as complete, and
your gift of mind as capable as ours of increase and
elevation, I would put no wisdom of mine against God's
evident allotment. I would charge you to water the
undying bud, and give it healthy culture, and open its
beauty to the sun—and then you may hope, that when
your life is bound up with another, you will go on
equally, and in a fellowship that shall pervade every
earthly interest!
THE END.
