Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
of Paris. There he did not meet, as were met in the times of the
old _regime_, sparkling abbes intent upon intrigues; or amorous old
dowagers, eloquent on Rousseau; or powdered courtiers, uttering epigrams
against kings and religions,--straws that foretold the whirlwind. Paul
Courier was right! Frenchmen are Frenchmen still; they are full of fine
phrases, and their thoughts smell of the theatre; they mistake foil
for diamonds, the Grotesque for the Natural, the Exaggerated for the
Sublime: but still I say, Paul Courier was right,--there is more honesty
now in a single _salon_ in Paris than there was in all France in the
days of Voltaire. Vast interests and solemn causes are no longer tossed
about like shuttlecocks on the battledores of empty tongues. In the
_bouleversement_ of Revolutions the French have fallen on their feet!
Meeting men of all parties and all classes, Maltravers was struck with
the heightened tone of public morals, the earnest sincerity of feeling
which generally pervaded all, as compared with his first recollections
of the Parisians. He saw that true elements for national wisdom were
at work, though he saw also that there was no country in which their
operations would be more liable to disorder, more slow and irregular
in their results. The French are like the Israelites in the Wilderness,
when, according to a Hebrew tradition, every morning they seemed on the
verge of Pisgah, and every evening they were as far from it as ever. But
still time rolls on, the pilgrimage draws to its close, and the Canaan
must come at last!
At Valerie's house, Maltravers once more met the De Montaignes. It was a
painful meeting, for they thought of Cesarini when they met.
It is now time to return to that unhappy man. Cesarini had been removed
from England when Maltravers quitted it after Lady Florence's death;
and Maltravers had thought it best to acquaint De Montaigne with all the
circumstances that had led to his affliction. The pride and the honour
of the high-spirited Frenchman were deeply shocked by the tale of fraud
and guilt, softened as it was; but the sight of the criminal, his awful
punishment, merged every other feeling in compassion. Placed under
the care of the most skilful practitioners in Paris, great hopes of
Cesarini's recovery had been at first entertained. Nor was it long,
indeed, before he appeared entirely restored, so far as the external
and superficial tokens of sanity could indicate a cure. He testified
complete consciousness of the kindness of his relations, and clear
remembrance of the past: but to the incoherent ravings of delirium, an
intense melancholy, still more deplorable, succeeded. In this state,
however, he became once more the inmate of his brother-in-law's
house; and though avoiding all society, except that of Teresa, whose
affectionate nature never wearied of its cares, he resumed many of his
old occupations. Again he appeared to take delight in desultory and
unprofitable studies, and in the cultivation of that luxury of solitary
men, "the thankless muse." By shunning all topics connected with
the gloomy cause of his affliction, and talking rather of the sweet
recollections of Italy and childhood than of more recent events, his
sister was enabled to soothe the dark hour, and preserve some kind of
influence over the ill-fated man. One day, however, there fell into
his hands an English newspaper, which was full of the praises of Lord
Vargrave; and the article in lauding the peer referred to his services
as the commoner Lumley Ferrers.
This incident, slight as it appeared, and perfectly untraceable by
his relations, produced a visible effect on Cesarini; and three days
afterwards he attempted his own life. The failure of the attempt was
followed by the fiercest paroxysms. His disease returned in all its
dread force: and it became necessary to place him under yet stricter
confinement than he had endured before. Again, about a year from the
date now entered upon, he had appeared to recover; and again he was
removed to De Montaigne's house. His relations were not aware of the
influence which Lord Vargrave's name exercised over Cesarini; in the
melancholy tale communicated to them by Maltravers, that name had not
been mentioned. If Maltravers had at one time entertained some vague
suspicions that Lumley had acted a treacherous part with regard
to Florence, those suspicions had long since died away for want of
confirmation; nor did he (nor did therefore the De Montaignes) connect
Lord Vargrave with the affliction of Cesarini. De Montaigne himself,
therefore, one day at dinner, alluding to a question of foreign politics
which had been debated that morning in the Chamber, and in which he
himself had taken an active part, happened to refer to a speech of
Vargrave upon the subject, which had made some sensation abroad, as
well as at home. Teresa asked innocently who Lord Vargrave was; and De
Montaigne, well acquainted with the biography of the principal English
statesmen, replied that he had commenced his career as Mr. Ferrers,
and reminded Teresa that they had once been introduced to him in Paris.
Cesarini suddenly rose and left the room; his absence was not noted,
for his comings and goings were ever strange and fitful. Teresa soon
afterwards quitted the apartment with her children, and De Montaigne,
who was rather fatigued by the exertions and excitement of the morning,
stretched himself in his chair to enjoy a short _siesta_. He was
suddenly awakened by a feeling of pain and suffocation,--awakened in
time to struggle against a strong grip that had fastened itself at his
throat. The room was darkened in the growing shades of the evening; and,
but for the glittering and savage eyes that were fixed on him, he could
scarcely discern his assailant. He at length succeeded, however, in
freeing himself, and casting the intended assassin on the ground. He
shouted for assistance; and the lights borne by the servants who rushed
into the room revealed to him the face of his brother-in-law. Cesarini,
though in strong convulsions, still uttered cries and imprecations of
revenge; he denounced De Montaigne as a traitor and a murderer! In the
dark confusion of his mind, he had mistaken the guardian for the distant
foe, whose name sufficed to conjure up the phantoms of the dead, and
plunge reason into fury.
It was now clear that there was danger and death in Cesarini's disease.
His madness was pronounced to be capable of no certain and permanent
cure; he was placed at a new asylum (the superintendents of which
were celebrated for humanity as well as skill), a little distance from
Versailles, and there he still remained. Recently his lucid intervals
had become more frequent and prolonged; but trifles that sprang from his
own mind, and which no care could prevent or detect, sufficed to renew
his calamity in all its fierceness. At such times he required the
most unrelaxing vigilance, for his madness ever took an alarming and
ferocious character; and had he been left unshackled, the boldest and
stoutest of the keepers would have dreaded to enter his cell unarmed, or
alone.
What made the disease of the mind appear more melancholy and confirmed
was, that all this time the frame seemed to increase in health and
strength. This is not an uncommon case in instances of mania--and it
is generally the worst symptom. In earlier youth, Cesarini had been
delicate even to effeminacy; but now his proportions were enlarged, his
form, though still lean and spare, muscular and vigorous,--as if in
the torpor which usually succeeded to his bursts of frenzy, the animal
portion gained by the repose or disorganization of the intellectual.
When in his better and calmer mood--in which indeed none but the
experienced could have detected his malady--books made his chief
delight. But then he complained bitterly, if briefly, of the confinement
he endured, of the injustice be suffered; and as, shunning all
companions, he walked gloomily amidst the grounds that surrounded that
House of Woe, his unseen guardians beheld him clenching his hands, as at
some visionary enemy, or overheard him accuse some phantom of his brain
of the torments he endured.
Though the reader can detect in Lumley Ferrers the cause of the frenzy,
and the object of the imprecation, it was not so with the De Montaignes,
nor with the patient's keepers and physicians; for in his delirium he
seldom or never gave name to the shadows that he invoked,--not even to
that of Florence. It is, indeed, no unusual characteristic of madness to
shun, as by a kind of cunning, all mention of the names of those by whom
the madness has been caused. It is as if the unfortunates imagined that
the madness might be undiscovered if the images connected with it were
unbetrayed.
Such, at this time, was the wretched state of the man, whose talents
had promised a fair and honourable career, had it not been the wretched
tendency of his mind, from boyhood upward, to pamper every unwholesome
and unhallowed feeling as a token of the exuberance of genius. De
Montaigne, though he touched as lightly as possible upon this dark
domestic calamity in his first communications with Maltravers, whose
conduct in that melancholy tale of crime and woe had, he conceived, been
stamped with generosity and feeling, still betrayed emotions that told
how much his peace had been embittered.
"I seek to console Teresa," said he, turning away his manly head, "and
to point out all the blessings yet left to her; but that brother so
beloved, from whom so much was so vainly expected,--still ever and ever,
though she strives to conceal it from me, this affliction comes back to
her, and poisons every thought! Oh, better a thousand times that he
had died! When reason, sense, almost the soul, are dead, how dark and
fiend-like is the life that remains behind! And if it should be in the
blood--if Teresa's children--dreadful thought!"
De Montaigne ceased, thoroughly overcome.
"Do not, my dear friend, so fearfully exaggerate your misfortune,
great as it is; Cesarini's disease evidently arose from no physical
conformation,--it was but the crisis, the development, of a
long-contracted malady of mind, passions morbidly indulged, the
reasoning faculty obstinately neglected; and yet too he may recover. The
further memory recedes from the shock he has sustained, the better the
chance that his mind will regain its tone."
De Montaigne wrung his friend's hand.
"It is strange that from you should come sympathy and comfort!--you whom
he so injured; you whom his folly or his crime drove from your proud
career, and your native soil! But Providence will yet, I trust, redeem
the evil of its erring creature, and I shall yet live to see you
restored to hope and home, a happy husband, an honoured citizen. Till
then, I feel as if the curse lingered upon my race."
"Speak not thus. Whatever my destiny, I have recovered from that wound;
and still, De Montaigne, I find in life that suffering succeeds to
suffering, and disappointment to disappointment, as wave to wave. To
endure is the only philosophy; to believe that we shall live again in a
brighter planet, is the only hope that our reason should accept from our
desires."
CHAPTER II.
MONSTRA evenerunt mihi:
Introit in aedes ater alienus canis,
Anguis per impluvium decidit de tegulis,
Gallina cecinit!*--TERENCE.
* "Prodigies have occurred: a strange black dog came into the house;
a snake glided from the tiles, through the court; the hen crowed."
WITH his constitutional strength of mind, and conformably with his
acquired theories, Maltravers continued to struggle against the latest
and strongest passion of his life. It might be seen in the paleness of
his brow, and that nameless expression of suffering which betrays