Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
profound; its serenity is the proof of the might and terror of its
course, were the wind to blow and the storm to rise.
A young man's ambition is but vanity,--it has no definite aim, it plays
with a thousand toys. As with one passion, so with the rest. In youth,
Love is ever on the wing, but, like the birds in April, it hath not yet
built its nest. With so long a career of summer and hope before it, the
disappointment of to-day is succeeded by the novelty of to-morrow, and
the sun that advances to the noon but dries up its fervent tears. But
when we have arrived at that epoch of life,--when, if the light fail us,
if the last rose wither, we feel that the loss cannot be retrieved,
and that the frost and the darkness are at hand, Love becomes to us
a treasure that we watch over and hoard with a miser's care. Our
youngest-born affection is our darling and our idol, the fondest pledge
of the Past, the most cherished of our hopes for the Future. A certain
melancholy that mingles with our joy at the possession only enhances its
charm. We feel ourselves so dependent on it for all that is yet to come.
Our other barks--our gay galleys of pleasure, our stately argosies of
pride--have been swallowed up by the remorseless wave. On this last
vessel we freight our all, to its frail tenement we commit ourselves.
The star that guides it is our guide, and in the tempest that menaces we
behold our own doom!
Still Maltravers shrank from the confession that trembled on his lips;
still he adhered to the course he had prescribed to himself. If ever
(as he had implied in his letter to Cleveland)--if ever Evelyn should
discover they were not suited to each other! The possibility of such an
affliction impressed his judgment, the dread of it chilled his heart.
With all his pride, there was a certain humility in Maltravers that was
perhaps one cause of his reserve. He knew what a beautiful possession
is youth,--its sanguine hopes, its elastic spirit, its inexhaustible
resources! What to the eyes of woman were the acquisitions which manhood
had brought him,--the vast but the sad experience, the arid wisdom, the
philosophy based on disappointment? He might be loved but for the vain
glitter of name and reputation,--and love might vanish as custom dimmed
the illusion. Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius.
They know how separate a thing from the household character genius
often is,--they fear lest they should be loved for a quality, not for
themselves.
Thus communed he with himself; thus, as the path had become clear to his
hopes, did new fears arise; and thus did love bring, as it ever does, in
its burning wake,--
"The pang, the agony, the doubt!"
Maltravers then confirmed himself in the resolution he had formed:
he would cautiously examine Evelyn and himself; he would weigh in the
balance every straw that the wind should turn up; he would not aspire to
the treasure, unless he could feel secure that the coffer could preserve
the gem. This was not only a prudent, it was a just and a generous
determination. It was one which we all ought to form if the fervour
of our passions will permit us. We have no right to sacrifice years to
moments, and to melt the pearl that has no price in a single draught!
But can Maltravers adhere to his wise precautions? The truth must be
spoken,--it was, perhaps, the first time in his life that Maltravers
had been really in love. As the reader will remember, he had not been in
love with the haughty Florence; admiration, gratitude,--the affection of
the head, not that of the feelings,--had been the links that bound him
to the enthusiastic correspondent revealed in the gifted beauty; and the
gloomy circumstances connected with her early fate had left deep furrows
in his memory. Time and vicissitude had effaced the wounds, and the
Light of the Beautiful dawned once more in the face of Evelyn. Valerie
de Ventadour had been but the fancy of a roving breast. Alice, the sweet
Alice!--her, indeed, in the first flower of youth, he had loved with
a boy's romance. He had loved her deeply, fondly,--but perhaps he
had never been in love with her; he had mourned her loss for
years,--insensibly to himself her loss had altered his character and
cast a melancholy gloom over all the colours of his life. But she whose
range of ideas was so confined, she who had but broke into knowledge, as
the chrysalis into the butterfly--how much in that prodigal and gifted
nature, bounding onwards into the broad plains of life, must the peasant
girl have failed to fill! They had had nothing in common but their youth
and their love. It was a dream that had hovered over the poet-boy in the
morning twilight,--a dream he had often wished to recall, a dream that
had haunted him in the noon-day,--but had, as all boyish visions ever
have done, left the heart unexhausted, and the passions unconsumed!
Years, long years, since then had rolled away, and yet, perhaps, one
unconscious attraction that drew Maltravers so suddenly towards Evelyn
was a something indistinct and undefinable that reminded him of Alice.
There was no similarity in their features; but at times a tone in
Evelyn's voice, a "trick of the manner," an air, a gesture, recalled
him, over the gulfs of Time, to Poetry, and Hope, and Alice.
In the youth of each--the absent and the present one--there was
resemblance,--resemblance in their simplicity, their grace. Perhaps
Alice, of the two, had in her nature more real depth, more ardour of
feeling, more sublimity of sentiment, than Evelyn. But in her primitive
ignorance half her noblest qualities were embedded and unknown. And
Evelyn--his equal in rank; Evelyn, well cultivated; Evelyn, so long
courted, so deeply studied--had such advantages over the poor peasant
girl! Still the poor peasant girl often seemed to smile on him from that
fair face; and in Evelyn he half loved Alice again!
So these two persons now met daily; their intercourse was even more
familiar than before, their several minds grew hourly more developed
and transparent to each other. But of love Maltravers still forbore to
speak; they were friends,--no more; such friends as the disparity of
their years and their experience might warrant them to be. And in that
young and innocent nature--with its rectitude, its enthusiasm, and its
pious and cheerful tendencies--Maltravers found freshness in the desert,
as the camel-driver lingering at the well. Insensibly his heart warmed
again to his kind; and as the harp of David to the ear of Saul, was the
soft voice that lulled remembrance and awakened hope in the lonely man.
Meanwhile, what was the effect that the presence, the attentions, of
Maltravers produced on Evelyn? Perhaps it was of that kind which most
flatters us and most deceives. She never dreamed of comparing him with
others. To her thoughts he stood aloof and alone from all his kind. It
may seem a paradox, but it might be that she admired and venerated
him almost too much for love. Still her pleasure in his society was so
evident and unequivocal, her deference to his opinion so marked, she
sympathized in so many of his objects, she had so much blindness or
forbearance for his faults (and he never sought to mask them), that the
most diffident of men might have drawn from so many symptoms hopes the
most auspicious. Since the departure of Legard, the gayeties of Paris
lost their charm for Evelyn, and more than ever she could appreciate the
society of her friend. He thus gradually lost his earlier fears of her
forming too keen an attachment to the great world; and as nothing could
be more apparent than Evelyn's indifference to the crowd of flatterers
and suitors that hovered round her, Maltravers no longer dreaded a
rival. He began to feel assured that they had both gone through
the ordeal; and that he might ask for love without a doubt of its
immutability and faith. At this period they were both invited, with the
Doltimores, to spend a few days at the villa of De Montaigne, near St.
Cloud. And there it was that Maltravers determined to know his fate!
CHAPTER IV.
CHAOS of Thought and Passion all confused.--POPE.
IT is to the contemplation of a very different scene that the course of
our story now conducts us.
Between St. Cloud and Versailles there was at that time--perhaps
there still is--a lone and melancholy house, appropriated to the
insane,--melancholy, not from its site, but the purpose to which it
is devoted. Placed on an eminence, the windows of the mansion
command--beyond the gloomy walls that gird the garden ground--one of
those enchanting prospects which win for France her title to _La Belle_.
There the glorious Seine is seen in the distance, broad and winding
through the varied plains, and beside the gleaming villages and villas.
There, too, beneath the clear blue sky of France, the forest-lands of
Versailles and St. Germains stretch in dark luxuriance around and afar.
There you may see sleeping on the verge of the landscape the mighty
city,--crowned with the thousand spires from which, proud above the
rest, rises the eyry of Napoleon's eagle, the pinnacle of Notre Dame.
Remote, sequestered, the place still commands the survey of the
turbulent world below; and Madness gazes upon prospects that might well
charm the thoughtful eyes of Imagination or of Wisdom! In one of the
rooms of this house sat Castruccio Cesarini. The apartment was furnished
even with elegance; a variety of books strewed the table; nothing for
comfort or for solace that the care and providence of affection could
dictate was omitted. Cesarini was alone: leaning his cheek upon his
hand, he gazed on the beautiful and tranquil view we have described.
"And am I never to set a free foot on that soil again?" he muttered
indignantly, as he broke from his revery.
The door opened, and the keeper of the sad abode (a surgeon of humanity
and eminence) entered, followed by De Montaigne. Cesarini turned
round and scowled upon the latter; the surgeon, after a few words of
salutation, withdrew to a corner of the room, and appeared absorbed in
a book. De Montaigne approached his brother-in-law,--"I have brought
you some poems just published at Milan, my dear Castruccio,--they will
please you."
"Give me my liberty!" cried Cesarini, clenching his hands. "Why am I
to be detained here? Why are my nights to be broken by the groans of
maniacs, and my days devoured in a solitude that loathes the aspect of
things around me? Am I mad? You know I am not! It is an old trick to
say that poets are mad,--you mistake our agonies for insanity. See, I
am calm; I can reason: give me any test of sound mind--no matter how
rigid--I will pass it; I am not mad,--I swear I am not!"
"No, my dear Castruccio," said De Montaigne, soothingly; "but you are
still unwell,--you still have fever; when next I see you perhaps you
may be recovered sufficiently to dismiss the doctor and change the air.
Meanwhile is there anything you would have added or altered?"
Cesarini had listened to this speech with a mocking sarcasm on his lip,
but an expression of such hopeless wretchedness in his eyes, as they
alone can comprehend who have witnessed madness in its lucid intervals.
He sank down, and his head drooped gloomily on his breast. "No," said
he; "I want nothing but free air or death,--no matter which."
De Montaigne stayed some time with the unhappy man, and sought to soothe
him; but it was in vain. Yet when he rose to depart, Cesarini started
up, and fixing on him his large wistful eyes, exclaimed, "Ah! do not
leave me yet. It is so dreadful to be alone with the dead and the worse
than dead!"
The Frenchman turned aside to wipe his eyes, and stifle the rising at
his heart; and again he sat, and again he sought to soothe. At length