The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete
interposition of Farrel and the family, who disengaged him from his
master’s gripe by dint of force; yet, notwithstanding their joint
endeavours, he broke from this restraint, leaped upon the floor, and
seizing his sword, attempted to plunge it in his own breast. When he
was once more overcome by numbers, he cursed himself, and all those who
withheld him; swore he would not survive the fair victim who had
perished by his credulity and indiscretion; and the agitation of his
spirits increased to such a degree, that he was seized with strong
convulsions, which nature was scarce able to sustain. Every medical
expedient was used to quiet his perturbation, which at length yielded
so far as to subside into a continual fever and confirmed delirium,
during which he ceased not to pour forth the most pathetic complaints,
touching his ruined love, and to rave about the ill-starred Monimia.
The Major, half distracted by the calamity of his friend, would have
concealed it from the knowledge of his family, had not the physician,
by despairing of his life, laid him under the necessity of making them
acquainted with his condition.
The Countess and Mrs. Farrel were no sooner informed of his case than
they hastened to the melancholy scene, where they found Renaldo
deprived of his senses, panting under the rage of an exasperated
disease. They saw his face distorted, and his eyes glaring with frenzy;
they heard him invoke the name of Monimia with a tenderness of accent
which even the impulse of madness could not destroy. Then, with a
sudden transition of tone and gesture, he denounced vengeance against
her betrayer, and called upon the north wind to cool the fervour of his
brain. His hair hung in dishevelled parcels, his cheeks were wan, his
looks ghastly, his vigour was fled, and all the glory of his youth
faded; the physician hung his head in silence, the attendants wrung
their hands in despair, and the countenance of his friend was bathed in
tears.
Such a picture would have moved the most obdurate heart; what
impression then must it have made upon a parent and sister, melting
with all the enthusiasm of affection! The mother was struck dumb, and
stupefied with grief; the sister threw herself on the bed in a
transport of sorrow, caught her loved Renaldo in her arms, and was,
with great difficulty, torn from his embrace. Such was the dismal
reverse that overtook the late so happy family of Melvil; such was the
extremity to which the treachery of Fathom had reduced his best
benefactor!
Three days did nature struggle with surprising efforts, and then the
constitution seemed to sink under the victorious fever; yet, as his
strength diminished, his delirium abated, and on the fifth morning he
looked round, and recognised his weeping friends. Though now exhausted
to the lowest ebb of life, he retained the perfect use of speech, and
his reason being quite unclouded, spoke to each with equal kindness and
composure; he congratulated himself upon the sight of shore after the
horrors of such a tempest; called upon the Countess and his sister, who
were not permitted to see him at such a conjuncture; and being apprised
by the Major of his reason for excluding them from his presence, he
applauded his concern, bequeathed them to his future care, and took
leave of that gentleman with a cordial embrace. Then he desired to be
left in private with a certain clergyman, who regulated the concerns of
his soul, and he being dismissed, turned his face from the light, in
expectation of his final discharge. In a few minutes all was still and
dreary, he was no longer heard to breathe, no more the stream of life
was perceived to circulate, he was supposed to be absolved from all his
cares, and an universal groan from the bystanders announced the decease
of the gallant, generous, and tender-hearted Renaldo.
“Come hither, ye whom the pride of youth and health, of birth and
affluence inflames, who tread the flowery maze of pleasure, trusting to
the fruition of ever-circling joys; ye who glory in your
accomplishments, who indulge the views of ambition, and lay schemes for
future happiness and grandeur, contemplate here the vanity of life!
behold how low this excellent young man is laid! mowed down even in the
blossom of his youth, when fortune seemed to open all her treasures to
his worth!”
Such were the reflections of the generous Farrel, who, while he
performed the last office of friendship, in closing the eyes of the
much-lamented Melvil, perceived a warmth on the skin, which the hand of
death seldom leaves unextinguished. This uncommon sensation he reported
to the physician, who, though he could feel no pulsation of the heart
or arteries, conjectured that life still lingered in some of its
interior haunts, and immediately ordered such applications to the
extremities and surface of the body, as might help to concentrate and
reinforce the natural heat.
By these prescriptions, which for some time produced no sensible
effect, the embers were, in all probability, kept glowing, and the
vital power revived, for, after a considerable pause, respiration was
gradually renewed at long intervals, a languid motion was perceived at
the heart, a few feeble and irregular pulsations were felt at the
wrist, the clay-coloured livery of death began to vanish from his face,
the circulation acquired new force, and he opened his eyes with a sigh,
which proclaimed his return from the shades of death.
When he recovered the faculty of swallowing, a cordial was
administered, and whether the fever abated, in consequence of the
blood’s being cooled and condensed during the recess of action in the
solids, or nature, in that agony, had prepared a proper channel for the
expulsion of the disease, certain it is, he was from this moment rid of
all bodily pain; he retrieved the animal functions, and nothing
remained of his malady but an extreme weakness and languor, the effect
of nature’s being fatigued in the battle she had won.
Unutterable was the joy that took possession of his mother and sister
when Farrel flew into her apartment to intimate this happy turn. Scarce
could they be restrained from pouring forth their transports in the
presence of Renaldo, who was still too feeble to endure such
communication; indeed, he was extremely mortified and dejected at this
event, which had diffused such pleasure and satisfaction among his
friends, for though his distemper was mastered, the fatal cause of it
still rankled at his heart, and he considered this respite from death
as a protraction of his misery.
When he was congratulated by the Major on the triumph of his
constitution, he replied, with a groan, “I would to heaven it had been
otherwise, for I am reserved for all the horrors of the most poignant
sorrow and remorse. O Monimia! Monimia! I hoped by this time to have
convinced thy gentle shade, that I was, at least intentionally,
innocent of that ruthless barbarity which hath brought thee to an
untimely grave. Heaven and earth! do I still survive the consciousness
of that dire catastrophe! and lives the atrocious villain who hath
blasted all our hopes!”
With these last words the fire darted from his eyes, and his brother,
snatching this occasional handle for reconciling him to life, joined in
his exclamations against the treacherous Fathom, and observed, that he
should not, in point of honour, wish to die, until he should have
sacrificed that traitor to the manes of the beauteous Monimia. This
incitement acted as a spur upon exhausted nature, causing the blood to
circulate with fresh vigour, and encouraging him to take such
sustenance as would recruit his strength, and repair the damage which
his health had sustained.
His sister assiduously attended him in his recovery, flattering his
appetite, and amusing his sorrow at the same time; the clergyman
assailed his despondence with religious weapons, as well as with
arguments drawn from philosophy; and the fury of his passions being
already expended, he became so tractable as to listen to his
remonstrances. But notwithstanding the joint endeavours of all his
friends, a deep fixed melancholy remained after every consequence of
his disease had vanished. In vain they essayed to elude his grief by
gaiety and diversions, in vain they tried to decoy his heart into some
new engagement.
These kind attempts served only to feed and nourish that melancholy
which pined within his bosom. Monimia still haunted him in the midst of
these amusements, while his reflection whispered to him, “Pleasures
like these I might have relished with her participation.” That darling
idea mingled in all the female assemblies at which he was present,
eclipsing their attractions, and enhancing the bitterness of his loss;
for absence, enthusiasm, and even his despair had heightened the charms
of the fair orphan into something supernatural and divine.
Time, that commonly weakens the traces of remembrance, seemed to deepen
its impressions in his breast; nightly, in his dreams, did he converse
with his dear Monimia, sometimes on the verdant bank of a delightful
stream, where he breathed, in soft murmurs, the dictates of his love
and admiration; sometimes reclined within the tufted grove, his arm
encircled and sustained her snowy neck, whilst she, with looks of love
ineffable, gazed on his face, invoking Heaven to bless her husband and
her lord. Yet, even in these illusions was his fancy oft alarmed for
the ill-fated fair. Sometimes he viewed her tottering on the brink of a
steep precipice, far distant from his helping hand; at other times she
seemed to sail along the boisterous tide, imploring his assistance,
then would he start with horror from his sleep, and feel his sorrows
more than realised; he deserted his couch, he avoided the society of
mankind, he courted sequestered shades where he could indulge his
melancholy; there his mind brooded over his calamity until his
imagination became familiar with all the ravages of death; it
contemplated the gradual decline of Monimia’s health, her tears, her
distress, her despair at his imagined cruelty; he saw, through that
perspective, every blossom of her beauty wither, every sparkle vanish
from her eyes; he beheld her faded lips, her pale cheek, and her
inanimated features, the symmetry of which not death itself was able to
destroy. His fancy conveyed her breathless corse to the cold grave,
o’er which, perhaps, no tear humane was shed, where her delicate limbs
were consigned to dust, where she was dished out a delicious banquet to
the unsparing worm.
Over these pictures he dwelt with a sort of pleasing anguish, until he
became so enamoured of her tomb, that he could no longer resist the
desire that compelled him to make a pilgrimage to the dear hallowed
spot, where all his once gay hopes lay buried; that he might nightly
visit the silent habitation of his ruined love, embrace the sacred
earth with which she was now compounded, moisten it with his tears, and
bid the turf lie easy on her breast. Besides the prospect of this
gloomy enjoyment, he was urged to return to England, by an eager desire
of taking vengeance on the perfidious Fathom, as well as of acquitting
himself of the obligations he owed in that kingdom, to those who had
assisted him in his distress. He therefore communicated his intention
to Farrel, who would have insisted upon attending him in the journey,
had not he been conjured to stay and manage Renaldo’s affairs in his
absence. Every previous step being taken, he took leave of the Countess
and his sister, who had, with all their interest and elocution, opposed
his design, the execution of which, they justly feared, would, instead
of dissipating, augment his chagrin; and now, seeing him determined,
they shed a flood of tears at his departure, and he set out from Vienna