The Last Man
explanation closed the history of the human race.
Dim fancies, akin to these, haunted our minds, and instilled feelings
not unallied to pleasure, as we stood beside this silent tomb of
nature, reared by these lifeless mountains, above her living veins,
choking her vital principle. “Thus are we left,” said Adrian, “two
melancholy blasted trees, where once a forest waved. We are left to
mourn, and pine, and die. Yet even now we have our duties, which we
must string ourselves to fulfil: the duty of bestowing pleasure where
we can, and by force of love, irradiating with rainbow hues the tempest
of grief. Nor will I repine if in this extremity we preserve what we
now possess. Something tells me, Verney, that we need no longer dread
our cruel enemy, and I cling with delight to the oracular voice. Though
strange, it will be sweet to mark the growth of your little boy, and
the development of Clara’s young heart. In the midst of a desert world,
we are everything to them; and, if we live, it must be our task to make
this new mode of life happy to them. At present this is easy, for their
childish ideas do not wander into futurity, and the stinging craving
for sympathy, and all of love of which our nature is susceptible, is
not yet awake within them: we cannot guess what will happen then, when
nature asserts her indefeasible and sacred powers; but, long before
that time, we may all be cold, as he who lies in yonder tomb of ice. We
need only provide for the present, and endeavour to fill with pleasant
images the inexperienced fancy of your lovely niece. The scenes which
now surround us, vast and sublime as they are, are not such as can best
contribute to this work. Nature is here like our fortunes, grand, but
too destructive, bare, and rude, to be able to afford delight to her
young imagination. Let us descend to the sunny plains of Italy. Winter
will soon be here, to clothe this wilderness in double desolation; but
we will cross the bleak hill-tops, and lead her to scenes of fertility
and beauty, where her path will be adorned with flowers, and the cheery
atmosphere inspire pleasure and hope.”
In pursuance of this plan we quitted Chamounix on the following day. We
had no cause to hasten our steps; no event was transacted beyond our
actual sphere to enchain our resolves, so we yielded to every idle
whim, and deemed our time well spent, when we could behold the passage
of the hours without dismay. We loitered along the lovely Vale of
Servox; passed long hours on the bridge, which, crossing the ravine of
Arve, commands a prospect of its pine-clothed depths, and the snowy
mountains that wall it in. We rambled through romantic Switzerland;
till, fear of coming winter leading us forward, the first days of
October found us in the valley of La Maurienne, which leads to Cenis. I
cannot explain the reluctance we felt at leaving this land of
mountains; perhaps it was, that we regarded the Alps as boundaries
between our former and our future state of existence, and so clung
fondly to what of old we had loved. Perhaps, because we had now so few
impulses urging to a choice between two modes of action, we were
pleased to preserve the existence of one, and preferred the prospect of
what we were to do, to the recollection of what had been done. We felt
that for this year danger was past; and we believed that, for some
months, we were secured to each other. There was a thrilling, agonizing
delight in the thought—it filled the eyes with misty tears, it tore the
heart with tumultuous heavings; frailer than the “snow fall in the
river,” were we each and all—but we strove to give life and
individuality to the meteoric course of our several existences, and to
feel that no moment escaped us unenjoyed. Thus tottering on the dizzy
brink, we were happy. Yes! as we sat beneath the toppling rocks, beside
the waterfalls, near
—Forests, ancient as the hills,
And folding sunny spots of greenery,
where the chamois grazed, and the timid squirrel laid up its
hoard—descanting on the charms of nature, drinking in the while her
unalienable beauties—we were, in an empty world, happy.
Yet, O days of joy—days, when eye spoke to eye, and voices, sweeter
than the music of the swinging branches of the pines, or rivulet’s
gentle murmur, answered mine—yet, O days replete with beatitude, days
of loved society—days unutterably dear to me forlorn—pass, O pass
before me, making me in your memory forget what I am. Behold, how my
streaming eyes blot this senseless paper—behold, how my features are
convulsed by agonizing throes, at your mere recollection, now that,
alone, my tears flow, my lips quiver, my cries fill the air, unseen,
unmarked, unheard! Yet, O yet, days of delight! let me dwell on your
long-drawn hours!
As the cold increased upon us, we passed the Alps, and descended into
Italy. At the uprising of morn, we sat at our repast, and cheated our
regrets by gay sallies or learned disquisitions. The live-long day we
sauntered on, still keeping in view the end of our journey, but
careless of the hour of its completion. As the evening star shone out,
and the orange sunset, far in the west, marked the position of the dear
land we had for ever left, talk, thought enchaining, made the hours
fly—O that we had lived thus for ever and for ever! Of what consequence
was it to our four hearts, that they alone were the fountains of life
in the wide world? As far as mere individual sentiment was concerned,
we had rather be left thus united together, than if, each alone in a
populous desert of unknown men, we had wandered truly companionless
till life’s last term. In this manner, we endeavoured to console each
other; in this manner, true philosophy taught us to reason.
It was the delight of Adrian and myself to wait on Clara, naming her
the little queen of the world, ourselves her humblest servitors. When
we arrived at a town, our first care was to select for her its most
choice abode; to make sure that no harrowing relic remained of its
former inhabitants; to seek food for her, and minister to her wants
with assiduous tenderness. Clara entered into our scheme with childish
gaiety. Her chief business was to attend on Evelyn; but it was her
sport to array herself in splendid robes, adorn herself with sunny
gems, and ape a princely state. Her religion, deep and pure, did not
teach her to refuse to blunt thus the keen sting of regret; her
youthful vivacity made her enter, heart and soul, into these strange
masquerades.
We had resolved to pass the ensuing winter at Milan, which, as being a
large and luxurious city, would afford us choice of homes. We had
descended the Alps, and left far behind their vast forests and mighty
crags. We entered smiling Italy. Mingled grass and corn grew in her
plains, the unpruned vines threw their luxuriant branches around the
elms. The grapes, overripe, had fallen on the ground, or hung purple,
or burnished green, among the red and yellow leaves. The ears of
standing corn winnowed to emptiness by the spendthrift winds; the
fallen foliage of the trees, the weed-grown brooks, the dusky olive,
now spotted with its blackened fruit; the chestnuts, to which the
squirrel only was harvest-man; all plenty, and yet, alas! all poverty,
painted in wondrous hues and fantastic groupings this land of beauty.
In the towns, in the voiceless towns, we visited the churches, adorned
by pictures, master-pieces of art, or galleries of statues—while in
this genial clime the animals, in new found liberty, rambled through
the gorgeous palaces, and hardly feared our forgotten aspect. The
dove-coloured oxen turned their full eyes on us, and paced slowly by; a
startling throng of silly sheep, with pattering feet, would start up in
some chamber, formerly dedicated to the repose of beauty, and rush,
huddling past us, down the marble staircase into the street, and again
in at the first open door, taking unrebuked possession of hallowed
sanctuary, or kingly council-chamber. We no longer started at these
occurrences, nor at worse exhibition of change—when the palace had
become a mere tomb, pregnant with fetid stench, strewn with the dead;
and we could perceive how pestilence and fear had played strange
antics, chasing the luxurious dame to the dank fields and bare cottage;
gathering, among carpets of Indian woof, and beds of silk, the rough
peasant, or the deformed half-human shape of the wretched beggar.
We arrived at Milan, and stationed ourselves in the Vice-Roy’s palace.
Here we made laws for ourselves, dividing our day, and fixing distinct
occupations for each hour. In the morning we rode in the adjoining
country, or wandered through the palaces, in search of pictures or
antiquities. In the evening we assembled to read or to converse. There
were few books that we dared read; few, that did not cruelly deface the
painting we bestowed on our solitude, by recalling combinations and
emotions never more to be experienced by us. Metaphysical disquisition;
fiction, which wandering from all reality, lost itself in self-created
errors; poets of times so far gone by, that to read of them was as to
read of Atlantis and Utopia; or such as referred to nature only, and
the workings of one particular mind; but most of all, talk, varied and
ever new, beguiled our hours.
While we paused thus in our onward career towards death, time held on
its accustomed course. Still and for ever did the earth roll on,
enthroned in her atmospheric car, speeded by the force of the invisible
coursers of never-erring necessity. And now, this dew-drop in the sky,
this ball, ponderous with mountains, lucent with waves, passing from
the short tyranny of watery Pisces and the frigid Ram, entered the
radiant demesne of Taurus and the Twins. There, fanned by vernal airs,
the Spirit of Beauty sprung from her cold repose; and, with winnowing
wings and soft pacing feet, set a girdle of verdure around the earth,
sporting among the violets, hiding within the springing foliage of the
trees, tripping lightly down the radiant streams into the sunny deep.
“For lo! winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear
on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice
of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her
green figs, and the vines, with the tender grape, give a good
smell.”[26] Thus was it in the time of the ancient regal poet; thus was
it now.
Yet how could we miserable hail the approach of this delightful season?
We hoped indeed that death did not now as heretofore walk in its
shadow; yet, left as we were alone to each other, we looked in each
other’s faces with enquiring eyes, not daring altogether to trust to
our presentiments, and endeavouring to divine which would be the
hapless survivor to the other three. We were to pass the summer at the
lake of Como, and thither we removed as soon as spring grew to her
maturity, and the snow disappeared from the hill tops. Ten miles from
Como, under the steep heights of the eastern mountains, by the margin
of the lake, was a villa called the Pliniana, from its being built on
the site of a fountain, whose periodical ebb and flow is described by
the younger Pliny in his letters. The house had nearly fallen into
ruin, till in the year 2090, an English nobleman had bought it, and
fitted it up with every luxury. Two large halls, hung with splendid
tapestry, and paved with marble, opened on each side of a court, of
whose two other sides one overlooked the deep dark lake, and the other
was bounded by a mountain, from whose stony side gushed, with roar and
splash, the celebrated fountain. Above, underwood of myrtle and tufts
of odorous plants crowned the rock, while the star-pointing giant
cypresses reared themselves in the blue air, and the recesses of the