The Wandering Jew — Complete
us, and then we will forget it forever, like an evil dream."
"I will answer you sincerely, at the risk of injuring myself," said the
prince.
"How could you make up your mind to exhibit yourself in public with--?"
"With that young girl?" interrupted Djalma.
"Yes, cousin," replied Mdlle. de Cardoville, and she waited for Djalma's
answer with anxious curiosity.
"A stranger to the customs of this country," said Djalma, without
any embarrassment, for he spoke the truth, "with a mind weakened
with despair, and misled by the fatal counsels of a man devoted to my
enemies, I believed, even as I was told, that, by displaying before
you the semblance of another love, I should excite your jealousy, and
thus--"
"Enough, cousin; I understand it all," said Adrienne hastily,
interrupting Djalma in her turn, that she might spare him a painful
confession. "I too must have been blinded by despair, not to have
seen through this wicked plot, especially after your rash and intrepid
action. To risk death for the sake of my bouquet!" added Adrienne,
shuddering at the mere remembrance. "But one last question," she
resumed, "though I am already sure of your answer. Did you receive a
letter that I wrote to you, on the morning of the day in which I saw you
at the theatre?"
Djalma made no reply. A dark cloud passed over his fine countenance,
and, for a second, his features assumed so menacing an expression, that
Adrienne was terrified at the effect produced by her words. But this
violent agitation soon passed away, and Djalma's brow became once more
calm and serene.
"I have been more merciful that I thought," said the prince to Adrienne,
who looked at him with astonishment. "I wished to come hither worthy of
you, my cousin. I pardoned the man who, to serve my enemies, had given
me all those fatal counsels. The same person, I am sure, must have
intercepted your letter. Just now, at the memory of the evils he thus
caused me, I, for a moment, regretted my clemency. But then, again, I
thought of your letter of yesterday--and my anger is all gone."
"Then the sad time of fear and suspicion is over--suspicion, that made
me doubt of your sentiments, and you of mine. Oh, yes! far removed from
us be that fatal past!" cried Adrienne de Cardoville, with deep joy..
Then, as if she had relieved her heart from the last thought of sadness,
she continued: "The future is all your own--the radiant future, without
cloud or obstacle, pure in the immensity of its horizon, and extending
beyond the reach of sight!"
It is impossible to describe the tone of enthusiastic hope which
accompanied these words. But suddenly Adrienne's features assumed an
expression of touching melancholy, and she added, in a voice of profound
emotion: "And yet--at this hour--so many unfortunate creatures suffer
pain!"
This simple touch of pity for the misfortunes of others, at the
moment when the noble maiden herself attained to the highest point of
happiness, had such an effect on Djalma, that involuntarily he fell
on his knees before Adrienne, clasped his hands together, and turned
towards her his fine countenance, with an almost daring expression.
Then, hiding his face in his hands, he bowed his head without speaking a
single word. There was a moment of deep silence. Adrienne was the first
to break it, as she saw a tear steal through the slender fingers of the
prince.
"My friend! what is the matter?" she exclaimed, as with a movement rapid
as thought, she stooped forward, and taking hold of Djalma's hands, drew
them from before his face. That face was bathed in tears.
"You weep!" cried Mdlle. de Cardoville, so much agitated that she kept
the hands of Djalma in her own; and, unable to dry his tears, the young
Hindoo allowed them to flow like so many drops of crystal over the pale
gold of his cheeks.
"There is not in this wide world a happiness like to mine!" said the
prince, in his soft, melodious voice, and with a kind of exhaustion:
"therefore do I feel great sadness, and so it should be. You give me
heaven--and were I to give you the whole earth, it would be but a poor
return. Alas! what can man do for a divinity, but humbly bless and
adore? He can never hope to return the gifts bestowed: and this makes
him suffer--not in his pride--but in his heart!"
Djalma did not exaggerate. He said what he really felt: and the rather
hyperbolical form, familiar to Oriental nations, could alone express his
thought. The tone of his regret was so sincere, his humility so gentle
and full of simplicity, that Adrienne, also moved to tears, answered him
with an effusion of serious tenderness, "My friend, we are both at
the supreme point of happiness. Our future felicity appears to have no
limits, and yet, though derived from different sources, sad reflections
have come to both of us. It is, you see, that there are some sorts of
happiness, which make you dizzy with their own immensity. For a moment,
the heart, the mind, the soul, are incapable of containing so much
bliss; it overflows and drowns us. Thus the flowers sometimes hang their
heads, oppressed by the too ardent rays of the sun, which is yet their
love and life. Oh, my friend! this sadness may be great, but it also
sweet!"
As she uttered these words, the voice of Adrienne grew fainter and
fainter, and her head bowed lower, as if she were indeed sinking beneath
the weight of her happiness. Djalma had remained kneeling before her,
his hands in hers--so that as she thus bent forward, her ivory forehead
and golden hair touched the amber-colored brow and ebon curls of Djalma.
And the sweet, silent tears of the two young lovers flowed together, and
mingled as they fell on their clasped hands.
Whilst this scene was passing in Cardoville House, Agricola had gone to
the Rue de Vaugirard, to deliver a letter from Adrienne to M. Hardy.
CHAPTER XLII. "THE IMITATION."
As we have already said, M. Hardy occupied a pavilion in the "Retreat"
annexed to the house in the Rue de Vaugirard, inhabited by a goodly
number of the reverend fathers of the Company of Jesus. Nothing could be
calmer and more silent than this dwelling. Every one spoke in whispers,
and the servants themselves had something oily in their words, something
sanctified in their very walk.
Like all that is subject to the chilling and destructive influences of
these men, this mournfully quiet house was entirely wanting in life
and animation. The boarders passed an existence of wearisome and icy
monotony, only broken by the use of certain devotional exercises;
and thus, in accordance with the selfish calculation of the reverend
fathers, the mind, deprived of all nourishment and all external support,
soon began to droop and pine away in solitude. The heart seemed to beat
more slowly, the soul was benumbed, the character weakened; at last,
all freewill, all power of discrimination, was extinguished, and the
boarders, submitting to the same process of self-annihilation as the
novices of the Company, became, like them, mere "corpses" in the hands
of the brotherhood.
The object of these manoeuvres was clear and simple. They secured the
means of obtaining all kinds of donations, the constant aim of the
skillful policy and merciless cupidity of these priests. By the aid of
enormous sums, of which they thus become the possessors or the trustees,
they follow out and obtain the success of their projects, even though
murder, incendiarism, revolt, and all the horrors of civil war, excited
by and through them, should drench in blood the lands over which they
seek to extend their dark dominion.
Such, then, was the asylum of peace and innocence in which Francois
Hardy had taken refuge. He occupied the ground-floor of a summer-house,
which opened upon a portion of the garden. His apartments had been
judiciously chosen, for we know with what profound and diabolical craft
the reverend fathers avail themselves of material influences, to make
a deep impression upon the minds they are moulding to their purpose.
Imagine a prospect bounded by a high wall, of a blackish gray,
half-covered with ivy, the plant peculiar to ruins. A dark avenue of
old yew-trees, so fit to shade the grave with their sepulchral verdure,
extended from this wall to a little semicircle, in front of the
apartment generally occupied by M. Hardy. Two or three mounds of earth,
bordered with box, symmetrically cut, completed the charms of this
garden, which in every respect resembled a cemetery.
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. Though the April sun shone
brightly, its rays, intercepted by the high wall of which we have
spoken, could not penetrate into that portion of the garden, obscure,
damp, and cold as a cavern, which communicated with M. Hardy's
apartment. The room was furnished with a perfect sense of the
comfortable. A soft carpet covered the floor; thick curtains of dark
green baize, the same color as the walls, sheltered an excellent bed,
and hung in folds about the glass door, which opened on the garden. Some
pieces of mahogany furniture, plain, but very clean and bright, stood
round the room. Above the secretary, placed just in front of the
bed, was a large ivory crucifix, upon a black velvet ground. The
chimney-piece was adorned with a clock, in an ebony case, with
ivory ornaments representing all sorts of gloomy emblems, such as
hour-glasses, scythes, death's-heads, etc. Now imagine this scene in
twilight, with its solitary and mournful silence, only broken at the
hour of prayer by the lugubrious sound of the bells of the neighboring
chapel, and you will recognize the infernal skill, with which these
dangerous priests know how to turn to account every external object,
when they wish to influence the mind of those they are anxious to gain
over.
And this was not all. After appealing to the senses, it was necessary to
address themselves to the intellect--and this was the method adopted by
the reverend fathers. A single book--but one--was left, as if by chance,
within reach. This book was Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation." But as it
might happen that M. Hardy would not have the courage or the desire to
read this book, thoughts and reflections borrowed from its merciless
pages, and written in very large characters, were suspended in black
frames close to the bed, or at other parts within sight, so that,
involuntarily, in the sad leisure of his inactive dejection, the
dweller's eyes were almost necessarily attracted by them. To that fatal
circle of despairing thoughts they confined the already weakened mind of
this unfortunate man, so long a prey to the most acute sorrow. What
he read mechanically, every instant of the day and night, whenever the
blessed sleep fled from his eyes inflamed with tears, was not enough
merely to plunge the soul of the victim into incurable despair, but also
to reduce him to the corpse-like obedience required by the Society of
Jesus. In that awful book may be found a thousand terrors to operate
on weak minds, a thousand slavish maxims to chain and degrade the
pusillanimous soul.
And now imagine M. Hardy carried wounded into this house; while his
heart, torn by bitter grief and the sense of horrible treachery, bled
even faster than his external injuries. Attended with the utmost care,
and thanks to the acknowledged skill of Dr. Baleinier, M. Hardy soon
recovered from the hurts he had received when he threw himself into the
embers of his burning factory. Yet, in order to favor the projects
of the reverend fathers, a drug, harmless enough in its effects, but
destined to act for a time upon the mind of the patient, and often
employed for that purpose in similar important cases by the pious
doctor, was administered to Hardy, and had kept him pretty long in
a state of mental torpor. To a soul agonized by cruel deceptions, it