A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

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'I did hear you talk

Far above singing; after you were gone

I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched

What stirred it so! Alas! I found it love."




CHAPTER IX. A TALK ON THE STAIRS.



No! I will not describe that scene; nor how pale the stately lady
sat on the border of the green, sunny meadow! The hearts of some
women tremble like leaves at every breath of love which reaches
them, and then are still again. Others, like the ocean, are moved
only by the breath of a storm, and not so easily lulled to rest. And
such was the proud heart of Mary Ashburton. It had remained unmoved
by the presence of this stranger; and the sound of his footsteps and
his voice excited in it no emotion. He had deceived himself!
Silently they walked homeward through the green meadow. The very
sunshine was sad; and the rising wind, through the old ruin above
them, sounded in his ears like a hollow laugh!

Flemming went straight to his chamber. On the way, he passed the
walnut trees under which he had first seen the face of Mary
Ashburton. Involuntarily he closed his eyes. They were full of
tears. O, there are places in this fair world, which we never wish
to see again, however dear they may be to us! The towers of the old
Franciscan convent never looked so gloomily as then, though the
bright summer sun was shining full upon them.

In his chamber he found Berkley. He was looking out of the
window, whistling.

"This evening I leave Interlachen forever," said Flemming, rather
abruptly. Berkley stared.

"Indeed! Pray what is the matter? You look as pale as a
ghost!"

"And have good reason to look pale," replied Flemming bitterly.
"Hoffmann says, in one of his note-books, that, on the eleventh of
March, at half past eight o'clock, precisely, he was an ass. That is
what I was this morning at half past ten o'clock, precisely, and am
now, and I suppose always shall be."

He tried to laugh, but could not. He then related to Berkley the
whole story, from beginning to end.

"This is a miserable piece of business!" exclaimed Berkley, when
he had finished. "Strange enough! And yet I have long ceased to
marvel at the caprices of women. Did not Pan captivate the chaste
Diana? Did not Titania love Nick Bottom, with his ass's head? Do you
think that maidens' eyes are no longer touched with the juice of
love-in-idleness! Take my word for it, she is in love with somebody
else. There must be some reason for this. No; women never have any
reasons, except their will. But never mind. Keep a stout heart. Care
killed a cat. After all,--what is she? Who is she? Only a--"

"Hush! hush," exclaimed Flemming, in great excitement. "Not one
word more, I beseech you. Do not think to console me, by
depreciating her. She is very dear to me still; a beautiful,
high-minded, noble woman."

"Yes," answered Berkley; "that is the waywith you all, you young
men. You see a sweet face, or a something, you know not what, and
flickering reason says, Good night; amen to common sense. The
imagination invests the beloved object with a thousand superlative
charms; furnishes her with all the purple and fine linen, all the
rich apparel and furniture, of human nature. I did the same when I
was young. I was once as desperately in love as you are now; and
went through all the

'Delicious deaths, soft exhalations

Of soul; dear and divine annihilations,

A thousand unknown rites

Of joys, and rarified delights.'

I adored and was rejected. 'You are in love with certain
attributes,' said the lady. 'Damn your attributes, Madam,' said I;
'I know nothing of attributes.' 'Sir,' said she, with dignity, 'you
have been drinking.' So we parted. She was married afterwards to
another, who knew something about attributes, I suppose. I have seen
her once since, and only once. She had a baby in a yellow gown. I
hate a baby in a yellow gown. How glad I am she did not marry me.
One of these days, you will be glad you have been rejected. Take my
word for it."

"All that does not prevent my lot from being a very melancholy
one!" said Flemming sadly.

"O, never mind the lot," cried Berkley laughing, "so long as you
don't get Lot's wife. If the cucumber is bitter, throw it away, as
the philosopher Marcus Antoninus says, in his Meditations. Forget
her, and all will be as if you had not known her."

"I shall never forget her," replied Flemming, rather solemnly.
"Not my pride, but my affections, are wounded; and the wound is too
deep ever to heal. I shall carry it with me always. I enter no more
into the world, but will dwell only in the world of my own thoughts.
All great and unusual occurrences, whether of joy or sorrow, lift us
above this earth; and we should do well always to preserve this
elevation. Hitherto I have not done so. But now I will no more
descend; I will sit apart and above the world, with my mournful, yet
holy thoughts."

"Whew! You had better go into society; the whirl and delirium
will cure you in a week. If you find a lady, who pleases you very
much, and you wish to marry her, and she will not listen to such a
horrid thing, I see but one remedy, which is to find another, who
pleases you more, and who will listen to it."

"No, my friend; you do not understand my character," said
Flemming, shaking his head. "I love this woman with a deep, and
lasting affection. I shall never cease to love her. This may be
madness in me; but so it is. Alas and alas! Paracelsus of old wasted
life in trying to discover its elixir, which after all turned out to
be alcohol; and instead of being made immortal upon earth, he died
drunk on the floor of a tavern. The like happens to many of us. We
waste our best years in distilling the sweetest flowers of life into
love-potions, which after all do not immortalize, butonly intoxicate
us. By Heaven! we are all of us mad."

"But are you sure the case is utterly hopeless?"

"Utterly! utterly!"

"And yet I perceive you have not laid aside all hope. You still
flatter yourself, that the lady's heart may change. The great secret
of happiness consists not in enjoying, but in renouncing. But it is
hard, very hard. Hope has as many lives as a cat or a king. I dare
say you have heard the old Italian proverb, 'The King never dies.'
But perhaps you have never heard, that, at the court of Naples,
where the dead body of a monarch lies in state, his dinner is
carried up to him as usual, and the court physician tastes it, to
see that it be not poisoned, and then the servants bear it out
again, saying 'The King does not dine to-day.' Hope in our souls is
King; and we also say, 'The King never dies.' Even when in reality
he lies dead within us, in a kind of solemn mockery we offer him his
accustomed food, but are constrainedto say, 'The King does not dine
to-day.' It must be an evil day, indeed, when a king of Naples has
no heart for his dinner! but you yourself are a proof, that the King
never dies. You are feeding your King, although you say he is
dead."

"To show you, that I do not wish to cherish hope," replied
Flemming, I shall leave Interlachen to-morrow morning. I am going to
the Tyrol."

"You are right," said Berkley; "there is nothing so good for
sorrow as rapid motion in the open air. I shall go with you; though
probably your conversation will not be very various; nothing but
Edward and Kunigunde."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Go to Berlin, and you will find out. However, jesting apart, I
will do all I can to cheer you, and make you forget the Dark Ladie,
and this untoward accident."

"Accident!" said Flemming. "This is no accident, but God's
Providence, which brought us together, to punish me for my
sins."

"O, my friend," interrupted Berkley, "if you see the finger of
Providence so distinctly in every act of your life, you will end by
thinking yourself an Apostle and Envoy Extraordinary. I see nothing
so very uncommon in what has happened to you."

"What! not when our souls are so akin to each other! When we
seemed so formed to be together,--to be one!"

"I have often observed," replied Berkley coldly, "that those who
are of kindred souls, rarely wed together; almost as rarely as those
who are akin by blood. There seems, indeed, to be such a thing as
spiritual incest. Therefore, mad lover, do not think to persuade
thyself and thy scornful lady, that you have kindred souls; but
rather the contrary; that you are much unlike; and each wanting in
those qualities which most mark and distinguish the other. Trust me,
thy courtship will then be more prosperous. But good morning. I must
prepare for this sudden journey."

On the following morning, Flemming and Berkleystarted on their
way to Innsbruck, like Huon of Bordeaux and Scherasmin on their way
to Babylon. Berkley's self-assumed duty was to console his
companion; a duty which he performed like an old Spanish Matadora, a
woman whose business was to attend the sick, and put her elbow into
the stomach of the dying to shorten their agony.





BOOK IV.




Epigraph

"Mortal, they softly say,

Peace to thy heart!

We too, yes, mortal,

Have been as thou art;

Hope-lifted, doubt-depressed,

Seeing in part,

Tried, troubled, tempted,--

Sustained,--as thou art."




CHAPTER I. A MISERERE.



In the Orlando Innamorato, Malagigi, the necromancer, puts all
the company to sleep by reading to them from a book. Some books have
this power of themselves and need no necromancer. Fearing, gentle
reader, that mine may be of this kind, I have provided these
introductory chapters, from time to time, like stalls or Misereres
in a church, with flowery canopies and poppy-heads over them, where
thou mayest sit down and sleep.

No,--the figure is not a bad one. This book does somewhat
resemble a minster, in the Romanesque style, with pinnacles, and
flying buttresses, and roofs,

"Gargoyled with greyhounds, and with many lions

Made of fine gold, with divers sundry dragons."

You step into its shade and coolness out of the hot streets of
life; a mysterious light streams through the painted glass of the
marigold windows, staining the cusps and crumpled leaves of the
window-shafts, and the cherubs and holy-water-stoups below. Here and
there is an image of the Virgin Mary; and other images, "in divers
vestures, called weepers, stand in housings made about the tomb";
and, above all, swells the vast dome of heaven, with its
star-mouldings, and the flaming constellations, like the mosaics in
the dome of St. Peter's. Have you not heard funeral psalms from the
chauntry? Have you not heard the sound of church-bells, as I
promised; mysterious sounds from the Past and Future, as from the
belfries outside the cathedral; even such a mournful, mellow, watery
peal of bells, as is heard sometimes at sea, from cities afar off
below the horizon?

I know not how this Romanesque, and at times flamboyant, style of
architecture may please thecritics. They may wish, perhaps, that I
had omitted some of my many ornaments, my arabesques, and roses, and
fantastic spouts, and Holy-Roods and Gallilee-steeples. But would it
then have been Romanesque?

But perhaps, gentle reader, thou art one of those, who think the
days of Romance gone forever. Believe it not! O, believe it not!
Thou hast at this moment in thy heart as sweet a romance as was ever
written. Thou art not less a woman, because thou dost not sit aloft
in a tower, with a tassel-gentle on thy wrist! Thou art not less a
man, because thou wearest no hauberk, nor mail-sark, and goest not
on horseback after foolish adventures! Nay, nay! Every one has a
Romance in his own heart. All that has blessed or awed the world
lies there; and

"The oracle within him, that which lives,

He must invoke and question,--not dead books,

Not ordinances, not mould-rotten papers."

Sooner or later some passages of every one's romance must be
written, either in words or actions. They will proclaim the truth;
for Truth is thought, which has assumed its appropriate garments,
either of words or actions; while Falsehood is thought, which,
disguised in words or actions not its own, comes before the blind
old world, as Jacob came before the patriarch Isaac, clothed in the
goodly raiment of his brother Esau. And the world, like the
patriarch, is often deceived; for, though the voice is Jacob's
voice, yet the hands are the hands of Esau, and the False takes away
the birth-right and the blessing from the True. Hence it is, that
the world so often lifts up its voice and weeps.

That very pleasing and fanciful Chinese Romance, the Shadow in
the Water, ends with the hero's marrying both the heroines. I hope
my gentle reader feels curious to know the end of this Romance,
which is a shadow upon the earth; and see whether there be any
marriage at all in it.

That is the very point I am now thinking of, as I sit here at my
pleasant chamber window, and enjoy the balmy air of a bright summer
morning, and watch the motions of the golden robin, that sits on its
swinging nest on the outermost, pendulous branch of yonder elm. The
broad meadows and the steel-blue river remind me of the meadows of
Unterseen, and the river Aar; and beyond them rise magnificent
snow-white clouds, piled up like Alps. Thus the shades of Washington
and William Tell seem to walk together on these Elysian Fields; for
it was here, that in days long gone, our great Patriot dwelt; and
yonder clouds so much resemble the snowy Alps, that they remind me
irresistibly of the Swiss. Noble examples of a high purpose and a
fixed will! Do they not move, Hyperion-like on high? Were they not,
likewise, sons of Heaven and Earth?

Nothing can be more lovely than these summer mornings; nor than
the southern window at which I sit and write, in this old mansion,
which is like an Italian Villa. But O, this
lassitude,--thisweariness,--when all around me is so bright! I have
this morning a singular longing for flowers; a wish to stroll among
the roses and carnations, and inhale their breath, as if it would
revive me. I wish I knew the man, who called flowers "the fugitive
poetry of Nature." From this distance, from these scholastic
shades,--from this leafy, blossoming, and beautiful Cambridge, I
stretch forth my hand to grasp his, as the hand of a poet!--Yes;
this morning I would rather stroll with him among the gay flowers,
than sit here and write. I feel so weary!

Old men with their staves, says the Spanish poet, are ever
knocking at the door of the grave. But I am not old. The Spanish
poet might have included the young also.--No matter! Courage, and
forward! The Romance must be finished; and finished soon.

O thou poor authorling! Reach a little deeper into the human
heart! Touch those strings,--touch those deeper strings, and more
boldly, or the notes will die away like whispers, and no earshall
hear them, save thine own! And, to cheer thy solitary labor,
remember, that the secret studies of an author are the sunken piers
upon which is to rest the bridge of his fame, spanning the dark
waters of Oblivion. They are out of sight; but without them no
superstructure can stand secure!

And now, Reader, since the sermon is over, and we are still
sitting here in this Miserere, let us read aloud a page from the old
parchment manuscript on the lettern before us; let us sing it
through these dusky aisles, like a Gregorian Chant, and startle the
sleeping congregation!

"I have read of the great river Euripus, which ebbeth and floweth
seven times a day, and with such violence, that it carrieth ships
upon it with full sail, directly against the wind. Seven times in an
hour ebbeth and floweth rash opinion, in the torrent of indiscreet
and troublesome apprehensions; carrying critic calumny and
squint-eyed detraction mainly against the wind of wisdom and
judgment."

In secula seculorum! Amen!




CHAPTER II. CURFEW BELLS.



Welcome Disappointment! Thy hand is cold and hard, but it is the
hand of a friend! Thy voice is stern and harsh, but it is the voice
of a friend! O, there is something sublime in calm endurance,
something sublime in the resolute, fixed purpose of suffering
without complaining, which makes disappointment oftentimes better
than success!

The emperor Isaac Angelus made a treaty with Saladin, and tried
to purchase the Holy Sepulchre with gold. Richard Lion-heart scorned
such alliance, and sought to recover it by battle. Thus do weak
minds make treaties with the passions they cannot overcome, and try
to purchase happiness at the expense of principle. But the resolute
will of a strong man scorns such means; and struggles nobly with his
foe, to achieve great deeds. Therefore, whosoever thou art that
sufferest, try not to dissipate thy sorrow by the breath of the
world, nor drown its voice in thoughtless merriment. It is a
treacherous peace that is purchased by indulgence. Rather take this
sorrow to thy heart, and make it a part of thee, and it shall
nourish thee till thou art strong again.

The shadows of the mind are like those of the body. In the
morning of life they all lie behind us; at noon, we trample them
under foot; and in the evening they stretch long, broad, and
deepening before us. Are not, then, the sorrows of childhood as dark
as those of age? Are not the morning shadows of life as deep and
broad as those of its evening? Yes; but morning shadows soon fade
away, while those of evening reach forward into the night and mingle
with the coming darkness. Man is begotten in delight and born in
pain; and in these are the rapture and labor of his life
fore-shadowed from the beginning. But thelife of man upon this fair
earth is made up for the most part of little pains and little
pleasures. The great wonder-flowers bloom but once in a
lifetime.

A week had already elapsed since the events recorded in the last
chapter. Paul Flemming went his way, a melancholy man, "drinking the
sweet wormwood of his sorrow." He did not rail at Providence and
call it fate, but suffered and was silent. It is a beautiful trait
in the lover's character, that he thinks no evil of the object
loved. What he suffered was no swift storm of feeling, that passes
away with a noise, and leaves the heart clearer; but a dark phantom
had risen up in the clear night, and, like that of Adamastor, hid
the stars; and if it ever vanished away for a season, still the deep
sound of the moaning main would be heard afar, through many a dark
and lonely hour. And thus he journeyed on, wrapped in desponding
gloom, and mainly heedless of all things around him. His mind was
distempered. That one face was always before him; that one voice
forever saying;

"You are not the Magician."

Painful, indeed, it is to be misunderstood and undervalued by
those we love. But this, too, in our life, must we learn to bear
without a murmur; for it is a tale often repeated.

There are persons in this world to whom all local associations
are naught. The genius of the place speaks not to them. Even on
battle-fields, where the voice of this genius is wont to be loudest,
they hear only the sound of their own voices; they meet there only
their own dull and pedantic thoughts, as the old grammarian Brunetto
Latini met on the plain of Roncesvalles a poor student riding on a
bay mule. This was not always the case with Paul Flemming, but it
had become so now. He felt no interest in the scenery around him. He
hardly looked at it. Even the difficult mountain-passes, where, from
his rocky eyrie the eagle-eyed Tyrolese peasant had watched his foe,
and the roaring, turbid torrent underneath, which had swallowed up
the bloody corse, that fell from the rocks like a crushed
worm, awakened no lively emotion in his breast. All around him seemed
dreamy and vague; all within dim, as in a sun's eclipse. As the
moon, whether visible or invisible, has power over the tides of the
ocean, so the face of that lady, whether present or absent, had
power over the tides of his soul; both by day and night, both waking
and sleeping. In every pale face and dark eye he saw a resemblance
to her; and what the day denied him in reality, the night gave him
in dreams.

"This is a strange, fantastic world," said Berkley, after a very
long silence, during which the two travellers had been sitting each
in his corner of the travelling carriage, wrapped in his own
reflections. "A very strange, fantastic world; where each one
pursues his own golden bubble, and laughs at his neighbour for doing
the same. I have been thinking how a moral Linnæus would classify
our race. I think he would divide it, not as Lord Byron did, into
two great classes, the bores and those who are bored, but into
three, namely; Happy Men, Lucky Dogs, and Miserable Wretches. This is
more true and philosophical, though perhaps not quite so
comprehensive. He is the Happy Man, who, blessed with modest ease, a
wife and children,--sits enthroned in the hearts of his family, and
knows no other ambition, than that of making those around him happy.
But the Lucky Dog is he, who, free from all domestic cares, saunters
up and down his room, in morning gown and slippers; drums on the
window of a rainy day; and, as he stirs his evening fire, snaps his
fingers at the world, and says, 'I have no wife nor children, good
or bad, to provide for.' I had a friend, who is now no more. He was
taken away in the bloom of life, by a very rapid--widow. He was by
birth and by profession a beau,--born with a quizzing-glass and a
cane. Cock of the walk, he flapped his wings, and crowed among the
feathered tribe. But alas! a fair, white partlet has torn his crest
out, and he shall crow no more. You will generally find him of a
morning, smelling round a beef-cart, with domestic felicity written
in every line of his countenance; and sometimes meet him in a
cross-street at noon, hurrying homeward, with a beef-steak on a
wooden skewer, or a fresh fish, with a piece of tarred twine run
through its gills. In the evening he rocks the cradle, and gets up
in the night when the child cries. Like a Goth, of the Dark Ages, he
consults his wife on all mighty matters, and looks upon her as a
being of more than human goodness and wisdom. In short, the ladies
all say he is a very domestic man, and makes a good husband; which,
under the rose, is only a more polite way of saying he is
hen-pecked. He is a Happy Man. I have another dear friend, who is a
sexagenary bachelor. He has one of those well-oiled dispositions,
which turn upon the hinges of the world without creaking. The
hey-day of life is over with him; but his old age is sunny and
chirping; and a merry heart still nestles in his tottering frame,
like a swallow that builds in a tumble-down chimney. He is a
professed Squire of Dames. The rustle of a silk gown is music to his
ears, and his imagination is continuallylantern-led by some
will-with-a-wisp in the shape of a lady's stomacher. In his devotion
to the fair sex,--the muslin, as he calls it,--he is the gentle
flower of chivalry. It is amusing to see how quick he strikes into
the scent of a lady's handkerchief. When once fairly in pursuit,
there is no such thing as throwing him out. His heart looks out at
his eye; and his inward delight tingles down to the tail of his
coat. He loves to bask in the sunshine of a smile; when he can
breathe the sweet atmosphere of kid gloves and cambric
handkerchiefs, his soul is in its element; and his supreme delight
is to pass the morning, to use his own quaint language, 'in making
dodging calls, and wiggling round among the ladies!' He is a lucky
dog!"

"And as a specimen of the class of Miserable Wretches, I suppose
you will take me," said Flemming, making an effort to enter into his
friend's humor. "Certainly I am wretched enough. You may make me the
stuffed bear,--the specimen of this class."

"By no means," replied Berkley; "you are not reduced so low. He
only is utterly wretched, who is the slave of his own passions, or
those of others. This, I trust, will never be your condition. Why so
wan and pale, fond lover? Do you remember Sir John Suckling's
Song?

'Why so wan and pale, fond lover;

Pr'ythee why so pale?

Will, if looking well can't move her,

Looking ill prevail?

Pr'ythee why so pale?

'Why so dull and mute, young sinner;

Pr'ythee why so mute?

Will, if speaking well can't win her,

Saying nothing do 't?

Pr'ythee why so mute?

'Quit, quit, for shame! this cannot move,

This cannot take her!

If of herself she do not love,

Nothing will make her!

The devil take her!'

How do you like that?"

"To you I say quit, quit for shame;" replied Flemming. "Why quote
the songs of that witty and licentious age? Have you no better
consolation to offer me? How many, many times must I tell you, that
I bear the lady no ill-will. I do not blame her for not loving me. I
desire her happiness, even at the sacrifice of my own."

"That is generous in you, and deserves a better fate. But you are
so figurative in all you say, that a stranger would think you had no
real feeling,--and only fancied yourself in love."

"Expression of feeling is different with different minds. It is
not always simple. Some minds, when excited, naturally speak in
figures and similitudes. They do not on that account feel less
deeply. This is obvious in our commonest modes of speech. It depends
upon the individual."

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