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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Devereux, by Bulwer-Lytton, Book V.
+#56 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: Devereux, Book V.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7628]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 25, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVEREUX, BY LYTTON, BOOK V. ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Dagny,
+               and David Widger,
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A PORTRAIT.
+
+MYSTERIOUS impulse at the heart, which never suffers us to be at rest,
+which urges us onward as by an unseen yet irresistible law--human
+planets in a petty orbit, hurried forever and forever, till our course
+is run and our light is quenched--through the circle of a dark and
+impenetrable destiny! art thou not some faint forecast and type of our
+wanderings hereafter; of the unslumbering nature of the soul; of the
+everlasting progress which we are predoomed to make through the
+countless steps and realms and harmonies in the infinite creation?  Oh,
+often in my rovings have I dared to dream so,--often have I soared on
+the wild wings of thought above the "smoke and stir" of this dim earth,
+and wrought, from the restless visions of my mind, a chart of the
+glories and the wonders which the released spirit may hereafter visit
+and behold!
+
+What a glad awakening from self,--what a sparkling and fresh draught
+from a new source of being,--what a wheel within wheel, animating,
+impelling, arousing all the rest of this animal machine, is the first
+excitement of Travel! the first free escape from the bonds of the linked
+and tame life of cities and social vices,--the jaded pleasure and the
+hollow love, the monotonous round of sordid objects and dull
+desires,--the eternal chain that binds us to things and beings,
+mockeries of ourselves,--alike, but oh, how different! the shock that
+brings us nearer to men only to make us strive against them, and learn,
+from the harsh contest of veiled deceit and open force, that the more we
+share the aims of others, the more deeply and basely rooted we grow to
+the littleness of self!
+
+I passed more lingeringly through France than I did through the other
+portions of my route.  I had dwelt long enough in the capital to be
+anxious to survey the country.  It was then that the last scale which
+the magic of Louis Quatorze and the memory of his gorgeous court had
+left upon the mortal eye fell off, and I saw the real essence of that
+monarch's greatness and the true relics of his reign.  I saw the poor,
+and the degraded, and the racked, and the priest-ridden, tillers and
+peoplers of the soil, which made the substance beneath the glittering
+and false surface,--the body of that vast empire, of which I had
+hitherto beheld only the face, and THAT darkly, and for the most part
+covered by a mask!
+
+No man can look upon France, beautiful France,--her rich soil, her
+temperate yet maturing clime, the gallant and bold spirits which she
+produces, her boundaries so indicated and protected by Nature itself,
+her advantages of ocean and land, of commerce and agriculture,--and not
+wonder that her prosperity should be so bloated, and her real state so
+wretched and diseased.
+
+Let England draw the moral, and beware not only of wars which exhaust,
+but of governments which impoverish.  A waste of the public wealth is
+the most lasting of public afflictions; and "the treasury which is
+drained by extravagance must be refilled by crime."*
+
+
+* Tacitus.
+
+
+I remember one beautiful evening an accident to my carriage occasioned
+my sojourn for a whole afternoon in a small village.  The Cure honoured
+me with a visit; and we strolled, after a slight repast, into the
+hamlet.  The priest was complaisant, quiet in manner, and not ill
+informed for his obscure station and scanty opportunities of knowledge;
+he did not seem, however, to possess the vivacity of his countrymen, but
+was rather melancholy and pensive, not only in his expression of
+countenance, but his cast of thought.
+
+"You have a charming scene here: I almost feel as if it were a sin to
+leave it so soon."
+
+We were, indeed, in a pleasant and alluring spot at the time I addressed
+this observation to the good Cure.  A little rivulet emerged from the
+copse to the left, and ran sparkling and dimpling beneath our feet, to
+deck with a more living verdure the village green, which it intersected
+with a winding nor unmelodious stream.  We had paused, and I was leaning
+against an old and solitary chestnut-tree, which commanded the whole
+scene.  The village was a little in the rear, and the smoke from its few
+chimneys rose slowly to the silent and deep skies, not wholly unlike the
+human wishes, which, though they spring from the grossness and the fumes
+of earth, purify themselves as they ascend to heaven.  And from the
+village (when other sounds, which I shall note presently, were for an
+instant still) came the whoop of children, mellowed by distance into a
+confused yet thrilling sound, which fell upon the heart like the voice
+of our gone childhood itself.  Before, in the far expanse, stretched a
+chain of hills on which the autumn sun sank slowly, pouring its yellow
+beams over groups of peasantry, which, on the opposite side of the
+rivulet and at some interval from us, were scattered, partly over the
+green, and partly gathered beneath the shade of a little grove.  The
+former were of the young, and those to whom youth's sports are dear, and
+were dancing to the merry music, which (ever and anon blended with the
+laugh and the tone of a louder jest) floated joyously on our ears.  The
+fathers and matrons of the hamlet were inhaling a more quiet joy beneath
+the trees, and I involuntarily gave a tenderer interest to their
+converse by supposing them to sanction to each other the rustic loves
+which they might survey among their children.
+
+"Will not Monsieur draw nearer to the dancers?" said the Cure; "there is
+a plank thrown over the rivulet a little lower down."
+
+"No!" said I, "perhaps they are seen to better advantage where we are:
+what mirth will bear too close an inspection?"
+
+True, Sir," remarked the priest, and he sighed.
+
+"Yet," I resumed musingly, and I spoke rather to myself than to my
+companion, "yet, how happy do they seem! what a revival of our Arcadian
+dreams are the flute and the dance, the glossy trees all glowing in the
+autumn sunset, the green sod, and the murmuring rill, and the buoyant
+laugh, startling the satyr in his leafy haunts; and the rural loves
+which will grow sweeter still when the sun has set, and the twilight has
+made the sigh more tender and the blush of a mellower hue!  Ah, why is
+it only the revival of a dream? why must it be only an interval of
+labour and woe, the brief saturnalia of slaves, the green resting-spot
+in a dreary and long road of travail and toil?"
+
+"You are the first stranger I have met," said the Cure, "who seems to
+pierce beneath the thin veil of our Gallic gayety; the first to whom the
+scene we now survey is fraught with other feelings than a belief in the
+happiness of our peasantry, and an envy at its imagined exuberance.  But
+as it is not the happiest individuals, so I fear it is not the happiest
+nations, that are the gayest."
+
+I looked at the Cure with some surprise.  "Your remark is deeper than
+the ordinary wisdom of your tribe, my Father," said I.
+
+"I have travelled over three parts of the globe," answered the Cure: "I
+was not always intended for what I am;" and the priest's mild eyes
+flashed with a sudden light that as suddenly died away.  "Yes, I have
+travelled over the greater part of the known world," he repeated, in a
+more quiet tone; "and I have noted that where a man has many comforts to
+guard, and many rights to defend, he necessarily shares the thought and
+the seriousness of those who feel the value of a treasure which they
+possess, and whose most earnest meditations are intent upon providing
+against its loss.  I have noted, too, that the joy produced by a
+momentary suspense of labour is naturally great in proportion to the
+toil; hence it is that no European mirth is so wild as that of the
+Indian slave, when a brief holiday releases him from his task.  Alas!
+that very mirth is the strongest evidence of the weight of the previous
+chains; even as, in ourselves, we find the happiest moment we enjoy is
+that immediately succeeding the cessation of deep sorrow to the mind or
+violent torture to the body."*
+
+
+* This reflection, if true, may console us for the loss of those village
+dances and pleasant holidays for which "merry England" was once
+celebrated.  The loss of them has been ascribed to the gloomy influence
+of the Puritans; but it has never occurred to the good poets, who have
+so mourned over that loss, that it is also to be ascribed to the
+/liberty/ which those Puritans /generalized/, if they did not
+introduce.--ED.
+
+
+I was struck by this observation of the priest.
+
+"I see now," said I, "that as an Englishman I have no reason to repine
+at the proverbial gravity of my countrymen, or to envy the lighter
+spirit of the sons of Italy and France."
+
+"No," said the Cure; "the happiest nations are those in whose people you
+witness the least sensible reverses from gayety to dejection; and that
+/thought/, which is the noblest characteristic of the isolated man, is
+also that of a people.  Freemen are serious; they have objects at their
+heart worthy to engross attention.  It is reserved for slaves to indulge
+in groans at one moment and laughter at another."
+
+"At that rate," said I, "the best sign for France will be when the
+gayety of her sons is no longer a just proverb, and the laughing lip is
+succeeded by the thoughtful brow."
+
+We remained silent for several minutes; our conversation had shed a
+gloom over the light scene before us, and the voice of the flute no
+longer sounded musically on my ear.  I proposed to the Cure to return to
+my inn.  As we walked slowly in that direction, I surveyed my companion
+more attentively than I had hitherto done.  He was a model of masculine
+vigour and grace of form; and, had I not looked earnestly upon his
+cheek, I should have thought him likely to outlive the very oaks around
+the hamlet church where he presided.  But the cheek was worn and hectic,
+and seemed to indicate that the keen fire which burns at the deep heart,
+unseen, but unslaking, would consume the mortal fuel, long before Time
+should even have commenced his gradual decay.
+
+"You have travelled, then, much, Sir?" said I, and the tone of my voice
+was that of curiosity.
+
+The good Cure penetrated into my desire to hear something of his
+adventures; and few are the recluses who are not gratified by the
+interest of others, or who are unwilling to reward it by recalling those
+portions of life most cherished by themselves.  Before we parted that
+night, he told me his little history.  He had been educated for the
+army; before he entered the profession he had seen the daughter of a
+neighbour, loved her, and the old story,--she loved him again, and died
+before the love passed the ordeal of marriage.  He had no longer a
+desire for glory, but he had for excitement.  He sold his little
+property and travelled, as he had said, for nearly fourteen years,
+equally over the polished lands of Europe and the far climates where
+Truth seems fable and Fiction finds her own legends realized or
+excelled.
+
+He returned home poor in pocket and wearied in spirit.  He became what I
+beheld him.  "My lot is fixed now," said he, in conclusion; "but I find
+there is all the difference between quiet and content: my heart eats
+itself away here; it is the moth fretting the garment laid by, more than
+the storm or the fray would have worn it."
+
+I said something, commonplace enough, about solitude, and the blessings
+of competence, and the country.  The Cure shook his head gently, but
+made no answer; perhaps he did wisely in thinking the feelings are ever
+beyond the reach of a stranger's reasoning.  We parted more
+affectionately than acquaintances of so short a date usually do; and
+when I returned from Russia, I stopped at the village on purpose to
+inquire after him.  A few months had done the work: the moth had already
+fretted away the human garment; and I walked to his lowly and nameless
+grave, and felt that it contained the only quiet in which monotony is
+not blended with regret!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE ENTRANCE INTO PETERSBURG.--A RENCONTRE WITH AN INQUISITIVE AND
+MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.--NOTHING LIKE TRAVEL.
+
+IT was certainly like entering a new world when I had the frigid
+felicity of entering Russia.  I expected to have found Petersburg
+a wonderful city, and I was disappointed; it was a wonderful
+beginning of a city, and that was all I ought to leave expected.
+But never, I believe, was there a place which there was so much
+difficulty in arriving at: such winds, such climate, such police
+arrangements,--arranged, too, by such fellows! six feet high, with
+nothing human about them but their uncleanness and ferocity!  Such
+vexatious delays, difficulties, ordeals, through which it was necessary
+to pass, and to pass, too, with an air of the most perfect satisfaction
+and content.  By the Lord! one would have imagined, at all events, it
+must be an earthly paradise, to be so arduous of access, instead of a
+Dutch-looking town, with comfortless canals, and the most terrible
+climate in which a civilized creature was ever frozen to death.  "It is
+just the city a nation of bears would build, if bears ever became
+architects," said I to myself, as I entered the northern capital, with
+my teeth chattering and my limbs in a state of perfect insensibility.
+
+My vehicle stopped, at last, at an hotel to which I had been directed.
+It was a circumstance, I believe, peculiar to Petersburg, that, at the
+time I speak of, none of its streets had a name; and if one wanted to
+find out a house, one was forced to do so by oral description.  A
+pleasant thing it was, too, to stop in the middle of a street, to listen
+to such description at full length, and find one's self rapidly becoming
+ice as the detail progressed.  After I was lodged, thawed, and fed, I
+fell fast asleep, and slept for eighteen hours, without waking once; to
+my mind, it was a miracle that I ever woke again.
+
+I then dressed myself, and taking my interpreter,--who was a Livonian, a
+great rascal, but clever, who washed twice a week, and did not wear a
+beard above eight inches long,--I put myself into my carriage, and went
+to deliver my letters of introduction.  I had one in particular to the
+Admiral Apraxin; and it was with him that I was directed to confer,
+previous to seeking an interview with the Emperor.  Accordingly I
+repaired to his hotel, which was situated on a sort of quay, and was
+really, for Petersburg, very magnificent.  In this quarter, then or a
+little later, lived about thirty other officers of the court, General
+Jagoyinsky, General Cyernichoff, etc.; and, appropriately enough, the
+most remarkable public building in the vicinity is the great
+slaughter-house,--a fine specimen that of practical satire!
+
+On endeavouring to pass through the Admiral's hall I had the
+mortification of finding myself rejected by his domestics.  As two men
+in military attire were instantly admitted, I thought this a little hard
+upon a man who had travelled so far to see his admiralship, and,
+accordingly, hinted my indignation to Mr. Muscotofsky, my interpreter.
+
+"You are not so richly dressed as those gentlemen," said he.
+
+"That is the reason, is it?"
+
+"If it so please Saint Nicholas, it is; and, besides, those gentlemen
+have two men running before them to cry, 'Clear the way!'"
+
+"I had better, then, dress myself better, and take two /avant
+couriers/."
+
+"If it so please Saint Nicholas."  Upon this I returned, robed myself in
+scarlet and gold, took a couple of lacqueys, returned to Admiral
+Apraxin's, and was admitted in an instant.  Who would have thought these
+savages so like us?  Appearances, you see, produce realities all over
+the world!
+
+The Admiral, who was a very great man at court--though he narrowly
+escaped Siberia, or the knout, some time after--was civil enough to me:
+but I soon saw that, favourite as he was with the Czar, that great man
+left but petty moves in the grand chessboard of politics to be played by
+any but himself; and my proper plan in this court appeared evidently to
+be unlike that pursued in most others, where it is better to win the
+favourite than the prince.  Accordingly, I lost no time in seeking an
+interview with the Czar himself, and readily obtained an appointment to
+that effect.
+
+On the day before the interview took place, I amused myself with walking
+over the city, gazing upon its growing grandeur, and casting, in
+especial, a wistful eye upon the fortress or citadel, which is situated
+in an island, surrounded by the city, and upon the building of which
+more than one hundred thousand men are supposed to have perished.  So
+great a sacrifice does it require to conquer Nature!
+
+While I was thus amusing myself, I observed a man in a small chaise with
+one horse pass me twice, and look at me very earnestly.  Like most of my
+countrymen, I do not love to be stared at; however, I thought it better
+in that unknown country to change my intended frown for a good-natured
+expression of countenance, and turned away.  A singular sight now struck
+my attention: a couple of men with beards that would have hidden a
+cassowary, were walking slowly along in their curious long garments, and
+certainly (I say it reverently) disgracing the semblance of humanity,
+when, just as they came by a gate, two other men of astonishing height
+started forth, each armed with a pair of shears.  Before a second was
+over, off went the beards of the first two passengers; and before
+another second expired, off went the skirts of their garments too: I
+never saw excrescences so expeditiously lopped.  The two operators, who
+preserved a profound silence during this brief affair, then retired a
+little, and the mutilated wanderers pursued their way with an air of
+extreme discomfiture.
+
+"Nothing like travel, certainly!" said I, unconsciously aloud.
+
+"True!" said a voice in English behind me.  I turned, and saw the man
+who had noticed me so earnestly in the one horse chaise.  He was a tall,
+robust man, dressed very plainly, and even shabbily, in a green uniform,
+with a narrow tarnished gold lace; and I judged him to be a foreigner,
+like myself, though his accent and pronunciation evidently showed that
+he was not a native of the country in the language of which he accosted
+me.
+
+"It is very true," said he again; "there is nothing like travel!"
+
+"And travel," I rejoined courteously, "in those places where travel
+seldom extends.  I have only been six days at Petersburg, and till I
+came hither, I knew nothing of the variety of human nature or the power
+of human genius.  But will you allow me to ask the meaning of the very
+singular occurrence we have just witnessed?"
+
+"Oh, nothing," rejoined the man, with a broad strong smile, "nothing but
+an attempt to make men out of brutes.  This custom of shaving is not,
+thank Heaven, much wanted now: some years ago it was requisite to have
+several stations for barbers and tailors to perform their duties in.
+Now this is very seldom necessary; those gentlemen were especially
+marked out for the operation.  By ------" (and here the man swore a
+hearty English and somewhat seafaring oath, which a little astonished me
+in the streets of Petersburg), "I wish it were as easy to lop off all
+old customs! that it were as easy to clip the /beard of the mind/, Sir!
+Ha! ha!"
+
+"But the Czar must have found a little difficulty in effecting even this
+outward amendment; and to say truth, I see so many beards about still
+that I think the reform has been more partial than universal."
+
+"Ah, those are the beards of the common people: the Czar leaves those
+for the present.  Have you seen the docks yet?"
+
+"No, I am not sufficiently a sailor to take much interest in them."
+
+"Humph! humph! you are a soldier, perhaps?"
+
+"I hope to be so one day or other: I am not yet!"
+
+"Not yet! humph! there are opportunities in plenty for those who wish
+it; what is your profession, then, and what do you know best?"
+
+I was certainly not charmed with the honest inquisitiveness of the
+stranger.  "Sir," said I, "Sir, my profession is to answer no questions;
+and what I know best is--to hold my tongue!"
+
+The stranger laughed out.  "Well, well, that is what all Englishmen know
+best!" said he; "but don't be offended: if you will come home with me I
+will give you a glass of brandy!"
+
+"I am very much obliged for the offer, but business obliges me to
+decline it; good morning, Sir."
+
+"Good morning!" answered the man, slightly moving his hat, in answer to
+my salutation.
+
+We separated, as I thought; but I was mistaken.  As ill-luck would have
+it, I lost my way in endeavouring to return home.  While I was
+interrogating a French artisan, who seemed in a prodigious hurry, up
+comes my inquisitive friend in green again.  "Ha! you have lost your
+way: I can put you into it better than any man in Petersburg!"
+
+I thought it right to accept the offer; and we moved on side by side.  I
+now looked pretty attentively at my gentleman.  I have said that he was
+tall and stout; he was also remarkably well-built, and had a kind of
+seaman's ease and freedom of gait and manner.  His countenance was very
+peculiar; short, firm, and strongly marked; a small, but thick mustachio
+covered his upper lip; the rest of his face was shaved.  His mouth was
+wide, but closed, when silent, with that expression of iron resolution
+which no feature /but/ the mouth can convey.  His eyes were large,
+well-opened, and rather stern; and when, which was often in the course
+of conversation, he pushed back his hat from his forehead, the motion
+developed two strong deep wrinkles between the eyebrows, which might be
+indicative either of thought or of irascibility,--perhaps of both.  He
+spoke quickly, and with a little occasional embarrassment of voice,
+which, however, never communicated itself to his manner.  He seemed,
+indeed, to have a perfect acquaintance with the mazes of the growing
+city; and, every now and then, stopped to say when such a house was
+built, whither such a street was to lead, etc.  As each of these details
+betrayed some great triumph over natural obstacles and sometimes over
+national prejudice, I could not help dropping a few enthusiastic
+expressions in praise of the genius of the Czar.  The man's eyes
+sparkled as he heard them.
+
+"It is easy to see," said I, "that you sympathize with me, and that the
+admiration of this great man is not confined to Englishmen.  How little
+in comparison seem all other monarchs!--they ruin kingdoms; the Czar
+creates one.  The whole history of the world does not afford an instance
+of triumphs so vast, so important, so glorious as his have been.  How
+his subjects should adore him!"
+
+"No," said the stranger, with an altered and thoughtful manner, "it is
+not his subjects, but /their posterity/, that will appreciate his
+motives, and forgive him for wishing Russia to be an empire of MEN.  The
+present generation may sometimes be laughed, sometimes forced, out of
+their more barbarous habits and brute-like customs, but they cannot be
+reasoned out of them; and they don't love the man who attempts to do it.
+Why, Sir, I question whether Ivan IV., who used to butcher the dogs
+between prayers for an occupation, and between meals for an appetite, I
+question whether his memory is not to the full as much loved as the
+living Czar.  I know, at least, that whenever the latter attempts a
+reform, the good Muscovites shrug up their shoulders, and mutter, 'We
+did not do these things in the good old days of Ivan IV.'"
+
+"Ah! the people of all nations are wonderfully attached to their ancient
+customs; and it is not unfrequently that the most stubborn enemies to
+living men are their own ancestors."
+
+"Ha! ha!--true--good!" cried the stranger; and then, after a short
+pause, he said in a tone of deep feeling which had not hitherto seemed
+at all a part of his character, "We should do that which is good to the
+human race, from some principle within, and should not therefore abate
+our efforts for the opposition, the rancour, or the ingratitude that we
+experience without.  It will be enough reward for Peter I., if
+hereafter, when (in that circulation of knowledge throughout the world
+which I can compare to nothing better than the circulation of the blood
+in the human body) the glory of Russia shall rest, not upon the extent
+of her dominions, but that of her civilization,--not upon the number of
+inhabitants, embruted and besotted, but the number of enlightened,
+prosperous, and free men; it will be enough for him, if he be considered
+to have laid the first stone of that great change,--if his labours be
+fairly weighed against the obstacles which opposed them,--if, for his
+honest and unceasing endeavour to improve millions, he be not too
+severely judged for offences in a more limited circle,--and if, in
+consideration of having fought the great battle against custom,
+circumstances, and opposing nature, he be sometimes forgiven for not
+having invariably conquered himself."
+
+As the stranger broke off abruptly, I could not but feel a little
+impressed by his words and the energy with which they were spoken.  We
+were now in sight of my lodging.  I asked my guide to enter it; but the
+change in our conversation seemed to have unfitted him a little for my
+companionship.
+
+"No," said he, "I have business now; we shall meet again; what's your
+name?"
+
+"Certainly," thought I, "no man ever scrupled so little to ask plain
+questions:" however, I answered him truly and freely.
+
+"Devereux!" said he, as if surprised.  "Ha!--well--we shall meet again.
+Good day."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE CZAR.--THE CZARINA.--A FEAST AT A RUSSIAN NOBLEMAN'S.
+
+THE next day I dressed myself in my richest attire; and, according to my
+appointment, went with as much state as I could command to the Czar's
+palace (if an exceedingly humble abode can deserve so proud an
+appellation).  Although my mission was private, I was a little surprised
+by the extreme simplicity and absence from pomp which the royal
+residence presented.  I was ushered for a few moments into a paltry
+ante-chamber, in which were several models of ships, cannon, and houses;
+two or three indifferent portraits,--one of King William III., another
+of Lord Caermarthen.  I was then at once admitted into the royal
+presence.
+
+There were only two persons in the room,--one a female, the other a man;
+no officers, no courtiers, no attendants, none of the insignia nor the
+witnesses of majesty.  The female was Catherine, the Czarina; the man
+was the stranger I had met the day before--and Peter the Great.  I was a
+little startled at the identity of the Czar with my inquisitive
+acquaintance.  However, I put on as assured a countenance as I could.
+Indeed, I had spoken sufficiently well of the royal person to feel very
+little apprehension at having unconsciously paid so slight a respect to
+the royal dignity.
+
+"Ho! ho!" cried the Czar, as I reverently approached him; "I told you we
+should meet soon!" and turning round, he presented me to her Majesty.
+That extraordinary woman received me very graciously: and, though I had
+been a spectator of the most artificial and magnificent court in Europe,
+I must confess that I could detect nothing in the Czarina's air
+calculated to betray her having been the servant of a Lutheran minister
+and the wife of a Swedish dragoon; whether it was that greatness was
+natural to her, or whether (which was more probable) she was an instance
+of the truth of Suckling's hackneyed thought, in "Brennoralt,"--"Success
+is a rare paint,--hides all the ugliness."
+
+While I was making my salutations, the Czarina rose very quietly, and
+presently, to my no small astonishment, brought me with her own hand a
+tolerably large glass of raw brandy.  There is nothing in the world I
+hate so much as brandy; however, I swallowed the potation as if it had
+been nectar, and made some fine speech about it, which the good Czarina
+did not seem perfectly to understand.  I then, after a few preliminary
+observations, entered upon my main business with the Czar.  Her Majesty
+sat at a little distance, but evidently listened very attentively to the
+conversation.  I could not but be struck with the singularly bold and
+strong sense of my royal host.  There was no hope of deluding or
+misleading him by diplomatic subterfuge.  The only way by which that
+wonderful man was ever misled was through his passions.  His reason
+conquered all errors but those of temperament.  I turned the
+conversation as artfully as I could upon Sweden and Charles XII.
+"Hatred to one power," thought I, "may produce love to another; and if
+it does, the child will spring from a very vigorous parent."  While I
+was on this subject, I observed a most fearful convulsion come over the
+face of the Czar,--one so fearful that I involuntarily looked away.
+Fortunate was it that I did so.  Nothing ever enraged him more than
+being observed in those constitutional contortions of countenance to
+which from his youth he had been subjected.
+
+After I had conversed with the Czar as long as I thought decorum
+permitted, I rose to depart.  He dismissed me very complaisantly.  I
+re-entered my fine equipage, and took the best of my way home.
+
+Two or three days afterwards, the Czar ordered me to be invited to a
+grand dinner at Apraxin's.  I went there, and so found myself in
+conversation with a droll little man, a Dutch Minister, and a great
+favourite with the Czar.  The Admiral and his wife, before we sat down
+to eat, handed round to each of their company a glass of brandy on a
+plate.
+
+"What an odious custom!" whispered the little Dutch Minister, smacking
+his lips, however, with an air of tolerable content.
+
+"Why," said I, prudently, "all countries have their customs.  Some
+centuries ago, a French traveller thought it horrible in us Englishmen
+to eat raw oysters.  But the English were in the right to eat oysters;
+and perhaps, by and by, so much does civilization increase, we shall
+think the Russians in the right to drink brandy.  But really [we had now
+sat down to the entertainment], I am agreeably surprised here.  All the
+guests are dressed like my own countrymen; a great decorum reigns
+around.  If it were a little less cold, I might fancy myself in London
+or in Paris."
+
+"Wait," quoth the little Dutchman, with his mouth full of jelly broth,
+"wait till you hear them talk.  What think you, now, that lady next me
+is saying?"
+
+"I cannot guess: but she has the prettiest smile in the world; and there
+is something at once so kind and so respectful in her manner that I
+should say she was either asking some great favour, or returning thanks
+for one."
+
+"Right," cried the little Minister, "I will interpret for you.  She is
+saying to that old gentleman, 'Sir, I am extremely grateful--and may
+Saint Nicholas bless you for it--for your very great kindness in having,
+the day before yesterday, at your sumptuous entertainment, made me so
+deliciously--drunk!'"
+
+"You are witty, Monsieur," said I, smiling.  "/Se non e vero e ben
+trovato/."
+
+"By my soul, it is true," cried the Dutchman; "but, hush!--see, they are
+going to cut up that great pie."
+
+I turned my eyes to the centre of the table, which was ornamented with a
+huge pasty.  Presently it was cut open, and out--walked a hideous little
+dwarf.
+
+"Are they going to eat him?" said I.
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed the Dutchman.  "No! this is a fashion of the Czar's,
+which the Admiral thinks it good policy to follow.  See, it tickles the
+hebete Russians.  They are quite merry on it."
+
+"To be sure," said I; "practical jokes are the only witticisms savages
+understand."
+
+"Ay, and if it were not for such jokes now and then, the Czar would be
+odious beyond measure; but dwarf pies and mock processions make his
+subjects almost forgive him for having shortened their clothes and
+clipped their beards."
+
+"The Czar is very fond of those mock processions?"
+
+"Fond!" and the little man sank his voice into a whisper; "he is the
+sublimest buffoon that ever existed.  I will tell you an instance--Do
+you like these Hungary wines, by the by?--On the 9th of last June, the
+Czar carried me, and half-a-dozen more of the foreign ministers, to his
+pleasure-house (Peterhoff).  Dinner, as usual, all drunk with Tokay, and
+finished by a quart of brandy each, from her Majesty's own hand.
+Carried off to sleep,--some in the garden, some in the wood.  Woke at
+four, still in the clouds.  Carried back to the pleasure-house, found
+the Czar there, made us a low bow, and gave us a hatchet apiece, with
+orders to follow him.  Off we trudged, rolling about like ships in the
+Zuyder Zee, entered a wood, and were immediately set to work at cutting
+a road through it.  Nice work for us of the /corps diplomatique/!  And,
+by my soul, Sir, you see that I am by no means a thin man!  We had three
+hours of it, were carried back, made drunk again, sent to bed, roused
+again in an hour, made drunk a third time; and, because we /could not/
+be waked again, left in peace till eight the next morning.  Invited to
+court to breakfast; such headaches we had; longed for coffee; found
+nothing but brandy; forced to drink; sick as dogs; sent to take an
+airing upon the most damnable little horses, not worth a guilder, no
+bridles nor saddles; bump--bump--bump we go, up and down before the
+Czar's window,--he and the Czarina looking at us.  I do assure you I
+lost two stone by that ride,--two stone, Sir!--taken to dinner; drunk
+again, by the Lord, all bundled on board a /torrenschute/; devil of a
+storm came on; Czar took the rudder; Czarina on high benches in the
+cabin, which was full of water; waves beating; winds blowing; certain of
+being drowned; charming prospect!--tossed about for seven hours; driven
+into the port of Cronsflot.  Czar leaves us, saying, 'Too much of a
+jest, eh, gentlemen?'  All got ashore wet as dog-fishes, made a fire,
+stripped stark naked (a Dutch ambassador stark naked,--think of it,
+Sir!), crept into some covers of sledges, and rose next morning with the
+ague,--positive fact, Sir!  Had the ague for two months.  Saw the Czar
+in August; 'A charming excursion to my pleasure-house,' said his
+Majesty; 'we must make another party there soon.'"
+
+As the Dutchman delivered himself of the little history he was by no
+means forgetful of the Hungary wines; and as Bacchus and Venus have old
+affinity, he now began to grow eloquent on the women.
+
+"What think you of them yourself?" said he; "they have a rolling look,
+eh?"
+
+"They have so," I answered: "but they all have black teeth; what's the
+reason?"
+
+"They think it a beauty, and say white teeth are the sign of a
+blackamoor."
+
+Here the Dutchman was accosted by some one else, and there was a pause.
+Dinner at last ceased; the guests did not sit long after dinner, and for
+a very good reason: the brandy bowl is a great enforcer of a prostrate
+position!  I had the satisfaction of seeing the company safely under the
+table.  The Dutchman went first, and, having dexterously manoeuvred an
+escape from utter oblivion for myself, I managed to find my way home,
+more edified than delighted by the character of a Russian entertainment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+CONVERSATIONS WITH THE CZAR.--IF CROMWELL WAS THE GREATEST MAN (CAESAR
+EXCEPTED) WHO EVER /ROSE/ TO THE SUPREME POWER, PETER WAS THE GREATEST
+MAN EVER /BORN/ TO IT.
+
+IT was singular enough that my introduction to the notice of Peter the
+Great and Philip le Debonnaire should have taken place under
+circumstances so far similar that both those illustrious personages were
+playing the part rather of subjects than of princes.  I cannot, however,
+conceive a greater mark of the contrast between their characters than
+the different motives and manners of the incognitos severally assumed.
+
+Philip, in a scene of low riot and debauch, hiding the Jupiter under the
+Silenus,--wearing the mask only for the licentiousness it veiled, and
+foregoing the prerogative of power, solely for indulgence in the
+grossest immunities of vice.
+
+Peter, on the contrary, parting with the selfishness of state in order
+to watch the more keenly over the interests of his people, only omitting
+to preside in order to examine, and affecting the subject only to learn
+the better the duties of the prince.  Had I leisure, I might here pause
+to point out a notable contrast, not between the Czar and the Regent,
+but between Peter the Great and Louis le Grand: both creators of a new
+era,--both associated with a vast change in the condition of two mighty
+empires.  There ceases the likeness and begins the contrast: the blunt
+simplicity of Peter, the gorgeous magnificence of Louis; the sternness
+of a legislator for barbarians, the clemency of an idol of courtiers.
+One the victorious defender of his country,--a victory solid, durable,
+and just; the other the conquering devastator of a neighbouring
+people,--a victory, glittering, evanescent, and dishonourable.  The one,
+in peace, rejecting parade, pomp, individual honours, and transforming a
+wilderness into an empire: the other involved in ceremony, and throned
+on pomp; and exhausting the produce of millions to pamper the bloated
+vanity of an individual.  The one a fire that burns, without
+enlightening beyond a most narrow circle, and whose lustre is tracked by
+what it ruins, and fed by what it consumes; the other a luminary, whose
+light, not so dazzling in its rays, spreads over a world, and is noted,
+not for what it destroys, but for what it vivifies and creates.
+
+I cannot say that it was much to my credit that, while I thought the
+Regent's condescension towards me natural enough, I was a little
+surprised by the favour shown me by the Czar.  At Paris, I had /seemed/
+to be the man of pleasure: that alone was enough to charm Philip of
+Orleans.  But in Russia, what could I seem in any way calculated to
+charm the Czar?  I could neither make ships nor could sail them when
+they were made; I neither knew, nor, what was worse, cared to know, the
+stern from the rudder.  Mechanics were a mystery to me; road-making was
+an incomprehensible science.  Brandy I could not endure; a blunt bearing
+and familiar manner I could not assume.  What was it, then, that made
+the Czar call upon me, at least twice a week in private, shut himself up
+with me by the hour together, and endeavour to make me drunk with Tokay,
+in order (as he very incautiously let out one night), "to learn the
+secrets of my heart"?  I thought, at first, that the nature of my
+mission was enough to solve the riddle: but we talked so little about it
+that, with all my diplomatic vanities fresh about me, I could not help
+feeling I owed the honour I received less to my qualities as a minister
+than to those as an individual.
+
+At last, however, I found that the secret attraction was what the Czar
+termed the philosophical channel into which our conferences flowed.  I
+never saw a man so partial to moral problems and metaphysical inquiries,
+especially to those connected with what ought to be the beginning or the
+end of all moral sciences,--politics.  Sometimes we would wander out in
+disguise, and select some object from the customs or things around us,
+as the theme of reflection and discussion; nor in these moments would
+the Czar ever allow me to yield to his rank what I might not feel
+disposed to concede to his arguments.  One day, I remember that he
+arrested me in the streets, and made me accompany him to look upon two
+men undergoing the fearful punishment of the battaog;* one was a German,
+the other a Russian: the former shrieked violently, struggled in the
+hands of his punishers, and, with the utmost difficulty, was subjected
+to his penalty; the latter bore it patiently and in silence; he only
+spoke once, and it was to say, "God bless the Czar!"
+
+
+* A terrible kind of flogging, but less severe than the knout.
+
+
+"Can your Majesty hear the man," said I, warmly, when the Czar
+interpreted these words to me, "and not pardon him?"  Peter frowned, but
+I was not silenced.  "You don't know the Russians!" said he, sharply,
+and turned aside.  The punishment was now over.  "Ask the German," said
+the Czar to an officer, "what was his offence?"  The German, who was
+writhing and howling horribly, uttered some violent words against the
+disgrace of the punishment, and the pettiness of his fault; what the
+fault was I forget.
+
+"Now ask the Russian," said Peter.  "My punishment was just!" said the
+Russian, coolly, putting on his clothes as if nothing had happened; "God
+and the Czar were angry with me!"
+
+"Come away, Count," said the Czar; "and now solve me a problem.  I know
+both those men, and the German, in a battle, would be the braver of the
+two.  How comes it that he weeps and writhes like a girl, while the
+Russian bears the same pain without a murmur?"
+
+"Will your Majesty forgive me," said I, "but I cannot help wishing that
+the Russian had complained more bitterly; insensibility to punishment is
+the sign of a brute, not a hero.  Do you not see that the German felt
+the indignity, the Russian did not? and do you not see that that very
+pride which betrays agony under the disgrace of the battaog is exactly
+the very feeling that would have produced courage in the glory of the
+battle?  A sense of honour makes better soldiers and better men than
+indifference to pain."
+
+"But had I ordered the Russian to death, he would have gone with the
+same apathy and the same speech, 'It is just!  I have offended God and
+the Czar!'"
+
+"Dare I observe, Sire, that that fact would be a strong proof of the
+dangerous falsity of the old maxims which extol indifference to death as
+a virtue?  In some individuals it may be a sign of virtue, I allow; but,
+as a /national trait/, it is the strongest sign of national misery.
+Look round the great globe.  What countries are those where the
+inhabitants bear death with cheerfulness, or, at least, with apathy?
+Are they the most civilized, the most free, the most prosperous?  Pardon
+me; no!  They are the half-starved, half-clothed, half-human sons of the
+forest and the waste; or, when gathered in states, they are slaves
+without enjoyment or sense beyond the hour; and the reason that they do
+not recoil from the pangs of death is because they have never known the
+real pleasures or the true objects of life."
+
+"Yet," said the Czar, musingly, "the contempt of death was the great
+characteristic of the Spartans."
+
+"And, therefore," said I, "the great token that the Spartans were a
+miserable horde.  Your Majesty admires England and the English; you
+have, beyond doubt, witnessed an execution in that country; you have
+noted, even where the criminal is consoled by religion, how he trembles,
+and shrinks,--how dejected, how prostrate of heart he is before the doom
+is completed.  Take now the vilest slave, either of the Emperor of
+Morocco or the great Czar of Russia.  He changes neither tint nor
+muscle; he requires no consolation; he shrinks from no torture.  What is
+the inference?  /That slaves dread death less than the free/.  And it
+should be so.  The end of legislation is not to make /death/, but
+/life/, a blessing."
+
+"You have put the matter in a new light," said the Czar; but you allow
+that, in individuals, contempt of death is sometimes a virtue."
+
+"Yes, when it springs from mental reasonings, not physical indifference.
+But your Majesty has already put in action one vast spring of a system
+which will ultimately open to your subjects so many paths of existence
+that they will preserve contempt for its proper objects, and not lavish
+it solely, as they do now, on the degradation which sullies life and the
+axe that ends it.  You have already begun the conquest of another and a
+most vital error in the philosophy of the ancients,--that philosophy
+taught that man should have few wants, and made it a crime to increase
+and a virtue to reduce them.  A legislator should teach, on the
+contrary, that man should have many wants: for wants are not only the
+sources of enjoyment,--they are the sources of improvement; and that
+nation will be the most enlightened among whose populace they are found
+the most numerous.  You, Sire, by circulating the arts, the graces,
+create a vast herd of moral wants hitherto unknown, and in those wants
+will hereafter be found the prosperity of your people, the fountain of
+your resources, and the strength of your empire."
+
+In conversation on these topics we often passed hours together, and from
+such conferences the Czar passed only to those on other topics more
+immediately useful to him.  No man, perhaps, had a larger share of the
+mere human frailties than Peter the Great; yet I do confess that when I
+saw the nobleness of mind with which he flung aside his rank as a robe,
+and repaired from man to man, the humblest or the highest, the artisan
+or the prince,--the prosperity of his subjects his only object, and the
+acquisition of knowledge his only means to obtain it,--I do confess that
+my mental sight refused even to perceive his frailties, and that I could
+almost have bent the knee in worship to a being whose benevolence was so
+pervading a spirit, and whose power was so glorious a minister to
+utility.
+
+Towards the end of January, I completed my mission, and took my leave of
+the court of Russia.
+
+"Tell the Regent," said Peter, "that I shall visit him in France soon,
+and shall expect to see his drawings if I show him my models."
+
+In effect, the next month (February 16), the Czar commenced his second
+course of travels.  He was pleased to testify some regard for me on my
+departure.  "If ever you quit the service of the French court, and your
+own does not require you, I implore you to come to me; I will give you
+/carte blanche/ as to the nature and appointments of your office."
+
+I need not say that I expressed my gratitude for the royal
+condescension; nor that, in leaving Russia, I brought, from the example
+of its sovereign, a greater desire to be useful to mankind than I had
+known before.  Pattern and Teacher of kings, if each country in each
+century had produced one such ruler as you, either all mankind would
+/now/ be contented with despotism or all mankind would be /free/!  Oh!
+when kings have only to be good, to be kept forever in our hearts and
+souls as the gods and benefactors of the earth, by what monstrous
+fatality have they been so blind to their fame?  When we remember the
+millions, the generations, they can degrade, destroy, elevate, or save,
+we might almost think (even if the other riddles of the present
+existence did not require a future existence to solve them), we might
+almost think a hereafter /necessary/, were it but for the sole purpose
+of requiting the virtues of princes,--or their SINS!*
+
+
+* Upon his death-bed Peter is reported to have said, "God, I dare trust,
+will look mercifully upon my faults in consideration of the good I have
+done my country."  These are worthy to be the last words of a king!
+Rarely has there been a monarch who more required the forgiveness of the
+Creator; yet seldom perhaps has there been a human being who more
+deserved it.--ED.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+RETURN TO PARIS.--INTERVIEW WITH BOLINGBROKE.--A GALLANT
+ADVENTURE.--AFFAIR WITH DUBOIS.--PUBLIC LIFE IS A DRAMA, IN WHICH
+PRIVATE VICES GENERALLY PLAY THE PART OF THE SCENE-SHIFTERS.
+
+IT is a strange feeling we experience on entering a great city by
+night,--a strange mixture of social and solitary impressions.  I say by
+night, because at that time we are most inclined to feel; and the mind,
+less distracted than in the day by external objects, dwells the more
+intensely upon its own hopes and thoughts, remembrances and
+associations, and sheds over them, from that one feeling which it
+cherishes the most, a blending and a mellowing hue.
+
+It was at night that I re-entered Paris.  I did not tarry long at my
+hotel, before (though it was near upon midnight) I conveyed myself to
+Lord Bolingbroke's lodgings.  Knowing his engagements at St. Germains,
+where the Chevalier (who had but a very few weeks before returned to
+France, after the crude and unfortunate affair of 1715), chiefly
+resided, I was not very sanguine in my hopes of finding him at Paris.  I
+was, however, agreeably surprised.  His servant would have ushered me
+into his study, but I was willing to introduce myself.  I withheld the
+servant, and entered the room alone.  The door was ajar, and Bolingbroke
+neither heard nor saw me.  There was something in his attitude and
+aspect which made me pause to survey him, before I made myself known.
+He was sitting by a table covered with books.  A large folio (it was the
+Casaubon edition of Polybius) was lying open before him.  I recognized
+the work at once: it was a favourite book with Bolingbroke, and we had
+often discussed the merits of its author.  I smiled as I saw that that
+book, which has to statesmen so peculiar an attraction, made still the
+study from which the busy, restless, ardent, and exalted spirit of the
+statesman before me drew its intellectual food.  But at the moment in
+which I entered his eye was absent from the page, and turned
+abstractedly in an opposite though still downcast direction.  His
+countenance was extremely pale, his lips were tightly compressed, and an
+air of deep thought, mingled as it seemed to me with sadness, made the
+ruling expression of his lordly and noble features.  "It is the torpor
+of ambition after one of its storms," said I, inly; and I approached,
+and laid my hand on his shoulder.
+
+After our mutual greetings, I said, "Have the dead so strong an
+attraction that at this hour they detain the courted and courtly
+Bolingbroke from the admiration and converse of the living?"
+
+The statesman looked at me earnestly: "Have you heard the news of the
+day?" said he.
+
+"How is it possible?  I have but just arrived at Paris."
+
+"You do not know, then, that I have resigned my office under the
+Chevalier!"
+
+"Resigned your office!"
+
+"Resigned is a wrong word: I received a dismissal.  Immediately on his
+return the Chevalier sent for me, embraced me, desired me to prepare to
+follow him to Lorraine; and three days afterwards came the Duke of
+Ormond to me, to ask me to deliver up the seals and papers.  I put the
+latter very carefully in a little letter-case, and behold an end to the
+administration of Lord Bolingbroke!  The Jacobites abuse me terribly;
+their king accuses me of neglect, incapacity, and treachery; and Fortune
+pulls down the fabric she has built for me, in order to pelt me with the
+stones!"*
+
+
+* Letter to Sir W. Windham.--ED.
+
+
+"My dear, dear friend, I am indeed grieved for you; but I am more
+incensed at the infatuation of the Chevalier.  Surely, surely he must
+already have seen his error, and solicited your return?"
+
+"Return!" cried Bolingbroke, and his eyes flashed fire,--"return!--Hear
+what I said to the Queen-Mother who came to attempt a reconciliation:
+'Madam,' said I, in a tone as calm as I could command, 'if ever this
+hand draws the sword, or employs the pen, in behalf of that prince, may
+it rot!' Return! not if my head were the price of refusal!  Yet,
+Devereux,"--and here Bolingbroke's voice and manner changed,--"yet it is
+not at these tricks of fate that a wise man will repine.  We do right to
+cultivate honours; they are sources of gratification to ourselves: they
+are more; they are incentives to the conduct which works benefits to
+others; but we do wrong to afflict ourselves at their loss.  'Nec
+quaerere nec spernere honores oportet.'*  It is good to enjoy the
+blessings of fortune: it is better to submit without a pang to their
+loss.  You remember, when you left me, I was preparing myself for this
+stroke: believe me, I am now prepared."
+
+
+* "It becomes us neither to court nor to despise honours."
+
+
+And in truth Bolingbroke bore the ingratitude of the Chevalier well.
+Soon afterwards he carried his long cherished wishes for retirement into
+effect; and Fate, who delights in reversing her disk, leaving in
+darkness what she had just illumined, and illumining what she had
+hitherto left in obscurity and gloom, for a long interval separated us
+from each other, no less by his seclusion than by the publicity to which
+she condemned myself.
+
+Lord Bolingbroke's dismissal was not the only event affecting me that
+had occurred during my absence from France.  Among the most active
+partisans of the Chevalier, in the expedition of Lord Mar, had been
+Montreuil.  So great, indeed, had been either his services or the idea
+entertained of their value, that a reward of extraordinary amount was
+offered for his head.  Hitherto he had escaped, and was supposed to be
+still in Scotland.
+
+But what affected me more nearly was the condition of Gerald's
+circumstances.  On the breaking out of the rebellion he had been
+suddenly seized, and detained in prison; and it was only upon the escape
+of the Chevalier that he was released: apparently, however, nothing had
+been proved against him; and my absence from the head-quarters of
+intelligence left me in ignorance both of the grounds of his
+imprisonment and the circumstances of his release.
+
+I heard, however, from Bolingbroke, who seemed to possess some of that
+information which the ecclesiastical intriguants of the day so curiously
+transmitted from court to court and corner to corner, that Gerald had
+retired to Devereux Court in great disgust at his confinement.  However,
+when I considered his bold character, his close intimacy with Montreuil,
+and the genius for intrigue which that priest so eminently possessed, I
+was not much inclined to censure the government for unnecessary
+precaution in his imprisonment.
+
+There was another circumstance connected with the rebellion which
+possessed for me an individual and deep interest.  A man of the name of
+Barnard had been executed in England for seditious and treasonable
+practices.  I took especial pains to ascertain every particular
+respecting him.  I learned that he was young, of inconsiderable note,
+but esteemed clever; and had, long previously to the death of the Queen,
+been secretly employed by the friends of the Chevalier.  This
+circumstance occasioned me much internal emotion, though there could be
+no doubt that the Barnard whom I had such cause to execrate had only
+borrowed from this minion the disguise of his name.
+
+The Regent received me with all the graciousness and complaisance for
+which he was so remarkable.  To say the truth, my mission had been
+extremely fortunate in its results; the only cause in which the Regent
+was concerned the interests of which Peter the Great appeared to
+disregard was that of the Chevalier; but I had been fully instructed on
+that head anterior to my legation.
+
+There appears very often to be a sort of moral fitness between the
+beginning and the end of certain alliances or acquaintances.  This
+sentiment is not very clearly expressed.  I am about to illustrate it by
+an important event in my political life.  During my absence Dubois had
+made rapid steps towards being a great man.  He was daily growing into
+power, and those courtiers who were neither too haughty nor too honest
+to bend the knee to so vicious yet able a minion had already singled him
+out as a fit person to flatter and to rise by.  For me, I neither sought
+nor avoided him: but he was as civil towards me as his /brusque/ temper
+permitted him to be towards most persons; and as our careers were not
+likely to cross one another, I thought I might reckon on his neutrality,
+if not on his friendship.  Chance turned the scale against me.
+
+One day I received an anonymous letter, requesting me to be, at such an
+hour, at a certain house in the Rue ------.  It occurred to me as no
+improbable supposition that the appointment might relate to my
+individual circumstances, whether domestic or political, and I certainly
+had not at the moment any ideas of gallantry in my brain.  At the hour
+prescribed I appeared at the place of assignation.  My mind misgave me
+when I saw a female conduct me into a little chamber hung with tapestry
+descriptive of the loves of Mars and Venus.  After I had cooled my heels
+in this apartment about a quarter of an hour, in sailed a tall woman, of
+a complexion almost Moorish.  I bowed; the lady sighed.  An
+/eclaircissement/ ensued; and I found that I had the good fortune to be
+the object of a /caprice/ in the favourite mistress of the Abbe Dubois.
+Nothing was further from my wishes!  What a pity it is that one cannot
+always tell a woman one's mind!
+
+I attempted a flourish about friendship, honour, and the respect due to
+the /amante/ of the most intimate /ami/ I had in the world.
+
+"Pooh!" said the tawny Calypso, a little pettishly, "pooh! one does not
+talk of those things here."
+
+"Madame," said I, very energetically, "I implore you to refrain.  Do not
+excite too severe a contest between passion and duty!  I feel that I
+must fly you: you are already too bewitching."
+
+Just as I rose to depart in rushes the /femme de chambre/, and
+announces, not Monsieur the Abbe, but Monseigneur the Regent.  Of course
+(the old resort in such cases) I was thrust in a closet; in marches his
+Royal Highness, and is received very cavalierly.  It is quite
+astonishing to me what airs those women give themselves when they have
+princes to manage!  However, my confinement was not long: the closet had
+another door; the /femme de chambre/ slips round, opens it, and I
+congratulate myself on my escape.
+
+When a Frenchwoman is piqued, she passes all understanding.  The next
+day I am very quietly employed at breakfast, when my valet ushers in a
+masked personage, and behold my gentlewoman again!  Human endurance will
+not go too far, and this was a case which required one to be in a
+passion one way or the other; so I feigned anger, and talked with
+exceeding dignity about the predicament I had been placed in the day
+before.
+
+"Such must always be the case," said I, "when one is weak enough to form
+an attachment to a lady who encourages so many others!"
+
+"For your sake," said the tender dame, "for your sake, then, I will
+discard them all!"
+
+There was something grand in this.  it might have elicited a few strokes
+of pathos, when--never was there anything so strangely provoking--the
+Abbe Dubois himself was heard in my anteroom.  I thought this chance,
+but it was more; the good Abbe, I afterwards found, had traced cause for
+suspicion, and had come to pay me a visit of amatory police.  I opened
+my dressing-room door, and thrust in the lady.  "There," said I, "are
+the back-stairs, and at the bottom of the back-stairs is a door."
+
+Would not any one have thought this hint enough?  By no means; this very
+tall lady stooped to the littleness of listening, and, instead of
+departing, stationed herself by the keyhole.
+
+I never exactly learned whether Dubois suspected the visit his mistress
+had paid me, or whether he merely surmised, from his spies or her
+escritoire, that she harboured an inclination towards me; in either case
+his policy was natural, and like himself.  He sat himself down, talked
+of the Regent, of pleasure, of women, and, at last, of this very tall
+lady in question.
+
+"/La pauvre diablesse/," said he, contemptuously, "I had once compassion
+on her; I have repented it ever since.  You have no idea what a terrible
+creature she is; has such a wen in her neck, quite a /goitre/.  /Mort
+diable/!" (and the Abbe spat in his handkerchief), "I would sooner have
+a /liaison/ with the witch of Endor!"
+
+Not content with this, he went on in his usual gross and displeasing
+manner to enumerate or to forge those various particulars of her
+personal charms which he thought most likely to steel me against her
+attractions.  "Thank Heaven, at least," thought I, "that she has gone!"
+
+Scarcely had this pious gratulation flowed from my heart, before the
+door was burst open, and, pale, trembling, eyes on fire, hands clenched,
+forth stalked the lady in question.  A wonderful proof how much sooner a
+woman would lose her character than allow it to be called not worth the
+losing!  She entered, and had all the furies of Hades lent her their
+tongues, she could not have been more eloquent.  It would have been a
+very pleasant scene if one had not been a partner in it.  The old Abbe,
+with his keen, astute marked face, struggling between surprise, fear,
+the sense of the ridiculous, and the certainty of losing his mistress;
+the lady, foaming at the mouth, and shaking her clenched hand most
+menacingly at her traducer; myself endeavouring to pacify, and acting,
+as one does at such moments, mechanically, though one flatters one's
+self afterwards that one acted solely from wisdom.
+
+But the Abbe's mistress was by no means content with vindicating
+herself: she retaliated, and gave so minute a description of the Abbe's
+own qualities and graces, coupled with so any pleasing illustrations,
+that in a very little time his coolness forsook him, and he grew in as
+great a rage as herself.  At last she flew out of the room.  The Abbe,
+trembling with passion, shook me most cordially by the hand, grinned
+from ear to ear, said it was a capital joke, wished me good-by as if he
+loved me better than his eyes, and left the house my most irreconcilable
+and bitter foe!
+
+How could it be otherwise?  The rivalship the Abbe might have forgiven;
+such things happened every day to him: but the having been made so
+egregiously ridiculous the Abbe could not forgive; and the Abbe's was a
+critical age for jesting on these matters, sixty or so.  And then such
+unpalatable sarcasms on his appearance!  "'Tis all over in that
+quarter," said I to myself, "but we may find another," and I drove out
+that very day to pay my respects to the Regent.
+
+What a pity it is that one's pride should so often be the bane of one's
+wisdom.  Ah! that one could be as good a man of the world in practice as
+one is in theory! my master-stroke of policy at that moment would
+evidently have been this: I should have gone to the Regent and made out
+a story similar to the real one, but with this difference, all the
+ridicule of the situation should have fallen upon me, and the little
+Dubois should have been elevated on a pinnacle of respectable
+appearances!  This, as the Regent told the Abbe everything, would have
+saved me.  I saw the plan; but was too proud to adopt it; I followed
+another course in my game: I threw away the knave, and played with the
+king, /i.e./, with the Regent.  After a little preliminary conversation,
+I turned the conversation on the Abbe.
+
+"Ah! the /scelerat/!" said Philip, smiling, "'tis a sad dog, but very
+clever and /loves me/, he would be incomparable, if he were but decently
+honest."
+
+"At least," said I, "he is no hypocrite, and that is some praise."
+
+"Hem!" ejaculated the Duke, very slowly, and then, after a pause, he
+said, "Count, I have a real kindness for you, and I will therefore give
+you a piece of advice: think as well of Dubois as you can, and address
+him as if he were all you endeavoured to fancy him."
+
+After this hint, which in the mouth of any prince but Philip of Orleans
+would have been not a little remarkable for its want of dignity, my
+prospects did not seem much brighter; however, I was not discouraged.
+
+"The Abbe," said I, respectfully, "is a choleric man: one /may/
+displease him; but dare I hope that so long as I preserve inviolate my
+zeal and my attachment to the interests and the person of your Highness,
+no--"
+
+The Regent interrupted me.  "You mean nobody shall successfully
+misrepresent you to me?  No, Count" (and here the Regent spoke with the
+earnestness and dignity, which, when he did assume, few wore with a
+nobler grace)--"no, Count, I make a distinction between those who
+minister to the state and those who minister to me.  I consider your
+services too valuable to the former to put them at the mercy of the
+latter.  And now that the conversation has turned upon business I wish
+to speak to you about this scheme of Gortz."
+
+After a prolonged conference with the Regent upon matters of business,
+in which his deep penetration into human nature not a little surprised
+me, I went away thoroughly satisfied with my visit.  I should not have
+been so had I added to my other accomplishments the gift of prophecy.
+Above five days after this interview, I thought it would be but prudent
+to pay the Abbe Dubois one of those visits of homage which it was
+already become policy to pay him.  "If I go," thought I, "it will seem
+as if nothing had happened; if I stay away, it will seem as if I
+attached importance to a scene I should appear to have forgotten."
+
+It so happened that the Abbe had a very unusual visitor that morning, in
+the person of the austere but admirable Duc de St. Simon.  There was a
+singular and almost invariable distinction in the Regent's mind between
+one kind of regard and another.  His regard for one order of persons
+always arose either out of his vices or his indolence; his regard for
+another, out of his good qualities and his strong sense.  The Duc de St.
+Simon held the same place in the latter species of affection that Dubois
+did in the former.  The Duc was just coming out of the Abbe's closet as
+I entered the anteroom.  He paused to speak to me, while Dubois, who had
+followed the Duc out, stopped for one moment, and surveyed me with a
+look like a thundercloud.  I did not appear to notice it, but St. Simon
+did.
+
+"That look," said he, as Dubois, beckoning to a gentleman to accompany
+him to his closet, once more disappeared, "that look bodes you no good,
+Count."
+
+Pride is an elevation which is a spring-board at one time and a
+stumbling-block at another.  It was with me more often the
+stumbling-block than the spring-board.  "Monseigneur le Duc," said I,
+haughtily enough, and rather in too loud a tone considering the chamber
+was pretty full, "in no court to which Morton Devereux proffers his
+services shall his fortune depend upon the looks of a low-born insolent
+or a profligate priest."
+
+St. Simon smiled sardonically.  "Monsieur le Comte," said he, rather
+civilly, "I honour your sentiments, and I wish you success in the
+world--and a lower voice."
+
+I was going to say something by way of retort, for I was in a very bad
+humour, but I checked myself: "I need not," thought I, "make two
+enemies, if I can help it."
+
+"I shall never," I replied gravely, "I shall never despair, so long as
+the Duc de St. Simon lives, of winning by the same arts the favour of
+princes and the esteem of good men."
+
+The Duc was flattered, and replied suitably, but he very soon afterwards
+went away.  I was resolved that I would not go till I had fairly seen
+what sort of reception the Abbe would give me.  I did not wait long.  he
+came out of his closet, and standing in his usual rude manner with his
+back to the fireplace, received the addresses and compliments of his
+visitors.  I was not in a hurry to present myself, but I did so at last
+with a familiar yet rather respectful air.  Dubois looked at me from
+head to foot, and abruptly turning his back upon me, said with an oath,
+to a courtier who stood next to him,--"The plagues of Pharaoh are come
+again; only instead of Egyptian frogs in our chambers, we have the still
+more troublesome guests,--English adventurers!"
+
+Somehow or other my compliments rarely tell; I am lavish enough of them,
+but they generally have the air of sarcasms; thank Heaven, however, no
+one can accuse me of ever wanting a rude answer to a rude speech.  "Ha!
+ha! ha!" said I now, in answer to Dubois, with a courteous laugh, "you
+have an excellent wit, Abbe. /A propos/ of adventures, I met a Monsieur
+St. Laurent, Principal of the Institution of St. Michael, the other day.
+'Count,' said he, hearing I was going to Paris, 'you can do me an
+especial favour!'  'What is it?' said I.  'Why, a cast-off valet of mine
+is living at Paris; he would have gone long since to the galleys, if he
+had not taken sanctuary in the Church: if ever you meet him, give him a
+good horsewhipping on my account; his name is William Dubois.'  'Depend
+upon it,' answered I to Monsieur St. Laurent, 'that if he is servant to
+any one not belonging to the royal family, I will fulfil your errand,
+and horsewhip him soundly; if /in/ the service of the royal family, why,
+respect for his masters must oblige me to content myself with putting
+all persons on their guard against a little rascal, who retains, in all
+situations, the manners of the apothecary's son and the roguery of the
+director's valet.'"
+
+All the time I was relating this charming little anecdote, it would have
+been amusing to the last degree to note the horrified countenances of
+the surrounding gentlemen.  Dubois was too confounded, too aghast, to
+interrupt me, and I left the room before a single syllable was uttered.
+Had Dubois at that time been, what he was afterwards, cardinal and prime
+minister, I should in all probability have had permanent lodgings in the
+Bastile in return for my story.  Even as it was, the Abbe was not so
+grateful as he ought to have been for my taking so much pains to amuse
+him!  In spite of my anger on leaving the favourite, I did not forget my
+prudence, and accordingly I hastened to the Prince.  When the Regent
+admitted me, I flung myself on my knee, and told him, /verbatim/, all
+that had happened.  The Regent, who seems to have had very little real
+liking for Dubois, could not help laughing when I ludicrously described
+to him the universal consternation my anecdote had excited.*
+
+
+* On the death of Dubois, the Regent wrote to the Count de Noce, whom be
+had banished for an indiscreet expression against the favourite, uttered
+at one of his private suppers: "With the beast dies the venom: I expect
+you to-night to supper at the Palais Royal."
+
+
+"Courage, my dear Count," said he, kindly, "you have nothing to fear;
+return home and count upon an embassy!"
+
+I relied on the royal word, returned to my lodgings, and spent the
+evening with Chaulieu and Fontenelle.  The next day the Duc de St. Simon
+paid me a visit.  After a little preliminary conversation, he unburdened
+the secret with which he was charged.  I was desired to leave Paris in
+forty-eight hours.
+
+"Believe me," said St. Simon, "that this message was not intrusted to me
+by the Regent without great reluctance.  He sends you many condescending
+and kind messages; says he shall always both esteem and like you, and
+hopes to see you again, some time or other, at the Palais Royal.
+Moreover, he desires the message to be private, and has intrusted it to
+me in especial, because hearing that I had a kindness for you, and
+knowing I had a hatred for Dubois, he thought I should be the least
+unwelcome messenger of such disagreeable tidings.  'To tell you the
+truth, St. Simon,' said the Regent, laughing, 'I only consent to have
+him banished, from a firm conviction that if I do not Dubois will take
+some opportunity of having him beheaded.'"
+
+"Pray," said I, smiling with a tolerably good grace, "pray give my most
+grateful and humble thanks to his Highness, for his very considerate and
+kind foresight.  I could not have chosen better for myself than his
+Highness has chosen for me: my only regret on quitting France is at
+leaving a prince so affable as Philip and a courtier so virtuous as St.
+Simon."
+
+Though the good Duc went every year to the Abbey de la Trappe for the
+purpose of mortifying his sins and preserving his religion in so impious
+an atmosphere as the Palais Royal, he was not above flattery; and he
+expressed himself towards me with particular kindness after my speech.
+
+At court, one becomes a sort of human ant-bear, and learns to catch
+one's prey by one's tongue.
+
+After we had eased ourselves a little by abusing Dubois, the Duc took
+his leave in order to allow me time to prepare for my "journey," as he
+politely called it.  Before he left, he, however, asked me whither my
+course would be bent?  I told him that I should take my chance with the
+Czar Peter, and see if his czarship thought the same esteem was due to
+the disgraced courtier as to the favoured diplomatist.
+
+That night I received a letter from St. Simon, enclosing one addressed
+with all due form to the Czar.  "You will consider the enclosed," wrote
+St. Simon, "a fresh proof of the Regent's kindness to you; it is a most
+flattering testimonial in your favour, and cannot fail to make the Czar
+anxious to secure your services."
+
+I was not a little touched by a kindness so unusual in princes to their
+discarded courtiers, and this entirely reconciled me to a change of
+scene which, indeed, under any other circumstances, my somewhat morbid
+love for action and variety would have induced me rather to relish than
+dislike.
+
+Within thirty-six hours from the time of dismissal, I had turned my back
+upon the French capital.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A LONG INTERVAL OF YEARS.--A CHANGE OF MIND AND ITS CAUSES.
+
+THE last accounts received of the Czar reported him to be at Dantzic.
+He had, however, quitted that place when I arrived there.  I lost no
+time in following him, and presented myself to his Majesty one day after
+his dinner, when he was sitting with one leg in the Czarina's lap and a
+bottle of the best /eau de vie/ before him.  I had chosen my time well;
+he received me most graciously, read my letter from the Regent--about
+which, remembering the fate of Bellerophon, I had had certain
+apprehensions, but which proved to be in the highest degree
+complimentary--and then declared himself extremely happy to see me
+again.  However parsimonious Peter generally was towards foreigners, I
+never had ground for personal complaint on that score.  The very next
+day I was appointed to a post of honour and profit about the royal
+person; from this I was transferred to a military station, in which I
+rose with great rapidity; and I was only occasionally called from my
+warlike duties to be intrusted with diplomatic missions of the highest
+confidence and importance.
+
+It is this portion of my life--a portion of nine years to the time of
+the Czar's death--that I shall, in this history, the most concentrate
+and condense.  In truth, were I to dwell upon it at length, I should
+make little more than a mere record of political events; differing, in
+some respects, it is true, from the received histories of the time, but
+containing nothing to compensate in utility for the want of interest.
+That this was the exact age for adventurers, Alberoni and Dubois are
+sufficient proofs.  Never was there a more stirring, active, restless
+period; never one in which the genius of intrigue was so pervadingly at
+work.  I was not less fortunate than my brethren.  Although scarcely
+four and twenty when I entered the Czar's service, my habits of intimacy
+with men much older; my customary gravity, reserve, and thought; my
+freedom, since Isora's death, from youthful levity or excess; my early
+entrance into the world; and a countenance prematurely marked with the
+lines of reflection and sobered by its hue,--made me appear considerably
+older than I was.  I kept my own counsel, and affected to be so: youth
+is a great enemy to one's success; and more esteem is often bestowed
+upon a wrinkled brow than a plodding brain.
+
+All the private intelligence which during this space of time I had
+received from England was far from voluminous.  My mother still enjoyed
+the quiet of her religious retreat.  A fire, arising from the negligence
+of a servant, had consumed nearly the whole of Devereux Court (the fine
+old house! till /that/ went, I thought even England held one friend).
+Upon this accident, Gerald had gone to London; and, though there was now
+no doubt of his having been concerned in the Rebellion of 1715, he had
+been favourably received at court, and was already renowned throughout
+London for his pleasures, his excesses, and his munificent profusion.
+
+Montreuil, whose lot seemed to be always to lose by intrigue what he
+gained by the real solidity of his genius, had embarked very largely in
+the rash but gigantic schemes of Gortz and Alberoni; schemes which, had
+they succeeded, would not only have placed a new king upon the English
+throne, but wrought an utter change over the whole face of Europe.  With
+Alberoni and with Gortz fell Montreuil.  He was banished France and
+Spain; the penalty of death awaited him in Britain; and he was supposed
+to have thrown himself into some convent in Italy, where his name and
+his character were unknown.  In this brief intelligence was condensed
+all my information of the actors in my first scenes of life.  I return
+to that scene on which I had now entered.
+
+At the age of thirty-three I had acquired a reputation sufficient to
+content my ambition; my fortune was larger than my wants; I was a
+favourite in courts; I had been successful in camps; I had already
+obtained all that would have rewarded the whole lives of many men
+superior to myself in merit, more ardent than myself in desires.  I was
+still young; my appearance, though greatly altered, manhood had rather
+improved than impaired.  I had not forestalled my constitution by
+excesses, nor worn dry the sources of pleasure by too large a demand
+upon their capacities; why was it then, at that golden age, in the very
+prime and glory of manhood, in the very zenith and summer of success,
+that a deep, dark, pervading melancholy fell upon me? a melancholy so
+gloomy that it seemed to me as a thick and impenetrable curtain drawn
+gradually between myself and the blessed light of human enjoyment.  A
+torpor crept upon me; an indolent, heavy, clinging languor gathered over
+my whole frame, the physical and the mental: I sat for hours without
+book, paper, object, thought, gazing on vacancy, stirring not, feeling
+not,--yes, feeling, but feeling only one sensation, a sick, sad,
+drooping despondency, a sinking in of the heart, a sort of gnawing
+within as if something living were twisted round my vitals, and, finding
+no other food, preyed, though with a sickly and dull maw, upon /them/.
+This disease came upon me slowly: it was not till the beginning of the
+second year, from its obvious and palpable commencement, that it grew to
+the height that I have described.  It began with a distaste to all that
+I had been accustomed to enjoy or to pursue.  Music, which I had always
+passionately loved, though from some defect in the organs of hearing, I
+was incapable of attaining the smallest knowledge of the science, music
+lost all its diviner spells, all its properties of creating a new
+existence, a life of dreaming and vain luxuries, within the mind: it
+became only a monotonous sound, less grateful to the languor of my
+faculties than an utter and dead stillness.  I had never been what is
+generally termed a boon companion; but I had had the social vanities, if
+not the social tastes; I had insensibly loved the board which echoed
+with applause at my sallies, and the comrades who, while they deprecated
+my satire, had been complaisant enough to hail it as wit.  One of my
+weaknesses is a love of show, and I had gratified a feeling not the less
+cherished because it arose from a petty source, in obtaining for my
+equipages, my mansion, my banquets, the celebrity which is given no less
+to magnificence than to fame: now I grew indifferent alike to the signs
+of pomp, and to the baubles of taste; praise fell upon a listless ear,
+and (rare pitch of satiety!) the pleasures that are the offspring of our
+foibles delighted me no more.  I had early learned from Bolingbroke a
+love for the converse of men, eminent, whether for wisdom or for wit:
+the graceful /badinage,/ or the keen critique; the sparkling flight of
+the winged words which circled and rebounded from lip to lip, or the
+deep speculation upon the mysterious and unravelled wonders of man, of
+Nature, and the world; the light maxim upon manners, or the sage inquiry
+into the mines of learning, all and each had possessed a link to bind my
+temper and my tastes to the graces and fascination of social life.  Now
+a new spirit entered within me: the smile faded from my lip, and the
+jest departed from my tongue; memory seemed no less treacherous than
+fancy, and deserted me the instant I attempted to enter into those
+contests of knowledge in which I had been not undistinguished before.  I
+grew confused and embarrassed in speech; my words expressed a sense
+utterly different to that which I had intended to convey; and at last,
+as my apathy increased, I sat at my own board, silent and lifeless,
+freezing into ice the very powers and streams of converse which I had
+once been the foremost to circulate and to warm.
+
+At the time I refer to, I was Minister at one of the small Continental
+courts, where life is a round of unmeaning etiquette and wearisome
+ceremonials, a daily labour of trifles, a ceaseless pageantry of
+nothings.  I had been sent there upon one important event; the business
+resulting from it had soon ceased, and all the duties that remained for
+me to discharge were of a negative and passive nature.  Nothing that
+could arouse, nothing that could occupy faculties that had for years
+been so perpetually wound up to a restless excitement, was left for me
+in this terrible reservoir of /ennui/.  I had come thither at once from
+the skirmishing and wild warfare of a Tartar foe; a war in which, though
+the glory was obscure, the action was perpetual and exciting.  I had
+come thither, and the change was as if I had passed from a mountain
+stream to a stagnant pool.  Society at this court reminded me of a state
+funeral: everything was pompous and lugubrious, even to the
+drapery--even to the feathers--which, in other scenes, would have been
+consecrated to associations of levity or of grace; the hourly pageant
+swept on slow, tedious, mournful, and the object of the attendants was
+only to entomb the Pleasure which they affected  celebrate.  What a
+change for the wild, the strange, the novel, the intriguing, the varying
+life, which, whether in courts or camps, I had hitherto led!  The
+internal change that came over myself is scarcely to be wondered at; the
+winds stood still, and the straw they had blown from quarter to quarter,
+whether in anger or in sport, began to moulder upon the spot where they
+had left it.
+
+From this cessation of the aims, hopes, and thoughts of life I was
+awakened by the spreading, as it were, of another disease: the dead,
+dull, aching pain at my heart was succeeded by one acute and intense;
+the absence of thought gave way to one thought more terrible, more dark,
+more despairing than any which had haunted me since the first year of
+Isora's death; and from a numbness and pause, as it were, of existence,
+existence became too keen and intolerable a sense.  I will enter into an
+explanation.
+
+At the court of ------, there was an Italian, not uncelebrated for his
+wisdom, nor unbeloved for an innocence and integrity of life rarely
+indeed to be met with among his countrymen.  The acquaintance of this
+man, who was about fifty years of age, and who was devoted almost
+exclusively to the pursuit of philosophical science, I had sedulously
+cultivated.  His conversation pleased me; his wisdom improved; and his
+benevolence, which reminded me of the traits of La Fontaine, it was so
+infantine, made me incline to love him.  Upon the growth of the fearful
+malady of mind which seized me, I had discontinued my visits and my
+invitations to the Italian; and Bezoni (so was he called) felt a little
+offended by my neglect.  As soon, however, as he discovered my state of
+mind, the good man's resentment left him.  He forced himself upon my
+solitude, and would sit by me whole evenings,--sometimes without
+exchanging a word, sometimes with vain attempts to interest, to arouse,
+or to amuse me.
+
+At last, one evening--it was the era of a fearful suffering to me--our
+conversation turned upon those subjects which are at once the most
+important and the most rarely discussed.  We spoke of /religion/.  We
+first talked upon the theology of revealed religion.  As Bezoni warmed
+into candour, I perceived that his doctrines differed from my own, and
+that he inly disbelieved that divine creed which Christians profess to
+adore.  From a dispute on the ground of faith, we came to one upon the
+more debatable ground of reason.  We turned from the subject of revealed
+to that of natural religion; and we entered long and earnestly into that
+grandest of all earthly speculations,--the metaphysical proofs of the
+immortality of the soul.  Again the sentiments of Bezoni were opposed to
+mine.  He was a believer in the dark doctrine which teaches that man is
+dust and that all things are forgotten in the grave.  He expressed his
+opinions with a clearness and precision the more impressive because
+totally devoid of cavil and of rhetoric.  I listened in silence, but
+with a deep and most chilling dismay.  Even now I think I see the man as
+he sat before me, the light of the lamp falling on his high forehead and
+dark features; even now I think I hear his calm, low voice--the silver
+voice of his country--stealing to my heart, and withering the only pure
+and unsullied hope which I yet cherished there.
+
+Bezoni left me, unconscious of the anguish he bequeathed me, to think
+over all he had said.  I did not sleep nor even retire to bed.  I laid
+my head upon my hands, and surrendered myself to turbulent yet intense
+reflection.  Every man who has lived much in the world, and conversed
+with its various tribes, has, I fear, met with many who, on this
+momentous subject, profess the same tenets as Bezoni.  But he was the
+first person I had met of that sect who had evidently thought long and
+deeply upon the creed he had embraced.  He was not a voluptuary nor a
+boaster nor a wit.  He had not been misled by the delusions either of
+vanity or of the senses.  He was a man pure, innocent, modest, full of
+all tender charities and meek dispositions towards mankind: it was
+evidently his interest to believe in a future state; he could have had
+nothing to fear from it.  Not a single passion did he cherish which the
+laws of another world would have condemned.  Add to this, what I have
+observed before, that he was not a man fond of the display of intellect,
+nor one that brought to the discussions of wisdom the artillery of wit.
+He was grave, humble, and self-diffident, beyond all beings.  I would
+have given a kingdom to have found something in the advocate by which I
+could have condemned the cause: I could not, and I was wretched.
+
+I spent the whole of the next week among my books.  I ransacked whatever
+in my scanty library the theologians had written or the philosophers had
+bequeathed upon that mighty secret.  I arranged their arguments in my
+mind.  I armed myself with their weapons.  I felt my heart spring
+joyously within me as I felt the strength I had acquired, and I sent to
+the philosopher to visit me, that I might conquer and confute him.  He
+came; but he spoke with pain and reluctance.  He saw that I had taken
+the matter far more deeply to heart than he could have supposed it
+possible in a courtier and a man of fortune and the world.  Little did
+he know of me or my secret soul.  I broke down his reserve at last.  I
+unrolled my arguments.  I answered his, and we spent the whole night in
+controversy.  He left me, and I was more bewildered than ever.
+
+To speak truth, he had devoted years to the subject: I had devoted only
+a week.  He had come to his conclusions step by step; he had reached the
+great ultimatum with slowness, with care, and, he confessed, with
+anguish and with reluctance.  What a match was I, who brought a hasty
+temper, and a limited reflection on that subject to a reasoner like
+this?  His candour staggered and chilled me even more than his logic.
+Arguments that occurred not to me, upon my side of the question, /he/
+stated at length and with force; I heard, and, till he replied to them,
+I deemed they were unanswerable: the reply came, and I had no
+counter-word.  A meeting of this nature was often repeated; and when he
+left me, tears crept into my wild eyes, my heart melted within me, and I
+wept!
+
+I must now enter more precisely than I have yet done into my state of
+mind upon religious matters at the time this dispute with the Italian
+occurred.  To speak candidly, I had been far less shocked with his
+opposition to me upon matters of doctrinal faith than with that upon
+matters of abstract reasoning.  Bred a Roman Catholic, though pride,
+consistency, custom, made me externally adhere to the Papal Church, I
+inly perceived its errors and smiled at its superstitions.  And in the
+busy world, where so little but present objects or /human/ anticipations
+of the future engross the attention, I had never given the subject that
+consideration which would have enabled me (as it has since) to separate
+the dogmas of the priest from the precepts of the Saviour, and thus
+confirmed my belief as the Christian by the very means which would have
+loosened it as the Sectarian.  So that at the time Bezoni knew me a
+certain indifference to--perhaps arising from an ignorance of--doctrinal
+points, rendered me little hurt by arguments against opinions which I
+embraced indeed, but with a lukewarm and imperfect affection.  But it
+was far otherwise upon abstract points of reasoning, far otherwise, when
+the hope of surviving this frail and most unhallowed being was to be
+destroyed:  I might have been indifferent to cavil upon /what/ was the
+word of God, but never to question of the justice of God Himself.  In
+the whole world there was not a more ardent believer in our imperishable
+nature, nor one more deeply interested in the belief.  Do not let it be
+supposed that because I have not often recurred to Isora's death (or
+because I have continued my history in a jesting and light tone) that
+that event ever passed from the memory which it had turned to bitterness
+and gall.  Never in the masses of intrigue, in the festivals of
+pleasure, in the tumults of ambition, in the blaze of a licentious
+court, or by the rude tents of a barbarous host,--never, my buried love,
+had I forgotten thee!  That remembrance, had no other cause existed,
+would have led me to God.  Every night, in whatever toils or whatever
+objects, whatever failures or triumphs, the day had been consumed; every
+night before I laid my head upon my widowed and lonely pillow,--I had
+knelt down and lifted my heart to Heaven, blending the hopes of that
+Heaven with the memory and the vision of Isora.  Prayer had seemed to me
+a commune not only with the living God, but with the dead by whom His
+dwelling is surrounded.  Pleasant and soft was it to turn to one
+thought, to which all the holiest portions of my nature clung between
+the wearying acts of this hard and harsh drama of existence.  Even the
+bitterness of Isora's early and unavenged death passed away when I
+thought of the heaven to which she was gone, and in which, though I
+journeyed now through sin and travail and recked little if the paths of
+others differed from my own, I yet trusted with a solemn trust that I
+should meet her at last.  There was I to merit her with a love as
+undying, and at length as pure, as her own.  It was this that at the
+stated hour in which, after my prayer for our reunion, I surrendered my
+spirit to the bright and wild visions of her far, but /not impassable/
+home,--it was this which for that single hour made all around me a
+paradise of delighted thoughts!  It was not the little earth, nor the
+cold sky, nor the changing wave, nor the perishable turf,--no, nor the
+dead wall and the narrow chamber,--which were around me then!  No
+dreamer ever was so far from the localities of flesh and life as I was
+in that enchanted hour: a light seemed to settle upon all things around
+me; her voice murmured on my ear, her kisses melted on my brow; I shut
+my eyes, and I fancied that I beheld her.
+
+Wherefore was this comfort?  Whence came the spell which admitted me to
+this fairy land?  What was the source of the hope and the rapture and
+the delusion?  Was it not the deep certainty that /Isora yet existed/;
+that her spirit, her nature, her love were preserved, were inviolate,
+were the same?  That they watched over me yet, that she knew that in
+that hour I was with her, that she felt my prayer, that even then she
+anticipated the moment when my soul should burst the human prison-house
+and be once more blended with her own?
+
+What! and was this to be no more?  Were those mystic and sweet
+revealings to be mute to me forever?  Were my thoughts of Isora to be
+henceforth bounded to the charnel-house and the worm?  Was she indeed
+/no more/?  /No more/, oh, intolerable despair!  Why, there was not a
+thing I had once known, not a dog that I had caressed, not a book that I
+had read, which I could know that I should see /no more/, and, knowing,
+not feel something of regret.  No more! were we, indeed, parted forever
+and forever?  Had she gone in her young years, with her warm affections,
+her new hopes, all green and unwithered at her heart, at once into dust,
+stillness, ice?  And had I known her only for one year, one little year,
+to see her torn from me by a violent and bloody death, and to be left a
+mourner in this vast and eternal charnel, without a solitary consolation
+or a gleam of hope?  Was the earth to be henceforth a mere mass conjured
+from the bones and fattened by the clay of our dead sires?  Were the
+stars and the moon to be mere atoms and specks of a chill light, no
+longer worlds, which the ardent spirit might hereafter reach and be
+fitted to enjoy?  Was the heaven--the tender, blue, loving heaven, in
+whose far regions I had dreamed was Isora's home, and had, therefore,
+grown better and happier when I gazed upon it--to be nothing but cloud
+and air?  and had the love which had seemed so immortal, and so
+springing from that which had not blent itself with mortality, been but
+a gross lamp fed only by the properties of a brute nature, and placed in
+a dark cell of clay, to glimmer, to burn, and to expire with the frail
+walls which it had illumined?  Dust, death, worms,--were these the
+heritage of love and hope, of thought, of passion, of all that breathed
+and kindled and exalted and /created/ within?
+
+Could I contemplate this idea; could I believe it possible? /I could
+not/.  But against the abstract, the logical arguments for this idea,
+had I a reply?  I shudder as I write that at that time I had not!  I
+endeavoured to fix my whole thoughts to the study of those subtle
+reasonings which I had hitherto so imperfectly conned: but my mind was
+jarring, irresolute, bewildered, confused; my stake seemed too vast to
+allow me coolness for the game.
+
+Whoever has had cause for some refined and deep study in the midst of
+the noisy and loud world may perhaps readily comprehend that feeling
+which now possessed me; a feeling that it was utterly impossible to
+abstract and concentrate one's thoughts, while at the mercy of every
+intruder, and fevered and fretful by every disturbance.  Men early and
+long accustomed to mingle such reflections with the avocations of courts
+and cities have grown callous to these interruptions, and it has been in
+the very heart of the multitude that the profoundest speculations have
+been cherished and produced; but I was not of this mould.  The world,
+which before had been distasteful, now grew insufferable; I longed for
+some seclusion, some utter solitude, some quiet and unpenetrated nook,
+that I might give my undivided mind to the knowledge of these things,
+and build the tower of divine reasonings by which I might ascend to
+heaven.  It was at this time, and in the midst of my fiercest internal
+conflict, that the great Czar died, and I was suddenly recalled to
+Russia.
+
+"Now," I said, when I heard of my release, "now shall my wishes be
+fulfilled!"
+
+I sent to Bezoni.  He came, but he refused, as indeed he had for some
+time done, to speak to me further upon the question which so wildly
+engrossed me.  "I forgive you," said I, when we parted, "I forgive you
+for all that you have cost me: I feel that the moment is now at hand
+when my faith shall frame a weapon wherewith to triumph over yours!"
+
+Father in Heaven! thanks be to Thee that my doubts were at last removed,
+and the cloud rolled away from my soul.
+
+Bezoni embraced me, and wept over me.  "All good men," said he, "have a
+mighty interest in your success; for me there is nothing dark, even in
+the mute grave, if it covers the ashes of one who has loved and served
+his brethren, and done, with a wilful heart, no living creature wrong."
+
+Soon afterwards the Italian lost his life in attending the victims of a
+fearful and contagious disease, whom even the regular practitioners of
+the healing art hesitated to visit.
+
+At this moment I am, in the strictest acceptation of the words, a
+believer and a Christian.  I have neither anxiety nor doubt upon the
+noblest and the most comforting of all creeds, and I am grateful, among
+the other blessings which faith has brought me,--I am grateful that it
+has brought me CHARITY!  Dark to all human beings was Bezoni's
+doctrine,--dark, above all, to those who have mourned on earth; so
+withering to all the hopes which cling the most enduringly to the heart
+was his unhappy creed that he who knows how inseparably, though
+insensibly, our moral legislation is woven with our supposed
+self-interest will scarcely marvel at, even while he condemns, the
+unwise and unholy persecution which that creed universally sustains!
+Many a most wretched hour, many a pang of agony and despair, did those
+doctrines inflict upon myself; but I know that the intention of Bezoni
+was benevolence and that the practice of his life was virtue: and while
+my reason tells me that God will not punish the reluctant and
+involuntary error of one to whom all God's creatures were so dear, my
+religion bids me hope that I shall meet him in that world where no error
+/is/, and where the Great Spirit to whom all human passions are unknown
+avenges the momentary doubt of His justice by a proof of the infinity of
+His mercy.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVEREUX, BY LYTTON, BOOK V. ***
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