Читать книгу Corinne; or, Italy - Madame de Staël - Страница 7

In the year 1794, Oswald, Lord Nevil, a Scotch nobleman, left Edinburgh to pass the winter in Italy.[1] He possessed a noble and handsome person, a fine mind, a great name, an independent fortune; but his health was impaired; and the physicians, fearing that his lungs were affected, prescribed the air of the south. He followed their advice, though with little interest in his own recovery, hoping, at least, to find some amusement in the varied objects he was about to behold. The heaviest of all afflictions, the loss of a father, was the cause of his malady. The remorse inspired by scrupulous delicacy still more embittered his regret, and haunted his imagination. Such sufferings we readily convince ourselves that we deserve, for violent griefs extend their influence even over the realms of conscience. At five-and-twenty he was tired of life; he judged the future by the past, and no longer relished the illusions of the heart. No one could be more devoted to the service of his friends; yet not even the good he effected gave him one sensation of pleasure. He constantly sacrificed his tastes to those of others; but this generosity alone, far from proving a total forgetfulness of self, may often be attributed to a degree of melancholy, which renders a man careless of his own doom. The indifferent considered this mood extremely graceful; but those who loved him felt that he employed himself for the happiness of others, like a man who hoped for none; and they almost repined at receiving felicity from one on whom they could never bestow it. His natural disposition was versatile, sensitive, and impassioned; uniting all the qualities which could excite himself or others; but misfortune and repentance had rendered him timid, and he thought to disarm, by exacting nothing from fate. He trusted to find, in a firm adherence to his duties, and a renouncement of all enjoyments, a security against the sorrows which had distracted him. Nothing in the world seemed worth the risk of these pangs; but while we are still capable of feeling them, to what kind of life can we fly for shelter?

Lord Nevil flattered himself that he should quit Scotland without regret, as he had remained there without pleasure; but the dangerous dreams of imaginative minds are not thus fulfilled; he was sensible of the ties which bound him to the scene of his miseries, the home of his father. There were rooms he could not approach without a shudder, and yet, when he had resolved to fly them, he felt more alone than ever. A barren dearth seized on his heart; he could no longer weep; no more recall those little local associations which had so deeply melted him; his recollections had less of life; they belonged not to the things that surrounded him. He did not think the less of those he mourned, but it became more difficult to conjure back their presence. Sometimes, too, he reproached himself for abandoning the place where his father had dwelt. "Who knows," would he sigh, "if the shades of the dead follow the objects of their affection? They may not be permitted to wander beyond the spots where their ashes repose! Perhaps, at this moment, is my father deploring my absence, powerless to recall me. Alas! may not a host of wild events have persuaded him that I have betrayed his tenderness, turned rebel to my country, to his will, and all that is sacred on earth?"

These remembrances occasioned him such insupportable despair, that, far from daring to confide them to any one, he dreaded to sound their depths himself; so easy is it, out of our own reflections, to create irreparable evils!

It costs added pain to leave one's country, when one must cross the sea. There is such solemnity in a pilgrimage, the first steps of which are on the ocean. It seems as if a gulf were opening behind you, and your return becoming impossible; besides, the sight of the main always profoundly impresses us, as the image of that infinitude which perpetually attracts the soul, and in which thought ever feels herself lost. Oswald, leaning near the helm, his eyes fixed on the waves, appeared perfectly calm. Pride and diffidence generally prevented his betraying his emotions even before his friends; but sad feelings struggled within. He thought on the time when that spectacle animated his youth with a desire to buffet the tides, and measure his strength with theirs.

"Why," he bitterly mused, "why thus constantly yield to meditation? There is such rapture in active life! in those violent exercises that make us feel the energy of existence! then death itself may appear glorious; at least it is sudden, and not preceded by decay; but that death which finds us without being bravely sought—that gloomy death which steals from you, in a night, all you held dear, which mocks your regrets, repulses your embrace, and pitilessly opposes to your desire the eternal laws of time and nature—that death inspires a kind of contempt for human destiny, for the powerlessness of grief, and all the vain efforts that wreck themselves against necessity."

Such were the torturing sentiments which characterized the wretchedness of his state. The vivacity of youth was united with the thoughts of another age; such as might well have occupied the mind of his father in his last hours; but Oswald tinted the melancholy contemplations of age with the ardor of five-and-twenty. He was weary of everything; yet, nevertheless, lamented his lost content, as if its visions still lingered.

This inconsistency, entirely at variance with the will of nature (which has placed the conclusion and the gradation of things in their rightful course), disordered the depths of his soul; but his manners were ever sweet and harmonious; nay, his grief, far from injuring his temper, taught him a still greater degree of consideration and gentleness for others.

Twice or thrice in the voyage from Harwich to Emden the sea threatened stormily. Nevil directed the sailors, reassured the passengers; and while, toiling himself, he for a moment took the pilot's place, there was a vigour and address in what he did, which could not be regarded as the simple effect of personal strength and activity, for mind pervaded it all.

When they were about to part, all on board crowded round him to take leave, thanking him for a thousand good offices, which he had forgotten: sometimes it was a child that he had nursed so long; more frequently, some old man whose steps he had supported while the wind rocked the vessel. Such an absence of personal feeling was scarcely ever known. His voyage had passed without his having devoted a moment to himself; he gave up his time to others, in melancholy benevolence. And now the whole crew cried, with one voice, "God bless you, my Lord! we wish you better."

Yet Oswald had not once complained; and the persons of a higher class, who had crossed with him, said not a word on this subject; but the common people, in whom their superiors rarely confide, are wont to detect the truth without the aid of words; they pity you when you suffer, though ignorant of the cause; and their spontaneous sympathy is unmixed with either censure or advice.