Nothing is more painful to the human mind,
than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession
of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which
follows, and deprives the soul both of hope and fear. Justine died;
she rested; and I was alive. The blood flowed freely in my veins,
but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which
nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an
evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond
description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself), was
yet behind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness, and the love of
virtue. I had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted
for the moment when I should put them in practice, and make myself
useful to my fellow-beings. Now all was blasted: instead of that
serenity of conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past
with self satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new
hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried
me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can
describe.
This state of mind preyed upon my health, which
had perhaps never entirely recovered from the first shock it had
sustained. I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or
complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only
consolation--deep, dark, deathlike solitude.
My father
observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my disposition and
habits, and endeavoured by arguments deduced from the feelings of
his serene conscience and guiltless life, to inspire me with
fortitude, and awaken in me the courage to dispel the dark cloud
which brooded over me. "Do you think, Victor," said he, "that I do
not suffer also? No one could love a child more than I loved your
brother" (tears came into his eyes as he spoke); "but is it not a
duty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their
unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty
owed to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or
enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which
no man is fit for society."
This advice, although good, was
totally inapplicable to my case; I should have been the first to
hide my grief, and console my friends, if remorse had not mingled
its bitterness, and terror its alarm with my other sensations. Now I
could only answer my father with a look of despair, and endeavour to
hide myself from his view.
About this time we retired to our
house at Belrive. This change was particularly agreeable to me. The
shutting of the gates regularly at ten o'clock, and the
impossibility of remaining on the lake after that hour, had rendered
our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome to me. I was
now free. Often, after the rest of the family had retired for the
night, I took the boat, and passed many hours upon the water.
Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and
sometimes, after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat
to pursue its own course, and gave way to my own miserable
reflections. I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me,
and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so
beautiful and heavenly if I except some bat, or the frogs, whose
harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the
shore--often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake,
that the waters might close over me and my calamities for ever. But
I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic and suffering
Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound up
in mine. I thought also of my father and surviving brother: should I
by my base desertion leave them exposed and unprotected to the
malice of the fiend whom I had let loose among them?
At
these moments I wept bitterly, and wished that peace would revisit
my mind only that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But
that could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the
author of unalterable evils; and I lived in daily fear, lest the
monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I
had an obscure feeling that all was not over, and that he would
still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost
efface the recollection of the past. There was always scope for
fear, so long as anything I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of
this fiend cannot be conceived. When I thought of him, I gnashed my
teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish
that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on
his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of
moderation. I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of
the Andes, could I, when there, have precipitated him to their base.
I wished to see him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent of
abhorrence on his head, and avenge the deaths of William and
Justine.
Our house was the house of mourning. My father's
health was deeply shaken by the horror of the recent events.
Elizabeth was sad and desponding; she no longer took delight in her
ordinary occupations; all pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward
the dead; eternal woe and tears she then thought was the just
tribute she should pay to innocence so blasted and destroyed. She
was no longer that happy creature, who in earlier youth wandered
with me on the banks of the lake, and talked with ecstasy of our
future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are sent to wean
us from the earth, had visited her, and its dimming influence
quenched her dearest smiles.
"When I reflect, my dear
cousin," said she, "on the miserable death of Justine Moritz, I no
longer see the world and its works as they before appeared to me.
Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice, that I
read in books or heard from others, as tales of ancient days, or
imaginary evils; at least they were remote, and more familiar to
reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come home, and
men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood. Yet I
am certainly unjust. Everybody believed that poor girl to be guilty;
and if she could have committed the crime for which she suffered,
assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human creatures.
For the sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her
benefactor and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth,
and appeared to love as if it had been her own! I could not consent
to the death of any human being; but certainly I should have thought
such a creature unfit to remain in the society of men. But she was
innocent. I know, I feel she was innocent; you are of the same
opinion, and that confirms me. Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look
so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I
feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which
thousands are crowding, and endeavouring to plunge me into the
abyss. William and Justine were assassinated, and the murderer
escapes; he walks about the world free, and perhaps respected. But
even if I were condemned to suffer on the scaffold for the same
crimes, I would not change places with such a wretch."
I
listened to this discourse with the extremest agony I, not in deed,
but in effect, was the true murderer Elizabeth read my anguish in my
countenance, and kindly taking my hand, said, "My dearest friend,
you must calm yourself. These events have affected me, God knows how
deeply; but I am not so wretched as you are. There is an expression
of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance, that
makes me tremble. Dear Victor, banish these dark passions. Remember
the friends around you, who centre all their hopes in you. Have we
lost the power of rendering you happy? Ah! while we love--while we
are true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty, your
native country, we may reap every tranquil blessing--what can
disturb our peace?"
And could not such words from her whom I
fondly prized before every other gift of fortune, suffice to chase
away the fiend that lurked in my heart? Even as she spoke I drew
near to her, as if in terror; lest at that very moment the destroyer
had been near to rob me of her.
Thus not the tenderness of
friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of heaven, could redeem my
soul from woe: the very accents of love were ineffectual. I was
encompassed by a cloud which no beneficial influence could
penetrate. The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some
untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it,
and to die--was but a type of me.
Sometimes I could cope
with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me: but sometimes the
whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise
and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations.
It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home,
and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the
magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my
ephemeral, because human, sorrows. My wanderings were directed
towards the valley of Chamounix. I had visited it frequently during
my boyhood. Six years had passed since then: I was a wreck--but
nought had changed in those savage and enduring scenes.
I
performed the first part of my journey on horseback I afterwards
hired a mule, as the more sure footed, and least liable to receive
injury on these rugged roads. The weather was fine: it was about the
middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of
Justine; that miserable epoch from which I dated all my woe. The
weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper
in the ravine of Arve. The immense mountains and precipices that
overhung me on every side--the sound of the river raging among the
rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around, spoke of a power
mighty as Omnipotence--and I ceased to fear, or to bend before any
being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the
elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise. Still, as I
ascended higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and
astonishing character. Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of
piny mountains; the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and
there peeping forth from among the trees, formed a scene of singular
beauty. But it was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty
Alps, whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all,
as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of
beings.
I passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine,
which the river forms, opened before me, and I began to ascend the
mountain that overhangs it. Soon after I entered the valley of
Chamounix. This valley is more wonderful and sublime, but not so
beautiful and picturesque, as that of Servox, through which I had
just passed. The high and snowy mountains were its immediate
boundaries; but I saw no more ruined castles and fertile fields.
Immense glaciers approached the road; I heard the rumbling thunder
of the falling avalanche, and marked the smoke of its passage. Mont
Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from
the surrounding aiguilles, and its tremendous dome overlooked the
valley.
A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came
across me during this journey. Some turn in the road, some new
object suddenly perceived and recognised, reminded me of days gone
by, and were associated with the light-hearted gaiety of boyhood.
The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal nature
bade me weep no more. Then again the kindly influence ceased to
act--I found myself fettered again to grief, and indulging in all
the misery of reflection. Then I spurred on my animal, striving so
to forget the world, my fears, and, more than all, myself--or, in a
more desperate fashion, I alighted, and threw myself on the grass,
weighed down by horror and despair.
At length I arrived at
the village of Chamounix. Exhaustion succeeded to the extreme
fatigue both of body and of mind which I had endured. For a short
space of time I remained at the window, watching the pallid
lightnings that played above Mont Blanc, and listening to the
rushing of the Arve, which pursued its noisy way beneath. The same
lulling sounds acted as a lullaby to my too keen sensations: when I
placed my head upon my pillow, sleep crept over me; I felt it as it
came, and blest the giver of oblivion. |
