Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ my life, at least, my own?’ said Gerald boldly.

      ‘That it is not,’ said the other. ‘Your priestly teachers might have told you that you hold it in trust for Him who gave it. I, and men like me, would say that each of us here has his allotted task to do in life; and that he is but a coward, or as bad as a coward, who skulks his share of it. Go in, I say, boy.’

      Gerald obeyed without a word; and now a slavish sense of fear came over him, and he felt that this man swayed and controlled him as he pleased.

      ‘There, Gerald, drink that,’ said Gabriel, filling him out a goblet of red wine. ‘That’s the liquor inspires the pious sentiments of the Bishop of Orvieto. From that generous grape-juice spring his Christian charities and his heavenly precepts. Let us see what miracles it can work upon two such sinful mortals as you and me. Well done, boy; drain off another,’ and he refilled his glass as he spoke.

      Old Pippo had retired and left them alone together. The moon was slowly rising beyond the lake, and threw a long yellow stream upon the floor, the only light in the chamber where they sat, thus giving a sort of solemnity to a moment when each felt too deeply sunk in his own thoughts for much conversation.

      ‘Do you remark how that streak of moonlight seems to separate us, Gerald?’ said Gabriel. ‘A superstitious mind would find food for speculation there, and trace some mysterious meaning – perhaps a warning – from it. Are you superstitious?’

      ‘I can scarcely say I am not,’ said the boy diffidently.

      ‘None of us are,’ said the other boldly. ‘If we affect to despise spirits we are just as eager slaves of our own presentiments. What we dignify by the name of reason is just as often a mere prompting of instinct. It amuses us to believe that we steer the bark of our destiny; but the truth comes upon us at last, that the tiller was lashed when the voyage began.’ After a long silence on both sides, Gabriel said: ‘I have told you, Gerald, that I made a journey to Rome on your account. I have been to the Jesuit College; conversed with the superior; saw your cell, your torn school-books, your little table carved over with your pen-knife; and, by a date scratched on a window-pane, was led to discover where you had passed the evening of the fifth of January.’

      ‘And did you go there also?’ asked Gerald eagerly.

      ‘Ay, boy. I gave an afternoon to the Altieri and the café in front of it.’

      ‘You saw the Count, then?’

      ‘No, I have not seen him,’ said Gabriel dryly. ‘He was away from Rome at a villa, I believe; but I have learned that, indignant at your flight from the Cardinal’s villa, he absolves himself of all further interest in you.’

      ‘Have you seen Fra Luke?’ asked the boy, who now talked as if the other had known every incident of his life.

      ‘No; he too was away. In fact, Gerald, there was little to learn, and I came back very nearly as I went. I only know that you are about as much alone in the world as myself. We are meet companions. You said, a while ago, you were curious to know who and what I was. You shall hear. I am of a good Provençal family, originally derived from Italy. We are counts, from a date before the Medici; so much for blood. As to fortune, my grandfather was rich, and my own father enjoyed a reasonable fortune. I was, however, brought up to believe all men my brothers; all interested alike in serving and aiding each other: helping in the cause of that excellent thing we are pleased to call Humanity; and as a creed firmly believing that, bating a chance yielding to temptation, a little backsliding now and then on the score of an evil passion, men and women were wonderfully good, and were on the road to be better. We were most ingenious in our devices to build up this belief. My father wrote books and delivered lectures to prove it. He did more: he squandered all his patrimony in support of his theory, and he trained me up to be – what I am.’ And the last words were uttered in a voice of intense solemnity.

      ‘I am not going to give you a story of my life,’ said he, after some time; ‘I mean only to let you hear its moral. Till I was eighteen I was taught to believe that men were honest, truthful, brave, and affectionate; and that women were pure-hearted, gentle, forgiving, and trustful. Before I was nineteen I knew men to be scoundrels; it took me about a year more to think worse of the others. Then began my real life. I ceased to be a dupe, and felt a man. I am a quick learner, and I acquired their vices rapidly, all but one, that is still my stumbling-block – hypocrisy. All that I have done,’ said he, in half soliloquy, ‘might have passed harmlessly had I known but how to shroud it. Slander, theft, and seduction must not walk naked in this well-dressed world; but, with fine clothes on, they make very good company. I was curious to see if other lands were the same slaves of conventionalities, and I travelled. I went to Holland and to England; I found both as bad – nay worse – than France. If I obtained a momentary success in life I was certain to be robbed of it by some allegation foreign to the question. My book was clever; but I had deserted my wife. My treatise was admirable; but I had seduced the daughter of my protector. My views were just, right-minded, and true; but I had robbed my father. Thus, with a subtlety the stupidest possess, they were able to detract from my genius by charging it with the defects of my character, as if it behoved one to pay the debts of the other. I went on insisting that it was my opinions alone were before the world; they as steadily persisted in dragging myself there. At last they have had their will, and I wish them joy of the victory.’ There was a savage triumph in his eyes as he spoke this that made Gerald tremble while he looked at him.

      ‘If you care for my story, boy,’ resumed he, ‘old Pippo there will give it to you for a flask of Monte Pulciano. He ‘ll tell you of all my cruelties in my first campaign in Corsica; how I won my wife by first blasting her reputation; how I left her; how I was imprisoned and fined, and how escaped from both by a seduction. If he forget the name, you may remind him of Sophie De Mounier. They beheaded me in effigy for this at Dole. But why go on with vulgar incidents which have happened to so many! It is the moral of it all I would impress, boy, which is this – take nothing from the world but solid gifts. Laugh at its praises, and drink deep of its indulgences! Those born great are able to do this by prerogative; you and I may succeed to it by skill. Remember, too, that my theory is a wide, a most catholic one; and to follow it you need assume no special discipline, but be priest, soldier, statesman, scholar, just as you will. I have been all these in turn, and may be so again; but whether I wear a cassock or a cuirass, my knowledge of men will guide me to but one mode of dealing with them.’

      ‘There is nothing in what you have told me of your life to make me revere your principles,’ said Gerald, with a courageous boldness.

      ‘Because I have told you how I fell, and not how I was tempted; because I have stooped to say of myself that which none dare say to my face; because whatever I have been to the world it was that same world fashioned me to. What would it avail me that I made out a case of undeserving hardships and injustice, proved myself an injured, martyred saint: would your wondering sympathy heal any the least of those wounds that fester here, boy? Every man’s course in life is but one swing of the pendulum. I have vowed that with mine I shall cleave the dense mob and scatter the vile multitude. As to you,’ said he, suddenly turning his glaring eyes upon the youth, ‘you are free to leave this to-morrow. I’ll take care that you are safely restored to those you came from, if you wish to return. If you prefer it, you may remain here for a month or two; by that time I shall return.’

      ‘Are you going, then, from this?’ asked Gerald.

      ‘Yes. I am on my trial at Aix, for cruelty and desertion of my wife. They have spread a report that I have no intention to appear; that, having fled France, I mean never to return to it. Ere the week’s over they shall learn their mistake. I shall be there before them; and, if instances from the uses of court and courtiers are admissible, show, that when they prove me guilty, they must be ready to include Versailles in the next prosecution. Watch this case, boy; СКАЧАТЬ