Chapter I

The painter, who seeks the admiration of the crowd alone, bestows his chief attention upon vivid colouring, and striking effect, desirous rather to seize the imagination by the boldness of his conception, than to satisfy the judgment by the closeness of his designs from nature.

Thus the writer, who would address the heart, and who has a moral purpose in view, should not, in his delineations of vice, exaggerate, or overcharge the picture, by unnatural representation; but, tracing conscientiously, and steadily, its terrible consequences, aim rather to fortify the mind, by a lesson of severe truth, than to astonish, without impressing it, by the incongruous legends of romance.

It was in that sublimely beautiful part of Switzerland, which the magic pen of the tender enthusiast, Rousseau, has rescued from obscurity, that Montmorency, and his daughter, retired within their cottage, listened tranquilly to the raging storm without. The youthful Gabrielle, in all the bloom of beauty, and simplicity of innocence, the result of a life passed among the mountains, free from the contagion of society, was endeavouring, by the efforts of her pencil, to rescue from decay the perishable tints of a flower. Montmorency was reading, but not aloud, the Maxims of La Rochefoucault; for, though he fled from, and hated the world, he wished not to cloud, by premature misanthropy, the generous dawn of youth.

While thus they were mutually employed, the latch of the cottage door was gently raised, the door opened, and a young man, of an elegant figure, presented himself before them. It was enough;--Montmorency detested the world, but he could not refuse shelter to a stranger;--he rose immediately, and taking him by the hand, placed him in his own chair, while Gabrielle instinctively threw another faggot on the fire, and hastened to procure some wine.

“The kindness which I experience,” observed the stranger, in that polished voice that marks the gentleman, “induces me to hope that I may find shelter here for the night; if so,” he added, looking alternately at Montmorency, and his daughter, but longer at the latter, “how shall I not bless the chance which has conducted me hither?”

“Our accommodations here,” answered Montmorency, “are, probably, not such as you have been accustomed to; for one night, however, you will, I hope, endeavour to conform to them.”

The stranger was profuse of acknowledgments; but Montmorency was silent, for he had acted only according to the impulse of his heart, and as he considered his duty. He caused a bed, the best his cottage would afford, to be prepared for his guest; he sought to render agreeable to him, by attention, the lodging to which accident had directed him; then, unwilling to enter into conversation which might cause him to unbend, or induce a relaxation from a reserve now become habitual to him, he motioned his daughter to retire, and pointing out to him his apartment, withdrew immediately to his own.

Montmorency, the present inhabitant of a small sequestered cottage, in the village of Meillerie, buried amid mountains, and isolated from the world, was yet a gentleman, in the purest and most positive acceptance of the term. His birth was noble, his ancestry illustrious, for he was descended from the family of the chivalrous Josselin de Montmorency, who distinguished himself in the third crusade against the Saracens, under Philip Augustus. Though now bereft of fortune, friends, and every future prospect, faithful to the sacred memory of his ancestors, he preserved his honour unimpeached, and retained too, amid his disastrous poverty, the genuine dignity which results from the consciousness of true nobility. But what occasioned this painful degradation in the fortunes of the unhappy Frenchman? It was gaming! source of unnumbered ills! insatiate furor which has destroyed the fortune of millions, and still continues to destroy them. Montmorency pursued its seductive allurements, nearly to the gates of ruin; till then he recovered not from his infatuation; he awakened but to behold around him a desolate waste; while in melancholy association with himself, deprived of all, his eye paused in horror upon his unconscious child. What anguish in a retrospect of the past! He stood, with his beggared offspring, alone in the world; friends talked of pity, but remained aloof, and, in the midst of a populous city, he soon beheld himself in the profoundest solitude. Disgusted with the base selfishness of the world, its ingratitude, its delusions, its ephemeral friendship, and time-serving hypocrisy, he, with scrupulous exactness, proudly scorning to explain his situation, gave up almost the whole of what he possessed, assigning to each what was his due, and then, with the young Gabrielle, quitted for ever the haunts of civilised society, where man, polished and cultivated, preys, like a refined barbarian, upon his fellow man.

Such the leading features of Montmorency’s history. On abandoning the world, he had sought to be ever remote from its observation; his was no lukewarm quarrel with, or splenetic disgust against it; he possessed no feeling that momentary exhiliration, or brighter thoughts, might chace; therefore, he desired a solitude, eternal, and profound, where he might live, and die, forgotten and unnoticed by those he dreaded and abhorred. Such a situation he had found amid the wilds of Switzerland,--a desolate retirement, fenced round by rugged rocks, where he had fixed his residence, though with some pangs of the heart, yet with a prouder feeling than swells the bosom of the youthful heir who takes possession of the splendid estate of his ancestors. His fair daughter, alone, accompanied him in his exile; and the pangs of Montmorency were for her only, when he remembered that, thus robbed of fortune, and every future prospect, she must lose likewise the superior advantage of polished education. “Yet can I not” said he, mentally, “be myself her instructor? Assuredly I can;” and, in pursuance of this idea, the best selection of books that his limited means would allow, no inferior substitute for the society of which they would be deprived, some musical and mathematical instruments, and materials for drawing, were soon transferred to, and embellished their solitary abode.

It is a well-known fact, that the Mountaineers of Switzerland, though not an highly-educated race, are far removed from ignorance. Books, Metaphysical, Philosophical, and even Classical, are to be found in cottages that have scarcely, perhaps, a second chair; thus the few scattered inhabitants that resided near the dwelling of the fallen, but noble Frenchman, suffered him to pursue his plan of life, unmolested either by vulgar curiosity, or troublesome remark.

Possessed at once of taste, learning, and a refined understanding, he was well calculated to impart to the ductile mind of his daughter, their exhaustless treasures. Already, in childhood, from his tender and patient instructions, she had acquired a knowledge superior to what she could have attained from the hired, systematic, and mechanical operations of persons wholly uninterested, but for their own advantage. She had received, as it were, the ore refined from the dross; a polished education, without the contagion of evil example; her instructions tended to improve her mind, and to render her virtuous; and nothing tended to counteract their effects. As she advanced in years, Montmorency depicted to her, in glowing, but not flattering colours, the world from which she was excluded, and which fondly he endeavoured to hope it would be never necessary for her to associate with. Availing himself of his experience, and impressed with the severe lessons he had received, he represented to her, mankind as monsters, from whom it was happiness to escape.

“There is a world, beyond these sublime solitudes, my Gabrielle,” would he say; “but seek not to know it, for your knowledge must be purchased by the destruction of your innocence, and the wreck of your peace. Society corrupts the heart; if in retirement, it should be urged that the active duties of life are not so powerfully called forth, neither does the comparatively limited sphere of existence require them. Oh, may you never quit this seclusion! for here alone can you remain both virtuous and happy.” The frequent recurrence of this subject, wherein Montmorency continually presented to his daughter the worst side of human nature, ever pourtrayed with increasing bitterness, inspired her innocent mind with a feeling amounting almost to horror of her fellow creatures; the first wish of her heart was, to live and die, in the seclusion of her childhood; and fervently did she concur in the wish of her father, that never might she be necessitated to quit it. Whether the plan of Montmorency was just and safe, in thus describing all men alike, in levelling all distinction, and teaching her, that all should be equally distrusted; or whether, by so doing, he did not run a risk of leaving her open to the wiles of the first accomplished seducer she encountered, who might appear a being wholly different from his description, remains to be proved; but, taking the hue from his feelings, and trembling with the anxiety of a father, he had no mode of preserving her from temptation, but by an exaggeration of the danger to be encountered.

Gabrielle, however, possessed a natural energy of mind, and strength of character, that no education could give, and which to exist must be imbued with the soul: though a life of solitude might never call forth these attributes, yet was it powerless to subdue them. She reflected often on the conversation she held with her father, and sometimes allowed herself to ask, “Are all mankind, then, equally bad? Can there be no exceptions?--Surely, surely, my father has been ill treated by the world--he has met with ingratitude.--Or if it be, indeed, a world such as he describes, if such are human beings, it is almost a reproach to be of the same species.” Her mode of life, her habits of gloomy reflection, and the doubts in which her enquiring mind was occasionally involved, contributed to throw over her air a certain melancholy, that, though little suited to her period of life, appeared in her beautiful and interesting. This was chiefly perceptible after conversing with her father; an uneasy impression remained on her spirits, and, like those who entered the cave of Trophonius, animation was long after invincibly chilled. The pictures of Montmorency, sketched ever by the pencil of a misanthrope, could not fail of deeply affecting the youthful mind, permitted only to behold the miseries of social intercourse, without a reference to its comforts; yet he persuaded himself, that he was right in doing thus,--that he did not wish her to hate, but merely to dread the world; and, fearful lest she should imagine it a heaven, he verged into the opposite extreme, and painted it a hell.

The person of Gabrielle resembled her mind; it was majestic; her noble features were animated by the sublimity of her soul; her eyes darted at once, sparkling intelligence, and grandeur of sentiment; her fair cheek, unlike the ruddy mountaineers’, was of the white rose teint; it spoke a charming pensiveness; and over her whole appearance was diffused a dignified grace that showed a soul at ease with itself. As a fair lily flourishes beneath the shielding umbrage of some spreading oak, so did she flourish beneath the eye of a father, cherished by his anxious love, and shielded by his care.

Count Angelo D’Albini, the stranger who had sought shelter beneath the roof of this peaceful pair, was of noble family, and possessed of an extensive fortune. His father, by birth an Italian, had married a young English female, of considerable rank, who had become known to him in England, during a temporary residence of pleasure there; unable, however, to obtain her hand, but by consenting to remain in England, he acceeded to the condition, (for to resign her was from the question) and fixed his residence in the place of her nativity. One son only was the fruit of this marriage; he was the hope and idol of the house. Count D’Albini lived only to behold him enter his twenty-fifth year, when he paid the debt of nature, and, in less than another year, was followed to the grave by his wife, who had remained inconsolable for his loss: Thus, in the full bloom of youth, and pride of fortune, Angelo beheld himself almost alone in the world, (for so may he be considered who has no human being to whom he is united by the tender ties of consanguinity.) These melancholy events having so rapidly succeeded each other, filled him with a melancholy, which the dissipation of the gay metropolis was powerless to divert; he determined, therefore, to quit the dull round of unsubstantial pleasures, and irrational delights, (the very repetition of which rendered them disgusting, or converted them into toils) for a mode of life, if not more useful, less uniform at least, and boasting the charm of novelty; he resolved on travel, and quitting England, he visited Paris, where he remained till the same frivolous pursuits, noise, and folly, reminded him of the scenes he had quitted. He next passed into Italy; the demon of disgust followed him there. Failing of finding the variety he had sought, from change of place, where the similarity of the scenes, the same gay nothings pervading, rendered it a change of place only, without a change of pleasures, his thoughts wandered beyond the careless circle of society, and in the wilds of animated nature, in the independent majesty of solitude, he conceived that he should find those pure delights, which he had failed of experiencing in the idle clamour of the giddy world.

Thus, then, he abandoned for a time, his gay connections, and the crowd of beings, who, while they complain that life is short, are ever busily employed in destroying time, to breathe at large among the mountains of Switzerland, and to presume to think, amid the expansive waste of his silent scenery, and romantic beauties. Thither, ever accustomed to yield to his first impulses, and to regard his own will as law, he quickly transported himself. For a while he wandered delighted o’er Geneva’s majestic lake; he coasted along its borders, enraptured at the rich and varied prospects he beheld, where nature has done so little, and man has effected so much; where cultivation reveals her stores, and where the lately barren rock now smiles in the green treasures of vegetation. Next along the banks of the winding Rhone, among the mountains of La Valais, where, in the quaintness of character, and blunt honesty of the good Helvetians, he discovered already the variety he sought, in the forcible contrast which they exhibited to the manners of the world he had left; ennui and vacuum fled, and he began to experience a little rational pleasure.

It was one evening that, allured by the sublime beauty of the surrounding scenery, he remained out longer than he intended, night, accompanied by a dreadful hurricane, overtook him; the sense of his danger, in a situation unknown, and teeming with hazard at every step, caused him, amid the savage and nearly desolate mountains among which he found himself, to hail with joy the first appearance of a human habitation; he hastened towards it, and without otherwise announcing himself, according to the established custom among the hospitable Swiss, than by simply lifting the latch which fastened the door, (for thus easily had he till now insured himself a welcome) he requested, and instantly obtained, admission beneath the roof of Montmorency.

From the circumstance of having been an only child, the count D’Albini, as is too frequently the case, was loved by his parents, “not wisely, but too well”--he was rather, like a scarce exotic, tenderly cherished, than improved; the brilliant rather than the solid, was attended to in his education; content with beholding him an engaging child, and an accomplished man, they sought no further; no prominent vices, or glaring imperfections, had hitherto developed themselves; consequently, the decided bent of his character remained unknown, and uninvestigated. He attracted homage, he met with universal approbation; his parents, satisfied with this, as most parents are, did not trouble themselves to enquire, how far justified was this ephemeral approbation, or how much of it was attendant upon the circumstances in which he was placed by the adventitious combination of birth, rank, and fortune. Thus left to form itself, the character of Angelo had no decided principles, no solid foundation, no fixed rule of action; he possessed not powerful judgment, nor sound discrimination to enable him to distinguish between right and wrong, or to give him a basis on which to form his conduct; no strong hypothesis had ever exercised his youthful reason, no circumstance had occurred materially to draw it forth, nor no rule bounded in his mind the nice and almost imperceptible gradations which mark the limits between virtue and vice. His heart was by nature generous, and impassioned; but, proper education having never corrected the exuberance of these feelings, they had degenerated into vices, while the germs of many virtues became withered in his breast. A good action was with him an impulse, not a principle; if he acted wrong, it was involuntarily, from the want of due reason, or just discrimination for his guide: when made sensible of any impropriety of conduct that, in its effects, had been productive of injury to others, the regret which he felt was only to be equalled by his anxiety to repair the mischief. Thus, often his very faults seemed graceful in him, as they were accompanied by virtues, which were attendant upon them, and which could not otherwise have existed. Weak, volatile, and unsteady, because of an undisciplined mind, he yet possessed a quick, tenacious pride, which ever took alarm at the least thought of dishonor, and a susceptibility of soul, which, while it rendered him alive to his error, was continually leading him into the most dangerous excesses: remorse ever followed his faults, and faults again succeeded to the upbraidings of his conscience: all his sensations were, however, too transient; his pliable feelings, like the fickle reed to the wind, yielded readily to every allurement; his wishes were his guides, and the decision of one moment was ever in danger of being broken, by the temptation of the next.--Thus was his character a mixture of good and evil; while he charmed the undiscriminating part of society, by the frankness, naiveté, and gracefulness of his manners, he ravished admiration from the wiser part; he extorted from the coldest a praise which it surprised them to hear themselves bestow, and philosophy’s self could not but exclaim “pity that, in so beautiful a garden, such noxious weeds should have sprung up with the flowers!”