Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

“Here it is, then,” said Cristiano. “My name is--or at least I go by the name of Cristiano del Lago!”

“Chrétien du Lac? Christian of the Lake? Why so romantic a name?”

“Ah, there you have me! _Chi lo sa?_ Who knows? as they say in my country. It is altogether a romance, no doubt, without a word of truth in it. I will tell it to you as it was told to me.

“In some country--I don’t know what--by the side of a lake whose name I have never known, a lady--ugly or handsome, rich or poor, noble or plebeian--either in consequence of a legitimate connection or of an unfortunate mischance--gave birth to an infant whose existence, it seems, it was very necessary to conceal. By means of a cord and a basket--these details were told me with much precision--this lady, or her confidential companion, lowered the poor little new-born child into a boat, waiting below either by chance, or in pursuance of some arrangement made secretly. As to the lady, I have never met any one who could inform me what became of her; and where should I have made inquiries? As to the child, it was carried away secretly, I do not know whither, and maintained, I do not know how, until old enough to be weaned, when it was carried away again, I don’t know by whom, into another country--”

“I don’t know what!” said M. Goefle, laughing. “Your statements are a little vague. I should be a good deal troubled with such evidence, to gain your cause.”

“My cause?”

“Yes; I am supposing that you are going to law to recover your name, your rights, your inheritance.”

“Oh, make yourself easy about that, Monsieur Goefle,” replied Cristiano; “you will never have a cause to plead for me. I have none of the ordinary foolishness of adventurers of mysterious birth, who assume, at the very least, to be the sons of kings, and who spend their whole lives in hunting all over the world for their illustrious relatives, without remembering that they, most probably, would find it more inconvenient than agreeable to be recognized. For my part, if I happen to be of a noble family I don’t know it, and I don’t trouble myself about it. My adopted parents entertained this same indifference, or rather they inspired me with it.”

“And who were your adopted parents?”

“I have never known, and I have no recollection who the persons were who received me from the window into the boat, who kept me at nurse, and who carried me into Italy. They may all have been of the same family--perhaps it was one and the same person--I can’t tell anything at all about it. My only real adopted parents were Signor Goffredi, an antiquary and professor of ancient history at Perugia, and his excellent wife, Sophia Goffredi, whom I loved like a mother.”

“But where and from whom did these good people receive you? They must have told you--”

“They never knew. They had a small fortune, and having no children, they had several times shown a desire to adopt some poor orphan. One evening, in carnival time, a man in a mask presented himself to them, and took from under his cloak the individual who now has the honor to address you, but who has not the least recollection in the world of the occurrence, and could give no explanation of it at the time; inasmuch as he then spoke a language that nobody could understand.”

“But,” interrupted the advocate, who was listening to this story with the same attention that he would have bestowed upon the progress of a cause in court, “what was the tenor of the words used by the masked person who presented you to Professor Goffredi and his wife?”

“Here they are, as they were repeated to me: ‘I come from a distance--a great distance. I am poor, and have been obliged to spend part of the money given me with this child, in travelling. I thought myself bound to do this, for I had been ordered to carry him far away, very far, from his and my own country. Here is the rest of the money. I have heard that you were looking for a child to adopt, and I know you will bring him up happy and well-educated. Will you receive this poor orphan?’”

“The professor did receive it?”

“He accepted the child and refused the money. ‘If I want a child to bring up,’ he said, ‘it is my duty to provide for him; not his for me!’”

“And had he not curiosity enough to inform himself--?”

“He could obtain no information except on one point--whether or no the child was likely to be reclaimed. He wanted to feel that it was wholly his; for he did not wish to become attached to the little creature, and then some day or other have it taken away. The unknown swore to him that no one would ever reclaim me; ‘and,’ he added, ‘the proof is that I have brought him more than five hundred leagues, for the express purpose of causing every trace of him to be lost. The child,’ he continued, ‘would be in the utmost danger, even here, if his whereabouts should be discovered. Ask me no questions, therefore, I shall not answer them!’ And he insisted upon leaving with them the small sum in question, which amounted to two or three hundred sequins.”

“Italian money?”

“Foreign gold coins of various countries, as if the unknown had crossed the whole of Europe, and had taken pains to convert his money into all sorts of pieces, so as to disappoint search or supposition.”

“The Goffredis reminded him that he was poor; he had said so, and his whole appearance showed it. It was only just, they thought, that he should be rewarded for taking such a long journey, and fulfilling so faithfully his orders about my removal. These offers he refused with obstinacy, and austerely. He departed very abruptly, saying, to prevent further questions, that he would return next day. He did not return, however; nothing further was ever heard of him; and so I remained intrusted, or, more properly, abandoned, thank God, to the care of M. and Madame Goffredi.”

“But the history of the lake, the window and the boat--where the deuce did you get that?”

“Wait a moment. When I was five or six years old--I was apparently three or four when I made my entry into Perugia under the cloak of the man in the mask--I had a fall, and was for a time thought to be dead. It was not very serious, after all. But among the friends of my adopted family who came to inquire after me, there slipped in a little Jew, whether baptized or not I do not know, who lived in Perugia, and traded with visitors, in objects of art and antiquity. My parents disliked him because he was a Jew; for in Italy, as here, a strong prejudice prevails against that people. This Jew inquired about me anxiously, and even insisted on seeing me, so as to be satisfied as to my condition.

“A year afterwards, we spent the summer in the country, and on our return to the city, he came again to obtain further information about me, and to see with his own eyes whether I had grown, and was well. My parents were extremely surprised at this, and insisted on knowing why he took so much interest in me. They threatened to exclude him from the house unless he gave a satisfactory account of the matter; for they were already fond of me, and were afraid that this Jew might mean to carry me off. Upon this he confessed, or pretended, that he had chanced to receive at his house the man in the mask, on the day of his arrival in the city, and had extracted certain confidential disclosures from him about me. These disclosures, vague, improbable, and utterly useless, were the statements with which I began my story. Probably they are not entitled to any credit whatever. My adoptive mother paid very little attention to them, but thinking the adventure somewhat romantic, she gave me the surname of del Lago, which I have for a long time used as my real name.”

“But the baptismal name, Christian, Christin, Christiern, Chrétien, Cristiano, who gave you that?”

“The man in the mask, without adding any other.”

“Did this man speak Italian?”

“Very imperfectly. His difficulty in explaining himself added not a little to the mystery about me.”

“But what sort of accent had he?”

“Professor Goffredi had occupied himself with the dead languages only. His wife, like himself a highly educated person, knew a good deal about living languages, but she found it impossible to decide to what nationality this man’s accent belonged.”

“And the little Jew, what did he think?”

“If he had any opinion about it, he never thought proper to tell it.”

“Were your parents quite sure he was not himself the man in the mask?”

“Quite certain. The man in the mask was of middle size, while the Jew was not five feet high. Nor had their voices or accents anything of similarity. I see, Monsieur Goefle, that, like my poor friends the Goffredis, you are asking yourself all sorts of questions about me; but what difference would it make, let me ask you, even if you could answer them?”

“Very true; what difference would it make?” answered M. Goefle. “Perhaps you may not be worth the pains I have been taking this hour past to put you in the way of discovering your family. It is from a professional habit of mind: let us say no more about it; particularly as in all that you have told me there is not a single definite fact to serve as the basis for framing ingenious and learned deductions. Wait, however;--what was done with the money of the man in the mask?”

“My good parents, imagining that it may have been the hire of a kidnapper, or the reward of some other crime, and believing, therefore, that it could not bring me good fortune, hastened to deposit it in the box for the poor in the cathedral of Perugia.”

“But you mentioned that you yourself spoke some language when you were brought there.”

“Certainly; but I quickly forgot it, as there was no one for me to talk to in it. I only know that a German philologist, who was visiting us next year, tried to unravel the mystery, at which time I had a good deal of trouble to remember a few words of this old language of mine. The linguist said it was a northern dialect, and somewhat like Icelandic; but my black hair seemed in a measure to invalidate that conclusion. The attempt to discover the facts was given up. My adoptive mother wished to make me forget all about any other country or family. You may easily suppose she had little difficulty in accomplishing her object.”

“One question more,” said M. Goefle. “I cannot feel thoroughly interested in a story until I am well possessed of the beginning of it. These recollections, that faded of themselves so naturally, and which your friends tried, moreover, to help you lose--does there remain absolutely nothing of them?”

“There is something, but so vague that I cannot tell whether it is not merely a dream. It is a recollection of a strange, wild country, even grander in its features than this around me.”

“A cold country?”

“That I do not know. Children seldom feel the cold, and I was never very sensitive to it.”

“What else was there in your dream? Sunshine? snow?”

“I don’t know. Tall trees, herds of cows, I think.”

“Tall trees--that is not Iceland. And what do you remember of the journey to Italy?”

“Absolutely nothing. I believe my companion, or companions, were strangers to me when we set out.”

“Well, go on with your story.”

“That is, I will begin it, Monsieur Goefle; for, so far, I have only been telling you the mysterious circumstances with which, as the poets say, my cradle was surrounded. I will begin with the first clearly-defined recollection in my mind. This is--pray do not be scandalized--an ass.”

“An ass? A quadruped or a biped?”

“A real ass with four legs; a flesh-and-blood ass. He was the favorite animal of Sophia Goffredi for riding, and was called _Nino_, the diminutive of Giovanni. I was so fond of him, that I have called the one I now use to carry my baggage by the name of Jean, in remembrance of him who was the joy of my early childhood.”

“Ah, you have an ass? It must have been he who visited me last evening.”

“And it was you who had him put in the stable?”

“Exactly. You seem to love asses.”

“Fraternally. Indeed, I have been thinking for a quarter of an hour that mine has, perhaps, not had his breakfast. Ulph will be afraid of him. Perhaps he has driven him out of the chateau. The poor fellow may be wandering about in the ice and snow at this very moment, awakening the insensible echoes with his plaintive voice. I beg pardon, Monsieur Goefle, but I must leave you for a moment and look after my ass.”

“You are a queer fellow,” said M. Goefle. “Well, be quick, and give an eye to my horse at the same time. He’s worth more than your ass--no offence to you. But are you going out to the stable in my dress-coat and silk stockings?”

“I shall be back in a moment.”

“No, no, my boy, that won’t do at all. Besides, you will catch cold. Take my furred boots and pelisse, and be quick!”

Cristiano thankfully obeyed, and found Jean in very good case, coughing less than on the day before, and eating contentedly in company with Loki, whom Ulph had brought back from the new chateau.

Ulph was looking at the ass in stupid wonderment. He was beginning to recover a little from his drunkenness, and to suspect that it was not a horse that he had so quietly groomed in the morning. Cristiano, who had learned on the previous evening, while hunting after his supper, what a superstitious poltroon he had to deal with, addressed him at once in Italian, accompanying his remarks with fierce looks and absurd and terrifying gestures. In this fantastic style, he ordered the poor fellow to respect the ass like a mythological divinity, and threatened him with the most fearful punishment in case of disobedience. Ulph, in a great fright, retired in silence, after saluting both the ass and his master, his brain full of indistinct notions that he could not carry forward to any intelligible conclusion, but which the spirituous indulgences of the coming evening would be sure to develop into new alarms and imaginations more and more strange.

“Very well,” continued Cristiano, returning and resuming his pipe, his story, and his position astride of a chair, in the bear-room; “Madame Goffredi’s ass was my first friend. I believe no donkey in the world, not even my own, ever had such beautiful ears and such an agreeable gait. Perhaps, Monsieur Goefle, the reason I think so is, that the first time that quiet pace and those two long ears attracted the attention of my poor little undeveloped mind, I was at the same moment instinctively impressed by one of the most beautiful sights in the universe. It was on the shore of a lake. Lakes, you see, play an important part in my life. But what a lake this was! The lake of Perugia--the ancient lake Thrasymene! Were you never in Italy, Monsieur Goefle?”

“No, very much to my regret. But as to lakes, we have some here in Sweden that would make your Italian ones look like wash-basins.”

“I have nothing to say against your lakes. I have already seen a number of them. Very likely they are beautiful in summer, and even in winter, with their _mjelgars_--is not that the name of those immense avalanches of earth that slide down to the water’s edge with their green trees standing, their rocks and strange fractures?--I admit that they are very remarkable. The hoar-frost and ice that cover so many strange forms, and make a wreath of diamonds out of the smallest blade of grass; these inextricable net-works of brambles that might be taken for immense and elaborate pieces of work in cut-glass; the glorious red sunlight over it all; the jagged peaks above, glittering like shafts of sapphire against the purple of the morning--yes, I confess the grandeur of all this scenery. Even what I can see out of this window is a picture which dazzles me. Dazzles: that is the word; and that is really the only criticism I have to offer upon it. It excites me--carries me beyond myself. Enthusiasm is good, no doubt; but is there nothing else in life? Has not man an immense need for repose, for contemplation, without any sense of effort; for that sort of soft, delicious revery that we call _far niente_? Well, it is down in the south, at such a place as lake Thrasymene, that one feels a glorious consciousness of mere vegetating. It was there that I grew up in perfect quiet, without any violent changes; a poor little weed, transplanted, from some unknown region, to those shores, blessed by the sunshine, shaded by the ancient faint-hued olive-trees, and, as it were, bathed always in warm fluid gold.

“We had--it is a sad _we_--a little country-house, or _villetta_, on a small stream called the Sanguineto, or Bloody Brook; in memory, it is said, of the blood that once ran down its bed from the field of the famous battle of Thrasymene. Here we passed all the pleasant summer weather in a delicious rural paradise. There were no more corpses in the stream; the waters of the Sanguineto were as clear as crystal. However, my dear adoptive father used to be absorbed by his quaint occupation of searching for bones, medals, and remains of armor, of which great quantities are still found among the grass and flowers along the shore of the lake. His wife, who adored him--and with good reason--always accompanied him; and I, by this time a great careless boy, whom also, in their loving kindness, they adored--I used to roll about on the warm sand, or ride dreaming along on my dear mother’s lap, rocked by Nino’s even pace.

“Gradually I came to perceive and understand the splendor of the days and nights in that lovely country. The lake is immense. Not that it covers so much space as even the smallest of yours, but grandeur is not the same as dimension. The curves of its outlines are so grand, and its atmosphere is so soft, that its luminous distances give an impression of infinity. I cannot remember, without emotion, certain sunrises and sunsets that I have seen there, over that broad mirror, filled with reflections of headlands crowded with tall, thick trees, and of distant islets, showing as white as alabaster among the rosy waves. And at night, what myriads of stars hung quivering in the tranquil water! How lovely were the mists that climbed the silvery slopes, and how mysterious the harmonies that seemed to creep unobtrusively along the shores, with the slight ebb and flow of that great mass of waters that seemed afraid of disturbing the sleep of the flowers! With you, you must confess, Monsieur Goefle, that nature is violent, even in its winter’s repose. In your mountains everything carries the marks of the perpetual floods of your spring and autumn. But there, all the terrestrial outlines are certain of preservation for a long time, and every plant of maturing in the place where it was born. In breathing such an air, we breathe in with it some similar kindliness of instinct; the eternal happiness of nature diffuses itself in the soul without overpowering or confounding it.”

“You have a poetical vein in you, evidently,” said M. Goefle; “but are not the people of that beautiful country dirty, idle, and voluntarily wretched?”

“Poverty is always half the fault of the government and half of the governed; the blame is never all on one side. I suppose that may be what prevents improvement. But in such a pleasant climate, the poverty produced by indolence finds an excuse in the sensuous pleasure of contemplative existence. In my youth I felt keenly this intoxicating charm of the south, and I appreciated it all the more because I felt also, from time to time, an excess of feverish energy, as if I had really been born five hundred leagues away, in those cold regions where mind exerts more authority over matter.”

“Then you were not altogether indolent yourself?”

“I believe I was not indolent at all, for my parents desired me to become a learned man, and, out of affection for them, I made great efforts to acquire knowledge. But I felt much more inclined towards the natural sciences, arts, and philosophy, than to the difficult and minute researches of the learned M. Goffredi. I thought his line of study rather useless, and was quite unable to experience such a delirium of joy as he felt when we had succeeded in determining the purpose of some ancient landmark or deciphering some Etruscan inscription. In other matters he left me perfectly free to follow my own preferences, and I lived with him in the pleasantest relations that it is possible to imagine. Indulge me in a few details about this period of my life, from infancy to youth--the time when the faculties of my soul were awakening within me.

“Perugia is a university city, a poetical place--one of the old Italian centres of beauty and learning. It is rich in antiquities and monuments of all periods; it has some fine libraries, an academy of fine arts, collections, and so forth. The city itself is beautiful and picturesque; it includes more than a hundred churches and fifty monasteries, all rich in pictures, manuscripts, etc. The Piazza del Duomo is a remarkable place, having on one side a rich Gothic cathedral, a fountain by Giovanni de Pisa, a chef-d’œuvre, and other monuments of different ages, and on the other a great palace in the Venetian style. This is a proud and strange relic of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, of a sombre red, finished with black ornaments in iron, and with its doors and windows pierced with that fantastic irregularity of design which has gone so entirely out of vogue since the introduction of the correct lines and pure taste introduced by the renaissance.

“I felt a passionate admiration for what I may call the dramatic physiognomy of this old palace, though M. Goffredi despised it as belonging to a period of barbarism. He admired only the antique, and such modern periods as are inspired by the antique. For my part, I plainly confess that all these masterpieces of exactly the same school, ancient and modern, sometimes tried very severely my power of admiring. This predetermined preference of the Italians for always going over that same old ground again, and their obstinate neglect of exactly the period when the national character was most freely expressing itself, between the absolutism of the emperors and that of the popes, had become so consecrated by public opinion, that you will pass there for a Vandal if you allow yourself to use any other than the recognized standards of excellence.[5]

“I was natural and spontaneous in my character, and accordingly I was often reproved in consequence of my love for what was indiscriminately called ‘The Gothic’--that is, everything not pertaining to the ages of Pericles, Augustus, or Raphael. It was with some effort, indeed, that my adoptive father could bring himself to admire the last of these three. His only enthusiasm was for the ruins of Rome; and when he took me thither he was surprised and scandalized to hear me say that I saw nothing there to make me forget the royal imaginativeness and effective grouping of our own Piazza del Duomo, with its great red and black palace, its assemblage of varied splendors, and its narrow, crooked streets, that suddenly plunge under gloomy arcades, with a sort of air of tragic mystery.

“I was by this time fifteen or sixteen years old, and began to be able to explain my tastes and ideas. I managed to make my father understand that it was a matter of necessity for me to be absolutely independent in all that related to taste and feeling. I could not help admiring and enjoying all efforts of genius and of invention. I found it impossible to imprison my views within a system, an epoch, or a school. In a word, I must have liberty to adore the universe, God, and that divine spark which He has given to man, wherever visible in the works of nature or of art.

“‘Thus,’ I said to him, ‘I love the beautiful sunshine and the gloomy night; our own austere Perugino and the impetuous Michael Angelo; the mighty substructures of the Romans, and the delicate pierced work of the Saracens. I love our own quiet lake Thrasymene, and the furious cataract of Terni. I love your beloved Etruscans and all your sublime ancients, but I also love the Greco-arabic cathedrals; I love equally the monumental fountain of Trevi, and the little brook that runs between two rocks in the depths of some rural solitude. Everything that is new seems to me worthy of interest and of attention; everything is dear to me that at any time seizes hold of my heart or of my thoughts. Feeling these impulses to admire whatever is beautiful or sublime, and even whatever is merely charming or agreeable, I have a great repugnance for a devotion confined to certain forms of the beautiful exclusively.

“‘But,’ I continued, ‘if you are convinced that in this I am in a wrong road, that the impulse which I feel--the desire for development in all directions--is dangerous, a symptom of an ill-regulated mental action, I will do my best to repress it, and throw myself entirely into whatever course of study you may mark out for me. I desire, above all things, to be what you wish me to be; but, my dear father, before you cut my wings, please to make yourself certain that there is nothing worth preserving in all this vain plumage.’

“M. Goffredi, though exclusively devoted to a very narrow range of studies, was the most generous character I ever met. He reflected much about the matter, and often consulted his wife, a woman of the divinest susceptibilities. Sophia Goffredi was what the Italians call a _letterata_; not a _femme de lettres_, as that term is generally understood in France, but a woman at once cultivated, charming, inspired, erudite, simple. She loved me so tenderly that she believed me a prodigy; and these two excellent friends decided with one accord that my wishes must be regarded, and that at any rate they would not extinguish my fire until they were certain whether it was a flame from heaven, or a mere blaze of straw.

“What gave them confidence in me was, that this disposition of mine to permit my mind to pursue its own impulses in every direction, did not originate in inconstancy of character. I was warm-hearted, and felt kindly disposed towards all my fellow-creatures, and yet I was not disposed to waste my life with all manner of company. My attachments were exclusively for the two persons who had adopted me, and whom I preferred to all others. Their society was my greatest, I may say my only pleasure, apart from the various studies that had captivated me.

“It was decided, then, that my mind should be at my own disposal, particularly as, all things considered, it was a pretty good mind; and I was not obliged to confine myself rigorously to the university course. I was allowed to take my own way, and to give free career to the enormous facility with which I was gifted. Was this an error? I cannot think so. It is true that I might have been restricted to one specialty, which would have cased me up forever in some one corner of art or science, where I should never have known privation; but how many intellectual enjoyments should I have lost! And who can tell whether what are called practical ideas, and my own personal interests, if forced upon my attention in this way, might not have withered all the religion of my heart and my conscience? You will see shortly that Sophia Goffredi had no reason to regret having allowed me to be myself.

“My first conviction was that I was born for literature. Sophia trained me to write both in prose and verse, and while still a child, I composed several romances and comedies in rhyme, which our circle of friends were so kind, or so simple, as to admire. I might have become very conceited, for I was excessively spoiled by all our visitors; but Sophia used often to tell me that the day when one is satisfied with one’s self is the last day of improvement; and this simple warning saved me from the foolishness of self-admiration. And besides, I very soon saw that in order to produce anything worth while in literature, I must know a great many things, or else I should merely float in a sea of empty phrases. I read enormously; but my studies in history and natural science caused me to entirely lose sight of myself; and instead of gathering booty like a bee, to make honey and wax, I simply coursed to and fro through the vast field of human knowledge, merely for the pleasure of knowing and understanding.

“It was while thus engaged that I felt such a powerful impulse towards the natural sciences, and that my desire to devote my life to this pursuit became a vocation more definitely resolved upon in my mind than the former one. With this ardor for understanding, was joined a similar ardor for observing; and I might say that there awoke in me two distinct persons: one seeking to discover the secrets of creation for the love of science, that is, for the sake of humanity; and the other seeking to enjoy the varied beauties of creation as a poet--that is, to some extent, for his own pleasure.

“From that moment, I was possessed by the idea of making long voyages. While absorbed in studying the collections and museums of Perugia, I was dreaming of the antipodes; and the sight of a little stone or dried flower would carry me in imagination to the summits of lofty mountains, or across vast oceans. I thirsted to see the great cities, the centres of enlightenment, the scientific men of my time, and great and precious scientific collections. Sophia Goffredi had taught me French, German, and a little Spanish. I felt, likewise, the necessity of learning the northern languages, so as not to be a stranger in any part of Europe. I learned English, Dutch, and particularly Swedish, with extreme rapidity. My pronunciation, however, was defective; or rather, I had none. I did not try to master the characteristic music--so to speak--of languages which I could not hear spoken; but relied upon the correctness of my ear, and my facility in catching accents, for quickly mastering the spoken use of any language when necessary. The event has shown that these expectations were quite justified; I only need fifteen days to speak, without any foreign accent, a language which I have studied only in books.

“While I was thus learning languages, I was also studying drawing and a little painting; in order to be able to fix permanently my travelling recollections, by sketches of sites, remarkable plants, costumes, monuments,--in short, all that would have to be retained in the memory alone, if the hand had not the power to delineate the mental conception. Besides, I studied good writers, for the sake of enabling myself to narrate clearly and rapidly; for I had often been displeased at the obscure and confused style of books of travels. And so well did I use my time, Monsieur Goefle, that at eighteen, I was well prepared, in virtue of my knowledge, activity, power of labor, and faculty of observation, to become at least a useful, if not an actually scientific man. That was the happiest time of my life, the purest and sweetest. Ah, if it could have lasted a few years longer, I should have been a different man!

“M. Goffredi was buried in his antiquarian researches, and did not directly superintend my education. He, however, from time to time, reviewed my studies with me, and observed me with care, and when he was satisfied that I was not losing my time and labor, he became quite confident in my judgment. He had at first been tempted to dissuade me from trying too many things at once; but when he was satisfied that all my various acquisitions found their places in good order in my mind, he began to dream with me and for me everything that I dreamed myself. He had himself travelled before his marriage, and he was even now projecting another archæological tour, to reach certain points not yet explored. He was thinking the more seriously of this plan, since receiving a small inheritance that had recently fallen to him, and which enabled him to resign his professorship at the university. He had been for ten years employed on a work which he could not complete without visiting the coast of Africa and some of the Greek Islands. I should mention that his way of working was painful and slow, for his style lacked clearness, and there was also perhaps some want of clearness of thought in his way of presenting his reasonings, however ingenious in themselves. He was a genius without talent.

“He was pleased with the manner in which I wrote up some pages of his work for him, and resolved to take me with him, and have me write it all out after we came home. I was almost wild with delight when he communicated this design to me; but my joy was quickly changed to sadness at the idea of leaving alone at home my adoptive mother, that excellent woman whose whole life was devoted to us, and I asked to remain with her.

“She was grateful to me for this, but suggested, by way of satisfying all three of us, the plan of going herself--a proposition which was received with enthusiasm. Our preparations for departure were now made as joyfully as if for a feast. Ah, everything smiled upon us! _La Sofia_--you know that with us the _le_ or _la_ is a superlative of admiration, and not a term of contempt--was accustomed to long walks. In the country she used to go everywhere with us. She was active, courageous, and enthusiastic, and was never the least hindrance to us. If we were ever weary or discouraged, she raised our spirits, and put us into good humor, by her gayety and energy. She was still young and strong, and the angelic tenderness and goodness of her smile made you forget all about the plainness of her features. Her husband loved her devotedly; and as for her, nobody could have convinced her that Silvio Goffredi was not a demigod, despite his lameness, his prematurely rounded shoulders, and his fabulous absence of mind. But how pure and generous was the soul hidden by that frail body, and those timid and irresolute manners! His disinterestedness as to money was admirable, and a proof of it was this very work, for which he was sacrificing his employment and his habits. He was aware that such books cost more than they bring, especially in Italy; and he calculated upon no gain from this one; yet it was the glory, the purpose, the dream of his whole life.

“My poor mother was the most impatient to start of any of us, and she felt an absolute confidence in our good fortune. It was decided that we should begin by visiting some of the islands of the Archipelago.

“I must ask leave to pass rapidly over what follows; the recollection is most painful. In crossing part of the Apennines on foot, my poor father received a slight wound in the leg, from striking it against a rock. Notwithstanding our urgency, he neglected the wound, and insisted on walking during the following days. The weather was terribly hot. When we reached the coast of the Adriatic, where we were to embark, he found himself obliged to rest for some days, and we succeeded in inducing him to allow a surgeon to visit him. But what was our terror to find that mortification had commenced! We were at a mere village, far away from all competent aid. Our country surgeon, who was little more than a mere barber, spoke unconcernedly of amputating the leg. Would it have saved him, or hastened his death? In so horrible a dilemma, my mother and I knew not what to resolve. My father, with heroic courage, decided to have the leg taken off, and spoke of travelling about the world with a wooden leg. We dared not subject him to the knife of a butcher. I determined to hasten to Venice--it was only fifty leagues distant. I obtained a horse, set out, broke him down by night, abandoned him, bought another, and continued my journey. I reached the city exhausted, but alive. I applied to one of the first surgeons of Venice, and induced him to return with me by agreeing to pay him a sum equal to the whole of Sophia’s property. We took a boat and returned by sea, with a speed that filled me with hope and joy. Ah, monsieur! if I should live a thousand years, the memory of that terrible day would, I believe, be as bitter as it is now. I found Silvio Goffredi dead, and Sophia Goffredi insane.”

“Poor fellow!” said M. Goefle, as the great tears fell from Cristiano’s eyes.

“Well, well,” said the latter, hastily wiping them away, “it will not do to be surprised by emotions of that kind. It shows that one has too forcibly driven them out of his mind, and they revenge themselves for it once for all, when they can seize their rights.

“The skilful physician whom I had brought with me could neither cure my mother, nor give me any hope that she would ever be cured. He was only able, by studying the character of her insanity, to instruct me how to deal with its more violent attacks. It would be requisite to comply with all her desires, no matter how unreasonable, and, in other matters, to assume over her the sort of influence, and even authority, which a father exerts over his child.

“I carried her back to Perugia, along with the body of our poor friend, which we had embalmed, in order to deposit it in the mausoleum which his wife was imagining for him on the shore of lake Thrasymene. What I suffered at thus bringing back my father dead, and my mother insane, to the place from which we had so joyously departed not three weeks before, it is impossible for me to express. When we went, Sophia was laughing and singing all the way. On our return, also, she laughed and sang; but how mournful was the music, and how heart-breaking the laughter! I had to lead her along, to reason with her, to amuse and persuade her as one does a child--this woman, who had been so intelligent and strong; who but yesterday I relied upon as my guide and support; for, Monsieur Goefle, I was hardly nineteen years old.

“When the remains of Silvio Goffredi had been interred, his widow became more calm. Indeed, this calmness came upon her so suddenly, and was so extreme, that it seemed an appropriate last act of the sad drama of her destiny. I soon perceived that she had become, so to speak, a total stranger to herself; she became wholly absorbed in one idea: that of the monument to be erected to her beloved Silvio. From that day she would neither think nor talk about anything else. It was impossible for me to pursue any employments of my own, for she hardly slept at all, and allowed me only a few hours’ sleep, I will not say every day, but every week. It was out of the question to put her into the hands of any one but myself; under the care of any one else she became irritated, and fell into frightful paroxysms; while, with me, she never had a single attack of fury or despair. She talked to me endlessly, not about her husband, for she seemed no longer to retain any clear individual recollection of him; he had, as it were, become a wholly imaginary being, whom she had never seen; but she discussed the epitaphs, the emblematic designs, the carvings, etc., with which she proposed to embellish her husband’s monument.

“I think I must have drawn two or three thousand different designs for her. Each new one always pleased her for an hour or two, but at the end of that time she always found it unworthy of the memory of the ‘Magus,’ as she now always called the dear deceased. No emblematic design could embody the abstract and confused ideas that floated through her mind. She was constantly falling into profound meditations, when, taking out of my hands the pencil she herself had placed in them with a pretence of making some slight alteration, she would make me design some entirely new subject of a quite opposite character. As you will easily imagine, most of these designs were quite impracticable, and even meaningless. If I varied from her suggestions, she became so uneasy and agitated that I found it best to comply strictly with them. Thus I accumulated portfolio after portfolio full of designs, fantastic enough to have crazed any one who should have undertaken to interpret them.

“When some hours had been spent in this way, she used to take me out to see the pieces in marble that she had ordered of all the statuaries in the country. She had the court and garden full of them, and as soon as they were done she was dissatisfied with them.

“Another fancy of hers, which I felt bound to gratify at whatever cost, was in respect of the material to be employed for this imaginary monument. She obtained specimens of all the varieties of marbles and of all known metals; and more models, both in sculpture and in casting, were executed than the house could contain. They were even piled upon the beds; and travellers used to take our house for a museum, and to come to it and ask the meaning of all the strange subjects represented there. Poor Sophia found pleasure in receiving these visitors, and in explaining her ideas to them; and so they departed, some pained and saddened, others laughing and shrugging their shoulders,--the brutes! Their sneers affected me like so many crimes.

“Meanwhile our property began to be exhausted. M. Goffredi had left to his wife the whole of his little fortune, which I was to have inherited after her. A family council of the kinsmen assembled under these circumstances, as was alleged, both in order to protect my interests, and to provide for carrying out my father’s intentions in this respect. One member, a lawyer, was of opinion that the control of the property should be taken away from poor Sophia; that all artists, founders, mechanics and tradesmen should be formally notified not to fill orders from her, and that she herself should be confined in a lunatic asylum, since the proposed measure, being contrary to her wishes, would certainly throw her into a paroxysm of fury, in which she would be dangerous to others.”

“The lawyer was right,” said M. Goefle. “It was a painful step, but a necessary one.”

“I really beg pardon, Monsieur Goefle, but I judged otherwise. As I was the sole heir of Goffredi, I had a perfect right to permit my guardian to expend my property.”

“No, you had not that right. You were a minor, and the law protects those who cannot protect themselves.”

“That is just what I was told; but I was so sufficiently able to protect myself, that I threatened to throw the lawyer out of the window if he did not withdraw his infamous proposition. To put my mother into a lunatic asylum! I should have had to be shut up with her, for she could not bear to be without me a moment; she would quickly have died under the distress of being attended by hirelings. To deprive her of this sole occupation that could quiet her; that exerted an influence upon her little less than magical! To prevent her from expressing and soothing her sorrows by these works--senseless and ruinous in themselves, I readily admit, but which neither harmed nor wronged any one! And what mattered our house full of tomb-stones to that fat and prosperous lawyer? No one obliged him to volunteer his regret for money thrown away, or to mock at the aberrations of the poor widow’s mind, unsettled by her grief. I persisted, the family blamed me, and the lawyer declared I was out of my wits myself; but my mother was kept comfortable.”

“Ah, ah, my boy!” said M. Goefle, smiling, “that’s the way you treat lawyers, is it? Come, give me your hand!” he added, looking upon Cristiano with eyes wet with tenderness and sympathy.

Cristiano pressed the hands of the worthy Goefle, and raised them to his lips, in the Italian manner.

“I accept your kind feelings to me,” he said, “but I cannot accept your praises for my conduct. It was perfectly natural; to have been influenced by selfish motives in such a situation would have been infamous. Have I not told you how much I had been loved, petted, indulged, by these two parents--for such I felt them, even by blood as well as by heart. Ah! I had been happy with them, very happy, Monsieur Goefle--so much so, that no matter what disasters shall come upon me, I shall never have the right to complain of Providence. I had certainly not deserved so much happiness before I was born. I surely was bound to try and deserve it after I had lived a little while!”

“And what became of poor Sophia?” asked M. Goefle, after a few moments’ meditation.

“Alas! I promised to tell you my story as gayly as possible, and I have only shown you its melancholy side! I ask your pardon; I have saddened you. All I need say is, that the poor lady is no longer living.”

“Of course, since you are here. It is easy to see that you would never have left her. But did she fall into actual want before her death? I am anxious to know the whole story.”

“No, thank God; she was spared that misfortune. I do not know what might have happened if all her means had been expended, and I had been obliged to leave her for the sake of earning our living. But that consideration was not the one that troubled me. Notwithstanding her calmness, I could see that she was rapidly failing. At the end of about two years, one evening when we were sitting by the shore of the lake, she took my hand and said, with a strange inflection in her voice:

“‘Cristiano, I think I have fever. Feel my pulse, and tell me what you think.’

“This was the first time, since her misfortunes, that she had referred to her health. I perceived that she was really in a violent fever. I took her into the house and sent for a physician.

“‘She is very ill, it is true,’ he said to me, ‘but possibly it may be a favorable crisis!’

“In fact, she had never had any fever at any time since her disorder had seized her.

“But I felt no hope. She fell into a state of profound lethargy, upon which no treatment produced the least effect, and the progress of her decline was so rapid as to be plainly visible. A few moments before she died she seemed to recover strength, and to awaken as if from a long dream. She asked me to lift her in my arms, and feebly whispered in my ear:

“‘I bless you, Cristiano; you have saved me. I think I have been insane, and that I have been a trouble to you. Silvio has this moment been blaming me for it. I just saw him, there; he told me to rise up and follow him. Help me to escape out of the tomb where I have shut myself up so foolishly! Come! The ship is setting sail! Let us go!’

“And with one supreme effort to arise, she fell back dead into my arms.

“I know nothing of what happened for some days. I felt as if I had no further concern with life, since I had no longer any one but myself to care for.

“I had the remains of my dear parents deposited in one tomb, and placed over it the simplest and whitest of the monuments that had been accumulated in our home, cutting upon it, with my own hands, the beloved names, with no other epitaph. You may well suppose that I felt a horror of formulas and emblems. When I returned to our home, I was notified that it belonged not to me, but the creditors. This I knew very well, and, indeed, I was so entirely ready to depart from it, that I had mechanically packed up my own property, while the women were wrapping the body in the winding-sheet. I left the business of settlement in the hands of the family, for I had been orderly enough, in the midst of my carelessness, to know that though nothing should be left for me, no debts would be left unpaid.

“I was about leaving my home, when the little Jew of whom I spoke came in. I supposed he came to get a cheap bargain of some of M. Goffredi’s precious antiques, which were to be sold at auction; but if he had any such purpose, he had delicacy enough not to mention it to me, and, as I sought to avoid him, he followed me into the garden where I was gathering a few flowers--the only material souvenirs which I proposed to carry away with me. He put into my hands a well-filled purse, and would have retreated without any explanation.

“I had so little thought of any relations other than those whom I had just lost, that I concluded this was an alms which the Jew had been employed to bring me; I flung the purse away upon the ground, in order to make him return and pick it up. He did so, and said:

“‘This is yours--it really is. It is money which I owed Goffredi, and I wish to repay it to you.’

“I refused, for this might be just the amount necessary to enable the estate to meet all the claims against it. Then the Jew said:

“‘The money comes from your real parents. They deposited it with me, and I engaged to deliver it to you whenever you should need it.’

“‘I need none of it,’ I replied, ‘I have enough to carry me to Rome, where M. Goffredi’s friends will find me some employment. Make my parents easy about me. I presume they are not rich, since they have been unable to bring me up under their own eyes. Thank them for having remembered me, and say to them that, at my age, and with the education I have received, it is my duty to be of assistance to them, if they should need it. Whether they reveal themselves to me or not, I will do this with pleasure. They intrusted me to such good hands, and I have been so happy in consequence, that I owe them the liveliest gratitude.’

“Those were my real sentiments, Monsieur Goefle. I was not dissembling at all, for they are my sentiments still. I have never felt any inclination to accuse or question the motives of those who gave me life, and I do not understand the feelings of illegitimate children who complain of not having been born into such or such a condition of society as they would have chosen--as if every living being had not been from all eternity destined to live, and as if it were not God who calls us, or sends us, into this world, under such conditions as it pleases Him to establish.

“‘Your parents are no longer living!’ replied the little Jew; ‘pray for them, and accept this gift from a friend!’

“This being a third account, different from the two preceding, I felt a secret distrust.

“‘Perhaps it is you yourself,’ I said, ‘who are so good as to offer me this friendly assistance?’

“‘No,’ he replied, ‘I am simply the agent, nothing more.’