crime reigned within me, I had thralled my emotion; I had
curbed it within the circle of my own heart, though there,
thus pent and self -consuming, it was an agony and a torture ;
I had resisted the voice of that blood which cried from the
earth against a murderer, and which had consigned the
solemn charge of justice to my hands. Year after year I
had nursed an unappeased desire; nor ever when it stung
the most, suffered it to become an actual revenge. I had
knelt in tears and in softness by Aubrey's bed; I had poured
forth my pardon over him; I had felt, while I did so, ā no,
not so much sternness as would have slain a worm. By his
hand had the murderous stroke been dealt; on his soul was
the crimson stain of that blood which had flowed through the
veins of the gentlest and the most innocent of God's creat-
ures; and yet the blow was unavenged and the crime for-
given. For him there was a palliative, or even a gloomy
but an unanswerable excuse. In the confession which had
so terribly solved the mystery of my life, the seeds of that
curse, which had grown at last into madness, might be dis-
covered even in the first dawn of Aubrey's existence. The
latent poison might be detected in the morbid fever of his
DEVEREUX. 429
young devotion, in his jealous cravings of affection, in the
first flush of his ill-omened love, even before rivalship and
wrath began. Then, too, his guilt had not been regularly-
organized into one cold and deliberate system : it broke forth
in impetuous starts, in frantic paroxysms ; it was often
wrestled with, though by a feeble mind ; it was often con-
quered by a tender though a fitful temper ; it might not
have rushed into the last and most awful crime, but for
the damning instigation and the atrocious craft of one, who
(Aubrey rightly said) could wield and mould the unhappy
victim at his will. Might not, did I say? Nay, but for Mon-
treviil's accursed influence, had I not Aubrey's own word that
that crime never would have been committed? He had re-
solved to stifle his love, ā his heart had already melted to
Isora and to me, ā he had already tasted the sweets of a vir-
tuous resolution, and conquered the first bitterness of opposi-
tion to his passion. Why should not the resolution thus
auspiciously begun have been mellowed into effect? Why
should not the grateful and awful remembrance of the crime
he had escaped continue to preserve him from meditating
crime anew? And (oh, thought, which, while I now write,
steals over me and brings with it an unutterable horde of emo-
tions !) but for that all-tainting, all-withering influence, Au-
brey's soul might at this moment have been pure from murder
and Isora ā the living Isora ā by my side!
What wonder, as these thoughts came over me, that sense,
feeling, reason, gradually shrank and hardened into one stern
resolve? I looked as from a height over the whole conduct
of Montreuil. I saw him in our early infancy with no defi-
nite motive (beyond the general policy of intrigue), no fixed
design, which might somewhat have lessened the callousness
of the crime, not only fomenting dissensions in the hearts of
brothers; not only turning the season of warm affections, and
yet of unopened passion, into strife and rancour, but seizing
upon the inherent and reigning vice of our bosoms, which he
should have seized to crush, in order only by that master-vice
to weave our characters, and sway our conduct to his will,
whenever a cool-blooded and merciless policy required us to
430 DEVEREUX.
be of that will the minions and the tools. Thus had he taken
hold of the diseased jealousy of Aubrey, and by that handle,
joined to the latent spring of superstition, guided him on
his wretched course of misery and guilt. Thus, by a moral
irresolution in Gerald had he bowed him also to his purposes,
and by an infantine animosity between that brother and my-
self, held us both in a state of mutual hatred which I shud-
dered to recall. Readily could I now perceive that my charges
or my suspicions against Gerald, which, in ordinary circum-
stances, he might have dispassionately come forward to dis-
prove, had been represented to him by Montreuil in the light
of groundless and wilful insults ; and thus he had been led to
scorn that full and cool explanation which, if it had not elu-
cidated the mystery of my afflictions, would have removed
the false suspicion of guilt from himself and the real guilt of
wrath and animosity from me.
The crime of the forged will, and the outrage to the dead
and to myself, was a link in his woven guilt which I regarded
the least. I looked rather to the black and the consummate
craft by which Aubrey had been implicated in that sin ; and
my indignation became mixed with horror when I saw Mon-
treuil working to that end of fraud by the instigation not only
of a guilty and unlawful passion, but of the yet more unnat-
ural and terrific engine of frenzy, ā of a maniac's despair.
Over the peace, the happiness, the honour, the virtue of a
whole family, through fraud and through blood, this priest
had marched onward to the goal of his icy and heartless am-
bition, unrelenting and unrepenting; "but not," I said, as I
clenched my hand till the nails met in the flesh, "not forever
unchecked and unrequited ! "
But in what manner was justice to be obtained? A public
court of law? What! drag forward the deep dishonour of my
house, the gloomy and convulsive history of my departed
brother, his crime and his insanity? What! bring that his-
tory, connected as it was with the fate of Isora, before the
curious and the insolent gaze of the babbling world? Bare
that awful record to the jests, to the scrutiny, the marvel and
the pity, of that most coarse of all tribunals, ā an English
DEVEREUX. 431
court of law? and that most torturing of all exposures, ā the
vulgar comments of an English public? Could I do this?
Yea, in the sternness of my soul, I felt that I could submit
even to that humiliation, if no other way presented itself by
which I could arrive at justice. Was there no other way? ā
at that question conjecture paused: I formed no scheme, or
rather, I formed a hundred and rejected them all ; my mind
settled, at last, into an indistinct, unquestioned, but prophetic
resolution, that, whenever my path crossed Montreuil's, it
should be to his destruction. I asked not how, nor when,
the blow was to be dealt; I felt only a solemn and exultant
certainty that, whether it borrowed the sword of the law, or
the weapon of private justice, mine should be the hand which
brought retribution to the ashes of the dead and the agony of
the survivor.
So soon as my mind had subsided into this determination, I
suffered my thoughts to dwell upon subjects less sternly
agitating. Fondly did I look forward to a meeting with Ger-
ald, and a reconciliation of all our early and most frivolous
disputes. As an atonement for the injustice my suspicions
had done him, I resolved not to reclaini my inheritance. My
fortune was already ample; and all that I cared to possess of
the hereditary estates were the ruins of the old house and the
copses of the surrounding park: these Gerald would in all
likelihood easily yield to me ; and with the natural sanguine-
ness of my temperament, I already planned the reconstruction
of the ancient building, and the method of that solitary life
in which I resolved that the remainder of my years should be
spent.
Turning from this train of thought, I recurred to the mys-
terious and sudden disappearance of Oswald: that I was now
easily able to account for. There could be no doubt but that
Montreuil had (immediately after the murder), as he declared
he would, induced Oswald to quit England, and preserve si-
lence, either by bribery or by threats. And when I recalled
the impression which the man had made upon me, ā an im-
pression certainly not favourable to the elevation or the rigid
honesty of his mind, ā I could not but imagine that one or
432 DEVEREUX.
the other of tliese means Montreuil found far from difficult of
success. The delirious fever into which the wounds and the
scene of that night had thrown me, and the long interval that
consequently elapsed before inquiry was directed to Oswald,
gave him every opportunity and indulgence in absenting him-
self from the country, and it was not improbable that he had
accompanied Aubrey to Italy.
Here I paused, in deep acknowledgment of the truth of
Aubrey's assertion, that "under similar circumstances I might
perhaps have been equally guilty." My passions had indeed
been " intense and fierce as his own ; " and there was a dread
coincidence in the state of mind into which each of us had
been thrown by the event of that night, which made the
epoch of a desolated existence to both of us; if mine had
been but a passing delirium, and his a confirmed and lasting
disease of the intellect, the causes of our malady had been
widely different. He had been the criminal; I, only the
sufferer.
Thus, as I leaned over the deck and the waves bore me
homeward, after so many years and vicissitudes, did the shad-
ows of thought and memory flit across me. How seemingly
apart, yet how closely linked, had been the great events in
my wandering and wild life! My early acquaintance with
Bolingbroke, whom for more than nine years I had not seen,
and who, at a superficial glance, would seem to have exercised
influence over my public rather than my private life, ā how
secretly, yet how powerfully, had that circumstance led even
to the very thoughts which now possessed me, and to the very
object on which I was now bound. But for that circumstance
I might not have learned of the retreat of Don Diego d'Al-
varez in his last illness ; I might never have renewed my love
to Isora; and whatever had been her fate, destitution and
poverty would have been a less misfortune than her union
with me. But for my friendship for Bolingbroke, I might
not have visited France, nor gained the favour of the Eegent,
nor the ill offices of Dubois, nor the protection and kindness
of the Czar. I might never have been ambassador at the
court of , nor met with Bezoni, nor sought an asylum for
DEVEREUX. 433
a spirit sated with pomp and thirsting for truth, at the foot
of the Apennines, nor read that history (which, indeed, might
then never have occurred) that now rankled at my heart, urg-
ing my movements and colouring my desires. Thus, by the
finest but the strongest meshes had the thread of my political
honours been woven with that of my private afflictions. And
thus, even at the licentious festivals of the Kegent of France,
or the lifeless parade of the court of , the dark stream
of events had flowed onward beneath my feet, bearing me
insensibly to that very spot of time from which I now sur-
veyed the past and looked upon the mist and shadows of the
future.
Adverse winds made the little voyage across the Channel a
business of four days. On the evening of the last we landed
at Dover. Within thirty miles of that town was my mother's
retreat; and I resolved, before I sought a reconciliation with
Gerald or justice against Montreuil, to visit her seclusion.
Accordingly, the next day I repaired to her abode.
What a contrast is there between the lives of human be-
ings! Considering the beginning and the end of all mortal
careers are the same, how wonderfully is the interval varied !
Some, the weeds of the world, dashed from shore to shore, ā
all vicissitude, enterprise, strife, disquiet; others, the world's
lichen, rooted to some peaceful rock, growing, flourishing,
withering on the same spot, ā scarce a feeling expressed,
scarce a sentiment called forth, scarce a tithe of the proper-
ties of their very nature expanded into action.
There was an air of quiet and stillness in the red quad-
rangular building, as my carriage stopped at its porch, which
struck upon me, like a breathing reproach to those who sought
the abode of peace with feelings opposed to the spirit of the
place. A small projecting porch was covered with ivy, and
thence issued an aged portress in answer to my summons.
"The Countess Devereux," said she, "is now the superior
of this society [convent they called it not], and rarely ad-
mits any stranger."
I gave in my claim to admission, and was ushered into a
small parlour: all there, too, was still, ā the brown oak waiu-
23
434 DEVEREUX.
scoting, tlie huge chairs, the few antique portraits, the unin-
habited aspect of the chamber, ā all were silently eloquent of
quietude, but a quietude comfortless and sombre. At length
my mother appeared. I sprang forward : my childhood was
before me, ā years, care, change were forgotten, ā I was a boy
again, ā I sprang forward, and was in my mother's embrace!
It was long before, recovering myself, I noted how lifeless
and chill was that embrace, but I did so at last, and my
enthusiasm withered at once.
We sat down together, and conversed long and uninter-
ruptedly, but our conversation was like that of acquaintances,
not the fondest and closest of all relations (for I need scarcely
add that I told her not of my meeting with Aubrey, nor unde-
ceived her with respect to the date of his death). Every mo-
nastic recluse that I had hitherto seen, even in the most
seeming content with retirement, had loved to converse of the
exterior world, and had betrayed an interest in its events:
for my mother only, worldly objects and interests seemed ut-
terly dead. She expressed little surprise to see me, ā little
surprise at my alteration; she only said that my mien was
improved, and that I reminded her of my father : she testified
no anxiety to hear of my travels or my adventures ; she testi-
fied even no willingness to speak of herself; she described to
me the life of one day, and then said that the history of ten
years was told. A close cap confined all the locks for whose
rich luxuriance and golden hue she had once been noted, ā for
here they were not the victim of a vow, as in a nunnery they
would have been, ā and her dress was plain, simple, and \\n-
adorned. Save these alterations of attire, none were visible
in her exterior: the torpor of her life seemed to have par-
alyzed even time; the bloom yet dwelt in her unwrinkled
cheek ; the mouth had not fallen ; the faultless features were
faultless still. But there was a deeper stillness than ever
breathing through this frame : it was as if the soul had been
lulled to sleep; her mien was lifeless; her voice was lifeless;
her gesture was lifeless ; the impression she produced was like
that of entering some chamber which has not been entered
before for a century. She consented to my request to stay
DEVEREUX. 435
with her all the day : a bed was prepared for me ; and at sun-
rise the next morning I was folded once more in the chilling
mechanism of her embrace, and dismissed on my journey to
the metropolis.
CHAPTER VI.
THE RETREAT OF A CELEBRATED MAN, AND A VISIT TO
A GREAT POET.
I ARRIVED in town, and drove at once to Gerald's house.
It was not difficult to find it, for in my young day it had been
the residence of the Duke of ; and wealthy as I knew
was the owner of the Devereux lands, I was somewhat startled
at the extent and the magnificence of his palace. To my in-
expressible disappointment, I found that Gerald had left Lon-
don a day or two before my arrival on a visit to a nobleman
nearly connected with our family, and residing in the same
county as that in which Devereux Court was situated. Since
the fire, which had destroyed all of the old house but the one
tower which I had considered as peculiarly my own, Gerald,
I heard, had always, in visiting his estates, taken up his
abode at the mansion of one or other of his neighbours; and
to Lord 's house I now resolved to repair. My journey
was delayed for a day or two, by accidentally seeing at the
door of the hotel, to which I drove from Gerald's house, the
favourite servant of Lord Bolingbroke.
This circumstance revived in me, at once, all ray attach-
ment to that personage, and hearing he was at his country
house, within a few miles from town, I resolved the next
morning to visit him. It was not only that I contemplated
with an eager yet a melancholy interest an interview with
one whose blazing career I had long watched, and whose
letters (for during the years we had been parted he wrote to
me often) seemed to testify the same satiety of the triumphs
436 DEVEREUX.
and gauds of ambition which had brought something of wisdom
to myself; it was not only that I wished to commune with
that Bolingbroke in retirement whom I had known the oracle
of statesmen and the pride of courts ; nor even that I loved
the man, and was eager once more to embrace him. A fiercer
and more active motive urged me to visit one whose knowl-
edge of all men and application of their various utilities
were so remarkable, and who even in his present peace and
retirement would not improbably be acquainted with the
abode of that unquiet and plotting ecclesiastic whom I now
panted to discover, and whom Bolingbroke had of old often
guided or employed.
When my carriage stopped at the statesman's door, I was
informed that Lord Bolingbroke was at his farm. Farm!
how oddly did that word sound in my ear, coupled as it was
with the name of one so brilliant and so restless!
I asked the servant to direct me where I should find him,
and, following the directions, I proceeded to the search alone.
It was a day towards the close of autumn, bright, soft, clear,
and calm as the decline of a vigorous and genial age. I walked
slowly through a field robbed of its golden grain, and as I
entered another I saw the object of my search. He had seem-
ingly just given orders to a person in a labourer's dress, who
was quitting him, and with downcast eyes he was approach-
ing towards me. I noted how slow and even was the pace
which, once stately, yet rapid and irregular, had betrayed the
haughty but wild character of his mind. He paused often,
as if in thought, and I observed that once he stopped longer
than usual, and seemed to gaze wistfully on the ground. Af-
terwards (when I had joined him) we passed that spot, and I
remarked, with a secret smile, that it contained one of those
little mounds in which that busy and herded tribe of the in-
sect race, which have been held out to man's social state at
once as a mockery and a model, held their populous home.
There seemed a latent moral in the pause and watch of the
disappointed statesman by that mound, which afforded a clew
to the nature of his reflections.
He did not see me till I was close before him, and had
DEVEREUX. 437
called him by his name, nor did he at first recognize me, for
my garb was foreign, and ray upper lip unshaven; and, as I
said before, years had strangely altered me; but when he did,
he testified all the cordiality I had anticipated. I linked my
arm in his, and we walked to and fro for hours, talking of all
that had passed since and before our parting, and feeling our
hearts warm to each other as we talked.
"The last time I saw you," said he, "how widely did our
hopes and objects differ ! Yours from my own : you seemingly
had the vantage-ground, but it was an artificial eminence, and
my level state, though it appeared less tempting, was more
secure. I had just been disgraced by a misguided and un-
grateful prince. I had already gone into a retirement where
my only honours were proportioned to my fortitude in bear-
ing condemnation, and my only flatterer was the hope of find-
ing a companion and a Mentor in myself. You, my friend,
parted with life before you; and you only relinquished the
pursuit of Fortune at one court, to meet her advances at an-
other. Nearly ten years have flown since that time : my sit-
uation is but little changed; I am returned, it is true, to my
native soil, but not to a soil more indulgent to ambition and
exertion than the scene of my exile. My sphere of action is
still shut from me: my mind is still banished.^ You return
young in years, but full of successes. Have they brought you
happiness, Devereux? or have you yet a temper to envy my
content?"
" Alas ! " said I, " who can bear too close a search beneath
the mask and robe? Talk not of me now. It is ungracious
for the fortunate to repine; and I reserve whatever may dis-
quiet me within for your future consolation and advice. At
present speak to me of yourself; you are happy, then?"
"I am!" said Bolingbroke, emphatically. "Life seems
to me to possess two treasures: one glittering and precarious;
the other of less rich a show, but of a more solid value. The
one is Power, the other Virtue ; and there is this main differ-
1 I need scarcely remind the reader that Lord Bolingbroke, though he
had received a full pardon, was forbidden to resume his seat in the House
of Lords. ā Ed.
438 DEVEREUX.
euce between the two, ā Power is intrusted to us as a loan
ever required again, and with a terrible arrear of interest;
Virtue obtained by us as a hoon which we can only lose through
our own folly, when once it is acquired. In my youth I was
caught by the former ; hence my errors and my misfortunes !
In my declining years I have sought the latter; hence my
palliatives and my consolation. But you have not seen my
home, and all its attractions," added Bolingbroke, with a
smile which reminded me of his former self. " I will show
them to you." And we turned our steps to the house.
As we walked thither I wondered to find how little melan-
choly was the change Bolingbroke had undergone. Ten years,
which bring man from his prime to his decay, had indeed left
their trace upon his stately form, and the still unrivalled
beauty of his noble features; but the manner gained all that
the form had lost. In his days of more noisy greatness, there
had been something artificial and unquiet in the sparkling al-
ternations he had loved to adopt. He had been too fond of
changing wisdom by a quick turn into wit, ā too fond of the
affectation of bordering the serious with the gay, business with
pleasure. If this had not taken from the polish of his man-
ner, it had diminished its dignity and given it the air of be-
ing assumed and insincere. Now all was quiet, earnest, and
impressive; there was tenderness even in what was melan-
choly: and if there yet lingered the affectation of blending
the classic character with his own, the character was more
noble and the affectation more unseen. But this manner was
only the faint mirror of a mind which, retaining much of its
former mould, had been embellished and exalted by adversity,
and which if it banished not its former faculties, had acquired
a thousand new virtues to redeem them.
"You see," said my companion, pointing to the walls of the
hall, which we had now entered, " the subject which at pres-
ent occupies the greater part of my attention. I am meditat-
ing how to make the hall most illustrative of its owner's
pursuits. You see the desire of improving, of creating, and
of associating the improvement and the creation with our-
selves, follows us banished men even to our seclusion. I
DEVEREUX. 439
think of having those walls painted with the implements of
husbandry, and through pictures of spades and ploughshares
to express my employments and testify my content in them."
"Cincinnatus is a better model than Aristippus: confess
it," said I, smiling. "But if the senators come hither to
summon you to power, will you resemble the Roman, not only
in being found at your plough, but in your reluctance to leave
it, and your eagerness to return? "
"What shall I say to you?" replied Bolingbroke. "Will
you play the cynic if I answer no ? We should not boast of
despising power, when of use to others, but of being contented
to live without it. This is the end of my philosophy ! But
let me present you to one whom I value more now than I
valued power at any time."
As he said this, Bolingbroke threw open the door of an
apartment, and introduced me to a lady with whom he had
found that domestic happiness denied him in his first mar-
riage. The niece of Madame de Maintenon, this most charm-
ing woman possessed all her aunt's wit, and far more than all
her aunt's beauty.^ She was in weak health; but her vivacity
was extreme, and her conversation just what should be the
conversation of a woman who shines without striving for it.
The business on which I was bound only allowed me to stay
two days with Bolingbroke, and this I stated at first, lest
he should have dragged me over his farm.
"Well," said my host, after vainly endeavouring to induce