CHAPTER XXVII. — JOURNAL OF PAOLO LANGHETTI.
When Mrs. Thornton saw Despard next she showed him a short note which she had just received from her brother, accompanying his journal. Nearly two years had elapsed since she had last heard from him.
His journal was written as before at long intervals, and was as follows:
Halifax, April 10, 1847.—I exist here, but nothing more. Nothing is offered by this small colonial town that can afford interest. Life goes on monotonously. The officers and their families are what they are every where. They are amiable and pleasant, and try to get the best out of life. The townspeople are hospitable, and there is much refinement among them.
But I live for the most part in a cottage outside of the town, where I can be secluded and free from observation. Near my house is the Northwest Arm. I cross it in a boat, and am at once in a savage wilderness. From the summit of a hill, appropriately named Mount Misery, I can look down upon this city which is bordered by such a wilderness.
The winter has passed since my last entry, and nothing has occurred. I have learned to skate. I went out on a moose-hunt with Colonel Despard. The gigantic horns of a moose which I killed are now over the door of my studio. I have joined in some festivities, and have done the honors of my house. It is an old-fashioned wooden structure which they call the Priory.
So the winter has passed, and April is now here. In this country there is no spring. Snow is yet on the ground. Winter is transformed gradually till summer. I must keep up my fires till June, they say.
During the winter I have guarded my treasure well. I took a house on purpose to have a home for her. But her melancholy continued, and the state of mind in which I found her still endures. Will it ever change? I gave out here that she was a relative who was in ill health. But the winter has passed, and she remains precisely the same. Can she live on long in this mood?
At length I have decided to try a change for her. The Holy Sisterhood of Mercy have a convent here, where she may find a higher and purer atmosphere than any where else. There I have placed her. I have told nothing of her story. They think she is in grief for the death of friends. They have received her with that warm sympathy and holy love which it is the aim of their life to cherish.
O mater alma Christ! carissima,
Te nunc flagitant devota corda et ora,
Ora pro nobis!
August 5, 1847.—The summer goes on pleasantly. A bracing climate, a cool sea-breeze, fishing and hunting in the forests, sailing in the harbor—these are the amusements which one can find if he has the leisure.
She has been among the Sisterhood of Mercy for some months. The deep calm of that holy retreat has soothed her, but only this much, that her melancholy has not lessened but grown more placid. She is in the midst of those whose thoughts are habitually directed to that work which she longs after. The home from which she has been exiled is the desire of their hearts. They aim after that place for which she longs with so deep a longing. There is sympathy in all those hearts with one another. She hears in their chants and prayers those hopes and desires, and these are but the utterances of what she feels.
Here they sing the matchless Rhythm of Bernard de Morlaix, and in these words she finds the highest expression that human words can give of the thoughts and desires of her soul. They tell me that the first time they sang it, as they came to this passage she burst into tears and sank down almost senseless:
O bona patria! lumina sobria te speculantur,
Ad tua nomina sobria lumina collacrimantur:
Et tua mentio pectoris unctis, cura doloris,
Concipientibus aethers mentibus ignis amoris.
November 17.—The winter must soon be here again.
My treasure is well guarded by the Holy Sisterhood. They revere her and look upon her as a saint. They tell me wonderful things about her which have sunk into my soul. They think that she is another Saint Cecilia, or rather Saint Teresa, the Saint of Love and Longing.
She told them once that she was not a Catholic, but that any form of worship was sweet and precious to her—most of all, the lofty utterances of the prayers and hymns of the Church. She will not listen to dogmas, but says that God wishes only love and praise. Yet she joins in all their rites, and in this House, where Love is chiefly adored, she surpasses all in the deep love of her heart.
January 2, 1848.—I have seen her for the first time in many months. She smiled. I never saw her smile before, except once in the ship, when I told my name and made her mother take my place in the cabin.
She smiled. It was as if an angel from heaven had smiled on me. Do I not believe that she is one?
They all say that she is unchanged. Her sadness has had no abatement. On that meeting she made an effort for my sake to stoop to me. Perhaps she saw how my very soul entreated her to speak. So she spoke of the Sisterhood, and said she loved them all. I asked her if she was happier here than at my house. She said “No.” I did not know whether to feel rejoiced or sorrowful. Then she told me something which has filled me with wonder ever since.
She asked me if I had been making inquiries about her family, for I had said that I would. I told her that I had. She asked what I had heard. I hesitated for a moment, and at last, seeing that she was superior to any sorrow of bereavement; I told her all about the sad fate of her brother Louis, which your old friend Courtenay Despard had communicated to his uncle here. She listened without emotion, and at last, looking earnestly at me, said,
“He is not dead!”
I stood amazed. I had seen the very newspapers which contained an account of his death, I had read the letters of Courtenay Despard, which showed how painstaking his search had been. Had he not traveled to every place where he could hear any thing of the Brandons? Had he not written at the very outset wherever he could hope to hear any thing? I did not know what to say.
For Louis Brandon is known to have fallen overboard from the ship Java, during a tremendous monsoon, several hundred miles away from any land. How could he possibly have escaped death? The Captain, whom Courtenay Despard found out and questioned, said he threw over a hen-coop and a pail. These could not save him. Despard also inquired for months from every ship that arrived from those parts, but could learn nothing. The next ship that came from New South Wales foundered off the coast of Africa. Three passengers escaped to Sierra Leone, and thence to England. Despard learned their names, but they were not Brandon. The information which one of them, named Wheeler, gave to the ship-owners afforded no hope of his having been found by this ship, even if it had been possible. It was simply impossible, however, for the Falcon did not pass the spot where poor Brandon fell overboard till months had elapsed.
All these things I knew, and they came to my mind. She did not notice my emotion, but after a pause she looked at me again with the same earnestness, and said,
“My brother Frank is not dead.”
This surprised me as much as the other.
“Are you sure?” said I, reverently.
“I am.”
“How did you learn this? All who have inquired say that both of your brothers are dead.”
“They told me,” said she, “many times. They said that my brothers had not come among them to their own place, as they would have had to come if they had left the earth.”
She spoke solemnly and with mysterious emphasis. I said nothing, for I knew not what to say.
On going home and thinking over this, I saw that she believed herself to have the power of communicating with the departed. I did not know whether this intelligence, which she believed she had received, had been gained in her trance, or whether she thought that she had recent interviews with those on high. I went to see her again, and asked this. She told me that once since her recovery she had fallen into that state, and had been, as she called it, “in her home.”
I ventured to ask her more about what she considered a communion with the departed. She tried to speak, but looked like one who could not find words. It was still the same as before. She has in her mind thoughts which can not be expressed by any human language. She will not be able to express them till such a language is obtained. Yet she gave me one idea, which has been in my mind ever since.
She said that the language of those among whom she has been has nothing on earth which is like it except music. If our music could be developed to an indefinite extent it might at last begin to resemble it. Yet she said that she sometimes heard strains here in the Holy Mass which reminded her of that language, and might be intelligible to an immortal.
This is the idea which she imparted to me, and I have thought of it ever since.
August 23—Great things have happened.
When I last wrote I had gained the idea of transforming music into a language. The thought came to me that I, who thirst for music, and love it and cherish it above all things—to whom it is an hourly comfort and solace—that I might rise to utter forth to her sounds which she might hear. I had already seen enough of her spiritual tone to know what sympathies and emotions might best be acted upon. I saw her several times, so as to stimulate myself to a higher and purer exercise of whatever genius I may have.
I was encouraged by the thought that from my earliest childhood, as I began to learn to speak so I began to learn to sing. As I learned to read printed type so I read printed music. The thoughts of composers in music thus became as legible to me as those of composers in words. So all my life my knowledge has widened, and with that knowledge my love has increased. This has been my one aim in life—my joy and my delight. Thus it came to pass that at last, when alone with my Cremona, I could utter all my own thoughts, and pour forth every feeling that was in my heart. This was a language with me. I spoke it, yet there was no one who could understand it fully. Only one had I ever met with to whom I told this besides yourself—she could accompany me—she could understand and follow me wherever I led. I could speak this language to her, and she could hear and comprehend. This one was my Bice.
Now that she had told me this I grasped at the thought. Never before had the idea entered my mind of trying upon her the effect of my music. I had given it up for her sake while she was with me, not liking to cause any sound to disturb her rapt and melancholy mood.
But now I began to understand how it was with her. She had learned the language of the highest places and had heard the New Song. She stood far above me, and if she could not understand my music it would be from the same reason that a grown man can not comprehend the words of a lisping, stammering child. She had that language in its fullness. I had it only in its crudest rudiments.
Now Bice learned my words and followed me. She knew my utterance. I was the master—she the disciple. But here was one who could lead me. I would be the follower and disciple. From her I could learn more than in all my life I could ever discover by my own unassisted efforts.
It was mine, therefore, to struggle to overcome the lisping, stammering utterance of my purely earthly music; to gain from her some knowledge of the mood of that holier, heavenly expression, so that at last I might be able in some degree to speak to this exile the language of the home which she loved; that we, by holding commune in this language, might rise together to a higher spiritual realm, and that she in her solitude might receive at least some associate.
So I proposed to her to come back and stay with me again. She consented at once.
Before that memorable evening I purified my heart by fasting and prayer. I was like one who was seeking to ascend into heaven to take part in that celestial communion, to join in the New Song, the music of the angels.
By fasting and prayer I sought so to ascend, and to find thoughts and fit utterance for those thoughts. I looked upon my office as similar to that of the holy prophets of old. I felt that I had a power of utterance if the Divine One would only inspire.
I fasted and prayed that so I might reduce this grosser material frame, and sharpen and quicken every nerve, and stimulate every fibre of the brain. So alone could I most nearly approach to the commune of spirits. Thus had those saints and prophets of old done when they had entered upon the search after this communion, and they had received their reward, even the visitation of angels and the vision of the blessed.
A prophet—yes—now, in these days, it is left for the prophet to utter forth his inspiration by no other way than that of music.
So I fasted and prayed. I took up the words from the holy priesthood, and I said, as they say:
Munda cor meum, ac labia mea, Omnipotens Deus, qui labia Isaiae prophetae, calculo mundasti ignito!
For so Isaiah had been exalted till he heard the language of heaven, the music of the seraphim.
She, my divinity, my adored, enshrined again in my house, bore herself as before—kind to me and gentle beyond all expression, but with thoughts of her own that placed between us a gulf as wide as that which separates the mortal from the immortal.
On that evening she was with me in the parlor which looks out upon the Northwest Arm. The moon shone down there, the dark, rocky hills on the opposite side rose in heavy masses. The servants were away in the city. We were alone.
Ah, my Cremona! if a material instrument were ever able to utter forth sounds to which immortals might listen, thou, best gift of my father, thou canst utter them!
“You are pale,” said she, for she was always kindly and affectionate as a mother with a child, as a guardian angel with his ward. “You are pale. You always forget yourself for others, and now you suffer anxiety for me. Do not suffer. I have my consolations.”
I did not make any reply, but took my Cremona, and sought to lift up all my soul to a level with hers, to that lofty realm where her spirit ever wandered, that so I might not be comfortless. She started at the first tone that I struck forth, and looked at me with her large, earnest eyes. I found my own gaze fixed on hers, rapt and entranced. Now there came at last the inspiration so longed for, so sought for. It came from where her very soul looked forth into mine, out of the glory of her lustrous, spiritual eyes. They grew brighter with an almost immortal radiance, and all my heart rose up till it seemed ready to burst in the frenzy of that inspired moment.
Now I felt the spirit of prophecy, I felt the afflatus of the inspired sibyl or seer, and the voice of music which for a lifetime I had sought to utter forth now at last sounded as I longed that it should sound.
I exulted in that sound. I knew that at last I had caught the tone, and from her. I knew its meaning and exulted, as the poet or the musician must always exult when some idea sublimer than any which he has ever known is wafted over his upturned spiritual gaze.
She shared my exaltation. There came over her face swiftly, like the lightning flash, an expression of surprise and joy. So the face of the exile lightens up at the throbbing of his heart, when, in some foreign land, he suddenly and unexpectedly hears the sound of his own language. So his eyes light up, and his heart beats faster, and even amidst the very longing of his soul after home, the desire after that home is appeased by these its most hallowed associations.
And the full meaning of that eloquent gaze of hers as her soul looked into mine became all apparent to me. “Speak on,” it said; “sound on, oh strains of the language of my home! Unheard so long, now heard at last.”
I knew that I was comprehended. Now all the feelings of the melancholy months came rushing over my heart, and all the holiest ideas which had animated my life came thronging into my mind, bursting forth into tones, as though of their own accord, involuntarily, as words come forth in a dream.
“Oh thou,” I said, in that language which my own lips could not utter—“oh thou whom I saved from the tomb, the life to which I restored thee is irksome; but there remains a life to which at last thou shalt attain.
“Oh thou,” I said, “whose spirit moves among the immortals, I am mortal yet immortal! My soul seeks commune with them. I yearn after that communion. Life here on earth is not more dear to me than to thee. Help me to rise above it. Thou hast been on high, show me too the way.
“Oh thou,” I said, “who hast seen things ineffable, impart to me thy confidence. Let me know thy secret. Receive me as the companion of thy soul. Shut not thyself up in solitude. Listen, I can speak thy language.
“Attend,” I cried, “for it is not for nothing that the Divine One has sent thee back. Live not these mortal days in loneliness and in uselessness. Regard thy fellow-mortals and seek to bless them. Thou hast learned the mystery of the highest. Let me be thine interpreter. All that thou hast learned I will communicate to man.
“Rise up,” I cried, “to happiness and to labor. Behold! I give thee a purpose in life. Blend thy soul with mine, and let me utter thy thoughts so that men shall hear and understand. For I know that the highest truth of highest Heaven means nothing more than love. Gather up all thy love, let it flow forth to thy fellow-men. This shall be at once the labor and the consolation of thy life.”
Now all this, and much more—far more—was expressed in the tones that flowed from my Cremona. It was all in my heart. It came forth. It was apprehended by her. I saw it, I knew it, and I exulted. Her eyes dilated more widely—my words were not unworthy of her hearing. I then was able to tell something which could rouse her from her stupor. Oh, Music! Divine Music! What power thou hast over the soul!
There came over her face an expression which I never saw before; one of peace ineffable—the peace that passeth understanding. Ah me! I seemed to draw her to myself. For she rose and walked toward me. And a great calm came over my own soul. My Cremona spoke of peace—soft, sweet, and deep; the profound peace that dwelleth in the soul which has its hope in fruition. The tone widened into sweet modulation—sweet beyond all expression.
She was so close that she almost touched me. Her eyes were still fixed on mine. Tears were there, but not tears of sorrow. Her face was so close to mine that my strength left me. My arms dropped downward. The music was over.
{Illustration: “I DID NOT MAKE ANY REPLY, BUT TOOK MY CREMONA, AND SOUGHT TO LIFT UP ALL MY SOUL TO A LEVEL WITH HERS."}
She held out her hand to me. I caught it in both of mine, and wet it with my tears.
“Paolo,” said she, in a voice of musical tone; “Paolo, you are already one of us. You speak our language.
“You have taught me something which flows from love—duty. Yes, we will labor together; and they who live on high will learn even in their radiant home to envy us poor mortals.”
I said not a word, but knelt; and holding her hand still, I looked up at her in grateful adoration.
November 28.—For the last three months I have lived in heaven. She is changed. Music has reconciled her to exile. She has found one who speaks, though weakly, the language of that home.
We hold together through this divine medium a lofty spirited intercourse. I learn from her of that starry world in which for a brief time she was permitted to dwell. Her seraphic thoughts have become communicated to me. I have made them my own, and all my spirit has risen to a higher altitude.
So I have at last received that revelation for which I longed, and the divine thoughts with which she has inspired me I will make known to the world. How? Description is inadequate, but it is enough to say that I have decided upon an Opera as the best mode of making known these ideas.
I have reported to one of those classical themes which, though as old as civilization, are yet ever new, because they are truth.
My Opera is on the theme of Prometheus. It refers to Prometheus Delivered. My idea is derived from her. Prometheus represents Divine Love—since he is the god who suffers unendurable agonies through his love for man. Zeus represents the old austere god of the sects and creeds—the gloomy God of Vengeance—the stern—the inexorable—the cruel.
Love endures through the ages, but at last triumphs. The chief agent in his triumph is Athene. She represents Wisdom, which, by its life and increase, at last dethrones the God of Vengeance and enthrones the God of Love.
For so the world goes on; and thus it shall be that Human Understanding, which I have personified under Athene, will at last exalt Divine Love over all, and cast aside its olden adoration of Divine Vengeance.
I am trying to give to my Opera the severe simplicity of the classical form, yet at the same time to pervade it all with the warm atmosphere of love in its widest sense. It opens with a chorus of seraphim. Prometheus laments; but the chief part is that of Athene. On that I have exhausted myself.
But where can I get a voice that can adequately render my thoughts—our thoughts? Where is Bice? She alone has this voice; she alone has the power of catching and absorbing into her own mind the ideas which I form; and with it all, she alone could express them. I would wander over the earth to find her. But perhaps she is in a luxurious home, where her associates would not listen to such a proposal.
Patience! perhaps Bice may at last bring her marvelous voice to my aid.
December 15.—Every day our communion has grown more exalted. She breathes upon me the atmosphere of that radiant world, and fills my soul with rapture. I live in a sublime enthusiasm. We hold intercourse by means of music. We stand upon a higher plane than that of common men. She has raised me there, and has made me to be a partaker in her thoughts.
Now I begin to understand something of the radiant world to which she was once for a brief time borne. I know her lost joys; I share in her longings. In me, as in her, there is a deep, unquenchable thirst after those glories that are present there. All here seems poor and mean. No material pleasure can for a moment allure.
I live in a frenzy. My soul is on fire. Music is my sole thought and utterance. Colonel Despard thinks that I am mad. My friends here pity me. I smile within myself when I think of pity being given by them to me. Kindly souls! could they but have one faint idea of the unspeakable joys to which I have attained!
My Cremona is my voice. It expresses all things for me. Ah, sweet companion of my soul’s flight! my Guide, my Guardian Angel, my Inspirer! had ever before two mortals while on earth a lot like ours? Who else besides us in this life ever learned the joys of pure spiritual communion? We rise on high together. Our souls are borne up in company. When we hold commune we cease to be mortals.
My Opera is finished. The radiancy of that Divine Love which has inundated all the being of Edith has been imparted to me in some measure sufficient to enable me to breathe forth to human ears tones which have been caught from immortal voices. She has given me ideas. I have made them audible and intelligible to men.
I have had one performance of my work, or rather our work, for it is all hers. Hers are the thoughts, mine is only the expression.
I sought out a place of solitude in which I might perform undisturbed and without interruption the theme which I have tried to unfold.
Opposite my house is a wild, rocky shore covered with the primeval woods. Here in one place there rises a barren rock, perfectly bare of verdure, which is called Mount Misery. I chose his place as the spot where I might give my rehearsal.
She was the audience—I was the orchestra—we two were alone.
Mount Misery is one barren rock without a blade of grass on all its dark iron-like surface. Around it is a vast accumulation of granite boulders and vast rocky ledges. The trees are stunted, the very ferns can scarcely find a place to grow.
It was night. There was not a cloud in the sky. The moon shone with marvelous lustre.
Down in front of us lay the long arm of the sea that ran up between us and the city. On the opposite side were woods, and beyond them rose the citadel, on the other side of which the city lay nestling at its base like those Rhenish towns which lie at the foot of feudal castles.
On the left hand all was a wilderness; on the right, close by, was a small lake, which seemed like a sheet of silver in the moon’s rays. Farther on lay the ocean, stretching in its boundless extent away to the horizon. There lay islands and sand-banks with light-houses. There, under the moon, lay a broad path of golden light—molten gold—unruffled—undisturbed in that dead calm.
My Opera begins with an Alleluia Chorus. I have borrowed words from the Angel Song at the opening of “Faust” for my score. But the music has an expression of its own, and the words are feeble; and the only comfort is, that these words will be lost in the triumph strain of the tones that accompany them.
She was with me, exulting where I was exultant, sad where I was sorrowful; still with her air of Guide and Teacher. She is my Egeria. She is my Inspiring Muse. I invoke her when I sing.
But my song carried her away. Her own thoughts expressed by my utterance were returned to her, and she yielded herself up altogether to their power.
Ah me! there is one language common to all on earth, and to all in heaven, and that is music.
I exulted then on that bare, blasted rock. I triumphed. She joined me in it all. We exulted together. We triumphed. We mourned, we rejoiced, we despaired, we hoped, we sung alleluias in our hearts. The very winds were still. The very moon seemed to stay her course. All nature was hushed.
She stood before me, white, slender, aerial, like a spirit from on high, as pure, as holy, as stainless. Her soul and mine were blended. We moved to one common impulse. We obeyed one common motive.
What is this? Is it love? Yes; but not as men call love. Ours is heavenly love, ardent, but yet spiritual; intense, but without passion; a burning love like that of the cherubim; all-consuming, all-engrossing, and enduring for evermore.
Have I ever told her my admiration? Yes; but not in words. I have told her so in music, in every tone, in every strain. She knows that I am hers. She is my divinity, my muse, my better genius—the nobler half of my soul.
I have laid all my spirit at her feet, as one prostrates himself before a divinity. She has accepted that adoration and has been pleased.
We are blended. We are one, but not after an earthly fashion, for never yet have I even touched her hand in love. It is our spirits, our real selves—not our merely visible selves—that love; yet that love is so intense that I would die for evermore if my death could make her life more sweet.
She has heard all this from my Cremona.
Here, as we stood under the moon, I thought her a spirit with a mortal lover. I recognized the full meaning of the sublime legend of Numa and Egeria. The mortal aspires in purity of heart, and the immortal comes down and assists and responds to his aspirations.
Our souls vibrated in unison to the expression of heavenly thoughts. We threw ourselves into the rapture of the hour. We trembled, we thrilled, till at last frail mortal nature could scarcely endure the intensity of that perfect joy.
So we came to the end. The end is a chorus of angels. They sing the divinest of songs that is written in Holy Revelation. All the glory of that song reaches its climax in the last strain:
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes!”
We wept together. But we dried our tears and went home, musing on that “tearless eternity” which lies before us.
Morning is dawning as I write, and all the feeling of my soul can be expressed in one word, the sublimest of all words, which is intelligible to many of different languages and different races. I will end with this:
“Alleluia!”