Alas! the pleasures of our pilgrimage are lost to us, as well as its difficulties and its dangers! we no longer see the flowers of the vale, in which we loitered; we hear no more the murmur of the brook, whose clear streams refreshed us when fainting with fatigue and thirst! we retain of the whole but one sensation; that the whole is past!—and we wonder not a little, when the transient recollection of former events occasionally flits before us, how such trifles could have possest the power of affecting us with violence so extreme.
Such are our feelings in the decline of life; feelings which you too, beloved-ones, for whom I trace these lines, which you, my Amalberga, and you, my gentle Emmeline, will experience at the appointed hour. Alas! before that hour arrives, you must wander through a long and painful way, counting many a step of toil, and many a tear of sorrow: I feel it to be my duty once more to examine the road by which I have past myself; and by explaining to you the obstacles which impeded me in my progress, I hope to enable you to overcome those, which may present themselves before you in your own.
The spring of my life was bright and lovely. I was educated with the most illustrious young women of the age, and numbered the children of sovereigns among my play-mates. The daughters of the Count of Hapsburg lived with me like sisters; and even when Rudolf was elected Emperor, and their father’s elevation authorized them to expect to share the thrones of the first Sovereigns of Europe, still did our friendship continue in full force. What have innocence and inexperienced youth to do with dignity and grandeur? Things of this nature only furnished us with a subject for mirth; we past in review the Princes, both young and old, who solicited the good graces of the Emperor’s daughters; we discussed freely their merits and defects, portioned them out among our society, and amused ourselves with jesting at the unfortunate maiden, to whom the worst lot fell. The number of these illustrious suitors was seven; and as the Princesses with myself made exactly the same number, I necessarily came in for my share in this allotment.
Unfortunately, what at first was mere jesting at length became serious. The Duke of Saxony, who at his first arrival seemed to limit all his wishes to the possession of the Princess Matilda, (Rudolf’s eldest daughter,) began to imagine, that her companion Urania was the superior beauty of the two. As it was generally believed (both on account of the uniformity which prevailed in our society, and of our never being separated) that I was the sister of my friends, the Duke thought it a matter of very little consequence, to which of the Emperor’s daughters he paid his addresses; and he showed his election in my favour so plainly and so publicly, that Rudolf ordered me to quit his court. My removal was so sudden, that no step could be taken by the Duke in this important business: my father had fallen in the late popular commotions at Basle; I had never known my mother; I was consigned to the guardianship of an uncle, who had purchased considerable possessions in the neighbourhood of the Rhætian Alps, where he resided far from the tumult of the court in freedom and tranquillity.
Count Leopold Venosta received me with open arms. Painful as had been my separation from the friends of my childhood, still I was not insensible to the charm of being released from the chains of court etiquette, even though the chains which I had borne had been so light and easy. The air of liberty fanned my cheeks at every step I took; the peasants of Rhætia (who had now almost universally shaken off the fetters of their lordly masters) celebrated on all sides the feast of freedom, and invited the neighbouring inhabitants of the Valteline to participate in their happiness. Oh! what delightful scenes were these for a young and feeling heart!—and yet I had not sufficient experience to perceive their whole beauty and singularity.—Too often is liberty purchased dearly by the effusion of blood; and joy at obtaining the so long wished-for blessing is sullied by melancholy recollections of the means, by which that blessing was obtained. In this instance, it was the reward of temperance and industry, which had at length succeeded in their efforts to burst the chains of luxury and oppression. Knights and Monks, the former owners of these possessions, had long indulged without reflection or restraint every caprice of their voluptuous fancies, till they became the debtors of their own vassals; who in the mean while had been advancing silently towards their grand object through diligence in labour and propriety in morals, and now were able to set at defiance those, whose slaves and victims they had been so long. The impoverished libertines found themselves without resource; they were obliged to rest contented with bestowing angry looks on their enfranchised vassals, as often as accident brought them in their way, and with indulging their spleen in intemperate railing at (what they termed) the caprice of fortune.
But Count Leopold belonged not to the number of these reduced Lords. His opulence grew with every day; his possessions were increased by the purchase of those, which the debts of his neighbours compelled them to dispose of. Neither had the country reason to lament, that so much power was concentrated in his hands.
He allowed his vassals sufficient independence to prevent their sighing after a greater share of freedom; he parcelled out some of his estates into small farms, and bestowed them on the most industrious among his people; he even induced several of the inhabitants of the Valteline to settle upon his possessions, by allotting to them a portion of valuable but hitherto uncultivated land, which liberally replaced to them what little they abandoned in their own distracted country.
Oh! believe me, my children, the occupation renders us almost equal to the angels, when we employ our power in bidding some desart teem with harvest, and making it the habitation of happy creatures! I have witnessed many of these transformations, which the Princes of the earth could produce so often and so easily, had they but the inclination. It is in their power to copy the benevolence and might of the Creator; but they chuse rather to imitate his chastising justice, to convert the dwellings of men into heaps of stones, and to pour a deluge of blood over the smiling fruitful vallies.
Among the Lords of that part of Switzerland, whose chief possessions now belonged to my uncle, the Counts of Carlsheim held the most distinguished place. Ethelbert (the only remaining descendant of this family, at least as far as we knew) scarcely inherited from his father the tenth part of that property, which once belonged to his forefathers. Grief and vexation had bowed the young man to the ground; he sought to improve his fortune by entering into the service of foreign princes, failed in the attempt, and returned sorrowing to repair the ruined castles which still were his own, and to collect the fragments of his fallen greatness. He had no reason to reproach himself as the author of his distress; yet the consciousness of his situation and the feelings of wounded pride kept him in a constant state of humiliation, which became particularly painful at the sight of those, who had established their prosperity on the ruins of that of the house of Carlsheim.
Influenced by these sentiments, did Ethelbert most studiously avoid all intercourse with my uncle. On none of those occasions, which usually bring knights and noblemen together, did he ever appear, if there was the slightest probability of Count Leopold’s being present; and in spite of all my uncle’s endeavours to form an acquaintance with this young warrior, (for whom more reasons than one induced him to feel a lively interest,) still would his efforts in all likelihood have failed of success, had not a circumstance occurred, which absolutely enjoined their meeting, and which was the first link of a connexion which ... dare I say it?... which should never have been formed. Yet the ordinations of eternal Wisdom ought not to be censured: I press my finger on my lip, and am silent.