SOCIETY VERSUS SOLITUDE.
Come, let us to the hills, where none but God
Can overlook us; for I hate to breathe
The breaths and think the thoughts of other men.
A few days later and the wilds of Courland were given up, as far as Maurice Grey was concerned, to the animals that ranged them; he was in St. Petersburg, installed as a welcome guest in the grand city mansion of Count ——, one of the Courland nobles, his son, who had mixed in the best society of both London and Paris, having been for some time one of Maurice Grey's warmest friends.
Into the gay life of his brilliant city the young man welcomed his English friend with the utmost cordiality, and Maurice was soon immersed in a round of gayeties. It was a good time to see St. Petersburg, for all the misery of the spring melting of ice and snow was over. The stately Neva, clear as crystal and covered with craft of every description, was flowing in full magnificence after its winter sleep through the streets and piazzas of the city. The highways were full of vehicles, from the grand carriage-and-four of the general or prince to the plain hired droshki that seemed ubiquitous. Pleasure was the order of the day in the city, for all, high and low, rich and poor, were revelling in the charms of the short-lived summer-time.
Maurice threw himself into this new life with the utmost eagerness. French is the language of the crème de la crème in St. Petersburg, and as he was master of the seductive mistress of conversation, his ignorance of Russian by no means interfered with any of his amusements. And he entered into them thoroughly. Lounging about on the Prospekt or Grand English Quay in the morning with a few young Russians; flirting with pretty French coquettes, or rarer Russian beauties, in the ladies' afternoon receptions; floating at night in the grand barge of one of the princes on the wide Neva, in company of the fair and gay and to the sounds of delicious music; dancing far into the morning and supping with the dawn;—this was the life of St. Petersburg, and for some days he enjoyed it thoroughly. One thing was certain: it allowed very little time for thought. But he had not the constitution or power of endurance of some of his Russian friends. A week or two of this hard life knocked him up. He was compelled to rest, whether he would or no. And then reaction came. The crowd and bustle were once more hateful to him. Biliousness, that great foe of the fashionable, cast its jaundiced veil over his eyes. He began to loathe the luxurious saloons and crowded rooms and made-up beauties—to long again for his own society, for the scenes of Nature, for the solitude from which he had only just escaped.
"Be thine own heart thy palace, or the world's a jail,"
said the great Shakespeare. The world was a jail to Maurice Grey because of the bitterness his heart contained; and, unhappily, go where we will, we cannot escape the world, or that throbbing, torturing consciousness of good and evil, of pain and delight, that mortals call the heart. He could not hide his cynicism; like the thorn that the rose-leaves conceal, it peeped out when it was least expected, and the fair ladies with whose society he pleased himself began gayly to question him on the mysterious cause of his gloomy ideas.
This alarmed Maurice. His wound was of such a kind as to be sensitive to the lightest touch. He could not bear that what he looked upon as his dishonor should be the common talk of his associates. It was this that had made him leave England and break all connection with those who had known him there. When, therefore, it became the custom of his fair St. Petersburg friends to question him curiously about his past, to suggest a probable history in his dark, melancholy eyes, to speak to him with sentimental pathos about life and love, he took fright; and to the grief of his many friends—for the Englishman had become the fashion in St. Petersburg—announced his intention of departure. Loud and long was the opposition, and Maurice grew weary of the delay and sick of the great city before his friends would allow him to go; but at last they were left behind him. With no companion, not even a servant this time, he was travelling through the length and breadth of Russia, by her scattered cities and vast plains, to Moscow, the ancient capital; there only a few hours, and then on once more, for Russia had become distasteful to him.
He would scarcely pause, for he was in a fever to be on, on and away, far from the vexations of "towered cities" and their "busy hum"—far, if it were possible, even from men. There was a little village that he had known in happier days. It was far up in the Swiss mountains; it was lonely, save for the coming and going of tourists, and even these did not honor it with their presence for long. Two glaciers stooped down into its valley, and it was watched evermore by pillars of purest snow. There, perhaps, in the savage grandeur of holy Nature, he might find the rest for which he craved, and with a feverish anxiety he pressed on to his goal.
Switzerland at last!—a mountain-pass, snow-crowned hills, land-locked lakes and white foaming torrents. A certain satisfaction glowed in the breast of the world-weary man as he looked out upon it all.