‘As to happiness, believe me, it lives only in the extremes of perfect vacuity or true genius. Your clever fellow, with a vivid fancy and glowing imagination, strong feeling and strong power of expression, has no chance of it. The excitement he lives in is alone a bar to the tranquil character of thought necessary to happiness; and however cold a man may feel, he should never warm himself through a burning-glass.’
There seemed through all he said something like a retrospective tone, as though he were rather giving the fruit of past personal experiences than merely speculating on the future; and I could not help throwing out a hint to this purport.
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said he; then, after a long silence, he added: ‘It is a fortunate thing after all when the faults of a man’s temperament are the source of some disappointment in early life, because then they rarely endanger his subsequent career. Let him only escape the just punishment, whatever it be, and the chances are that they embitter every hour of his after-life. His whole care and study being not correction, but concealment, he lives a life of daily duplicity; the fear of detection is over him at every step he takes; and he plays a part so constantly that he loses all real character at last in the frequency of dissimulation. Shall I tell you a little incident with which I became acquainted in early life. If you have nothing better to do, it may while away the hours before dinner.’
CHAPTER XIII. THE ABBE’S STORY
‘Without tiring you with any irrelevant details of the family and relatives of my hero, if I dare call him such, I may mention that he was the second son of an old Belgian family of some rank and wealth, and that in accordance with the habits of his house he was educated for the career of diplomacy. For this purpose, a life of travel was deemed the best preparation—foreign languages being the chief requisite, with such insight into history, national law, and national usages as any young man with moderate capacity and assiduity can master in three or four years.
‘The chief of the Dutch mission at Frankfort was an old diplomat of some distinction, but who, had it not been from causes purely personal towards the king, would not have quitted The Hague for any embassy whatever. He was a widower, with an only daughter—one of those true types of Dutch beauty which Terburg was so fond of painting. There are people who can see nothing but vulgarity in the class of features I speak of, and yet nothing in reality is farther from it. Hers was a mild, placid face, a wide, candid-looking forehead, down either side of which two braids of sunny brown hair fell; her skin, fair as alabaster, had the least tinge of colour, but her lips were full, and of a carmine hue, that gave a character of brilliancy to the whole countenance; her figure inclined to embonpoint, was exquisitely moulded, and in her walk there appeared the composed and resolute carriage of one whose temperament, however mild and unruffled, was still based on principles too strong to be shaken. She was indeed a perfect specimen of her nation, embodying in her character the thrift, the propriety, the high sense of honour, the rigid habits of order, so eminently Dutch; but withal there ran through her nature the golden thread of romance, and beneath that mild eyebrow there were the thoughts and hopes of a highly imaginative mind.
‘The mission consisted of an old secretary of embassy, Van Dohein, a veteran diplomat of some sixty years, and Edward Norvins, the youth I speak of. Such was the family party, for you are aware that they all lived in the same house, and dined together every day—the attachés of the mission being specially intrusted to the care and attention of the head of the mission, as if they were his own children. Norvins soon fell in love with the pretty Marguerite. How could it be otherwise? They were constantly together; he was her companion at home, her attendant at every ball; they rode out together, walked, read, drew, and sang together, and in fact very soon became inseparable. In all this there was nothing which gave rise to remark. The intimate habits of a mission permitted such; and as her father, deeply immersed in affairs of diplomacy, had no time to busy himself about them, no one else did. The secretary had followed the same course at every mission for the first ten years of his career, and only deemed it the ordinary routine of an attachés life.
‘Such, then, was the pleasant current of their lives, when an event occurred which was to disturb its even flow—ay, and alter the channel for ever. A despatch arrived one morning at the mission, informing them that a certain Monsieur von Halsdt, a son of one of the ministers, who had lately committed some breach of discipline in a cavalry regiment, was about to be attached to the mission. Never was such a shock as Marguerite and her lover sustained. To her the idea of associating with a wild, and unruly character like this was insupportable. To him it was misery; he saw at once all his daily intimacy with her interrupted; he perceived how their former habits could no longer be followed—that with this arrival must cease the companionship that made him the happiest of men. Even the baron himself was indignant at the arrangement to saddle him with a vaurien to be reclaimed; but then he was the minister’s son. The king himself had signed the appointment, and there was no help for it.
‘It was indeed with anything but feelings of welcome that they awaited the coming of the new guest. Even in the short interval between his appointment and his coming, a hundred rumours reached them of his numerous scrapes and adventures, his duels, his debts, his gambling, and his love exploits. All of course were duly magnified. Poor Marguerite felt as though an imp of Satan was about to pay them a visit, and Norvins dreaded him with a fear that partook of a presentiment.