“Poor creature! she takes this to heart far more heavily than I could have thought;” and then, seeing that the words were not quite intelligible to me, he added, “Yes, mon cher Grégoire, I am a bachelor once more; Madame the Countess has left me! Weary of a life of poverty to which she had been so long unaccustomed, she has returned to the world again—to the stage, perhaps—who knows?” added he, with a careless indifference, and as though dismissing the theme from his thoughts forever.
I had never liked him, but at no time of our intercourse did he appear so thoroughly odious to me as when he uttered these words.
There is some strange fatality in the way our characters are frequently impressed by circumstances and intimacies which seem the veriest accidents. We linger in some baneful climate till it has made its fatal inroad on our health; and so we as often dally amidst associations fully as dangerous and deadly. In this way did I continue to live on with Ysaffich, daily resolving to leave him, and yet, by some curious chain of events, bound up inseparably with his fortunes. At one moment his poverty was the tie between us We supported ourselves by the chasse, a poor and most precarious livelihood, and one which we well knew would fail us when the spring came. At other moments he would gain an influence over me by the exercise of that sanguine, hopeful spirit which seemed never to desert him. He saw, or affected to see, that the great drama of revolution which closed the century in France must yet be played out over the length and breadth of Europe, and that in this great piece the chief actors would be those who had all to gain and nothing to lose by the convulsion. “We shall have good parts in the play, Grégoire,” would he repeat to me, time after time, till he thoroughly filled my mind with ambitions that rose far above the region of all probability, and, worse still, that utterly silenced every whisper of conscience within me.
Had he attempted to corrupt me by the vulgar ideas of wealth,—by the splendor of a life of luxurious ease and enjoyment, with all the appliances of riches,—it is more than likely he would have failed. He however assailed me by my weak side: the delight I always experienced in acts of protection and benevolence—the pleasure I felt in being regarded by others as their good genius—this was a flattery that never ceased to sway me! The selfishness of such a part lay so hidden from view; there was a plausibility in one's conviction of being good and amiable,—that the enjoyment became really of a higher order than usually waits on mere egotism. I had been long estranged from the world, so far as the ties of affection and friendship existed. For me there was neither home nor family, and yet I yearned for what would bind me to the cause of my fellow-men. All my thoughts were now centred on this object, and innumerable were the projects by which I amused my imagination about it. Ysaffich perhaps detected this clew to my confidence. At all events, he made it the pivot of all reasonings with me. To be powerless with good intentions—to have the “will” to work for good, and yet want the “way”—was, he would say, about the severest torture poor humanity could be called on to endure. When he had so far imbued my mind with these notions that he found me not only penetrated with his own views, but actually employing his own reasonings, his very expressions, to maintain them, he then advanced a step further; and this was to demonstrate that to every success in life there was a compromise attached, as inseparable as were shadow and substance.
“Was there not,” he would say, “a compensation attached to every great act of statesmanship, to every brilliant success in war,—in fact, to every grand achievement, wherever and however accomplished? It is simply a question of weighing the evil against the good, whatever we do in life; and he is the best of us who has the largest balance in the scales of virtue.”
When a subtle theory takes possession of the mind, it is curious to mark with what ingenuity examples will suggest themselves to sustain and support it. Ysaffich possessed a ready memory, and never failed to supply me with illustrations of his system. There was scarcely a good or great name of ancient or modern times that he could not bring within this category; and many an hour have we passed in disputing the claims of this one or that to be accounted as the benefactor or the enemy of mankind. If I recall these memories now, it is simply to show the steps by which a mind far more subtle and acute than my own succeeded in establishing its influence over me.
I have said that we were very poor; our resources were derived from the scantiest of all supplies; and even these, as the spring drew nigh, showed signs of failure. If I at times regarded our future with gloomy anticipations, my companion never did so. On the contrary, his hopeful spirit seemed to rise under the pressure of each new sufferance, and he constantly cheered me by saying, “The tide must ebb soon.” It is true, this confidence did not prevent him suggesting various means by which we might eke out a livelihood.
“It is the same old story over again,” said he to me one day, as we sat at our meal of dry bread and water. “Archimedes could have moved the world had he had a support whereon to station his lever, and so with me; I could at» this very moment rise to wealth and power, could I but find a similar appliance. There is a million to be made on the Bourse of Amsterdam any morning, if one only could pay for a courier who should arrive at speed from the Danube with the news of a defeat of the French army. A lighted tar-barrel in the midst of the English fleet at Spithead would n't cost a deal of money, and yet might do great things towards changing the fortunes of mankind. And even here,” added he, taking a letter from his pocket, “even here are the means of wealth and fortune to both of us, if I could rely on you for the requisite energy and courage to play your part.”
“I have at least had courage to share your fortunes,” said I, half angrily; “and even that much might exempt me from the reproach of cowardice.”
Not heeding my taunt in the slightest, he resumed his speech with slow and deliberate words:—