“Why am I not also gone?” thought I despondingly, as the barouche rolled over the smooth road, among the ruins. “Why do I still live on, unfortunate, unhappy? my husband arrested for high treason; myself and child alone and desolate; our home lost to us forever! What has the future for me but disappointment, continued isolation and my child, my Raphael! what is to become of him?”
The stopping of the carriage aroused me from my gloomy reflections. It paused at a small cottage kept as a place of accommodation for strangers. Tired, faint, and weary, I found myself in the parlor of this rustic abode, scarce knowing where I was. The apartments were comfortable and scrupulously clean, but in contrast to the elegant home I had just left, they appeared contemptible to me. An image of the virgin stood in one corner, under it a crucifix: some pictures decorated the plastered walls, and flowers were trained to creep outside the latticed windows;—a gaily colored parrot, in a gilded cage, mockingly imitated our words, repeating them after us in playful tones: the hostess, a peasant vinter’s wife, came courtesying in to receive us, wearing a Neapolitan dress, which reminded me forcibly of Naples. The domestics of the castle, wearing another style, embarrassed and awkward at the sight of one, so far superior in worldly station. Ah! how far happier, if they did but know it, are those lowly ones of earth! how quiet; how untinctured by ambition are their lives! Very little envy is theirs; very little of those fierce hatreds we see in society! Calm, peaceful, obscure, they walk to their graves, seldom known; seldom wishing to be known, yet often tasting much real, substantial happiness.
The count explained that I wished apartments for myself, nurse, and child, and the woman left the room to prepare them.
“And you, my friend,” I said to him, “you also are going to stay here?”
“Until to-morrow I shall have that honor,” said he, “but after that I shall not have the pleasure of being near you.”
“Oh!” I cried, “will you also desert me? shall I be utterly alone?”
“Alone! oh, no! not all alone with the companionship of your own sweet thoughts and your lovely child. Do not grieve; to meet to separate is the inevitable law of nature. Why should we cavil at that we cannot change? Existence is, as I have often told you, a play, a farce;—do not let us be its most miserable actors. Your husband will doubtless be liberated soon. You will be restored to him;—life will put forth new buds and blossoms from its giant tree. In his renewed affection you will find new joys; and I shall pursue my solitary travels, rejoicing at your happiness.”
“But if you were not there, the measure of our joy would be incomplete. If what you predict comes to pass, will not you partake of our joy?”
“I! what shall I be to you but a strange dream, associated with unhappy circumstances, disagreeable to your memory? I shall have been but the witnesser of one of those vicissitudes of fortune, which always fall to the lot of the talented and beautiful. No! I had better be forgotten. To be forgotten! how mortifying is the reflection. Yet, has it not always been the law of destiny?”
“Do not philosophize now; let us be matter of fact. I thought, when my husband was so cruelly taken away, that you, who have always been so kind, would be spared me—at least for some time—till I should recover a little from this violent shock; but I am disappointed in this, as in all other things.”