One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre

by G. P. R. James

D'Aubin had been warned of her purpose not to come, and important business was the cause that Beatrice assigned for her absence; but the day having lost its usual occupations, neither the anxiety for her coming, nor the remembrance of her visit, affording matter for reflection, the thoughts of Philip d'Aubin turned to other things. Had he been one of those stern moralists who examine with microscopic exactness all their feelings, try every idea in the fine balance of equity, and search out all the lurking motives of the heart, D'Aubin might have started to discover how much he was recovered, by finding out how much his thoughts were flowing back into old channels. There were fancies crossed his mind, there were ideas presented themselves to his imagination, at which he recoiled; and he was still so feeble, his convalescence was still so far unconfirmed, that he blamed himself for the recurrence of thoughts that, still smarting as he was under the lash of suffering and the correction of adversity, he looked upon as base and ungenerous. He hastened, then, to banish all such ideas, and tried to look with horror and disgust those past vices and follies which had been once his pride. But the surest sign that our faults still cling to us, is the necessity of an effort to banish them from our thoughts. So long as he had been really ill, D'Aubin had hated his errors without an effort; but he was now convalescent, and they began to play around his imagination as familiar things.

The next morning broke in floods of splendour, bearing in a golden day of May; and as soon as his attendants would permit him, D'Aubin rose, and, supported by the physician, walked feebly forth into the garden of the chateau, where many a flower was opening its young bosom to the sweet breath of the spring air, and the warm beams of the genial sun. Under the spreading branches of an old tree, which, standing by the castle wall, cast its scarce unfolded leaves over the garden, some seats were placed; and there sat Beatrice with several of her women, busily employed at their everlasting embroidery: but ever and anon the eye of the lady turned to the low postern door; and when she at length beheld the expected sight, a smile, bright and beautiful as the morning, beamed upon her lip, accompanied by as warm a blush as ever touched with crimson the timid cheek of love.

Hours went on, and days, working with their usual power to the change of all things: but, oh! how differently does the mighty artist, Time, labour on the world of subjects ever beneath his hands. Who would dream that the same handiwork gave expansion to the bursting bud, and shrivelled up the withering leaf of winter; or at the same moment cast the pale violet dying on the green lap of spring, and called forth the rose to bind the temples of the lusty year? Yet as different, as strangely different, were the changes which he worked in Beatrice of Ferrara and in Philip d'Aubin; and those changes must be told and dwelt on separately.

Beatrice gave herself up to hope, that bright deluder, whose skilful, unseen diplomacy outwits, with scarcely an effort, the whole cabinet of reason. Fondly, idly, she gave herself up to hope; and the triumph of the magician was the more powerful, inasmuch as she had nobler allies than the mere selfishness with which she usually works her ends. Beatrice's hope was--not solely that the period of anxiety and pain for herself was past--that the long-sought, dear-bought, well-earned happiness was before her--that the intense and burning love, which none but a nature passionate and ardent as her own could feel, was returned with full and answering passion; but she hoped, that he whom she loved, taught by severe affliction, had learned to know and value virtue--had become nobler, wiser, better, under the chastisement of sickness. The biting disdain which she had assumed towards him, when, in the insolence of unchecked prosperity and vigorous health, he had dared to speak the same language of love to her that he held towards others--the scorn, the defiance, with which she then treated him--had not survived the sight of a man, whose vices even had not estranged her heart, lying wounded, senseless, and apparently dying, before her eyes: and now, as day after day went by, and she was permitted to trace the bright progress of returning health on the face of him she loved; as a thousand new interests and tender feelings sprang up under the little cares and anxieties of his convalescence; as with the mild and gentle words of yet unconfirmed health, he spoke vaguely, but not the less ardently, of hopes and wishes, and feelings in common, the reserve which she afterwards assumed, as a light armour against slight perils, was cast away piece by piece; and she loved even to sit alone, and dream of him and happiness.

Such was the work of Time with Beatrice of Ferrara; with Philip d'Aubin it was different. He saw Beatrice in all her beauty, and in all her excellence, it is true, and he loved her better than any other upon earth; and yet, as health returned, came back the thoughts that he had known in health--the vanity, the pride, the levity. The heart of man can love as deeply and as fondly as that of woman; and who denies it such capability, libels it most foully; but the heart of man or woman either, worn by the touch of follies and of vices, soon loses its power to love: the temple is profaned, and the god will no longer dwell therein. Women, less called upon to pass amidst the foul and polluting things of earth, keep the heart's bright garment longer in its lustre--that lustre which, like the bloom upon the unplucked fruit, is lost at every touch; and this is why so few men are found to love with woman's intensity; because they have staked the fortune of the heart upon petty throws, and lost it piece by piece. So was it with Philip d'Aubin: he could not love as Beatrice of Ferrara loved; he could not feel as she could feel; and yet he loved her as much as he loved anything, but other thoughts shared that love; and when he remembered Eugenie de Menancourt, his unstable mind wavered under contending doubts and purposes. The tie between himself and her could easily be broken, he well knew, if both parties sought its dissolution; but he knew too, that she would seek its dissolution with an eagerness that roused every evil spirit in his heart in the cause of mortified vanity. He fancied to himself her triumph; he fancied the scoffs, and the sneers, and the jests of all that knew him; he pictured the smiles that would hang upon the lip of many whom he had scorned in his day of pride and success; and he crowned the whole by representing to the eye of imagination, her who had disdained his vows and rejected his hand, united to him who had supplanted him in love, and overthrown him in battle. And yet he loved Beatrice of Ferrara deeply, passionately; and while, at times, he revolved the means of triumphing over Eugenie, and casting back the pre-imagined scoff in the teeth of the world whose slave he had made himself, at others he longed to fly with the fair Italian girl, whose love and devotion were of so firm a quality; and, dying to his follies, his vices, and his native land, to live in some far country in peace, and love, and forgetfulness.

Such were often his meditations as health and strength slowly returned; and the increasing success attending the arms of Henry IV. which reached his ear in vague rumours, rendered the better course even the more immediately politic. It was thus one evening he had sat listening to the lute and voice of Beatrice, and thinking that ever to have that voice and lute to soothe the moments of gloom, and that lovely being to be the star of a domestic home, were, in truth, a lot that princes might envy, when the careful physician warned him away from the garden where they had been sitting, and through which the evening air was beginning to blow somewhat cool and sharp. D'Aubin lingered a moment; but Beatrice, with gentle urgency, enforced the old man's authority; and retiring to his chamber, the Count continued to gaze out, in solitude, on the spot where his fair companion and her women still sat. He heard the door of his apartments open, but he heeded not; so fixed was his attention upon the beautiful line of Beatrice's reclining figure, as--leaning back till the flowers of the jasmine behind her mingled with her jetty hair, and with her hand resting still upon the lute--she gazed up at a bright passing cloud, that, tinted with the hope-like hues of the setting sun, was floating fast overhead.

"My lord Count!" said a low voice near him, "I have risked all to come to you for a moment, and to glad my eyes with the sight of your restored health."

D'Aubin turned in some surprise, and beheld the small form of Bartholo, his cousin's dwarf page. That form, indeed, seemed even more shrunk and small than ever; and on the usually sallow cheek of the dwarf there was a red and fiery glow that was not that of health; but nevertheless his voice was calm and strong, and his bright large eyes full of meaning and intelligence.

"Ha, Bartholo!" cried D'Aubin; "art thou here? Right glad am I to see thee: but how doest thou risk aught in thus coming to see me? Thou art safe here!"

"You know not, sir, that I have left your cousin long," replied the dwarf, "and am now with my first mistress; the only one who has ever had a real right to call me servant. But she wills not that I should come hither. It was only because the other page was sick that I was brought here to-day; and I tremble lest the time of departing comes, and she should miss me; for she has the eye of a lynx, and would instantly divine that I was here, against her express command."