Villars would not have been satisfied to feel, without knowing why he felt. The Rhone was nothing to him, without its name in history; but it recalled to him the days of Cæsar, and every struggle the ancient Gauls made for the independence of their country: and there was a feeling of pride mixed with the remembrance, which seemed, in a degree, to transfer itself to the object that excited it; and he became almost proud of the Rhone, because he admired the deeds which its banks had witnessed.
It is a country fertile in ruins. It seems as if time had taken a barbarous pleasure in leaving there the wreck of mighty works as trophies of his all-destroying power; and in wandering amidst them, Durand would mark the elegance of the capital, or the fair proportion of the architrave which had once adorned some palace or some temple, whose lord and his parasites, whose idol and its worshippers, had long been forgotten in the silence of things that are no more; and he would point out the beauties to his companion who, for his part, would carry his thoughts back to the days of Rome; to the mind, whose energy had conceived, and to the men, whose labour had perfected, those giant fabrics that shame the pigmy efforts of our later times; and while Durand would laughingly contend, that the Romans were neither braver; wiser, nor better than the race of modern men, Villars would exclaim against the degeneracy of mankind, and grieve that he had not lived in those days of glory and of liberty.
They were at that period of life when passion is strongest, and imagination most vivid, and when judgment; like a young monarch, forgets his painful duties and leaves his throne vacant, while he wanders amongst the pleasures and diversions of his new estate. They were at this period of life, when the revolution began to throw a new and too strong light upon the world. In the enthusiasm of republican spirit, the revival of ancient institutions, and all the brilliant fantasies which rapidly succeeded each other, many of the wisest and the best got bewildered; nor was Durand one of the last to adore this phantasmagoria of antique forms. His course is soon told. He quitted his native city; but before he went he embraced Villars with all the ardour of his new sect. He called him "citizen" and "brother," he vowed that their friendship should be everlasting.
He joined the army formed for the defence of the republic. His talents, his daring courage, and some of those accidental circumstances of fortune which decide not only the fate of men but of empires, combined to raise him above his compeers. His mind readily embraced every thing that was brilliant. He was naturally witty, and shrewdly perceiving that a jest would often pass where a reason would not, he raised up for himself a sort of philosophy which taught him to laugh at every thing, good or bad, and with this he passed safely and honourably through all the vicissitudes of a changing state, and found himself in the end even as he could have wished to have been--selfish, heartless, rich, respected, and in power.
The life of Armand Villars was different. For a while he looked upon the grand scene which was playing before him, and rejoiced at the revival of ancient virtues--for he hoped that it was so--but yet there was something in it that he distrusted. He looked for the great independence of soul, the generous self-devotion, the steady purpose of right, and the stern patriotism which sacrificed all private feeling to public good. He looked for Roman laws and Roman spirit, and he found but a wild chaos of idle names, and an empty mockery of ancient institutions; and, unwilling to yield the favourite illusion, he turned his eyes away.
It was then that every Frenchman was called to bleed for his country, and Villars willingly quitted the ungrateful scenes that were passing in France, to place himself in the ranks of her defenders. In the field as in the city, the same calm firm spirit still animated him. He fought as if life had for him no charms, nor death any terrors. But it was not the courage of romance. There was none of the headlong ardour of enthusiasm; there was none of the daring of thoughtless temerity; there was none of the reckless valour of despair. There was in his bosom alone the one fixed remembrance that he was doing his duty--that he was fighting for his country--together with that calm reasoning courage which knows danger and despises it.
He rose in command, but he rose slowly, and it was not till late in the campaign of Italy that he attained the rank of colonel. Italy was a land which had long been the theme of his thoughts. He was now there, amongst the ruins of that stupendous fabric, the record of whose ancient glory had been his admiration and delight. He was on the spot where Romans had dwelt, and he fought where Romans had bled; and if any thing like ardour ever entered into his nature, it was then. The habits, too, of his boyish days seemed here to resume their empire. He would wander, as he had done in youth, among the wreck of ages past, and indulge in long and deep meditations in the midst of empty palaces and neglected fanes. He would re-people them with the generations gone, and conjure up the great and wise of other days. The first and second Brutus seemed to rise before him--the men who had expelled a Tarquin, and had slain a Cæsar--he that had sacrificed his children, and he that had sacrificed his friend to his country. Virginius, too, and his daughter; and Manlius, and, in short, all the train of those whose deeds gave a splendour to the times in which they lived, and whose names history has for ever consecrated.
Italy teems with recollections of every kind: for courage, and wisdom, and power, and arts and sciences, and beauty, and music, and desolation, have all in turn made it their favourite dwelling-place; and though the train of thought which Villars followed was but of one description, there was matter enough for that; and he might have indulged it for ever, but that the more busy and Warlike occupation of the present gave him but little time to ponder over the past. Another fate too awaited him--a fate which he little dreamt of.
In a skirmish, which took place near Bologna, he was severely wounded, and carried to the house of an old Bolognese lady, whose rank was rather at variance with her fortune. For though she prized illustrious birth, as the purest and most permanent species of wealth, and perhaps valued it the more, inasmuch as it was the only sort of riches that remained to her, she nevertheless found it very difficult to make this refined treasure supply the place of that coarser material, gold; at least in the opinion of others, who obstinately continued to think, that rank must have fortune to support its pretensions, or else it is worse than nothing.
It is supposed, that sometimes their pertinacity almost persuaded her of this also: but as the old countess had not the one, she endeavoured to make the other do: and like a poor man, ostentatious of his last guinea, she contrived to render every one well aware of her rank and family. However, she was a kind-hearted woman, and though she would talk of her cousin the prince, and her nephew the duke, the poor and the sick would always share of what little she had, and when she had nothing else she would give them a tear.