There was, indeed, one tribute he paid to the memory of Beatrice. She had loved music. Her mind had been attuned to all harmony; and she had delighted in all that was bright and sweet in every art which softens the asperities of human existence. And Villars resolved, he scarcely knew why, to give his daughter all her mother's accomplishments. It was like writing her epitaph on the heart of her child. This only seemed to show the least spark of feeling yet unextinguished in his breast; for there was now a degree of bitterness mixed with the original sternness of his character. He looked upon the world with disappointed eyes, and gladly turned away from the view, for there was nothing but a desert round about him.
France no longer needed defenders. His duty to his country was done; and, quitting the army, he collected together his little property, and retired to dwell near his native town of Arles.
It was more probably chance than any taste for picturesque beauty, which directed him in the situation he chose for his future residence; but of all the neighbourhood it was the most lovely and the most retired. It was surrounded by wood, with the Rhone sparkling through the trees beyond, and the remains of an antique Roman arch crowning the hill above. The country was covered with olive-grounds and vineyards, and scattered with small villages: but there was not for a considerable distance round--indeed, nowhere near, except in the town of Arles--a house of any consequence, whose proximity might have disturbed the solitude of his retirement; and here, for fifteen years, lived Armand Villars, secluded from a world he despised, seeking no commune but with his own thoughts, and dividing his time between the cultivation of his ground, solitary study, and the education of the daughter which Beatrice had left him.
On their first arrival at their new dwelling, little Julie offered no particular promise of beauty. Her large, wild, Italian eyes, and the dark hair which clustered round her forehead, were all that could have saved her from being called a very plain child. But as years passed over her head, and she grew towards womanhood, a thousand latent charms sprang up in her face and person. Like a homely bud that blossoms into loveliness, her beauties expanded with time, and she became one of the fairest of nature's works.
Beauty can scarcely be well described. I know not how it is; whether imagination far exceeds nature, or whether remembrance is ever busy to recall what love once decked in adventitious charms, but every one has raised an ideal standard in his own mind, which is fairer to him than all that painter or statuary ever portrayed. Description, therefore, must fall far short of what Julie really was. Let all men, then, draw from their own mind. She was lovely as imagination can conceive; and there were few of those who, by any chance, beheld her, that were so critical or so fastidious as to find or fancy a fault in her beauty; and as the strangers who did see were ever sure to ask, among the neighbouring peasantry, who she was, and to describe her by her loveliness, she soon acquired the name of the Beauty of Arles.
It seldom happens that many perfections cluster together. If beauty be granted, wit is often denied; and if wit and beauty unite, vanity, or some other deteriorating quality, is generally superadded. But it is not always so. Nature had dealt liberally to Julie of all her stores. She might know that she was lovely, for where is the woman that is not conscious of it; but in her solitude there was none to tell her of her charms, and she was not vain of them. The bright wild genius, the warm vivid imagination, that revelled in her breast, and sparkled in the dark flashes of her eye, was guided and tempered by the softest, gentlest, heart that ever beat within a woman's bosom. She had no means of comparing her own mind with that others, and she did not know that it was superior; and all the accomplishments and knowledge that her father had taken care she should acquire appeared to her what all human knowledge really is--but little to that which may be known.
In the mean time, the mind of Armand Villars had undergone scarce any change; his feelings were the same; but, if at all altered, they were only the harder and the more inflexible. If his daughter possessed his affection, it was seldom that any trait of gentleness betrayed it; and, as if fearful of again loving any human thing, he passed the greater part of his time in utter solitude, from which even his child was excluded.
Julie feared her father, but she loved him too. Her heart, like a young plant, clung to that which it grew beside, however rugged and unbending; and in those hours which she was allowed to spend with her parent, she strove to win him from the sternness of his nature, and draw from him a smile of affection or approbation; and if she succeeded, it was a source of joy to her for many an after hour.
Her pleasures, indeed, were so few, that she was obliged to husband them well, and even to seek new ones for herself. She lost none of those unheeded blessings which nature scatters on the way of ungrateful man. She had joy in every fair sight and every sweet sound. To her the breathing of the spring air was a delight, the warbling maze of the brook a treasure. The notes of the forest birds--nature's own melody--was to her the sweetest concert; and, thankful for all that a good God had given, she would long for the wings of the lark to soar into the blue air and sing her gratitude at the gates of heaven. She would wander for hours through the fair lonely scenes around, when the prime of morning glittered over the earth, or when the calm evening, like a gentle mother, seemed soothing nature to repose; and her life passed like the waters of the broad Rhone, glittering on in one sunshiny course amidst all that is beautiful in nature.
Thus went hour after hour, and day after day, in peaceful solitude and undisturbed repose; ignorant of a corrupted world and all its arts, and blessed in her ignorance. It was one bright evening in autumn, when the world was full of luxuriance, before the grape was plucked from its branch, or the olives began to fall, and the robe of nature, though somewhat embrowned by the sun of many a summer's day, had not yet lost all its verdure. Her father had shut himself up in his solitude, and Julie wandered out towards the ruined Roman arch that crowned the hill above their dwelling. From the height the whole country round was exposed to her view. It was a gay scene, where all the rich gifts of generous nature were spread out at large. The green foliage of the vine covered all the slopes; and olive-grounds, with their white leaves glistening in the sun, skirted the vineyards, and sheltered the peasants' houses and villages that were thickly scattered over the landscape, while the bright waters of the Rhone bordered it along, and formed a glittering boundary to the very edge of the horizon.