Our little party, in recalling other times, found numerous passages of this description. Lothario had the most to tell. Jarno's histories were all of one peculiar character: what Wilhelm could disclose we already know. He was apprehensive they might mention his adventure with the countess; but it was not hinted at, not even in the remotest manner.
"It is true," observed Lothario, "there can scarcely any feeling in the world be more agreeable than when the heart, after a pause of indifference, again opens to love for some new object; yet I would forever have renounced that happiness, had fate been pleased to unite me with Theresa. We are not always youths: we ought not always to be children. To the man who knows the world, who understands what he should do in it, what he should hope from it, nothing can be more desirable than meeting with a wife who will everywhere co-operate with him, who will everywhere prepare his way for him; whose diligence takes up what his must leave; whose occupation spreads itself on every side, while his must travel forward on its single path. What a heaven had I figured for myself beside Theresa! Not the heaven of an enthusiastic bliss, but of a sure life on earth; order in prosperity, courage in adversity, care for the smallest, and a spirit capable of comprehending and managing the greatest. Oh! I saw in her the qualities which, when developed, make such women as we find in history, whose excellence appears to us far preferable to that of men,—this clearness of view, this expertness in all emergencies, this sureness in details, which brings the whole so accurately out, although they never seem to think of it. You may well forgive me," added he, and turning to Wilhelm, with a smile, "that I forsook Aurelia for Theresa: with the one I could expect a calm and cheerful life, with the other not a happy hour."
"I will confess," said Wilhelm, "that, in coming hither, I had no small anger in my heart against you; that I proposed to censure with severity your conduct to Aurelia."
"It was really censurable," said Lothario: "I should not have exchanged my friendship for her with the sentiment of love; I should not, in place of the respect which she deserved, have intruded an attachment she was neither calculated to excite nor to maintain. Alas! she was not lovely when she loved,—the greatest misery that can befall a woman."
"Well, it is past!" said Wilhelm. "We cannot always shun the things we blame; in spite of us, our feelings and our actions sometimes strangely swerve from their natural and right direction; yet there are certain duties which we never should lose sight of. Peace be to the ashes of our friend! Without censuring ourselves or her, let us with sympathizing hearts strew flowers upon her grave. But, at the grave in which the hapless mother sleeps, let me ask why you acknowledge not the child,—a son whom any father might rejoice in, and whom you appear entirely to overlook? With your pure and tender nature, how can you altogether cast away the instinct of a parent? All this while you have not spent one syllable upon that precious creature, of whose attractions I could say so much."
"Whom do you speak of?" asked Lothario: "I do not understand you."
"Of whom but of your son, Aurelia's son, the lovely child, to whose good fortune there is nothing wanting, but that a tender father should acknowledge and receive him."
"You mistake, my friend!" exclaimed Lothario; "Aurelia never had a son, at least by me: I know of no child, or I would with joy acknowledge it; and, even in the present case, I will gladly look upon the little creature as a relic of her, and take charge of educating it. But did she ever give you to believe that the boy was hers, was mine?"
"I cannot recollect that I ever heard a word from her expressly on the subject; but we took it up so, and I never for a moment doubted it."
"I can give you something like a clew to this perplexity," said Jarno. "An old woman, whom you must have noticed often, gave Aurelia the child: she accepted it with passion, hoping to alleviate her sorrows by its presence; and, in truth, it gave her many a comfortable hour."