LETTER XVIII.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
“La solitude est certainement une belle chose, mais il-y-a plaisir d’avoir quelqu’une qui en sache repondre, a qui on puis dire, la solitude est une belle chose.”
So says Monsieur de Balsac, and so repeats my heart a thousand times a day. In short, I am devoured by ennui, by apathy, by discontent! What should I do here? Nothing. I have spent but four days here, and all the symptoms of my old disease begin to re-appear: in short, like other impatient invalids, I believed my cure was effected when my disease was only on the decline.
I must again fly to sip from the fountain of intellectual health at Inismore, and receive the vivifying drops from the hand of the presiding priestess, or stay here, and fall into an incurable atrophy of the heart and mind!
Having packed up a part of my wardrobe, and a few books, I sent them by a young rustic to the little Villa di Marino, and in about an hour after I followed myself. The old fisherman and his dame seemed absolutely rejoiced to see me, and having laid my valise in their cabin, and dismissed my attendant, I requested they would permit their son to carry my luggage as far as the next cabaret, where I expected a man and horse to meet me. They cheerfully complied, and I proceeded with my compagnon de voyage to a hut which lies half way between the fisherman’s and the castle. This hut they call a Sheebin House, and is something inferior to a certain description of Spanish inn.
Although a little board informs the weary traveller he is only to expect “good dry lodgings,” yet the landlord contrives to let you know in an entre nous manner, that he keeps some real Inishone, (or spirits, smuggled from a tract of country so called) for his particular friends. So having dismissed my second courier, and paid for the whiskey I did not taste, and the potatoes I did not eat, I sent my host forward, mounted on a sorry mule, with my travelling equipage, to the cabin at the foot of the drawbridge; and by these precautions obviated all possibility of discovery.
As I now proceeded on my route, every progressive step awakened some new emotion; while my heart was agitated by those unspeakable little flutterings which are alternately excited and governed by the ardour of hope, or the timidity of fear. “And shall I, or shall I not be welcome?” was the problem which engaged my thoughts during the rest of my little journey.
As I descended the mountain, at whose base the peninsula of Inismore reposes, I perceived a form at some distance, whose drapery (“ne bulam lineam”) seemed light as the breeze on which it floated. It is impossible to mistake the figure of Glorvina, when its graces are called forth by motion. I instantly alighted, and flew to meet her. She too sprang eagerly forward. We were almost within a few paces of each other, when she suddenly turned back and flew down the hill with the bounding step of a fawn. This would have mortified another—I was charmed. And the bashful consciousness which repelled her advances, was almost as grateful to my heart as the warm impulse which had nearly hurried her into my arms.—How freshly does she still wear the first gloss of nature!
In a few minutes, however, I perceived her return, leaning on the arm of the Father Director. You cannot conceive what a festival of the feelings my few days absence had purchased me. Oh! he knows nothing of the doctrine of enjoyment, who does not purchase his pleasure at the expense of temporary restraint. The good priest, who still retains something of the etiquette of his foreign education, embraced me a la Française. Glorvina, however, who malhereusement, was not reared in France, only offered me her hand, which I had not the courage to raise to my unworthy lip, although the cordial cead mille a falta of her country revelled in her shining eyes, and and her effulgent countenance was lit up with an unusual blaze of animation.