When in Rome only a few hours, and wandering through the Campo Vaccino, I found among the ruins one I did not seek. It was Lady Penock. I had met her so often that I could not fail to know her name. Edgar, you know Lady Penock; it is impossible that you should not. But if not, it is easy for you to picture her to yourself. Take a keepsake, pick out one of those faces more beautiful than the fairies of our dreams, so lovely that it might be doubted whether the painter found his model among the daughters of earth. Passionate lover of form, feast your eye upon the graceful curve of that neck, those shoulders; gaze upon that pure brow where grace and youth preside; bathe your soul in the soft brightness of that blue and limpid glance; bend to taste the perfumed breath of that smiling mouth; tremble at the touch of those blonde tresses, twined in bewildering mazes behind the head and falling over the temples in waving masses; fervent worshipper at the shrine of beauty, fall into ecstasies; then imagine the opposite of this charming picture, and you have Lady Penock.
This apparition, in the centre of the ancient forum, completely upset my meditations. J.J. Rousseau says in his Confessions that he forgot Mme. de Larnage in seeing the Pont du Gard. So I forgot the Coliseum at the sight of Lady Penock. Explain, dear Edgar, what fatality attended my steps, that ever afterwards this baleful beauty pursued me?
Under the arches of the Coliseum, beneath the dome of St. Peter, in Pagan Rome and in Catholic Rome, in front of the Laocöon, before the Communion of St. Jerome, by Dominichino, on the banks of Lake Albano, under the shades of the Villa Borghese, at Tivoli in the Sibyl's temple, at Subiaco in the Convent of St. Benoit, under every moon and by every sun I saw her start up at my side. To get away from her I took flight and travelled post to Tuscany. I found her at the foot of the falls of Terni, at the tomb of St. Francis d'Assise, under Hannibal's gate at Spoletta, at the table d'hote Perouse at Arezzo, on the threshold of Petrarch's house; finally, the first person I met in the Piazza of the Grand Duke at Florence, before the Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini, Edgar, was Lady Penock. At Pisa she appeared to me in the Campo Santo; in the Gulf of Genoa her bark came near capsizing mine; at Turin I found her at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities; her and no one else! And, what was so amusing, my Lady on seeing me became agitated, blushed and looked down, and believing herself the object of an ungovernable passion, she mumbled through her long teeth, "Shocking! Shocking!"
Tired of war, I bade adieu to Italy and crossed the mountains; besides, dear country, I sighed to see you once more. I passed through Savoy and when I saw the mountains of Dauphiny loom up against the distant horizon my heart beat wildly, my eyes filled with tears, and I felt like a returning exile, and know not what false pride restrained me from springing to the ground and kissing the soil of France!
Hail! noble and generous land, the home of intelligence and of liberty! On touching thee the soul swells within us, the mind expands; no child of thine can return to thy bosom without a throb of holy joy, a feeling of noble pride. I passed along filled with delirious happiness. The trees smiled on me, the winds whispered softly in my ear, the little flowers that carpeted the wayside welcomed me; it required an effort to restrain myself from embracing as brothers the noble fellows that passed me on the way.
Then, Edgar, I was to find you again, and it was the spot of my birthplace, the paternal acres which in our common land seem to us a second country.
The night was dark, no moon, no stars; I had just left Grenoble and was passing through Voreppe, a little village not without some importance because in the neighborhood of the Grande Chartreuse, which, at this season of the year, attracts more curiosity-hunters than believers—suddenly the horses stopped, I heard a rumbling noise outside, and a crimson glare lighted up the carriage windows. I might have taken it for sunset, if the sun had not set long since.
I got out and found the only inn of the village on fire; great was the confusion in the small hamlet, there was a general screaming, struggling and running about. The innkeeper with his wife, children, and servants emptied the stables and barns. The horses neighed, the oxen bellowed, and the pigs, feeling that they were predestined to be roasted anyhow, offered to their rescuers an obstinate and philosophical resistance.
Meantime the notables of the place, formed in groups, discussed magisterially the origin of a fire which no one made an effort to stay. Left alone, it brightened the night, fired the surrounding hills and shot its jets and rockets of sparks far into the sky. You, a poet, would have thought it fine. Sublime egotist that you are, everything is effect, color, mirages, decorations. Endeavoring to make myself useful in this disaster, I thought I heard it whispered around me that some travellers remained in the inn, who, if not already destroyed, were seriously threatened.
Among others a young stranger was mentioned who had come that day from the Grande Chartreuse, which she had been visiting. I went straight to the innkeeper who was dragging one of his restive pigs by the tail, reminding me of one of the most ridiculous pictures of Charlet. "All right," said the man, "all the travellers are gone, and as to those who remain—" "Then some do remain?" I asked, and by insisting learned that an Englishwoman occupied a room in the second story.