But chance came to my relief. It happened that I had unconsciously won the particular regard of one of the Béguines who attended the hospital; and my tristesse, which she termed 'effrayante,' one evening attracted her peculiar notice. Let not my vanity be called in question; for my fair admirer was at least fifty years old, and was about the figure and form of one of her country churns, although her name was Juliet! Pretty as the name was, the Béguine had not an atom of the poetic about her. Romance troubled her not. Yet with a face like the full moon, and a pile of petticoats which would have made a dowdy of the "Belvedere Diana," she was a capital creature. Juliet, fat as she was, had the natural frolic of a squirrel; she was everywhere, and knew every thing, and did every thing for every body; her tongue and her feet were constantly busy; and I scarcely knew which was the better emblem of the perpetual motion. My paleness was peculiarly distressing to her; "it hurt her feelings;" it also hurt her honour; for she had been famous for her nursing, and as she told me, with her plump hands upon her still plumper hips, and her head thrown back with an air of conscious merit, "she had saved more than the doctors had killed." I had some reluctance to tell her the cause of my tristesse; for I knew her zeal, and I dreaded her plunging into some hazard with the authorities. But who has ever been able to keep a secret, where it was the will of the sex to extort it? Juliet obtained mine before she left the ward for the night; and desired me to give her a letter, which she pledged herself to transmit to my regiment. But this I determined to refuse, and I kept my determination. I had no desire to see my "fat friend" suspended from the pillars of the portico; or to hear of her, at least, being given over to the mercies of the provost-marshal. We parted, half in anger on her side, and with stern resolution on mine.
During the day Juliet was not forthcoming, and her absence produced, what the French call, a "lively sensation"—which, in nine instances out of ten, means an intolerable sense of ennui—in the whole establishment. I shared the general uneasiness, and at length began to cast glances towards the gate, where, though I was not exactly prepared to see the corpulent virtues of my friend in suspension, I had some tremblings for the state, "sain et sauf;" of my Béguine. At last her face appeared at the opening of the great door, flushed with heat and good-nature, and, as it came moving through the crowd which gathered round her with all kinds of enquiries, giving no bad resemblance to the moon seen through a fog; whether distinct or dim, full and florid to the last. Her good-humoured visage revived me, as if I had met a friend of as many years standing as she numbered on her cradle. But all my enquiries for the news of earth outside the hospital, were answered only by an "order" to keep myself tranquil—prevent the discomposure of my pulse, and duly drink my ptisan. All this, however, was for the general ear. The feebleness which kept me confined to my bed during the day, had made my nights wakeful. On this night, whether on the anxiety of the day, or the heavier roar of the siege, for the bombardment was now at its height, I exhibited signs of returning fever, and the Béguine remained in attendance. But when the crowd had gone to such rest as they could find, amid the thunder of batteries and the bursting of shells, Juliet approached my pillow with a broad smile, which distended her good-natured mouth from ear to ear, and thrust under my pillow a small packet—the whole operation being followed by a finger pressed to her lips, and a significant glance to every corner of the huge melancholy hall, to see that all was secure. She then left me to my meditations!
The mysterious packet contained three letters; and, eager as I was for their perusal, I almost shuddered at their touch; for they must have been obtained with infinite personal peril, and if found upon the Béguine they might have brought her under the severest vengeance of the garrison. They were from Guiscard, Mariamne, and Mordecai. Thus to three individuals, all comparatively strangers, was my world reduced. But they were no common strangers; and I felt, while holding their letters in my hand, and almost pressing them to my heart, how much more strongly friendship may bind us than the ties of cold and negligent relationship. I opened the soldier's letter first. It was like every thing that Guiscard ever did; manly, yet kind. "Your disappearance in that unfortunate rencontre has created much sorrow and surprise; but the sorrow was all for your loss to the 'corps of corps,' and the surprise was, that no tidings could be heard of you, whether fallen or surviving. The flag and trumpet sent in next morning to recover the remains of such as had suffered in that mad rush to the gates of the town, came back without being permitted to pass beyond the outworks, bringing a brutal message from the officer on duty, 'that the next flag should be fired on,' and that the 'brave soldiers of the Republic allowed of no compromise with the slaves of tyranny!' The bravado might be laughed at, but it left me in the dark relative to your fate; and if you are to be flattered by the feelings of men who cannot get at you but by cannon-shot, you may congratulate yourself on having had as many fine things said of you as would make an epitaph for a duke—and, I believe, with a sincerity at least equal to the best of them. I write all this laughingly now, but suspense makes heaviness of heart, and you cost me some uneasy hours, of course. I send you none of our news; as you will hear all in good time, and communications on public matters might bring your messenger or yourself into difficulties. You are alive, and in good hands; that is the grand point. Your character is now in my hands, and I shall take care of it; I shall see you a general officer yet, if you have not the greater luck to retire and live an honest farmer, sitting under your own fig-tree and your own vine, with an unromantic spouse, and some half-dozen of red-cheeked children. Farewell, we shall soon see each other."
The last line evidently meant more than met the eye, and I was now just in the mind to indulge in the fantasies of my fair correspondent. They were like herself—a curious mixture of mirth and melancholy.
"Why I wished to write to you, or why I write at all—which, however, I do decorously at the side of my father—are questions which I have not taken the trouble of asking until this moment. But I am in Switzerland, where no one has time for any thing but worshipping mountain-tops, and falling down at the feet of cataracts. Whether it would add to Mr Marston's satisfaction I cannot presume to say, but I feel better, much better, than when I first came into this land of fresh breezes and beauty of all kinds—the population, of every rank, always excepted. If I were, like you, a philosopher, I should probably say that nature gets tired of her work, and after having struck off some part of it with all the spirit of an Italian painter, disdains the trouble of finishing; or, like a French 'fashionable,' coquettes with her own charms, and is determined to make the world adore her, in spite of her slippers and her shawl. Thus, nature, which gave the peacock a diadem on its head, and a throne in its tail, has given it a pair of frightful legs. And on the same charming principle, she has given Switzerland the finest of all possible landscapes, and filled them with the most startling of all possible physiognomies.
"But no more of theory. It has always made my head ache, and headachs are, I know, contagious; so I spare you. Yet, have you a moment, among your thousand and one avocations, to remember my father—or me? I beg that I may not impede the march of armies, or shock the balance of Europe, while I solicit you to give me a single line—no more; a mere 'annonce' of any thing that can tell me of your 'introuvable' friend Lafontaine. This is not for myself. The intelligence is required for a sister of his whom I have lately met in this country—a showy "citizeness" of Zurich, embonpoint and matronly, married to one of the portly burghers of the city, and exemplary in all the arts of sheep-shearing, wool-spinning, and cheese-making; a mother, surrounded à la Française with a host of Orlandos, Hyacintes, Aristomenes, and Apollos—pretty children, with the Frenchman developing in all its gaudiness; the Switzer remaining behind, until it shall come forth in cloudy brows, and a face stamped with money-making. Madame Spiegler is still not beyond a waltz, and in the very whirl of one last night, she turned to me and implored that I should 'move heaven and earth,' as she termed it—with her blue eyes thrown up to the chandelier, and her remarkably pretty and well-chaussé'd feet still beating time to the dance—to bring her disconsolate bosom tidings of her 'frère, si bien aimé, si malheureux.' I promised, and she flew off instantly into the very core of a dance, consisting of at least a hundred couples.
"I have just returned from a drive along the shore of the Leman. The recollection of Madame Spiegler, rolling and rushing through the waltz like a dolphin through the waves; or like any thing caught in an enormous whirlpool, sweeping round perpetually until it was swept out of sight, had fevered me. The air here is certainly delicious. It has a sense of life—a vivid, yet soft, freshness, that makes the mere act of breathing it delightful. But I have mercy on you—not one word of Clarens, not one word of Meillerie. Take it for granted that Ferney is burnt down, as it well might be without any harm to the picturesque; and that Jean Jacques never wrote, played the knave, or existed. If I were a Swiss Caliph Omar, I should make a general seizure, to be followed by a general conflagration, of every volume that has ever touched on the wit and wickedness of the one, or the intolerable sensibility of the other. I should next extend the flame to all tours, meditations, and musings on hills, valleys, and lakes; prohibit all sunset 'sublimities' as an offence against the state; and lay all raptures at the 'distant view of Mont Blanc,' or the 'ascent of the Rhighi,' if not under penalty of prison, at least under a bond never to be seen in the territory again. But I must make my adieux. Apropos, if you should accidentally hear any thing of your pelerin-à-pied friend Lafontaine—for I conjecture that he has gone to discover the fountains of the Nile, or is at this moment a candidate for the office of court-chamberlain at Timbuctoo—let me hear it. Madame Spiegler is really uneasy on the subject, though it has not diminished either her weight or her velocity, nor will prevent her waltzing till the end of the world, or of herself. One sentence—nay, one syllable—will be enough.
"This light is delicious, and it is only common gratitude to nature to acknowledge, that she has done something in the scene before my casement at this sweet and quiet hour, which places her immeasurably above the decorateurs of a French salon. The sun has gone, and the moon has not yet come. There is scarcely a star; and yet a light lingers, and floats, and descends over everything—hill, forest, and water—like the light that one sometimes sees in dreams. All dream-like—the work of a spell laid over a horizon of a hundred miles. I should scarcely be surprised to see visionary forms rising from these woods and waters, and ascending in bright procession into the clouds. I hear, at this moment, some touches of music, which I could almost believe to come from invisible instruments as they pass along with the breeze. Still, may I beg of you, Mr Marston, not to suppose that I mean to extend this letter to the size of a government despatch, nor that the mark which I find I have left on my paper, is a tear? I have no sorrow to make its excuse. But here, one weeps for pleasure, and I can forgive even Rousseau his—'Je m'attendrissais, je soupirais, et je pleurais comme un enfant. Combien de fois, m'arrêtant pour pleurer plus à mon aise, assis sur une grosse pierre, je me suis amusé à voir tomber mes larmes dans l'eau.' Rousseau was lunatic, but he was not lunatic when he wrote this, or I am growing so too. For fear of that possible romance, I say, farewell.
"P.S.—Remember Madame Spiegler. Toujours à vous—Mariamne."
My third letter was Mordecai to the life—a bold, hurried, yet clear view of the political bearings of the time. It more than ever struck me, in the course of his daring paragraphs, what a capital leader he would have made for a Jewish revolution; if one could imagine the man of a thousand years of slavery grasping the sword and unfurling the banner. Yet bold minds may start up among a fallen people; and when the great change, which will assuredly come, is approaching, it is not improbable that it will be begun by some new and daring spirit throwing off the robes of humiliation, and teaching Israel to strike for freedom by some gallant example—a new Moses smiting the Egyptian, and marching from the house of bondage, the fallen host of the oppressor left weltering in the surge of blood behind.