January 12.
René will be in Paris on the 15th, darling Kate. He will tell you about Karl, Lizzy, Isa, all our friends, and then I shall have him again! Adrien is reading Lamartine to us; I always listen with enchantment. What poetry! It flows in streams; it is sweet, tender, melancholy, moaning; it sings with nature, with the bird, with the falling leaf, the murmuring stream, the sounding bell, the sighing wind; it weeps with the suffering heart, and prays with the pleading soul. Oh! how is it that this poet could stray aside from his heavenly road, and burn incense on other altars? How could he leave his Christian lyre—he who once sang to God of his faith and love in accents so sublime? Will he not one day recover the sentiments and emotions of his youth, when he went in the footsteps of his mother to the house of God
Offrir deux purs encens, innocence et bonheur.[29]
The Harmonies are rightly named. I never read anything more harmoniously sweet, more exquisite in cadence. How comes it that he should have lost his faith where so many others have found it—in that journey to the East, from which he ought to have returned a firmer Catholic, a greater poet? Could it be that the death of his daughter,
she who was his future, his joy, his dearest glory, overthrew everything within him? O my God! this lyre has, almost divinely, sung of thee; thou wilt not suffer its last notes to be a blasphemy. Draw all unto thyself, Lord Jesus, and let not the brows marked by the seal of genius be stamped eternally with that of reprobation!
Mme. de Clissey has told us her history; you must hear it, since your kind heart is interested in these two new friends of your Georgina. Madame is Roman, and has been brought up in Tuscany. You know the proverb: “A Tuscan tongue in a Roman mouth.”[30] Her mother made a misalliance, was cast off by her family after her husband’s death, and the poor woman hid at Florence her loneliness and tears. Thanks to her talents as a painter, she was enabled to secure to Marcella a solid and brilliant education; but her strength becoming rapidly exhausted by excessive labor, Marcella, when scarcely sixteen years of age, saw her mother expire in her arms. She remained alone, under the care of a venerable French priest, who compassionated her great misfortune, and obtained for his protégée an honorable engagement. She was taken as governess to her daughter by a rich duchess, who, after being in ecstasies about her at first, cast her aside as a useless plaything. Her pupil, however, a very intelligent and affectionate child, became the sole and absorbing interest of the orphan; but the young girl’s attachment to her mistress excited the jealousy of the proud duchess, who contrived to find a pretext for excluding Marcella from the house. Her kind protector then
brought her to France, and, as it was necessary that she should obtain her living, she entered as teacher in a boarding-school in the south. A year afterwards a lady of high rank engaged her to undertake the education of her daughters. She thankfully accepted this situation, but had scarcely occupied it a month before she was in a dying state from typhoid fever and inflammation of the brain. For fifty-two days her life was in danger, and for forty-eight hours she was in a state of lethargy, from which she had scarcely returned, almost miraculously, to consciousness, before she had to witness the death of the kind priest who alone, with a Sister of Charity, had done all that it was possible to do to save her life. What was to become of her? The slender means of which the old man had made her his heir lasted only for the year of her convalescence; she then unexpectedly made the acquaintance of a rich widow who was desirous of finding a young girl as her companion, promising to provide for her future. Marcella was twenty years of age; the old lady took a great fancy to her, and took her to Paris and to Germany. Unfortunately, the character of her protectress was not one to inspire affection. Ill-tempered, fanciful, exacting, life with her was intolerable. Her servants left her at the end of a month. Marcella became the submissive slave of her domineering caprice, and was shut up the whole day, having to replace the waiting-woman, adorn the antique idol, enliven her, and play to her whatever she liked. In the drawing-room, of an evening, she had to endure a thousand vexations; at eleven o’clock the customary visitors took leave, and Marcella examined the account-books
of the house under the eye of the terrible old dowager, who, moreover, could not sleep unless some one read to her aloud. “Till five o’clock in the morning I used to read Cooper or Scott.” What do you think of this anticipated purgatory, dear Kate? Marcella, timid, and without any experience of life, tried to resign herself to her lot, until at Paris M. de Clissey asked her to exchange her dependent condition for a happy and honored life. She accepted his offer, to the no small despair of the old lady, who loudly charged her with ingratitude, and thought to revenge herself by not paying her the promised remuneration. M. de Clissey triumphantly took away his beautiful young bride to his native town. “It seemed to me as if I had had a resurrection to another life. For ten years our happiness was without alloy. But the cross, alas! is everywhere; and I am now, at thirty-two years of age, a widow, with unspeakable memories and my pretty little Anna, whose love is my consolation.”
Thank God! Marcella has friends also, and my mother wishes to propose to her to live with us.
Kate, what a good, sweet, happy destiny God has granted us! How I pity those orphans who have not, as I have, a sister to love them! Oh! may God bless you, and render to you all the good that your kind heart has done to me! Hurrah for Ireland! Erin mavourneen!