We went in; and I sat down with them to their plain meal with more satisfaction than if I had been invited to a prince’s table.
Although my good old friend was exceedingly anxious to hear all my own adventures since we parted, I contrived to make him tell all that had occurred to him, which amounted to little more than what I have already stated. He had been detained by the Austrians, he said, for nearly two months, had been sent to Milan, and put in prison there, but in other respects had been well treated, and at length liberated, on its being made clear that he was a French emigrant with no political character. He hurried through the details, in order to get at my history, and then said, with a look of parental affection, “But now tell me, my dear Louis, what has happened to you since we met last? How comes that scar upon your cheek? Where have you been staying? And why are you in such deep mourning?”
The last words sent all the color from my cheek. I could feel the blood rush away as if to fill my heart too full, and I shook my head sadly, saying, “Do not ask me about that just now.”
I then related to him all that had occurred previous to my arrival in Hamburgh; how, after I had shot the man who was going to murder him, I had turned back to assist Lavater; how I had been knocked down and trodden under feet by the Austrian soldiers, and afterward carried to the hospital; I then told him that I had suffered from poverty as well as himself, and that I had begged my way to the north of Germany. “That is all over now,” I added, “and I trust that we shall never know such days again.”
“Well, you two have had a pretty hard life of it,” said the good landlord—for we had been speaking in English all the time, so that he understood us. “You were great people in your own country, I dare say; and that made it all the harder for you.”
“Not very great people,” I replied, “but very comfortable, and very happy, till we were driven forth for no fault of our own.”
I judged from what I saw of good Father Bonneville at this time, that he had not yet sufficiently recovered to return to Boston, and I therefore left him where he was for the night, promising to see him early on the following day. Although engaged to go out to a party in the city, I remained at home that evening pondering upon my course of action. I read over again, and more attentively, the letter from the notary, answered it, and signed the accounts, although to say truth, I knew little of the affairs to which they referred. I then considered long, and somewhat anxiously, two plans which naturally suggested themselves to my mind. The first was, to go to England, receive the sum which there awaited me, and establish myself with Father Bonneville in that country. But strange to say I had a dislike to the idea of visiting England. Father Bonneville, in all our wanderings, had shown no desire to take refuge in a land where so many other emigrants had found safety and met with hospitality. Views prejudicial to England had been widely circulated amongst the inhabitants of all those countries which entertain feelings and jealousies against Great Britain, on account of her calm, steady, and, at the same time, extraordinary progress in arts, sciences, commerce and arms. Even the very Swiss, while they admired and applauded it, did not like England; and the isolation of her geographical position seemed to affect the character of her inhabitants as well as her policy and her interests. Like every one who has never been in England, I conceived the most false and inferior idea of her people, her views, and her very aspect. I imagined that it was a cold, bleak, ungenial country, everlastingly overhung by fogs, with the sun rarely, if ever, apparent, and deriving its great wealth and importance solely from its commerce. I believed the people to be haughty, self-sufficient and repulsive, unsocial in all their habits, and although occasionally generous and benevolent, actuated upon all ordinary occasions by motives of self-interest and commercial selfishness. I had heard a great deal at Hamburgh, in the society of the professors there, of her treatment of scientific and literary men, of the cold neglect they experience, of their exclusion from all that forms the ambition of others, of the honors paid to them when dead, and the misery to which they were subjected while living. The old maxim still rang in my ears, that France was the country for a literary man to live in, and England for him to die in; and I believed that there really could be very little good or generous in a nation which displayed such cold neglect and bitter injustice toward those who labored to elevate the human mind, and whose names form no insignificant part of her glory. I was now, I thought, in a beautiful and youthful country, comprising within itself every climate and every soil, offering opportunity and encouragement to every one, where thought and action were free, where progress was rapid beyond conception, where no invidious distinctions existed, where competence, if not wealth, was the sure reward of exertion—a land of youth, of hope, and energy. I thought of England, in short, as England was at that time conventionally represented on the continents of Europe and of America; not as I knew it to be. It is not wonderful therefore, that in the end I determined to remain in the country where I then was, and to send for the funds which had been invested in London, without visiting Great Britain myself. It must be remembered at the same time, that Napoleon was now in the plenitude of his power, commanding sovereigns and dictating to nations, and that England stood single-handed against a world in arms. There was little hope therefore that I could aid even in the slightest degree in relieving France from the tyranny under which she groaned, and that seemed to me the only object worthy of desire, which could lead me once more to traverse the Atlantic.
When I laid down my head upon my pillow that night, my determination was fully taken to remain in the United States; and with my fondness for visionary prospects, I drew a pleasant picture of a New England farm, with competence and literary ease, and rural occupations, diversified by those sports of the field which I had enjoyed so much in other years. How soon, and how speedily, all such visions melted away; all such resolutions came to an end.
I rose the following morning, carried my letter to the post-office, and carelessly asked if there were any communications for me. The good man with spectacles, answered yes, and from a great bundle, took out a letter for which he demanded a high postage. It came from New Orleans, and contained but a few words to the following effect.
“Faithful to my promise, I have made every inquiry, Monsieur De Lacy, for the friends in regard to whose fate you were anxious when I saw you. Of the good Father Bonneville I have been able to obtain no intelligence; but Madame de Salins and Mademoiselle, her daughter, are now in London, and perhaps a letter addressed to them at numero 3 Swallow Street, may obtain for you information regarding Monsieur De Bonneville.