In the histories of the Revolution, the writers have omitted to set the picture of outer France by the side of the picture of inner France, to depict that great colony of exiles, changing its industry and its sorrows in accordance with the diversity of climate and the difference in national manners.
Outside France, everything operated by individuals: changes of condition, obscure afflictions, noiseless and unrewarded sacrifices; and, in this variety of individuals of every rank, age and sex, one fixed idea was preserved: that of Old France travelling with her prejudices and her faithful sons, as formerly the Church of God had wandered over the earth with her virtues and her martyrs.
Inside France, everything operated in the mass: Barère announcing murders and conquests, civil wars and foreign wars; the gigantic combats of the Vendée and on the banks of the Rhine; thrones toppling to the sound of the march of our armies; our fleets swallowed up by the waves; the people disinterring the monarchs at Saint-Denis and flinging the dust of the dead kings into the eyes of the living kings to blind them; New France, glorying in her new-found liberties, proud even of her crimes, steadfast on her own soil, while extending her frontiers, doubly armed with the headsman's blade and the soldier's sword.
In the midst of my family sorrows I received some letters from my friend Hingant, to reassure me as to his fate: letters very remarkable in themselves; he wrote to me in September 1795:
"Your letter of the 23rd of August is full of the most touching feeling. I showed it to a few people, whose eyes filled with tears on reading it. I was almost tempted to say what Diderot said on the day when J. J. Rousseau came and cried in his prison at Vincennes:
"'See how my friends love me.'
"My illness, as a matter of fact, was only one of those nervous fevers which cause great suffering, and for which time and patience are the best remedies. During the fever I read extracts from the Phædo and Timæus, and I said with Cato:
"'It must be so, Plato; thou reason'st well[189]!'
"I had formed an idea of my journey as one might form an idea of a voyage to India. I imagined that I should see many new objects in the 'spirit world,' as Swedenborg calls it, and above all that I should be free from the fatigue and dangers of the journey."
*
Eight miles from Beccles, in a little town called Bungay, lived an English clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Ives[190], a great Hellenist and mathematician. He had a wife who was still young, with a charming appearance, mind and manners, and an only daughter, fifteen years of age. I was introduced to this household, and was better received there than anywhere else. We took our wine in the old English fashion, and sat two hours at table after the ladies had left. Mr. Ives, who had been to America, liked to tell of his travels, to hear the story of my own, to talk of Newton and Homer. His daughter, who had become learned in order to please her father, was an excellent musician, and sang as Madame Pasta[191] sings to-day. She reappeared in time to pour out tea, and charmed away the old parson's infectious drowsiness. Leaning against the end of the piano, I listened to Miss Ives in silence.
When the music was over, the young lady questioned me about France, about literature; asked me to set her plans of studies; she wished particularly to know the Italian authors, and begged me to give her some notes on the Divina Commedia and the Gerusalemme. Gradually I began to experience a timid charm that issued from the soul: I had decked the Floridans, I should not have ventured to pick up Miss Ives's glove; I grew confused when I tried to translate a passage from Tasso. I was more at my ease with that chaster and more masculine genius, Dante.
Charlotte Ives's age and my own were suited. Into friendships formed in the midst of one's career, there enters a certain melancholy; when two people do not meet at the very outset, the memories of the person beloved are not mingled with that portion of our days in which we breathed without knowing her: those days, which belong to another society, are painful to the memory, and as though curtailed from our existence. When there is a disproportion of age, the drawbacks increase: the older of the two commenced life before the younger was born; the younger is destined to remain alone in his turn: one has walked in a solitude this side of a cradle, the other will cross a solitude that side of a tomb; the past was a desert for the first, the future will be a desert for the second. It is difficult to be in love in all the conditions that produce happiness: youth, beauty, seasonable time, harmony of hearts, tastes, character, graces, and years.
Having had a fall from my horse, I stayed some time with Mr. Ives. It was winter; the dreams of my life began to flee before reality. Miss Ives became more reserved; she ceased to bring me flowers; she would no longer sing.