"I will," I cried; "I shall come to bring you your son's appointment."
She shook her head with an air of doubt, and withdrew. On returning to the Embassy, I locked myself in and opened the packet. It contained only a few unimportant notes from myself and a scheme of studies, with remarks on the English and Italian poets. I had hoped to find a letter from Charlotte: there was none; but, in the margins of the manuscript, I perceived some notes in English, French, and Italian: the age of the ink and the youthfulness of the hand in which they were written showed that it was long since they had been inscribed upon those margins.
That is the story of my relations with Miss Ives. As I finish telling it, it seems to me as though I were losing a second Charlotte in the same island in which I lost the first. But between that which I feel at this moment and that which I felt at the hours whose tenderness I have recalled lies the whole space of innocence: passions have interposed themselves between Miss Ives and Lady Sutton. I could no longer bring to an artless woman the candour of desire, the sweet ignorance of a love that did not surpass the limits of a dream. I was writing then on the wave of sadness; I am now no longer tossed on the wave of life. Well, if I had pressed in my arms, as a wife and a mother, her who was destined for me as a virgin and a bride, it would have been with a sort of rage, to blight, to fill with sorrow, to crush out of existence those seven-and-twenty years which had been given to another after having been offered to me.
I must look upon the sentiment which I have just recalled as the first of that kind which entered my heart; it was nevertheless in no way sympathetic with my stormy nature: the latter would have corrupted it and made me incapable of long enjoying such sacred delectations. It was then that, embittered as I was by misfortunes, already a pilgrim from beyond the seas, having begun my solitary travels, it was then that I became obsessed by the mad ideas depicted in the mystery of René, which turned me into the most tormented being on the face of the earth. However that may be, the chaste image of Charlotte, by causing a few rays of true light to penetrate to the depths of my soul, at first dissipated a cloud of phantoms: my dæmon, like an evil genius, plunged back into the abyss, and awaited the effects of time in order to renew her apparitions.
*
My relations with Deboffe in connection with the Essai sur les révolutions had never been completely interrupted, and it was important for me to resume them in London at the earliest possible moment to support my material existence. But whence had my last misfortune arisen? From my obstinate bent for silence. In order to understand this it is necessary to enter into my character.
At no time of my life have I been able to overcome the spirit of reticence and of mental solitude which prevents me from talking of my private affairs.
My reserved nature.
No one can state without lying that I have told what most people tell in a moment of pain, pleasure, or vanity. A name, a confession of any seriousness never issues, or issues but rarely, from my lips. I never talk to casual people of my interests, my plans, my work, my ideas, my attachments, my joys, my sorrows, being persuaded of the profound weariness which one causes to others by talking of one's self. Sincere and truthful though I be, I am lacking in openness of heart: my soul incessantly tends to close up; I do not tell anything wholly, and I have never allowed my complete life to transpire, except in these Memoirs. If I try to begin a story, I am suddenly terrified at the idea of its length; after four words, the sound of my voice becomes unendurable to me, and I am silent. As I believe in nothing except religion, I distrust everything: malevolence and disparagement are the two distinctive qualities of the French mind; derision and calumny, the certain result of a confidence.
But what have I gained by my reserved nature? To become, because I was impenetrable, a fantastic something, having no relation with my real being? My very friends are mistaken in me, when they think that they are making me better known and when they adorn me with the illusions of their love for me. All the small intellects of the ante-chambers, the public offices, the newspapers, the cafés have assigned ambition to me, whereas I have none at all. Cold and dry in matters of everyday life, I have nothing of the enthusiast or the sentimentalist: my clear and swift perception quickly pierces men and facts, and strips them of all importance. Far from carrying me away, from idealizing apposite truths, my imagination disparages the loftiest events and baffles even myself; I see the petty and ridiculous side of things first of all; great geniuses and great things scarcely exist in my eyes. While I show myself polite, encomiastic and full of admiration for the self-conceited minds which proclaim themselves superior intelligences, my secret contempt laughs at all those faces intoxicated with incense, and covers them with Callot[195] masks. In politics, the warmth of my opinions has never exceeded the length of my speech or my pamphlet. In the inner and theoretical life, I am the man of all the dreams; in the outer and practical life, I am the man of realities. Adventurous and orderly, passionate and methodical, I am the most chimerical and the most positive, the most ardent and the most icy being that ever existed, a whimsical androgynus, formed out of the different blood of my mother and my father.