I have now, I believe, fully accounted for our intimacy, and displayed the ligatures that secretly bound us to each other. It is scarcely necessary to add, that my understanding confirmed what my heart impelled. Bethlem Gabor appeared to me the fittest man in the world upon whom to fix for my friend. We were qualified mutually to benefit each other. My kindness, my unremitted attentions, the earnestness with which I listened to and soothed his griefs, mitigated their agony. I proposed, when I could once more reconcile and incite him to activity, to repair his castle, and restore his fortune. On the other hand, he was, of all the persons I could have pitched upon, the ablest to protect me. By his birth he ranked among the first men of his country; by his ability, at least as a partisan soldier, a character at that time highly esteemed, he rose above them all.
For some time I regarded Bethlem Gabor as entirely my friend, and I consulted him in every thing, in which, compatibly with the legacy of the stranger of the summer-house, I could consult him. I told him of the suspicions of the bashaw, and the precariousness of my safety. I demanded his advice as to the best method of securing it. Ought I to regard it as a more effectual or as a cheaper expedient, to attempt to purchase the countenance of the sultan, instead of condescending to bribe his minister? Ought I to set up for myself, and by rendering myself the independent prince of one of the Hungarian provinces, defy the Turk, or at least endeavour to negotiate with him from a more respectable and commanding situation? I said more than enough under these heads, as it afterwards appeared, to awaken strange imaginations in a mind of so much penetration as that of Bethlem Gabor. In fine, I demanded of him whether, in case of any great and formidable danger falling on me, he would to the utmost of his power afford me protection? When the question was first started, he swore to me with his customary impressiveness and energy that he would.
While I was thus employed in consulting him, and opening to him as far as was practicable my prospects and fears, I did not less succeed in dissipating or suspending the despair of his melancholy. It was of benefit to him in this respect, that, by opening to him my affairs, I from time to time called off his attention from his personal misfortunes. I proposed to him the rebuilding his castle, and I at length obtained his permission to send off a corps of workmen for that purpose. Beside the castle in which his wife and children had been murdered, and which the marauders had nearly destroyed, he had one considerably stronger, though void of all recommendation from cheerfulness or beauty, in the more northerly part of the kingdom. This we visited together. I restored the condition of his fields; with considerable difficulty I replaced the cattle he had lost, by purchases in Poland; and I revived his dilapidated revenues. At first he felt an invincible repugnance to the receiving any advantage from the bounty of another; but by continual remonstrances I was able to persuade him, that he owed me nothing, and that what I did was no more than was required from me by a regard for my own safety.
If ever on the face of the earth there lived a misanthrope, Bethlem Gabor was the man. Never for a moment did he forget or forgive the sanguinary catastrophe of his family; and for his own misfortunes he seemed to have vowed vengeance against the whole human race. He almost hated the very face of man; and, when expressions of cheerfulness, peace, and contentment discovered themselves in his presence, I could see, by the hideous working of his features, that his spirit experienced intolerable agonies. To him such expressions were tones horribly discordant; all was uproar and havoc within his own bosom, and the gaiety of other men inspired him with sentiments of invincible antipathy. He never saw a festive board without an inclination to overturn it; or a father encircled with a smiling family, without feeling his soul thrill with suggestions of murder. Something, I know not what, withheld his hand: it might be some remaining atom of humanity: it might be—for his whole character was contemplative and close—it might be that he regarded that as a pitiful and impotent revenge, which should cause him the next hour to be locked up as a madman, or put to death as criminal. Horrible as was his personal aspect, and wild and savage as was his mind, yet, as I have already said, I felt myself attached to him. I knew that all the unsocial propensities that animated him, were the offspring of love, were the sentiments of a lioness bereaved of her young; and I found an undescribable and exhaustless pleasure in examining the sublime desolation of a mighty soul.
Bethlem Gabor had at first regarded me with some degree of partiality. Kindness in almost all cases begets kindness; he could not see how much I interested myself about and how much I courted him, without feeling for me a sentiment different from that he confessed for other men. I saw however after some time, with inexpressible grief, that his regard for me, instead of increasing, suffered perceptible diminution. Our propensities were opposed to each other. He rejoiced in disorder and desolation as in his congenial element; my present pursuit was the restoration of public order and prosperity. He repeatedly expostulated with me on this. I had sometimes in our conversations, in the bitterness of my recollections, exclaimed on myself as the most unfortunate and most persecuted of men, though without entering into an explanation of my sufferings. He reminded me of these exclamations. He reproached me as a contemptible and pusillanimous wretch, that I did not, like him, resolve amply and memorably to revenge my own sufferings upon my species at large. In his estimate, the poorest and most servile of all maxims was, that of the author of the christian religion, to repay injury with favour, and curses with benediction.
I perceived with grief that the kindness towards me that had been excited in Bethlem Gabor’s mind, rather declined than augmented; but I was very far from being aware of the degree in which, as I afterwards found, this sentiment had relapsed into its opposite. It seems, I inflicted on him a daily torture by my daily efforts for the dissemination of happiness. Of these he had not been at first completely aware. His mind had been too much absorbed in its own feelings to attend very distinctly to any thing I did, unless it were done in his presence. But, in proportion as I soothed his sorrows, and made him my confidant, the film was removed; and all that he saw had the peculiar misfortune to excite at once his contempt and his rage. The finishing stroke that I gave to the animosity which, unknown to me, was now brooding and engendering in his breast, consisted in my bestowing an important benefit upon one, against whom he had entertained a long and eternal feud.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
While Bethlem Gabor became every day more confirmed in his antipathy against me, I reposed in him an unsuspecting confidence—a confidence more extensive than I had, since the singular and fatal acquisition I had made, reposed in any other man. Frequently for a considerable time together he resided under my roof; frequently we went forth together in those excursions which either my projects or his views rendered it necessary for us to make. In his character of a nobleman of great consideration in his native country, he was now rising like a phœnix from its ashes. His castles were repairing; his property was restored; the list of his retainers daily became more numerous; he revived and carefully recruited the martial band, which, in the first exacerbations of his despair, he had dismissed from his service. My purse and all that I had were his; he never made a demand upon me that I did not instantly supply; I reaped a particular pleasure from the largeness and frequency of his requisitions; there was nothing for which I was more anxious, than to bind him to me in indissoluble ties of gratitude and affection.
Little, alas! did I understand the compound of tenderness and ferocity, of decisiveness and inscrutability, with which I was now concerned. My friend, such I esteemed him, had been absent some time; I expected his return to my residence at Buda; and anxious to pay him every mark of attention and respect, I set out to meet him. It was scarcely safe, during the existing hostilities between the Austrians and the Turks, to travel any where without a guard; I had the precaution in the present instance to take with me an attendance of twenty men.