The hilarity and loveliness which Hector found in the midst of my family instigated and increased the attachment he began to feel for myself. He could not believe that the father of such daughters, and the chosen husband of such a consort, could be destitute of a title to be loved. He reasoned in his own way upon the attempt I had made to corrupt his fidelity, an attack which he never thoroughly digested. I have reason to believe that his attendance upon my chemical processes, and the wonders I occasionally showed to excite his astonishment, did not tend to elevate me in his good opinion. But he could not avoid witnessing in me many of the virtues of a good husband and a good father, and these, so new to his observation, strongly impressed him in my favour. The regularity of my habits and the mildness of my carriage were also calculated to win his affection and esteem. Never had the poor fellow’s affections been so forcibly called out as they were in his new situation; and he would cheerfully have stretched out his neck to the assassin’s knife, to have warded off impending evil from the meanest of us.
Prosperity and ease have often been found the parents of wishes and inclinations unfelt before. Adversity is the season of sober thought, calls home the erratic mind, and teaches us to be cheaply satisfied. But the man who has many gratifications is apt to wander in imagination from daily and familiar joys, and confidently to reach after things yet untried. Such was the situation of Hector: Hector was in love. Our sweet and simple mansion was distant scarcely more than two hundred yards from a characteristic Italian village. The maid of a little albergo in this place had caught his inexperienced heart. He had been invited by some peasants to a moonlight festivity on the lawn of the albergo; and, though I should have been better pleased that my servants should decline this sort of amusement, I could not have the heart to deny him. It was, so far as I knew, the first and the last time that Hector had ever resorted to it. But I was deceived. Hector had proved the gayest and most amusing of the whole circle. His cheerfulness was inexhaustible, and his mirth in the utmost degree harmless and good humoured. He had played a thousand antics, and danced with an agility that knew no end. In a word, the accomplishments of Hector, in spite of the jetty hue that stained his face, had won the heart, or roused the coquetry, of the plump and rosy bar-maid. The overtures she made and the lures she threw out were too glaring to escape the notice even of the modest Hector. He felt himself flattered, such is human nature, at suddenly becoming an object of admiration and preference to a woman, whom his imagination, stimulated by her visible partiality, attired in a hundred charms. He owned himself hers, in all fair and honest fealty, to the world’s end.
Love taught Hector a lesson which he had never learned before. In nature he was frank, and, as far as fidelity to his master permitted it, wore his heart as naked as his face. Love taught him dissimulation. A vulgar footman or clown is as forward as the most empty beau, in boasting of the triumphs he has gained over the female heart, and in sacrificing the reputation of those who have loved him at the shrine of his vanity. Not such was Hector. He shut Up his new sensations and reveries as a sacred deposit in his bosom. Nature worked within him, and he would have been ashamed to speak, and distressed to hear, of emotions, now felt, till now never experienced. His artless and ingenuous temper in this one particular assumed the guise of cunning. Never did he tell his love in the ear of any indifferent auditor; assiduously did he avoid pronouncing even the name of her to whom he was attached. In any other case he would have announced to me his inclinations, and previously demanded my leave of absence for his excursions. But love seemed to him imperiously to command privacy, and he employed every imaginable precaution to prevent me and all human beings from knowing whither he went, or that he was absent at all.
In one of his visits to his fair donzella, he happened incautiously to drop some very remote hint of the scenes in which he had just been engaged with me in my secret grotto. The curiosity of the girl was strongly roused; she questioned him further. He started, and was terrified to recollect what he had said. I had strictly enjoined him secrecy towards every member of my family: my precaution had extended no further; for, as I have said, I scarcely knew that he had the most casual intercourse with any person beyond my own roof. But Hector naturally dreaded that what I was so earnest to conceal from every one in my house he would be highly to blame to communicate to a stranger. He therefore peremptorily refused, and with many signs of distress, to say another word on the subject.
The donzella, piqued at his resistance, had recourse to female arts. She was cruel; she uttered words of sharp displeasure and disdain; she knew that a person who refused her such a trifle could not have an atom of regard for her; she commanded him never to see her more. Unsuccessful in these expedients, she had recourse to expedients of a different sort. She wept; she called him base, false-hearted and unkind; she saw he was determined to be the death of her; she was seized with strong fits of sobbing and hysterical affection. In the midst of all this he was as unmoved as a rock of marble. He interpreted every thing that passed in its most literal form; he felt more severely her unkindness, and sympathised more truly in her distress, than perhaps any human creature would have done. But no further could she gain upon him. The confidence of his master was in question, and he would sooner have died upon the rack, than run the slightest risk of betraying it.
From these arts she descended to arts more congenial to the habits of her life. She summoned all her skill to perplex him with cunning and insidious questions. From her questions he ought to have fled; but of this Hector was incapable. He was distressed by her severity, he grieved for the unintentional pain he had caused her. All these circumstances melted his heart; and he could not resolve upon any thing that was not considerate and respectful towards her. As the framing of artful questions was the strong-hold of the donzella, and she might have challenged in this article the most hoary practitioner of the quibbling bar, so it was exactly the weakest side upon which poor Hector could be attacked. His simplicity yielded him up a defenceless prey to the assailant; least of all human undertakings was he capable of detecting the various faces of a doubtful question, and of guarding himself against the traps of an insidious foe. It was not till the fourth interview from Hector’s original hint, that the donzella had recourse to this species of attack; and she did not withdraw her forces, till she had extorted from him all he knew.
When Hector found that all his guards were baffled and put to flight, he had then recourse to the only expedient that remained, conjuring her by every thing sacred and every thing tremendous, not to betray a trust she had so ungenerously obtained from him. She readily promised every thing he desired. Soothed by her compliance, he determined not to mention to me the lapse of which he had been guilty. It would in his opinion have been little less than treason, to suspect his Dulcinea of indiscretion or frailty. In the breast of this miracle of nature was not his loyalty as secure as it could be even in his own? Why then should he betray the secret of his love, which had never yet been confided even to the senseless air? Why should he subject himself to the inconceivable anguish and confusion, of owning, where my interests, or where my wishes were concerned, that he had been found tripping and imperfect? Why should he inflict a pain, or cause in me a fear, which he knew, and he only could know, was groundless? Thus it happened that I had one more confident of what I purposed should be secret, than I was myself in the smallest degree advertised of.
The consequences of this indiscretion of my servant were not slow in rendering themselves visible. The donzella was by no means so scrupulous or delicate in her sentiments, as my humble, but faithful, attendant. As she had given her company to Hector, she had had an opportunity of observing in him such integrity and goodness of heart, as could not fail to extort the esteem of any human being. She really honoured him; she was unwilling to give him any cause of uneasiness. But she had another lover; perhaps she had more. The laws of chastity she regarded as prejudices, and believed they were never formed for persons in her situation in society. She was of opinion that the more lovers she had, provided she satisfied them all, the more completely did she improve the talents with which Heaven had endowed her. Few women have any secrets for the man they admit to their embraces. In an hour of amorous dalliance she communicated to Agostino, the ostler, all that she knew of the conjurations and spells of Monsieur Boismorand, such was the name I had assumed upon my entrance into Italy. Her communication was probably attended with cautions, imitated from those with which Hector had so industriously loaded the donzella in the preceding example. Perhaps the illustrissimo Agostino had another mistress, with whom he thought it would be unjust to practise greater reserves than the donzella had done with him. Be that as it will, the rumours which were whispered to my prejudice speedily got air; and, it may be, were repeated with the greater avidity, on account of the mystery that attended them, and the injunctions of secrecy with which they were accompanied.