During the remainder of that and the following day Charney exhibited the depression of mind and body which results from every great physical crisis. But on the third day he resumed his powers of thought and action; and, if still detained by weakness on his pillow, the time was not far distant when he was likely to resume his former habits of life.
What delight to renew his acquaintance with his benefactress! All his thoughts were now turned towards Picciola! There seemed to be something beyond the common course of events in the fact that a seed, accidentally shed within the precincts of his prison, should have germinated in order to cure in the first instance his moral disorder—ennui: and in the second, the perilous physical disease to which he had been about to fall a victim. He, whom the splendour of wealth had failed to enliven—he, whom the calculations of human learning had failed to restore—had been preserved, first and last, by a plant! Enfeebled by illness, he was no longer able to apply his full force of reasoning to the development of the question; and a superstitious feeling, accordingly, began to attach him with redoubled force to the mysterious Picciola. It was impossible to ground upon a rational basis his sentiments of gratitude towards a non-sentient being; nevertheless Charney found it impossible to refuse his affection in exchange for the existence bestowed upon him. Where reason is paralysed, imagination exercises her influence without restraint. Charney’s regard for his benefactress now became exalted into a religious feeling, or rather into a blind superstition. Between him and his favourite there existed a mysterious sympathy of nature, like the attraction which draws together certain inanimate substances. He even fancied himself under a charm—a spell of enchantment. Who knows? Perhaps the arrogant refuter of the existence of a God is about to fall into the puerilities of judicial astrology. For in the secrecy of his cell, Charney does not hesitate to apostrophize Picciola as his star—his destiny—his talisman of light and life!
It is a curious fact that scarcely one illustrious man, remarkable for knowledge or genius, convicted of doubt in the agency of a Providence, but has been in his own person the slave of superstition; while attempting to throw off the yoke of servitude, submitting to become threefold slaves. In the blind eagerness of their pride to arrogate to their own merit the power or glory they have attained—those deep-seated instincts of religion which they have attempted to stifle in their souls—thrust out of their natural channel—force a way of their own towards daylight, and acquire a wild and irregular character. The homage they arrest in its course to heaven, falls back upon the earth. They would fain judge, though they refuse to believe; and the genius whose horizon they have circumscribed, requites the forced contraction by seeing things in part instead of a whole, and losing all power of estimating the homogeneous design of the great Master of all! They attach themselves to details, because an isolated fact is within the scope of their judgment, and do not so much as notice the points of union which connect it with universal nature. For what is the whole creation—earth, air, water—the winds, the waves, the stars—mankind—the universe, but an infinite being, complete, premeditated, varied into inscrutable details, and breathing and palpitating under the omnipresent hand of God?
Subdued, however, by the strength of his pride and the weakness of his health, Charney saw nothing to admire in nature but his weed—his plant—his Picciola; and, as if to justify his folly by analogy, dived into the vast stores of his memory for a precedent.
He called to mind all the miraculous plants recorded from the earliest times, by poet or historian; the holly of Homer—the palm-tree of Latona—the oak of Odin—nay, even the golden herb which shines before the eyes of the ignorant peasants of Brittany, and the May-flower, which preserves from evil thoughts the simple shepherdess of La Brie. He recollected the sacred fig-tree of the Romans—the olive of the Athenians—the Teutatés of the Celts—the vervain of the Gauls—the lotus of the Greeks—the beans of the Pythagoreans—the mandrake of the Hebrews. He remembered the green campac which blossoms everlastingly in the Persian’s paradise; the touba tree which overshadows the celestial throne of Mahomet; the magic camalata, the sacred amreet on whose branches the Indians behold imaginary fruits of Ambrosia and of voluptuous enjoyment. He recurred with pleasure to the symbolical worship of the Japanese, who elevate the altars of their divinities on pedestals of heliotropes and water-lilies, assigning the throne of Love himself to the corolla of a nenuphar. He admired the religious scruples of the Siamese, which make it sacrilege to exterminate or even mutilate certain consecrated shrubs. A thousand superstitions which in former times excited his pity and contempt toward the short-sightedness of human nature, tended now to elevate his fellow-creatures in his estimation. For the Count had discovered that, from the vegetation of an humble flower, may emanate lessons of wisdom; and doubted not, that all these idolatrous customs must have originated in sentiments of gratitude unexampled by tradition.
“From his imperial throne of the west,” thought Charney, “Charlemagne did not disdain to exhort the nation submitted to his rule, to the culture of flowers. And have not Ælian and Herodotus recorded that the great Xerxes himself took such delight in the beauty of an oriental plane-tree, as to caress its stem—press it tenderly in his arms—sleep enraptured under its shade—decorating it with bracelets and chains of gold, when compelled to bid adieu to his verdant favourite!”
As the convalescence of the Count proceeded, he was seated one morning reclining absorbed in thought in his own chamber, of which he had not yet ventured to cross the threshold, when his door was suddenly burst open, and Ludovico, with a radiant countenance, hastened towards him.
“Vittoria!” cried he. “The creature is in bloom. Picciola! Piccioletta! figlioccia mia!”
“In bloom?” cried Charney, starting up. “Let me see her. I must see the blossom.”