“In the smallest services consists the truest generosity,” argued Charney in reply.
“True,” resumed the voice, “when such services are dedicated to your own convenience. Had Picciola never sprung to life, these two beings would have remained in your eyes—the one a doting old man, engrossed by puerile pursuits; the other, a gross and sordid clod, absorbed by the love of gain. In your world of other days, Sir Count, to what, pray, did you attach yourself? To nothing. Your soul recoiled upon itself, and no man cared for you. By love comes love. It is your attachment to Picciola which has obtained you the affection of your companions. Picciola is the talisman by which you have attracted their regard.”
Charney interrupted this mono-dialogue by a glance from the microscope towards Picciola. He has already forgotten the announcement of “Napoleon, Emperor of the French, and King of Italy!”—one half of which formerly sufficed to convert him into a conspirator and a captive. How unimportant in his eyes, now, those honours conferred by nations, and based upon the liberties of Europe! An insect hovering over his plant, threatening mischief to its delicate vegetation, seems more alarming than the impending destruction of the balance of power, by the conquests of a new Alexander.
CHAPTER XI.
Armed with his glass, Charney now extended his field of botanical discovery; and, at every step, his enthusiasm increased. It must be owned, however, that inexperienced as he was in the method of scientific inquiry, devoid of first principles and appropriate instruments, he often found himself defeated; and the spirit of paradox became insensibly roused to existence by the cavilling temper of his mind.
He invented half a hundred theories on the circulation of the sap; on the coloration of the various parts of the flower; on the secretion of different kinds of aroma by different organs of the stem, the leaves, the flowers; on the nature of the gum and resin emitted by vegetables, and the wax and honey extracted by bees from the nectary. At first, ready answers suggested themselves to all his inquiries; but new systems arose, to confute on the morrow those of the preceding day. Nay, Charney seemed to take delight in the impotence of his own judgment, as if affording wider scope to the efforts of his imagination, and an indefinite term to the duration of his experiments and inferences.
A day of joy and triumph for the enthusiast was now approaching! He had formerly heard, and heard with a smile of incredulity, allusion to the loves of plants, and the sublime discoveries of Linnæus concerning vegetable generation. It was now his pleasing task to watch the gradual accomplishment of maternity in Picciola; and when, with his glass fixed on the stamens and pistils of the flower, he beheld them suddenly endowed with sensibility and action, the mind of the sceptic became paralyzed with wonder and admiration! By analogical comparison, his perceptions rose till they embraced the vast scale of the vegetable and animal creation. He recognised with a glance the mightiness, the immensity, the harmony of the whole. The mysteries of the universe seemed suddenly developed before him. His eyes grew dim with emotion—the microscope escaped his hand. The atheist sinks back overpowered on his rustic bench, and after nearly an hour of profound meditation, the following apostrophe burst from the lips of Charney:—