Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

inany kings, he assembled his old warriors, and marched towards Britanny. The French, impatient to avenge their brothers, carried devastation over the states of the king of Gannes. Lionel, intoxicated with his late success, wished to meet the enemy; Bliomberis advised to retire behind entrenchments, and to await them; but the general's opinion was adopted, and the troops were ordered to prepare for battle.

It was not for a moment undecided; Pharamond had only to shew himself, all fled before him. The Ganaois dragged away Lionel in their Hight. Bliomberis, after having fought most violently, was endeavouring to save the troops which he commanded, but the king of France came himself and attacked them. Scarcely had Bliomberis's soldiers perceived the fleur de lys on Pharamond's shield, than a sudden fear seized them; they fled. Bliomberis remained alone, surrounded by enemies. Surrender," cried the king, 66 it is Pharamond that demands your sword." Bliomberis disdaining to display useless courage, gave his sword into the monarch's hand, and followed him to his camp.

thanked the king, but felt confused in observing Felicia's eyes were fixed on him.

Our hero soon perceived that the princess joined, with the fairest of forms, the best of hearts, and the most cultivated mind: this discovery augmented his love. But the first time we feel this passion, we have so little hope of its being returned, that the pleasure of consuining away in silence, seems supreme happiness. Bliomberis gave way to it, trembling with apprehension of its being discovered. The court of Pharamond was an abode so much to be dreaded for him, who had never before left Gannis, who had passed his life in the solitary woods. He beheld himself transported to the most brilliant court of the universe: he dared love the daughter of a most powerful monarch, she whe had disdained the vows of crowds of princes.Could he flatter himself to be distinguished; he, the unknown son of a simple knight; he, the unhappy cause of his mother's disgrace and death; he, in short, whose only talents to please consisted in his fervent adoration of an object so far is su perior.

In a few days Pharamond had conquered all the country of Gannis. He made Boort pay all the expences of the war, left a garrison in his principal city, and kept Bliomberis as an hostage. After having thus terminated the expedition, the French monarch caused a search to be made for his son throughout Brittany; all his cares were useless, and the afflicted Pharamond returned to Tournai, accompanied by Bliomberis.ing all that he was deficient in. On arriving in his capital, Pharamond found joy enlivening every heart; the fame of his victory had preceded him. Rosamunda and Felicia came to meet him, surounded by a people who celebrated the return of their beloved King. Rosamunda expected to see her son. The fresh laurels gathered by her husband could not stop the current of her tears when she found that Clodion could no where be found. Felicia shared her grief and shed tears as she embraced her victorious father.

These reflections were inexpressibly distressing to a lover, and ought to have discouraged a sage; but Bliomberis was no longer a sage. He mentally reviewed all these objections, confessed he was commencing the misery of his life; and after having been well convinced that reason prescribed him to stifle his love, resolved to give way to it, and pass his days and nights in acquir

:

Bliomberis while witnessing this scene of grief, reproached himself for having caused Felicia's tears. This princess's beauty made him experience an undefinable sentiment, and till then unknown although he turned away his eyes, still against his will they fell upon Felicia. The wise, the prudent Bliomberis had lost all consciousness of his situation, when the King presented him to Rosamunda and his daughter, saying he was a prisoner to be respected for his valour then giving him his sword, he said, "you know its use too well for it not to be returned you. The interest of the state forbids my giving you your liberty; but nothing shall detain you here but your word." Bliomberis

From that moment Bliomberis studied the politeness and manners of the world, which render many fools supportable. He very soon acquired that outward polish so much praised, but of so little intrinsic value. With this he joined more solid accomplishments; adorned his mind, and acquired talents: love was his master; it is the preceptor under which we make the most rapid progress. In less than a year, Bliomberis became the most polished and amiable knight of Pharamond's court.

Felicia, who had remarked Bliomberis ever since he had been introduced to court, soon divined his secret: the woman the least addicted to coquetry, knows she is beloved some time be fore her lover is conscious of his passion. The love of this young savage had flattered the princess; but when the savage became polished, when she was certain it was for her, for her alone, that Bliomberis had taken so much pains, the timid Felicia interrogated herself how she was to act. The result of her questions was, that she need not scruple to be grateful to Bliomberis for his attention: this gratitude soon becama friendship; this friendship had not existed three months before it was changed into love. The

wise princess was as yet not quite certain of it; but her reason advised her not to listen to the dictates of her heart.

When a young princess is obliged to chuse between her heart and her reason, she is sometimes long in her decision, but it is never doubtful. Felicia soon gave herself up to the charm by which she was ensnared. She received a note from Bliomberis: a love-letter is a talisman, that overthrows all the dictates of wisdom. Fear no more, youthful lovers, when your letters are read. Felicia answered Bliomberis to beg he would never write again. Bliomberis wrote a second time, to entreat her to revoke this terrible order; this granted, letters were no longer the confidants of their thoughts, they conversed together..

You who have loved, you have, doubtless, not forgotten how sweet the first moments of a mutual passion are. Each day, each hour is interesting: to-day a glance makes us happy, tomorrow we wish for more; we quarrel, we obtain; the next day we dispute again, become friends, and find ourselves more advanced than we were before the altercation. How they glide away, those delightful days that are called the season of troubles.

One day, when the lovely Felicia was going to walk in a wood near the city, she left her attendants at the entrance, and advanced alone into one of its most solitary alleys. She thought of Bliomberis; a year had elapsed since they had sworn to each other eternal love. Felicia was reading over a letter, in which Bliomberis had repeated a thousand times this pleasing oath. She fancied she heard the voice of her lover, pronouncing the words he had written. In this enchanting delusion she imprinted a thousand kisses on the letter; when suddenly a furious boar appeared, and rushed towards the princess. Where were you, Bliomberis?

was often interrupted by the kisses she suffered the happy wounded youth to ravish.

As soon as she had tied the first bandage, and stil supported her lover, Felicia sought, in his eyes, how she could repay so great an obligation, Bliomberis gazed on her, and sighed. Chance came to their assistance.

A turtle-dove flew gently by them, endeavour ing to escape from a hawk, by which it was pursued. She was going to become its prey, when her mate rushed between the talons of the ra venous bird to save his companion. The hawk left the female, and carried away the male; but Bliomberis had had time to prepare his arrow; it flew, killed the ravisher, and delivered the generous dove.

Bliomberis was not far off; he had reached the favoured spot before Felicia, and, hid amidst the thickening foliage, had watched her emotions with delight. He perceived the monster, and flew to meet it; the boar reached and wounded him, but slightly, because the dexterous Bliomberis struck him at the same instant; the grass was bathed with their blood. The trembling Felicia's eyes were fixed on her lover, her heart palpitated, a death-like paleness sat on her cheek; || but in a moment her fears were dissipated. Bliomberis seized his dart, and pierced the side of the furious animal.

Felicia ran to him, seated him by her side, supported his head, and endeavoured to bind up his wound, which was but slight. The compas sionate Felicia gathered some simples, which chance offered, applied these to his wound, pressed the juice from them, yet her occupation

Scarcely free, he alighted on a branch opposite Felicia and Bliomberis. His faithful companion hastened to him; she caressed him, and repaired, with her beak, the disorder he had been thrown in by the cruel grasp of the hawk; she seemed to delight in smoothing his feathers, fluttered her wings around him; and soon the tender bird returned her warni caresses, and proved that love was stronger than fear.

What a scene for our lovers! Bliomberis had been as generous as the turtle-dove. Felicia was as affectionate, virtue alone could hinder her from being as grateful.

This forest, this alley, became the rendezvous of the tender lovers. The god of love, who watched over them, prevented their happiness from being suspected. Alas! none can last for

ever.

During the space of two years, occupied solely with each other, the months glided away like days; time flies with hasty steps, when we love. Felicia had attained her eighteenth year, and the King, her father, announced to her that she should make a choice among the princes who solicited her hand.

What news for Felicia! She went to the forest to consult with Bliomberis: he was there to give his advice, "The time of happiness is passed," exclaimed the sorrowful Felicia: "you must no longer pretend to my hand. I ought neither to obey nor resist the commands of my father: let us depart, let us fly together, love will protect us." Bliomberis, in an agony, declared that flight was impossible, as he was a prisoner on his honour. "But if we could gain time," added he, "I hope to render myself worthy of you. I am the son of Palamede, whose name is respected even by Pharamond. My mother was the daughter of a king; my father is of the race of the sovereigns of Babylon. I will seek him, he will acknowledge me, he will himself come and ask your hand of Pharamond. And if a kingdom be wanting to obtain Felicia, nothing is impossible

to the valour of Palamede, and the love of Bliomberis."

While pronouncing these words, the fire of courage shone in his eyes. Hope enters so easily into the souls of those who love, that Felicia and Bliomberis gave way to it with transport. It was decided that the princess should assemble all those who pretended to her hand, and declare that he who, in the space of two years, should perform the most glorious feats, would be the obJect of her choice.

When Pharamond learned his daughter's determination, he subscribed to it with joy; and soon the price attached to Felicia's hand was known throughout France, and all the knights that could boast of royal blood, quitted the court in order to deserve it.

Bliomberis seized this occasion to request his liberty; it was granted him. Felicia was charged with this melancholy commission. What pain to separate! when they must bid adieu, and pronounce that word so cruel to lovers! what sighs, what tears! Bliomberis could not tear himself from Felicia; Felicia pressed Bliomberis's hand to her heart; they gazed on each other, they wept, and a torrent of tears made their words inarticulate, though they repeated that they only parted to meet again never to separate. Vain hope! two years are not a moment when spent in happiness, and when lovers are not to meet till the end of that term it seems to last more than life. Ah! what pain Bliomberis had to fly from the arms of Felicia; but he took a fixed resolution, embraced her, bade her farewell, pressed her hand, with a stifled voice repeated his adieu, and departed without looking back.

Obliged to conceal her tears in the presence of the ladies of the court, the wretched princess went to hide them in her chamber; there she wept, read over Bliomberis's letters, commenced them again. "Alas! he will write no more to me," said she, "I have perhaps embraced him for the last time;" this idea completed her misery; her imagination exaggerated all the dangers that menaced her lover; and, as if she had not troubles enough, she afflicted herself thinking of those which were never to happen,

Bliomberis allowed his horse to take the road he pleased. This horse had been given him by Felicia; she had caused it to be brought from

Siberia; and the courser was worthy of being offered to courage by the hands of love. He was as black as jet; a white star shone on his forehead; lighter than a bird he gallopped on the sand, without leaving the print of his hoofs.— Felicia had sometimes mounted him, and had given him the name of Ebene. Ebene knew || Bliomberis, and was attached to him; so true is it, that love electrifies all that approaches it.

Bliomberis, while traversing a large forest, found that he rode too quick from the object of his love; he stopped, descended from his horse, and allowing the faithful Ebene to graze, seated himself at the foot of a tree, by the side of a There he began to reflect, which little stream. he had not done for some time.

Reflection is tolerably useless in affairs of the heart; as we generally finish by acting as if we had not reflected; thus it is, at least, lost time. | Inspired by the silence of the forest, the soft murmur of the stream, and above all, by his love, he sang the following lay to a melancholy

tune:

When far from thee, my tender maid,
Life seems to yield its latest breath,
'Twas love that bliss around me shed,
'Tis love that ope's the gates of death.
But ever constant, ever true,
When fate shall call me hence away,

My lips will sigh love ever new,
Thy image cheer my closing day.

Beneath this oak tree's ancient shade
I vainly courted peaceful rest;

My hours of peaceful rest are fled,
And here new torments tear my breast.
Before sad mem'ry's tearful eye,

Gay scenes of mutual joy arose;

And the young dove's soft plaintive sigla
Awoke the strains whence sorrow flows.

The stream that rolls its waves around,
And gently murmurs thro' the vale;

The echoes of the whispering ground
Reveal thy beauties to the gale.

On nature's blooming face I see
Thy face belov'd still brighter shine;

But vain my dream, too far from me,
My bosom only is thy shrine.

[To be continued]

E. R. R.

THE REPRESENTATIONS OF LIFE,

CONTAINED IN WORKS OF FICTION:

NOT TO BE CONSIDERED AS HAVING ANY EXISTENCE IN NATURE.

[Continued from Page 25.]

|| objects of their application. The young people, especially Mademoiselle, lost all patience, and declared that they would not remain any longer' in a place where detraction was the principal topic of conversation, and the chief amusement of social intercourse. M. de Palaise laughed at their impatience; and told them, that as they had made this excursion for the purpose of ob

difications of society, they must submit to the
inconveniences of the experiment, and expect
to meet with some things of a disagreeable na-
ture in the gratification of curiosity, and the ac-
"These vex-
quisition of moral knowledge.
atious surmises, and disgraceful tales," added he,
66 must be ranked among those inconveniences
and dissatisfactions to which all are subject. De-
traction, like death, must have its victims, and
spare none. Have patience a little while, and
some novel circumstance will surprize inquisitive
prudery, engross attention, exercise the loqua-
cious talents of the sisterhood, and withdraw the
eye of curiosity from you and your concerns."

WHILE these good-natured people were thus exercising the faculties of imagination and memory, in communicating to the strangers such a mass of important intelligence, they were not less curious to indemnify themselves for their trouble by obtaining some knowledge of their affairs, nor less busily employed in attempting to investigate their circumstances; and in this obscure inquiry, the want of information was sup-serving the different conditions of life, and moplied by fertility of invention, and ingenuity of conjecture. Some supposed them to be persons in respectable circumstances, while others imagined that M. de Clairville was a broken tradesman, who could no longer show his face among his acquaintance, and had brought his family to that place to hide his poverty in a country retirement. Many thought that his son had been wild, and that he had found it necessary to separate him from his old companions; but the greater number conjectured that Miss had been imprudent, and that her parents had removed her into the country, with a view of breaking off her improper connections. One well-meaning lady, who pretended to an uncommon share of sagacity, declared that she had often known such things done, and that she should not in the least wonder if the young lady had made same false step; and another, ambitious of showing herself superior to her neighbours in acuteness of penetration and accuracy of intelligence, positively asserted that she had received information, in a letter from a correspondent in London, a person of indisputable veracity, one of her sister-in-neighbour, instead of affording a feast to sneerlaw's distant cousins, that a young woman, in the street where she lived, had eloped with an extravagant young tradesman, and that, as she had been brought up by a needy uncle and aunt, they had all gone off somewhere into the country, to live on the young fellow's money as long as it lasted; and as this sagacious person assured those with whom she conversed, that her penetration seldom failed, she communicated to them her very important conjecture, that these strangers were, in all probability, the identical persons.

These surmises were no sooner expressed, than they were disseminated throughout the whole circle of the village society, and with the same apidity, communicated to those who were the No. XIV. Vol. II.

The observation of M. de Palaise proved equivalent to a prediction. Within a few days, the daughter of a respectable inhabitant was discovered to be in a disgraceful situation. This important and unexpected affair attracted the attention, gratified the malevolence, and excited the conjectures of the whole sisterhood. A rational view of the matter might induce a supposition that the unfortunate misconduct of a

ing malignity, would, in the mouth of every parent, have been a cautionary lesson to her daughter, to have furnished an occasion of pointing out the fatal consequences of levity and indiscretion.

Prudence would have required, and maternal affection might have dictated such a conduct. Nothing of the kind, however, was practised among the gossips of the village; but all their inquisitive powers were exerted, and every means of investigation employed to find cut who was the father of the unborn infant; whether he would make the girl satisfaction by marriage, and a thousand particulars besides, of equal importance. One said, "who could have thought it?" Another said, "who could have

K

of the propriety of their conduct, and the strickness of their morals, by their ostensible disapprobation of vice in others. I am the more inclined to be of this opinion, from observing that deviations from the path of virtue are generally the most diligently traced, and the most industriously published by those who, if we may believe the reports of common fame, have not been themselves paragons of prudence, nor patterns chastity."

thought any other?" A third said, "the little modest minx has not in the least deceived me;" another said, "that she thought the girl's youngest sister was a forward little chit; but that she, for her part, would not be the speaker of it." One elderly lady assured the company at a tea-table conversation, where the strangers were present, that the fair delinquent's mother had once in her time been reckoned no better than she should be; and another of the same description, said, that she could tell them of many pretty pranks that "These considerations, especially the latter," had, in former days, been played in that family, answered M. de Palaise, "have undoubtedly but that she was one who never troubled her head some weight in the minds of those who delight in about other people's concerns. After this pre-scrutinizing the conduct, and exposing the vices

|

and follies of their neighbours. When a person is conscious of some deviation from the path of moral rectitude or prudential discretion, he naturally imagines that the frequency of such violations of morality and decorum, will render them less glaring, and diminish their deformity in proportion to the increase of their number. He flatters himself that his own foibles will be less

as in contemplating a multiplicity of objects, how striking soever any one might singly appear, it becomes far less observable by being in so numerous a group; or if these objects be viewed in succession, each one, by striking the eye and the mind, contributes to weaken the impression made by the preceding ones. It is thus that a person conscious of some indiscretion, and imaat-gining the eye of observation turned towards hin, naturally thinks that his own misconduct will be less noticed, and more easily excused, when accompanied with a number of parallel cases, and that every deviation observed among his neighbours will draw the public attention from him, by directing it towards the last discovered failure."

Jude she proceeded to entertain them with a very long train of scandalous anecdotes, partly of the last, and partly of the present generation, and concluded by assuring them, that there was nothing which she detested so much as to speak ill of her neighbours. And another grave and venerable matron, who had herself, in her former days, forfeited her title to rank among the vestals, closed the edifying conversation, by in-conspicuous among a crowd of similar instances, forming her associates, that she heard an old aunt of her's, who was a very creditable person, || say, on the credit of another old lady, of as unimpeachable veracity as herself, that the grandmother of the young woman in question, was very harshly spoken of about sixty or seventy years ago, which was long before most of the company present had received existence.

The young Clairvilles listened with equal tention and disgust. They admired the retentive memory, and lamented the depraved taste of those propagators of scandal, who find a malicious pleasure in publishing the misconduct of their neighbours, and perpetuating the remembrance of those follies or vices, which ought first to operate as a warning to others, and then be pitied and forgotten.

"These arguments, however," said Ma In consequence of this afternoon's conversademoiselle de Clairville, 66 are equally applicable tion, the young emigrées, with their sage Men- to all situations, and the principle on which they tor, M. de Palaise, began to moralize on that are founded being interwoven in the moral sysstrange depravity of mind which takes pleasuretem, and fixed in human nature, must operate in telling or hearing those narratives of human weakness.

"What pity it is," cried Mademoiselle, "that conversation should so often turn on such mischievous or such trifling subjects. Where can arise the pleasure of raking out of the dust of oblivion the follies and frailties of those whose bodies are now bending under the decrepitude of age, or rotting in the silent grave."

"I suppose," said young Clairville, "that those who fabricate or publish the anecdotes of scandal, think to extenuate such of their own indiscretions as are known, or at least to prevent any suspicion of such as are concealed, and to impress on the minds of their hearers an opinion

equally in town and country; but our own observations have convinced us that the spirit of investigating the private concerns of others, of censuring their conduct, and calumniating their characters, is more prevalent and active in country villages than in large and pupulous cities."

"This," replied M. de Palaise, "is to be ascribed to the difference in the state of society in those different situations. Curiosity is so natural to the human mind, that scarcely any one is entirely free from its impulse. Every one is desirous of obtaining some information relative to subjects, either of an important or trival nature. Where the former are wanting, the lat

« AnteriorContinuar »