University of Virginia Library

SCENE THE FIRST.

The House of Count Colville.
Count Colville and Le Charier.
COUNT COLVILLE.
WHAT answer from Duke D'Ormond do you bring?

LE CHARIER.
Oh, the old tale! he will not hear reproof.
His passions are in arms! 'Tis doubtless true,
That, of the Marchioness de Mielcour,
And him, which you have heard.

COUNT COLVILLE.
Would he not then
One moment listen to you?

LE CHARIER.
Not one moment.

COUNT COLVILLE.
Would he not see me?

LE CHARIER.
No.—When first I gave
Utterance to such a wish on your part, he
Writhed like a thing tormented.

COUNT COLVILLE.
Wretched man!—
What must be done for him? What I can, I will.
But here the possible seems impotence!—
But tell me what you gathered from him?

LE CHARIER.
When
To him your apprehensions I expressed
Of the ill consequence of intercourse
With Courtenaye and his comrades, and when further,
As you had authorized, nay had enjoined,
I hinted at the rumour you had heard
Of an arrangement 'twixt the Marchioness
De Mielcour, and him, and then suggested
The cruel consequence to Julia Villeneuve
Of such an infidelity, he bit
His lips, frowned sternly, stamped upon the ground,
And quitting me abruptly, he pushed back
The door with all his might, so that the room
E'en shook; and thus without allowing me
Time to expostulate, or his departure
Gracing with any courteous ceremony,
Finally disappeared. But I have now
Another charge of which t'acquit myself:
As I departed from the house, a servant
Asked me if I came not from you. The truth
Confessing, he informed me that a lady
Then in the house, had questioned him of you,
And wished to send to you a messenger.
Then added, shewing me a letter, which
He held, that she had begged him to take that
With many charges of discreet conveyance,
To your abode: he then went on to ask me,—
As being burthened with variety
Of hindrances, from doing this to-night;
If I would be the bearer of it.—See,—
Here is the letter, sir.—

COUNT COLVILLE.
To me, a letter!—
And from a lady! In an unknown hand!—
And yet methinks ere now I've seen that writing!
What may its contents be? Sorrow in me
Has made such ravages, in me, alas!
Is such a constant inmate, with her pale
Attendant apprehension, that I draw
Inference calamitous, from each event
That seems mysterious or extraordinary,
And not of every day's anticipation.
Well, I will open it, and put an end
To these perplexed conjectures!—
[Opens the letter.
From Julia!—
From the affianced bride of the Duke D'Ormond!—
She tells me here that she is come to Paris:
And further my permission she entreats
To have brief interview with me!
(To Le Charier.)
But did
You not say you received this at the house
Where D'Ormond meets with his licentious friends?
In short within the very threshold, where
You erewhile met him?

LE CHARIER.
Yes, it is so.

COUNT COLVILLE.
Ah!
Should they meet there. Well, if they do, I hope
That Providence will turn the chance to good!—
At all events I'll see her. Sit you down
While briefly to her letter I reply.—

[He sits down, writes. Folds and seals a letter, and gives it to a servant with an order to deliver it to Julia Villeneuve.]
COUNT COLVILLE.
What can she have to say to me? What can
I say to her? Oh that I could, or ere
I quit my native land, Duke D'Ormond see
Released from his degenerate enthralment?
To Julia reconciled!—And being one,
As I have reason to believe, who well
Deserves his love, e'en as he was or ere
By vice degraded, that he might again
Confer his love on her, and wedding her,
With peace, and virtue, form a lasting union!
I have myself from vice too deeply suffered,
Not e'en to shudder, when its strong allurements,
Enthral a heart susceptible of good!—
I am not, Le Charier, the thing I seem!—

LE CHARIER.
So you have often told me; but I know not—
You're always so consistent with yourself,
Practice in you not only so makes good,
But so outstrips profession—I confess,
How to believe your self-disparagement.—

COUNT COLVILLE.
I am the thing I seem, and I am not!—
You know I leave my native land: with me
Time now is precious. Ere this lady come,—
Since other opportunities may fail,—
The few hours which I have to tarry here,
Are with so many more affairs o'ercharged,
Than I, with my enfeebled faculties,
Can well dispatch,—I will now shew to you
My inner self, if utterance meet be lent me.
I am the thing I seem, and I am not!—
Inasmuch as I am sincere I am;
And inasmuch I am not as the times
Discretion, place, person, and circumstance,
Or would not suffer, or not authorize
Me, to be unreservedly sincere.—
But if you knew the pang it cost me, when
I deviate the least from truth's plain path,
My aberrations you would deem the effect
Of circumstance, not offspring of my will.
I have a heavy burthen at my heart!—
Le Charier, divers are the characters
Of human beings! Are there not who seem
In early life for good predestinate
Who by some fatal swerving of the will
In perilous temptation, blast a prime
Of happy promise: trees are they, which bear,
Or ought to bear delicious fruit, which nipped
By blighting east winds, sapless, withered, sered,
And unproductive, finally become
The leafless skeletons of what they were!—
From men like these all joyous impulse flies;
When they should act, they think, not having thought
In past times ere they acted! Instinct dies
In them, and scrutiny usurps its place.
They see through all the common forms of things!
They weigh; they speculate; they analyze!—
In actions, which, to other men, seem good,
And graceful, they, detecting but too well
The prevalent motive, nothing see to praise.
They are like automatic entities!
They, for a gush of tears, or throb of love,
Would hazard more than conqueror ever did,
And Cæsar's hardships. Alexander's toils,—
Give them the promise of sweet sympathy,—
To them like sports of childhood would appear.
I—I—am one of these!—

LE CHARIER.
You jest, Count Colville.

COUNT COLVILLE.
Ah, that I did! the icy cold that weighs
Upon my heart, the tearless speculation
With which mine eyes see scenes even of anguish,
That make my blood creep in my veins, and all
My bodily functions seem to paralyze,
These symptoms, though invisible to others,
Cleaving with importunity to me,
Tell but too plainly, to the wretch who feels them,
Of a disorganized and shattered conscience.
It is by its inexorable pang,
Immitigable, inextinguishable,
Alone, that I retain a consciousness
Of conscience, and discover that I have one.—
As to all other joys, I am quite dead
To its approval;—to its terrors, victim!—
I talk of virtue, but I feel it not!—
Talk of religion, but I cannot pray!—
And talk of loving, loveless, and unloved!
In youth, I pious forms of speech acquired;
In youth with virtuous men alone I lived;
In youth I framed to virtue my demeanour;
And though my speech, my feelings, and my deeds,
Still, like a parrot that can talk by rote,
Bear virtue's impress, her sweet peace of mind,
Her joys unspeakable, are gone for ever!—
I am called hugonot, called heretic!—
I am no hugonot, no heretic!—
But I am one who have too freely tasted
Fruit of the tree of knowledge, not to smile
At modern commutations,—called Religion,—
For sense of moral obligation,
And practice of the human hearted virtues.
Not but that I believe that heaven consents
Slight penance to accept for slight offences.
But when the sense of duty is thrown off,
None but slight minds at slight offences stop.
Offences these of superficial souls,
Which cannot or be great in vice or virtue.
There are some of etherial innocence:
And there are others of mixed temperament,
Who cannot or be great in vice or virtue.
But those whose virtues are pre-eminent,
Are they of perilous natures, who have borne
Faithfully a commingled communing,
With deep solicitings from froward passions.—
Woe be to those who have at once in them
Angel combined with devil, and through weakness
Have let the latter gain th' ascendancy.—
These, these know what it literally is,
When they have basely yielded to temptation,
To realize again the angel's fall.
Hell,—Heaven,—are within them: and the shows
Of outward things, as they are prone to yield
To ill, or firm as spirits militant
T'assist the better cause, reflect on them
Infernal horror, or celestial brightness!—
So, on the other hand, how bright at last,
Shines, like the fire of Vesta, the trimmed lamp,
Which,—though it have been cumbered with thick fogs,
Or oft half quenched by surly visitings
From felon blasts, and noisome damps, and storms
Of rain, hail, sleet, and snow,—a good man tends
E'en to the hour of final dissolution
With vigilant unintermitted toil!—
Yet think not I complain! Though buffeted
By (sorest of misfortunes here below!)
The anguish of a lacerated conscience,
I yet can see, or think I see, e'en here,
In this untoward world, the ascendancy
Of truth o'er error; o'er the ill, of good;
A permanence in moral excellence;
A self-destructive mutability
In pain, and falsehood, and calamity;
And thence the promise of the final triumph
Of truth, of virtue, and of happiness!—

LE CHARIER.
Since earliest youth have I been visited
With manifold calamities! In none
Of these could I discern that man possessed
A more than instrumental agency!—
A mightier than myself has scourged me.
I have bowed down in silent passiveness,
Have learned humility: and 'mid all woes
Religion a sure comforter has been!—

COUNT COLVILLE.
When I consider the infinity,
The contrariety, complexity,
Of powers that bear upon this scene, not made
For mortal explanation, I am lost
In wonder at the order thence educed,—
Their skilful adaptation! With a good,
Is there an evil which teems not? Unfit
To assume another, and a better form,
In nature an abortion? We accuse
Men, institutions, as they were the cause
Of evil. But the bitterness with which
We make the accusation, proves to me
That its seat deeper lies—in our own hearts!

LE CHARIER.
Talk ever thus! Though I am one whose fate
Is spited by the world, I love the world,
And those my brethren who inhabit it.
It soothes me thus in human things to trace
A power educing good from imperfection.

COUNT COLVILLE.
So, my friend, is it! 'Tis the fortunate
Who chiefly at their destiny complain.
Who, for the most part suffer, if they be
Among those numbered, to whom ‘all things work
Together for their good,’ learn to endure
In silence: to ‘rejoice with thankfulness’
When it is mitigated. “Then at once
“Their tongues are loosen'd, and their lips unclosed.
“Somewhat of virtue, health, and happiness,
“Form the preponderant experience
“Of mortals; hence as contraries, and hence
“As of more rare occurrence of the two,
“Of instances to the reverse we talk,
“And he who has fewest of these contraries
“Talks with the loudest, and the bitterest tongue!
“'Tis an exception which he cannot brook!
“We never hear men marvel when they're well!—
“Comment, as on a miracle, on joy!—
“As thing unheard of, celebrate success!—
“Or speak of safety as a prodigy!—
“From health allotted, for one grateful word;
“From joy imparted, for one warm thanksgiving;
“From friendship shewn, one tributary praise;
“How many rash ones from infirmity!
“How many peevish ones from wretchedness!
“How many pinings from ingratitude!
“And these, meanwhile, it might be clearly shewn,
“Are the exceptions to the general rule.”—
Enough of this! Le Charier, let me now
Do that to which I've pledged myself already!
Yet not to you, as to a Confessor,
Do I myself disburthen! No, I deem,
God hates not, with an arbitrary hatred,
The vicious, but from contrariety
Of vice to his pure essence.—Change of heart,
Alone can be a grateful sacrifice
To Him, not mere confession, much less penance,
And all the juggling tricks by which the crafty,—
Making them the equivalents for virtue,—
Have sought, as one means of ascendency,
To gain an influence o'er coward souls,
Enervate from the consciousness of guilt.
I therefore, as from friend to friend, and not
As to a priest—would all priests were like you,
Though staunch, and willing martyrdom t'endure
In the high cause of your religion, yet
Deeming diversity of forms no more
Than of man's levity, imperfectness,
His love of change, tenaciousness for shew
Rather than substance, necessary fruits:—
Therefore I sent to you, that, ere I leave
My native land for ever, as from friend
To bosom friend, I might to you impart—
That which I never yet have done to any—
The clue from whence to comprehend,—the spring,
The master-key of,—my heart's mystery!—
I am not what I seem! Le Charier, no!—
Hear from my lips that which I really am!—
The self-denying, exemplary, Colville,—
The mortified ascetic Colville is—

LE CHARIER.
Stop! stop! for mercy's sake! Your countenance
Is wild, and agitated! You are ill!—
You know not that which you are saying.—

COUNT COLVILLE.
I
Know but too well! In order to destroy
A fabric of foundationless repute,
Which I have gained with you, and a few more,—
For narrow is my circle of acquaintance—
To you,—who judge of others by yourself,
And cannot, without the reality,
Of the appearance, dream, of rectitude,—
I, this confession make. My heart will be
Tormented less, when it has once to you
Communicated its mysterious secret:
Although it cost me pangs like those which wait
Upon the hour when soul and body part;
Yea, anguish indescribably intense,
And throes of agonizing fearfulness!
Your friend, your Colville is—

(A Servant enters).
SERVANT.
A lady, sir,
Waits, in a chariot, at your door, who fain
Would speak with you.

COUNT COLVILLE.
This must be Julia Villeneuve.
(To Le Charier).
May I request you to retire now? Soon
As from this lady I'm released—at least
Or ere I lay me on my pillow—will I
The rest of my confession make to you.

LE CHARIER.
Sir, I retire. May heaven bring healing to you!

[As Le Charier withdraws on one side, Julia Villeneuve enters on the other].