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Title: Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2)
       Or Italy

Author: Mme de Stael

Commentator: George Saintsbury

Illustrator: R. S. Greig

Release Date: October 17, 2005 [EBook #16896]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: The crowd break their ranks as the horses pass.]




CORINNE

OR

ITALY

BY

MME. DE STAEL


WITH INTRODUCTION BY

GEORGE SAINTSBURY

(_In Two Volumes_)

VOL. I.

_Illustrated_

_by_

H.S. Greig

LONDON: Published by J.M. DENT and COMPANY at
ALDINE HOUSE in Great Eastern Street, E.C.

MDCCCXCIV




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE CROWD BREAK THEIR RANKS AS THE HORSES PASS      _Frontispiece_.

CORINNE AT THE CAPITOL                                      PAGE 33

CORINNE SHOWING OSWALD HER PICTURES                          "  235

[Illustration]




INTRODUCTION.


In Lady Blennerhassett's enthusiastic and encyclopaedic book on Madame de
Stael she quotes approvingly Sainte-Beuve's phrase that "with _Corinne_
Madame de Stael ascended the Capitol." I forget in which of his many
dealings with an author who, as he remarks in the "Coppet-and-Weimar"
_causeries_, was "an idol of his youth and one that he never renounced,"
this fancy occurs. It must probably have been in one of his early
essays; for in his later and better, Sainte-Beuve was not wont to give
way to the little flashes and crackles of conceit and epigram which many
Frenchmen and some Englishmen think to be criticism. There was, however,
some excuse for this. In the first place (as one of Charles Lamb's
literal friends would have pointed out), Madame de Stael, like her
heroine, did actually "ascend the Capitol," and received attentions
there from an Academy. In the second, there can be no doubt that
_Corinne_ in a manner fixed and settled the high literary reputation
which she had already attained. Even by her severest critics, and even
now when whatever slight recrudescence of biographical interest may have
taken place in her, her works are little read, _Corinne_ is ranked next
to _De l'Allemagne_ as her greatest production; while as a work of form,
not of matter, as literature of power, not of knowledge, it has at last
a chance of enduring when its companion is but a historical
document--the record of a moment that has long passed away.

The advocates of the _milieu_ theory--the theory which will have it that
you can explain almost the whole of any work of art by examining the
circumstances, history, and so forth of the artist--have a better chance
with _Corinne_ than with many books, though those who disagree with them
(as I own that I do) may retort that this was precisely because Madame
de Stael in literature has little idiosyncracy, and is a receptive, not
a creative, force. The moment at which this book was composed and
appeared had really many of the characteristics of crisis and climax in
the life of the author. She was bidding adieu to youth; and though her
talents, her wealth, her great reputation, and her indomitable
determination to surround herself with admirers still made her a sort of
queen of society, some illusions at least must have been passing from
her. The most serious of her many passions, that for Benjamin Constant,
was coming, though it had not yet come, to an end. Her father, whom she
unfeignedly idolised, was not long dead. The conviction must have been
for some time forcing itself on her, though she did not even yet give up
hope, that Napoleon's resolve not to allow her presence in her still
more idolised Paris was unconquerable. Her husband, who indeed had long
been nothing to her, was dead also, and the fancy for replacing him with
the boy Rocca had not yet arisen. The influence of the actual chief of
her usual herd of lovers, courtiers, teachers, friends (to use whichever
term, or combination of terms, the charitable reader pleases), A.W.
Schlegel, though it never could incline her innately unpoetical and
unreligious mind to either poetry or religion, drove her towards
aesthetics of one kind and another. Lastly, the immense intellectual
excitement of her visits to Weimar, Berlin, and Italy, added its
stimulus to produce a fresh intellectual ferment in her. On the purely
intellectual side the result was _De l'Allemagne_, which does not
concern us; on the side of feeling, tinged with aesthetic philosophy, of
study of the archaic and the picturesque illuminated by emotion--the
result was _Corinne_.

If there had been only one difference between this and its author's
earlier attempt at novel-writing, that difference would have given
_Corinne_ a great advantage. _Delphine_ had been irreverently described
by Sydney Smith, when it appeared a few years earlier, as "this dismal
trash which has nearly dislocated the jaws of every critic with gaping."
The Whigs had not then taken up Madame de Stael, as they did afterwards,
or it is quite certain that Mr Sydney would not have been allowed to
exercise such Britannic frankness. _Corinne_ met with gentler treatment
from his friends, if not from himself. Sir James Mackintosh, in
particular, was full of the wildest enthusiasm about it, though he
admitted that it was "full of faults so obvious as not to be worth
mentioning." It must be granted to be in more than one, or two important
points a very great advance on _Delphine_. One is that the easy and
illegitimate source of interest which is drawn upon in the earlier book
is here quite neglected. _Delphine_ presents the eternal French
situation of the "triangle;" the line of _Corinne_ is straight, and the
only question is which pair of three points it is to unite in an
honourable way. A French biographer of Madame de Stael, who is not only
an excellent critic and an extremely clever writer, but a historian of
great weight and acuteness, M. Albert Sorel, has indeed admitted that
both Leonce, the hero of _Delphine_, who will not make himself and his
beloved happy because he has an objection to divorcing his wife, and
Lord Nelvil, who refuses either to seduce or to marry the woman who
loves him and whom he loves, are equal donkeys with a national
difference. Leonce is more of a "fool;" Lord Nelvil more of a "snob." It
is something to find a Frenchman who will admit that any national
characteristic is foolish: I could have better reciprocated M. Sorel's
candour if he had used the word "prig" instead of "snob" of Lord Nelvil.
But indeed I have often suspected that Frenchmen confuse these two
engaging attributes of the Britannic nature.

A "higher moral tone" (as the phrase goes) is not the only advantage
which _Corinne_ possesses over its forerunner. _Delphine_ is almost
avowedly autobiographical; and though Madame de Stael had the wit and
the prudence to mix and perplex her portraits and her reminiscences so
that it was nearly impossible to fit definite caps on the personages,
there could be no doubt that Delphine was herself--as she at least would
have liked to be--drawn as close as she dared. These personalities have
in the hands of the really great masters of fiction sometimes produced
astonishing results; but no one probably would contend that Madame de
Stael was a born novelist. Although _Delphine_ has many more personages
and much more action of the purely novel kind than _Corinne_, it is
certainly not an interesting book; I think, though I have been
reproached for, to say the least, lacking fervour as a Staelite, that
_Corinne_ is.

But it is by no means unimportant that intending readers should know the
sort of interest that they are to expect from this novel; and for that
purpose it is almost imperative that they should know what kind of
person was this novelist. A good deal of biographical pains has been
spent, as has been already more than once hinted, on Madame de Stael.
She was most undoubtedly of European reputation in her day; and between
her day and this, quite independently of the real and unquestionable
value of her work, a high estimate of her has been kept current by the
fact that her daughter was the wife of Duke Victor and the mother of
Duke Albert of Broglie, and that so a proper respect for her has been a
necessary passport to favour in one of the greatest political and
academic houses of France; while another not much less potent in both
ways, that of the Counts d'Haussonville, also represents her. Still
people, and especially English people, have so many non-literary things
to think of, that it may not be quite unpardonable to supply that
conception of the life of Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baroness of
Stael-Holstein, which is so necessary to the understanding of _Corinne_,
and which may, in possible cases, be wanting.

She was born on the 22nd of April 1766, and was, as probably everybody
knows, the daughter of the Swiss financier, Necker, whom the French
Revolution first exalted to almost supreme power in France, and then
cast off--fortunately for him, in a less tragical fashion than that in
which it usually cast off its favourites. Her mother was Suzanne
Curchod, the first love of Gibbon, a woman of a delicate beauty, of very
considerable mental and social faculties, a kind of puritanical
coquette, but devoted to her (by all accounts not particularly
interesting) husband. Indeed, mother and daughter are said to have been
from a very early period jealous of each other in relation to Necker.
Germaine, as she was generally called, had, unluckily for her, inherited
nothing of her mother's delicacy of form and feature; indeed, her most
rapturous admirers never dared to claim much physical beauty for her,
except a pair of fine, though unfeminine, eyes. She was rather short
than tall; her figure was square-set and heavy; her features, though not
exactly ill-formed, matched her figure; her arms were massive, though
not ill-shaped; and she was altogether distinctly what the French call
_hommasse_. Nevertheless, her great wealth, and the high position of her
father, attracted suitors, some of whom at least may not have overlooked
the intellectual ability which she began very early to display. There
was talk of her marrying William Pitt, but either Pitt's well-known
"dislike of the fair," or some other reason, foiled the project. After
one or two other negotiations she made a match which was not destined to
good fortune, and which does not strike most observers as a very
tempting one in any respect, though it carried with it some exceptional
and rather eccentric guarantees for that position at court and in
society on which Germaine was set. The King of Sweden, Gustavus, whose
family oddity had taken, among less excusable forms, that of a platonic
devotion to Marie Antoinette, gave a sort of perpetual brevet of his
ministry at Paris to the Baron de Stael-Holstein, a nobleman of little
fortune and fair family. This served, using clerical language, as his
"title" to marriage with Germaine Necker. Such a marriage could not be
expected to, and did not, turn out very well; but it did not turn out as
ill as it might have done. Except that M. de Stael was rather
extravagant (which he probably supposed he had bought the right to be)
nothing serious is alleged against him; and though more than one thing
serious might be alleged against his wife, it is doubtful whether either
contracting party thought this out of the bargain. For business reasons,
chiefly, a separation was effected between the pair in 1798, but they
were nominally reconciled four years later, just before Stael's death.

Meanwhile the Revolution broke out, and Madame de Stael, who, as she was
bound to do, had at first approved it, disapproved totally of the
Terror, tried to save the Queen, and fled herself from France to
England. Here she lived in Surrey with a questionable set of _emigres_,
made the acquaintance of Miss Burney, and in consequence of the
unconventionalities of her relations, especially with M. de Narbonne,
received, from English society generally, a cold shoulder, which she has
partly avenged, or tried to avenge, in _Corinne_ itself. She had already
written, or was soon to write, a good deal, but nothing of the first
importance. Then she went to Coppet, her father's place, on the Lake of
Geneva, which she was later to render so famous; and under the Directory
was enabled to resume residence in Paris, though she was more than once
under suspicion. It was at this time that she met Benjamin Constant, the
future brilliant orator, and author of _Adolphe_, the only man perhaps
whom she ever really loved, but, unluckily, a man whom it was by no
means good to love. For some years she oscillated contentedly enough
between Coppet and Paris. But the return of Bonaparte from Egypt was
unlucky for her. Her boundless ambition, which, with her love of
society, was her strongest passion, made her conceive the idea of
fascinating him, and through him ruling the world. Napoleon, to use
familiar English, "did not see it." When he liked women he liked them
pretty and feminine; he had not the faintest idea of admitting any kind
of partner in his glory; he had no literary taste; and not only did
Madame de Stael herself meddle with politics, but her friend, Constant,
under the Consulate, chose to give himself airs of opposition in the
English sense. Moreover, she still wrote, and Bonaparte disliked and
dreaded everyone who wrote with any freedom. Her book, _De la
Litterature_, in 1800, was taken as a covert attack on the Napoleonic
_regime_; her father shortly after republished another on finance and
politics, which was disliked; and the success of _Delphine_, in 1803,
put the finishing touch to the petty hatred of any kind of rival
superiority which distinguished the Corsican more than any other man of
equal genius. Madame de Stael was ordered not to approach within forty
leagues of Paris, and this exile, with little softening and some
excesses of rigour, lasted till the return of the Bourbons.

Then it was that the German and Italian journeys already mentioned (the
death of M. Necker happening between them and recalling his daughter
from the first) led to the writing of _Corinne_.

A very few words before we turn to the consideration of the book, as a
book and by itself, may appropriately finish all that need be said here
about the author's life. After the publication of _Corinne_ she returned
to Germany, and completed the observation which she thought necessary
for the companion book _De l'Allemagne_. Its publication in 1810, when
she had foolishly kindled afresh the Emperor's jealousy by appearing
with her usual "tail" of worshippers or parasites as near Paris as she
was permitted, completed her disgrace. She was ordered back to Coppet:
her book was seized and destroyed. Then Albert de Rocca, a youth of
twenty-three, who had seen some service, made his appearance at Geneva.
Early in 1811, Madame de Stael, now aged forty-five, married him
secretly. She was, or thought herself, more and more persecuted by
Napoleon; she feared that Rocca might be ordered off on active duty, and
she fled first to Vienna, then to St Petersburg, then to Stockholm, and
so to England. Here she was received with ostentatious welcome and
praises by the Whigs; with politeness by everybody; with more or less
concealed terror by the best people, who found her rhapsodies and her
political dissertations equally boring. Here too she was unlucky enough
to express the opinion that Miss Austen's books were vulgar. The fall
of Napoleon brought her back to Paris; and after the vicissitudes of
1814-15, enabled her to establish herself there for the short remainder
of her life, with the interruption only of visits to Coppet and to
Italy. She died on the 13th July 1817: her two last works, _Dix Annees
d'Exil_ and the posthumous _Considerations sur La Revolution Francaise_,
being admittedly of considerable interest, and not despicable even by
those who do not think highly of her political talents.

And now to _Corinne_, unhampered and perhaps a little helped by this
survey of its author's character, career, and compositions. The
heterogeneous nature of its plan can escape no reader long; and indeed
is pretty frankly confessed by its title. It is a love story doubled
with a guide-book: an eighteenth-century romance of "sensibility"
blended with a transition or even nineteenth-century diatribe of
aesthetics and "culture." If only the first of these two labels were
applicable to it, its case would perhaps be something more gracious than
it is; for there are more unfavourable situations for cultivating the
affections, than in connection with the contemplation of the great works
of art and nature, and it is possible to imagine many more disagreeable
_ciceroni_ than a lover of whichever sex. But Corinne and Nelvil (whom
our contemporary translator[1] has endeavoured to acclimatise a little
more by Anglicising his name further to Nelville), do not content
themselves with making love in the congenial neighbourhoods of Tiber or
Poestum, or in the stimulating presence of the masterpieces of modern
and ancient art. A purpose, and a double purpose, it might almost be
said, animates the book. It aims at displaying "sensibility so
charming"--the strange artificial eighteenth-century conception of love
which is neither exactly flirtation nor exactly passion, which sets
convention at defiance, but retains its own code of morality; at
exhibiting the national differences, as Madame de Stael conceived them,
of the English and French and Italian temperaments; and at preaching the
new cult of aesthetics whereof Lessing and Winckelmann, Goethe, and
Schlegel, were in different ways and degrees the apostles. And it seems
to have been generally admitted, even by the most fervent admirers of
Madame de Stael and of _Corinne_ itself, that the first purpose has not
had quite fair play with the other two. "A little thin," they confess of
the story. In truth it could hardly be thinner, though the author has
laid under contribution an at least ample share of the improbabilities
and coincidences of romance.

Nelvil, an English-Scottish peer who has lost his father, who accuses
himself of disobedience and ingratitude to that father, and who has been
grievously jilted by a Frenchwoman, arrives in Italy in a large black
cloak, the deepest melancholy, and the company of a sprightly though
penniless French _emigre_, the Count d'Erfeuil. After performing
prodigies of valour in a fire at Ancona, he reaches Rome just when a
beautiful and mysterious poetess, the delight of Roman society, is being
crowned on the Capitol. The only name she is known by is Corinne. The
pair are soon introduced by the mercurial Erfeuil, and promptly fall in
love with each other, Corinne seeking partly to fix her hold on Nelvil,
partly to remove his Britannic contempt for Italy and the Italians, by
guiding him to all the great spectacles of Rome and indeed of the
country generally, and by explaining to him at great length what she
understands of the general theory of aesthetics, of Italian history, and
of the contrasted character of the chief European nations. Nelvil on his
side is distracted between the influence of the beauty, genius, and
evident passion of Corinne, and his English prejudices; while the
situation is further complicated by the regulation discovery that
Corinne, though born in Italy of an Italian mother, is, strictly
speaking, his own compatriot, being the elder and lawful daughter of a
British peer, Lord Edgermond, his father's closest friend. Nay more, he
had always been destined to wed this very girl; and it was only after
her father's second marriage with an Englishwoman that the younger and
wholly English daughter, Lucile, was substituted in the paternal schemes
as his destined spouse. He hears, on the other hand, how Corinne had
visited her fatherland and her step-mother, how she had found both
intolerable, and how she had in a modified and decent degree "thrown her
cap over the mill" by returning to Italy to live an independent life as
a poetess, an improvisatrice, and, at least in private, an actress.

It is not necessary to supply fuller argument of the text which follows,
and of which, when the reader has got this length, he is not likely to
let the _denoument_ escape him. But the action of _Corinne_ gets rather
slowly under weigh; and I have known those who complained that they
found the book hard to read because they were so long in coming to any
clear notion of "what it was all about." Therefore so much argument as
has been given seems allowable.

But we ought by this time to have laid sufficient foundation to make it
not rash to erect a small superstructure of critical comment on the book
now once more submitted to English readers. Of that book I own that I
was myself a good many years ago, and for a good many years, a harsh and
even a rather unfair judge. I do not know whether years have brought me
the philosophic mind, or whether the book--itself, as has been said, the
offspring of middle-aged emotions--appeals more directly to a
middle-aged than to a young judgment. To the young of its own time and
the times immediately succeeding it appealed readily enough, and
scarcely Byron himself (who was not a little influenced by it) had more
to do with the Italomania of Europe in the second quarter of this
century than Madame de Stael.

The faults of the novel indeed are those which impress themselves (as
Mackintosh, we have seen, allowed) immediately and perhaps excessively.
M. Sorel observes of its companion sententiously but truly, "Si le style
de _Delphine_ semble vieilli, c'est qu'il a ete jeune." If not merely
the style but the sentiment, the whole properties and the whole stage
management of _Corinne_ seem out of date now, it is only because they
were up to date then. It is easy to laugh--not perhaps very easy to
abstain from laughing--at the "schall" twisted in Corinne's hair, where
even contemporaries mocked the hideous turban with which Madame de Stael
chose to bedizen her not too beautiful head; at Nelvil's inky cloak; at
the putting out of the fire; at the queer stilted half-Ossianic,
half-German rants put in the poetess's mouth; at the endless mingling of
gallantry and pedantry; at the hesitations of Nelvil; at the agonies of
Corinne. When French critics tell us that as they allow the
good-humoured satire on the Count d'Erfeuil to be just, we ought to do
the same in reference to the "cant Britannique" of Nelvil and of the
Edgermond circle, we can only respectfully answer that we should not
presume to dispute their judgment in the first case, but that they
really must leave us to ours in the second. As a matter of fact, Madame
de Stael's goody English characters, are rather like Miss Edgeworth's
naughty French ones in _Leonora_ and elsewhere--clever generalisations
from a little observation and a great deal of preconceived idea, not
studies from the life.

But this (and a great deal more that might be said if it were not
something like petty treason in an introduction-writer thus to play the
devil's advocate against his author) matters comparatively little, and
leaves enough in _Corinne_ to furnish forth a book almost great,
interesting without any "almost," and remarkable as a not very large
shelf-ful in the infinite library of modern fiction deserves remark. For
the passion of its two chief characters, however oddly, and to us
unfashionably, presented, however lacking in the commanding and
perennial qualities which make us indifferent to fashion in the work of
the greatest masters, is _real_. And it is perhaps only after a pretty
long study of literature that one perceives how very little real passion
books, even pretty good books, contain, how much of what at times seems
to us passionate in them owes its appeal to accident, mode, and the
personal equation. Of the highest achievement of art--that which avails
itself of, but subdues, personal thought and feeling in the elaboration
of a perfectly live character--Madame de Stael was indeed incapable. But
in the second order--that which, availing itself of, but not subduing,
the personal element, keeps enough of its veracity and lively force to
enliven a composite structure of character--she has here produced very
noteworthy studies. Corinne is a very fair embodiment of the beauty
which her author would so fain have had; of the youthful ardour which
she had once actually possessed; of the ideas and cults to which she was
sincerely enough devoted; of the instruction and talent which
unquestionably distinguished her. And it is not, I think, fanciful to
discover in this heroine, with all her "Empire" artifice and convention,
all her smack of the theatre and the _salon_, a certain live quiver and
throb, which, as has been already hinted, may be traced to the combined
working in Madame de Stael's mind and heart of the excitements of
foreign travel, the zest of new studies, new scenes, new company, with
the chill regret for lost or passing youth and love, and the chillier
anticipation of coming old age and death. It is a commonplace of
psychology that in shocks and contrasts of this kind the liveliest
workings of the imagination and the emotions are to be expected. If we
once establish the contact and complete the circle, and feel something
of the actual thrill that animated the author, we shall, I think, feel
disposed to forgive Corinne many things--from the dress and attitude
which recall that admirable frontispiece of Pickersgill's to Miss
Austen's _Emma_, where Harriet Smith poses in rapt attitude with
"schall" or scarf complete, to that more terrible portrait of Madame de
Stael herself which editors with remorseless ferocity will persist in
prefixing to her works, and especially to _Corinne_. We shall consent to
sweep away all the _fatras_ and paraphernalia of the work, and to see in
the heroine a real woman enough--loving, not unworthy of being loved,
unfortunate, and very undeserving of her ill fortune. We shall further
see that besides other excuses for the mere guide-book detail, the
enthusiasm for Italy which partly prompted it was genuine enough and
very interesting as a sign of the times--of the approach of a period of
what we may call popularised learning, culture, sentiment. In some
respects _Corinne_ is not merely a guide-book to Italy; it is a
guide-book by prophecy to the nineteenth century.

The minor characters are a very great deal less interesting than Corinne
herself, but they are not despicable, and they set off the heroine and
carry out what story there is well enough. Nelvil of course is a thing
shreddy and patchy enough. He reminds us by turns of Chateaubriand's
Rene and Rousseau's Bomston, both of whom Madame de Stael of course
knew; of Mackenzie's Man of Feeling, with whom she was very probably
acquainted; but most of no special, even bookish, progenitor, but of a
combination of theoretic deductions from supposed properties of man in
general and Englishman in particular. Of Englishmen in particular Madame
de Stael knew little more than a residence (chiefly in _emigre_ society)
for a short time in England, and occasional meetings elsewhere, could
teach her. Of men in general her experience had been a little
unfortunate. Her father had probity, financial skill, and, I suppose, a
certain amount of talent in other directions; but while he must have had
some domestic virtues he was a wooden pedant. Her husband hardly counted
for more in her life than her _maitre d'hotel_, and though there seems
to have been no particular harm in him, had no special talents and no
special virtues. Her first regular lover, Narbonne, was a handsome,
dignified, heartless _roue_ of the old _regime_. Her second, Benjamin
Constant, was a man of genius, and capable of passionate if inconstant
attachment, but also what his own generation in England called a
thorough "raff"--selfish, treacherous, fickle, incapable of considering
either the happiness or the reputation of women, theatrical in his ways
and language, venal, insolent, ungrateful. Schlegel, though he too had
some touch of genius in him, was half pedant, half coxcomb, and full of
intellectual and moral faultiness. The rest of her mighty herd of male
friends and hangers-on ranged from Mathieu de Montmorency--of whom, in
the words of Medora Trevilian it may be said, that he was "only an
excellent person"--through respectable savants like Sismondi and Dumont,
down to a very low level of toady and tuft-hunter. It is rather
surprising that with such models and with no supreme creative faculty
she should have been able to draw such creditable walking gentlemen as
the Frenchman Erfeuil, the Englishman Edgermond, and the Italian
Castel-Forte; and should not have produced a worse hero than Nelvil. For
Nelvil, whatever faults he may have, and contemptible as his vacillating
refusal to take the goods the gods provide him may be, is, after all, if
not quite a live man, an excellent model of what a considerable number
of the men of his time aimed at being, and would have liked to be. He is
not a bit less life-like than Byron's usual hero for instance, who
probably owes not a little to him.

And so we get to a fresh virtue of _Corinne_, or rather we reach its
main virtue by a different side. It has an immense historical value as
showing the temper, the aspirations, the ideas, and in a way the manners
of a certain time and society. A book which does this can never wholly
lose its interest; it must always retain that interest in a great
measure, for those who are able to appreciate it. And it must interest
them far more keenly, when, besides this secondary and, so to speak,
historical merit, it exhibits such veracity in the portraiture of
emotion, as, whatever be its drawbacks, whatever its little temptations
to ridicule, distinguishes the hapless, and, when all is said, the noble
and pathetic figure of Corinne.

                                                      GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] I am creditor neither to praise nor to blame for this translation,
which is the old English version brought out in the same year as the
original, but corrected by another hand for the present edition in the
pretty numerous points where it was lax or unintelligent in actual
rendering. In the places which I have compared, it seems to me to
present that original very fairly now; and I am by no means sure that an
excessively artificial style like that of the French Empire is not best
left to contemporaries to reproduce. At any rate, a really good new
translation of _Corinne_ would be a task unlikely to be achieved except
by rather exceptional talents working in labour of love: and I cannot
blame the publishers of this issue for not waiting till such a
translator appeared.




Book i.

OSWALD.

[Illustration]




CORINNE.




Chapter i.


Oswald, Lord Nelville, Peer of Scotland, quitted Edinburgh for Italy
during the winter of 1794-5. He possessed a noble and handsome figure,
an abundance of wit, an illustrious name, and an independent fortune,
but his health was impaired by deeply-rooted sorrow, and his physicians,
fearing that his lungs were attacked, had prescribed him the air of the
South. Though indifferent as to the preservation of his life, he
followed their advice. He expected, at least, to find in the diversity
of objects he was about to see, something that might divert his mind
from the melancholy that preyed upon it. The most exquisite of
griefs--the loss of a father--was the cause of his malady; this was
heightened by cruel circumstances, which, together with a remorse
inspired by delicate scruples, increased his anguish, which was still
further aggravated by the phantoms of the imagination. Those who suffer,
easily persuade themselves that they are guilty, and violent grief will
extend its painful influence even to the conscience.

At twenty-five years of age he was dissatisfied with life, his mind
anticipated every thing that it could afford, and his wounded
sensibility no longer enjoyed the illusions of the heart. Nobody
appeared more complacent, more devoted to his friends when he was able
to render them service; but not even the good he performed could afford
him a pleasurable sensation.

He incessantly sacrificed his own taste to that of others; but it was
impossible to explain, upon principles of generosity alone, this total
abnegation of every selfish feeling, most frequently to be attributed to
that species of sadness which no longer permitted him to take any
interest in his own fate. Those indifferent to him enjoyed this
disposition so full of benignity and charm; but those who loved him
perceived that he sought the happiness of others like a man who no
longer expected any himself; and they almost experienced a pain from his
conferring a felicity for which it was impossible to make him a return
in kind.

He was, notwithstanding, of a nature susceptible of emotion, sensibility
and passion; he combined every thing that could evoke enthusiasm in
others and in himself; but misfortune and repentance had taught him to
tremble at that destiny whose anger he sought to disarm by forbearing to
solicit any favour at her hands.

He expected to find in a strict attachment to all his duties, and in a
renunciation of every lively enjoyment, a security against those pangs
that tear the soul. What he had experienced struck fear into his heart;
and nothing this world can afford, could, in his estimation, compensate
the risk of those sufferings; but when one is capable of feeling them,
what mode of life can shelter us from their power?

Lord Nelville flattered himself that he should be able to quit Scotland
without regret, since he resided in it without pleasure; but the
unhappy imagination of the children of sensibility is not so formed: he
did not suspect what ties attached him to those scenes which were most
painful to him,--to the home of his father. There were in this
habitation, chambers, places, which he could not approach without
shuddering, and, nevertheless, when he resolved to quit them, he felt
himself still more solitary. His heart became dried up; he was no longer
able to give vent to his sufferings in tears; he could no longer call up
those little local circumstances which affected him deeply; his
recollections no longer possessed anything of the vivid semblance of
real existence; they were no longer in affinity with the objects that
surrounded him; he did not think less on him whose loss he lamented, but
he found it more difficult to recall his presence.

Sometimes also he reproached himself for abandoning those abodes where
his father had dwelt. "Who knows," said he to himself, "whether the
shades of the departed are allowed to pursue every where the objects of
their affection? Perhaps it is only permitted them to wander about the
spot where their ashes repose! Perhaps at this moment my father regrets
me, while distance prevents my hearing his voice exerted to recall his
son. Alas! while he was living must not a concourse of strange events
have persuaded him that I had betrayed his tenderness, that I was a
rebel to my country, to his paternal will, to everything that is sacred
on earth?"--These recollections excited in Lord Nelville a grief so
insupportable that not only was he unable to confide it to others, but
even dreaded himself to sound it to the bottom. So easily do our own
reflections become to us an irreparable evil.

It costs us more to quit our native country when to leave it we must
traverse the sea; all is solemn in a journey of which ocean marks the
first steps. An abyss seems to open behind you, and to render your
return for ever impossible. Besides, the sublime spectacle which the sea
presents must always make a deep impression on the imagination; it is
the image of that Infinity which continually attracts our thoughts, that
run incessantly to lose themselves in it. Oswald, supporting himself on
the helm, his eyes fixed on the waves, was apparently calm, for his
pride, united to his timidity, would scarcely ever permit him to
discover, even to his friends, what he felt; but he was internally
racked with the most painful emotions.

He brought to mind the time when the sight of the sea animated his youth
with the desire of plunging into her waves, and measuring his force
against her's.--"Why," said he to himself, with the most bitter regret,
"why do I yield so unremittingly to reflection? How many pleasures are
there in active life, in those exercises which make us feel the energy
of existence? Death itself then appears but an event, perhaps glorious,
at least sudden, and not preceded by decline. But that death which comes
without having been sought by courage, that death of darkness which
steals from you in the night all that you hold most dear, which despises
your lamentations, repulses your embrace, and pitilessly, opposes to you
the eternal laws of nature and of time! such a death inspires a sort of
contempt for human destiny, for the impotence of grief, for all those
vain efforts that dash and break themselves upon the rock of necessity."

Such were the sentiments that tormented Oswald; and what particularly
characterised his unhappy situation, was the vivacity of youth united to
thoughts of another age. He entered into those ideas which he conceived
must have occupied his father's mind in the last moments of his life;
and he carried the ardour of twenty-five into the melancholy
reflections of old age. He was weary of every thing, and yet still
regretted happiness, as if her illusions were still within his grasp.
This contrast, quite in hostility with the ordinance of nature, which
gives uniformity and graduation to the natural course of things, threw
the soul of Oswald into disorder; but his manners always possessed
considerable sweetness and harmony, and his sadness, far from souring
his temper, only inspired him with more condescension and goodness
towards others.

Two or three times during the passage from Harwich to Empden the sea put
on the appearance of approaching storm; Lord Nelville counselled the
sailors, restored confidence to the passengers, and when he himself
assisted in working the ship, when he took for a moment the place of the
steersman, there was in all he did, a skill and a power which could not
be considered as merely the effect of the agility of the body,--there
was soul in all that he did.

On his quitting the vessel all the crew crowded around Oswald to take
leave of him; they all thanked him for a thousand little services which
he had rendered them during the voyage, and which he no longer
remembered. Upon one occasion, perhaps, it was a child which had
occupied a large share of his attention; more often an old man, whose
tottering steps he had supported when the wind agitated the ship. Such a
general attention, without any regard to rank or quality, was perhaps
never met with. During the whole day he would scarcely bestow a single
moment upon himself: influenced alike by melancholy and benevolence, he
gave his whole time to others. On leaving him the sailors said to him
with one voice, "My dear Lord, may you be more happy!" Oswald had not
once expressed the internal pain he felt; and the men of another rank,
who had accompanied him in his passage, had not spoken a word to him on
that subject. But the common people, in whom their superiors rarely
confide, accustom themselves to discover sentiments and feelings by
other means than speech: they pity you when you suffer, though they are
ignorant of the cause of your grief, and their spontaneous pity is
unmixed with either blame or advice.




Chapter ii.


Travelling, whatever may be said of it, is one of the saddest pleasures
of life. When you find yourself comfortable in some foreign city it
begins to feel, in some degree, like your own country; but to traverse
unknown realms, to hear a language spoken which you hardly comprehend,
to see human countenances which have no connection either with your past
recollections or future prospects, is solitude and isolation, without
dignity and without repose; for that eagerness, that haste to arrive
where nobody expects us, that agitation, of which curiosity is the only
cause, inspires us with very little esteem for ourselves, till the
moment when new objects become a little old, and create around us some
soft ties of sentiment and habit.

The grief of Oswald was, then, redoubled in traversing Germany in order
to repair to Italy. On account of the war it was necessary to avoid
France and its environs; it was also necessary to keep aloof from the
armies who rendered the roads impracticable. This necessity of occupying
his mind with particulars material to the journey, of adopting, every
day, and almost every instant, some new resolution, was quite
insupportable to Lord Nelville. His health, far from becoming better,
often obliged him to stop, when he felt the strongest desire to hasten
to his journey's end or at least to make a start. He spat blood, and
took scarcely any care of himself; for he believed himself guilty, and
became his own accuser with too great a degree of severity. He no longer
wished for life but as it might become instrumental to the defence of
his country. "Has not our country," said he, "some paternal claims upon
us? But we should have the power to serve it usefully: we must not offer
it such a debilitated existence as I drag along to ask of the sun some
principle of life to enable me to struggle against my miseries. None but
a father would receive me to his bosom, under such circumstances, with
affection increased in proportion as I was abandoned by nature and by
destiny."

Lord Nelville had flattered himself that the continual variety of
external objects would distract his imagination a little from those
ideas by which it was habitually occupied; but that circumstance was far
from producing, at first, this happy effect. After any great misfortune
we must become familiarised anew with everything that surrounds us;
accustom ourselves to the faces that we behold again, to the house in
which we dwell, to the daily habits that we resume; each of these
efforts is a painful shock, and nothing multiplies them like a journey.

The only pleasure of Lord Nelville was to traverse the Tirolese
Mountains upon a Scotch horse which he had brought with him, and which
like the horses of that country ascended heights at a gallop: he quitted
the high road in order to proceed by the most steep paths. The
astonished peasants cried out at first with terror at beholding him thus
upon the very brink of precipices, then clapped their hands in
admiration of his address, his agility, and his courage. Oswald was fond
of this sensation of danger; it supports the weight of affliction, it
reconciles us, for a moment, with that life which we have reconquered,
and which it so easy to lose.




Chapter iii.


In the town of Inspruck, before entering Italy, Oswald heard a merchant
at whose house he had stopped some time, relate the story of a French
emigre called the Count d'Erfeuil, which greatly interested him in his
favour. This man had suffered the entire loss of a very large fortune
with the most perfect serenity; he had, by his talent for music,
supported himself and an old uncle, whom he had taken care of until his
death; he had constantly refused to accept offers of pecuniary
assistance pressingly made to him; he had manifested the most brilliant
valour--a French valour--during the war, and the most invincible gaiety
in the midst of reverses. He was desirous of going to Rome to see a
relation, whose heir he was to be, and wished for a companion, or rather
a friend, in order to render the journey more agreeable to both.

The most bitter recollections of Lord Nelville were connected with
France; nevertheless he was exempt from those prejudices which divide
the two nations; for a Frenchman had been his intimate friend, and he
had found in this friend the most admirable union of all the qualities
of the soul. He, therefore, offered to the merchant who related to him
the story of the Count d'Erfeuil, to take this noble and unfortunate
young man to Italy; and at the end of an hour the merchant came to
inform Lord Nelville that his proposition was accepted with gratitude.
Oswald was happy in being able to perform this service, but it cost him
much to renounce his solitude; and his timidity was wounded at finding
himself, all of a sudden, in an habitual relation with a man whom he did
not know.

The Count d'Erfeuil came to pay a visit to Lord Nelville, in order to
thank him. He possessed elegant manners, an easy politeness, good taste,
and appeared, from the very first introduction, perfectly at his ease.
In his company one would feel astonished at all that he had suffered,
for he supported his fate with a courage approaching to oblivion; and
there was in his conversation a facility truly admirable when he spoke
of his own reverses; but less admirable, it must be confessed, when it
extended to other subjects.

"I owe you infinite obligation, my lord," said the Count d'Erfeuil, "for
rescuing me from this Germany, where I was perishing with _ennui_." "You
are here, nevertheless," replied Lord Nelville, "generally beloved and
esteemed." "I have friends here," replied the Count d'Erfeuil, "whom I
sincerely regret; for we meet in this country the best people in the
world; but I do not know a word of German, and you will agree with me
that it would be too long and fatiguing a task for me to set about
learning it now. Since I have had the misfortune to lose my uncle I do
not know what to do with my time, when I had the care of him it filled
up my day, at present the twenty-four hours weigh heavily upon my
hands." "The delicacy of your conduct towards your uncle," said Lord
Nelville, "inspires everybody with the most profound esteem for your
character, Count." "I have only done my duty," replied the Count
d'Erfeuil; "the poor man had overwhelmed me with kindnesses during my
childhood; I should never have deserted him had he lived a hundred
years! But it is happy for him, however, that he is dead; it would be a
happy thing for me also were I to follow him," added he, laughing; "for
I have not much hope in this world. I used my best endeavours, during
the war, to get killed; but, since fate has spared me, I must only live
as well as I can." "I shall congratulate myself on my arrival here,"
answered Lord Nelville, "if you find yourself comfortable at Rome, and
if--" "Oh, _mon Dieu_," interrupted the Count d'Erfeuil, "I shall find
myself comfortable every where: when we are young and gay every thing
accommodates itself to us. It is not from books, nor from meditation,
that I have derived the philosophy which I possess, but from knowledge
of the world, and trials of misfortune; and you see, my lord, that I
have reason to reckon upon chance, since it has procured me the honour
of travelling with you." In finishing these words the Count d'Erfeuil
saluted Lord Nelville with the best grace in the world, settled the hour
of departure for the following day, and took his leave.

The Count d'Erfeuil and Lord Nelville set out on the morrow. Oswald,
after some expressions of politeness had passed between them, was
several hours without saying a word; but perceiving that this silence
was disagreeable to his companion, he asked him if he anticipated
pleasure from a residence in Italy: "_Mon Dieu_," replied the Count
d'Erfeuil, "I know what I have to expect from that country. I have no
hope of any amusement there: a friend of mine, who had passed six months
at Rome, has assured me there is not a province of France where one may
not find a better theatre and a more agreeable society than at Rome, but
in that ancient capital of the world I shall surely find some Frenchmen
to chat with, and that is all I desire." "You have not attempted to
learn Italian?" interrupted Oswald. "Not at all," replied the Count
d'Erfeuil; "that did not enter into my plan of study." And in saying
this he assumed such a serious air that one would have believed it was a
resolution founded upon grave motives.

"If I may speak my mind to you," continued the Count d'Erfeuil, "as a
nation, I love only the English and the French, one must either be proud
like them or brilliant like us; all the rest is only imitation." Oswald
was silent; the Count d'Erfeuil some moments after resumed the
conversation by the most lively sallies of wit and gaiety. He played
with words and phrases in a very ingenious manner, but neither external
objects nor intimate sentiments were the object of his discourse. His
conversation proceeded, if it may be so expressed, neither from without
nor within; it was neither reflective nor imaginative, and the bare
relations of society were its subject.

He repeated twenty proper names to Lord Nelville, either in France, or
in England, to know if he was acquainted with them, and related upon
this occasion highly seasoned anecdotes with a most graceful turn; but
one would have said, in hearing him, that the only discourse suitable to
a man of taste was, to use the expression, the gossip of good company.

Lord Nelville reflected some time on the character of Count d'Erfeuil;
that singular mixture of courage and frivolity, that contempt of
misfortune, so great if it had cost more efforts, so heroic if it did
not proceed from the same source that renders us incapable of deep
affections. "An Englishman," said Oswald to himself, "would be weighed
down with sadness under similar circumstances.--Whence proceeds the
resolution of this Frenchman? Whence proceeds also his mobility? Does
the Count d'Erfeuil then truly understand the art of living? Is it only
my own disordered mind that whispers to me I am superior to him? Does
his light existence accord better than mine with the rapidity of human
life? And must we shun reflection as an enemy, instead of giving up our
whole soul to it?" Vainly would Oswald have cleared up those doubts; no
one can escape from the intellectual region allotted him; and qualities
are still more difficult to subdue than defects.

The Count d'Erfeuil paid no attention to Italy, and rendered it almost
impossible for Lord Nelville to bestow a thought upon it; for he
incessantly distracted him from that disposition of mind which excites
admiration of a fine country, and gives a relish for its picturesque
charms. Oswald listened as much as he could to the noise of the wind and
to the murmuring of the waves; for all the voices of nature conveyed
more gratification to his soul than he could possibly receive from the
social conversation indulged in at the foot of the Alps, among the
ruins, and on the borders of the sea.

The sadness which consumed Oswald would have opposed fewer obstacles to
the pleasure which he could have derived from Italy than the gaiety of
Count d'Erfeuil, the sorrows of a sensitive mind will blend with the
contemplation of nature and the enjoyment of the fine arts; but
frivolity, in whatever form it presents itself, deprives attention of
its force, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its profundity.
One of the singular effects of this frivolity was to inspire Lord
Nelville with a great deal of timidity in his intercourse with Count
d'Erfeuil: embarrassment is nearly always on the side of him whose
character is the more serious. Mental levity imposes upon the mind
habitually disposed to meditation, and he who proclaims himself happy,
appears wiser than he who suffers.

The Count d'Erfeuil was mild, obliging, and easy in every thing; serious
only in self love, and worthy of being regarded as he regarded others;
that is to say, as a good companion of pleasures and of perils; but he
had no idea whatever of sharing sorrows: he was wearied to death with
the melancholy of Oswald, and, as much from goodness of heart as from
taste, was desirous of dissipating it.

"What is it you find wanting?" said he to him often; "are you not young,
rich, and if you choose, in good health? for you are only ill because
you are sad. For my part I have lost my fortune, my existence: I know
not in fact what will become of me; nevertheless I enjoy life as if I
possessed all the prosperity that earth can afford." "You are endowed
with a courage as rare as it is honourable," replied Lord Nelville; "but
the reverses which you have experienced are less injurious in their
consequences than the grief which preys upon the heart." "The grief
which preys upon the heart," cried the Count d'Erfeuil; "Oh! it is true,
that is the most cruel of all;--but--but yet we should console ourselves
under it; for a sensible man ought to drive away from his soul every
thing that can neither be useful to others nor to himself. Are we not
here below to be useful first and happy afterwards? My dear Nelville let
us hold to that."

What the Count d'Erfeuil said was reasonable, according to the general
import of the word, for it savoured a good deal of what is usually
called common sense: passionate characters are much more capable of
folly than cool and superficial ones; but so far was the Count
d'Erfeuil's mode of feeling from exciting the confidence of Lord
Nelville that he would gladly have convinced him he was the most happy
of men in order to avoid the pain which his consolation gave him.

However the Count became greatly attached to Lord Nelville: his
resignation and his simplicity, his modesty and his pride, inspired him
with an involuntary respect for his character. He was concerned at the
calm exterior of Oswald; he ransacked his head to bring to recollection
all the most grave sayings which, in his childhood, he had heard from
his aged parents, in order to try their effect upon Lord Nelville; and,
quite astonished at not overcoming his apparent coldness, he said to
himself: "Do I not possess courage, goodness, and openness of
disposition? Am I not beloved in society? What is it then that I want to
make an impression upon this man? There surely must be some
misunderstanding between us which probably arises from his not
understanding French sufficiently well."




Chapter iv.


An unforeseen circumstance greatly increased the sentiment of respect
which the Count d'Erfeuil experienced already, almost without knowing
it, for his travelling companion. The health of Lord Nelville had
obliged him to stop some days at Ancona. The mountains and the sea
render the situation of this city very fine, and the crowd of Greeks who
work in front of their shops seated in the oriental manner, the
diversity of costume of the inhabitants of the Levant, whom one meets in
the streets, give it an original and interesting appearance. The art of
civilization has a continual tendency to render all men alike in
appearance and almost in reality; but the mind and the imagination take
pleasure in the characteristic differences of nations: it is only by
affectation and by calculation that men resemble each other; all that is
natural is varied. The eyes then, at least, derive some little pleasure
from diversity of costume; it seems to promise a new manner of feeling
and of judging.

The Greek, the Catholic, and the Jewish worships exist simultaneously
and peaceably in the city of Ancona. The ceremonies of these several
religions differ widely from each other; but in those various forms of
worship, the same sentiment lifts the soul to heaven--the same cry of
grief, the same need of support.

The catholic church is on the top of a mountain, which dominates the
sea: the roaring of the waves is often mingled with the song of the
priests. The interior of the church is overladen with a crowd of rather
tawdry ornaments; but if one stop beneath the portico of the temple, the
soul is filled with the purest sentiments of religion, heightened by
that sublime spectacle the sea, on whose bosom man has never been able
to imprint the smallest trace. The earth is tilled by him, the mountains
are cut through by his roads, and rivers shut up into canals to
transport his merchandise; but if the waves are furrowed for a moment by
his vessels the billows immediately efface this slight mark of
servitude, and the sea appears again as it was the first day of the
creation.

Lord Nelville had fixed his departure for Rome for the morrow, when he
heard, during the night the most dreadful cries in the city. He hastily
quitted the inn in order to learn the cause, when he beheld a terrible
fire, which proceeded from the port, and climbed from house to house
even to the very top of the city. The flames were mirrored at a distance
in the sea; the wind, which increased their fierceness, also disturbed
their image in the surging waves, which reflected in a thousand ways the
lurid traits of the conflagration.

The inhabitants of Ancona[2], not having among them pumps in good
condition, were obliged to carry water to extinguish the flames, which
they did with great eagerness. Amidst the din of different cries was
heard the clank of chains, from the galley slaves, who were employed in
saving that city which served them for a prison. The different nations
of the Levant, which commerce draws to Ancona, expressed their fear by
the stupor which appeared in their looks. The merchants, on beholding
their warehouses in flames, entirely lost their presence of mind. Alarm
for the loss of fortune affects the common order of men as much as the
fear of death, and does not inspire that energy of the soul, that
enthusiasm which brings resources to our aid.

The cries of sailors have always something doleful and prolonged in
them, and were now rendered still more so by terror. The mariners on the
shores of the Adriatic are clad in a red and brown hooded cloak of most
singular appearance, and from the midst of this vestment emerged the
animated countenances of the Italians, painting fear in a thousand
shapes. The inhabitants, throwing themselves down in the streets,
covered their heads with their cloaks, as if nothing remained for them
now to do but to avoid seeing their disaster; others precipitated
themselves into those flames from which they entertained no hope of
escaping. A thoughtless fury and a blind resignation appeared by turns;
but nowhere was seen that cool deliberation which redoubles our
resources and our strength.

Oswald recollected that there were two English vessels in the harbour
which had on board pumps of the best construction: he ran to the
captain, who accompanied him in a boat to bring away these pumps. The
inhabitants, seeing them enter the boat, exclaimed, "_Ah! strangers you
do well to quit our unhappy city_!" "We shall come back again," said
Oswald. They did not believe him. He returned however, fixed one of the
pumps opposite the first house on fire, near the port, and the other
facing that which was burning in the middle of the street. The Count
d'Erfeuil exposed his life with carelessness, courage, and gaiety; the
English sailors, and the domestics of Lord Nelville, all came to his
aid; for the inhabitants of Ancona remained motionless, hardly
comprehending what these strangers were about, and not expecting the
least success from them.

The bells rang in every quarter, the priests made processions, the women
lamented and prostrated themselves before the images of the saints at
the corners of the streets; but no one thought of those natural means
which God has given to man for his defence. However, when the
inhabitants perceived the happy effect of Oswald's activity; when they
saw that the flames were being extinguished, and that their houses would
be saved, they passed from astonishment to enthusiasm; they thronged
about Lord Nelville, and kissed his hands with such lively eagerness
that he was obliged to appear angry in order to drive away from him all
who might obstruct the rapid succession of orders, and of efforts
necessary to save the city. Every body was arranged under his command;
for, in the least as well as in the greatest circumstances, when danger
presents itself courage assumes its proper station; as soon as men are
possessed with fear they cease to be jealous of one another.

Oswald, however, amid the general din, distinguished some cries more
horrible than the rest, which resounded from the other extremity of the
city. He demanded whence these cries proceeded, and was informed that
they came from the quarter which was allotted for the Jews: the officer
of the police was accustomed to shut the gates of this quarter in the
evening, and, the fire having reached that part of the city, the Jews
had no means of escape.

Oswald shuddered at this idea, and demanded that the gate should be
immediately opened; but some women of the people who heard him threw
themselves at his feet, entreating him to desist.--"_You see very
well_," said they, "_our good angel! that it is certainly on account of
these Jews who reside here that we have suffered this fire, it is they
who bring calamity upon us, and if you set them at liberty all the water
in the sea will not extinguish the flames_." And they besought Oswald to
let the Jews be burnt with as much eloquence and tenderness as if they
were soliciting an act of clemency. This was not the effect of natural
cruelty, but of a superstitious imagination acutely impressed by a great
misfortune; however, Oswald could hardly contain his indignation on
hearing these strange entreaties.

He sent four English sailors with hatchets to break open the gates which
inclosed these unfortunate people, who spread themselves in an instant
through the city, running to their merchandise with that greed of
possession which has something very melancholy in it, when it induces
mortals to risk their lives for worldly wealth. One would say that in
the present state of society the simple blessing of life is esteemed by
man of little value.

There now remained but one house at the top of the city, which the
flames surrounded in such a manner that it was impossible to extinguish
them, and more impossible to enter it. The inhabitants of Ancona had
manifested so little concern for this house, that the English sailors,
not believing it to be inhabited, had dragged their pumps towards the
harbour. Oswald himself, stunned by the cries of those who surrounded
him and solicited his aid, had not paid attention to it. The fire had
extended the latest to that quarter, but had made considerable progress
there. Lord Nelville demanded so impatiently what house that was, that
at length a man informed him it was the madhouse. At this idea his whole
soul was agitated; he turned, but found none of the sailors around him;
the Count d'Erfeuil was not there either, and he would vainly have
addressed himself to the inhabitants of Ancona: they were almost all
occupied in saving their merchandise, and considered it absurd to run
any risk to rescue men, of whom there was not one who was not incurably
mad: "_It is a blessing from Heaven_," said they, "_for them, and for
their relations, that they should die in this manner; without any one
incurring a crime by their death_."

Whilst they held such language as this around Oswald, he proceeded with
the utmost speed towards the madhouse, and the crowd, by whom he was
censured, followed him with a confused sentiment of involuntary
enthusiasm. As Oswald approached the house, he saw, at the only window
which was not surrounded with flames, a number of lunatics, who regarded
the progress of the fire with that horrid kind of smile which either
supposes ignorance of all the ills of life, or so much grief at the
bottom of the soul that death in no shape can terrify it. An
inexpressible shudder seized upon Oswald at this sight; he had felt in
the most dreadful moment of his despair, that his reason was on the
point of being affected, and since that epoch, the aspect of madness
always inspired him with the most sorrowful emotions of pity. He seized
a ladder which he found near the spot, fixed it against the wall, and
entered by the window into an apartment where the unhappy people who
remained in the madhouse were assembled together.

Their insanity was so harmless, that they were suffered to be at large
in the interior of the house with the exception of one, who was chained
in this very room, where the flames already began to appear through the
door, but had not yet consumed the floor. These miserable creatures,
quite degraded by disease and suffering, were so surprised and enchanted
by the appearance of Oswald among them, that they obeyed him at first
without resistance. He ordered them to descend before him, one after
another, by means of the ladder, which the flames might devour in a
moment. The first of these wretched people obeyed without uttering a
word; the accent and the physiognomy of Lord Nelville had entirely
subdued him. A third wished to resist, without suspecting the danger
that he incurred by each moment of delay, and without thinking of the
peril to which he exposed Oswald in detaining him. The people, who felt
all the horrors of his situation, cried out to Lord Nelville to return,
and to let those maniacs get away how they could. But the deliverer
would listen to nothing till he had achieved his generous enterprise.

Of the six lunatics who were in the madhouse, five were already saved;
there now only remained the sixth who was chained. Oswald loosened his
irons, and endeavoured to make him take the same means of escaping as
his companions had done; but it was a poor young man, whose reason was
entirely destroyed, and, finding himself at liberty, after being chained
for two years, he darted about the room with an extravagant joy. This
joy rose to fury, when Oswald tried to make him go out at the window.
Lord Nelville perceiving that it was impossible to prevail upon this
maniac to save himself, though the flames increased around them, seized
him in his arms, in spite of the efforts of the unhappy wretch, who
struggled against his benefactor. He carried him off, without knowing
where he placed his feet, so much was his sight obscured by the smoke;
he leaped from nearly the middle of the ladder, and consigned the
lunatic, who loaded him with curses, to some people whom he made promise
to take care of him.

Oswald, animated by the danger he had just run, his hair dishevelled,
his look so proud yet so mild, struck the crowd who beheld him with
admiration, and almost with fanaticism; the women, above all, expressed
themselves with that imagination which is an almost universal gift in
Italy, and even gives a nobleness to the conversation of the common
people. They threw themselves on their knees before him, and cried,
"_You are surely St Michael, the patron of our city; display thy wings
most holy saint! but do not quit us: deign to ascend the steeple of the
cathedral, that all the city may behold, and pray to thee_." "_My child
is sick_," said one, "_heal him_." "_Tell me_," said another, "_where my
husband is, who has been absent several years_?" Oswald sought a means
of escape. The Count d'Erfeuil arrived, and said to him, pressing his
hand, "My dear Nelville, we ought to share all things with our friends;
it is unkind of you thus to monopolise all the danger." "Release me from
these people," said Oswald to him, in a low voice. A moment of darkness
favoured their flight, and both of them went in haste to get post
horses.

Lord Nelville experienced, at first, some pleasure from the good action
he had just performed, but with whom could he enjoy it now that his best
friend was no more? How unhappy is the lot of orphans! The most
fortunate events, as well as the most painful, make them feel alike the
solitude of the heart. How is it possible, in effect, ever to replace
that affection which is born with us, that intelligence, that sympathy
of blood, that friendship prepared by heaven between the child and the
father? We may still, it is true, find an object of love; but one in
whom we can confide our whole soul is a happiness which can never be
found again.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Ancona is now pretty nearly in the same predicament that it was
then.




Chapter v.


Oswald pursued his journey through the Marches of Ancona, and the
Ecclesiastical States, without any thing attracting his observation, or
exciting his interest: this was occasioned as well by the melancholy
habit of his soul, as by a certain natural indolence, from which he was
only to be aroused by strong passions. His taste for the arts had not
yet unfolded itself; he had never dwelt but in France, where society is
all in all, and in London, where political interests absorb almost every
other: his imagination, concentrated in his sufferings, had not yet
learnt to take pleasure in the wonders of nature and the masterpieces of
art.

The Count d'Erfeuil traversed every town with the "Traveller's Guide" in
his hand, and had at once the double pleasure of losing his time in
seeing every thing, and of declaring, that he had seen nothing which
could excite admiration in any person acquainted with France. The
_ennui_ of Count d'Erfeuil discouraged Oswald; he, besides, entertained
prejudices against the Italians and against Italy: he did not yet
penetrate the mystery of this nation or of this country;--a mystery
which must be comprehended by the imagination, rather than by that
faculty of judgment which is particularly developed by an English
education.

The Italians are much more remarkable for what they have been, and for
what they might be than for what they actually are. The deserts which
surround the city of Rome, that land which, fatigued with glory, seems
to hold in contempt the praise of being productive, presents but an
uncultivated and neglected country to him who considers it with regard
to utility. Oswald, accustomed from his infancy to the love of order and
public prosperity, received, at first, unfavourable impressions in
traversing those deserted plains which announce the approach to that
city formerly the queen of the world: he blamed the indolence of the
inhabitants and that of their rulers. Lord Nelville judged of Italy as
an enlightened administrator, the Count d'Erfeuil as a man of the world:
thus the one from reason, and the other from levity, were not sensible
of that effect which the country about Rome produces upon the
imagination, when it is impressed with the recollections, the
sympathies, the natural beauties and the illustrious misfortunes which
spread over these regions an undefinable charm.

The Count made ludicrous lamentations on the environs of Rome. "What,"
said he, "no country house, no carriage, nothing that announces the
vicinity of a great city? Heavens! what a melancholy prospect!" In
approaching Rome, the postillions cried, with transport, "_See! See,
there is the dome of St Peter's_!" It is thus that the Neapolitans shew
mount Vesuvius, and the sea excites the same emotions of pride in the
inhabitants of the coast. "One would have thought they had seen the dome
of _Les Invalides_;" cried the Count d'Erfeuil. This comparison, more
patriotic than just, destroyed the impression which Oswald might have
received on beholding this magnificent wonder of human creation. They
entered Rome, not on a fine day--not on a fine night--but on a gloomy
evening, which tarnished and confounded every object. They traversed the
Tiber without remarking it; they arrived at Rome by the Porta del Popolo
which conducts immediately to the Corso, to the largest street of the
modern city, but to that part of Rome which possesses the least
originality, because it resembles more the other cities of Europe.

Crowds were walking in the streets; the puppet shows and the charlatans
were formed in groups in the square, where stands the column of
Antoninus. All the attention of Oswald was captivated by the objects
nearest to him. The name of Rome no longer vibrated through his soul; he
felt nothing but that isolation which oppresses the heart when we enter
a strange city, when we behold that multitude of people to whom our
existence is unknown, and who have no interest in common with us. Those
reflections, so sad for every man, are still more so for the English,
who are accustomed to live among themselves, and who with difficulty
enter into the manners of other nations. In the vast caravansary of Rome
everything is foreign, even the Romans seem to inhabit there not as the
possessors, _but like pilgrims who repose beneath the ruins_[3]. Oswald,
oppressed with painful sensations, shut himself up at home, and went not
out to see the city. He was very far from thinking that this country,
which he entered under such sadness and dejection of spirits, would soon
become for him a source of so many new ideas and enjoyments.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] This reflection is taken from a letter on Rome, by M. de Humboldt,
brother of the celebrated Traveller, and Prussian Minister at Rome. It
is difficult to find anywhere a man whose conversation and writings
bespeak more knowledge and ideas.




Book ii.

CORINNE AT THE CAPITOL.

[Illustration]




Chapter i.


Oswald awoke in Rome. His first looks were saluted by the brilliancy of
an Italian sun, and his soul was penetrated with a sentiment of love and
gratitude towards that Power which seemed manifested in its resplendent
beams. He heard the bells of the different churches of the city; the
firing of cannon at intervals announced some great solemnity. He
demanded the cause of it, and was informed that that morning was to be
crowned, at the Capitol, the most celebrated woman in Italy. Corinne,
poetess, writer, _improvisatrice_, and one of the greatest beauties of
Rome. He made some enquiries respecting this ceremony consecrated by the
names of Petrarch and of Tasso, and all the answers that he received
strongly excited his curiosity.

There is certainly nothing more contrary to the habits and opinions of
an Englishman, than this great publicity given to the destiny of a
woman; but even foreigners are affected, at least for a moment, with
that enthusiasm which is inspired in the Italians by all those talents
that belong to the imagination, and they forget the prejudices of their
country amidst a nation so warm in the expression of its feelings. The
common people of Rome reason with taste upon their statues, pictures,
monuments and antiquities; and literary merit, carried to a certain
pitch, excites in them a national interest.

Oswald quitted his lodgings to repair to the public square, where he
heard everybody speaking of the genius and talents of Corinne. The
streets through which she was to pass had been decorated; the people,
who rarely assemble together except to pay their homage to fortune or
power, were, upon this occasion, almost in a tumult to behold a female
whose mind was her only claim to distinction. In the actual state of the
Italians the field of glory is only open to them in the fine arts, and
they possess a sensibility for genius in that department, which ought to
give birth to great men, if applause alone were sufficient to produce
them, if the stress of vigorous life, great interests and an independent
existence were not necessary to nourish thought.

Oswald walked the streets of Rome, waiting the arrival of Corinne. At
every instant he heard her name accompanied with some anecdote
concerning her, which implied the possession of all those talents that
captivate the imagination. One said that her voice was the most touching
in Italy; another, that nobody played tragedy like her; somebody else,
that she danced like a nymph, and designed with as much taste as
invention: all said that nobody had ever written or improvised such fine
verses, and that, in habitual conversation she possessed by turns, a
grace and an eloquence which charmed every mind. Disputes were entered
into as to what city of Rome had given her birth; but the Romans
maintained, warmly, that she must have been born in Rome to speak
Italian in such purity as she did. No one was acquainted with her family
name. Her first work had appeared five years before, and only bore the
name of Corinne; nobody knew where she had lived, nor what she had been
before that time: she was, however, nearly twenty-six years of age. This
mystery and publicity both at the same time, this woman of whom
everybody spoke, but whose real name was known to nobody, appeared to
Lord Nelville one of the wonders of the singular country he had just
come to live in. He would have judged very severely of such a woman in
England, but he did not apply the usual etiquette of society to Italy,
and the coronation of Corinne inspired him beforehand with that interest
to which an adventure of Ariosto would give birth.

Very fine and brilliant music preceded the arrival of the triumphal
procession. Any event, whatever it may be, which is announced by music,
always produces emotion. A great number of Roman Lords, and some
foreigners, preceded the car of Corinne. "_That is the train of her
admirers!_" said a Roman. "_Yes_," replied the other, "_she receives the
incense of everybody; but she grants nobody a decided preference: she is
rich and independent; it is even believed, and certainly her appearance
bespeaks it, that she is a woman of illustrious birth who desires to
remain unknown_." "_Be it as it may_," replied a third, "_she is a
goddess wrapt in a cloud_." Oswald looked at the man who spoke thus, and
every thing about him indicated that he belonged to the most obscure
rank in society; but in the south people so naturally make use of
poetical expressions, that one would say they were inhaled with the air
and inspired by the sun.

At length way was made through the crowd for the four white horses that
drew the car of Corinne. Corinne was seated in this car which was
constructed upon an antique model, and young girls, dressed in white,
walked on each side of her. Wherever she passed an abundance of perfumes
was thrown into the air; the windows, decorated with flowers and scarlet
tapestry, were crowded with spectators; every body cried, "_Long live
Corinne!_" "_Long live Genius and Beauty!_" The emotion was general but
Lord Nelville did not yet share it, and though he had observed in his
own mind that in order to judge of such a ceremony we must lay aside
the reserve of the English and the pleasantry of the French, he did not
share heartily in the _fete_ till at last he beheld Corinne.

[Illustration: _Corinne at the Capitol._]

She was dressed like the Sybil of Domenichino; an Indian shawl twisted
about her head, and her hair of the finest jet black, entwined with this
shawl; her dress was white, with blue drapery from her bosom downwards,
and her costume was very picturesque, at the same time without departing
so much from established modes as to savour of affectation. Her attitude
on the car was noble and modest: it was easily perceived that she was
pleased with being admired, but a sense of timidity was mingled with her
joy, and seemed to ask pardon for her triumph. The expression of her
physiognomy, of her eyes, of her smile, interested all in her favour,
and the first look made Lord Nelville her friend, even before that
sentiment was subdued by a warmer impression. Her arms were of dazzling
beauty; her shape, tall, but rather full, after the manner of the
Grecian statues, energetically characterised youth and happiness; and
there was something inspired in her look. One might perceive in her
manner of greeting and returning thanks for the applause which she
received, a kind of disposition which heightened the lustre of the
extraordinary situation in which she was placed. She gave at once the
idea of a priestess of Apollo advancing towards the temple of the Sun,
and of a woman of perfect simplicity in the common relations of life. To
conclude, in her every motion there was a charm which excited interest,
curiosity, astonishment and affection. The admiration of the people
increased in proportion as she advanced towards the Capitol--that spot
so fertile in memories. The beauty of the sky, the enthusiasm of these
Romans, and above all Corinne, electrified the imagination of Oswald. He
had often, in his own country, seen statesmen carried in triumph by the
people, but this was the first time he had been a witness of the
honours paid to a woman--a woman illustrious only by the gifts of
genius. Her chariot of victory was not purchased at the cost of the
tears of any human being, and no regret, no terror overshadowed that
admiration which the highest endowments of nature, imagination,
sentiment and mind, could not fail to excite.

Oswald was so absorbed in his reflections, so occupied by novel ideas,
that he did not remark the antique and celebrated places through which
the car of Corinne passed. It was at the foot of the flight of steps
which leads to the Capitol, that the car stopped, and at that moment all
the friends of Corinne rushed forward to offer her their hands. She
chose that of the prince Castel-Forte, the most esteemed of the Roman
nobility, for his intellect and for his disposition: every one approved
the choice of Corinne, and she ascended the steps of the Capitol whose
imposing majesty seemed to receive, with kind condescension, the light
footsteps of a woman. A new flourish of music was heard at the moment of
Corinne's arrival, the cannon resounded and the triumphant Sybil entered
the palace prepared for her reception.

At the lower end of the hall in which she was received were placed the
senator who was to crown her, and the conservators of the senate; on one
side all the cardinals and the most distinguished women of the country;
on the other the men of letters of the academy of Rome; and at the
opposite extremity the hall was occupied by a part of the immense crowd
who had followed Corinne. The chair destined for her was placed a step
below that of the senator. Corinne, before she seated herself in it,
made a genuflection on the first step, agreeably to the etiquette
required in this august assembly. She did it with so much nobleness and
modesty, so much gentleness and dignity, that Lord Nelville in that
moment felt his eyes moist with tears: he was astonished at his own
tenderness, but in the midst of all her pomp and triumph it seemed to
him that Corinne had implored, by her looks, the protection of a
friend--that protection which no woman, however superior, can dispense
with; and how sweet, said he within himself, would it be to become the
support of her to whom sensibility alone renders that support necessary.

As soon as Corinne was seated the Roman poets began to read the sonnets
and odes which they had composed for the occasion. They all exalted her
to the skies, but the praises which they lavishly bestowed upon her did
not draw any characteristic features of distinction between her and
other women of superior talents. They were only pleasing combinations of
images, and allusions to mythology, which might, from the days of Sappho
to those in which we live, have been addressed indiscriminately to any
woman who had rendered herself illustrious by her literary talents.

Already Lord Nelville felt hurt at this manner of praising Corinne; he
thought, in beholding her, that he could at that very instant draw a
portrait of her, more true, more just, more characteristic--a portrait
in fact that could only belong to Corinne.




Chapter ii.


The Prince Castel-Forte then rose to speak, and his observations upon
the merits of Corinne excited the attention of the whole assembly. He
was about fifty years of age, and there was in his speech and in his
deportment much deliberate ease and dignity. The assurances which Lord
Nelville received from those about him, that he was only the friend of
Corinne, excited, in his lordship's mind, an interest for the portrait
which he drew of her, unmixed with any other emotion. Without such a
security a confused sentiment of jealousy would have already disturbed
the soul of Oswald.

The Prince Castel-Forte read some unpretentious pages of prose which
were particularly calculated to display the genius of Corinne. He first
pointed out the peculiar merit of her work, and said that that merit
partly consisted of her profound study of foreign literature: she
united, in the highest degree, imagination, florid description and all
the brilliancy of the south, with that knowledge, that observation of
the human heart, which falls to the share of those countries where
external objects excite less interest.

He extolled the elegant graces and the lively disposition of Corinne--a
gaiety which partook of no improper levity, but proceeded solely from
the vivacity of the mind and the freshness of the imagination. He
attempted to praise her sensibility, but it was easily perceived that
personal regret mingled itself with this part of his speech. He lamented
the difficulty which a woman of her superior cast experienced of meeting
with the object of which she has formed to herself an ideal portrait--a
portrait clad with every endowment the heart and mind can wish for. He
however took pleasure in painting the passionate sensibility which the
poetry of Corinne inspired, and the art she possessed of seizing every
striking relation between the beauties of nature and the most intimate
impressions of the soul. He exalted the originality of Corinne's
expressions, those expressions which were the offspring of her character
and manner of feeling, without ever permitting any shade of affectation
to disfigure a species of charm not only natural but involuntary.

He spoke of her eloquence as possessing an irresistible force and energy
which must the more transport her hearers the more they possessed within
themselves true intellectual sensibility. "Corinne," said he, "is
indubitably the most celebrated woman of our country, and nevertheless
it is only her friends who can properly delineate her; for we must
always have recourse, in some degree, to conjecture, in order to
discover the genuine qualities of the soul. They may be concealed from
our knowledge by celebrity as well as obscurity, if some sort of
sympathy does not assist us to penetrate them." He enlarged upon her
talent for extemporisation, which did not resemble any thing of that
description known in Italy. "It is not only to the fecundity of her mind
that we ought to attribute it;" said he; "but to the deep emotion which
every generous thought excites in her. She cannot pronounce a word that
recalls such thoughts without enthusiasm, that inexhaustible source of
sentiments and of ideas animating and inspiring her." The Prince
Castel-Forte also made his audience sensible of the beauties of a style
always pure and harmonious. "The poetry of Corinne," added he, "is an
intellectual melody which can alone express the charm of the most
fugitive and delicate impressions."

He praised the conversation of his heroine in a manner that easily made
it perceived he had experienced its delight. "Imagination and
simplicity, justness and elevation, strength and tenderness, are
united," said he, "in the same person to give incessant variety to all
the pleasures of the mind: we may apply to her, this charming verse of
Petrarch:

     _Il parlar che nell' anima si sente._[4]

and, I believe, in her will be found that grace so much boasted of,
that oriental charm which the ancients attributed to Cleopatra.

"The places I have visited with her, the music we have heard together,
the pictures she has pointed out to me, the books she has made me
comprehend, compose the universe of my imagination. There is in all
these objects a spark of her life; and if I were to exist at a distance
from her I would wish at least to be surrounded by those objects,
certain as I am of finding nowhere else that trace of fire, that trace
of herself in fact, which she has left in them. Yes," continued he (and
at that moment his eyes fell by chance upon Oswald), "behold Corinne; if
you can pass your life with her, if that double existence which it is in
her power to give can be assured to you for a long time; but do not
behold her if you are condemned to quit her; you will seek in vain as
long as you live that creative soul which shares and multiplies your
sentiments and your thoughts; you will never behold her like again."

Oswald started at these words, his eyes fixed themselves upon Corinne,
who heard them with an emotion that was not inspired by self-love, but
which was allied to the most amiable and delicate feelings. The Prince
Castel-Forte was much affected for a moment, and then resumed his
speech. He spoke of Corinne's talent for music, for painting, for
declamation and for dancing: In all these talents, he said, she was
entirely herself, not confined to any particular manner, or to any
particular rule, but expressing in various languages the same powers of
the imagination, and the same witchery of the fine arts under all their
different forms.

"I do not flatter myself," said the Prince Castel-Forte in concluding,
"that I have been able to paint a lady of whom it is impossible to form
an idea without having heard her; but her presence is, for us at Rome,
as one of the benefits of our brilliant sky and our inspired nature.
Corinne is the tie that unites her friends together; she is the moving
principle and the interest of our life. We reckon upon her goodness; we
are proud of her genius; we say to strangers, 'Behold her! She is the
image of our beautiful Italy; she is what we should be without the
ignorance, the envy, the discord and the indolence to which our fate has
condemned us.' We take pleasure in contemplating her as an admirable
production of our climate and of our fine arts,--as a scion shooting out
of the past, as a prophecy of the future. When foreigners insult this
country, whence has issued that intelligence which has shed its light
over Europe; when they are without pity for our defects, which arise out
of our misfortunes, we will say to them: 'Behold Corinne! 'Tis our
desire to follow her footsteps; we would endeavour to become, as men,
what she is as woman, if man like woman could create a world in his own
heart; and if our genius, necessarily dependent upon social relations
and external circumstances, could be kindled by the torch of poetry
alone.'"

The moment the Prince Castel-Forte left off speaking unanimous applause
was heard on all sides, and though towards the conclusion of his speech
he indirectly blamed the present state of the Italians, all the nobles
of the state approved of it; so true it is that we find in Italy that
sort of liberality which does not lead men to alter institutions, but
which pardons in superior minds a tranquil opposition to existing
prejudices. The reputation of Prince Castel-Forte was very great in
Rome. He spoke with a rare sagacity, which is a remarkable gift in a
nation who exhibit more intellect in their conduct than in their
conversation. He did not in his worldly concerns shew that address which
often distinguishes the Italians, but he took delight in thought, and
did not dread the fatigue of meditation. The happy inhabitants of the
south sometimes shrink from this fatigue, and flatter themselves that
imagination will do everything for them, as their fertile soil produces
fruit without cultivation assisted only by the bounty of the sky.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] The language which is felt in the depth of the soul.




Chapter iii.


Corinne arose when the Prince Castel-Forte had ceased speaking; she
thanked him by an inclination of the head so dignified yet so gentle,
that it expressed at once the modesty and joy so natural at having
received praise according to her heart's desire. It was the custom that
every poet crowned at the Capitol should recite or extemporise some
piece of poetry, before the destined laurel was placed on his head.
Corinne ordered her lyre to be brought to her--the instrument of her
choice--which greatly resembled the harp, but was however more antique
in form and more simple in its sounds. In tuning it she was seized with
uncommon timidity, and it was with a trembling voice that she asked to
know the subject imposed on her. "_The glory and happiness of Italy!_"
cried all around her with a unanimous voice. "Very well," replied she
already fired with enthusiasm, already supported by her genius, "_the
glory and happiness of Italy_;" and feeling herself animated by the love
of her country she commenced the most charming strains, of which prose
can give but a very imperfect idea.

       *       *       *       *       *

_The Improvisation of Corinne, at the Capitol._

"Italy, empire of the sun! Italy, mistress of the world! Italy, the
cradle of letters, I salute thee! How often has the human race been
subjected to thee, tributary to thy arms, to thy art and to thy sky.

"A deity quitted Olympus to take refuge in Ausonia; the aspect of this
country recalled the virtues of the golden age;--man appeared there too
happy to be supposed guilty.

"Rome conquered the universe by her genius, and became sovereign by
liberty. The Roman character was imprinted everywhere, and the invasion
of the Barbarians, in destroying Italy obscured the whole world.

"Italy appeared again with the divine treasures which the fugitive
Greeks brought back to her bosom; heaven revealed its laws to her; the
daring of her children discovered a new hemisphere; she again became
sovereign by the sceptre of thought, but this laurelled sceptre only
produced ingratitude.

"Imagination restored to her the universe which she had lost. The
painters and the poets created for her an earth, an Olympus, a hell, and
a heaven; and her native fire, better guarded by her genius than by the
Pagan deity, found not in Europe a Prometheus to ravish it from her.

"Why am I at the Capitol? Why is my humble forehead about to receive the
crown which Petrarch, has worn, and which remained suspended on the
gloomy cypress that weeps over the tomb of Tasso?--Why, if you were not
so enamoured of glory, my fellow-countrymen, that you recompense its
worship as much as its success?

"Well, if you so love this glory which too often chooses its victims
among the conquerors which it has crowned, reflect with pride upon those
ages which beheld the new birth of the arts. Dante, the modern Homer,
the hero of thought, the sacred poet of our religious mysteries, plunged
his genius into the Styx to land in the infernal regions, and his mind
was profound as the abyss which he has described.

"Italy in the days of her power was wholly revived in Dante. Animated by
a republican spirit, warrior as well as poet, he breathed the flame of
action among the dead; and his shadows have a more vivid existence than
the living here below.

"Terrestrial remembrances pursue them still; their aimless passions
devour one another in the heart; they are moved at the past which seems
to them less irrevocable than their eternal future.

"One would say that Dante, banished from his country, has transported
into imaginary regions the pangs which devoured him. His shades
incessantly demand news from the scene of mortal existence, as the poet
himself eagerly enquires after his native country; and hell presents
itself to him in the form of exile.

"All, in his eyes, are clothed in the costume of Florence. The ancient
dead whom he invokes, seem to be born again as completely Tuscan as
himself. It was not that his mind was limited--it was the energy of his
soul, that embraced the whole universe within the circle of his
thoughts.

"A mystical chain of circles and of spheres conducts him from hell to
purgatory, from purgatory to paradise. Faithful historian of his vision,
he pours a flood of light upon the most obscure regions, and the world
which he creates in his triple poem is as complete, as animated and as
brilliant as a planet newly-discovered in the firmament.

"At his voice the whole earth assumes a poetical form, its objects,
ideas, laws and phenomena, seem a new Olympus of new deities; but this
mythology of the imagination is annihilated, like paganism, at the
aspect of paradise, of that ocean of light, sparkling with rays and with
stars, with virtues and with love.

"The magic words of our great poet are the prism of the universe; all
its wonders are there reflected, divided, and recomposed; sounds imitate
colours, and colours are blended in harmony; rhyme, sonorous or bizarre,
rapid or prolonged, is inspired by this poetical divination; supreme
beauty of art! triumph of genius! which discovers in nature every secret
in affinity with the heart of man.

"Dante hoped from his poem the termination of his exile; he reckoned on
Fame as his mediator; but he died too soon to receive the palm of his
country. Often is the fleeting life of man worn out in adversity! and if
glory triumph, if at length he land upon a happier shore, he no sooner
enters the port than the grave yawns before him, and destiny, in a
thousand shapes, often announces the end of life by the return of
happiness.

"Thus unfortunate Tasso, whom your homage, Romans, was to console for
all the injustice he had suffered; Tasso, the handsome, the gentle, the
heroic, dreaming of exploits, feeling the love which he sang, approached
these walls as his heroes did those of Jerusalem--with respect and
gratitude. But on the eve of the day chosen for his coronation, Death
claimed him for its terrible festival: Heaven is jealous of earth, and
recalls her favourites from the treacherous shores of Time!

"In an age more proud and more free than that of Tasso, Petrarch was,
like Dante, the valorous poet of Italian independence. In other climes
he is only known by his amours,--here, more severe recollections
encircle his name with never-fading honour; for it is known that he was
inspired by his country more than by Laura herself.

"He re-animated antiquity by his vigils; and, far from his imagination
raising any obstacle to the most profound studies, its creative power,
in submitting the future to his will, revealed to him the secrets of
past ages. He discovered how greatly knowledge assists invention; and
his genius was so much the more original, since, like the eternal
forces, he could be present at all periods of time.

"Ariosto derived inspiration from our serene atmosphere, and our
delicious climate. He is the rainbow which appeared after our long wars;
brilliant and many-hued, like that herald of fine weather, he seems to
sport familiarly with life; his light and gentle gaiety is the smile of
nature and not the irony of man.

"Michael Angelo, Raphael, Pergolese, Galileo, and you, intrepid
travellers, greedy of new countries, though nature could offer nothing
finer than your own, join your glory also to that of the poets. Artists,
scholars, philosophers! you are, like them, the children of that sun
which by turns developes the imagination, animates thought, excites
courage, lulls us into a happy slumber, and seems to promise everything,
or cause it to be forgotten.

"Do you know that land where the Orange-trees bloom, which the rays of
heaven make fertile with love? Have you heard those melodious sounds
which celebrate the mildness of the nights? Have you breathed those
perfumes which are the luxury of that air, already so pure and so mild?
Answer, strangers; is nature in your countries so beautiful and so
beneficent?

"In other regions, when social calamities afflict a country, the people
must believe themselves abandoned by the Deity; but here we ever feel
the protection of heaven; we see that he interests himself for man, that
he has deigned to treat him as a noble being.

"It is not only with vine branches, and with ears of corn, that Nature
is here adorned; she prodigally strews beneath the feet of man, as on
the birthday of a sovereign, an abundance of useless plants and flowers,
which, destined to please, will not stoop to serve.

"The most delicate pleasures nourished by nature are enjoyed by a nation
worthy of them--a nation who are satisfied with the most simple dishes;
who do not become intoxicated at the fountains of wine which plenty
prepares for them;--a nation who love their sun, their arts, their
monuments, their country, at once antique and in the spring of youth;--a
nation that stand equally aloof from the refined pleasures of luxury, as
from the gross and sordid pleasures of a mercenary people."

"Here sensations are confounded with ideas; life is drawn in all its
fulness from the same spring, and the soul, like the air, inhabits the
confines of earth, and of heaven. Genius is untrammelled because here
reverie is sweet: its holy calm soothes the soul when perturbed,
lavishes upon it a thousand illusions when it regrets a lost purpose,
and when oppressed by man nature is ready to welcome it."

"Thus is our country ever beneficent, and her succouring hand heals
every wound. Here, even the pangs of the heart receive consolation, in
admiring a God of kindness, and penetrating the secrets of his love; the
passing troubles of our ephemeral life are lost in the fertile and
majestic bosom of the immortal universe."

Corinne was interrupted, for some moments, by a torrent of applause.
Oswald alone took no share in the noisy transports that surrounded him.
He had leaned his head upon his hand, when Corinne said: "_Here, even
the pangs of the heart receive consolation_;" and had not raised it
since. Corinne remarked it, and soon, from his features, the colour of
his hair, his costume, his lofty figure, from his whole manner in short,
she knew him for an Englishman: she was struck with his mourning habit,
and the melancholy pictured in his countenance. His look, at that moment
fixed upon her, seemed full of gentle reproaches; she guessed the
thoughts that occupied his mind, and felt the necessity of satisfying
him, by speaking of happiness with less confidence, by consecrating some
verses to death in the midst of a festival. She then resumed her lyre,
with this design, and having produced silence in the assembly, by the
moving and prolonged sounds which she drew from her instrument, began
thus:

"There are griefs however which our consoling sky cannot efface, but in
what retreat can sorrow make a more sweet and more noble impression upon
the soul than here?

"In other countries hardly do the living find space sufficient for their
rapid motions and their ardent desires; here, ruins, deserts and
uninhabited palaces, afford an asylum for the shades of the departed. Is
not Rome now the land of tombs?

"The Coliseum, the obelisks, all the wonders which from Egypt and from
Greece, from the extremity of ages, from Romulus to Leo X. are assembled
here, as if grandeur attracted grandeur, and as if the same spot was to
enclose all that man could secure from the ravages of time; all these
wonders are consecrated to the monuments of the dead. Our indolent life
is scarcely perceived, the silence of the living is homage paid to the
dead; they endure and we pass away.

"They only are honoured, they are still celebrated: our obscure
destinies serve only to heighten the lustre of our ancestors: our
present existence leaves nothing standing but the past; it will exact no
tribute from future recollections! All our masterpieces are the work of
those who are no more, and genius itself is numbered among the
illustrious dead.

"Perhaps one of the secret charms of Rome, is to reconcile the
imagination with the sleep of death. Here we learn resignation, and
suffer less pangs of regret for the objects of our love. The people of
the south picture to themselves the end of life in colours less gloomy
than the inhabitants of the north. The sun, like glory, warms even the
tomb.

"The cold and isolation of the sepulchre beneath our lovely sky, by the
side of so many funereal urns, have less terrors for the human mind. We
believe a crowd of spirits is waiting for our company; and from our
solitary city to the subterranean one the transition seems easy and
gentle.

"Thus the edge of grief is taken off; not that the heart becomes
indifferent, or the soul dried up; but a more perfect harmony, a more
odoriferous air, mingles with existence. We abandon ourselves to nature
with less fear--to nature, of whom the Creator has said: 'Consider the
lilies of the field; they toil not neither do they spin: yet I say unto
you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these.'"

Oswald was so ravished with these last strains, that he gave the most
lively testimonies of his admiration; and, upon this occasion, the
transports of the Italians themselves did not equal his. In fact, it was
to him more than to the Romans, that the second improvisation of Corinne
was directed.

The greater part of the Italians have, in reading poetry, a kind of
singing monotony, called _cantilene_, which destroys all emotion[5]. It
is in vain that the words vary--the impression remains the same; since
the accent, more essential than even the words, hardly varies at all.
But Corinne recited with a variety of tone, which did not destroy the
sustained charm of the harmony;--it was like several different airs
played on some celestial instrument.

The tones of Corinne's voice, full of sensibility and emotion, giving,
effect to the Italian language, so pompous and so sonorous, produced
upon Oswald an impression entirely novel. The English prosody is uniform
and veiled, its natural beauties are all of a sombre cast; its colouring
has been formed by clouds, and its modulation by the roaring of the sea;
but when Italian words, brilliant as an Italian festival, resonant like
those instruments of victory, which have been compared to scarlet among
colours; when these words, bearing the stamp of that joy which a fine
climate spreads through every heart, are pronounced in a moving voice,
their lustre softened, their strength concentrated, the soul is affected
in a manner as acute as unforeseen. The intention of nature seems
baffled, her benefits of no use, her offers rejected, and the expression
of pain, in the midst of so many enjoyments, astonishes and affects us
more deeply than the grief which is sung in those northern languages
which it seems to inspire.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] We must expect from this censure upon the Italian mode of
declamation, the celebrated Monti, who recites verses as well as he
composes them. It is really one of the greatest dramatic pleasures that
can be experienced, to hear him recite the Episode of Ugolin, of
Francesca da Rimini, the Death of Clorinda, &c.




Chapter iv.


The Senator took the crown of myrtle and laurel which he was to place on
the head of Corinne. She removed the shawl which graced her forehead,
and all her ebon hair fell in ringlets about her shoulders. She advanced
with her head bare, and her look animated by a sentiment of pleasure and
gratitude which she sought not to conceal. She a second time bent her
knee, to receive the crown; but she displayed less agitation and tremor
than at first; she had just spoken; she had just filled her mind with
the most noble thoughts, and enthusiasm conquered diffidence. She was
no longer a timid woman, but an inspired priestess who joyfully
consecrated herself to the worship of genius.

As soon as the crown was placed on the head of Corinne all the
instruments were heard in those triumphant airs which fill the soul with
the most sublime emotion. The sound of kettle-drums, and the flourish of
trumpets, inspired Corinne with new feelings--her eyes were filled with
tears--she sat down a moment, and covered her face with her
handkerchief. Oswald, most sensibly affected, quitted the crowd, and
advanced to speak to her, but was withheld by an invincible
embarrassment. Corinne looked at him for some time, taking care
nevertheless, that he should not observe the attention she paid him; but
when the Prince Castel-Forte came to take her hand, in order to conduct
her to the car, she yielded to his politeness with an absent mind; and,
while she permitted him to hand her along, turned her head several
times, under various pretexts, to take another view of Oswald.

He followed her, and at the moment when she descended the steps
accompanied by her train, she made a retrograde movement, in order to
behold him once more, when her crown fell off. Oswald hastened to pick
it up; and in restoring it to her, said in Italian, that an humble
mortal like himself might venture to place at the feet of a goddess that
crown which he dared not presume to place on her head[6]. Corinne
thanked Lord Nelville in English, with that pure national accent--that
pure insular accent, which has scarcely ever been successfully imitated
on the continent. What was the astonishment of Oswald in hearing her! He
remained at first immovably fixed to the spot where he was, and feeling
confused he leaned against one of the lions of basalt at the foot of
the stairway descending from the Capitol. Corinne viewed him again,
forcibly struck with the emotion he betrayed; but she was dragged away
towards the car, and the whole crowd disappeared long before Oswald had
recovered his strength and his presence of mind.

Corinne, till then, had enchanted him as the most charming of
foreigners--as one of the wonders of that country he had come to visit;
but her English accent recalled every recollection of his native
country, and in a manner naturalised all the charms of Corinne. Was she
English? Had she passed several years of her life in England? He was
lost in conjecture; but it was impossible that study alone could have
taught her to speak thus--Corinne and Lord Nelville must have lived in
the same country. Who knows whether their families were not intimate?
Perhaps even, he had seen her in his infancy! We often have in our
hearts, we know not what kind of innate image of that which we love,
which may persuade us that we recognise it in an object we behold for
the first time.

Oswald had cherished many prejudices against the Italians; he believed
them passionate, but changeable, and incapable of any deep and lasting
affection. Already the language of Corinne at the Capitol had inspired
him with a different idea. What would be his fortune, then, if he could
at once revive the recollections of his native country, and receive by
imagination a new existence,--live again for the future without
forgetting the past!

In the midst of his reveries, Oswald found himself upon the bridge of St
Angelo, which leads to the castle of the same name, or rather to the
tomb of Adrian, which has been converted into a fortress. The silence of
the place, the pale waves of the Tiber, the moon-beams which shed their
mild radiance upon the statues placed on the bridge, and gave to those
statues the appearance of white spectres steadfastly regarding the
current of the waters, and the flight of time which no longer concerned
them; all these objects led him back to his habitual ideas. He put his
hand upon his breast, and felt the portrait of his father which he
always carried there; he untied it, contemplated the features, and the
momentary happiness which he had just experienced, as well as the cause
of that happiness, only recalled, with too severe a remembrance, the
sentiment which had already rendered him so guilty towards his father:
This reflection renewed his remorse.

"Eternal recollection of my life!" cried he: "Friend so offended, yet so
generous! Could I have believed that any pleasurable sensation would so
soon have found access to my heart? It is not thou, best and most
indulgent of men,--it is not thou who reproachest me with them--it was
thy wish that I should be happy, and, in spite of my errors, that is
still thy desire: but at least, may I not misconceive thy voice, if thou
speak to me from heaven, as I have misconceived it upon earth!"

FOOTNOTE:

[6] Lord Nelville seems to have alluded to this beautiful distich of
Propertius:

     "Ut caput in Magnis ubi non est ponere signis,
     Ponitur hic imos ante corona pedes."




Book iii.

CORINNE

[Illustration]




Chapter i.


The Count d'Erfeuil was present at the ceremony of the Capitol: He came
the next day to Lord Nelville, and said to him, "My dear Oswald, shall I
take you this evening to see Corinne?" "How!" interrupted Oswald; "are
you acquainted with her, then?" "No," replied the Count d'Erfeuil; "but
so celebrated a lady is always flattered when people express a desire to
see her; and I have written to her this morning to request permission to
visit her in the evening accompanied by you." "I could have wished,"
replied Oswald blushing, "that you had not named me in this manner
without my consent." "Do not be angry with me," replied the Count
d'Erfeuil, "for having spared you some tiresome formalities: Instead of
going to an ambassador, who would have taken you to a cardinal, who
would have conducted you to a lady, who would have introduced you to
Corinne, I present you--you present me, and we shall both of us be very
well received I have no doubt."

"I am less confident on that subject than you," replied Lord Nelville,
"and certainly not without reason. I am afraid that this forward request
may have displeased Corinne." "Not at all, I assure you," said the Count
d'Erfeuil; "she has too much good sense for that; and her answer is
extremely polite." "How! she has answered you," replied Lord Nelville;
"and what has she said to you, my dear Count?" "Ah, my dear Count?"
said M. d'Erfeuil, laughing, "you change your note then, since you know
that Corinne has answered me; however, _I love you, and all is
pardoned_. I will confess to you then, modestly, that in my note I had
spoken of myself more than of you, and that, in her answer she seems to
have named you first, but I am never jealous of my friends." "Indeed,"
replied Lord Nelville, "I do not think that either you or I have any
reason to flatter ourselves with being agreeable to Corinne; and as to
me, all that I desire is sometimes to enjoy the society of so
extraordinary a lady: so adieu till this evening, since you have
arranged it so." "You will accompany me then?" said the Count d'Erfeuil.
"Well, yes, I will," answered Lord Nelville with visible embarrassment.
"Why then," continued the Count, "find fault with what I have done? You
finish as I have begun, but however, I must allow you the honour of
being more reserved than I, provided you lose nothing by it. Corinne is
certainly a charming lady, she is graceful and witty; I could not
comprehend what she said very well, because she spoke Italian; but I
would venture to lay a wager, from only seeing her, that she knows
French very well: however, we shall judge of that in the evening. She
leads a very singular life; she is rich, young, and independent; yet no
one can tell, to a certainty, whether she has lovers or not. It appears
certain, notwithstanding, that, at present she gives a preference to no
one; indeed," added he, "it may be the case that she has not been able
to find in this country a man worthy of her: that would not astonish me
at all."

The Count held this kind of discourse some time longer without being
interrupted by Lord Nelville. He said nothing that was discourteous; but
he always wounded the delicate feelings of Oswald by speaking with too
much boldness or too much levity upon what interested him. There is a
certain tact that even wit and knowledge of the world will not teach; so
that, without being wanting in the most perfect politeness, we may often
wound the heart.

Lord Nelville was very much agitated the whole day in thinking of the
visit he was to make in the evening; but he drove away from him as much
as he could the reflections which disturbed him, and endeavoured to
persuade himself that he might find pleasure in a sentiment, without
permitting it to decide the fate of his life. False security! for the
soul receives no pleasure from anything which it deems transient.

Oswald and the Count arrived at Corinne's house, which was situated in
the _Quartiere di Trastevere_, a little beyond the castle of St Angelo.

The view of the Tiber gave an additional embellishment to this house,
which was ornamented, internally, with the most perfect elegance. The
saloon was decorated with copies, in plaster, of the best statues in
Italy--Niobe, Laocoon, Venus de Medicis, and the Dying Gladiator. In the
apartment where Corinne received company were instruments of music,
books, and furniture not more remarkable for its simplicity than for its
convenience, being merely arranged so as to render the conversation
easy, and to draw the circle more closely together. Corinne had not yet
made her appearance when Oswald arrived; while waiting for her he walked
about the apartment with much eager curiosity, remarking in every
particular a happy medley of all that is most agreeable in the English,
French and Italian nations; the love of literature, the taste for
society, and a passion for the fine arts.

Corinne at length appeared; her costume was still picturesque without
being over-studied. Her hair was ornamented with antique cameos and she
wore a necklace of coral: her politeness was noble and easy: in
beholding her in the familiar circle of her friends, you might discover
in her the goddess of the Capitol, notwithstanding she was perfectly
simple and natural in everything. She first saluted the Count d'Erfeuil,
her eyes fixed upon Oswald; and then, as if she repented this piece of
falsehood, she advanced towards the latter--and it might be remarked
that in addressing him by the title of Lord Nelville, that name seemed
to produce a singular effect upon her, and twice she repeated it with a
faltering voice, as if it recalled some affecting remembrances.

At length, in the most graceful manner, she thanked Lord Nelville, in
Italian, for his obliging behaviour on the preceding day in picking up
her crown. Oswald answered by expressing the admiration with which she
inspired him, and gently complained of her not speaking to him upon this
occasion in English: "Am I more an alien to you to-day," added he, "than
I was yesterday?" "No certainly," replied Corinne; "but when people
have, like me, for several years, been in the habit of speaking two or
three different languages, they are apt to employ that which will best
convey the sentiments they wish to express." "Surely," said Oswald,
"English is your natural language, that which you speak to your friends,
that--" "I am an Italian," interrupted Corinne--"pardon me, my lord, but
I think I discover in you that national pride which often characterises
your countrymen. In this country we are more modest; we are neither
pleased with ourselves like the French, nor proud of ourselves like the
English: we only ask a little indulgence of foreigners, and as we have
long ceased to be considered a nation, we are guilty of sometimes being
wanting, as individuals, in that dignity which is not allowed us as a
people. But when you are acquainted with the Italians, you will see
that they possess in their character, some traces of ancient greatness,
some rare traces which, though now effaced, may appear again in happier
times. I will speak English to you sometimes, but not always: Italian is
dear to me; for I have endured much," added she, "to reside in Italy."

The Count d'Erfeuil politely reproached Corinne with having entirely
forgotten him, by expressing herself in languages he did not understand.
"Lovely Corinne," said he to her, "pray talk French; indeed you are
worthy of such an accomplishment." Corinne smiled at this compliment,
and began to speak French, with great purity and much facility, but with
an English accent. Lord Nelville and the Count d'Erfeuil were equally
astonished, but the Count, who believed he might say anything, provided
it was done with grace, and who imagined that impoliteness consisted in
the form, and not the substance, asked directly of Corinne, the reason
of this singularity. She was at first a little discomposed at this
sudden interrogation; but recovering her presence of mind, she said to
the Count--"Apparently, Sir, I have learnt French of an Englishman?" He
renewed his questions smilingly, but with much earnestness. Corinne more
and more embarrassed, said to him at last, "For these four years past,
Sir, since I have settled at Rome, none of my friends, none of those
who, I am sure, are most interested on my account have questioned me
concerning my destiny; they easily perceived that it was painful to me
to speak on the subject."

Those words put an end to the questions of the Count; but Corinne was
afraid she had offended him, and as he appeared to be very intimately
connected with Lord Nelville, she feared still more, without asking
herself the reason of such fear, that he might speak disadvantageously
of her to his friend; and therefore she set about taking much pains to
please him.

The Prince Castel-Forte arrived at this moment, with several Romans,
friends of his and of Corinne. They were men of an amiable mind and
lively disposition, very prepossessing in their appearance, and so
easily animated by the conversation of others that it was a great
pleasure to converse with them, so exquisitely did they appear to feel
every thing that was worthy of being felt. The indolence of the Italians
prevents them from displaying in company, or often in any way whatever,
all the wit they possess. The greater part of them do not even cultivate
in retirement, the intellectual faculties that nature has given them;
but they enjoy with transport, that which comes to them without trouble.

Corinne possessed a very gay turn of wit; she perceived the ridiculous
with the keen sense of a French woman, and coloured it with the
imagination of an Italian; but in every instance it was mingled with
goodness of heart; nothing was ever seen in her, either premeditated or
hostile; for, in every thing, it is coldness that offends--and
imagination on the contrary, is always accompanied with good-nature.

Oswald discovered a grace in Corinne which was entirely new to him. One
great and terrible circumstance of his life was connected with the
remembrance of a very amiable and intelligent French woman; but Corinne
resembled her in nothing--her conversation was a mixture of every kind
of intellectual endowment, enthusiasm for the fine arts, and knowledge
of the world; refinement of ideas, and depth of sentiment; in short, all
the charms of a vivacious and rapid mind were observable in her, without
her thoughts ever being on that account incomplete, or her reflections
superficial. Oswald was at once surprised and charmed, uneasy and
transported; he was unable to comprehend how one person alone could
combine all the qualifications of Corinne. He asked himself whether the
union of all these qualities was the effect of an inconsistent or a
superior character; whether it was by the force of universal feeling, or
because she forgot every thing successively, that she passed thus,
almost in the same instant, from melancholy to gaiety, from profundity
to grace--from conversation the most astonishing, by the knowledge and
the ideas it displayed, to the coquetry of a woman who seeks to please,
and desires to captivate; but there was, even in that coquetry, such
perfect nobleness that it imposed as much respect as the most severe
reserve.

The Prince Castel-Forte was very much taken up with Corinne, and the
sentiments of all his party were manifested towards her by attention and
the most delicate and assiduous respect; and the habitual worship with
which they surrounded her, made every day of her life a sort of
festival. Corinne felt herself happy in being thus beloved; but it was
that sort of happiness which we feel in living in a mild climate,
hearing nothing but harmonious sounds, and receiving, in short, nothing
but agreeable impressions. The serious and profound passion of love was
not painted on her countenance, where every emotion of her soul was
expressed by a most bright and mobile physiognomy. Oswald beheld her in
silence; his presence animated Corinne, and inspired her with the desire
of pleasing. However, she sometimes checked herself in those moments
when her conversation was the most brilliant, astonished at the calm
exterior of Oswald, not knowing whether he approved her or blamed her
secretly, or whether his English ideas would permit him to applaud this
display of talents in a woman.

Oswald was too much captivated by the charms of Corinne, to call to
mind his old opinions upon that obscurity which became women; but he was
inquiring of himself, whether it were possible to be beloved by her;
whether any man could expect to concentrate in himself so many rays of
light. In fact, he was at the same time dazzled and disturbed; and
although, at his departure, she invited him, very politely, to come and
see her again, he suffered a whole day to pass without availing himself
of the invitation, experiencing a sort of terror from the sentiment by
which he felt himself impelled.

Sometimes he compared this sentiment with the fatal error of the first
moments of his youth, but immediately banished such a comparison from
his mind--for then it was a perfidious art that had overcome him; but
who could doubt the truth of Corinne? Was that peculiar charm she
possessed the effect of magic, or of poetical inspiration? Was she an
Armida, or a Sappho? Was there any hope of captivating so lofty and
brilliant a genius! It was impossible to decide; but at least it was
easily seen, that not society, but heaven itself, could have formed this
extraordinary being, and that her mind could no more be imitated, than
her character feigned. "Oh, my father!" said Oswald, "if you had known
Corinne what would you have thought of her?"




Chapter ii.


The Count d'Erfeuil came in the morning, according to custom, to see
Lord Nelville, and reproaching him for not having been to see Corinne
the day before, said, "Had you come, you would have been very happy."
"Why so?" replied Oswald. "Because yesterday I discovered, to a
certainty, that you have greatly interested her." "Still this levity,"
interrupted Lord Nelville; "know that I neither can nor will endure it."
"Do you call levity," said the Count, "the promptitude of my
observation? Am I less in the right, because more quickly so? You were
made to live in the happy time of the Patriarchs, when the age of man
was five centuries; but mind, I give you notice that four of them at
least are lopped off in our days." "Be it so," answered Oswald, "and
what discovery have you made by these rapid observations?"--"That
Corinne loves you. Yesterday, when I arrived at her house, she received
me very kindly, to be sure; but her eyes were fixed on the door, to see
whether you followed me. She tried for a moment to talk of something
else; but as she is a lady of a very ingenuous and natural disposition,
she asked me, quite frankly, why you had not come with me? I blamed you
very much; I said that you were a very odd, gloomy sort of creature; but
you will excuse my relating all that I said over and above in your
praise."

"'He is very sad,' said Corinne; 'he must certainly have lost some one
very dear to him. Whom is he in mourning for?' 'His father, Madam,' said
I; 'though it is more than a year since he lost him; and as the law of
nature obliges us all to survive our parents, I imagine there is some
other secret cause for so long and deep a melancholy.' 'Oh!' replied
Corinne, 'I am very far from thinking that griefs, similar in
appearance, are felt alike by all men. I am very much tempted to believe
that the father of your friend, and your friend himself, are exceptions
from the general rule.' Her voice was very tender, my dear Oswald, when
she said these words." "Are these," replied Oswald, "your proofs of that
interest you spoke of?" "In truth," replied the Count d'Erfeuil, "these
are quite enough, according to my way of thinking, to convince a man
that he is beloved by a lady; but since you wish for better, you shall
have them; I have reserved the strongest for the last. Prince
Castel-Forte arrived, and related your adventure at Ancona, without
knowing that he was speaking of you: he related it with much fire and
imagination, as well as I could judge from the two lessons of Italian I
have taken; but there are so many French word