Ch. 17: Chapter 13

Chapter 13

“I now hasten to the more moving part of my story. I shall relate

events that impressed me with feelings which, from what I had been,

have made me what I am.

“Spring advanced rapidly; the weather became fine and the skies

cloudless. It surprised me that what before was desert and gloomy

should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure. My

senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight and

a thousand sights of beauty.

“It was on one of these days, when my cottagers periodically rested

from labour—the old man played on his guitar, and the children

listened to him—that I observed the countenance of Felix was

melancholy beyond expression; he sighed frequently, and once his father

paused in his music, and I conjectured by his manner that he inquired

the cause of his son’s sorrow. Felix replied in a cheerful accent, and

the old man was recommencing his music when someone tapped at the door.

“It was a lady on horseback, accompanied by a country-man as a guide.

The lady was dressed in a dark suit and covered with a thick black

veil. Agatha asked a question, to which the stranger only replied by

pronouncing, in a sweet accent, the name of Felix. Her voice was

musical but unlike that of either of my friends. On hearing this word,

Felix came up hastily to the lady, who, when she saw him, threw up her

veil, and I beheld a countenance of angelic beauty and expression. Her

hair of a shining raven black, and curiously braided; her eyes were

dark, but gentle, although animated; her features of a regular

proportion, and her complexion wondrously fair, each cheek tinged with

a lovely pink.

“Felix seemed ravished with delight when he saw her, every trait of

sorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly expressed a degree of

ecstatic joy, of which I could hardly have believed it capable; his

eyes sparkled, as his cheek flushed with pleasure; and at that moment I

thought him as beautiful as the stranger. She appeared affected by

different feelings; wiping a few tears from her lovely eyes, she held

out her hand to Felix, who kissed it rapturously and called her, as

well as I could distinguish, his sweet Arabian. She did not appear to

understand him, but smiled. He assisted her to dismount, and

dismissing her guide, conducted her into the cottage. Some

conversation took place between him and his father, and the young

stranger knelt at the old man’s feet and would have kissed his hand,

but he raised her and embraced her affectionately.

“I soon perceived that although the stranger uttered articulate sounds

and appeared to have a language of her own, she was neither understood

by nor herself understood the cottagers. They made many signs which I

did not comprehend, but I saw that her presence diffused gladness

through the cottage, dispelling their sorrow as the sun dissipates the

morning mists. Felix seemed peculiarly happy and with smiles of

delight welcomed his Arabian. Agatha, the ever-gentle Agatha, kissed

the hands of the lovely stranger, and pointing to her brother, made

signs which appeared to me to mean that he had been sorrowful until she

came. Some hours passed thus, while they, by their countenances,

expressed joy, the cause of which I did not comprehend. Presently I

found, by the frequent recurrence of some sound which the stranger

repeated after them, that she was endeavouring to learn their language;

and the idea instantly occurred to me that I should make use of the

same instructions to the same end. The stranger learned about twenty

words at the first lesson; most of them, indeed, were those which I had

before understood, but I profited by the others.

“As night came on, Agatha and the Arabian retired early. When they

separated Felix kissed the hand of the stranger and said, ‘Good night

sweet Safie.’ He sat up much longer, conversing with his father, and

by the frequent repetition of her name I conjectured that their lovely

guest was the subject of their conversation. I ardently desired to

understand them, and bent every faculty towards that purpose, but found

it utterly impossible.

“The next morning Felix went out to his work, and after the usual

occupations of Agatha were finished, the Arabian sat at the feet of the

old man, and taking his guitar, played some airs so entrancingly

beautiful that they at once drew tears of sorrow and delight from my

eyes. She sang, and her voice flowed in a rich cadence, swelling or

dying away like a nightingale of the woods.

“When she had finished, she gave the guitar to Agatha, who at first

declined it. She played a simple air, and her voice accompanied it in

sweet accents, but unlike the wondrous strain of the stranger. The old

man appeared enraptured and said some words which Agatha endeavoured to

explain to Safie, and by which he appeared to wish to express that she

bestowed on him the greatest delight by her music.

“The days now passed as peaceably as before, with the sole alteration

that joy had taken place of sadness in the countenances of my friends.

Safie was always gay and happy; she and I improved rapidly in the

knowledge of language, so that in two months I began to comprehend most

of the words uttered by my protectors.

“In the meanwhile also the black ground was covered with herbage, and

the green banks interspersed with innumerable flowers, sweet to the

scent and the eyes, stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods;

the sun became warmer, the nights clear and balmy; and my nocturnal

rambles were an extreme pleasure to me, although they were considerably

shortened by the late setting and early rising of the sun, for I never

ventured abroad during daylight, fearful of meeting with the same

treatment I had formerly endured in the first village which I entered.

“My days were spent in close attention, that I might more speedily

master the language; and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than

the Arabian, who understood very little and conversed in broken

accents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that

was spoken.

“While I improved in speech, I also learned the science of letters as

it was taught to the stranger, and this opened before me a wide field

for wonder and delight.

“The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney’s _Ruins

of Empires_. I should not have understood the purport of this book had not

Felix, in reading it, given very minute explanations. He had chosen this

work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of the

Eastern authors. Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of history

and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave

me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different

nations of the earth. I heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous

genius and mental activity of the Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue

of the early Romans—of their subsequent degenerating—of the

decline of that mighty empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard

of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the

hapless fate of its original inhabitants.

“These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was

man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so

vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil

principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and

godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour

that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on

record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more

abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I

could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or

even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of

vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and

loathing.

“Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me.

While I listened to the instructions which Felix bestowed upon the

Arabian, the strange system of human society was explained to me. I

heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid

poverty, of rank, descent, and noble blood.

“The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the

possessions most esteemed by your fellow creatures were high and

unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with

only one of these advantages, but without either he was considered,

except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to

waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few! And what was I? Of

my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I

possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides,

endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even

of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could

subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with

less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked

around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot

upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?

“I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted

upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with

knowledge. Oh, that I had for ever remained in my native wood, nor

known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!

“Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it

has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to

shake off all thought and feeling, but I learned that there was but one

means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death—a state

which I feared yet did not understand. I admired virtue and good

feelings and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my

cottagers, but I was shut out from intercourse with them, except

through means which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and

unknown, and which rather increased than satisfied the desire I had of

becoming one among my fellows. The gentle words of Agatha and the

animated smiles of the charming Arabian were not for me. The mild

exhortations of the old man and the lively conversation of the loved

Felix were not for me. Miserable, unhappy wretch!

“Other lessons were impressed upon me even more deeply. I heard of the

difference of sexes, and the birth and growth of children, how the

father doted on the smiles of the infant, and the lively sallies of the

older child, how all the life and cares of the mother were wrapped up

in the precious charge, how the mind of youth expanded and gained

knowledge, of brother, sister, and all the various relationships which

bind one human being to another in mutual bonds.

“But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my

infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if

they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I

distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I

then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being

resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The

question again recurred, to be answered only with groans.

“I will soon explain to what these feelings tended, but allow me now to

return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various

feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated

in additional love and reverence for my protectors (for so I loved, in

an innocent, half-painful self-deceit, to call them).”