Corinne, Volume 1 | Page 9

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