The Cross of Berny | Page 6

I have tried to please your rustic taste in the wagon-load of newly
imported plants, one of which is a Padwlonia (do not call it a Polonais),
and is now acclimated in France; its leaves are a yard in circumference,
and it grows twenty inches a month--malicious people say it freezes in
the winter, but don't you believe the slander.
Adieu, adieu, my Valentine, write to me, a line from you is happiness.
IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN.
My address is, Madame Albert Guérin, Care Mme. Taverneau, Pont de
l'Arche, Department of the Eure.

II.
ROGER DE MONBERT to M. DE MEILHAN, Pont-de-l'Arche
(Eure.)
Paris, May 19th, 18--.
Dear Edgar,--It cannot be denied that friendship is the refuge of
adversity--the roof that shelters from the storm.
In my prosperous days I never wrote you. Happiness is selfish. We fear
to distress a friend who may be in sorrow, by sending him a picture of
our own bliss.
I am oppressed with a double burden; your absence, and my
misfortunes.

This introduction will, doubtless, impress you with the idea that I
wander about Paris with dejected visage and neglected dress.
Undeceive yourself. It is one of my principles never to expose my
sacred griefs to the gaze of an unsympathetic world, that only looks to
laugh.
Pity I regard as an insult to my pride: the comforter humiliates the
inconsolable mourner; besides, there are sorrows that all pretend to
understand, but which none really appreciate. It is useless, then, to
enumerate one's maladies to a would-be physician; and the world is
filled with those who delight in the miseries of others; who follow the
sittings of courts and luxuriate in heart-rending pictures of man's
injustice to his fellow.
I do not care to serve as a relaxation to this class of mankind, who,
since the abolition of the circus and amphitheatre, are compelled to
pick up their pleasure wherever they can find it; seeking the best places
to witness the struggle of Christian fortitude with adversity.
But every civilized age has its savage manners, and, knowing this, I
resemble in public the favorite of fortune. I simulate content, and my
face is radiant with deceit.
The idle and curious of the Boulevard Italien, the benches of the circus
would hardly recognise me as the gladiator struggling with an
iron-clawed monster--they are all deceived.
I feel a repugnance, dear Edgar, to entertaining you with a recital of my
mysterious sorrow. I would prefer to leave you in ignorance, or let you
divine them, but I explain to prevent your friendship imagining
afflictions that are not mine.
In the first place, to reassure you, my fortune has not suffered during
my absence. On my return to Paris, my agent dazzled me with the
picture of my wealth.
"Happy man!" said he; "a great name, a large fortune, health that has
defied the fires of the tropics, the ice of the poles,--and only thirty!"

The notary reasoned well from a notary's stand-point. If I were to
reduce my possessions to ingots, they would certainly balance a
notary's estimate of happiness; therefore, fear nothing for my fortune.
Nor must you imagine that I grieve over my political and military
prospects that were lost in the royal storm of '30, when plebeian cannon
riddled the Tuilleries and shattered a senile crown. I was only sixteen,
and hardly understood the lamentations of my father, whose daily
refrain was, "My child, your future is destroyed."
A man's future lies in any honorable career. If I have left the epaulettes
of my ancestors reposing in their domestic shrine, I can bequeath to my
children other decorations.
I have just returned from a ten years' campaign against all nations,
bringing back a marvellous quantity of trophies, but without causing
one mother to mourn. In the light of a conqueror, Caesar, Alexander,
and Hannibal pale in comparison, and yet to a certainty my military
future could not have gained me the epaulettes of these illustrious
commanders.
You would not, my dear Edgar, suppose, from the gaiety of this letter,
that I had passed a frightful night.
You shall see what becomes of life when not taken care of; when there
is an unguarded moment in the incessant duel that, forced by nature, we
wage with her from the cradle to the grave.
What a long and glorious voyage I had just accomplished! What
dangers I escaped! The treacherous sea defeated by a motion of the
helm! The sirens to whom I turned a deaf ear. The Circes deserted
under a baleful moon, ere the brutalizing change had come!
I returned to Paris, a man with soul so dead that his country was not
dear to him--I felt guilty of an unknown crime, but reflection reduced
the enormity of the offence. Long voyages impart to