The Cross of Berny | Page 6

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 us a nameless virtue--or vice, made up of tolerance, stoicism and disdain. After having trodden over the graveyards of all nations, it seems as if we had assisted at the funeral ceremonies of the world, and they who survive on its surface seem like a band of adroit fugitives who have discovered the secret of prolonging to-day's agony until to-morrow.
I walked upon the Boulevard Italien without wonder, hatred, love, joy or sorrow. On consulting my inmost thoughts I found there an unimpassioned serenity, a something akin to ennui; I scarcely heard the noise of the wheels, the horses--the crowd that surrounded me.
Habituated to the turmoil of those grand dead nations near the vast ruins of the desert, this little hubbub of wearied citizens scarcely attracted my