The Headsman | Page 3

eye could range to the smiling fields that surround Geneva.
Within this setting is contained one of the most magnificent pictures
that Nature ever drew, and he bethought him of the human actions,
passions, and interests of which it might have been the scene. By a
connexion that was natural enough to the situation, he imagined a
fragment of life passed between these grand limits, and the manner in
which men could listen to the never-wearied promptings of their
impulses in the immediate presence of the majesty of the Creator. He
bethought him of the analogies that exist between inanimate nature and
our own wayward inequalities; of the fearful admixture of good and
evil of which we are composed; of the manner in which the best betray
their submission to the devils, and in which the worst have gleams of
that eternal principle of right, by which they have been endowed by
God; of those tempests which sometimes lie dormant in our systems,
like the slumbering lake in the calm, but which excited, equal its fury
when lashed by the winds; of the strength of prejudices; of the
worthlessness and changeable character of the most cherished of our
opinions, and of that strange, incomprehensible, and yet winning
_mélange_ of contradictions, of fallacies, of truths, and of wrongs,
which make up the sum of our existence.
The following pages are the result of this dreaming. The reader is left to
his own intelligence for the moral.
A respectable English writer observed:--"All pages of human life are
worth reading; the wise instruct; the gay divert us; the imprudent teach
us what to shun; the absurd cure the spleen."

The Headsman
Chapter I.
Day glimmered and I went, a gentle breeze Ruffling the Leman lake.
Rogers.

The year was in its fall, according to a poetical expression of our own,
and the morning bright, as the fairest and swiftest bark that navigated
the Leman lay at the quay of the ancient and historical town of Geneva,
ready to depart for the country of Vaud. This vessel was called the
Winkelried, in commemoration of Arnold of that name, who had so
generously sacrificed life and hopes to the good of his country, and
who deservedly ranks among the truest of those heroes of whom we
have well-authenticated legends. She had been launched at the
commencement of the summer, and still bore at the fore-top-mast-head
a bunch of evergreens, profusely ornamented with knots and streamers
of riband, the offerings of the patron's female friends, and the fancied
gage of success. The use of steam, and the presence of unemployed
seamen of various nations, in this idle season of the warlike, are slowly
leading to innovations and improvements in the navigation of the lakes
of Italy and Switzerland, it is true; but time, even at this hour, has done
little towards changing the habits and opinions of those who ply on
these inland waters for a subsistence. The Winkelried had the two low,
diverging masts; the attenuated and picturesquely-poised latine yards;
the light, triangular sails; the sweeping and projecting gangways; the
receding and falling stern; the high and peaked prow, with, in general,
the classical and quaint air of those vessels that are seen in the older
paintings and engravings. A gilded ball glittered on the summit of each
mast, for no canvass was set higher than the slender and well-balanced
yards, and it was above one of these that the wilted bush, with its gay
appendages, trembled and fluttered in a fresh western wind. The hull
was worthy of so much goodly apparel, being spacious, commodious,
and, according to the wants of the navigation, of approved mould. The
freight, which was sufficiently obvious, much the greatest part being
piled on the ample deck, consisted of what our own watermen would
term an assorted cargo. It was, however, chiefly composed of those
foreign luxuries, as they were then called, though use has now rendered
them nearly indispensable to domestic economy, which were consumed,
in singular moderation, by the more affluent of those who dwelt deeper
among the mountains, and of the two principal products of the dairy;
the latter being destined to a market in the less verdant countries of the
south. To these must be added the personal effects of an unusual
number of passengers, which were stowed on the top of the heavier part

of the cargo, with an order and care that their value would scarcely
seem to require. The arrangement, however, was necessary to the
convenience and even to the security of the bark, having been made by
the patron with a view to posting each individual by his particular
wallet, in a manner to prevent confusion in the crowd, and to leave the
crew space and opportunity to discharge the necessary duties