Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  “The Lord of the Hills if you please,” said Monsieur, laughing again. “I beg his Lordship’s pardon.”

  “And I do not see,” said Madame, “why what is not true in Paris should be not true any where else. The beaux esprits there have talked me out of belief in any thing but a chaos of abstract doctrines, which are to set all the world to rights when those who have muddled them together can agree how to disembroil them. In the meantime, in the circles of Paris, the existence of a mountain-cataract is just as improbable as the existence of a mountain-spirit. A man emerging from that world into this world would be just as much unprepared for the first as the second.”

  “Very likely,” said Monsieur, “but the Paris circles have at least information of mountain-cataracts on living and credible testimony, and they have none such of mountain-spirits.”

  “Nobody,” said Madame, “speaks in Paris, with all its free discussion, of any thing which would subject the speaker to be laughed at. The chance of being laughed at is as formidable to that enlightened society as the chance of meeting the Lord of the Hills is to me. Therefore there may be living testimony, though the Parisians do not receive it.”

  “One would almost think,” said Monsieur, “you had fallen in with such testimony.”

  “If I had,” said Madame, “I should keep it to myself in sceptical company.”

  “There are still,” said Monsieur, “plenty of people in the world of very enlarged and liberal credulity.”

  “No doubt,” said Madame, “but they will only believe en masse. The sceptical and the credulous are equally intolerant of an opinion not countenanced by numbers.”

  “Perhaps,” said Monsieur, “in the place where we now are the belief in the Lord of the Hills may be countenanced by numbers.”

  “Oh! I should like of all things,” said Adeline, “to know what the people here think about it.

  Let us ask the landlady when she comes in with the supper.”

  An earlier opportunity presented itself, for the landlady made her appearance to request permission for three new arrivals to join the party: two military officers and a benighted sportsman. Permission being obtained, the guests were introduced.

  The two officers were companions, and evidently warm friends, notwithstanding a great disparity in their ages; one being a man of about sixty, and the other of not more than twenty-five. The sportsman was a merry looking man on the youthful side of the middle age. The carriage-party, who had been somewhat disconcerted at the prospect of chance company, which in an inn with but one good room could not well be avoided, were reconciled by a single glance at the new-comers, and returned their salutations with cheerfulness and cordiality.

  Mademoiselle took the opportunity to put her question to the landlady. “We have been talking, “she said, “about the traditions of this neighbourhood. Is the Lord of the Hills still in existence?”

  “I never saw him,” answered the landlady smiling, “nor heard of any one who did.”

  “But I mean,” said Adeline, “do the people here believe in his existence?”

  “There are people who will believe any thing,” said the landlady, smiling again.

  “Very true,” said Monsieur, smiling at Madame.

  “It is something new,” he added, when the landlady had retired, “to bring faith from Paris to a local superstition which has died on its own ground.”

  Madame was mute. She did not choose to speak on the subject before strangers.

  “Scarcely died,” said Adeline. “It seems there are still some believers.”

  “Many,” said the elder officer, “if you speak of the celebrated Numbernip. Local superstitions do not easily die, especially in the mountains, where solitude and fantastic sights and sounds tend so strongly to keep them alive. I have myself three times passed these mountains. I have never seen any thing strange, but have heard sounds that have puzzled me, to say the least of it.”

  “Oh! pray tell us,” said Mademoiselle.

  “There is little to tell,” said the officer, “but a singular repetition of the same thing in the same place. In my young days I was an enthusiast for Liberty, and in the outbreaking of the French Revolution I hurried to Paris alone and on foot, to be a witness of the regeneration of man. My home was not distant from the foot of these mountains, and my route led over them. On gaining the summit of the road, I paused to rest, and look back on the fields of my youth. I could not leave them for the first time without regret. I had no kindred to mourn for me: but there was one pair of bright eyes which I thought would miss me and watch for my return. Sitting on a fragment of stone, and thinking as I have often done aloud, I broke out into a rhapsody of anticipation of the progress of light and liberty, and the downfall of tyranny and superstition. My vision was broken by a loud laugh of derision which echoed and re-echoed among the rocks. I looked every where around, but saw nothing but barren crags and the short mossy verdure of the mountain summits. The sound was not repeated. I concluded that my excited imagination had deceived me, and I proceeded on my way.”

  The entrance of supper suspended the progress of the narrative. The supper far surpassed Monsieur’s expectations. It consisted chiefly of fowl and game in great abundance and variety, with several bottles of most excellent wine. Monsieur expressed his surprise. The sportsman acknowledged that he had furnished the game, and that, being in his rambles an occasional visitant of the inn, he kept a small cellar of his own there for the entertainment of himself and his friends. Monsieur was delighted, and the company grew into high good humour with themselves and each other. When the main business of the table was completed, Adeline asked the officer if he had completed his story.

  “By no means,” answered the officer. “Time passed on. The dreams of liberty passed away, and changed into dreams of conquest and universal empire. I was then an officer of the French army. I repassed the same mountains to look on the scenes of my youth. I sate on the same stone and, thinking aloud as before, I indulged in a new rhapsody about the Augustan age, universal peace under an enlightened head, and the diffusion of science, which would prepare mankind for universal liberty.

  “Again the same loud laugh of derision echoed and re-echoed among the crags. Still I saw nothing, and the sounds were not repeated.

  “I visited my native valley. The bright eyes which I had thought would miss me had long since beamed kindly on another. I found them overlooking the operations of a farm and shining on a jolly husband and half-a-dozen chubby children. I was recognised and heartily welcomed. I felt that all was as it should be, and that I ought to be as delighted as my hosts: but I was not. I could [not] help thinking that the honest farmer had the best of it.

  “On my return, I sate down on the stone, but I was in no mood to rhapsodise, and my reverie was undisturbed.

  “Once more I passed these mountains. The sceptre of the mighty one had been broken, and the rabble of the nations was shouting at the heels of barbarian monarchs, who had quickly turned round and set their feet upon their necks: but time had passed on, and brought the three glorious days. Once more I sate on the same stone, and rhapsodised of the march of mind and the final triumph of reason, and once more the same loud laugh of derision, issuing I know not whence, marred my meditations. I visited the farm. There I found the difference which time had made. My first love was a widow and a grandmother. Her son-in-law was the farmer, and her eldest grandchild was much such a girl as she had been when I sallied forth in my visions of liberty, forty years before. Tomorrow I shall pass the mountains perhaps for the last time. I am returning to revisit the farm: and if the family will receive me as an inmate, I shall finish my days in my native valley. My young friend accompanies me; partly from friendship, partly for an excursion, and partly to hear what he calls the echo that laughs at illusions; but if that be its character I shall furnish no food for it, for all my illusions are over.”

  “It will be enough to say that,” said the sportsman. “Man cannot live without illusions. His life is no
thing else. The echo that laughs at illusions will laugh as heartily as ever at the idea of a featherless biped without them. You have followed liberty. I follow a hare. Either serves as a spell to draw us through the day. Lose it or win it, we resume the chace of the same thing, or of something else, to-morrow. The game which I can pass the whole day in pursuing, I would scarcely pick up if it lay in my way. As an end it is everything. As a possession it is nothing.”

  “It is something,” said Monsieur, “with currant jelly. But this echo of yours; it must have been an echo, however excited.”

  “I should like of all things to hear it,” said Adeline. “We can muster illusions among us enough to wake it.”

  “It was not an echo,” said the officer. “I tried it with shouts, and obtained no answer.”

  “And if it were a spirit,” said Monsieur, “it might not choose to speak to a large party.”

  It turned out on enquiry that they were going the same road, and the officer undertook to bear them company so far, on the following day, and point out the place. Monsieur was very glad of the prospect of a military escort over the mountains.

  CHAPTER II

  THE PARTY SET forward after a comfortable breakfast, and Monsieur was very bountiful to the landlady, both in money and praise, for the excellence of her accommodations. The sportsman had started at day-break on his favorite pursuit. The two officers accompanied the carriage on horseback.

  It was past noon when they reached that part of the summit of the mountain road which overlooked the plains of Bohemia. The road was narrow, and bounded by precipitous crags, with fragments of stone scattered at their base.

  “This is the spot,” said the old officer, “and this is the identical stone, looking neither younger nor older than it did when I was as young as my fair companions.’ Madame—”

  “Oh,” said Madame, “I would not sit on it for the world.”

  “Mademoiselle—”

  “I will with pleasure, but I am afraid I have no illusions worth the echo’s notice, though I do most firmly believe I shall marry the handsomest, wittiest, most amiable and most constant husband in all the world. Bless me, surely I heard a titter at least.”

  No, it was but fancy. There was not the shadow of a sound.

  “Well,” said Adeline, “I am clearly not worth laughing at. Pray try yourself, sir.”

  “It is in vain,” said the officer, sitting down. “I have no longer any illusions. Did you hear?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even a half-stifled laugh?”

  “No.”

  “The charm is broken. Will you try, Mademoiselle?”

  “I, too, have no illusions,” said Elise.

  “Will you, my young friend?”

  “My illusions,” said the young officer, “are of a very common-place kind, not worth the echo’s notice.”

  “Monsieur?” said the old officer.

  “I will try my chance,” said Monsieur, “and to recur to the subject of your three illusions, I will say that I think the progress of reason and liberty are certain though slow, and that there is much more of both now in the world than there was in the twelfth century.”

  A loud laugh ran echoing and re-echoing along the rocks.

  Monsieur jumped up in amazement, and Madame fell down in a swoon.

  Suddenly the sportsman made his appearance, and sprinkled some cold water on her forehead, while Monsieur held a smelling bottle to her nose.

  “Ah! Monsieur le chasseur,” said Monsieur de Virelai, “I suspect this is a mauvaise plaisanterie of yours. You have got here before us to laugh at us behind the rocks.”

  “Indeed,” said the sportsman, “you give me credit for magnificent lungs. But I have been here before you with a less mischievous intent. My purpose was simply to invite you to a collation which I have had spread for you in a grotto close by.”

  This invitation was irresistible to Monsieur. Leaving the carriage and horses in charge of their servants, they followed the sportsman along a rocky path, which after a short winding through precipices, opened into a little amphitheatre of basaltic columns, with a dark-brown lake in the centre, on the shore of which, in a shadowy nook which the sun had just quitted — a natural grotto of surpassing beauty — was spread a collation of great variety and abundance.

  The party felt very grateful for the sportsman’s attention. The collation had something of the effect of the lotus. It made them forget their journey: and they sat discussing the past, present and future, over wine of astonishing flavour.

  Monsieur was very full of the laughing echo, as he called it, though he admitted that if nobody had laughed to set it going, it could not be an echo. He suspected the sportsman, but the old officer maintained that the sounds were the same as he had heard forty years before, when the sportsman could not have been born.

  Madame said little, but she was clearly convinced that the laugher was Numbernip: but she seemed to have got rid of her fears, whether by the charm of the collation or by the exercise of reason we know not; or rather we do know it was reason of course, as every thing is in our time, and as nothing was in the time of our forefathers. Perhaps it was because her two new military acquaintances had seated her between them: but the younger officer had contrived to have Adeline on the other side of him.

  The conversation often recurred to the echo, and from the echo to Numbernip. “Of all the tales that I have heard of the mountain-spirit,’ said Mademoiselle, “I most delight in his adventure with the Countess Cecilia, whom he rescued from a robber, and entertained so magnificently in a castle, under the semblance of Lord Giantdale.”

  “It is very singular,” said the sportsman, “that my worthy grandfather should have been taken for Numbernip. I am now Lord Giantdale, and practice, I hope, the hospitality of my ancestors: but I never knew that any of us had been suspected of being goblins. I have heard him speak of the Countess Cecilia, and wonder she did not keep an engagement she had made to pay him a second visit.”

  “She could not find him,” said Adeline. “Nobody knew anything about him.”

  “She must have gone strangely out of her way then,” said the sportsman. “Ask the first man you meet; I will be bound he knows me.”

  “But,” said Adeline, “he introduced her to a large company, the whole of whom she met again at Carlsbad, and not one of them recollected her.”

  “Very likely,” said the sportsman. “Your dearest friend in one place does not know you in another.

  “But there could be no reason for not knowing the Countess,” said Adeline.

  “I cannot tell,” said the sportsman. “I know that Giantdale Castle has stood on terra firma ever since I was born.”

  “I know one of the Countess’s daughters,” said Madame. “I have heard the story from her, though they talked little of it, for fear of the beaux esprits.”

  “I like the beaux esprits,” said the sportsman. “I have had many such among my visitors at Giantdale. But they have laughed me out of placing implicit trust in my own senses. I think the Carlsbad company must have been in a conspiracy to mystify the Countess Cecilia.”

  They went on discoursing till the sky darkened above them, and a rising wind announced a coming storm. The surface of the solitary pool was crisped over with little eddies.

  “You had better,” said the sportsman, “make an experiment for this evening on the hospitality of Giantdale. It is not far off, and you have otherwise before you a long journey through the tempest which is coming.”

  Monsieur, who, having been once puzzled, had grown extremely curious, gladly availed himself of an opportunity to pause in a locality in which he might investigate the mystery of the echo. Madame had got rid of her apprehensions, and all the rest of the party were very willing to participate in the hospitality of Giantdale. It was not long before the travelling carriage rolled under the arch of the castle gates.

  Julia Procula

  I

  IN a retired street of Rome, stood the house of
Julius Proculus: a man of an old family and a small patrimonial estate: — a widower, with an only daughter.

  Julia was pious, and especially devout to her Household God: on whose altar she placed every morning her offering of fruits and flowers. Proculus was an Epicurean: he respected his daughter’s feelings, but had no sympathy with her devotion.

  Julia had a young lover: Marcus Atilius: a son of a rich family, who refused their sanction to his suit, because the damsel had no dowry. The reversion of the small estate, on which Proculus barely maintained his household, offered no temptation to his wealthy neighbours, who, as usual, having more than enough already, wanted more.

  Proculus, in the principles of his philosophy, aimed at tranquillity of mind, and to a certain extent succeeded in attaining it: but he was of a social and festive disposition: he liked the moderate enjoyment of the good things of this world: he was fond of good company, and preferred Falernian to Sabine wine. In the principles of his philosophy, also, he was prudent, and contracted no debt: but when his larder and cellar were ill-stocked, and his purse deficient in gravity, he could not always preserve himself from feelings of discontent, which would sometimes break out into a good hearty railing against Fortune, and occasionally into an expression of astonishment at his daughter’s devotion to the Lar, to whom he thought himself and his family under very small obligation.

  In one of these moods, he said one morning to his daughter: “I cannot imagine a Lar, who has had better opportunities of taking care of the family entrusted to him, or who has made a worse use of it. My father, and grandfather, and greatgrandfather, were all men of penurious habits: my father, especially, was a genuine miser: he was moreover addicted to commerce: — his dealings were understood to be prosperous: he died in Syracuse, and intelligence of his death was duly conveyed to me: but not a sesterce of coin have I inherited from him: nothing but the poor old estate, which may, for any thing I know, have belonged to my namesake; who was the only person that ever had the honor to see Quirinus; and who may, for any thing I know also, have been my thirtieth great-grandfather.”