Charles James Lever

“ I have done more,—I have struggled with myself to abandon it; but in vain. My heart is linked to it; it forms the one sole tie that attaches me to life. Without it, the apathy that I feel stealing over me would be complete, and my existence become a mournful dream. In a word, Upton, all is passionless within me, save one sentiment; and I drag on life merely for a 'Vendetta.'”
Upton shook his head mournfully, as the other paused here, and said,—
“This is disease, Glencore!”
“Be it so; the malady is beyond cure,” said he, sternly. ”

“ Imagine her in all the pride of wealth and beauty, sought after, adulated, worshipped as she is, suddenly struck down by the brand of this disgrace, and left upon the world without fortune, without rank, without even a name. To be shunned like a leper by the very meanest of those it had once been an honor when she recognized them. Picture to yourself this woman, degraded to the position of all that is most vile and contemptible. She, that scarcely condescended to acknowledge as her equals the best-born and the highest, sunk down to the hopeless infamy of a mistress. ”

“ We are not about to follow up the correspondence of Sir Horace by detailing the reply which Harcourt sent, and all that thereupon ensued between them.
We pass over, then, some months of time, and arrive at the late autumn.
It is a calm, still morning; the sea, streaked with tinted shadows, is without a ripple; the ships of many nations that float on it are motionless, their white sails hung out to bleach, their ensigns drooping beside the masts. Over the summit of Vesuvius—for we are at Naples—a light blue cloud hangs, the solitary one in all the sky. ”

“ Faces and events, forms and accents, that once found the way to our hearts, come back again, faintly and imperfectly it may be, but with a touch that revives in us what we once were. It is the one sole feature in which self-love becomes amiable, when, looking back on our past, we cherish the thought of a time before the world had made us sceptical and hard-hearted!
Glencore warmed as he told of that tranquil period when poetry gave a color to his life, and the wild conceptions of genius ran like a thread of gold through the whole web of existence. ”

“ You forget, Upton,—but I do not forget,—that it was by this very argument you once tried to dissuade me from my act of vengeance. You told me—ay, in words that still ring in my ears—to remember that if by any accident or chance her innocence might be proven, I could never avail myself of the indication without first declaring my own unworthiness to profit by it; that if the Wife stood forth in all the pride of purity, the Husband would be a scoff and a shame throughout the world! ”

“ Various cares and duties consequent on Glencore's death had devolved entirely upon him. Young Massy had suddenly disappeared from Florence on the morning after the funeral, and was seen no more, and Upton was the only one who could discharge any of the necessary duties of such a moment. The very nature of the task thus imposed upon him had its own depressing influence on his mind; the gloomy pomp of death—the terrible companionship between affliction and worldliness—the tear of the mourner—the heart-broken sigh drowned in the sharp knock of the coffin-maker. ”

“ She has a sorrow whose burden I might help to bear. There is cruelty, or treachery, or falsehood arrayed against her; and through all the splendor of the scene—all the wild gayety of the orgie—some spectral image never leaves her side! I would stake existence on it that I have read her aright!”
Of all the intoxications that can entrance the human faculties, there is none so maddening as that produced by giving full sway to an exuberant imagination. The bewilderment resists every effort of reason, and in its onward course carries away its victims with all the force of a mountain torrent. ”

“ Where that singularly beautiful inlet of the sea known in the west of Ireland as the Killeries, after narrowing to a mere strait, expands into a bay, stands the ruin of the ancient Castle of Glencore. With the bold steep sides of Ben Creggan behind, and the broad blue Atlantic in front, the proud keep would seem to have occupied a spot that might have bid defiance to the boldest assailant. The estuary itself here seems entirely landlocked, and resembles, in the wild, fantastic outline of the mountains around, a Norwegian fiord, rather than a scene in our own tamer landscape. ”

“ Loss of fortune, loss of influence, loss of station, loss of health even, dearer than them all, can be borne. There is but one intolerable ill, one that no time alleviates, no casuistry diminishes,—loss of honor! Ay, Harcourt, rank and riches do little for him who feels himself the inferior of the meanest that elbows him in a crowd; and the man whose name is a scoff and a jibe has but one part to fill,—to make himself forgotten. ”

“ Were we writing a drama instead of a true history, we might like to linger for a few moments on the leave-taking between the Princess and Sir Horace Upton. They were indeed both consummate “artists,” and they played their parts to perfection,—not as we see high comedy performed on the stage, by those who grotesque its refinements and exaggerate its dignity; “lashing to storm” the calm and placid lake, all whose convulsive throes are many a fathom deep, and whose wildest workings never bring a ripple to the surface. ”

“ There is no need of any subtlety to teach me what I am, and what the world insists I must remain. There is no ambition I dare to strive for, no affection my heart may cherish, no honorable contest I may engage in, but that the utterance of one fatal word may not bar the gate against my entrance, and send me back in shame and confusion. ”

“ I affect no high-flown sentiments. I am as plain and practical as may be; and when I tell you that you are wrong in this affair, I mean to say that what you are about to do is not only bad, but impolitic. In your pursuit of a victim, you are immolating yourself.”
“Be it so; I go not alone to the stake; there is another to partake of the torture,” cried Glencore, wildly; and already his flushed cheek and flashing eyes betrayed the approach of a feverish access.
“If I am not to have any influence with you, then,” resumed Upton, “I am here to no purpose. ”

“ The world would have no parallel for such a wretch! Mark me, Upton!” cried he, fiercely, “there is no torture I have yet endured would equal the bare possibility of what you hint at.”
“Good Heavens! Glencore, do not let me suppose that selfishness has so marred and disfigured your nature that this is true. Bethink you of what you say. Would it not be the crowning glory of your life to repair a dreadful wrong, and acknowledge before the world that the fame you had aspersed was without stain or spot?” ”

“ You write up a code for the whole world, built out of the materials of all your national prejudices, your insular conceit,—ay, and out of the very exigencies of your bad climate; and then you say to us, blessed in the enjoyment of light hearts and God's sunshine, that we must think and feel as you do! I am not astonished that my nobles are discontented with the share you possess of my confidence; they must long have seen how little suited the maxims of your national policy are to the habits of a happier population! ”

“ It was only when a call was made upon Lord Glencore for some bodily exertion that his extreme debility became apparent. Seated at ease in a chair, his manner seemed merely that of natural coolness and apathy; he spoke as one who would not suffer his nature to be ruffled by any avoidable annoyance; but now, as he arose from his seat, and endeavored to walk, one side betrayed unmistakable signs of palsy, and his general frame exhibited the last stage of weakness.
“You see, sir, that the exertion costs its price,” said he, with a sad, sickly smile. ”

“ Here I am, living, breathing, walking, and sleeping, but without one sentiment that attaches me to existence; and yet do I feel as though whatever endangered life, or jeoparded fame would call me up to an effort and make me of some value to myself.
I went yesterday to see my old studio: sorry things were those strivings of mine,—false endeavors to realize conceptions that must have some other interpreter than marble. Forms are but weak appeals, words are coarse ones; music alone, my dear friend, is the true voice of the heart's meanings. ”

“ Upton was glad to accept even this much of interest in the events of life, and drew Glencore on to talk of the days he had passed in this solitary region.
As in the dreariest landscape a ray of sunlight will reveal some beautiful effects, making the eddies of the dark pool to glitter, lighting up the russet moss, and giving to the half-dried lichen a tinge of bright color, so will, occasionally, memory throw over a life of sorrow a gleam of happier meaning. ”

“ Along the vast plain of ancient olives the perfumed wind will still steal at evening, and the blue waters of the Mediterranean plash lazily among the rocks, over which the myrtle and the arbutus are hanging. There, amidst them all, half hid in clustering vines, bathed in soft odors from orange-groves, with plashing fountains glittering in the sun, and foaming streams gushing from the sides of marble mountains,—there stands Massa, ruined, decayed, and deserted, but beautiful in all its desolation, and fairer to gaze on than many a scene where the tide of human fortune is at the flood. ”

“ Besides this, we are disposed to think that the moral of a tale is often more effectively conveyed by the characters than by the catastrophe of a story. The strange, discordant tones of the human heart, blending, with melody the purest, sounds of passionate meaning, are in themselves more powerful lessons than all the records of rewarded virtue and all the calendars of punished vice. The nature of a single man can be far more instructive than the history of every accident that befalls him.
It is, then, with regret that we leave the Princess and Sir Horace to pursue their journey alone. ”

“ If sometimes my heart yearns for the glorious scenes of Palestine, full of memories that alone satisfy the soul's longings, there are days when I pant for the solitude of the vast savannas of the New World. I feel as if to know one's self thoroughly, one's nature should be tested by the perils and exigencies of a life hourly making some demand on courage and ingenuity. ”

“ I arrived at Brighton late at night, only to learn that a gentleman had got out at the Pavilion, and had not left it since.
“I do not believe that all I have ever suffered in my life equalled what I went through in the two weary hours that I passed walking up and down outside that low paling that skirts the Palace garden. The poor fellow, in all his misery, came before me in so many shapes; sometimes wandering in intellect—sometimes awake and conscious of his sufferings—now trying to comport himself as became the presence he was in—now reckless of all the world and everything. ”