Much I mused and conjectured what her history might be, and frequently I felt tempted to address myself in conversation to her; but still there was a tranquillity and repose in those long eyelashes which I feared to disturb. It was probable that she preferred her own reflections, melancholy as they might be, to any intercourse with others, and out of respect to this wish I remained silent. Not so, however, my fellow-traveller of her own sex, who, far from practising this forbearance, felt that she acted the kind and social part by engaging her in conversation. And so perhaps she did. For certainly, after some time, the beautiful and pensive girl became communicative, and I overheard the brief history of her sufferings, which I had felt so curious to know. It was indeed brief—it is not a three-volumed novel that one overhears in a stage-coach—but it had the charm of truth to recommend it. I had been lately reading Eugene Sue’s romance, The Mysteries of Paris, and it gave an additional interest to remark, that the simple tale I was listening to from the lips of the living sufferer bore a resemblance to one of its most striking episodes.
The shades of evening were closing round us, and the rest of the passengers seemed to be preparing themselves for slumber, as, leaning forward on my leathern supporter, I listened to the low sweet voice of the young stranger.
“You are surprised,” she said in answer to some remark made by her companion, “that one of our sex, so young and of so delicate health, should travel alone in the diligence; but I have no relative in Paris, and no friend on whose protection I could make a claim. I have lived there alone, or in something worse than solitude.”
Her companion, with a woman’s quickness of eye, glanced at the rich toilette of the speaker. It was mourning, but mourning of the most costly description.
“You think,” she continued, replying to this glance, “that one whose toilette is costly ought not to be without friends; but mine has been for some time a singular condition. Wealth and a complete isolation from the world have been in my fate strangely combined. They married me”–
“What! are you a married woman and so young?” exclaimed the lady who was addressed.
“I have been; I am now a widow. It is for my husband that I wear this mourning. They took me from the convent where I was educated, and married me to a man whom I was permitted to see only once before the alliance was concluded. As I had been brought up with the idea that my father was to choose a husband for me, and as the Count D– was both handsome and of agreeable manners, the only qualities on which I was supposed to have an opinion, there was no room for objection on my part. The marriage was speedily celebrated. My husband was wealthy. Of that my father had taken care to satisfy himself; perhaps it was the only point on which he was very solicitous. For I should tell you that my father, the only parent I have surviving, is one of those restless unquiet men who have no permanent abode, who delight in travelling from place to place, and who regard their children, if they have any, in the light only of cares and encumbrances. There is not a capital in Europe in which he has not resided, and scarcely a spot of any celebrity which he has not visited. It was therefore at the house of a maiden aunt—to whom I am now about to return—that I was married.
“I spent the first years of my marriage, as young brides I believe generally do, in a sort of trouble of felicity. I did not know how to be sufficiently thankful to Heaven for the treasure I found myself the possessor of; such a sweetness of temper and such a tenderness of affection did my husband continually manifest towards me. After a short season of festivity, spent at the house of my aunt, we travelled together without any other companion towards Paris, where the Count had a residence elegantly fitted up to receive us. The journey itself was a new source of delight to one who had been hitherto shut up, with her instructress, in a convent. Never shall I forget the hilarity, the almost insupportable joy, with which the first part of this journey was performed. The sun shone out upon a beautiful landscape, and there was I, travelling alone with the one individual who had suddenly awoke and possessed himself of all my affections—travelling, too, with gay anticipations to the glorious city of Paris, of which I had heard so much, and in which I was to appear with all the envied advantages of wealth.
“As we approached towards Paris, I noticed that my husband became more quiet and reserved. I attributed it to the fatigue of travelling, to which my own spirits began to succumb; and as the day was drawing to a close, I proposed, at the next stage we reached, that we should rest there, and resume our journey the next morning. But in an irritable and impetuous manner, of which I had never seen the least symptom before, he ordered fresh horses, and bade the postilion drive on with all the speed he could. Still as we travelled he grew more sullen, became restless, incommunicative, and muttered occasionally to himself. It was now night. Leaning back in the carriage, and fixing my eye upon the full moon that was shining brightly upon us, I tried to quiet my own spirit, somewhat ruffled by this unexpected behaviour of my husband. I observed, after a short time, that his eye also had become riveted on the same bright object; but not with any tranquillizing effect, for his countenance grew every minute more and more sombre. On a sudden he called aloud to the postilion to stop—threw open the carriage-door, and walked in a rapid pace down towards a river that for some time had accompanied our course. I sprang after him. I overtook, and grasped him as he was in the very act of plunging into the river. O my God! how I prayed, and wept, and struggled to prevent him from rushing into the stream. At length he sat down upon the bank of the river; he turned to me his wild and frenzied eye—he laughed—O Heaven! he was mad!
“They had married me to a madman. Cured, or presumed to be cured, of his disorder, he had been permitted to return to society; and now his malady had broken out again. He who was to be my guide and protector, who was my only support, who took the place of parent, friend, instructor—he was a lunatic!
“For three dreadful hours did I sit beside him on that bank—at night—with none to help me—restraining him by all means I could devise from renewed attempts to precipitate himself into the river. At last I succeeded in bringing him back to the carriage. For the rest of the journey he was quiet; but he was imbecile—his reason had deserted him.
“We arrived at his house in Paris. A domestic assisted me in conducting him to his chamber; and from that time I, the young wife, who the other morning had conceived herself the happiest of beings, was transformed into the keeper of a maniac—of a helpless or a raving lunatic. I wrote to my father. He was on the point of setting out upon one of his rambling expeditions, and contented himself with appealing to the relatives of my husband, who, he maintained, were the proper persons to take charge of the lunatic. They, on the other hand, left him to the care of the new relations he had formed by a marriage, which had interfered with their expectations and claims upon his property. Thus was I left alone—a stranger in this great city of Paris, which was to have welcomed me with all its splendours, and festivities, and its brilliant society—my sole task to soothe and control a maniac husband. It was frightful. Scarcely could I venture to sleep an hour together—night or day—lest he should commit some outrage upon himself or on me. My health is irretrievably ruined. I should have utterly sunk under it; but, by God’s good providence, the malady of my husband took a new direction. It appeared to prey less upon the brain, and more upon other vital parts of the constitution.