CHAPTER V.
THE JOURNEY, AND SOME OF ITS EVENTS.
We will pass over all comments which took place amongst the parties to the scene which we described in our last chapter, and will take up our story again with the interval of a single day.
How happy would it often be for us in life if we could thus blot out a single day! if, out of our existence as out of our history, we could extirpate one four and twenty hours, its never-to-be-recalled deeds, its thoughts affecting the mind for ever, its events affecting the whole course of after-existence! How happy would it be if we could blot it out from being! and often, too often, how happy would it be if we could blot it out from memory--from memory, the treasurer of our joys and pains--memory, whose important charge differs from the bright office of hope, in the sad particular of having to deal with nothing but realities!
However, with the Count de Morseiul and his friend the Chevalier d'Evran, that day had passed in nothing which left regret. The Count had explained to his friend that he judged it necessary to go to Poitiers at once: the Chevalier had very willingly agreed to accompany him, saying, that he would take the good old Duke by surprise: they had then enjoyed every thing that Morseiul afforded of enjoyable; they had wandered by the glassy stream, they had ridden through the beautiful scenes around, they had hunted the boar in the Count's green woods, they had tasted with moderation his good wine, and the rich fruits of a sunny land; and thus that day had passed over without a cloud.
Although the King of France had given over, by this time, the habit with which he set out, in the light and active days of his first manhood, and no longer made all his journeys on horseback, yet the custom was kept up by a great part of his nobility and officers, and it was very usual to ride post upon a journey, that is to say, to mount whatever horse the postmaster chose to give, and ride on to the next relay, accompanied by a postilion on another horse, carrying the baggage. The Count de Morseiul, however, did not follow this plan, as he had no inclination to appear in the city of Poitiers, which at that time boasted of being the largest city in France, except Paris, in the character of a courier. As he loved not carriages, however, and had plenty of fiery horses in his stable panting for exercise, he sent forward a relay himself to a distant inn upon the road, and, on the morning we speak of, accompanied by his friend and a large body of their servants, rode calmly on upon the way, proposing to make a journey of about five and thirty miles that day.
"It is politic of me, D'Evran," he said, conversing with the Chevalier, "it is politic of me to carry you away from Morseiul so soon; as you have promised to give me one whole month, for fear you should become tired of your abode, and exhaust all its little stock of amusements and pleasures too rapidly. Satiety is a great evil, and surely one of the minor policies of life is to guard against it."
"No fear of my getting tired of Morseiul so soon," replied the Chevalier; "but I cannot agree entirely to your view of satiety. I have often had many doubts as to whether it be really an evil or not."
"I have none," replied the Count; "it seems to me the greatest of intellectual evils; it seems to me to be to the mind what despair is to the heart, and in the mind of a young man is surely what premature decrepitude is to the body. Good God, Louis, how can you entertain a doubt? The idea of losing one sense, one fine perception, is surely horrible enough; but tenfold horrible must be the idea of losing them altogether; or, what comes to the same thing, of losing the enjoyment that they confer upon us?"
"Nay, but, Albert," said the Chevalier, who was fond of playing with his own wit as a bright weapon, without considering its dangerous nature, and took no little pleasure in calling forth, even against himself, the enthusiastic eagerness of his friend; "nay, but, Albert, what I contend for is, that satiety is true wisdom; that it is a perfect, thorough knowledge of all enjoyments, and a proper estimation of their emptiness."
"Hold, hold," exclaimed the Count, "that is a very different thing; to my mind satiety is the exhaustion of our own powers of enjoying, not the discovery of the want of a power of conferring enjoyment in other things. Because a man loses the sense of smelling, that will not deprive the rose of its sweet odour. Does a tyrant cut out my tongue? the delicious flavour of the peach will remain, though I taste it not; though he blind my eyes, the face of nature will flourish and look fair as much as ever. No, no, satiety is the deprivation, by over enjoyment, of our own powers of receiving; and not a just estimate of the powers of other things in giving pleasure."
"But you will own," said the Chevalier, "that a deep and minute acquaintance with any source of enjoyment naturally tends to diminish the gratification that we at first received from it. You will not deny that moralist and philosopher, from Solomon down to our own days, have all been right in pointing out the vanity of all things. Vanitas vanitatis, my dear Count, has been the stamp fixed by every great mind that the world has yet produced upon the objects of human enjoyment. This has been the acme, this the conclusion at which wisdom has arrived; and surely the sooner we ourselves arrive at it in life the better."
"Heaven forbid," exclaimed the Count; "Heaven forbid, either that it should be so, or that such should be your real and mature opinion. You say that a minute acquaintance with the sources of enjoyment diminishes the gratification they afford. There is undoubtedly something lost in every case of such minute acquaintance; but it is by the loss of a peculiar and distinct source of pleasure accompanying every other enjoyment the first time it is tasted, and never going beyond. I mean novelty--the bloom upon the ripe plum, which renders it beautiful to the eye as well as refreshing to the taste--brush away the bloom, the plum is no longer so beautiful, but the taste no less refreshing. Setting aside the diminution made for the loss of that novelty, I deny your position."
The Chevalier laughed at his friend's eagerness.
"You will not surely deny, Morseiul," he said, "that there is no pleasure, no enjoyment, really satisfactory to the human heart; and, consequently, the more intimately we become acquainted with it, the more clearly do we see its emptiness."
"Had you said at the first," replied the Count, "that our acquaintance with pleasures show their insufficiency, I should have admitted the truth of your assertion; but to discover the insufficiency of one pleasure seems to me only a step towards the enjoyment of pleasures of a higher quality."
"But we may exhaust them all," said the Chevalier, "and then comes--what but satiety?"
"No," replied the Count, "not satiety, aspirations for and hopes of higher pleasures still; the last, the grandest, the noblest seeking for enjoyment that the universe can afford; the pursuit that leads us through the gates of the tomb to those abodes where the imperfections of enjoyment end, where the seeds of decay grow not up with the flowers that we plant, where the fruit is without the husk, and the music without the dissonance. This still is left us when all other enjoyments of life are exhausted, or have been tasted, or have been cast away, or have been destroyed. Depend upon it, Louis, that even the knowledge we acquire of the insufficiency of earth's enjoyment gives us greater power to advance in the scale of enjoyment; and that, if we choose to learn our lesson from the picture given us of the earthly paradise, we shall find a grand moral in the tree of eternal life having been planted by the tree