Delphi Complete Works of William Godwin 1st ed. (2022), page 235
part #1 of Delphi Classics Series
When Cloudesley took the infant in his arms, under the engagement that no obstacle should arise from this quarter to my assuming the title and possessing myself of the estates of my deceased brother, he had not yet determined in what way to proceed to accomplish his undertaking. The first thought that occurred to him was that he would remove the child for ever from my sight and his own, by disposing of it to some poor person, in consideration of a comparatively trifling sum to be paid for its future support. This plan had many obvious recommendations. If he adopted it, it would have the advantage of banishing everlastingly an object, the sight of which would at no time fail to remind him of the guilt he had contracted. Attached as he had been to his late master, and indebted for the most essential benefits, he felt that he was acting a most base part in conspiring against his helpless and orphan child. But, for the moment, the idea of insuring to himself a handsome, almost a gentlemanly, provision as long as he existed, was too strong for these recollections. He would of course have left the party that received the child in perpetual ignorance, as to the parentage of the unfortunate outcast. By this conduct therefore he would seem to have secured the reward he had so dishonourably earned, and at the same time be enabled still further from day to day to erase from his memory the recollection of his baseness.
The project however which Cloudesley had thus formed, was overturned in a moment. When he took the infant in his arms, with the determination at all events that it should be deprived of the rights of its birth, there were many contending sentiments at war in his mind, and the expression of these sentiments in his countenance must necessarily have been such as a mature person would have found it painful to contemplate. His complexion was pale, his hair dishevelled and staring, and his eye was haggard. But (as if it had been under the direction of an all-ruling Providence) the child of my brother, void of all experience, and therefore of all terror, saw nothing of this. He turned on the gaze of this wicked and fearful visage, and smiled. Nothing can be more dissimilar than the simple and unadulterated smile of an infant, from the smile of a creature already acquainted with conjecture and doubt, and apprehension and hope. It resembles the serenity of ether, and the purity of the blessed in heaven.
In addition to the instantaneous effect which this smile produced upon Cloudesley, he saw also, upon a more attentive perusal of the child’s features, several lineaments strongly reminding of the countenance of his late master. For this he had not been prepared. By a violent effort he had endeavoured to separate in his mind the sentiment of fidelity to my late brother, from the injustice he had consented to practise towards his offspring. The subtle and artificial reasoning he had employed to quiet his conscience, was now swept away in an instant. The soul of my confederate was totally changed. He vowed that the orphan boy should never lose the advantage of his watchful care, or be removed from his sight.
By the operation of this circumstance the mind of Cloudesley was brought back to its original character. He was by nature mild, friendly and affectionate. Adversity had in a considerable degree hardened his heart; and the temptation which had been presented by the death of my brother and my inordinate ambition, had been too much for his integrity to resist. But the idea that now presented itself of taking care of the child, making it his own, and omitting no means to secure its improvement and substantial advantage, took a weight from his mind, which, though he had resolved to endure, was not the less depressing and afflictive to him. It was a return to his former self, and a comparative jubilee to his soul. He had felt too bitterly the apostasy into which he had been tempted from the right onward path. Integrity and kindness were his natural element. And he swore that this should be the last deviation into which he would be betrayed.
When he announced to his wife his new resolution, she felt the truest delight in the intelligence. She had yielded to the masculine and resolute determination of her husband in the first instance; but she had yielded with reluctance. Her consent had been wrung from her by the imbecility of her nature; and she secretly repined, even when she most seemed to subscribe to the will of her lord. She now received the child from the arms of Cloudesley with the sincerest joy, and promised to be in all points a mother to it.
Cloudesley, with his wife and infant ward, as has been before mentioned, took up his residence at Neustadt. Though not populous, its streets are handsome, and it contains several squares. Its fortifications render it tenable against an enemy; it boasts of an imperial palace, and is the see of a bishop. The wall of the town is washed by the stream of the river Leitha. Here, that Cloudesley might not be without occupation, he engaged in the cultivation of a small tract of land, and surrounded himself with a little collection or horses, cows, and other animals, such as are seen in the neighbourhood of the dwelling of a rustic in the middle condition of life. He kept servants and dogs, and occasionally amused himself with fishing, and shooting such animals as are not protected as game by the nobility and great lords of the soil. As the income I paid him was fully adequate to all his wishes, he regarded the pursuits I have mentioned, both the more constant and the occasional, merely as they might contribute to his diversion and his health both corporeal and intellectual, and did not make himself their slave.
Eudocia, his wife, whose character I have already described, had all the advantages that usually fall to the lot of a Grecian female, of a lively and cheerful disposition, and not without some pretensions to beauty. She was not troubled with any very strict notions of moral principle, as may easily be inferred from the passiveness with which she yielded to the conspiracy of Cloudesley and myself, respecting the future destination of the offspring of Irene. Her offence in this sort against religion and morality sat but lightly upon her thoughts. But she was in other respects of a kindly and obliging temper and an affectionate disposition. Cloudesley and she were a handsome couple; and, though they did not at first come together from the impulse of a very romantic love, they daily became more pleasing and attached to each other. The husband had greatly the advantage in strength of understanding; and the schemes of life they pursued were deliberated and determined on by him.
They had no children; and therefore the infant they had undertaken to bring up in ignorance of his origin, was emphatically an object of attention to both. Many of the particulars I have to relate respecting their mode of proceeding are drawn from a journal kept by Cloudesley, which a few years ago fell into my hands; and in which he has put down with more ingenuousness and clearness of perception that I could have expected, whatever has reference to their sentiments and conduct at this period. The child was beautiful in limb and feature, with every promise of health and a sound constitution. His disposition was in no small degree docile and affectionate; and all his infant ways were winning.
Cloudesley and his wife, though imperfect characters, and capable of being misled from the paths of rectitude and honour, were both of them in different ways endowed with a tender and affectionate disposition. They were at their ease, possessing abundantly the means of every luxury which their moderate habits demanded. Exclusively of their little list of domestic and rural attendants, they had but one human creature under their roof, to give variety to their existence, and agreeably to occupy their attention, if at any time they should feel an excess of each other’s society. This was my brother’s son. They named him Julian. He passed for their own son, and therefore bore the surname of his supposed father. Their feelings towards him were of a mingled character, but were all of them conducive to the advantage of the child. They viewed him as the source of the income they derived from me, and were therefore prompted to cherish and make much of him. They viewed him as a helpless being, whom they had concurred to injure, had concurred to cut off from the high expectations to which he was born, and reduced to the condition of having no friend in the world but themselves. They felt therefore a melting tenderness towards him; they resolved to bestow upon him all the honour which it lay within their limited power to confer, to strew his path with roses, and to give him reason to consider existence and the lot which had fallen to him as a blessing.
These good resolutions might by possibility have remained ineffective and barren: but there was that in the child which perpetually gave them new vigour and substance. He had received from his birth the invaluable inheritance of much sweetness of temper. There was that in his smile, which irresistibly insured the kindness of those about him; it had in it the essence of confidence and love. He was all animation and life; his new-born limbs seemed to seek for a sphere in which to expand themselves. No cloud ever appeared on his brow; he never betrayed the slightest symptom of sullenness and stubbornness. Cloudesley and Eudocia were all he had of father and mother; and abundantly he paid them all the love they could have looked for from the offspring of their bowels. He stretched out his little hands to meet Eudocia, and to be received by her husband. His laugh was of genuine high spirits, expressive of and exciting gaiety; and he crowed with a voice of health and a bounding soul.
But the season of jubilee to those by whom a child is truly loved, is when he begins to talk. Words of love and endearment are among the first he utters. How delightful is it to them, that his tongue should assure them of what they had before learned only from dumb signs and uncertain gestures! It is like the first declaration between a lover and his mistress. No; there was nothing doubtful before; but articulated sounds are as the seal to the bond, and make assurance doubly sure. It was now that Julian began to be caressing, that he would stoke down the hair upon Cloudesley’s brow, and, when he saw him returning from the daily circuit of his fields, would run to meet him, and proudly lead him in to his refreshment and his rest. Cloudesley would present him with a flower, a fruit, or a cake. The lispings, the imperfect efforts which the child would make to tell his supposed father of what had happened in his absence, were all of them acceptable, and would smooth the brow of toil. In proportion to the want of power was the eagerness of the child to tell, till at length his mouth was stopped with kisses.
It is very early that a boy begins to display invention and ingenuity, and a sort of childish industry, all of which is exquisitely entertaining to seniors whose time is at their command. He imitates every thing he sees; and plays visits and entertainments with a seriousness of face, and an earnestness of attention, which is irresistibly comic. He gives his whole soul to it, and performs his part with a mixture of affected demureness and simplicity, which might put professional practitioners to the blush. The ingenuity of Julian was truly extraordinary. He made houses, and collected the little implements of furniture about him, which are usually supplied to children; and, when all of a sudden he observed Cloudesley or Eudocia laughing at the gravity of his demeanour, he would join in the laugh, and sweep away his little apparatus, with a sort of consciousness of its worthlessness: at the same time that, as soon as the laugh was over, and the attention of his critics withdrawn to other objects, he would return to his contrivance, and grow immersed in it, as if nothing had happened to tarnish its glory.
Every day that passed over his head inspired Cloudesley with a more affectionate interest in the destination, the character, and the happiness of his ward. He felt towards him in many respects more than the sentiments of a father; but with these sentiments were mingled a mysterious sense of his dignity of birth, and a recollection that the name he had an hereditary right to bear, removed him far from the sphere of the plebeian herd. The blood that flowed in his veins was noble; and its pulses had for ages beat with high aspirations, and the meditations of chivalrous enterprise. He was surrounded in the imagination of Cloudesley with a sort of atmosphere of prerogative, which no vulgarity and rudeness must dare to approach. Yet the yeoman saw him daily, almost perpetually; and from this familiar intercourse the language and thoughts of equality in love inevitably flowed. Julian listened to Cloudesley with all the docility of a son, and obeyed him with implicit deference and a ready submission.
CHAPTER VII
THE CHILD WAS scarcely yet three years old, when the feelings of Cloudesley prompted him to transport him to a different scene. All that related to the future destination of Julian was yet in obscurity; he might by some unexpected event, without the concurrence, and even in defiance of the efforts of those by whom he had been made an outcast and an exile, be restored to his proper station. Cloudesley resolved, that he should be so educated, and brought up in such habits, as should prevent him from being a disgrace to any condition in which he might be called to move. His present pretended father had the means amply in his power to do him justice in that respect. Situated as he was, at a distance from his native soil, and with his activities necessarily contracted into a narrow circle, Cloudesley gradually came to consider the education, the improvement and well being of his ward as the great business of his thoughts.
At three years of age he determined to removed him to Lombardy, and fixed upon the city of Verona as the place of their abode. Cloudesley had travelled in his mind southward to Carinthia, the Tyrol, and the foot of the Alps. He went to Vienna to procure the best statistical accounts of these countries, and he enquired of all persons who were likely to afford him the fullest information. He was deeply impressed with the conception of the severe climate, the avalanches, and mountains of ice, that were to be found north of the Alps, even to the foot of the mountains, and the divine and paradisaical climate that presented itself the moment you had passed over them to the south, and had placed them as a mighty and almost insurmountable screen against all the harsher influences of the Arctic heavens. Cloudesley was of opinion that inestimable advantages of education and society might be obtained by this removal; but most especially his imagination reposed upon the refreshing breezes and the abundant fertility of Lombardy, and its varied and magnificent scenery. He persuaded himself that, for a child, especially between the third and the tenth year of his age, such a climate would be of incalculable advantage. His blood would flow cheerily, and his spirits would be for ever airy and gay. Cloudesley aimed in the first instance at the happiness of his ward in each succeeding day as it passed. He wished that nature should smile upon Julian, that so Julian might be prompted to smile in return. He wished that the child might have for ever before him the magnificent foliage, the health-inspiring fruits, the rivers and the lakes, the brilliant skies and the peace-breathing sounds, the flocks and the herds, the beautiful cattle and the everlasting gaiety, in which no country on earth can compare with Lombardy. Thus would Julian be led to the idea, that existence itself was joy. No dark clouds would intervene to disturb his happiness. His mind would be a stranger to all evil passions, all animosity and hatred, and the very temptations to stray from the paths of ingenuousness and truth. By this process two great ends would be attained, the present peace and felicity of his ward, and the foundation gradually laid of a temper full of philanthropical propensities, happy itself, and disposed to make all others happy.
One of the earliest acts of Cloudesley, subsequently to his arrival at Verona, was to reconcile himself to the church of Rome. His first object was the education and welfare of Julian; and he knew that it would be many ways disadvantageous to his ward, to be held the son of a Protestant father. Cloudesley could not give him the appearance of nobility and high station; but for that very reason he was the more anxious to move out of his way any disqualifications and obstacles to a hospitable and encouraging reception in the province where he dwelt. Eudocia had paid small attention to the peculiarities of religious creeds, and was scarcely aware of the difference between the Greek and the Roman church: there arose therefore no difficulty on her part to the plan which her husband had formed in this respect. They took every necessary step on this point, which might smooth their admission into good society.
Cloudesley gave himself out for the son of an English yeoman, a member of that class of his countrymen, whose occupation it is to cultivate the land, or cause it to be cultivated, for their own personal benefit. He affirmed that his father had left him in such circumstances, as might enable him to set himself down with a competent income, in whatever part of the world he pleased. He avoided naming the province of England from which he came, that so, whatever report he thought proper to make of himself, his story might run the less risk, through any unforeseen accident, of being contradicted. His own station had been so far limited and obscure, as to afford small chance of his being identified as having been formerly a shopkeeper in a country-town. He also said nothing of the Hungarian campaigns or of Vienna. Silence in this respect was made incumbent upon him by the stipulations that had been entered into between him and me. He gave out that he had fixed himself in Verona, principally for the advantages that might there be procured for the education of his only son.
