Delphi Complete Works of William Godwin 1st ed. (2022), page 256
part #1 of Delphi Classics Series
I arrived. I found the young man of whom the officer had spoken at Messina. I encountered him just as he had finished one of these exhibitions; and I never saw a more interesting countenance. He was in the first bloom of youth, when ingenuousness is marked in every lineament; and had that very moment closed the scene, in which he had presented himself as an extempore poet to an admiring audience. His hair hung in beautiful disorder; his eyes sparkled; his whole frame trembled with emotion; he was out of breath. I perused his features with the keenest attention; I said to myself, Is this the youth who is rightful heir to an English earldom, but who is made an outcast and a vagabond, a being without a name, by a cold-blooded usurper?
I found in him no trace of the features of earl Danvers, or of lord Bardsley, the uncle and cousin of Julian. His face was perfectly beautiful, but of the true Italian cast. He answered all my questions with perfect unreserve. He said, he was of Siena, and had been first excited to embrace the profession of an improvvisatore by witnessing the performance of the celebrated Perfetti. On these occasions he had seen both Francesco and Julian.
I asked him, how he came by the story, the particulars of which had so much roused my attention at Messina? He replied, that he had heard it as a tale, he believed founded in fact, but knew nothing of the parties. He did not in the smallest degree connect it with the person of the young Cloudesley. It struck him as remarkably well adapted for a poetical narrative to be recited in public; and he adopted it accordingly. The mode in the sort of exhibitions with which he was concerned, is for the company indiscriminately to suggest subjects for the poet; and he contrived that this should be drawn out of the box, and put into his hand as if by accident. As the manners of this person were the very mirror of frankness, we talked of several subjects, beside that on which I first accosted him; and, among other things, I said I had come from England, on purpose to endeavour to be of service to the young Cloudesley.
The next morning, to my exceeding surprise, I had no sooner opened the door of my lodging, than my acquaintance of yesterday presented himself before me. He had a printed paper in his hand. It contained a list of certain banditti, who had been captured by a party of the military, and brought prisoners into Palermo. They amounted to twenty persons. At the head of the list was the name of St Elmo. Among those that followed was Francesco Perfetti, and the object of all my solicitude, the unfortunate Julian. My visitor observed, that, after what had fallen from me yesterday on the subject, he could do no less, however unwelcome the intelligence might be, than bring me the earliest information. He observed, that the affair did not admit of the delay of a moment, and that the resolution that had been avowed by the king of the two Sicilies, to reform the police of his dominions, and to introduce the most perfect security every where, rendered the case of these prisoners a matter in the highest degree critical.
I confess it did not strike me in that light. I was perfectly convinced that Julian was not a robber; he had never joined in any of their depredations, though he might have lived among them. I could not bring myself to believe that any criminal proceeding could touch the life of this interesting youth. – The affair however assumed a very different aspect from any thing I had anticipated.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CHIEF MINISTER of the new king of Naples was the marchese Tanucci. He was a man of great talents, and of a mind in a high degree liberal and enlightened. He was the person who set on foot the unrolling of the manuscripts at Herculaneum on a magnificent scale. The ruins of this city had been first discovered in 1713; but the discovery excited little attention till more than twenty years after. He conducted with great ability the project for relieving the kingdom of Naples from the usurpations of the papal see, and, among other things, abolished the degrading tribute of an ambling nag and a hundred dollars, annually paid by the former to the latter as a token of subjection. One of the projects he had most at heart was that of establishing a complete security in private life, so that neither the traveller on the road, nor the cottage of the meanest peasant, should be liable to attack from the free-booter. Too long had this licentiousness been the dishonour of the beautiful regions of Italy; and Tanucci resolved to effect its extirpation. For this purpose he held it necessary to afford some examples of an unsparing severity. – These circumstances I did not fully consider till afterwards.
The whole adventure of Julian in this memorable scene of his life was extraordinary. He had been for a considerable time sunk in the very depths of sorrow for the untimely fate of his supposed father. He had never entertained the remotest suspicion of how that event had been produced. When he returned from the absolute abstraction in which he had for a period been involved, he was smitten with despair. He saw nothing about him, but Borromeo, and the menials of Borromeo. He seemed to himself inclosed in a wilderness of rocks, exhibiting an imperfect resemblance of the human figure, but without having among them a human soul. They were like the limnings of the poet:
Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish;
A vapour, – sometime like a bear or lion,
A towered citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory,
With trees upon it, that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air.
Unlike however in this: that the indifferent and uninteresting forms that Julian saw, experienced no change, but seemed to remain, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. It was a bitter aggravation of his lot, that he was not in solitude, in some wild scene of desolation, where he might even forget the face of man. Death is that which closes the scene of human things, and feelingly convinces us that what we have seen and doated on, we shall see no more. Cloudesley and Eudocia being lost for ever, the mind of Julian vehemently reverted to the friend he had left in the Apennines. He was a being in whom Julian could yet find sympathy. He did not desire any thing that should rouse his mind. If he could be introduced into any new society, though endowed with every quality and every grace that could elevate human nature, though it were the society of angels, this introduction would be distressing to him. But with St Elmo, or even with Francesco, he would experience no shock. They would leave him quietly to his moods.
He accordingly sought them; and though they were removed to a considerable distance from the scene they occupied at the time he withdrew himself, yet, by instinct, or by the overruling influence of his destiny, he found them. They were surprised, and even shocked at his appearance among them, after the melancholy event which had separated them, as it seemed, for ever. Sympathy however, and a deep feeling for the extraordinary situation in which he was placed, sealed the door of their lips. They could not say to him, Behold in us the murderers of your father! The tenderness that was thus excited in the generous bosom of St Elmo modified all his gestures, and every inflection of his richly toned melodious voice.
The attachment for this robber-leader, which had before been lighted up in the breast of Julian, was thus inexpressibly increased. He wondered at the demeanour of St Elmo towards him; and the friendly yearnings of his heart to his protector rose to a degree which has rarely been paralleled. He felt the sentiment that has been described as existing between Theseus and Pirithous, Achilles and Patroclus, or Damon and Pythias in ancient times. He would have encountered any peril, and even had laid down his life, for his friend. A tie of this sort seemed necessary to his existence. He required something to look up to, something to cherish with even a filial affection, something to regard with mysterious reverence, and to contemplate as too high to be comprehended, and considered as governed by impulses of the most exalted kind, which he was unable to unravel. It may seem strange that Julian found all this in a man living in the rambling and disorderly kind of life in which St Elmo lived. But St Elmo had originally been a noble and a patriot; and it was only when he was defeated in his patriotic views, and driven into exile, that he had betaken himself to his present courses.
His form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than arch-angel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured.
And, when we add to this general character the indescribable softness and mildness with which he treated Julian, from the consideration of his peculiar situation, as unconsciously dwelling among the destroyers of his father, we shall be less at a loss to explain the singular devotion with which the English youth was impressed towards his Italian protector.
At length Julian discovered the real pursuits of the band to which he had joined himself. But it was too late. The society into which he was thrown, had strangely discomposed all his systems of reasoning. Independence of thinking is one of the latest improvements of the human mind, and is rarely attained at so early a period of life as that which Julian had reached. In the classes of Florence he had studied the ethics of Aristotle and the visionary refinements of Plato. In his supposed father and mother he had seen models of that irreproachable conduct, which renders the human form in some sort a habitation for the divinity. But, in the connection in which he was now placed, he began to question whether the saws of morality which he had hitherto listened to, were any thing more than the prejudices of weak minds, and the interested growth of artificial society. Not that he extended the indulgence he accorded to the breach of these laws, any further than to the single person of St Elmo. The rest of the band he saw in their true colours. He found them humorous, passionate, and intemperate, uncontroled in temper, sudden and fierce in displeasure, and ever prone on the slightest occasion to have recourse to the stiletto.
When Julian made the discovery I have mentioned, St Elmo thought that a fitting time to urge him to return into the established walks of political community. He explained to the youth the circumstances which had had the power to induce him to adopt this mode of existence. Painful necessity had driven him from his country, and even from the boundaries of civilised life. But Julian had the career of honourable ambition before him. He was blessed with eminent talents; he had had every advantage of education; his habits were honourable; his character was unassailed with blemish or aspersion. The walks of social institution were his to choose as he pleased. He might earn fame in any one of them. He would make to himself friends among the most virtuous members of the community; the laws of society would protect him; the orders of society would emulate each other in crowning and rewarding his labours. St Elmo called upon Julian to contrast this destination with the billet he had himself drawn in the lottery of life. He was compelled to hide his head where he could, to be a fugitive, to wander from place to place; and at last probably his fate would be, to be dragged before the tribunal of offended laws, and to expiate his disdain of the land-marks of the civilised world by an ignominious death.
Julian turned a deaf ear to this expostulation. The wayward boy in his moods found a gratification in entering into a contumacious opposition to all that was soundest in argument, and most potent in remonstrance. Grief made him indifferent to the prejudices of his kind. He said to St Elmo, I am more unhappily circumstanced, than you were at the moment when the heroic exertions of your patriotism were utterly defeated. You still had approvers and friends. It was with you as has been said of the Roman Cato: ‘The Gods, the invisible governors of the world, took part with your enemies, but your own heart and your conscience told you that you were right.’ There were still men, and the best of men, who approved of your conduct, who sympathised with your adversity, and cherished you in their heart of hearts. But what am I? I am alone in the world, without a friend, without one person to countenance my honest undertakings, and cheer my endeavours with a smile. Never was solitude like my solitude! – Thus soured with his fortune Julian found a perverse pleasure in attaching himself to St Elmo the rather because he was an outlaw.
The robber-chief considered it as the most judicious mode of proceeding for the present, to humour the youthful mourner, rather than to engage in diametrical opposition to his visionary conceptions. He satisfied himself that the time would shortly come, when reason would resume its empire in the mind of Julian, and he would be accessible to the authority of sober advice. For the present they entered into a mutual arrangement; Julian was to remain with the company of St Elmo, but to take no part in such of their active proceedings as were infractions of the system of political communities. In reality, however the mind of the youth had become destitute of its wholesome balance, it was yet in no sort depraved, and therefore he felt a genuine repugnance to engaging in the deeds of a free-booter.
It was not long after the contract had thus been made between St Elmo and Julian, that the marchese Tanucci avowed his project for suppressing the infractions of the banditti throughout his master’s dominions. This afforded a new opportunity to the robber-chief to press upon his young friend the necessity of separating himself from a set of men against whom the government of the country had declared open war. But Julian would not hear of it. What, should he quit his friend in the hour of danger? He would then indeed deserve to be branded to the universal world. – On the other hand St Elmo thought, that, if things came to extremity, it would in no case be possible, that an ingenuous youth, whose hands had never been stained with blood, and who had not been implicated in the slightest act of violence, should be involved in the fate of himself and his followers.
It turned out however very contrary to what he had anticipated. It was not long after this discussion between the young man and his protector, that a scene occurred of the most disastrous nature. St Elmo and about fifty of his followers were surrounded by a party of the military in one of the mountain-passes. The surprise had been conducted with consummate skill. The robber-chieftain sent out his scouts on every side; but he found that he was entirely hemmed in. He had no choice, but to allow himself to be starved into surrender, or to determine by a desperate effort to cut his way through the enemy, and over their bleeding carcases to make good his retreat to some of the other fastnesses with which the island abounded. If he succeeded in this, he had conceived the plan of withdrawing entirely from Sicily, and offering the services of himself and those he should carry with him, to the bey of Tunis.
The conflict which took place was furious and bloody in the highest degree. The banditti performed prodigies of valour. St Elmo, and even Francesco, shewed themselves more than men. On this occasion Julian refused to remain idle. He would never engage in those acts which constituted the occupation of the banditti; but could not stand by, and see the life of the man he so profoundly loved exposed to the most desperate hazards. He resolved at least to share in the resistance, and partake the peril. He seized a musket and a sword. He did not manifest this resolution till the last moment. St Elmo was yet anxious that he should remove from the scene of battle; strenuously and energetically he opposed the generous devotion of Julian; but it was too late. The crisis in which he stood hurried him along. The military possessed every advantage of position. They fought from a descent, and were covered by the precipices on either side as with a wall. Thirty of the banditti were killed, and fifteen of the soldiers of the king. Twenty of the free-booters, assailed as they momentarily were by fresh adversaries, some of them wounded, others completely exhausted and powerless, were made prisoners. Among these were St Elmo, Francesco and Julian.
I no sooner heard of this event, than I set out with all expedition for Messina, and thence to Palermo. Every where as I passed along, I found the business regarded in a very serious light, the general opinion being, that the Sicilian government would make use of this occasion, to exhibit a terrible example, and shew their unalterable resolution that no more of these marauders should be permitted to exist. I arrived at Palermo. I found that the prisoners were confined in separate cells, and that no one was permitted to have access to them.
The condition in which he was now placed could not fail to have a memorable effect on the mind of Julian. Shut up in a solitary dungeon, without exercise or amusement, he had nothing upon which to occupy his thoughts but the image of his own situation. He had hitherto lived, particularly during the last twelve months, in a dream. He grieved most bitterly, most persistingly, for the death of Cloudesley. He had been instigated by his grief to seek the society of the companions he had left in the Apennines. He did not desire any new connections; he would have shrunk from the encounter of new faces.
All this was well. But the case was different, when he understood from the language and manner of those who had him in custody, the only persons he saw, that he would probably barely be taken out of prison to be led to the scaffold. This was a kind of shock, greatly calculated to awaken a man out of a dream. Julian was young, and had seen little of the diversified scenes of human life. Existence is a thing that is regarded in a very different light by the young and the old. The springs of human nature are of a limited sort, and lie in a narrow compass; and, when we grow old, our desires are declining, our faculties have lost their sharpness, and we are reasonably contented ‘to close our eyes, and shut out daylight.’ But to the young it is a very different thing, particularly perhaps at twenty years of age. We are just come into the possession of all our faculties, and begin fully to be aware of our own independence. Every thing is new to us; and the larger half at least of what is new, is also agreeable. Pleasure spreads before us all its allurements. Knowledge unrols its ample page. We have every thing to learn, and every thing to enjoy. Ambition proffers its variegated visions; and we are at a loss on which side to fix our choice. It is easy to dally with death. The young man is like the coquette of the other sex: she had little objection to trifling with a displeasing and superannuated lover, so long as she is satisfied she is not within his clutches.
