Chapter 1 No.1

In the month of February, at the close of an exceedingly severe winter, a singular tumult took place in the town of --, the origin, progress, and final pacification of which, gave rise to the most strange and contradictory reports. Where every one will relate, and no one knows any thing of the matter, it is natural that the simplest circumstance should become invested with an air of the marvellous.

It was in one of the narrowest streets of the populous suburbs of the town that this mysterious event took place. According to some, a traitor or desperate rebel had been discovered and captured by the police; others said that an atheist, who had secretly conspired with others to tear up Christianity by the roots, had, after an obstinate resistance, surrendered himself to the authorities, and was now lying in prison, there to learn better principles. All agreed that the criminal had defended himself in the most desperate manner. One man, who was a profound politician and an execrable shoemaker, laboured to convince his neighbours that the prisoner was at the head of a hundred secret societies, which had their ramifications over France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the far East; and that, in fact, a monstrous insurrection was on the very point of breaking out in the furthest parts of India, which, like the cholera, would spread over Europe, and set in flame all its combustible material.

Thus much was certain, that a tumult had arisen in a small house in the suburbs; that the police had been called in; that the populace had made an uproar; that some eminent personage was seen amongst the crowd; and that, after a little time, all became still again, without any body being the wiser. In the house itself certain devastations had undoubtedly been made, which some explained one way, some another, according to their humours: the carpenters and joiners were busy in repairing them.

In this house had lived a man of whom no one in the neighbourhood knew any thing. Whether he was a poet or a politician, a native or a foreigner, no one could divine. The wisest were at fault. This only was certain, that the unknown lived in a most quiet and retired manner; he was seen on none of the promenades, nor in any public place; he was young, was pronounced to be handsome, and his newly married bride, who shared his solitude with him, was described as being miraculously beautiful.

It was about Christmas time when this young couple were sitting together over the stove in their little apartment. "Of a truth," said the young man, "how all this is to end is a riddle. All our resources seem now exhausted."

"Alas! yes, Henry," answered the beautiful Clara, to whom this was addressed; "but whilst you, dearest, are still cheerful, I cannot feel myself unfortunate."

"Fortunate and unfortunate," replied Henry, "shall be with us but empty words. The day when you quitted your father's house, and for my sake abandoned all other considerations, decided our fortune for all our lifetime to come. To live and to love, this is our watchword; in what manner exactly we live shall be indifferent."

"Indeed we are deprived of almost every thing," said the young wife, "except each other. But I knew you were not rich, and you knew when I left my father's house I could bring nothing with me; so love and poverty came to us hand in hand. And now this little chamber, which we never quit, and the talking together, and the looking into the eyes we love-this is all our life."

"Right! right!" said Henry, and springing up from his seat, he embraced his charming companion with renewed fondness. "Here are we like Adam and Eve in their paradise; and I think," he added, looking round the apartment as he spoke, "no angel will come down from heaven for the express purpose of driving us out of it."

"If it were not," said Clara, a little dejected, "that the wood begins to fail-and this winter is certainly the severest I ever knew"--

"Certainly," said Henry; "some fuel must somewhere be found. It is inconceivable that we should be allowed to freeze from without, with all this warm love within us. Quite impossible! I cannot help laughing amidst it all, with a sense of ridiculous embarrassment, at the idea that so simple a thing as a little coin cannot be procured."

Clara smiled. "If only," said she, "we had some superfluous furniture, any brass pans or copper kettles."

"Ah! if only we were millionaires!" interrupted Henry gaily; "then we could get wood in abundance, and perhaps," he added, looking slyly over to the stove where some bread-soup was in preparation for their very temperate repast, "some better fare for dinner. But," he continued in a tone of humorous banter, which he frequently adopted, and pushing back his chair a few paces as he spoke, "while you superintend the household concerns, and give the necessary orders to the cook, I will withdraw into my study. Now, what would I not write if only pen, paper, and ink, were to be got at; and how studiously would I read if but a book could be procured."

"You must think, dearest," said Clara waggishly; "the stock of thoughts, it is to be hoped, is not quite so low as our wood."

"Dearest wife," he replied, "the cares of our establishment demand all your attention; let me proceed undisturbed with my studies. I will read," he continued, speaking as if to himself, "the journal I formerly kept in our palmy days of stationery. And it strikes me that it would be particularly profitable to study it backwards; to begin at the end, and so lay a proper foundation for a full comprehension of the beginning. All true wisdom goes in a circle, and is typified by a serpent biting at its own tail. We will begin this time at the tail."

Opening his journal at the last page, he began to read in the same subdued tone-"They tell a tale of a raving criminal, who, being condemned to death by starvation, ate himself gradually up. This is, in fact, the story of life, and of all of us. In some there remains nothing but the stomach and the mouth. With us there is left the soul, which is expressly said to be inconsumable. So far as externals are concerned, I have certainly flayed and devoured myself. That I should, up to this day, have retained a certain dress-coat-I, who never go out-was perfectly ridiculous. Mem.-Next birthday of my wife to appear before her in a waist-coat and shirt sleeves, as it would be highly indecorous to present myself to a person of her rank in a frock-coat somewhat overworn."

Here he came to the end both of the page and the book. Turning back, he commenced at the page immediately preceding-"One can live very well without napkins. And now I think of it, what are these miserable napkins but a niggardly expedient for saving the table-cloth? Nay, what is this table-cloth itself but a base economy for sparing the table! I pronounce them both to be mere superfluities; both shall be sold, that we may eat off the table in the manner of the patriarchs. We will live in the fashion of our magnanimous ancestors. It is in no cynical, Diogenes-humour that I banish them from the house, but from a resolution not to follow the example of this poor-spirited age, which encumbers itself with extravagant superfluities out of a sordid economy."

"Exactly so," said Clara laughing. "Meanwhile, on the proceeds of those and other superfluities, I invite you to a repast which, at all events, shall not savour of extravagance."

So saying, they sat down to their bread-soup. He who had seen them, whatever he might have thought of the dinner, would have envied those who partook of it, so cheerful were they, so joyful, so full of freaks and frolics, over their simple provender. When the bread-soup was dispatched, Clara slyly brought from the stove a covered plate, and set before her astonished husband-a reserve of potatoes! "Long live thou second Sir Walter Raleigh!" cried Henry. Whereupon they drank to each other out of the pure element, and hob-nobbed with such glee, that Clara looked anxiously the next moment at the glasses, to see that they had not cracked them in their enthusiasm.

The dinner concluded, they drew their chairs, by way of variety, up to the solitary window of their apartment, and amused themselves with looking at the fantastic filigree work with which the frost had decorated the inside of the glass.

"My aunt used to maintain," said Clara, "that the room was warmer with this ice on the window than when the glass was clear."

"Possibly!" replied Henry. "But on the strength of this faith I would not dispense with the fire."

"How wonderfully various," said Clara, "are these ice-flowers! Is it not strange, one seems to have seen them all in reality, yet cannot give a name to a single one of them? And look how one grows over the other, and how the noble leaves seem to expand, even as we speak of them."

"It is your sweet breath, my dear, that is calling up these ghosts and spirits of departed flowers," said Henry. "I imagine that some invisible genius is reading all thy gentle and loving fancies, and pictures them forth, as they arise, in these flower-phantoms; so that, by looking at this glass, I know, even while you are silent, that your thoughts are full of love-that they are dwelling upon me."

A fond kiss was the answer and the reward of this pretty speech.

Henry took up his journal, and beginning at the ante-penultimate page, read aloud:-"To-day-Sold to that old miser of a bookseller, my rare copy of Chaucer, the costly edition of Caxton. My friend, the dear, noble Andreas Vandelmeer, made me a present of it on my birthday, when we were at the university together. He had written to London for it himself: paid an enormous price for it; and then had it bound, after his own taste, in rich Gothic style. The old hunks of a bookseller will, no doubt, send it back to London, and will get for it tenfold what he has given me. I ought, at least, to have cut out the leaf where the circumstance of this gift is recorded; and here I have written some lamentable lines, signed with my present name and address. This is vexatious. Parting with this book almost persuades me that something like want is pressing on us; for, without doubt, it was the most precious thing I possessed, and the memorial of my dearest and my only friend. Oh, Andreas Vandelmeer! art thou still living? Where art thou? And dost thou still think of me?"

"I saw your pain," said Clara, as he concluded, "when you sold that book; but this friend of your youth-you have never described him to me."

"He was in person," replied Henry, "somewhat resembling myself-rather older and more staid. We knew each other as boys at school. I might say he almost persecuted me with his love, so passionately did he press it on me. He was ever complaining that my friendship was too cold. Rich as he was, and tenderly as he had been brought up, no indulgence had made him selfish. On leaving the university, he determined on going to India, that distant land of wonder having fascinated his ardent imagination. There was then quite a storm of entreaties and supplications that I should accompany him. He assured me that I should make my fortune there, as his own forefathers had in fact done. But my mother died about this time, and my friends, moreover, procured for me a position in the diplomatic body. He persuaded me, at least, to entrust to him the small fortune I had inherited from my mother, that he might employ it advantageously for me; a request which I have always suspected was made in order that he might have, some future time, a pretext and disguise for his generosity. We took leave of each other, and I repaired, in the suite of my ambassador, to the town where your father resided-and where"--

"The history becomes tolerably well known to us both. But this noble Andreas-did you never hear of him again?"

"I received two letters," answered Henry, "from that remote quarter of the world. After which I heard, but through no authentic source, that he died of the cholera. So far as fortune was concerned, I was left as you see, entirely dependent on myself. Still, I enjoyed the favour of my ambassador-was not unpopular at my court-could reckon on some powerful friends;-but all this has disappeared."

"All this, alas!" said Clara, "you have sacrificed for me. And I also am a fugitive from home."

"Then love must supply all. And so it has, and so it will. Has not our honeymoon, as they vulgarly call it, lasted nearly a year?"

"It shall last for ever!" said Clara. Then after a pause, which was filled up as lovers' pauses usually are, she added. "But the worst blow of all was the loss of your own book;-that dear poetry you had written. If we had but kept a copy of it, we might have passed many hours of these winter evenings in reading it. But then," she added, with a smile and a sigh at the same time, "we should have wanted a candle."

"We talk-we gossip," said Henry, "which is much better. I hear the sweet tones of your voice; you sing me a song, or you break suddenly out into that heavenly laugh of yours. What is there not in that musical, jubilee laugh? When I hear it, angel mine, I am not only delighted, I muse, I meditate, I am rapt. How much of character is there in a laugh! You know no man till you have heard him laugh-till you know when and how he will laugh. There are occasions-there are humours when a man with whom we have been long familiar, shall quite startle and repel us, by breaking out into a laugh which comes manifestly right from his heart, and which yet we had never heard before. Even in fair ladies with whom I have been much pleased, I have remarked the same thing. As in many a heart a sweet angel slumbers unseen till some happy moment awakens it, so there sleeps often in gracious and amiable characters, deep in the background, a quite vulgar spirit, which starts into life when something rudely comical penetrates into the less frequented chambers of the mind. Our instinct teaches us that in that being there lies something we must take heed of.

"As to that young and thoughtless publisher," continued Henry, "who became bankrupt and ran off with my glorious manuscript, he, no doubt, did us good service; for how easily might my intercourse with him, while the book was being printed, have led to our discovery? Your father has not yet, be assured, relinquished his pursuit of us-my passport would have been examined again with severer scrutiny-something, no doubt, would have led to the suspicion that the name I bear is assumed. We should have been separated. So, angel mine, we are happy as we are-most happy!"

It had now grown dark, and the fire was burned out; a candle to talk by would have been certainly superfluous: so they retired early to their sleeping apartment. Here they could continue their chat in the dark, quite heedless of the heavy fall of snow that was encumbering their windows.