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Devereux, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Book 4 - Chapter 11. An Interview |
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_ BOOK IV CHAPTER XI. AN INTERVIEW I WENT a little out of my way, on departing from Paris, to visit Lord Bolingbroke, who at that time was in the country. There are some men whom one never really sees in capitals; one sees their masks, not themselves: Bolingbroke was one. It was in retirement, however brief it might be, that his true nature expanded itself; and, weary of being admired, he allowed one to love, and, even in the wildest course of his earlier excesses, to respect him. My visit was limited to a few hours, but it made an indelible impression on me. "Once more," I said, as we walked to and fro in the garden of his temporary retreat, "once more you are in your element; minister and statesman of a prince, and chief supporter of the great plans which are to restore him to his throne." A slight shade passed over Bolingbroke's fine brow. "To you, my constant friend," said he, "to you,--who of all my friends alone remained true in exile, and unshaken by misfortune,--to you I will confide a secret that I would intrust to no other. I repent me already of having espoused this cause. I did so while yet the disgrace of an unmerited attainder tingled in my veins; while I was in the full tide of those violent and warm passions which have so often misled me. Myself attainted; the best beloved of my associates in danger; my party deserted, and seemingly lost but for some bold measure such as then offered,--these were all that I saw. I listened eagerly to representations I now find untrue; and I accepted that rank and power from one prince which were so rudely and gallingly torn from me by another. I perceive that I have acted imprudently; but what is done, is done: no private scruples, no private interest, shall make me waver in a cause that I have once pledged myself to serve; and if I _can_ do aught to make a weak cause powerful, and a divided party successful, I will; but, Devereux, you are wrong,--this is _not_ my element. Ever in the paths of strife, I have sighed for quiet; and, while most eager in pursuit of ambition, I have languished the most fondly for content. The littleness of intrigue disgusts me, and while _the branches_ of my power soared the highest, and spread with the most luxuriance, it galled me to think of the miry soil in which that power was condemned to strike _the roots_,* upon which it stood, and by which it must be nourished."
"Do not think I affect to speak thus: you know how eagerly I snatch any respite from state, and how unmovedly I have borne the loss of prosperity and of power. You are now about to enter those perilous paths which I have trod for years. Your passions, like mine, are strong! Beware, oh, beware, how you indulge them without restraint! They are the fires which should warm: let them not be the fires which destroy." Bolingbroke paused in evident and great agitation; he resumed: "I speak strongly, for I speak in bitterness; I was thrown early into the world; my whole education had been framed to make me ambitious; it succeeded in its end. I was ambitious, and of all success,--success in pleasure, success in fame. To wean me from the former, my friends persuaded me to marry; they chose my wife for her connections and her fortune, and I gained those advantages at the expense of what was better than either,--happiness! You know how unfortunate has been that marriage, and how young I was when it was contracted. Can you wonder that it failed in the desired effect? Every one courted me; every temptation assailed me: pleasure even became more alluring abroad, when at home I had no longer the hope of peace; the indulgence of one passion begat the indulgence of another; and, though my better sense _prompted_ all my actions, it never _restrained_ them to a proper limit. Thus the commencement of my actions has been generally prudent, and their _continuation_ has deviated into rashness, or plunged into excess. Devereux, I have paid the forfeit of my errors with a terrible interest: when my motives have been pure, men have seen a fault in the conduct, and calumniated the motives; when my conduct has been blameless, men have remembered its former errors, and asserted that its present goodness only arose from some sinister intention: thus I have been termed crafty, when I was in reality rash, and that was called the inconsistency of interest which in reality was the inconsistency of passion.* I have reason, therefore, to warn you how you suffer your subjects to become your tyrants; and believe me no experience is so deep as that of one who has committed faults, and who has discovered their causes."
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