Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851.», sayfa 6

"Of some of these tombs many persons could not withstand the suffocating air, which often causes fainting. A vast quantity of dust rises, so fine that it enters the throat and nostrils, and chokes the nose and mouth to such a degree, that it requires great power of lungs to resist it and the strong effluvia of the mummies. This is not all; the entry or passage where the bodies are is roughly cut in the rocks, and the falling of the sand from the upper part or ceiling of the passage causes it to be nearly filled up. In some places there is not more than the vacancy of a foot left, which you must contrive to pass through in a creeping posture, like a snail, on pointed and keen stones, that cut like glass. After getting through these passages, some of them two or three hundred yards long, you generally find a more commodious place, perhaps high enough to sit. But what a place of rest! surrounded by bodies, by heaps of mummies in all directions; which, previous to my being accustomed to the sight, impressed me with horror. The blackness of the walls, the faint light given by the candles or torches for want of air, the different objects that surrounded me, seeming to converse with each other, and the Arabs, with the candles or torches in their hands, naked and covered with dust, themselves resembling living mummies, absolutely formed a scene that can not be described. In such a situation I found myself several times, and often returned exhausted and fainting, till at last I became inured to it, and indifferent to what I suffered, except from the dust which never failed to choke my throat and nose; and though, fortunately, I am destitute of the sense of smelling, I could taste that the mummies were rather unpleasant to swallow. After the exertion of entering into such a place, through a passage of fifty, a hundred, three hundred, or perhaps six hundred yards, nearly overcome, I sought a resting-place, found one, and contrived to sit; but when my weight bore on the body of an Egyptian, it crushed it like a band-box. I naturally had recourse to my hands to sustain my weight, but they found no better support; so that I sunk altogether among the broken mummies, with a crash of bones, rags, and wooden cases, which raised such a dust as kept me motionless for a quarter of an hour, waiting till it subsided again. I could not remove from the place, however, without increasing it, and every step I took I crushed a mummy in some part or other. Once I was conducted from such a place to another resembling it, through a passage of about twenty feet in length, and no wider than that a body could be forced through. It was choked with mummies, and I could not pass without putting my face in contact with that of some decayed Egyptian; but as the passage inclined downward, my own weight helped me on: however, I could not avoid being covered with bones, legs, arms, and heads rolling from above. Thus I proceeded from one cave to another, all full of mummies piled up in various ways – some standing, some lying, and some on their heads."

Afterward, Belzoni traveled to the shores of the Red Sea, inspected the ruins of Berenice; then returned to Cairo, and directed excavations to be made at the bases of the great pyramids of Ghizeh; penetrated into that of Chephren – which had hitherto been inaccessible to Europeans – and discovered within it the sacred chamber where repose the hallowed bones of the bull Apis. The Valley of Faioum, the Lake Mœris, the ruins of Arsinoë, the sands of Libya, all yielded up their secrets to his dauntless spirit of research. He visited the oasis of El-Cassar, and the Fountain of the Sun; strangled in his arms two treacherous guides who tried to assassinate him; and then left Egypt, and returned to Padua with his wife.

The son of the humble barber had now become a rich and celebrated personage. A triumphal entry was prepared for him; and the municipal authorities of his native city met him at the gate, and presented him with an address. Manfredini was commissioned to engrave a medal which should commemorate the history of the illustrious traveler. England, however, soon claimed him; and on his arrival in London, he was received with the same honors as in his own country. Then he published an account of his travels, under the following title: "Narrative of the Operations and recent Discoveries in the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Cities of Egypt and Nubia, &c."

In 1822, Belzoni returned to Africa, with the intention of penetrating to Timbuctoo. Passing in the following year from the Bight of Benin toward Houssa, he was attacked with dysentery; was carried back to Gato, and thence put on board an English vessel lying off the coast. There, with much firmness and resignation, he prepared to meet his end. He intrusted the captain with a large amethyst to be given to his wife, and also with a letter which he wrote to his companion through good and evil days. Soon afterward, he breathed his last. They buried him at Gato, at the foot of a large tree, and engraved on his tomb the following epitaph in English —

"Here lies Belzoni, who died at this place, on his way to Timbuctoo, December 3d, 1823."

Belzoni was but forty-five years old when he died. A statue of him was erected at Padua, on the 4th of July, 1827. Very recently, the government of Great Britain bestowed on his widow the tardy solace of a small pension.

Giovanni Belzoni, the once starving mountebank, became one of the most illustrious men in Europe! – an encouraging example to all those who have not only sound heads to project, but stout hearts to execute.

PHANTOMS AND REALITIES. – AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

(Continued from Page 613.)

PART THE SECOND – NOON

V

To reason upon the effects of the discovery, or confession of our feelings, was not a process for which either of us was qualified by temperament or inclination. We did not pause to consider whether it was prudent to take our hearts and natures for granted all at once, and risk upon the strange delight of a single moment of luxurious emotion the happiness, perhaps, of a whole lifetime. We did not stop to ask if there were any obstacles in the way, any jarring chords to be attuned, any thing to be known or thought of into which our position demanded a scrutiny. We resigned ourselves at once to our impulses. We believed that we had seen enough of the world, and were strong enough in our self-sustaining power, and clear enough in our penetration, to dispense with ordinary safeguards, and act as if we were superior to them. We made our own world, and so went on as if we could control the planet in which we lived at our own will and pleasure.

I soon perceived that my attentions to Astræa had become a subject of much remark. The peering coterie about us were so vigilant in matters of that kind, that, as it appeared afterward, they had found out the fact before it had taken place. For my own part, there was nobody half so much surprised at the circumstance as I was myself. I believed that the heart, like that plant which is said to blow once and die, was incapable of a second growth of love; but I now felt the fallacy of that doctrine, and was at first humiliated by the discovery. It struck me like a great heresy against truth and purity; it seemed to lay bare before me the corruptibility and feebleness of poor human nature. To strive against it, however, was idle. The second growth was in full flower, yet with a difference from the first, which I could detect even against the grain of the passion that was subjugating me. I felt that the second growth was less simple and devotional than the first; that it had more exuberance, and was of a wilder character; that it struck not its roots so deeply, but spread its blossoms more widely; that it was less engrossing, but more agitating; that it was cultivated with greater consciousness and premeditation, risked with more caution, fed with more prudence, and tended more constantly – but all with a lesser waste of the imagination; that its delights were more fervid but less appeasing; that it looked not so much into the future with hope and promise, as it filled the present with rapture; that its memories were neither so sad nor so vivid, and that it let in caprice, and vanity, and unreasonableness, and self-love, and the world's esteem, which are all as dust in the balance, or a feather in the whirlwind, to impetuous love. I was amazed to find myself a daily waiter upon beauty. Yet so it was. The vision of Gertrude was now gone from my path – the spectre had vanished in the broad light of the new passion.

Still, while I paid my court to Astræa, it was not with any intention of publicity, but furtively, as if a private dread hung over us, or as if we thought it pleasanter to vail our feelings from observation. We understood each other in silent looks, which we supposed to be unintelligible to every body else; she seemed to avoid, designedly, all appearance of interest in me, and sometimes played the part to such admiration, as to give me not a few passing pangs of doubt and uneasiness; and I, seeing how scrupulous she was on that point, and not choosing to incur rude jests at her expense, was equally unwilling to betray a feeling which was rendered the more delicious by secrecy. We imagined ourselves secure; but neither of us could have had much worldly sagacity or we must have known that all our caution was fruitless. Basilisks' eyes were around us, and we trod a path beset with serpents. Fortunately we were both looked up to as persons who could not be approached with familiarity; and that preserved us from the open badinage to which others, in similar circumstances, might have been subjected.

Alone, and liberated from this vexatious surveillance, we gave free vent to our thoughts. The suddenness of our new confidence, and the rapidity with which we already shaped its issues, bewildered us by the intensity of the emotions that came crowding for speech and explanation. Astræa sometimes had misgivings, although she never knew how to give them a definite form. One day she said to me, "We are wrong in giving way to this feeling. It is not a love likely to procure us peace. I say this to you because I feel it – perhaps, because I know it; but I confess myself unable to argue upon a question upon which my reason, my whole being is held in suspense. I say so, simply because I ought to say so, and not because I am prepared of myself to act, or even to advise. I am like a leaf in a tempest, and can not guide myself. I yield to the irresistible power that has swept me from the firm land, and deprived me of the strength to regain it."

I fancied that this left me but one course to take, and I replied, "We have pronounced our destiny, Astræa, for good or for evil. We ought to have no choice but to abide by it. If you do not fail in your faith, mine is irrevocable."

At these words she looked gravely at me, and answered,

"My faith dies with me. It is a part of my life. It was not taken up in an hour, to be as lightly thrown aside. Without it, life would be insupportable; with it, life in any shape of seclusion, privation, banishment, contains all the blessings I covet upon earth. It was not for that, or of that I spoke. Understand me clearly, and put no construction on my words outside their plain and ordinary meaning. All I ask, all that is necessary for me is your society; to hear you speak, to drink in the words of kindness and power that flow from your lips, to be ever near you, to tend, solace, and console you. I should be content to enjoy the privilege of seeing that you were happy, without even aspiring to the higher glory of creating happiness for you. That is my nature – capable of a wider range, and a loftier flight, but happiest in its devotion. In any capacity I will serve you – and feel that the servitude of love is dominion!"

So firm and constant was the character of Astræa, tinged with a romantic inspiration, that all this homage was serious and real, and issued gravely from her heart through her lips. She meant every syllable she spoke in its true sense; and I felt that she was ready to fulfill it, and sustain it to the end. She believed that all endurances were possible for love's sake, and that she could even enact miracles of stoicism in the strength of her fidelity.

For many months our intercourse, always thus sophisticating its aims and interpretations, was carried on in secret. We had become necessary to each other; but being still shut up in our mystery, we had not made as much advance toward any definite result as one single moment of disclosure to the people we were among would have inevitably compelled us to decide upon. We were very prudent in our outward bearing, and hardly aware of the avidity with which the concealed passion was devouring our hearts.

The dwarf followed me, and hovered about me more than ever. But I learned to bear with him on account of his being in the house with Astræa. Any body who was constantly in her society, and admitted to terms of intimacy with her, was welcome to me – as relics from the altar of a saint are welcome to the devotee, or a leaf snatched, from a tree in the haunts of home is welcome to the exile. It was a pleasure when I met him even to ask for Astræa, to have an excuse for uttering her name, or to hear him speak of her, or to speak of her myself, or to talk of any thing that we had before talked of together. Such are the resources, the feints, the stratagems, the foibles of love!

VI

One night my indefatigable Mephistophiles took me to a tavern. He was in a vagrant mood, and I indulged him.

"Come, we shall see life to-night," he said.

"With all my heart," I replied. It was not much to my taste, but I fancied there was something unusual in his manner, and my curiosity was awakened to see what it would lead to.

We entered a bustling and brilliantly-lighted house. Numerous guests were scattered about at different tables, variously engaged in getting rid of time at the smallest possible cost of reflection. The dwarf sauntered through the room, whispered a waiter, and, beckoning me to follow, led the way up-stairs to a lesser apartment, where we found ourselves alone.

"You will not see much life here," I observed, rather surprised at his selection of a secluded room in preference to the lively salon through which we had just passed.

"We can make our own life," he answered, with a sarcastic twinge of the mouth, "and imagine more things in five minutes than we should see or hear below in a month."

I thought this very odd. It looked as if he had some concealed motive; but I acquiesced in his notion, and was secretly pleased, not less at the exchange of the din and riot for ease and quietness, than at the opportunity it opened to him for the free play of the humor, whatever it was, that I could plainly see was working upon him.

We drank freely – that was a great resource with him when he was in a mood of extravagance – talked rapidly about a chaos of things, laughed loudly, and in the pauses of the strange revel relapsed every now and then into silence and abstraction. During these brief and sudden intervals, the dwarf would amuse himself by drawing uncouth lines on the table, with his head hanging over them, as if his thoughts were elsewhere engaged, and the unintelligible pastime of his fingers were resorted to only to hide them.

I could not tell why it was, but I felt uneasy and restless. My companion appeared to me like a man who was mentally laboring at some revelation, yet did not know how to begin it. He was constantly talking at something that was evidently troubling his mind, yet he still evaded his own purpose, as if he did not like the task to which he had set himself. Throughout the whole time he never mentioned Astræa's name, and this circumstance gave me additional cause for suspicion.

At last, summoning up all his energy, and fixing himself with the points of his elbows on the table, and his long, wiry hands, which looked like talons, stretched up into his elfin hair at each side of his face, while his eyes, shooting out their malignant fires, were riveted upon me to scan the effect of what he was about to say, he suddenly exclaimed,

"You have been remarked in your attentions to Astræa."

The mystery was out. And what was there in it, after all? I was a free agent, and so was Astræa. Why should he make so much theatrical parade about so very simple a business?

"Well!" I exclaimed, scarcely able to repress a smile, which the exaggerated earnestness of his manner excited.

"Well! You acknowledge that it is so?"

"Acknowledge? Why should I either acknowledge or deny it? There is no treason in it; the lady is the best judge – let me add, the only judge – of any attentions I may have paid to her."

"But I say you have been remarked – it has been spoken of – it is already a common topic of conversation."

"Indeed! A common topic of conversation! Well, I have no objection, provided my good-natured friends do not say any thing injurious, or wound the lady's feelings by an improper use of my name."

He paused for a moment, and lowering his voice, then went on,

"You never said any thing of this before."

"Why should I? The inquiry was never made of me before."

"I have made no inquiry," he retorted. "I didn't ask you to confess. You have avowed it all yourself, unconsciously."

I felt that the dwarf was getting serious, and that he was likely to make me more in earnest before he was done than I had at first anticipated. I saw the necessity of showing him at once that I would not brook his interference, and I addressed him in a more deliberate tone than I had hitherto adopted.

"Allow me to ask," I demanded, "what interest you may take in this matter, and by what right you assume the office of interrogating me so authoritatively?"

"By what right?" he answered. "My right to do so is rather clearer than your right to refuse an explanation. You met her at my mother's house – you meet her there. She is under our roof, under our guardianship and protection. That gives me the right. It is not pleasant to interfere in this way; but I am called upon to do so by my position, and I delayed it in the hope that you would render it unnecessary."

"Why should you hope so? Why should you desire any explanation on the subject? The lady is her own mistress: she is under your roof, it is true; but not under your control. The same thing might happen under any other roof, and nobody would thereby acquire a right to interfere in a matter that concerns her alone. You will surely see the propriety of not suffering your curiosity to meddle any further in the affair?"

"Meddle!" he reiterated; "control! Are these the phrases with which you taunt me? But," dropping his voice again, he added, "you are right in suggesting that I have discharged my office when I demand, to what end those very marked attentions are paid to Astræa?"

"You make an unwarrantable demand, and you shall have a fitting answer to it; and my answer is, that to Astræa alone will I confide my confession, as you call it. She is old enough and wise enough to think and act for herself; nor will I consent to compromise my respect for her understanding by admitting that she requires an arbitrator – perhaps I ought to say, champion."

"Have a care," he replied, kindling up all at once into a sort of frenzy – "have a care what you say or do. You move in darkness – you tread on smothered fire."

"Do you threaten me?" said I.

"No; I do not threaten you. Look at your arm and mine – compare your muscles with my shrunken and stunted frame," he cried, with an expression of pain and bitterness; "I do not threaten you, but I warn you – mark me, I warn you! Heed my warning, I beseech, I implore you – nay, heed it for your life!"

I could not but admire the sibyl-like grandeur of his head and outstretched arms as he uttered these strange words. His voice was hoarse with some surging emotion; and if so poor a creature could have been the recipient of a supernatural inspiration, he might have sat at that moment for the portrait of one of the deformed soothsayers in a tale of magic.

"Do I understand you correctly?" said I; "or are you only playing off some new freak upon me? Answer me frankly one question, and I shall be better able to comprehend the meaning of your mysterious menace. Are you – but I know it is absurd, I feel that the question is very ridiculous, only that your reply to it will, perhaps, set us both right – do you love Astræa? I really can not conceive any thing short of some such feeling to justify this violence."

"Love her? I love Astræa? If there be a mortal I hate in the core of my heart, it is Astræa. Are you satisfied?" he replied, with an expression of fiendish satisfaction in his face, as if he were glad of the excuse for giving vent to his malignity.

"Hate her?" said I, calmly; "that is unreasonable: but the whole discussion is unreasonable. I have given you my answer; none other shall you have from me. So, good-night."

"One word," he said, leaping out of his chair into the middle of the room. "One word before you go. I am a dwarf – do not delude yourself into any contempt of me on that account. I know as well as you do my disadvantages in the world; I am as conscious as you are of my physical defects and shortcomings, my distorted spine, and the parsimony of nature in all particulars when she made me. But I have passions like other men; and I pursue them like other men, only, as I am shut out from the summary and open process, I am compelled, perchance, to the choice of dark and crooked means. Perhaps, too, my passions are all the more turbulent and dangerous because they are pent up in an incapable frame, and denied the vents and appliances which men like you have at their command. Mark me! see Astræa no more. Let your last interview with her be your last forever. Enter our house no more; that interdict, at least, I have a right to pronounce. But for myself, and from myself, and apart from the privilege of my own roof, I warn you at your peril, and on my own responsibility, never to see Astræa again."

"Are you mad?" I exclaimed. "Never to see Astræa again! To forsake her society at your bidding! Wherefore do you make this monstrous demand? Do you not feel how preposterous it is to thrust yourself into a quarrel with me in a matter which not only does not concern you, but which involves the feelings, perhaps the whole future happiness, of a person whom you have just ostentatiously declared is the object of your hate?"

"I make no quarrel with you," he answered; "I will not quarrel with you. I should be mad, indeed, if I did. What! set myself against your thews and sinews? No, no – I break no bones with you – but I tell you, once again, your fate is in my hands. I am your destiny, if you will have it so. You may trample on the oracle; but you can not, with all your show of bravery and your proud pretensions, with the lady, too, in triumph on your side, escape its denunciations."

"Did you, or did you not," I inquired, bewildered by his language, and not quite satisfied that he was in possession of his senses, "did you, or did you not, observe those attentions some months ago of which you now complain for the first time?"

"I did," he answered.

"And why did you not then speak to me on the subject?"

"Because it wasn't ripe!"

"Ripe? If you have any meaning in these obscure hints, why do you not explain it for your own sake, since you can not believe that I will submit patiently to your insane threats? Again I ask you, did you, or did you not, promote these attentions by every artifice and suggestion in your power?"

"I did."

"Did you not watch them anxiously, forward them daily, and exult in their progress, until you became secretly convinced that both Astræa's feelings and mine were engaged beyond recall?"

"I did – I did – I did!" roared the dwarf.

"Did you not produce this very result yourself? Did you not seek it, urge it, fan it to its height, and even glory in the flame you had nursed so cunningly?"

"I did – I did – I did!" he shrieked, his whole body seeming to take part in the frenzy that convulsed him.

"Fiend!" I cried; "inexplicable devil! what would you have, then? What is your aim in thus coming with your curses between us?"

"You shall never know," he replied, "unless to deplore it to the last hour of your life. You can never know unless you outrage my will. I have the power to make you wretched forever, to blight and destroy you. And if you treat my warning with contempt, I will do it without fail, without mercy, without remorse. The jester who has contributed so largely to your entertainment, and furnished such a delectable theme for your secret and cowardly mockery, will shoot a bolt of a graver cast when you least expect it, and think yourself most secure. Mark me – note me well. These are not words of rage, or transient passion: remember them, be wise, and look to your safety. See Astræa no more. With this I leave you. Our next meeting must be of your making."

I was alone. Overwhelmed and awed by the demoniacal maledictions of the wretched creature whom I had hitherto so intensely despised, I knew not what to think, or how to act. He had assumed a fresh shape, more marvelous than any he had hitherto put on in the whole round of his extraordinary mummery. The raillery and tipsy recklessness which appeared constitutional in him had suddenly passed away, leaving not a solitary trace behind. Even his figure, while he had been speaking, seemed to heave with a new life, and to dilate into unnatural dimensions. I was perplexed to the last extremity; not that the malice of the demon could scare me from my resolves, but that his motives were so impenetrable as to suffer no clew to escape by which I could discover the evil purpose that lay at the bottom.

It was not the machination or revenge of a disappointed suitor. He never could have aspired to a hope of Astræa, and he avowed his aversion to her. She was ignorant of all this bravado about her; and would be even more indignant to hear of it than I was to suffer it. I resolved, therefore, not to insult her by revealing it to her. Fortunately, I had made an appointment to meet her alone on the following day. That meeting would decide every thing. She might, perhaps, throw some light upon what was at present a profound mystery to me. At all events, my course was clear. Under the circumstances in which I was placed, I felt that there lay but one alternative before me.