第4章 CHAPTER I(3)

Probably the lagunes surrounding the invested fortress would be his worst difficulty. The Adige he described as beset with a two-fold risk - the avoidance of the bridges, which courted suspicion, and the thin ice and only partially frozen river, which had to be traversed in the dark. The vigour, the zest with which the wiry veteran 'shoulder'd his crutch and show'd how fields were won' was not a thing to be forgotten.

Lord Lynedoch lived to a great age, and it was from his house at Cardington, in Bedfordshire, that my brother Leicester married his first wife, Miss Whitbread, in 1843. That was the last time I saw him.

Perhaps the following is not out of place here, although it is connected with more serious thoughts:

Though neither my father nor my mother were more pious than their neighbours, we children were brought up religiously.

From infancy we were taught to repeat night and morning the Lord's Prayer, and invoke blessings on our parents. It was instilled into us by constant repetition that God did not love naughty children - our naughtiness being for the most part the original sin of disobedience, rooted in the love of forbidden fruit in all its forms of allurement. Moses himself could not have believed more faithfully in the direct and immediate intervention of an avenging God. The pain in one's stomach incident to unripe gooseberries, no less than the consequent black dose, or the personal chastisement of a responsible and apprehensive nurse, were but the just visitations of an offended Deity.

Whether my religious proclivities were more pronounced than those of other children I cannot say, but certainly, as a child, I was in the habit of appealing to Omnipotence to gratify every ardent desire.

There were peacocks in the pleasure grounds at Holkham, and I had an aesthetic love for their gorgeous plumes. As I hunted under and amongst the shrubs, I secretly prayed that my search might be rewarded. Nor had I a doubt, when successful, that my prayer had been granted by a beneficent Providence.

Let no one smile at this infantine credulity, for is it not the basis of that religious trust which helps so many of us to support the sorrows to which our stoicism is unequal? Who that might be tempted thoughtlessly to laugh at the child does not sometimes sustain the hope of finding his 'plumes' by appeals akin to those of his childhood? Which of us could not quote a hundred instances of such a soothing delusion - if delusion it be? I speak not of saints, but of sinners: of the countless hosts who aspire to this world's happiness; of the dying who would live, of the suffering who would die, of the poor who would be rich, of the aggrieved who seek vengeance, of the ugly who would be beautiful, of the old who would appear young, of the guilty who would not be found out, and of the lover who would possess. Ah! the lover. Here possibility is a negligible element. Consequences are of no consequence. Passion must be served. When could a miracle be more pertinent?

It is just fifty years ago now; it was during the Indian Mutiny. A lady friend of mine did me the honour to make me her confidant. She paid the same compliment to many - most of her friends; and the friends (as is their wont) confided in one another. Poor thing! her case was a sad one. Whose case is not? She was, by her own account, in the forty-second year of her virginity; and it may be added, parenthetically, an honest fourteen stone in weight.

She was in love with a hero of Lucknow. It cannot be said that she knew him only by his well-earned fame. She had seen him, had even sat by him at dinner. He was young, he was handsome. It was love at sight, accentuated by much meditation - 'obsessions [peradventure] des images genetiques.' She told me (and her other confidants, of course) that she prayed day and night that this distinguished officer, this handsome officer, might return her passion.

And her letters to me (and to other confidants) invariably ended with the entreaty that I (and her other, &c.) would offer up a similar prayer on her behalf. Alas! poor soul, poor body! I should say, the distinguished officer, together with the invoked Providence, remained equally insensible to her supplications. The lady rests in peace. The soldier, though a veteran, still exults in war.

But why do I cite this single instance? Are there not millions of such entreaties addressed to Heaven on this, and on every day? What difference is there, in spirit, between them and the child's prayer for his feather? Is there anything great or small in the eye of Omniscience? Or is it not our thinking only that makes it so?