On Murder (Oxford World's Classics)

by Thomas De Quincey

  Agencies of fear, as of any other passion, and above all, of passion felt in communion with thousands, and in which the heart beats in conscious sympathy with an entire city, through all its regions of high and low, young and old, strong and weak; such agencies avail to raise and transfigure the natures of men; mean minds become elevated; dull men become eloquent; and when matters came to this crisis, the public feeling, as made known by voice, gesture, manner, or words, was such that no stranger could represent it to his fancy. In that respect, therefore, I had an advantage, being upon the spot through the whole course of the affair, for giving a faithful narrative; as I had still more eminently, from the sort of central station which I occupied, with respect to all the movements of the case. I may add, that I had another advantage, not possessed, or not in the same degree, by any other inhabitant of the town. I was personally acquainted with every family of the slightest account, belonging to the resident population; whether amongst the old local gentry, or the new settlers whom the late wars had driven to take refuge within our walls.

  It was in September, 1815, that I received a letter from the Chief Secretary to the Prince of M——, a nobleman connected with the diplomacy of Russia, from which I quote an extract:—‘I wish, in short, to recommend to your attentions, and in terms stronger than I know how to devise, a young man on whose behalf the Czar himself is privately known to have expressed the very strongest interest. He was at the battle of Waterloo* as an aide-de-camp to a Dutch general officer, and is decorated with distinctions won upon that awful day. However, though serving in that instance under English orders, and although an Englishman of rank, he does not belong to the English military service. He has served, young as he is, under various banners, and under ours, in particular, in the cavalry of our Imperial Guard. He is English by birth, nephew to the Earl of E., and heir presumptive to his immense estates. There is a wild story current—that his mother was a gipsy of transcendent beauty, which may account for his somewhat Moorish complexion, though, after all, that is not of a deeper tinge than I have seen amongst many an Englishman. He is himself one of the noblest looking of God’s creatures. Both father and mother, however, are now dead; since then, he has become the favourite of his uncle, who detained him in England after the Emperor had departed—and, as this uncle is now in the last stage of infirmity, Mr Wyndham’s succession to the vast family estates is inevitable, and probably near at hand. Mean-time, he is anxious for some assistance in his studies. Intellectually he stands in the very first rank of men, as I am sure you will not be slow to discover; but his long military service, and the unparalleled tumult of our European history since 1805, have interfered (as you may suppose) with the cultivation of his mind; for he entered the cavalry service of a German power when a mere boy, and shifted about from service to service as the hurricane of war blew from this point or from that. During the French anabasis to Moscow* he entered our service, made himself a prodigious favourite with the whole Imperial family, and even now is only in his twenty-second year. As to his accomplishments, they will speak for themselves; they are infinite, and applicable to every situation of life. Greek is what he wants from you; never ask about terms. He will acknowledge any trouble he may give you, as he acknowledges all trouble, en prince.* And ten years hence you will look back with pride upon having contributed your part to the formation of one whom all here at St Petersburg, not soldiers only, but we diplomates, look upon as certain to prove a great man, and a leader amongst the intellects of Christendom.’

  Two or three other letters followed; and at length it was arranged that Mr Maximilian Wyndham should take up his residence at my monastic abode for one year. He was to keep a table, and an establishment of servants, at his own cost; was to have an apartment of some dozen or so of rooms; the unrestricted use of the library; with some other public privileges willingly conceded by the magistracy of the town; in return for all which he was to pay me a thousand guineas: and already beforehand, by way of acknowledgment for the public civilities of the town, he sent, through my hands, a contribution of three hundred guineas to the various local institutions for education of the poor, or for charity.

  The Russian Secretary had latterly corresponded with me from a little German town not more than ninety miles distant: and, as he had special couriers at his service, the negotiation advanced so rapidly, that all was closed before the end of September. And, when once that consummation was attained, I, that previously had breathed no syllable of what was stirring, now gave a loose to the interesting tidings, and suffered them to spread through the whole compass of the town. It will be easily imagined that such a story, already romantic enough in its first outline, would lose nothing in the telling. An Englishman to begin with, which name of itself, and at all times, is a passport into German favour, but much more since the late memorable wars that, but for Englishmen, would have drooped into disconnected efforts—next, an Englishman of rank and of the haute noblesse,*—then a soldier covered with brilliant distinctions, and in the most brilliant arm of the service; young, moreover, and yet a veteran by his experience,—fresh from the most awful battle of this planet since the day of Pharsalia,*—radiant with the favour of courts and of Imperial ladies,—finally (which alone would have given him an interest in all female hearts), an Antinous* of faultless beauty, a Grecian statue, as it were, into which the breath of life had been breathed by some modern Pygmalion,*—such a pomp of gifts and endowments settling upon one man’s head, should not have required for its effect the vulgar consummation (and yet to many it was the consummation and crest of the whole) that he was reputed to be rich beyond the dreams of romance or the necessities of a fairy tale. Unparalleled was the impression made upon our stagnant society; every tongue was busy in discussing the marvellous young Englishman from morning to night; every female fancy was busy in depicting the personal appearance of this gay apparition.

  On his arrival at my house, I became sensible of a truth which I had observed some years before. The commonplace maxim is—that it is dangerous to raise expectations too high. This, which is thus generally expressed, and without limitation, is true only conditionally; it is true then and there only where there is but little merit to sustain and justify the expectation. But in any case where the merit is transcendent of its kind, it is always useful to rack the expectation up to the highest point; in any thing which partakes of the infinite, the most unlimited expectations will find ample room for gratification; whilst it is certain that ordinary observers, possessing little sensibility, unless where they have been warned to expect, will often fail to see what exists in the most conspicuous splendour. In this instance it certainly did no harm to the subject of expectation, that I had been warned to look for so much. The warning, at any rate, put me on the look-out for whatever eminence there might be of grandeur in his personal appearance; whilst, on the other hand, this existed in such excess, so far transcending any thing I had ever met with in my experience, that no expectation which it is in words to raise could have been disappointed.

  These thoughts travelled with the rapidity of light through my brain as at one glance my eye took in the supremacy of beauty and power which seemed to have alighted from the clouds before me. Power, and the contemplation of power, in any absolute incarnation of grandeur or excess, necessarily have the instantaneous effect of quelling all perturbation. My composure was restored in a moment. I looked steadily at him. We both bowed. And, at the moment when he raised his head from that inclination, I caught the glance of his eye; an eye such as might have been looked for in a face of such noble lineaments—

  Blending the nature of the star

  With that of summer skies;*

  and, therefore, meant by nature for the residence and organ of serene and gentle emotions; but it surprised, and at the same time filled me more almost with consternation than with pity, to observe, that in those eyes a light of sadness had settled more profound than seemed possible for youth, or almost commensurate to a human sorrow; a sadness that might hav
e become a Jewish prophet, when laden with inspirations of wo. *

  Two months had now passed away since the arrival of Mr Wyndham. He had been universally introduced to the superior society of the place; and, as I need hardly say, universally received with favour and distinction. In reality, his wealth and importance, his military honours, and the dignity of his character as expressed in his manners and deportment, were too eminent to allow of his being treated with less than the highest attention in any society whatever. But the effect of these various advantages, enforced and recommended as they were by a personal beauty so rare, was somewhat too potent for the comfort and self-possession of ordinary people; and really exceeded in a painful degree the standard of pretensions under which such people could feel themselves at their ease. He was not naturally of a reserved turn; far from it. His disposition had been open, frank, and confiding originally; and his roving, adventurous life, of which considerably more than one-half had been passed in camps, had communicated to his manners a more than military frankness. But the profound melancholy which possessed him, from whatever cause it arose, necessarily chilled the native freedom of his demeanour, unless when it was revived by strength of friendship or of love. The effect was awkward and embarrassing to all parties. Every voice paused or faltered when he entered a room—dead silence ensued—not an eye but was directed upon him, or else, sunk in timidity, settled upon the floor; and young ladies seriously lost the power, for a time, of doing more than murmuring a few confused, half-inarticulate syllables, or half-inarticulate sounds. The solemnity, in fact, of a first presentation, and the utter impossibility of soon recovering a free unembarrassed movement of conversation, made such scenes really distressing to all who participated in them, either as actors or spectators. Certainly this result was not a pure effect of manly beauty, however heroic, and in whatever excess; it arose in part from the many and extraordinary endowments which had centered in his person, not less from fortune than from nature; in part also, as I have said, from the profound sadness and freezing gravity of Mr Wyndham’s manner; but still more from the perplexing mystery which surrounded that sadness.

  Were there, then, no exceptions to this condition of awe-struck admiration? Yes: One at least there was in whose bosom the spell of all-conquering passion soon thawed every trace of icy reserve. Whilst the rest of the world retained a dim sentiment of awe towards Mr Wyndham, Margaret Liebenheim* only heard of such a feeling to wonder that it could exist towards him. Never was there so victorious a conquest interchanged between two youthful hearts—never before such a rapture of instantaneous sympathy. I did not witness the first meeting of this mysterious Maximilian and this magnificent Margaret, and do not know whether Margaret manifested that trepidation and embarrassment which distressed so many of her youthful co-rivals; but if she did, it must have fled before the first glance of the young man’s eye, which would interpret, past all misunderstanding, the homage of his soul and the surrender of his heart. Their third meeting I did see; and there all shadow of embarrassment had vanished, except, indeed, of that delicate embarrassment which clings to impassioned admiration. On the part of Margaret, it seemed as if a new world had dawned upon her that she had not so much as suspected amongst the capacities of human experience. Like some bird she seemed, with powers unexercised for soaring and flying, not understood even as yet, and that never until now had found an element of air capable of sustaining her wings, or tempting her to put forth her buoyant instincts. He, on the other hand, now first found the realization of his dreams, and for a mere possibility which he had long too deeply contemplated, fearing, however, that in his own case it might prove a chimera, or that he might never meet a woman answering the demands of his heart, he now found a corresponding reality that left nothing to seek.

  Here, then, and thus far, nothing but happiness had resulted from the new arrangement. But, if this had been little anticipated by many, far less had I, for my part, anticipated the unhappy revolution which was wrought in the whole nature of Ferdinand von Harrelstein. He was the son of a German baron; a man of good family, but of small estate, who had been pretty nearly a soldier of fortune in the Prussian service, and had, late in life, won sufficient favour with the king and other military superiors, to have an early prospect of obtaining a commission, under flattering auspices, for this only son—a son endeared to him as the companion of unprosperous years, and as a dutifully affectionate child. Ferdinand had yet another hold upon his father’s affections: his features preserved to the Baron’s unclouded remembrance a most faithful and living memorial of that angelic wife who had died in giving birth to this third child—the only one who had long survived her. Anxious that his son should go through a regular course of mathematical instruction, now becoming annually more important in all the artillery services throughout Europe, and that he should receive a tincture of other liberal studies which he had painfully missed in his own military career, the Baron chose to keep his son for the last seven years at our college, until he was now entering upon his twenty-third year. For the four last he had lived with me as the sole pupil whom I had, or meant to have, had not the brilliant proposals of the young Russian guardsman persuaded me to break my resolution. Ferdinand Von Harrelstein had good talents, not dazzling but respectable; and so amiable were his temper and manners, that I had introduced him every where; and every where he was a favourite; every where, indeed, except exactly there where only in this world he cared for favour. Margaret Liebenheim, she it was whom he loved, and had loved for years with the whole ardour of his ardent soul; she it was for whom, or at whose command, he would willingly have died. Early he had felt that in her hands lay his destiny; that she it was who must be his good or his evil genius.

  At first, and perhaps to the last, I pitied him exceedingly. But my pity soon ceased to be mingled with respect. Before the arrival of Mr Wyndham he had shown himself generous, indeed magnanimous. But never was there so painful an overthrow of a noble nature as manifested itself in him. I believe that he had not himself suspected the strength of his passion; and the sole resource for him, as I said often, was—to quit the city; to engage in active pursuits of enterprise, of ambition, or of science. But he heard me as a somnambulist might have heard me—dreaming with his eyes open. Sometimes he had fits of reverie, starting, fearful, agitated; sometimes he broke out into maniacal movements of wrath, invoking some absent person, praying, beseeching, menacing some air-wove phantom: sometimes he slunk into solitary corners—muttering to himself, and with gestures sorrowfully significant, or with tones and fragments of expostulation that moved the most callous to compassion. Still he turned a deaf ear to the only practical counsel that had a chance for reaching his ears. Like a bird under the fascination of a rattlesnake, he would not summon up the energies of his nature to make an effort at flying away. ‘Begone, whilst it is time!’ said others, as well as myself; for more than I saw enough to fear some fearful catastrophe. ‘Lead us not into temptation!’* said his confessor to him in my hearing (for, though Prussians, the Von Harrelsteins were Roman Catholics), ‘lead us not into temptation!—that is our daily prayer to God. Then, my son, being led into temptation, do not you persist in courting, nay, almost tempting temptation! Try the effects of absence, though but for a month.’ The good father even made an overture towards imposing a penance upon him, that would have involved an absence of some duration. But he was obliged to desist; for he saw that, without effecting any good, he would merely add spiritual disobedience to the other offences of the young man. Ferdinand himself drew his attention to this; for he said,—‘Reverend father! do not you, with the purpose of removing me from temptation, be yourself the instrument for tempting me into a rebellion against the Church. Do not you weave snares about my steps; snares there are already, and but too many.’ The old man sighed, and desisted.