Louis acknowledged the truth of these observations. He had erred under them all, excepting that, of not knowing how to pardon; and there, his heart bore witness to itself, that he could forgive the hand that stabbed him.
"Yes, Sir;" replied he, "I know that in striving after excellence; to bear, and to forbear, is the duty of men on earth. Perfect virtue will be his happiness in Heaven."
"You sigh, very heavily, my dear Louis;" replied Mr. Athelstone, "while you acknowledge this!--But so right a judgement at so early an age, is cheaply purchased by the _sweet uses of adversity_!--you know I told you, in my first letter on the beginning of your misfortunes; that, may be you were only entered into a cloud, which would shed forth a gentle shower to refresh your virtues--and the event has proved it." "But not with gentle showers!" replied Louis with a smile of anguish.
"No, my child," answered the Pastor, tenderly regarding him; "but had you not required it, they would not have been so heavy."
"I believe it, Sir!" replied Louis rising from his chair, "I was proud, and I was ambitious. The world reigned in my heart, when you thought it possessed by a better principle. I was ignorant of my own state, till I was made to see my own likeness in a mirror--But we will not speak further on it!" cried he, interrupting himself,--"It is over,--quite over;--buried deep, deep--beneath the walls of Tetuan!"
Louis had touched a string that made every chord in his heart vibrate; and, he quitted the venerable presence, to recover composure in the recollections of solitude.
The letters from Morewick, which announced to Sir Anthony Athelstone, the return of his nephew, found the Baronet at Cheltenham, just recovering from a fit of the gout. He was seated in his great-arm chair, and Cornelia reading by his footstool, when the tidings were brought in. Under these circumstances, for either to set out on an immediate journey northward, was impossible; but the raptures of both were not less eloquent; and was expressed with boisterous joy, by the one; and the mild transport of perfect happiness, from the lips of the other.
Sir Anthony wrote to Morewick, that his physicians would allow him to set forward in a very short time; when six horses should bring him with all speed to the banks of the Coquet. But this permission was not granted so soon as he expected; and, when it was accorded, the haste he made in travelling was so hostile to his convalescent state, that, within a stage of his own place of Athelstone-manor, he was seized with a relapse. Cornelia got him to the house, but no farther; the gout had now made prisoners of both feet; and he was laid upon his couch, for, perhaps a month to come, when she wrote to her cousin to tell him of this prevention to their progress.