Part 8 (1/2)
_Portia_.--I must own, Octavia, that to bear such usage was harder to a woman than to swallow fire.
_Octavia_.--Yet I did bear it, madam, without even a complaint which could hurt or offend my husband. Nay, more, at his return from his Parthian expedition, which his impatience to bear a long absence from Cleopatra had made unfortunate and inglorious, I went to meet him in Syria, and carried with me rich presents of clothes and money for his troops, a great number of horses, and two thousand chosen soldiers, equipped and armed like my brother's Praetorian bands. He sent to stop me at Athens because his mistress was then with him. I obeyed his orders; but I wrote to him, by one of his most faithful friends, a letter full of resignation, and such a tenderness for him as I imagined might have power to touch his heart. My envoy served me so well, he set my fidelity in so fair a light, and gave such reasons to Antony why he ought to see and receive me with kindness, that Cleopatra was alarmed. All her arts were employed to prevent him from seeing me, and to draw him again into Egypt. Those arts prevailed. He sent me back into Italy, and gave himself up more absolutely than ever to the witchcraft of that Circe. He added Africa to the States he had bestowed on her before, and declared Caesario, her spurious son by Julius Caesar, heir to all her dominions, except Phoenicia and Cilicia, which with the Upper Syria he gave to Ptolemy, his second son by her; and at the same time declared his eldest son by her, whom he had espoused to the Princess of Media, heir to that kingdom and King of Armenia; nay, and of the whole Parthian Empire which he meant to conquer for him. The children I had brought him he entirely neglected as if they had been b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. I wept. I lamented the wretched captivity he was in; but I never reproached him. My brother, exasperated at so many indignities, commanded me to quit the house of my husband at Rome and come into his. I refused to obey him. I remained in Antony's house; I persisted to take care of his children by Fulvia, the same tender care as of my own. I gave my protection to all his friends at Rome. I implored my brother not to make my jealousy or my wrongs the cause of a civil war. But the injuries done to Rome by Antony's conduct could not possibly be forgiven. When he found he should draw the Roman arms on himself, he sent orders to me to leave his house. I did so, but carried with me all his children by Fulvia, except Antyllus, the eldest, who was then with him in Egypt. After his death and Cleopatra's, I took her children by him, and bred them up with my own.
_Arria_.--Is it possible, madam? the children of Cleopatra?
_Octavia_.--Yes, the children of my rival. I married her daughter to Juba, King of Mauritania, the most accomplished and the handsomest prince in the world.
_Arria_.--Tell me, Octavia, did not your pride and resentment entirely cure you of your pa.s.sion for Antony, as soon as you saw him go back to Cleopatra? And was not your whole conduct afterwards the effect of cool reason, undisturbed by the agitations of jealous and tortured love?
_Octavia_.--You probe my heart very deeply. That I had some help from resentment and the natural pride of my s.e.x, I will not deny. But I was not become indifferent to my husband. I loved the Antony who had been my lover, more than I was angry with the Antony who forsook me and loved another woman. Had he left Cleopatra and returned to me again with all his former affection, I really believe I should have loved him as well as before.
_Arria_.--If the merit of a wife is to be measured by her sufferings, your heart was unquestionably the most perfect model of conjugal virtue.
The wound I gave mine was but a scratch in comparison to many you felt.
Yet I don't know whether it would be any benefit to the world that there should be in it many Octavias. Too good subjects are apt to make bad kings.
_Portia_.--True, Arria; the wives of Brutus and Cecinna Paetus may be allowed to have spirits a little rebellious. Octavia was educated in the Court of her brother. Subjection and patience were much better taught there than in our houses, where the Roman liberty made its last abode.
And though I will not dispute the judgment of Minos, I can't help thinking that the affection of a wife to her husband is more or less respectable in proportion to the character of that husband. If I could have had for Antony the same friends.h.i.+p as I had for Brutus, I should have despised myself.
_Octavia_.--My fondness for Antony was ill-placed; but my perseverance in the performance of all the duties of a wife, notwithstanding his ill-usage, a perseverance made more difficult by the very excess of my love, appeared to Minos the highest and most meritorious effort of female resolution against the seductions of the most dangerous enemy to our virtue, offended pride.
DIALOGUE XVI.
LOUISE DE COLIGNI, PRINCESS OF ORANGE--FRANCES WALSINGHAM, COUNTESS OF ESs.e.x AND OF CLANRICARDE; BEFORE, LADY SIDNEY.
_Princess of Orange_.--Our destinies, madam, had a great and surprising conformity. I was the daughter of Admiral Coligni, you of Secretary Walsingham, two persons who were the most consummate statesmen and ablest supports of the Protestant religion in France, and in England. I was married to Teligni, the finest gentleman of our party, the most admired for his valour, his virtue, and his learning: you to Sir Philip Sidney, who enjoyed the same pre-eminence among the English. Both these husbands were cut off, in the flower of youth and of glory, by violent deaths, and we both married again with still greater men; I with William Prince of Orange, the founder of the Dutch Commonwealth; you with Devereux Earl of Ess.e.x, the favourite of Elizabeth and of the whole English nation. But, alas! to complete the resemblance of our fates, we both saw those second husbands, who had raised us so high, destroyed in the full meridian of their glory and greatness: mine by the pistol of an a.s.sa.s.sin; yours still more unhappily, by the axe, as a traitor.
_Countess of Clanricarde_.--There was indeed in some princ.i.p.al events of our lives the conformity you observe. But your destiny, though it raised you higher than me, was more unhappy than mine. For my father lived honourably, and died in peace: yours was a.s.sa.s.sinated in his old age.
How, madam, did you support or recover your spirits under so rainy misfortunes?
_Princess of Orange_.--The Prince of Orange left an infant son to my care. The educating of him to be worthy of so ill.u.s.trious a father, to be the heir of his virtue as well as of his greatness, and the affairs of the commonwealth, in which I interested myself for his sake, so filled my mind, that they in some measure took from me the sense of my grief, which nothing but such a great and important scene of business, such a necessary talk of private and public duty, could have ever relieved. But let me inquire in my turn, how did your heart find a balm to alleviate the anguish of the wounds it had suffered? What employed your widowed hours after the death of your Ess.e.x?
_Countess of Clanricarde_.--Madam, I did not long continue a widow: I married again.
_Princess of Orange_.--Married again! With what prince, what king did you marry? The widow of Sir Philip Sidney and of my Lord Ess.e.x could not descend from them to a subject of less ill.u.s.trious fame; and where could you find one that was comparable to either?
_Countess of Clanricarde_.--I did not seek for one, madam: the heroism of the former, and the ambition of the latter, had made me very unhappy. I desired a quiet life and the joys of wedded love, with an agreeable, virtuous, well-born, unambitious, unenterprising husband. All this I found in the Earl of Clanricarde: and believe me, madam, I enjoyed more solid felicity in Ireland with him, than I ever had possessed with my two former husbands, in the pride of their glory, when England and all Europe resounded with their praise.
_Princess of Orange_.--Can it be possible that the daughter of Walsingham, and the wife of Sidney and Ess.e.x, should have sentiments so inferior to the minds from which she sprang, and to which she was matched? Believe me, madam, there was no hour of the many years I lived after the death of the Prince of Orange, in which I would have exchanged the pride and joy I continually had in hearing his praise, and seeing the monuments of his glory in the free commonwealth his wisdom had founded, for any other delights the world could give. The cares that I shared with him, while he remained upon earth, were a happiness to my mind, because they exalted its powers. The remembrance of them was dear to me after I had lost him. I thought his great soul, though removed to a higher sphere, would look down upon mine with some tenderness of affection, as its fellow-labourer in the heroic and divine work of delivering and freeing his country. But to be divorced from that soul!
to be no longer his wife! to be the comfort of an inferior, inglorious husband! I had much rather have died a thousand deaths, than that my heart should one moment have conceived such a thought.
_Countess of Clanricarde_.--Your Highness must not judge of all hearts by your own. The ruling pa.s.sion of that was apparently ambition. My inclinations were not so n.o.ble as yours, but better suited, perhaps, to the nature of woman. I loved Sir Philip Sidney, I loved the Earl of Ess.e.x, rather as amiable men than as heroes and statesmen. They were so taken up with their wars and state-affairs, that my tenderness for them was too often neglected. The Earl of Clanricarde was constantly and wholly mine. He was brave, but had not that spirit of chivalry with which Sir Philip Sidney was absolutely possessed. He had, in a high degree, the esteem of Elizabeth, but did not aspire to her love; nor did he wish to be the rival of Carr or of Villiers in the affection of James.
Such, madam, was the man on whom my last choice bestowed my hand, and whose kindness compensated for all my misfortunes. Providence has a.s.signed to different tempers different comforts. To you it gave the education of a prince, the government of a state, the pride of being called the wife of a hero; to me a good-living husband, quiet, opulence, n.o.bility, and a fair reputation, though not in a degree so exalted as yours. If our whole s.e.x were to choose between your consolations and mine, your Highness, I think, would find very few of your taste. But I respect the sublimity of your ideas. Now that we have no bodies they appear less unnatural than I should have thought them in the other world.
_Princess of Orange_.--Adieu, madam. Our souls are of a different order, and were not made to sympathise or converse with each other.