About three years after, our philosopher was on a visit at Geneva; the
promise he made to La Roche and his daughter, on his former visit, was
recalled to his mind by the view of that range of mountains on a part of
which they had often looked together. There was a reproach, too, conveyed
along with the recollection, for his having failed to write to either for
several months past. The truth was, that indolence was the habit most
natural to him, from which he was not easily roused by the claims of
correspondence, either of his friends or of his enemies; when the latter
drew their pens in controversy, they were often unanswered as well as
the former. While he was hesitating about a visit to La Roche, which he
wished to make, but found the effort rather too much for him, he received
a letter from the old man, which had been forwarded to him from Paris,
where he had then fixed his residence. It contained a gentle complaint
of Mr. ——’s want of punctuality, but an assurance of continued gratitude
for his former good offices; and, as a friend whom the writer considered
interested in his family, it informed him of the approaching nuptials
of Mademoiselle La Roche with a young man, a relation of her own, and
formerly a pupil of her father’s, of the most amiable dispositions and
respectable character. Attached from their earliest years, they had
been separated by his joining one of the subsidiary regiments of the
canton, then in the service of a foreign power. In this situation he had
distinguished himself as much for courage and military skill as for the
other endowments which he had cultivated at home. The time of his service
was now expired, and they expected him to return in a few weeks, when the
old man hoped, as he expressed it in his letter, to join their hands and
see them happy before he died.
Our philosopher felt himself interested in this event; but he was not,
perhaps, altogether so happy in the tidings of Mademoiselle La Roche’s
marriage as her father supposed him. Not that he was ever a lover of the
lady’s; but he thought her one of the most amiable women he had seen,
and there was something in the idea of her being another’s forever that
struck him, he knew not why, like a disappointment. After some little
speculation on the matter, however, he could look on it as a thing
fitting if not quite agreeable, and determined on this visit to see his
old friend and his daughter happy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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