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CHAPTER XVIII.
The first conviction that there is death in the house is perhaps the
most awful moment of youth. When we are young, we think that not only
ourselves, but that all about us, are immortal. Until the arrow has
struck a victim round our own hearth, death is merely an unmeaning
word; until then, its casual mention has stamped no idea upon our
brain. There are few, even among those least susceptible of thought
and emotion, in whose hearts and minds the first death in the family
does not act as a powerful revelation of the mysteries of life, and of
their own being; there are few who, after such a catastrophe, do not
look upon the world and the world's ways, at least for a time, with
changed and tempered feelings. It recalls the past; it makes us ponder
over the future; and youth, gay and light-hearted youth, is taught,
for the first time, to regret and to fear.
On Cadurcis, a child of pensive temperament, and in whose strange
and yet undeveloped character there was, amid lighter elements, a
constitutional principle of melancholy, the sudden decease of his
mother produced a profound effect. All was forgotten of his parent,
except the intimate and natural tie, and her warm and genuine
affection. He was now alone in the world; for reflection impressed
upon him at this moment what the course of existence too generally
teaches to us all, that mournful truth, that, after all, we have no
friends that we can depend upon in this life but our parents.
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