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Title: The Parisians, Book 4.
Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Release Date: March 2005 [EBook #7740]
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[This file was first posted on May 20, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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THE PARISIANS
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.
It is many days since I wrote to you, and but for your delightful note
just received, reproaching me for silence, I should still be under the
spell of that awe which certain words of M. Savarin were well fitted to
produce. Chancing to ask him if he had written to you lately, he said,
with that laugh of his, good-humouredly ironical, "No, Mademoiselle, I am
not one of the _Facheux_ whom Moliere has immortalized. If the meeting
of lovers should be sacred from the intrusion of a third person, however
amiable, more sacred still should be the parting between an author and
his work. Madame de Grantmesnil is in that moment so solemn to a genius
earnest as hers,--she is bidding farewell to a companion with whom, once
dismissed into the world, she can never converse familiarly again; it
ceases to be her companion when it becomes ours. Do not let us disturb
the last hours they will pass together."
These words struck me much. I suppose there is truth in them. I can
comprehend that a work which has long been all in all to its author,
concentrating his thoughts, gathering round it the hopes and fears of his
inmost heart, dies, as it were, to him when he has completed its life for
others, and launched it into a world estranged from the solitude in which
it was born and formed. I can almost conceive that, to a writer like
you, the very fame which attends the work thus sent forth chills your own
love for it. The characters you created in a fairyland, known but to
yourself, must lose something of their mysterious charm when you hear
them discussed and cavilled at, blamed or praised, as if they were really
the creatures of streets and salons.
I wonder if hostile criticism pains or enrages you as it seems to do such
other authors as I have known. M. Savarin, for instance, sets down in
his tablets as an enemy to whom vengeance is due the smallest scribbler
who wounds his self-love, and says frankly, "To me praise is food,
dispraise is poison. Him who feeds me I pay; him who poisons me I break
on the wheel." M. Savarin is, indeed, a skilful and energetic
administrator to his own reputation. He deals with it as if it were a
kingdom,--establishes fortifications for its defence, enlists soldiers to
fight for it. He is the soul and centre of a confederation in which each
is bound to defend the territory of the others, and all those territories
united constitute the imperial realm of M. Savarin. Don't think me an
ungracious satirist in what I am thus saying of our brilliant friend. It
is not I who here speak; it is himself. He avows his policy with the
_naivete_ which makes the charm of his style as writer. "It is the
greatest mistake," he said to me yesterday, "to talk of the Republic of
Letters. Every author who wins a name is a sovereign in his own domain,
be it large or small. Woe to any republican who wants to dethrone me!"
Somehow or other, when M. Savarin thus talks I feel as if he were
betraying the cause of, genius. I cannot bring myself to regard
literature as a craft,--to me it is a sacred mission; and in hearing this
"sovereign" boast of the tricks by which he maintains his state, I seem
to listen to a priest who treats as imposture the religion he professes
to teach. M. Savarin's favourite _eleve_ now is a young contributor to
his journal, named Gustave Rameau. M. Savarin said the other day in my
hearing, "I and my set were Young France; Gustave Rameau and his set are
New Paris."
"And what is the distinction between the one and the other?" asked my
American friend, Mrs. Morley.
"The set of 'Young France,'" answered M. Savarin, "had in it the hearty
consciousness of youth; it was bold and vehement, with abundant vitality
and animal spirits; whatever may be said against it in other respects,
the power of thews and sinews must be conceded to its chief
representatives. But the set of 'New Paris' has very bad health, and
very indifferent spirits. Still, in its way, it is very clever; it can
sting and bite as keenly as if it were big and strong. Rameau is the
most promising member of the set. He will be popular in his time,
because he represents a good deal of the mind of his time,--namely, the
mind and the time of 'New Paris.'"
Do you know anything of this young Rameau's writings? You do not know
himself, for he told me so, expressing a desire, that was evidently very
sincere, to find some occasion on which to render you his homage. He
said this the first time I met him at M. Savarin's, and before he knew
how dear to me are yourself and your fame. He came and sat by me after
dinner, and won my interest at once by asking me if I had heard that you
were busied on a new work; and then, without waiting for my answer, he
launched forth into praises of you, which made a notable contrast to the
scorn with which he spoke of all your contemporaries,--except indeed M.
Savarin, who, however, might not have been pleased to hear his favourite
pupil style him "a great writer in small things." I spare you his
epigrams on Dumas and Victor Hugo and my beloved Lamartine. Though his
talk was showy, and dazzled me at first, I soon got rather tired of it,
even the first time we met. Since then I have seen him very often, not
only at M. Savarin's, but he calls here at least every other day, and we
have become quite good friends. He gains on acquaintance so far that one
cannot help feeling how much he is to be pitied. He is so envious! and
the envious must be so unhappy. And then he is at once so near and so
far from all the things that he envies. He longs for riches and luxury,
and can only as yet earn a bare competence by his labours. Therefore he
hates the rich and luxurious. His literary successes, instead of
pleasing him, render him miserable by their contrast with the fame of the
authors whom he envies and assails. He has a beautiful head, of which he
is conscious, but it is joined to a body without strength or grace. He
is conscious of this too,--but it is cruel to go on with this sketch.
You can see at once the kind of person who, whether he inspire affection
or dislike, cannot fail to create an interest, painful but compassionate.
You will be pleased to hear that Dr. C. considers my health so improved
that I may next year enter fairly on the profession for which I was
intended and trained. Yet I still feel hesitating and doubtful. To give
myself wholly up to the art in which I am told I could excel must
alienate me entirely from the ambition that yearns for fields in which,
alas! it may perhaps never appropriate to itself a rood for culture,--
only wander, lost in a vague fairyland, to which it has not the fairy's
birthright. O thou great Enchantress, to whom are equally subject the
streets of Paris and the realm of Faerie, thou who hast sounded to the
deeps that circumfluent ocean called "practical human life," and hast
taught the acutest of its navigators to consider how far its courses are
guided by orbs in heaven,--canst thou solve this riddle which, if it
perplexes me, must perplex so many? What is the real distinction between
the rare genius and the commonalty of human souls that feel to the quick
all the grandest and divinest things which the rare genius places before
them, sighing within themselves, "This rare genius does but express that
which was previously familiar to us, so far as thought and sentiment
extend"? Nay, the genius itself, however eloquent, never does, never
can, express the whole of the thought or the sentiment it interprets; on
the contrary, the greater the genius is, the more it leaves a something
of incomplete satisfaction on our minds,--it promises so much more than
it performs; it implies so much more than it announces. I am impressed
with the truth of what I thus say in proportion as I re-peruse and
re-study the greatest writers that have come within my narrow range of
reading; and by the greatest writers I mean those who are not exclusively
reasoners (of such I cannot judge), nor mere poets (of whom, so far as
concerns the union of words with music, I ought to be able to judge), but
the few who unite reason and poetry, and appeal at once to the common-
sense of the multitude and the imagination of the few. The highest type
of this union to me is Shakspeare; and I can comprehend the justice of no
criticism on him which does not allow this sense of incomplete
satisfaction augmenting in proportion as the poet soars to his highest.
I ask again, In what consists this distinction between the rare genius
and the commonalty of minds that exclaim, "He expresses what we feel, but
never the whole of what we feel"? Is it the mere power over language, a
larger knowledge of dictionaries, a finer ear for period and cadence, a
more artistic craft in casing our thoughts and sentiments in well-
selected words? Is it true what Buffon says, "that the style is the
man"? Is it true what I am told Goethe said, "Poetry is form"? I cannot
believe this; and if you tell me it is true, then I no longer pine to be
a writer. But if it be not true, explain to me how it is that the
greatest genius is popular in proportion as it makes itself akin to us by
uttering in better words than we employ that which was already within us,
brings to light what in our souls was latent, and does but correct,
beautify, and publish the correspondence which an ordinary reader carries
on privately every day between himself and his mind or his heart. If
this superiority in the genius be but style and form, I abandon my dream
of being something else than a singer of words by another to the music of
another. But then, what then? My knowledge of books and art is
wonderfully small. What little I do know I gather from very few books
and from what I hear said by the few worth listening to whom I happen to
meet; and out of these, in solitude and revery, not by conscious effort,
I arrive at some results which appear to my inexperience original.
Perhaps, indeed, they have the same kind of originality as the musical
compositions of amateurs who effect a cantata or a quartette made up of
borrowed details from great masters, and constituting a whole so original
that no real master would deign to own it. Oh, if I could get you to
understand how unsettled, how struggling my whole nature at this moment
is! I wonder what is the sensation of the chrysalis which has been a
silkworm, when it first feels the new wings stirring within its shell,--
wings, alas! they are but those of the humblest and shortest-lived sort
of moth, scarcely born into daylight before it dies. Could it reason, it
might regret its earlier life, and say, "Better be the silkworm than the
moth."
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
Have you known well any English people in the course of your life? I say
well, for you must have had acquaintance with many. But it seems to me
so difficult to know an Englishman well. Even I, who so loved and
revered Mr. Selby,--I, whose childhood was admitted into his
companionship by that love which places ignorance and knowledge, infancy
and age, upon ground so equal that heart touches heart, cannot say that I
understand the English character to anything like the extent to which I
fancy I understand the Italian and the French. Between us of the
Continent and them of the island the British Channel always flows. There
is an Englishman here to whom I have been introduced, whom I have met,
though but seldom, in that society which bounds the Paris world to me.
Pray, pray tell me, did you ever know, ever meet him? His name is Graham
Vane. He is the only son, I am told, of a man who was a _celebrite_ in
England as an orator and statesman, and on both sides he belongs to the
haute aristocratic. He himself has that indescribable air and mien to
which we apply the epithet 'distinguished.' In the most crowded salon
the eye would fix on him, and involuntarily follow his movements. Yet
his manners are frank and simple, wholly without the stiffness or reserve
which are said to characterize the English. There is an inborn dignity
in his bearing which consists in the absence of all dignity assumed. But
what strikes me most in this Englishman is an expression of countenance
which the English depict by the word 'open,'--that expression which
inspires you with a belief in the existence of sincerity. Mrs. Morley
said of him, in that poetic extravagance of phrase by which the Americans
startle the English, "That man's forehead would light up the Mammoth
Cave." Do you not know, Eulalie, what it is to us cultivators of art--
art being the expression of truth through fiction--to come into the
atmosphere of one of those souls in which Truth stands out bold and
beautiful in itself, and needs no idealization through fiction? Oh, how
near we should be to heaven could we live daily, hourly, in the presence
of one the honesty of whose word we could never doubt, the authority of
whose word we could never disobey! Mr. Vane professes not to understand
music, not even to care for it, except rarely, and yet he spoke of its
influence over others with an enthusiasm that half charmed me once more
back to my destined calling; nay, might have charmed me wholly, but that
he seemed to think that I--that any public singer--must be a creature
apart from the world,--the world in which such men live. Perhaps that is
true.
CHAPTER II.
It was one of those lovely noons towards the end of May in which a rural
suburb has the mellow charm of summer to him who escapes awhile from the
streets of a crowded capital. The Londoner knows its charm when he feels
his tread on the softening swards of the Vale of Health, or, pausing at
Richmond under the budding willow, gazes on the river glittering in the
warmer sunlight, and hears from the villa-gardens behind him the brief
trill of the blackbird. But the suburbs round Paris are, I think, a yet
more pleasing relief from the metropolis; they are more easily reached,
and I know not why, but they seem more rural,--perhaps because the
contrast of their repose with the stir left behind, of their redundance
of leaf and blossom compared with the prim efflorescence of trees in the
Boulevards and Tuileries, is more striking. However that may be, when
Graham reached the pretty suburb in which Isaura dwelt, it seemed to him
as if all the wheels of the loud busy life were suddenly smitten still.
The hour was yet early; he felt sure that he should find Isaura at home.
The garden-gate stood unfastened and ajar; he pushed it aside and
entered. I think I have before said that the garden of the villa was
shut out from the road and the gaze of neighbours by a wall and thick
belts of evergreens; it stretched behind the house somewhat far for the
garden of a suburban villa. He paused when he had passed the gateway,
for he heard in the distance the voice of one singing,--singing low,
singing plaintively. He knew it was the voice of Isaura-_he passed on,
leaving the house behind him, and tracking the voice till he reached the
singer.
Isaura was seated within an arbour towards the farther end of the
garden,--an arbour which, a little later in the year, must indeed be
delicate and dainty with lush exuberance of jessamine and woodbine; now
into its iron trelliswork leaflets and flowers were insinuating their
gentle way. Just at the entrance one white rose--a winter rose that had
mysteriously survived its relations--opened its pale hues frankly to the
noonday sun. Graham approached slowly, noiselessly, and the last note of
the song had ceased when he stood at the entrance of the arbour. Isaura
did not perceive him at first, for her face was bent downward musingly,
as was often her wont after singing, especially when alone; but she felt
that the place was darkened, that something stood between her and the
sunshine. She raised her face, and a quick flush mantled over it as she
uttered his name, not loudly, not as in surprise, but inwardly and
whisperingly, as in a sort of fear.
"Pardon me, Mademoiselle," said Graham, entering; "but I heard your voice
as I came into the garden, and it drew me onward involuntarily. What a
lovely air! and what simple sweetness in such of the words as reached me!
I am so ignorant of music that you must not laugh at me if I ask whose is
the music and whose are the words? Probably both are so well known as to
convict me of a barbarous ignorance."
"Oh, no," said Isaura, with a still heightened colour, and in accents
embarrassed and hesitating. "Both the words and music are by an unknown
and very humble composer, yet not, indeed, quite original,--they have not
even that merit; at least they were suggested by a popular song in the
Neapolitan dialect which is said to be very old."
"I don't know if I caught the true meaning of the words, for they seemed
to me to convey a more subtle and refined sentiment than is common in the
popular songs of southern Italy."
"The sentiment in the original is changed in the paraphrase, and not, I
fear, improved by the change."
"Will you explain to me the sentiment in both, and let me judge which I
prefer?"
"In the Neapolitan song a young fisherman, who has moored his boat under
a rock on the shore, sees a beautiful face below the surface of the
waters; he imagines it to be that of a Nereid, and casts in his net to
catch this supposed nymph of the ocean. He only disturbs the water,
loses the image, and brings up a few common fishes. He returns home
disappointed, and very much enamoured of the supposed Nereid. The next
day he goes again to the same place, and discovers that the face which
had so charmed him was that of a mortal girl reflected on the waters from
the rock behind him, on which she had been seated, and on which she had
her home. The original air is arch and lively; just listen to it." And
Isaura warbled one of those artless and somewhat meagre tunes to which
light-stringed instruments are the fitting accompaniment.
"That," said Graham, "is a different music indeed from the other, which
is deep and plaintive, and goes to the heart."
"But do you not see how the words have been altered? In the song you
first heard me singing, the fisherman goes again to the spot, again and
again sees the face in the water, again and again seeks to capture the
Nereid, and never knows to the last that the face was that of the mortal
on the rock close behind him, and which he passed by without notice every
day. Deluded by an ideal image, the real one escapes from his eye."
"Is the verse that is recast meant to symbolize a moral in love?"
"In love? nay, I know not; but in life, yes,--at least the life of the
artist."
"The paraphrase of the original is yours, Signorina, words and music
both. Am I not right? Your silence answers 'Yes.' Will you pardon me
if I say that, though there can be no doubt of the new beauty you have
given to the old song, I think that the moral of the old was the sounder
one, the truer to human life. We do not go on to the last duped by an
allusion. If enamoured by the shadow on the waters, still we do look
around us and discover the image it reflects."
Isaura shook her head gently, but made no answer. On the table before
her there were a few myrtle-sprigs and one or two buds from the last
winter rose, which she had been arranging into a simple nosegay; she took
up these, and abstractedly began to pluck and scatter the rose-leaves.
"Despise the coming May flowers if you will, they will soon be so
plentiful," said Graham; "but do not cast away the few blossoms which
winter has so kindly spared, and which even summer will not give again;"
and placing his hand on the winter buds, it touched hers,--lightly,
indeed, but she felt the touch, shrank from it, coloured, and rose from
her seat.
"The sun has left this side of the garden, the east wind is rising, and
you must find it chilly here," she said, in an altered tone; "will you
not come into the house?"
"It is not the air that I feel chilly," said Graham, with a half-smile;
"I almost fear that my prosaic admonitions have displeased you."
"They were not prosaic; and they were kind and very wise," she added,
with her exquisite laugh,--laugh so wonderfully sweet and musical. She
now had gained the entrance of the arbour; Graham joined her, and they
walked towards the house. He asked her if she had seen much of the
Savarins since they had met.
"Once or twice we have been there of an evening."
"And encountered, no doubt, the illustrious young minstrel who despises
Tasso and Corneille?"
"M. Rameau? Oh, yes; he is constantly at the Savarins. Do not be severe
on him. He is unhappy, he is struggling, he is soured. An artist has
thorns in his path which lookers-on do not heed."
"All people have thorns in their path, and I have no great respect for
those who want lookers-on to heed them whenever they are scratched. But
M. Rameau seems to me one of those writers very common nowadays, in
France and even in England; writers who have never read anything worth
studying, and are, of course, presumptuous in proportion to their
ignorance. I should not have thought an artist like yourself could have
recognized an artist in a M. Rameau who despises Tasso without knowing
Italian."
Graham spoke bitterly; he was once more jealous.
"Are you not an artist yourself? Are you not a writer? M. Savarin told
me you were a distinguished man of letters."
"M. Savarin flatters me too much. I am not an artist, and I have a great
dislike to that word as it is now hackneyed and vulgarized in England and
in France. A cook calls himself an artist; a tailor does the same; a man
writes a gaudy melodrame, a spasmodic song, a sensational novel, and
straightway he calls Himself an artist, and indulges in a pedantic jargon
about 'essence' and 'form,' assuring us that a poet we can understand
wants essence, and a poet we can scan wants form. Thank heaven, I am not
vain enough to call myself artist. I have written some very dry
lucubrations in periodicals, chiefly political, or critical upon other
subjects than art. But why, a propos of M. Rameau, did you ask me that
question respecting myself?"
"Because much in your conversation," answered Isaura, in rather a
mournful tone, "made me suppose you had more sympathies with art and its
cultivators than you cared to avow; and if you had such sympathies, you
would comprehend what a relief it is to a poor aspirant to art like
myself to come into communication with those who devote themselves to any
art distinct from the common pursuits of the world, what a relief it is
to escape from the ordinary talk of society. There is a sort of
instinctive freemasonry among us, including masters and disciples; and
one art has a fellowship with other arts. Mine is but song and music,
yet I feel attracted towards a sculptor, a painter, a romance-writer, a
poet, as much as towards a singer, a musician. Do you understand why I
cannot contemn M. Rameau as you do? I differ from his tastes in
literature; I do not much admire such of his writings as I have read; I
grant that he overestimates his own genius, whatever that be,--yet I like
to converse with him. He is a struggler upwards, though with weak wings,
or with erring footsteps, like myself."
"Mademoiselle," said Graham, earnestly, "I cannot say how I thank you for
this candour. Do not condemn me for abusing it, if--" he paused.
"If what?"
"If I, so much older than yourself,--I do not say only in years, but in
the experience of life, I whose lot is cast among those busy and
'positive' pursuits, which necessarily quicken that unromantic faculty
called common-sense,--if, I say, the deep interest with which you must
inspire all whom you admit into an acquaintance even as unfamiliar as
that now between us makes me utter one caution, such as might be uttered
by a friend or brother. Beware of those artistic sympathies which you so
touchingly confess; beware how, in the great events of life, you allow
fancy to misguide your reason. In choosing friends on whom to rely,
separate the artist from the human being. Judge of the human being for
what it is in itself. Do not worship the face on the waters, blind to
the image on the rock. In one word, never see in an artist like a M.
Rameau the human being to whom you could intrust the destinies of your
life. Pardon me, pardon me; we may meet little hereafter, but you are a
creature so utterly new to me, so wholly unlike any woman I have ever
before encountered and admired, and to me seem endowed with such wealth
of mind and soul, exposed to such hazard, that--that--" again he paused,
and his voice trembled as he concluded--"that it would be a deep sorrow
to me if, perhaps years hence, I should have to say, 'Alas'! by what
mistake has that wealth been wasted!'"
While they had thus conversed, mechanically they had turned away from the
house, and were again standing before the arbour.
Graham, absorbed in the passion of his adjuration, had not till now
looked into the face of the companion by his side. Now, when he had
concluded, and heard no reply, he bent down and saw that Isaura was
weeping silently.
His heart smote him.
"Forgive me," he exclaimed, drawing her hand into his; "I have had no
right to talk thus; but it was not from want of respect; it was--
it was--"
The hand which was yielded to his pressed it gently, timidly, chastely.
"Forgive!" murmured Isaura; "do you think that I, an orphan, have never
longed for a friend who would speak to me thus?" And so saying, she
lifted her eyes, streaming still, to his bended countenance,--eyes,
despite their tears, so clear in their innocent limpid beauty, so
ingenuous, so frank, so virgin-like, so unlike the eyes of 'any other
woman he had encountered and admired.'
"Alas!" he said, in quick and hurried accents, "you may remember, when we
have before conversed, how I, though so uncultured in your art, still
recognized its beautiful influence upon human breasts; how I sought to
combat your own depreciation of its rank among the elevating agencies of
humanity; how, too, I said that no man could venture to ask you to
renounce the boards, the lamps,--resign the fame of actress, of singer.
Well, now that you accord to me the title of friend, now that you so
touchingly remind me that you are an orphan, thinking of all the perils
the young and the beautiful of your sex must encounter when they abandon
private life for public, I think that a true friend might put the
question, 'Can you resign the fame of actress, of singer?'"
"I will answer you frankly. The profession which once seemed to me so
alluring began to lose its charms in my eyes some months ago. It was
your words, very eloquently expressed, on the ennobling effects of music
and song upon a popular audience, that counteracted the growing distaste
to rendering up my whole life to the vocation of the stage; but now I
think I should feel grateful to the friend whose advice interpreted the
voice of my own heart, and bade me relinquish the career of actress."
Graham's face grew radiant. But whatever might have been his reply was
arrested; voices and footsteps were heard behind. He turned round and
saw the Venosta, the Savarins, and Gustave Rameau.
Isaura heard and saw also, started in a sort of alarmed confusion, and
then instinctively retreated towards the arbour. Graham hurried on to
meet the Signora and the visitors, giving time to Isaura to compose
herself by arresting them in the pathway with conventional salutations.
A few minutes later Isaura joined them, and there was talk to which
Graham scarcely listened, though he shared in it by abstracted
monosyllables. He declined going into the house, and took leave at the
gate. In parting, his eyes fixed themselves on Isaura. Gustave Rameau
was by her side. That nosegay which had been left in the arbour was in
her hand; and though she was bending over it, she did not now pluck and
scatter the rose-leaves. Graham at that moment felt no jealousy of the
fair-faced young poet beside her.
As he walked slowly back, he muttered to himself, "But am I yet in the
position to hold myself wholly free? Am I, am I? Were the sole choice
before me that between her and ambition and wealth, how soon it would be
made! Ambition has no prize equal to the heart of such a woman; wealth
no sources of joy equal to the treasures of her love."
CHAPTER III.
FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.
The day after I posted my last, Mr. Vane called on us. I was in our
little garden at the time. Our conversation was brief, and soon
interrupted by visitors,--the Savarins and M. Rameau. I long for your
answer. I wonder how he impressed you, if you have met him; how he would
impress, if you met him now. To me he is so different from all others;
and I scarcely know why his words ring in my ears, and his image rests in
my thoughts. It is strange altogether; for though he is young, he speaks
to me as if he were so much older than I,--so kindly, so tenderly, yet as
if I were a child, and much as the dear Maestro might do, if he thought I
needed caution or counsel. Do not fancy, Eulalie, that there is any
danger of my deceiving myself as to the nature of such interest as he may
take in me. Oh, no! There is a gulf between us there which he does not
lose sight of, and which we could not pass. How, indeed, I could
interest him at all, I cannot guess. A rich, high-born Englishman,
intent on political life; practical, prosaic--no, not prosaic; but still
with the kind of sense which does not admit into its range of vision that
world of dreams which is familiar as their daily home to Romance and to
Art. It has always seemed to me that for love, love such as I conceive
it, there must be a deep and constant sympathy between two persons,--not,
indeed, in the usual and ordinary trifles of taste and sentiment, but in
those essentials which form the root of character, and branch out in all
the leaves and blooms that expand to the sunshine and shrink from the
cold,--that the worldling should wed the worldling, the artist the
artist. Can the realist and the idealist blend together, and hold
together till death and beyond death? If not, can there be true love
between them?
By true love, I mean the love which interpenetrates the soul, and once
given can never die. Oh, Eulalie, answer me, answer!
P. S.--I have now fully made up my mind to renounce all thought of the
stage.
FROM MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL TOISAURA CICOGNA.
MY DEAR CHILD,--how your mind has grown since you left me, the sanguine
and aspiring votary of an art which, of all arts, brings the most
immediate reward to a successful cultivator, and is in itself so divine
in its immediate effects upon human souls! Who shall say what may be the
after-results of those effects which the waiters on posterity presume to
despise because they are immediate? A dull man, to whose mind a ray of
that vague starlight undetected in the atmosphere of workday life has
never yet travelled; to whom the philosopher, the preacher, the poet
appeal in vain,--nay, to whom the conceptions of the grandest master of
instrumental music are incomprehensible; to whom Beethoven unlocks no
portal in heaven; to whom Rossini has no mysteries on earth unsolved by
the critics of the pit,--suddenly hears the human voice of the human
singer, and at the sound of that voice the walls which enclosed him fall.
The something far from and beyond the routine of his commonplace
existence becomes known to him. He of himself, poor man, can make
nothing of it. He cannot put it down on paper, and say the next morning,
"I am an inch nearer to heaven than I was last night;" but the feeling
that he is an inch nearer to heaven abides with him. Unconsciously he is
gentler, he is less earthly, and, in being nearer to heaven, he is
stronger for earth. You singers do not seem to me to understand that you
have--to use your own word, so much in vogue that it has become abused
and trite--a mission! When you talk of missions, from whom comes the
mission? Not from men. If there be a mission from man to men, it must
be appointed from on high.
Think of all this; and in being faithful to your art, be true to
yourself. If you feel divided between that art and the art of the
writer, and acknowledge the first to be too exacting to admit a rival,
keep to that in which you are sure to excel. Alas, my fair child! do not
imagine that we writers feel a happiness in our pursuits and aims more
complete than that which you can command. If we care for fame (and, to
be frank, we all do), that fame does not come up before us face to face,
a real, visible, palpable form, as it does to the singer, to the actress.
I grant that it may be more enduring, but an endurance on the length of
which we dare not reckon. A writer cannot be sure of immortality till
his language itself be dead; and then he has but a share in an uncertain
lottery. Nothing but fragments remains of the Phrynichus who rivalled
AEschylus; of the Agathon who perhaps excelled Euripides; of the Alcaeus,
in whom Horace acknowledged a master and a model; their renown is not in
their works, it is but in their names. And, after all, the names of
singers and actors last perhaps as long. Greece retains the name of
Polus, Rome of Roscius, England of Garrick, France of Talma, Italy of
Pasta, more lastingly than posterity is likely to retain mine. You
address to me a question, which I have often put to myself,--"What is the
distinction between the writer and the reader, when the reader says,
'These are my thoughts, these are my feelings; the writer has stolen
them, and clothed them in his own words'?" And the more the reader says
this, the more wide is the audience, the more genuine the renown, and,
paradox though it seems, the more consummate the originality, of the
writer. But no, it is not the mere gift of expression, it is not the
mere craft of the pen, it is not the mere taste in arrangement of word
and cadence, which thus enables the one to interpret the mind, the heart,
the soul of the many. It is a power breathed into him as he lay in his
cradle, and a power that gathered around itself, as he grew up, all the
influences he acquired, whether from observation of external nature, or
from study of men and books, or from that experience of daily life which
varies with every human being. No education could make two intellects
exactly alike, as no culture can make two leaves exactly alike. How
truly you describe the sense of dissatisfaction which every writer of
superior genius communicates to his admirers! how truly do you feel that
the greater is the dissatisfaction in proportion to the writer's genius,
and the admirer's conception of it! But that is the mystery which makes
--let me borrow a German phrase--the cloud-land between the finite and
the infinite. The greatest philosopher, intent on the secrets of Nature,
feels that dissatisfaction in Nature herself. The finite cannot reduce
into logic and criticism the infinite.
Let us dismiss these matters, which perplex the reason, and approach that
which touches the heart, which in your case, my child, touches the heart
of woman. You speak of love, and deem that the love which lasts--the
household, the conjugal love--should be based upon such sympathies of
pursuit that the artist should wed the artist.
This is one of the questions you do well to address to me; for whether
from my own experience, or from that which I have gained from observation
extended over a wide range of life, and quickened and intensified by the
class of writing that I cultivate, and which necessitates a calm study of
the passions, I am an authority on such subjects, better than most women
can be. And alas, my child, I come to this result: there is no
prescribing to men or to women whom to select, whom to refuse. I cannot
refute the axiom of the ancient poet, "In love there is no wherefore."
But there is a time--it is often but a moment of time--in which love is
not yet a master, in which we can say, "I will love, I will not love."
Now, if I could find you in such a moment, I would say to you, "Artist,
do not love, do not marry, an artist." Two artistic natures rarely
combine. The artistic nature is wonderfully exacting. I fear it is
supremely egotistical,--so jealously sensitive that it writhes at the
touch of a rival. Racine was the happiest of husbands; his wife adored
his genius, but could not understand his plays. Would Racine have been
happy if he had married a Corneille in petticoats? I who speak have
loved an artist, certainly equal to myself. I am sure that he loved me.
That sympathy in pursuits of which you speak drew us together, and became
very soon the cause of antipathy. To both of us the endeavour to
coalesce was misery.
I don't know your M. Rameau. Savarin has sent me some of his writings;
from these I judge that his only chance of happiness would be to marry a
commonplace woman, with _separation de biens_. He is, believe me, but
one of the many with whom New Paris abounds, who because they have the
infirmities of genius imagine they have its strength.
I come next to the Englishman. I see how serious is your questioning
about him. You not only regard him as a being distinct from the crowd of
a salon; he stands equally apart in the chamber of your thoughts,--you do
not mention him in the same letter as that which treats of Rameau and
Savarin. He has become already an image not to be lightly mixed up with
others. You would rather not have mentioned him at all to me, but you
could not resist it. The interest you feel in him so perplexed you, that
in a kind of feverish impatience you cry out to me, "Can you solve the
riddle? Did you ever know well Englishmen? Can an Englishman be
understood out of his island?" etc. Yes, I have known well many
Englishmen; in affairs of the heart they are much like all other men.
No; I do not know this Englishman in particular, nor any one of his name.
Well, my child, let us frankly grant that this foreigner has gained some
hold on your thoughts, on your fancy, perhaps also on your heart. Do not
fear that he will love you less enduringly, or that you will become
alienated from him, because he is not an artist. If he be a strong
nature, and with some great purpose in life, your ambition will fuse
itself in his; and knowing you as I do, I believe you would make an
excellent wife to an Englishman whom you honoured as well as loved; and
sorry though I should be that you relinquished the singer's fame, I
should be consoled in thinking you safe in the woman's best sphere,--
a contented home, safe from calumny, safe from gossip. I never had that
home; and there has been no part in my author's life in which I would
not have given all the celebrity it won for the obscure commonplace of
such woman-lot. Could I move human beings as pawns on a chessboard, I
should indeed say that the most suitable and congenial mate for you, for
a woman of sentiment and genius, would be a well-born and well-educated
German; for such a German unites, with domestic habits and a strong sense
of family ties, a romance of sentiment, a love of art, a predisposition
towards the poetic side of life, which is very rare among Englishmen of
the same class. But as the German is not forthcoming, I give my vote for
the Englishman, provided only you love him. Ah, child, be sure of that.
Do not mistake fancy for love. All women do not require love in
marriage, but without it that which is best and highest in you would
wither and die. Write to me often and tell me all. M. Savarin is right.
My book is no longer my companion. It is gone from me, and I am once
more alone in the world.
Yours affectionately.
P. S.--Is not your postscript a woman's? Does it not require a woman's
postscript in reply? You say in yours that you have fully made up your
mind to renounce all thoughts of the stage. I ask in mine, "What has the
Englishman to do with that determination?"
CHAPTER IV.
Some weeks have passed since Graham's talk with Isaura in the garden; he
has not visited the villa since. His cousins the D'Altons have passed
through Paris on their way to Italy, meaning to stay a few days; they
stayed nearly a month, and monopolized much of Graham's companionship.
Both these were reasons why, in the habitual society of the Duke,
Graham's persuasion that he was not yet free to court the hand of Isaura
became strengthened, and with that persuasion necessarily came a question
equally addressed to his conscience. "If not yet free to court her hand,
am I free to expose myself to the temptation of seeking to win her
affection?" But when his cousin was gone, his heart began to assert its
own rights, to argue its own case, and suggest modes of reconciling its
dictates to the obligations which seemed to oppose them. In this
hesitating state of mind he received the following note:--
VILLA ------, LAC D'ENGHIEN.
MY DEAR MR. VANE,--We have retreated from Paris to the banks of this
beautiful little lake. Come and help to save Frank and myself from
quarrelling with each other, which, until the Rights of Women are firmly
established, married folks always will do when left to themselves,
especially if they are still lovers, as Frank and I are. Love is a
terribly quarrelsome thing. Make us a present of a few days out of your
wealth of time. We will visit Montmorency and the haunts of Rousseau,
sail on the lake at moonlight, dine at gypsy restaurants under trees not
yet embrowned by summer heats, discuss literature and politics,
"Shakspeare and the musical glasses,"--and be as sociable and pleasant as
Boccaccio's tale-tellers, at Fiesole. We shall be but a small party,
only the Savarins, that unconscious sage and humourist Signora Venosta,
and that dimple-cheeked Isaura, who embodies the song of nightingales and
the smile of summer. Refuse, and Frank shall not have an easy moment
till he sends in his claims for thirty millions against the Alabama.
Yours, as you behave,
LIZZIE MORLEY.
Graham did not refuse. He went to Enghien for four days and a quarter.
He was under the same roof as Isaura. Oh, those happy days! so happy
that they defy description. But though to Graham the happiest days he
had ever known, they were happier still to Isaura. There were drawbacks
to his happiness, none to hers,--drawbacks partly from reasons the weight
of which the reader will estimate later; partly from reasons the reader
may at once comprehend and assess. In the sunshine of her joy, all the
vivid colourings of Isaura's artistic temperament came forth, so that
what I may call the homely, domestic woman-side of her nature faded into
shadow. If, my dear reader, whether you be man or woman, you have come
into familiar contact with some creature of a genius to which, even
assuming that you yourself have a genius in its own way, you have no
special affinities, have you not felt shy with that creature? Have you
not, perhaps, felt how intensely you could love that creature, and
doubted if that creature could possibly love you? Now I think that
shyness and that disbelief are common with either man or woman, if,
however conscious of superiority in the prose of life, he or she
recognizes inferiority in the poetry of it. And yet this self-abasement
is exceedingly mistaken. The poetical kind of genius is so grandly
indulgent, so inherently deferential, bows with such unaffected modesty
to the superiority in which it fears it may fail (yet seldom does fail),
--the superiority of common-sense. And when we come to women, what
marvellous truth is conveyed by the woman who has had no superior in
intellectual gifts among her own sex! Corinne, crowned at the Capitol,
selects out of the whole world as the hero of her love no rival poet and
enthusiast, but a cold-blooded, sensible Englishman.
Graham Vane, in his strong masculine form of intellect--Graham Vane, from
whom I hope much, if he live to fulfil his rightful career--had, not
unreasonably, the desire to dominate the life of the woman whom he
selected as the partner of his own; but the life of Isaura seemed to
escape him. If at moments, listening to her, he would say to himself,
"What a companion! life could never be dull with her," at other moments
he would say, "True, never dull, but would it be always safe?" And then
comes in that mysterious power of love which crushes all beneath its
feet, and makes us end self-commune by that abject submission of reason,
which only murmurs, "Better be unhappy with the one you love than happy
with one whom you do not." All such self-communes were unknown to
Isaura. She lived in the bliss of the hour. If Graham could have read
her heart, he would have dismissed all doubt whether he could dominate
her life. Could a Fate or an Angel have said to her, "Choose,--on one
side I promise you the glories of a Catalani, a Pasta, a Sappho, a De
Stael, a Georges Sand, all combined into one immortal name; or, on the
other side, the whole heart of the man who would estrange himself from
you if you had such combination of glories,"--her answer would have
brought Graham Vane to her feet. All scruples, all doubts, would have
vanished; he would have exclaimed, with the generosity inherent in the
higher order of man, "Be glorious, if your nature wills it so. Glory
enough to me that you would have resigned glory itself to become mine."
But how is it that men worth a woman's loving become so diffident when
they love intensely? Even in ordinary cases of love there is so
ineffable a delicacy in virgin woman, that a man, be he how refined
soever, feels himself rough and rude and coarse in comparison; and while
that sort of delicacy was pre-eminent in this Italian orphan, there came,
to increase the humility of the man so proud and so confident in himself
when he had only men to deal with, the consciousness that his
intellectual nature was hard and positive beside the angel-like purity
and the fairy-like play of hers.
There was a strong wish on the part of Mrs. Morley to bring about the
union of these two. She had a great regard and a great admiration for
both. To her mind, unconscious of all Graham's doubts and prejudices,
they were exactly suited to each other. A man of intellect so cultivated
as Graham's, if married to a commonplace English "Miss," would surely
feel as if life had no sunshine and no flowers. The love of an Isaura
would steep it in sunshine, pave it with flowers. Mrs. Morley admitted
--all American Republicans of gentle birth do admit--the instincts which
lead "like" to match with "like," an equality of blood and race. With
all her assertion of the Rights of Woman, I do not think that Mrs. Morley
would ever have conceived the possibility of consenting that the richest
and prettiest and cleverest girl in the States could become the wife of a
son of hers if the girl had the taint of negro blood, even though shown
nowhere save the slight distinguishing hue of her finger-nails. So had
Isaura's merits been threefold what they were and she had been the
wealthy heiress of a retail grocer, this fair Republican would have
opposed (more strongly than many an English duchess, or at least a Scotch
duke, would do, the wish of a son), the thought of an alliance between
Graham Vane and the grocer's daughter! But Isaura was a Cicogna, an
offspring of a very ancient and very noble house. Disparities of
fortune, or mere worldly position, Mrs. Morley supremely despised. Here
were the great parities of alliance,--parities in years and good looks
and mental culture. So, in short, she in the invitation given to them
had planned for the union between Isaura and Graham. To this plan she
had an antagonist, whom she did not even guess, in Madame Savarin. That
lady, as much attached to Isaura as was Mrs. Morley herself, and still
more desirous of seeing a girl, brilliant and parentless, transferred
from the companionship of Signora Venosta to the protection of a husband,
entertained no belief in the serious attentions of Graham Vane. Perhaps
she exaggerated his worldly advantages, perhaps she undervalued the
warmth of his affections; but it was not within the range of her
experience, confined much to Parisian life, nor in harmony with her
notions of the frigidity and morgue of the English national character,
that a rich and high-born young man, to whom a great career in practical
public life was predicted, should form a matrimonial alliance with a
foreign orphan girl, who, if of gentle birth, had no useful connections,
would bring no correspondent dot, and had been reared and intended for
the profession of the stage. She much more feared that the result of any
attentions on the part of such a man would be rather calculated to
compromise the orphan's name, or at least to mislead her expectations,
than to secure her the shelter of a wedded home. Moreover, she had
cherished plans of her own for Isaura's future. Madame Savarin had
conceived for Gustave Rameau a friendly regard, stronger than that which
Mrs. Morley entertained for Graham Vane, for it was more motherly.
Gustave had been familiarized to her sight and her thoughts since he had
first been launched into the literary world under her husband's auspices;
he had confided to her his mortification in his failures, his joy in his
successes. His beautiful countenance, his delicate health, his very
infirmities and defects, had endeared him to her womanly heart. Isaura
was the wife of all others who, in Madame Savarin's opinion, was made for
Rameau. Her fortune, so trivial beside the wealth of the Englishman,
would be a competence to Rameau; then that competence might swell into
vast riches if Isaura succeeded on the stage. She found with extreme
displeasure that Isaura's mind had become estranged from the profession
to which she had been destined, and divined that a deference to the
Englishman's prejudices had something to do with that estrangement. It
was not to be expected that a Frenchwoman, wife to a sprightly man of
letters, who had intimate friends and allies in every department of the
artistic world, should cherish any prejudice whatever against the
exercise of an art in which success achieved riches and renown; but she
was prejudiced, as most Frenchwomen are, against allowing to unmarried
girls the same freedom and independence of action that are the rights of
women--French women--when married; and she would have disapproved the
entrance of Isaura on her professional career until she could enter it as
a wife, the wife of an artist, the wife of Gustave Rameau.
Unaware of the rivalry between these friendly diplomatists and schemers,
Graham and Isaura glided hourly more and more down the current, which as
yet ran smooth. No words by which love is spoken were exchanged between
them; in fact, though constantly together, they were very rarely, and
then but for moments, alone with each other. Mrs. Morley artfully
schemed more than once to give them such opportunities for that mutual
explanation of heart which, she saw, had not yet taken place; with art
more practised and more watchful, Madame Savarin contrived to baffle her
hostess's intention. But, indeed, neither Graham nor Isaura sought to
make opportunities for themselves. He, as we know, did not deem himself
wholly justified in uttering the words of love by which a man of honour
binds himself for life; and she!--what girl pure-hearted and loving truly
does not shrink from seeking the opportunities which it is for the man to
court? Yet Isaura needed no words to tell her that she was loved,--no,
nor even a pressure of the hand, a glance of the eye; she felt it
instinctively, mysteriously, by the glow of her own being in the presence
of her lover. She knew that she herself could not so love unless she
were beloved.
Here woman's wit is keener and truthfuller than man's. Graham, as I have
said, did not feel confident that he had reached the heart of Isaura. He
was conscious that he had engaged her interest, that he had attracted her
fancy; but often, when charmed by the joyous play of her imagination, he
would sigh to himself, "To natures so gifted what single mortal can be
the all in all."
They spent the summer mornings in excursions round the beautiful
neigbbourhood, dined early, and sailed on the calm lake at moonlight.
Their talk was such as might be expected from lovers of books in summer
holidays. Savarin was a critic by profession; Graham Vane, if not that,
at least owed such literary reputation as he had yet gained to essays in
which the rare critical faculty was conspicuously developed.
It was pleasant to hear the clash of these two minds encountering each
other; they differed perhaps less in opinions than in the mode by which
opinions are discussed. The Englishman's range of reading was wider than
the Frenchman's, and his scholarship more accurate; but the Frenchman had
a compact neatness of expression, a light and nimble grace, whether in
the advancing or the retreat of his argument, which covered deficiencies,
and often made them appear like merits. Graham was compelled, indeed, to
relinquish many of the forces of superior knowledge or graver eloquence,
which with less lively antagonists he could have brought into the field,
for the witty sarcasm of Savarin would have turned them aside as pedantry
or declamation. But though Graham was neither dry nor diffuse, and the
happiness at his heart brought out the gayety of humour which had been
his early characteristic, and yet rendered his familiar intercourse
genial and playful, still there was this distinction between his humour
and Savarin's wit,--that in the first there was always something earnest,
in the last always something mocking. And in criticism Graham seemed
ever anxious to bring out a latent beauty, even in writers comparatively
neglected; Savarin was acutest when dragging forth a blemish never before
discovered in writers universally read.
Graham did not perhaps notice the profound attention with which Isaura
listened to him in these intellectual skirmishes with the more glittering
Parisian. There was this distinction she made between him and Savarin,--
when the last spoke she often chimed in with some happy sentiment of her
own; but she never interrupted Graham, never intimated a dissent from his
theories of art, or the deductions he drew from them; and she would
remain silent and thoughtful for some minutes when his voice ceased.
There was passing from his mind into hers an ambition which she imagined,
poor girl, that he would be pleased to think he had inspired, and which
might become a new bond of sympathy between them. But as yet the
ambition was vague and timid,--an idea or a dream to be fulfilled in some
indefinite future.
The last night of this short-lived holiday-time, the party, after staying
out on the lake to a later hour than usual, stood lingering still on the
lawn of the villa; and their host, who was rather addicted to superficial
studies of the positive sciences, including, of course, the most popular
of all, astronomy, kept his guests politely listening to speculative
conjectures on the probable size of the inhabitants of Sirius, that very
distant and very gigantic inhabitant of heaven who has led philosophers
into mortifying reflections upon the utter insignificance of our own poor
little planet, capable of producing nothing greater than Shakspeares and
Newtons, Aristotles and Caesars,--mannikins, no doubt, beside intellects
proportioned to the size of the world in which they flourish.
As it chanced, Isaura and Graham were then standing close to each other
and a little apart from the rest. "It is very strange," said Graham,
laughing low, "how little I care about Sirius. He is the sun of some
other system, and is perhaps not habitable at all, except by Salamanders.
He cannot be one of the stars with which I have established familiar
acquaintance, associated with fancies and dreams and hopes, as most of us
do, for instance, with Hesperus, the moon's harbinger and comrade. But
amid all those stars there is one--not Hesperus--which has always had
from my childhood a mysterious fascination for me. Knowing as little of
astrology as I do of astronomy, when I gaze upon that star I become
credulously superstitious, and fancy it has an influence on my life.
Have you, too, any favourite star?"
"Yes," said Isaura; "and I distinguish it now, but I do not even know its
name, and never would ask it."
"So like me. I would not vulgarize my unknown source of beautiful
illusions by giving it the name it takes in technical catalogues. For
fear of learning that name I never have pointed it out to any one before.
I too at this moment distinguish it apart from all its brotherhood. Tell
me which is yours."
Isaura pointed and explained. The Englishman was startled. By what
strange coincidence could they both have singled out from all the host of
heaven the same favourite star? "Cher Vane," cried Savarin, "Colonel
Morley declares that what America is to the terrestrial system Sirius is
to the heavenly. America is to extinguish Europe, and then Sirius is to
extinguish the world."
"Not for some millions of years; time to look about us," said the
Colonel, gravely. "But I certainly differ from those who maintain that
Sirius recedes from us. I say that he approaches. The principles of a
body so enlightened must be those of progress." Then addressing Graham
in English, he added, "there will be a mulling in this fogified planet
some day, I predicate. Sirius is a keener!"
"I have not imagination lively enough to interest myself in the destinies
of Sirius in connection with our planet at a date so remote," said
Graham, smiling. Then he added in a whisper to Isaura, "My imagination
does not carry me further than to wonder whether this day twelvemonth--
the 8th of July-we two shall both be singling out that same star, and
gazing on it as now, side by side."
This was the sole utterance of that sentiment in which the romance of
love is so rich that the Englishman addressed to Isaura during those
memorable summer days at Enghien.
CHAPTER V.
The next morning the party broke up. Letters had been delivered both to
Savarin and to Graham, which, even had the day for departure not been
fixed, would have summoned them away. On reading his letter, Savarin's
brow became clouded. He made a sign to his wife after breakfast, and
wandered away with her down an alley in the little garden. His trouble
was of that nature which a wife either soothes or aggravates, according
sometimes to her habitual frame of mind, sometimes to the mood of temper
in which she may chance to be,--a household trouble, a pecuniary trouble.
Savarin was by no means an extravagant man. His mode of living, though
elegant and hospitable, was modest compared to that of many French
authors inferior to himself in the fame which at Paris brings a very good
return in francs; but his station itself as the head of a powerful
literary clique necessitated many expenses which were too congenial to
his extreme good-nature to be regulated by strict prudence. His hand was
always open to distressed writers and struggling artists, and his sole
income was derived from his pen and a journal in which he was chief
editor and formerly sole proprietor. But that journal had of late not
prospered. He had sold or pledged a considerable share in the
proprietorship. He had been compelled also to borrow a sum large for
him, and the debt obtained from a retired bourgeois who lent out his
moneys "by way," he said, "of maintaining an excitement and interest in
life," would in a few days become due. The letter was not from that
creditor; but it was from his publisher, containing a very disagreeable
statement of accounts, pressing for settlement, and declining an offer of
Savarin for a new book (not yet begun) except upon terms that the author
valued himself too highly to accept. Altogether, the situation was
unpleasant. There were many times in which Madame Savarin presumed to
scold her distinguished husband for his want of prudence and thrift. But
those were never the times when scolding could be of no use. It could
clearly be of no use now. Now was the moment to cheer and encourage him;
to reassure him as to his own undiminished powers and popularity, for he
talked dejectedly of himself as obsolete and passing out of fashion; to
convince him also of the impossibility that the ungrateful publisher whom
Savarin's more brilliant successes had enriched could encounter the odium
of hostile proceedings; and to remind him of all the authors, all the
artists, whom he in their earlier difficulties had so liberally assisted,
and from whom a sum sufficing to pay the bourgeois creditor when the day
arrived could now be honourably asked and would be readily contributed.
In this last suggestion the homely prudent good-sense of Madame Savarin
failed her. She did not comprehend that delicate pride of honour which,
with all his Parisian frivolities and cynicism, dignified the Parisian
man of genius. Savarin could not, to save his neck from a rope, have
sent round the begging-hat to friends whom he had obliged. Madame
Savarin was one of those women with large-lobed ears, who can be
wonderfully affectionate, wonderfully sensible, admirable wives and
mothers, and yet are deficient in artistic sympathies with artistic
natures. Still, a really good honest wife is such an incalculable
blessing to her lord, that, at the end of the talk in the solitary alley,
this man of exquisite finesse, of the undefinably high-bred temperament,
and, alas! the painful morbid susceptibility, which belongs to the
genuine artistic character, emerged into the open sunlit lawn with his
crest uplifted, his lip curved upward in its joyous mockery, and
perfectly persuaded that somehow or other he should put down the
offensive publisher, and pay off the unoffending creditor when the day
for payment came. Still he had judgment enough to know that to do this
he must get back to Paris, and could not dawdle away precious hours in
discussing the principles of poetry with Graham Vane.
There was only one thing, apart from "the begging-hat," in which Savarin
dissented from his wife.--She suggested his starting a new journal in
conjunction with Gustave Rameau, upon whose genius and the expectations
to be formed from it (here she was tacitly thinking of Isaura wedded to
Rameau, and more than a Malibran on the stage) she insisted vehemently.
Savarin did not thus estimate Gustave Rameau, thought him a clever,
promising young writer in a very bad school of writing, who might do well
some day or other. But that a Rameau could help a Savarin to make a
fortune! No; at that idea he opened his eyes, patted his wife's
shoulder, and called her "enfant."
Graham's letter was from M. Renard, and ran thus:--
MONSIEUR,--I had the honour to call at your apartment this morning,
and I write this line to the address given to me by your concierge
to say that I have been fortunate enough to ascertain that the
relation of the missing lady is now at Paris. I shall hold myself
in readiness to attend your summons. Deign to accept, Monsieur, the
assurance of my profound consideration.
J. RENARD.
This communication sufficed to put Graham into very high spirits.
Anything that promised success to his research seemed to deliver his
thoughts from a burden and his will from a fetter. Perhaps in a few days
he might frankly and honourably say to Isaura words which would justify
his retaining longer, and pressing more ardently, the delicate hand which
trembled in his as they took leave.
On arriving at Paris, Graham despatched a note to M. Renard requesting to
see him, and received a brief line in reply that M. Renard feared he
should be detained on other and important business till the evening, but
hoped to call at eight o'clock. A few minutes before that hour he
entered Graham's apartment.
"You have discovered the uncle of Louise Duval!" exclaimed Graham; "of
course you mean M. de Mauleon, and he is at Paris?"
"True so far, Monsieur; but do not be too sanguine as to the results of
the information I can give you. Permit me, as briefly as possible, to
state the circumstances. When you acquainted me with the fact that M. de
Mauleon was the uncle of Louise Duval, I told you that I was not without
hopes of finding him out, though so long absent from Paris. I will now
explain why. Some months ago, one of my colleagues engaged in the
political department (which I am not) was sent to Lyons, in consequence
of some suspicions conceived by the loyal authorities there of a plot
against the emperor's life. The suspicions were groundless, the plot a
mare's nest. But my colleague's attention was especially drawn towards a
man not mixed up with the circumstances from which a plot had been
inferred, but deemed in some way or other a dangerous enemy to the
Government. Ostensibly, he exercised a modest and small calling as a
sort of courtier or _agent de change_; but it was noticed that certain
persons familiarly frequenting his apartment, or to whose houses he used
to go at night, were disaffected to the Government,--not by any means of
the lowest rank,--some of them rich malcontents who had been devoted
Orleanists; others, disappointed aspirants to office or the 'cross;' one
or two well-born and opulent fanatics dreaming of another Republic.
Certain very able articles in the journals of the excitable _Midi_,
though bearing another signature, were composed or dictated by this man,
--articles evading the censure and penalties of the law, but very
mischievous in their tone. All who had come into familiar communication
with this person were impressed with a sense of his powers; and also with
a vague belief that he belonged to a higher class in breeding and
education than that of a petty _agent de change_. My colleague set
himself to watch the man, and took occasions of business at his little
office to enter into talk with him. Not by personal appearance, but by
voice, he came to a conclusion that the man was not wholly a stranger to
him,--a peculiar voice with a slight Norman breadth of pronunciation,
though a Parisian accent; a voice very low, yet very distinct; very
masculine, yet very gentle. My colleague was puzzled till late one
evening he observed the man coming out of the house of one of these rich
malcontents, the rich malcontent himself accompanying him. My colleague,
availing himself of the dimness of light, as the two passed into a lane
which led to the agent's apartment, contrived to keep close behind and
listen to their conversation; but of this he heard nothing,--only, when
at the end of the lane, the rich man turned abruptly, shook his companion
warmly by the hand, and parted from him, saying, 'Never fear; all shall
go right with you, my dear Victor.' At the sound of that name 'Victor,'
my colleague's memories, before so confused, became instantaneously
clear. Previous to entering our service, he had been in the horse
business, a votary of the turf; as such he had often seen the brilliant
'sportman,' Victor de Mauleon; sometimes talked to him. Yes, that was
the voice,--the slight Norman intonation (Victor de Mauleon's father had
it strongly, and Victor had passed some of his early childhood in
Normandy), the subdued modulation of speech which had made so polite the
offence to men, or so winning the courtship to women,--that was Victor de
Mauleon. But why there in that disguise? What was his real business and
object? My confrere had no time allowed to him to prosecute such
inquiries. Whether Victor or the rich malcontent had observed him at
their heels, and feared he might have overheard their words, I know not;
but the next day appeared in one of the popular journals circulating
among the _ouvriers_ a paragraph stating that a Paris spy had been seen
at Lyons, warning all honest men against his machinations, and containing
a tolerably accurate description of his person. And that very day, on
venturing forth, my estimable colleague suddenly found himself hustled by
a ferocious throng, from whose hands he was with great difficulty rescued
by the municipal guard. He left Lyons that night; and for recompense of
his services received a sharp reprimand from his chief. He had committed
the worst offence in our profession, _trop de zele_. Having only heard
the outlines of this story from another, I repaired to my _confrere_
after my last interview with Monsieur, and learned what I now tell you
from his own lips. As he was not in my branch of the service, I could
not order him to return to Lyons; and I doubt whether his chief would
have allowed it. But I went to Lyons myself, and there ascertained that
our supposed Vicomte had left that town for Paris some months ago, not
long after the adventure of my colleague. The man bore a very good
character generally,--was said to be very honest and inoffensive; and the
notice taken of him by persons of higher rank was attributed generally to
a respect for his talents, and not on account of any sympathy in
political opinions. I found that the confrere mentioned, and who alone
could identify M. de Mauleon in the disguise which the Vicomte had
assumed, was absent on one of those missions abroad in which he is
chiefly employed. I had to wait for his return, and it was only the day
before yesterday that I obtained the following particulars. M. de
Mauleon bears the same name as he did at Lyons,--that name is Jean
Lebeau; he exercises the ostensible profession of a 'letter-writer,' and
a sort of adviser on business among the workmen and petty bourgeoisie,
and he nightly frequents the cafe Jean Jacques, Rue Faubourg Montmartre.
It is not yet quite half-past eight, and, no doubt, you could see him at
the cafe this very night, if you thought proper to go."
"Excellent! I will go! Describe him!"
"Alas! that is exactly what I cannot do at present; for after hearing
what I now tell you, I put the same request you do to my colleague, when,
before he could answer me, he was summoned to the bureau of his chief,
promising to return and give me the requisite description. He did not
return; and I find that he was compelled, on quitting his chief, to seize
the first train starting for Lille upon an important political
investigation which brooked no delay. He will be back in a few days,
and then Monsieur shall have the description."
"Nay; I think I will seize time by the forelock, and try my chance
tonight. If the man be really a conspirator, and it looks likely enough,
who knows but what he may see quick reason to take alarm and vanish from
Paris at any hour?--Cafe Jean Jacques, Rue ------; I will go. Stay; you
have seen Victor de Mauleon in his youth: what was he like then?"
"Tall, slender, but broad-shouldered, very erect, carrying his head high,
a profusion of dark curls, a small black mustache, fair clear complexion,
light-coloured eyes with dark lashes, _fort bel homme_. But he will not
look like that now."
"His present age?"
"Forty-seven or forty-eight. But before you go, I must beg you to
consider well what you are about. It is evident that M. de Mauleon has
some strong reason, whatever it be, for merging his identity in that of
Jean Lebeau. I presume, therefore, that you could scarcely go up to M.
Lebeau, when you have discovered him, and say, 'Pray, Monsieur le
Vicomte, can you give me some tidings of your niece, Louise Duval?' If
you thus accosted him, you might possibly bring some danger on yourself,
but you would certainly gain no information from him."
"True."
On the other hand, if you make his acquaintance as M. Lebeau, how can you
assume him to know anything about Louise Duval?"
"Parbleu! Monsieur Renard, you try to toss me aside on both horns of the
dilemma; but it seems to me that, if I once make his acquaintance as M.
Lebeau, I might gradually and cautiously feel my way as to the best mode
of putting the question to which I seek reply. I suppose, too, that the
man must be in very poor circumstances to adopt so humble a calling, and
that a small sum of money may smooth all difficulties."
"I am not so sure of that," said M. Renard, thoughtfully; "but grant that
money may do so, and grant also that the Vicomte, being a needy man, has
become a very unscrupulous one,--is there anything in your motives for
discovering Louise Duval which might occasion you trouble and annoyance,
if it were divined by a needy and unscrupulous man; anything which might
give him a power of threat or exaction? Mind, I am not asking you to
tell me any secret you have reasons for concealing, but I suggest that it
might be prudent if you did not let M. Lebeau know your real name and
rank; if, in short, you could follow his example, and adopt a disguise.
But no; when I think of it, you would doubtless be so unpractised in the
art of disguise that he would detect you at once to be other than you
seem; and if suspecting you of spying into his secrets, and if those
secrets be really of a political nature, your very life might not be
safe."
"Thank you for your hint; the disguise is an excellent idea, and combines
amusement with precaution. That this Victor de Mauleon must be a very
unprincipled and dangerous man is, I think, abundantly clear. Granting
that he was innocent of all design of robbery in the affair of the
jewels, still, the offence which he did own--that of admitting himself at
night by a false key into the rooms of a wife, whom he sought to surprise
or terrify into dishonour--was a villanous action; and his present course
of life is sufficiently mysterious to warrant the most unfavourable
supposition. Besides, there is another motive for concealing my name
from him: you say that he once had a duel with a Vane, who was very
probably my father, and I have no wish to expose myself to the chance of
his turning up in London some day, and seeking to renew there the
acquaintance that I had courted at Paris. As for my skill in playing any
part I may assume, do not fear; I am no novice in that. In my younger
days I was thought clever in private theatricals, especially in the
transformations of appearance which belong to light comedy and farce.
Wait a few minutes, and you shall see."
Graham then retreated into his bedroom, and in a few minutes reappeared
so changed, that Renard at first glance took him for a stranger. He had
doffed his dress--which habitually, when in Capitals, was characterized
by the quiet, indefinable elegance that to a man of the great world,
high-bred and young, seems "to the manner born"--for one of those coarse
suits which Englishmen are wont to wear in their travels, and by which
they are represented in French or German caricatures,--loose jacket of
tweed with redundant pockets, waistcoat to match, short dust-coloured
trousers. He had combed his hair straight over his forehead, which, as I
have said somewhere before, appeared in itself to alter the character of
his countenance, and, without any resort to paints or cosmetics, had
somehow or other given to the expression of his face an impudent, low-
bred expression, with a glass screwed on to his right eye,--such a look
as a cockney journeyman, wishing to pass for a "swell" about town, may
cast on a servant-maid in the pit of a suburban theatre.
"Will it do, old fellow?" he exclaimed, in a rollicking, swaggering tone
of voice, speaking French with a villanous British accent.
"Perfectly," said Renard, laughing. "I offer my compliments, and if ever
you are ruined, Monsieur, I will promise you a place in our police. Only
one caution,--take care not to overdo your part."
"Right. A quarter to nine; I'm off."
CHAPTER VI.
There is generally a brisk exhilaration of spirits in the return to any
special amusement or light accomplishment associated with the pleasant
memories of earlier youth; and remarkably so, I believe, when the
amusement or accomplishment has been that of the amateur stage-player.
Certainly I have known persons of very grave pursuits, of very dignified
character and position, who seem to regain the vivacity of boyhood when
disguising look and voice for a part in some drawing-room comedy or
charade. I might name statesmen of solemn repute rejoicing to raise and
to join in a laugh at their expense in such travesty of their habitual
selves.
The reader must not therefore be surprised, nor, I trust, deem it
inconsistent with the more serious attributes of Graham's character, if
the Englishman felt the sort of joyful excitement I describe, as, in his
way to the cafe Jean Jacques, he meditated the role he had undertaken;
and the joyousness was heightened beyond the mere holiday sense of
humouristic pleasantry by the sanguine hope that much to effect his
lasting happiness might result from the success of the object for which
his disguise was assumed.
It was just twenty minutes past nine when he arrived at the cafe Jean
Jacques. He dismissed the _fiacre_ and entered.
The apartment devoted to customers comprised two large rooms. The first
was the cafe properly speaking; the second, opening on it, was the
billiard-room. Conjecturing that he should probably find the person of
whom he was in quest employed at the billiard-table, Graham passed
thither at once. A tall man, who might be seven-and-forty, with a long
black beard, slightly grizzled, was at play with a young man of perhaps
twenty-eight, who gave him odds,--as better players of twenty-eight ought
to give odds to a player, though originally of equal force, whose eye is
not so quick, whose hand is not so steady, as they were twenty years ago.
Said Graham to himself, "The bearded man is my Vicomte." He called for a
cup of coffee, and seated himself on a bench at the end of the room.
The bearded man was far behind in the game. It was his turn to play;
the balls were placed in the most awkward position for him. Graham
himself was a fair billiard-player, both in the English and the French
game. He said to himself, "No man who can make a cannon there should
accept odds." The bearded man made a cannon; the bearded man continued
to make cannons; the bearded man did not stop till he had won the game.
The gallery of spectators was enthusiastic. Taking care to speak in
very bad, very English-French, Graham expressed to one of the
enthusiasts seated beside him his admiration of the bearded man's
playing, and ventured to ask if the bearded man were a professional
or an amateur player.
"Monsieur," replied the enthusiast, taking a short cutty-pipe from his
mouth, "it is an amateur, who has been a great player in his day, and is
so proud that he always takes less odds than he ought of a younger man.
It is not once in a month that he comes out as he has done to-night; but
to-night he has steadied his hand. He has had six petits verres."
"Ah, indeed! Do you know his name?"
"I should think so: he buried my father, my two aunts, and my wife."
"Buried?" said Graham, more and more British in his accent; "I don't
understand."
"Monsieur, you are English."
"I confess it."
"And a stranger to the Faubourg Montmartre."
"True."
"Or you would have heard of M. Giraud, the liveliest member of the State
Company for conducting funerals. They are going to play La Poule."
Much disconcerted, Graham retreated into the cafe, and seated himself
haphazard at one of the small tables. Glancing round the room, he saw no
one in whom he could conjecture the once brilliant Vicomte.
The company appeared to him sufficiently decent, and especially what may
be called local. There were some blouses drinking wine, no doubt of the
cheapest and thinnest; some in rough, coarse dresses, drinking beer.
These were evidently English, Belgian, or German artisans. At one table,
four young men, who looked like small journeymen, were playing cards.
At three other tables, men older, better dressed, probably shop-keepers,
were playing dominos. Graham scrutinized these last, but among them all
could detect no one corresponding to his ideal of the Vicomte de Mauleon.
"Probably," thought he, "I am too late, or perhaps he will not be here
this evening. At all events, I will wait a quarter of an hour." Then,
the _garcon_ approaching his table, he deemed it necessary to call for
something, and, still in strong English accent, asked for lemonade and an
evening journal. The _garcon_ nodded and went his way. A monsieur at
the round table next his own politely handed to him the "Galignani,"
saying in very good English, though unmistakably the good English of a
Frenchman, "The English journal, at your service."
Graham bowed his head, accepted the "Galignani," and inspected his
courteous neighbour. A more respectable-looking man no Englishman could
see in an English country town. He wore an unpretending flaxen wig, with
limp whiskers that met at the chin, and might originally have been the
same colour as the wig, but were now of a pale gray,--no beard, no
mustache. He was dressed with the scrupulous cleanliness of a sober
citizen,--a high white neckcloth, with a large old-fashioned pin,
containing a little knot of hair covered with glass or crystal, and
bordered with a black framework, in which were inscribed letters,--
evidently a mourning pin, hallowed to the memory of lost spouse or child,
--a man who, in England, might be the mayor of a cathedral town, at least
the town-clerk. He seemed suffering from some infirmity of vision, for
he wore green spectacles. The expression of his face was very mild and
gentle; apparently he was about sixty years old,--somewhat more.
Graham took kindly to his neighbour, insomuch that, in return for the
"Galignani," he offered him a cigar, lighting one himself.
His neighbour refused politely.
"Merci! I never smoke, never; _mon medecin_ forbids it. If I could be
tempted, it would be by, an English cigar. Ah, how you English beat us
in all things,--your ships, your iron, your tabac,--which you do not
grow!"
This speech rendered literally as we now render it may give the idea of a
somewhat vulgar speaker. But there was something in the man's manner, in
his smile, in his courtesy, which did not strike Graham as vulgar; on the
contrary, he thought within himself, "How instinctive to all Frenchmen
good breeding is!"
Before, however, Graham had time to explain to his amiable neighbour the
politico-economical principle according to which England, growing no
tobacco, had tobacco much better than France, which did grow it, a rosy
middle-aged monsieur made his appearance, saying hurriedly to Graham's
neighbour, "I'm afraid I'm late, but there is still a good half-hour
before us if you will give me my revenge."
"Willingly, Monsieur Georges. _Garcon_, the dominos."
"Have you been playing at billiards?" asked M. Georges.
"Yes, two games."
"With success?"
"I won the first, and lost the second through the defect of my eyesight;
the game depended on a stroke which would have been easy to an infant,--
I missed it."
Here the dominos arrived, and M. Georges began shuffling them; the other
turned to Graham and asked politely if he understood the game.
"A little, but not enough to comprehend why it is said to require so much
skill."
"It is chiefly an affair of memory with me; but M. Georges, my opponent,
has the talent of combination, which I have not."
"Nevertheless," replied M. Georges, gruffly, "you are not easily beaten;
it is for you to play first, Monsieur Lebeau." Graham almost started.
Was it possible! This mild, limp-whiskered, flaxen-wigged man Victor de
Mauleon, the Don Juan of his time; the last person in the room he should
have guessed. Yet, now examining his neighbour with more attentive eye,
he wondered at his stupidity in not having recognized at once the
ci-devant _gentilhomme_ and _beau garcon_. It happens frequently that
our imagination plays us this trick; we form to ourselves an idea of some
one eminent for good or for evil,--a poet, a statesman, a general, a
murderer, a swindler, a thief. The man is before us, and our ideas have
gone into so different a groove that he does not excite a suspicion; we
are told who he is, and immediately detect a thousand things that ought
to have proved his identity.
Looking thus again with rectified vision at the false Lebeau, Graham
observed an elegance and delicacy of feature which might, in youth, have
made the countenance very handsome, and rendered it still good-looking,
nay, prepossessing. He now noticed, too, the slight Norman accent, its
native harshness of breadth subdued into the modulated tones which
bespoke the habits of polished society. Above all, as M. Lebeau moved
his dominos with one hand, not shielding his pieces with the other (as M.
Georges warily did), but allowing it to rest carelessly on the table, he
detected the hands of the French aristocrat,--hands that had never done
work; never (like those of the English noble of equal birth) been
embrowned or freckled, or roughened or enlarged by early practice in
athletic sports; but hands seldom seen save in the higher circles of
Parisian life,--partly perhaps of hereditary formation, partly owing
their texture to great care begun in early youth, and continued
mechanically in after life,--with long taper fingers and polished nails;
white and delicate as those of a woman, but not slight, not feeble;
nervous and sinewy as those of a practised swordsman.
Graham watched the play, and Lebeau good-naturedly explained to him its
complications as it proceeded; though the explanation, diligently
attended to by M. Georges, lost Lebeau the game.
The dominos were again shuffled, and during that operation M. Georges
said, "By the way, Monsieur Lebeau, you promised to find me a _locataire_
for my second floor; have you succeeded?"
"Not yet. Perhaps you had better advertise in 'Les Petites Affiches.'
You ask too much for the habitues of this neighbourhood,--one hundred
francs a month."
"But the lodging is furnished, and well too, and has four rooms. One
hundred francs are not much."
A thought flashed upon Graham. "Pardon, Monsieur," he said, "have you an
_appartement de garcon_ to let furnished?"
"Yes, Monsieur, a charming one. Are you in search of an apartment?"
"I have some idea of taking one, but only by the month. I am but just
arrived at Paris, and I have business which may keep me here a few weeks.
I do but require a bedroom and a small cabinet, and the rent must be
modest. I am not a milord."
"I am sure we could arrange, Monsieur," said M. Georges, "though I could
not well divide my logement. But one hundred francs a month is not
much!"
"I fear it is more than I can afford; however, if you will give me your
address, I will call and see the rooms,--say the day after to-morrow.
Between this and then, I expect letters which may more clearly decide my
movements."
"If the apartments suit you," said M. Lebeau, "you will at least be in
the house of a very honest man, which is more than can be said of every
one who lets furnished apartments. The house, too, has a concierge, with
a handy wife who will arrange your rooms and provide you with coffee--or
tea, which you English prefer--if you breakfast at home." Here M.
Georges handed a card to Graham, and asked what hour he would call.
"About twelve, if that hour is convenient," said Graham, rising. "I
presume there is a restaurant in the neighbourhood where I could dine
reasonably."
"_Je crois bien_, half-a-dozen. I can recommend to you one where you can
dine _en prince_ for thirty sous. And if you are at Paris on business,
and want any letters written in private, I can also recommend to you my
friend here, M. Lebeau. Ay, and on affairs his advice is as good as a
lawyer's, and his fee a bagatelle."
"Don't believe all that Monsieur Georges so flatteringly says of me," put
in M. Lebeau, with a modest half-smile, and in English. "I should tell
you that I, like yourself, am recently arrived at Paris, having bought
the business and goodwill of my predecessor in the apartment I occupy;
and it is only to the respect due to his antecedents, and on the score of
a few letters of recommendation which I bring from Lyons, that I can
attribute the confidence shown to me, a stranger in this neighbourhood.
Still I have some knowledge of the world, and I am always glad if I can
be of service to the English. I love the English"--he said this with a
sort of melancholy earnestness which seemed sincere; and then added in a
more careless tone,--"I have met with much kindness from them in the
course of a chequered life."
"You seem a very good fellow,--in fact, a regular trump, Monsieur
Lebeau," replied Graham, in the same language. "Give me your address.
To say truth, I am a very poor French scholar, as you must have seen, and
am awfully bother-headed how to manage some correspondence on matters
with which I am entrusted by my employer, so that it is a lucky chance
which has brought me acquainted with you."
M. Lebeau inclined his head gracefully, and drew from a very neat morocco
case a card, which Graham took and pocketed. Then he paid for his coffee
and lemonade, and returned home well satisfied with the evening's
adventure.
CHAPTER VII.
The next morning Graham sent for M. Renard, and consulted with that
experienced functionary as to the details of the plan of action which he
had revolved during the hours of a sleepless night.
"In conformity with your advice," said he, "not to expose myself to the
chance of future annoyance, by confiding to a man so dangerous as the
false Lebeau my name and address, I propose to take the lodging offered
to me, as Mr. Lamb, an attorney's clerk, commissioned to get in certain
debts, and transact other matters of business, on behalf of his
employer's clients. I suppose there will be no difficulty with the
police in this change of name, now that passports for the English are not
necessary?"
"Certainly not. You will have no trouble in that respect."
"I shall thus be enabled very naturally to improve acquaintance with the
professional letter-writer, and find an easy opportunity to introduce the
name of Louise Duval. My chief difficulty, I fear, not being a practical
actor, will be to keep up consistently the queer sort of language I have
adopted, both in French and in English. I have too sharp a critic in a
man so consummate himself in stage trick and disguise as M. Lebeau not
to feel the necessity of getting through my role as quickly as I can.
Meanwhile, can you recommend me to some _magasin_ where I can obtain a
suitable change of costume? I can't always wear a travelling suit, and I
must buy linen of coarser texture than mine, and with the initials of my
new name inscribed on it."
"Quite right to study such details; I will introduce you to a magasin
near the Temple, where you will find all you want."
"Next, have you any friends or relations in the provinces unknown to M.
Lebeau, to whom I might be supposed to write about debts or business
matters, and from whom I might have replies?"
"I will think over it, and manage that for you very easily. Your letters
shall find their way to me, and I will dictate the answers."
After some further conversation on that business, M. Renard made an
appointment to meet Graham at a cafe near the, Temple later in the
afternoon, and took his departure.
Graham then informed his _laquais de place_ that, though he kept on his
lodgings, he was going into the country for a few days, and should not
want the man's services till he returned. He therefore dismissed and
paid him off at once, so that the laquais might not observe, when he
quitted his rooms the next day, that he took with him no change of
clothes, etc.
CHAPTER VIII.
Graham Vane has been for some days in the apartment rented of M. Georges.
He takes it in the name of Mr. Lamb,--a name wisely chosen, less common
than Thompson and Smith, less likely to be supposed an assumed name, yet
common enough not to be able easily to trace it to any special family.
He appears, as he had proposed, in the character of an agent employed by
a solicitor in London to execute sundry commissions and to collect
certain outstanding debts. There is no need to mention the name of the
solicitor; if there were, he could give the name of his own solicitor,
to whose discretion he could trust implicitly. He dresses and acts up to
his assumed character with the skill of a man who, like the illustrious
Charles Fox, has, though in private representations, practised the stage-
play in which Demosthenes said the triple art of oratory consisted; who
has seen a great deal of the world, and has that adaptability of
intellect which knowledge of the world lends to one who is so thoroughly
in earnest as to his end that he agrees to be sportive as to his means.
The kind of language he employs when speaking English to Lebeau is that
suited to the role of a dapper young underling of vulgar mind habituated
to vulgar companionships. I feel it due, if not to Graham himself, at
least to the memory of the dignified orator whose name he inherits, so to
modify and soften the hardy style of that peculiar diction in which he
disguises his birth and disgraces his culture, that it is only here and
there that I can venture to indicate the general tone of it; but in order
to supply my deficiencies therein, the reader has only to call to mind
the forms of phraseology which polite novelists in vogue, especially
young-lady novelists, ascribe to well-born gentlemen, and more
emphatically to those in the higher ranks of the Peerage. No doubt
Graham, in his capacity of critic, had been compelled to read, in order
to review, those contributions to refined literature, and had
familiarized himself to a vein of conversation abounding with "swell" and
"stunner" and "awfully jolly," in its libel on manners and outrage on
taste.
He has attended nightly the cafe Jean Jacques; he has improved
acquaintance with M. Georges and M. Lebeau; he has played at billiards,
he has played at dominos, with the latter. He has been much surprised at
the unimpeachable honesty which M. Lebeau has exhibited in both these
games. In billiards, indeed, a man cannot cheat except by disguising his
strength; it is much the same in dominos,--it is skill combined with
luck, as in whist; but in whist there are modes of cheating which dominos
do not allow,--you can't mark a domino as you can a card. It was
perfectly clear to Graham that M. Lebeau did not gain a livelihood by
billiards or dominos at the cafe Jean Jacques. In the former he was not
only a fair but a generous player. He played exceedingly well, despite
his spectacles; but he gave, with something of a Frenchman's lofty
_fanfaronnade_, larger odds to his adversary than his play justified. In
dominos, where such odds could not well be given, he insisted on playing
such small stakes as two or three francs might cover. In short,
M. Lebeau puzzled Graham. All about M. Lebeau, his manner, his talk,
was irreproachable, and baffled suspicion; except in this,--Graham
gradually discovered that the cafe had a quasi-political character.
Listening to talkers round him, he overheard much that might well have
shocked the notions of a moderate Liberal; much that held in disdain the
objects to which, in 1869, an English Radical directed his aspirations.
Vote by ballot, universal suffrage, etc.,--such objects the French had
already attained. By the talkers at the cafe Jean Jacques they were
deemed to be the tricky contrivances of tyranny. In fact, the talk was
more scornful of what Englishmen understand by radicalism or democracy
than Graham ever heard from the lips of an ultra-Tory. It assumed a
strain of philosophy far above the vulgar squabbles of ordinary party
politicians,--a philosophy which took for its fundamental principles the
destruction of religion and of private property. These two objects
seemed dependent the one on the other. The philosophers of the Jean
Jacques held with that expounder of Internationalism, Eugene Dupont,
"Nous ne voulons plus de religion, car les religions etouffent
l'intelligence."
[Discours par Eugene Dupont a la Cloture du Congres de Bruxelles,
Sept. 3, 1868]
Now and then, indeed, a dissentient voice was raised as to the existence
of a Supreme Being, but, with one exception, it soon sank into silence.
No voice was raised in defence of private property. These sages appeared
for the most part to belong to the class of _ouvriers_ or artisans. Some
of them were foreigners,--Belgian, German, English; all seemed well off
for their calling. Indeed they must have had comparatively high wages,
to judge by their dress and the money they spent on regaling themselves.
The language of several was well chosen, at times eloquent. Some brought
with them women who seemed respectable, and who often joined in the
conversation, especially when it turned upon the law of marriage as a
main obstacle to all personal liberty and social improvement. If this
was a subject on which the women did not all agree, still they discussed
it, without prejudice and with admirable sang froid. Yet many of them
looked like wives and mothers. Now and then a young journeyman brought
with him a young lady of more doubtful aspect, but such a couple kept
aloof from the others. Now and then, too, a man evidently of higher
station than that of ouvrier, and who was received by the philosophers
with courtesy and respect, joined one of the tables and ordered a bowl of
punch for general participation. In such occasional visitors, Graham,
still listening, detected a writer of the press; now and then, a small
artist or actor or medical student. Among the _habitues_ there was one
man, an _ouvrier_, in whom Graham could not help feeling an interest. He
was called Monnier, sometimes more familiarly Armand, his baptismal
appellation. This man had a bold and honest expression of countenance.
He talked like one who, if he had not read much, had thought much on the
subjects he loved to discuss. He argued against the capital of employers
quite as ably as Mr. Mill has argued against the rights of property in
land. He was still more eloquent against the laws of marriage and
Heritage. But his was the one voice not to be silenced in favour of a
Supreme Being. He had at least the courage of his opinions, and was
always thoroughly in earnest. M. Lebeau seemed to know this man, and
honoured him with a nod and a smile, when passing by him to the table he
generally occupied. This familiarity with a man of that class, and of
opinions so extreme, excited Graham's curiosity. One evening he said to
Lebeau, "A queer fellow that you have just nodded to.
"How so?"
"Well, he has queer notions."
"Notions shared, I believe, by many of your countrymen?"
"I should think not many. Those poor simpletons yonder may have caught
'em from their French fellow-workmen, but I don't think that even the
_gobemouches_ in our National Reform Society open their mouths to swallow
such wasps."
"Yet I believe the association to which most of those _ouvriers_ belong
had its origin in England."
"Indeed! what association?"
"The International."
"Ah, I have heard of that."
Lebeau turned his green spectacles full on Graham's face as he said
slowly, "And what do you think of it?"
Graham prudently checked the disparaging reply that first occurred to
him, and said, "I know so little about it that I would rather ask you."
"I think it might become formidable if it found able leaders who knew how
to use it. Pardon me, how came you to know of this cafe? Were you
recommended to it?"
"No; I happened to be in this neighbourhood on business, and walked in,
as I might into any other cafe."
"You don't interest yourself in the great social questions which are
agitated below the surface of this best of all possible worlds?"
"I can't say that I trouble my head much about them."
"A game at dominos before M. Georges arrives?"
"Willingly. Is M. Georges one of those agitators below the surface?"
"No, indeed. It is for you to play."
Here M. Georges arrived, and no further conversation on political or
social questions ensued.
Graham had already called more than once at M. Lebeau's office, and asked
him to put into good French various letters on matters of business, the
subjects of which had been furnished by M. Renard. The office was rather
imposing and stately, considering the modest nature of M. Lebeau's
ostensible profession. It occupied the entire ground-floor of a corner
house, with a front-door at one angle and a back-door at the other. The
anteroom to his cabinet, and in which Graham had generally to wait some
minutes before he was introduced, was generally well filled, and not only
by persons who, by their dress and outward appearance, might be fairly
supposed sufficiently illiterate to require his aid as polite letter-
writers,--not only by servant-maids and grisettes, by sailors, zouaves,
and journeymen workmen,--but not unfrequently by clients evidently
belonging to a higher, or at least a richer, class of society,--men with
clothes made by a fashionable tailor; men, again, who, less fashionably
attired; looked like opulent tradesmen and fathers of well-to-do
families,--the first generally young, the last generally middle-aged.
All these denizens of a higher world were introduced by a saturnine clerk
into M. Lebeau's reception-room, very quickly and in precedence of the
_ouvriers_ and _grisettes_.
"What can this mean?" thought Graham; "is it really that this humble
business avowed is the cloak to some political conspiracy concealed,--the
International Association?" And so pondering, the clerk one day singled
him from the crowd and admitted him into M. Lebeau's cabinet. Graham
thought the time had now arrived when he might safely approach the
subject that had brought him to the Faubourg Montmartre.
"You are very good," said Graham, speaking in the English of a young earl
in our elegant novels,--"you are very good to let me in while you have so
many swells and nobs waiting for you in the other room. But, I say, old
fellow, you have not the cheek to tell me that they want you to correct
their cocker or spoon for them by proxy?"
"Pardon me," answered M. Lebeau in French, "if I prefer my own language
in replying to you. I speak the English I learned many years ago, and
your language in the _beau monde_, to which you evidently belong, is
strange to me. You are quite right, however, in your surmise that I have
other clients than those who, like yourself, think I could correct their
verbs or their spelling. I have seen a great deal of the world,--I know
something of it, and something of the law; so that many persons come to
me for advice and for legal information on terms more moderate than those
of an _avoue_. But my ante-chamber is full, I am pressed for time;
excuse me if I ask you to say at once in what I can be agreeable to you
to-day."
"Ah!" said Graham, assuming a very earnest look, "you do know the world,
that is clear; and you do know the law of France, eh?"
"Yes, a little."
"What I wanted to say at present may have something to do with French
law, and I meant to ask you either to recommend to me a sharp lawyer, or
to tell me how I can best get at your famous police here."
"Police?"
"I think I may require the service of one of those officers whom we in
England call detectives; but if you are busy now, I can call to-morrow."
"I spare you two minutes. Say at once, dear Monsieur, what you want with
law or police."
"I am instructed to find out the address of a certain Louise Duval,
daughter of a drawing-master named Adolphe Duval, living in the Rue ----
in the year 1848."
Graham, while he thus said, naturally looked Lebeau in the face,--not
pryingly, not significantly, but as a man generally does look in the face
the other man whom he accosts seriously. The change in the face he
regarded was slight, but it was unmistakable. It was the sudden meeting
of the eyebrows, accompanied with the sudden jerk of the shoulder and
bend of the neck, which betoken a man taken by surprise, and who pauses
to reflect before he replies. His pause was but momentary,
"For what object is this address required?"
"That I don't know; but evidently for some advantage to Madame or
Mademoiselle Duval, if still alive, because my employer authorizes me to
spend no less than L100 in ascertaining where she is, if alive, or where
she was buried, if dead; and if other means fail, I am instructed to
advertise to the effect that if Louise Duval, or, in case of her death,
any children of hers living in the year 1849, will communicate with some
person whom I may appoint at Paris, such intelligence, authenticated, may
prove to the advantage of the party advertised for. I am, however, told
not to resort to this means without consulting either with a legal
adviser or the police."
"Hem! have you inquired at the house where this lady was, you say,
living in 1848?"
"Of course I have done that; but very clumsily, I dare say, through a
friend, and learned nothing. But I must not keep you now. I think I
shall apply at once to the police. What should I say when I get to the
bureau?"
"Stop, Monsieur, stop. I do not advise you to apply to the police. It
would be waste of time and money. Allow me to think over the matter. I
shall see you this evening at the cafe Jean Jacques at eight o'clock.
Till then do nothing."
"All right; I obey you. The whole thing is out of my way of business
awfully. Bonjour."
CHAPTER IX.
Punctually at eight o'clock Graham Vane had taken his seat at a corner
table at the remote end of the cafe Jean Jacques, called for his cup of
coffee and his evening journal, and awaited the arrival of M. Lebeau.
His patience was not tasked long. In a few minutes the Frenchman
entered, paused at the comptoir, as was his habit, to address a polite
salutation to the well-dressed lady who there presided, nodded as usual
to Armand Monnier, then glanced round, recognized Graham with a smile,
and approached his table with the quiet grace of movement by which he was
distinguished.
Seating himself opposite to Graham, and speaking in a voice too low to be
heard by others, and in French, he then said,
"In thinking over your communication this morning, it strikes me as
probable, perhaps as certain, that this Louise Duval or her children, if
she have any, must be entitled to some moneys bequeathed to her by a
relation or friend in England. What say you to that assumption, Monsieur
Lamb?"
"You are a sharp fellow," answered Graham. "Just what I say to myself.
Why else should I be instructed to go to such expense in finding her out?
Most likely, if one can't trace her, or her children born before the date
named, any such moneys will go to some one else; and that some one else,
whoever he be, has commissioned my employer to find out. But I don't
imagine any sum due to her or her heirs can be much, or that the matter
is very important; for, if so, the thing would not be carelessly left in
the hands of one of the small fry like myself, and clapped in along with
a lot of other business as an off-hand job."
"Will you tell me who employed you?"
"No, I don't feel authorized to do that at present; and I don't see the
necessity of it. It seems to me, on consideration, a matter for the
police to ferret out; only, as I asked before, how should I get at the
police?"
"That is not difficult. It is just possible that I might help you better
than any lawyer or any detective."
"Why, did you ever know this Louise Duval?"
"Excuse me, Monsieur Lamb; you refuse me your full confidence; allow me
to imitate your reserve."
"Oho!" said Graham; "shut up as close as you like; it is nothing to me.
Only observe, there is this difference between us, that I am employed by
another. He does not authorize me to name him, and if I did commit that
indiscretion, I might lose my bread and cheese. Whereas you have
nobody's secret to guard but your own, in saying whether or not you ever
knew a Madame or Mademoiselle Duval; and if you have some reason for not
getting me the information I am instructed to obtain, that is also a
reason for not troubling you further. And after all, old boy" (with a
familiar slap on Lebeau's stately shoulder), "after all, it is I who
would employ you; you don't employ me. And if you find out the lady, it
is you who would get the L100., not I."
M. Lebeau mechanically brushed, with a light movement of hand, the
shoulder which the Englishman had so pleasantly touched, drew himself and
chair some inches back, and said slowly,--
"Monsieur Lamb, let us talk as gentleman to gentleman. Put aside the
question of money altogether; I must first know why your employer wants
to hunt out this poor Louise Duval. It may be to her injury, and I would
do her none if you offered thousands where you offer pounds. I forestall
the condition of mutual confidence; I own that I have known her,--it is
many years ago; and, Monsieur Lamb, though a Frenchman very often injures
a woman from love, he is in a worse plight for bread and cheese than I am
if he injures her for money."
"Is he thinking of the duchess's jewels?" thought Graham. "Bravo, mon
vieux," he said aloud; "but as I don't know what my employer's motive in
his commission is, perhaps you can enlighten me. How could his inquiry
injure Louise Duval?"
"I cannot say; but you English have the power to divorce your wives.
Louise Duval may have married an Englishman, separated from him, and he
wants to know where he can find, in order to criminate and divorce her,
or it may be to insist on her return to him."
"Bosh! that is not likely."
"Perhaps, then, some English friend she may have known has left her a
bequest, which would of course lapse to some one else if she be not
living."
"By gad!" cried Graham, "I think you hit the right nail on the head:
_c'est cela_. But what then?"
"Well, if I thought any substantial benefit to Louise Duval might result
from the success of your inquiry, I would really see if it were in my
power to help you. But I must have time to consider."
"How long?"
"I can't exactly say; perhaps three or four days."
"Bon! I will wait. Here comes M. Georges. I leave you to dominos and
him. Good-night."
Late that night M. Lebeau was seated alone in a chamber connected with
the cabinet in which he received visitors. A ledger was open before him,
which he scanned with careful eyes, no longer screened by spectacles.
The survey seemed to satisfy him. He murmured, "It suffices, the time
has come," closed the book, returned it to his bureau, which he locked
up, and then wrote in cipher the letter here reduced into English:--
"DEAR AND NOBLE FRIEND,--Events march; the Empire is everywhere
undermined. Our treasury has thriven in my hands; the sums
subscribed and received by me through you have become more than
quadrupled by advantageous speculations, in which M. Georges has
been a most trustworthy agent. A portion of them I have continued
to employ in the mode suggested,--namely, in bringing together men
discreetly chosen as being in their various ways representatives and
ringleaders of the motley varieties that, when united at the right
moment, form a Parisian mob. But from that right moment we are as
yet distant. Before we can call passion into action, we must
prepare opinion for change. I propose now to devote no
inconsiderable portion of our fund towards the inauguration of a
journal which shall gradually give voice to our designs. Trust me
to insure its success, and obtain the aid of writers who will have
no notion of the uses to which they ultimately contribute. Now that
the time has come to establish for ourselves an organ in the press,
addressing higher orders of intelligence than those which are needed
to destroy and incapable of reconstructing, the time has also
arrived for the reappearance in his proper name and rank of the man
in whom you take so gracious an interest. In vain you have pressed
him to do so before; till now he had not amassed together, by the
slow process of petty gains and constant savings, with such
additions as prudent speculations on his own account might
contribute, the modest means necessary to his resumed position; and
as he always contended against your generous offers, no
consideration should ever tempt him either to appropriate to his
personal use a single sou intrusted to him for a public purpose, or
to accept from friendship the pecuniary aid which would abase him
into the hireling of a cause. No! Victor de Mauleon despises too
much the tools that he employs to allow any man hereafter to say,
'Thou also wert a tool, and hast been paid for thy uses.'
"But to restore the victim of calumny to his rightful place in this
gaudy world, stripped of youth and reduced in fortune, is a task
that may well seem impossible. To-morrow he takes the first step
towards the achievement of the impossible. Experience is no bad
substitute for youth, and ambition is made stronger by the goad of
poverty.
"Thou shalt hear of his news soon."
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