Isaura had, as we have seen, been hitherto saved by the siege and its
consequences from the fulfilment of her engagement to Gustave Rameau; and
since he had quitted his father's house she had not only seen less of
him, but a certain chill crept into his converse in the visits he paid to
her. The compassionate feeling his illness had excited, confirmed by the
unwonted gentleness of his mood, and the short-lived remorse with which
he spoke of his past faults and follies, necessarily faded away in
proportion as he regained that kind of febrile strength which was his
normal state of health, and with it the arrogant self-assertion which was
ingrained in his character. But it was now more than ever that she
became aware of the antagonism between all that constituted his inner
life and her own. It was not that he volunteered in her presence the
express utterance of those opinions, social or religious, which he
addressed to the public in the truculent journal to which, under a _nom
de plume_, he was the most inflammatory contributor. Whether it was that
he shrank from insulting the ears of the pure virgin whom he had wooed as
wife with avowals of his disdain of marriage bonds, or perhaps from
shocking yet more her womanly humanity and her religious faith by cries
for the blood of anti-republican traitors and the downfall of Christian
altars; or whether he yet clung, though with relapsing affection, to the
hold which her promise had imposed on him, and felt that that hold would
be for ever gone, and that she would recoil from his side in terror and
dismay, if she once learned that the man who had implored her to be his
saving angel from the comparatively mild errors of youth, had so belied
his assurance, so mocked her credulity, as deliberately to enter into
active warfare against all that he knew her sentiments regarded as noble
and her conscience received as divine: despite the suppression of avowed
doctrine on his part, the total want of sympathy between these
antagonistic natures made itself felt by both--more promptly felt by
Isaura. If Gustave did not frankly announce to her in that terrible time
(when all that a little later broke out on the side of the Communists was
more or less forcing ominous way to the lips of those who talked with
confidence to each other, whether to approve or to condemn) the
associates with whom he was leagued, the path to which he had committed
his career--still for her instincts for genuine Art--which for its
development needs the serenity of peace, which for its ideal needs dreams
that soar into the Infinite--Gustave had only the scornful sneer of the
man who identifies with his ambition the violent upset of all that
civilisation has established in this world, and the blank negation of all
that patient hope and heroic aspiration which humanity carries on into
the next.
On his side, Gustave Rameau, who was not without certain fine and
delicate attributes in a complicated nature over which the personal
vanity and the mobile temperament of the Parisian reigned supreme, chafed
at the restraints imposed on him. No matter what a man's doctrines may
be--however abominable you and I may deem them--man desires to find, in
the dearest fellowship he can establish, that sympathy in the woman his
choice singles out from her sex-deference to his opinions, sympathy with
his objects, as man. So, too, Gustave's sense of honour and according to
his own Parisian code that sense was keen--became exquisitely stung by
the thought that he was compelled to play the part of a mean dissimulator
to the girl for whose opinions he had the profoundest contempt. How
could these two, betrothed to each other, not feel, though without coming
to open dissension, that between them had flowed the inlet of water by
which they had been riven asunder? What man, if he can imagine himself a
Gustave Rameau, can blame the revolutionist absorbed in ambitious
projects for turning the pyramid of society topsy-turvy, if he shrank
more and more from the companionship of a betrothed with whom he could
not venture to exchange three words without caution and reserve? And
what woman can blame an Isaura if she felt a sensation of relief at the
very neglect of the affianced whom she had compassionated and could never
love?
Possibly the reader may best judge of the state of Isaura's mind at this
time by a few brief extracts from an imperfect fragmentary journal, in
which, amid saddened and lonely hours, she held converse with herself.
"One day at Enghien I listened silently to a conversation between M.
Savarin and the Englishman, who sought to explain the conception of duty
in which the German poet has given such noble utterance to the thoughts
of the German philosopher--viz., that moral aspiration has the same goal
as the artistic,--the attainment to the calm delight wherein the pain of
effort disappears in the content of achievement. Thus in life, as in
art, it is through discipline that we arrive at freedom, and duty only
completes itself when all motives, all actions, are attuned into one
harmonious whole, and it is not striven for as duty, but enjoyed as
happiness. M. Savarin treated this theory with the mockery with which
the French wit is ever apt to treat what it terms German mysticism.
According to him, duty must always be a hard and difficult struggle; and
he said laughingly, 'Whenever a man says, "I have done my duty," it is
with a long face and a mournful sigh.'
"Ah, how devoutly I listened to the Englishman! how harshly the
Frenchman's irony jarred upon my ears! And yet now, in the duty that
life imposes on me, to fulfil which I strain every power vouchsafed to my
nature, and seek to crush down every impulse that rebels, where is the
promised calm, where any approach to the content of achievement?
Contemplating the way before me, the Beautiful even of Art has vanished.
I see but cloud and desert. Can this which I assume to be duty really be
so? Ah, is it not sin even to ask my heart that question?
"Madame Rameau is very angry with her son for his neglect both of his
parents and of me. I have had to take his part against her. I would not
have him lose their love. Poor Gustave! But when Madame Rameau suddenly
said to-day: 'I erred in seeking the union between thee and Gustave.
Retract thy promise; in doing so thou wilt be justified,'--oh, the
strange joy that flashed upon me as she spoke. Am I justified? Am I?
Oh, if that Englishman had never crossed my path! Oh, if I had never
loved! or if in the last time we met he had not asked for my love, and
confessed his own! Then, I think, I could honestly reconcile my
conscience with my longings, and say to Gustave, 'We do not suit each
other; be we both released!' But now-is it that Gustave is really changed
from what he was, when in despondence at my own lot, and in pitying
belief that I might brighten and exalt his, I plighted my troth to him?
or is it not rather that the choice I thus voluntarily made became so
intolerable a thought the moment I knew I was beloved and sought by
another; and from that moment I lost the strength I had before,--strength
to silence the voice at my own heart? What! is it the image of that
other one which is persuading me to be false?--to exaggerate the
failings, to be blind to the merits of him who has a right to say, 'I am
what I was when thou didst pledge thyself to take me for better or for
worse'?
"Gustave has been here after an absence of several days. He was not
alone. The good Abbe Vertpre and Madame de Vandemar, with her son, M.
Raoul, were present. They had come on matters connected with our
ambulance. They do not know of my engagement to Gustave; and seeing him
in the uniform of a National Guard, the Abbe courteously addressed to him
some questions as to the possibility of checking the terrible increase of
the vice of intoxication, so alien till of late to the habits of the
Parisians, and becoming fatal to discipline and bodily endurance,--could
the number of the _cantines_ on the ramparts be more limited? Gustave
answered with rudeness and bitter sarcasm, 'Before priests could be
critics in military matters they must undertake military service
themselves.'
"The Abbe replied with unalterable good-humour, 'But, in order to
criticise the effects of drunkenness, must one get drunk one's self?'
Gustave was put out, and retired into a corner of the room, keeping
sullen silence till my other visitors left.
"Then before I could myself express the pain his words and manner had
given me, he said abruptly, 'I wonder how you can tolerate the
_tartuferie_ which may amuse on the comic stage, but in the tragedy of
these times is revolting.' This speech roused my anger, and the
conversation that ensued was the gravest that had ever passed between us.
"If Gustave were of stronger nature and more concentrated will, I believe
that the only feelings I should have for him would be antipathy and
dread. But it is his very weaknesses and inconsistencies that secure to
him a certain tenderness of interest. I think he could never be judged
without great indulgence by women; there is in him so much of the child,
--wayward, irritating one moment, and the next penitent, affectionate.
One feels as if persistence in evil were impossible to one so delicate
both in mind and form. That peculiar order of genius to which he belongs
seems as if it ought to be so estranged from all directions, violent or
coarse. When in poetry he seeks to utter some audacious and defying
sentiment, the substance melts away in daintiness of expression, in soft,
lute-like strains of slender music. And when he has stung, angered,
revolted my heart the most, suddenly he subsides into such pathetic
gentleness, such tearful remorse, that I feel as if resentment to one so
helpless, desertion of one who must fall without the support of a
friendly hand, were a selfish cruelty. It seems to me as if I were
dragged towards a precipice by a sickly child clinging to my robe.
"But in this last conversation with him, his language in regard to
subjects I hold most sacred drew forth from me words which startled him,
and which may avail to save him from that worst insanity of human minds,
--the mimicry of the Titans who would have dethroned a God to restore a
Chaos. I told him frankly that I had only promised to share his fate on
my faith in his assurance of my power to guide it heavenward; and that if
the opinions he announced were seriously entertained, and put forth in
defiance of heaven itself, we were separated for ever. I told him how
earnestly, in the calamities of the time, my own soul had sought to take
refuge in thoughts and hopes beyond the earth; and how deeply many a
sentiment that in former days passed by me with a smile in the light talk
of the salons, now shocked me as an outrage on the reverence which the
mortal child owes to the Divine Father. I owned to him how much of
comfort, of sustainment, of thought and aspiration, elevated beyond the
sphere of Art in which I had hitherto sought the purest air, the loftiest
goal, I owed to intercourse with minds like those of the Abbe de Vertpre;
and how painfully I felt as if I were guilty of ingratitude when he
compelled me to listen to insults on those whom I recognised as
benefactors.
"I wished to speak sternly; but it is my great misfortune, my prevalent
weakness, that I cannot be stern when I ought to be. It is with me in
life as in art. I never could on the stage have taken the part of a
Norma or a Medea. If I attempt in fiction a character which deserves
condemnation, I am untrue to poetic justice. I cannot condemn and
execute; I can but compassionate and pardon the creature I myself have
created. I was never in the real world stern but to one; and then, alas!
it was because I loved where I could no longer love with honour; and I,
knowing my weakness, had terror lest I should yield.
"So Gustave did not comprehend from my voice, my manner, how gravely I
was in earnest. But, himself softened, affected to tears, he confessed
his own faults--ceased to argue in order to praise; and--and--uttering
protestations seemingly the most sincere, he left me bound to him still
--bound to him still--woe is me!"
It is true that Isaura had come more directly under the influence of
religion than she had been in the earlier dates of this narrative. There
is a time in the lives of most of us, and especially in the lives of
women, when, despondent of all joy in an earthly future, and tortured by
conflicts between inclination and duty, we transfer all the passion and
fervour of our troubled souls to enthusiastic yearnings for the Divine
Love; seeking to rebaptise ourselves in the fountain of its mercy, taking
thence the only hopes that can cheer, the only strength that can sustain
us. Such a time had come to Isaura. Formerly she had escaped from the
griefs of the work-a-day world into the garden-land of Art. Now, Art had
grown unwelcome to her, almost hateful. Gone was the spell from the
garden-land; its flowers were faded, its paths were stony, its sunshine
had vanished in mist and rain. There are two voices of Nature in the
soul of the genuine artist,--that is, of him who, because he can create,
comprehends the necessity of the great Creator. Those voices are never
both silent. When one is hushed, the other becomes distinctly audible.
The one speaks to him of Art, the other of Religion.
At that period several societies for the relief and tendance of the
wounded had been formed by the women of Paris,--the earliest, if I
mistake not, by ladies of the highest rank--amongst whom were the
Comtesse de Vandemar and the Contessa di Rimini--though it necessarily
included others of stations less elevated. To this society, at the
request of Alain de Rochebriant and of Enguerrand, Isaura had eagerly
attached herself. It occupied much of her time; and in connection with
it she was brought much into sympathetic acquaintance with Raoul de
Vandemar--the most zealous and active member of that Society of St.
Francois de Sales, to which belonged other young nobles of the Legitimist
creed. The passion of Raoul's life was the relief of human suffering.
In him was personified the ideal of Christian charity. I think all, or
most of us, have known what it is to pass under the influence of a nature
that is so far akin to ours that it desires to become something better
and higher than it is--that desire being paramount in ourselves--but
seeks to be that something in ways not akin to, but remote from, the ways
in which we seek it. When this contact happens, either one nature, by
the mere force of will, subjugates and absorbs the other, or both, while
preserving their own individuality, apart and independent, enrich
themselves by mutual interchange, and the asperities which differences of
taste and sentiment in detail might otherwise provoke melt in the
sympathy which unites spirits striving with equal earnestness to rise
nearer to the unseen and unattainable Source, which they equally
recognise as Divine.
Perhaps, had these two persons met a year ago in the ordinary intercourse
of the world, neither would have detected the sympathy of which I speak.
Raoul was not without the prejudice against artists and writers of
romance, that is shared by many who cherish the persuasion that all is
vanity which does not concentrate imagination and intellect in the
destinies of the soul hereafter; and Isaura might have excited his
compassion, certainly not his reverence. While to her, his views on all
that seeks to render the actual life attractive and embellished, through
the accomplishments of Muse and Grace, would have seemed the narrow-
minded asceticism of a bigot. But now, amid the direful calamities of
the time, the beauty of both natures became visible to each. To the eyes
of Isaura tenderness became predominant in the monastic self-denial of
Raoul. To the eyes of Raoul, devotion became predominant in the gentle
thoughtfulness of Isaura. Their intercourse was in ambulance and
hospital-in care for the wounded, in prayer for the dying. Ah! it is
easy to declaim against the frivolities and vices of Parisian society as
they appear on the surface; and, in revolutionary times, it is the very
worst of Paris that ascends in scum to the top. But descend below the
surface, even in that demoralising suspense of order, and nowhere on
earth might the angel have beheld the image of humanity more amply
vindicating its claim to the heritage of heaven.