"WHEN YOUTH, THE DREAM, DEPARTS"
The leaves are falling!
This October afternoon is deliciously serene, there is not a cloud in the
grayish-blue sky, where the sun, which has shed a pure and steady light
since morning, has begun majestically to decline, like a good king who
has grown old after a long and prosperous reign. How soft the air is!
How calm and fresh! This is certainly one of the most beautiful of
autumn days. Below, in the valley, the river sparkles like liquid
silver, and the trees which crown the hill-tops are of a lurid gold and
copper color. The distant panorama of Paris is grand and charming, with
all its noted edifices and the dome of the Invalides shining like gold
outlined upon the horizon. As a loving and coquettish woman, who wishes
to be regretted, gives at the moment of departure her most intoxicating
smile to a friend, so the close of autumn had put on for one of her last
days all her splendid charms.
But the leaves are falling!
Amedee Violette is walking alone in his garden at Meudon. It is his
country home, where he has lived for eight years. A short time after the
close of the war he married Maurice's widow. He is walking upon the
terrace planted with lindens that are now more than half-despoiled of
their leaves, admiring the beautiful picture and thinking.
He is celebrated, he has worked hard and has built up a reputation by
good, sincere books, as a poet. Doubtless, some persons are still
jealous of him, and he is often treated with injustice, but he is
estimated by the dignity of his life, which his love of art fills
entirely, and he occupies a superior position in literature. Although
his resources are modest, they are sufficient to exempt him from
anxieties of a trivial nature. Living far from society, in the close
intimacy of those that he loves, he does not know the miseries of
ambition and vanity. Amedee Violette should be happy.
His old friend, Paul Sillery, who breakfasted with him that morning in
Meudon, is condemned to daily labor and the exhausting life of a
journalist; and when he was seated in the carriage which took him back
to Paris that morning, to forced labor, to the article to be knocked off
for tomorrow, in the midst of the racket and chattering of an editor's
office, beside an interrupted cigar laid upon the edge of a table, he
heaved a deep sigh as he thought of Amedee.
Ah, this Violette was to be envied! With money, home, and a family, he
was not obliged to disseminate his ideas right and left. He had leisure,
and could stop when he was not in the spirit of writing; he could think
before he wrote and do some good work. It was not astonishing, to be
sure, that he produced veritable works of art when he is cheered by the
atmosphere of affection. First, he adores his wife, that is easily seen,
and he looks upon Maurice's little son as his own, the little fellow is
so pretty and attractive with his long, light curls. Certainly, one can
see that Madame Violette has a never-to-be-forgotten grief, but what a
kind and grateful glance she gives her husband! Could anything be more
touching than Louise Gerard, that excellent old maid, the life of the
house, who has the knack of making pleasing order and elegant comfort
reign in the house, while she surrounds her mother, the paralytic
Grandmother Gerard, with every care? Truly, Amedee has arranged his life
well. He loves and is loved: he has procured for mind and body valuable
and certain customs. He is a wise and fortunate man.
While Paul Sillery, buried in the corner of a carriage, allowed himself
to be almost carried away by jealousy of his friend, Amedee, detained by
the charm of this beautiful day which is drawing to a close, walks with
slow, lingering steps under the lindens on the terrace.
The leaves are falling around him!
A very slight breeze is rising, the blue sky is fading a little below; in
the nearest Paris suburb the windows are shining in the oblique rays of
the setting sun. It will soon be night, and upon this carpet of dead
leaves, which crackle under the poet's tread, other leaves will fall.
They fall rarely, slowly, but continually. The frost of the night before
has blighted them all. Dried up and rusty, they barely hang to the
trees, so that the slightest wind that passes over them gathers them one
after another, detaching them from their branches; whirling an instant in
the golden light, they at last rejoin, with a sad little sound, their
withered sisters, who sprinkle the gravel walks. The leaves fall, the
leaves fall!
Amedee Violette is filled with melancholy.
He ought to be happy. What can he reproach destiny with? Has he not the
one he always desired for his wife? Is she not the sweetest and best of
companions for him? Yes! but he knows very well that she consented to
marry him in order to obey Maurice's last wish, he knows very well that
Maria's heart is buried in the soldier's grave at Champigny. She has set
apart a sanctuary within herself where burns, as a perpetual light, the
remembrance of the adored dead, of the man to whom she gave herself
without reserve, the father of her son, the hero who tore himself from
her arms to shed his blood for his country.
Amedee may be certain of the gratitude and devotion of his wife, but he
never will have her love, for Maurice, a posthumous rival, rises between
them. Ah, this Maurice! He had loved Maria very little or not very
faithfully! She should remember that he had first betrayed her, that but
for Amedee he would have abandoned her and she never would have been his
wife. If she knew that in Paris when she was far away he had deceived
her! But she never would know anything of it, for Amedee has too much
delicacy to hurt the memory of the dead, and he respects and even admires
this fidelity of illusion and love in Maria. He suffers from it.
The one to whom he has given his name, his heart, and his life, is
inconsolable, and he must be resigned to it. Although remarried, she is
a widow at the bottom of her heart, and it is in vain that she puts on
bright attire, her eyes and her smile are in mourning forever.
How could she forget her Maurice when he is before her every day in her
son, who is also named Maurice and whose bright, handsome face strikingly
resembles his father's? Amedee feels a presentiment that in a few years
this child will be another Maurice, with the same attractions and vices.
The poet does not forget that his dying friend confided the orphan to
him, and he endeavors to be kind and good to him and to bring him up
well. He sometimes has a feeling of sorrow when he discovers the same
instincts and traits in the child as in the man whom he had so dearly
loved and who had made him such trouble; in spite of all, he can not feel
the sentiments of a father for another's son. His own union has been
sterile.
Poor Amedee! Yet he is envied! The little joy that he has is mingled
with grief and sorrow, and he dares not confide it to the excellent
Louise--who suspects it, however--whose old and secret attachment for him
he surmises now, and who is the good genius of his household. Had he
only realized it before! It might have been happiness, genuine happiness
for him!
The leaves fall! the leaves fall!
After breakfast, while they were smoking their cigars and walking along
beside the masses of dahlias, upon which the large golden spider had spun
its silvery web, Amedee Violette and Paul Sillery had talked of times
past and the comrades of their youth. It was not a very gay
conversation, for since then there had been the war, the Commune. How
many were dead! How many had disappeared! And, then, this retrospective
review proves to one that one can be entirely deceived as to certain
people, and that chance is master.
Such an one, whom they had once considered as a great prose writer, as
the leader of a sect, and whose doctrines of art five or six faithful
disciples spread while copying his waistcoats and even imitating his
manner of speaking with closed teeth, is reduced to writing stories for
obscene journals. "Chose," the fiery revolutionist, had obtained a good
place; and the modest "Machin," a man hardly noticed in the clubs, had
published two exquisite books, genuine works of art.
All of the "beards" and "long-haired" men had taken unexpected paths.
But the politicians, above all, were astonishing in the variety of their
destinies. Among the cafe's frequenters at the hour for absinthe one
could count eight deputies, three ministers, two ambassadors, one
treasurer, and thirty exiles at Noumea awaiting the long-expected
amnesty. The most interesting, everything considered, is that imbecile,
that old fanatic of a Dubief, the man that never drank anything but
sweetened water; for he, at least, was shot on the barricades by the
Versaillese soldiers.
One person of whom the very thought disgusted the two friends was that
jumping-jack of an Arthur Papillon. Universal suffrage, with its
accustomed intelligence, had not failed to elect this nonentity and
bombastic fool, and to-day he flounders about like a fish out of water in
the midst of this political cesspool. Having been enriched by a large
dowry, he has been by turns deputy, secretary, vice-president, president,
head of committees, under secretary of State, in one word, everything
that it was possible to be. For the time being he rants against the
clergy, and his wife, who is ugly, rich, and pious, has just put their
little girl into the Oiseaux school. He has not yet become minister,
but rest assured he will reach that in time. He is very vain, full of
confidence in himself, not more honest than necessary, and very
obtrusive. Unless in the meantime they decide to establish a rotation
providing that all the deputies be ministers by turns, Arthur Papillon is
the inevitable, necessary man mentioned. In such a case, this would be
terrible, for his eloquence would flow in torrents, and he would be one
of the most agitating of microbes in the parliamentary culture.
And Jocquelet? Ah! the two friends only need to speak his name to burst
into peals of laughter, for the illustrious actor now fills the universe
with his glory and ridiculousness. Jocquelet severed the chain some time
ago which bound him to the Parisian theatres. Like the tricolored flag,
he has made the tour of Europe several times; like the English standard,
he has crossed every ocean. He is the modern Wandering Actor, and the
capitals of the Old World and both Americas watch breathless with desire
for him to deign to shower over them the manna of his monologues. At
Chicago, they detached his locomotive, and he intended, at the sight of
this homage proportioned to his merits, to become a naturalized American
citizen. But they proposed a new tour for him in old Europe, and out of
filial remembrance he consented to return once more among us. As usual,
he gathered a cartload of gold and laurels. He was painfully surprised
upon reaching Stockholm by water not to be greeted by the squadrons with
volleys of artillery, as was once done in honor of a famous cantatrice.
Let Diplomacy look sharp! Jocquelet is indifferent to the court of
Sweden!
After Paul Sillery's departure Amedee turned over in his mind various
other recollections of former days. He has been a trifle estranged from
Madame Roger since his marriage to Maria, but he sometimes takes little
Maurice to see her. She has sheltered and given each of Colonel Lantz's
daughters a dowry. Pretty Rosine Combarieu's face rises up before him,
his childhood's companion, whom he met at Bullier's and never has seen
since. What has become of the poor little creature? Amedee almost hopes
that she is dead. Ah, how sad these old memories are in the autumn, when
the leaves are falling and the sun is setting!
It has set, it has plunged beneath the horizon, and suddenly all is dark.
Over the darkened landscape in the vast pearl-colored sky spreads the
melancholy chill which follows the farewell of day. The white smoke from
the city has turned gray, the river is like a dulled mirror. A moment
ago, in the sun's last rays, the dead leaves, as they fell, looked like a
golden rain, now they seem a dark snow.
Where are all your illusions and hopes of other days, Amedee Violette?
You think this evening of the rapid flight of years, of the snowy flakes
of winter which are beginning to fall on your temples. You have the
proof to-day of the impossibility of absolutely requited love in this
world. You know that happiness, or what is called so, exists only by
snatches and lasts only a moment, and how commonplace it often is and how
sad the next day! You depend upon your art for consolation. Oppressed
by the monotonous ennui of living, you ask for the forgetfulness that
only the intoxication of poetry and dreams can give you. Alas! Poor
sentimentalist, your youth is ended!
And still the leaves fall!
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Egotists and cowards always have a reason for everything
Eternally condemned to kill each other in order to live
God forgive the timid and the prattler!
Happiness exists only by snatches and lasts only a moment
He almost regretted her
He does not know the miseries of ambition and vanity
How sad these old memorics are in the autumn
Never travel when the heart is troubled!
Not more honest than necessary
Poor France of Jeanne d'Arc and of Napoleon
Redouble their boasting after each defeat
Take their levity for heroism
The leaves fall! the leaves fall!
Universal suffrage, with its accustomed intelligence
Were certain against all reason