*THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN*
_Sursum corda!_
PARIS, _April 25, 185-_.
The second evening I have passed in this miserable room, staring
gloomily at the bare hearth, hearing the dull monotone of the street,
and feeling more lonely, more forsaken, and nearer to despair in the
heart of this great city than a ship-wrecked man shivering on a broken
plank in mid-ocean.
I have done with cowardice. I will look my destiny in the face till it
loses its spectral air. I will open my sorrowful heart to the one
confidant whose pity will not hurt, to that pale last friend who looks
back at me from the glass. I will write down my thoughts and my life,
not in trivial and childish detail, but without serious omissions, and
above all without lies. I shall love my journal; it will be a brotherly
echo to cheat my loneliness, and at the same time a second conscience
warning me not to allow anything to enter into my life which I dare not
write down calmly with my own hand.
Now, with sad eagerness I search the past for the facts and incidents
which should have long since enlightened me, had not filial respect,
habit, and the indifference of a happy idler blinded me. I understand
now my mother's deep and constant melancholy; I understand her distaste
for society, and why she wore that plain, unvaried dress which sometimes
called forth sarcasms, sometimes wrath from my father.--"You look like a
servant," he would say to her.
I could not but be conscious that our family life was broken by more
serious quarrels, though I was never an actual witness of them. All I
heard were my father's sharp and imperious tones, the murmur of a
pleading voice, and stifled sobs. These outbursts I attributed to my
father's violent and fruitless attempts to revive in my mother the taste
for the elegant and brilliant life which she had once enjoyed as much as
becomes a virtuous woman, but into which she now accompanied my father
with a repugnance that grew stronger every day. After such crises, my
father nearly always ran off to buy some costly trinket which my mother
found in her table-napkin at dinner, and never wore. One day in the
middle of winter she received a large box of rare flowers from Paris;
she thanked my father warmly, but directly he had left the room, I saw
her slightly raise her shoulders and look up to heaven with an
expression of hopeless despair.
During my childhood and early youth I had a great respect for my father,
but not much affection. Indeed, throughout this period I saw only the
sombre side of his character--the one side that showed itself in
domestic life, for which he was not fitted. Later, when I was old
enough to go out with him, I was surprised and charmed to find in him a
person perfectly new to me. It seemed as if, in our old family house,
he felt himself constrained by some fatal spell; once beyond its doors,
his forehead cleared, his chest expanded, and he was young again. "Now,
Maxime," he would cry, "now for a gallop!" And joyously we would rush
along. His shouts of youthful pleasure, his enthusiasm, his fantastic
wit, his bursts of feeling, charmed my young heart, and I longed to
bring something of all this back to my poor mother, forgotten in her
corner at home. I began to love my father; and when I saw all the
sympathetic qualities of his brilliant nature displayed in all the
functions of social life--at hunts and races, balls and dinners--my
fondness for him became an actual admiration. A perfect horseman, a
dazzling talker, a bold gambler, daring and open-handed, he became for
me the finished type of manly grace and chivalrous nobility. Indeed, he
would speak of himself--smiling with some bitterness--as the last of the
gentlemen.
Such was my father in society; but as soon as he returned to his home my
mother and I saw only a restless, morose, and violent old man.
My father's outbursts to a creature so sweet and delicate as my mother
would certainly have revolted me had they not been followed by the quick
returns of tenderness and the redoubled attentions I have mentioned.
Justified in my eyes by these proofs of penitence, my father seemed to
be only a naturally kind, warm-hearted man sometimes irritated beyond
endurance by an obstinate and systematic opposition to all his tastes
and preferences. I thought my mother was suffering from some nervous
derangement. My father gave me to understand so, though, and as I
thought very properly, he only referred to this subject with great
reserve.
I could not understand what were my mother's feelings towards my father;
they were--for me--beyond analysis or definition. Sometimes a strange
severity glittered in the looks she fixed on him; but it was only a
flash, and the next moment her beautiful soft eyes and her unchanged
face showed nothing but tender devotion and passionate submission.
My mother had been married at fifteen, and I was nearly twenty-two when
my sister, my poor Helene, was born. One morning soon afterwards my
father came out of my mother's room looking anxious. He signed to me to
follow him into the garden.
"Maxime," he said, after walking in silence for a little, "your mother
gets stranger and stranger."
"She is so ill just now, father."
"Yes, of course. But now she has the oddest fancy: she wants you to
study law."
"Law! What! Does my mother want me, at my age, with my birth and
position, to sit among school-boys on the forms of a college classroom?
It is absurd."
"So I think," said my father dryly, "but your mother is ill,
and--there's no more to be said."
I was a young puppy then, puffed up by my name, my importance, and my
little drawing-room successes; but I was sound at heart, and I
worshipped my mother, with whom I had lived for twenty years in the
closest intimacy possible between two human souls. I hastened to assure
her of my obedience; she thanked me with a sad smile and made me kiss my
sister who was sleeping on her lap.
We lived about a mile and a half from Grenoble, so I could attend the
law classes at the university without leaving home. Day by day my
mother followed my progress with such intense and persistent interest
that I could not help thinking that she had some stronger motive than
the fancy of an invalid; that perhaps my father's hatred and contempt
for the practical and tedious side of life might have brought about a
certain embarrassment in our affairs which, my mother thought, a
knowledge of law and a business training would enable me to put right.
This explanation did not satisfy me. No doubt my father had often
complained bitterly of our losses during the Revolution, but his
complaints had long ceased, and I had never thought them well-founded,
because, as far as I could see, our position was in every way
satisfactory.
We lived near Grenoble in our hereditary chateau, which was famous in
our country as an aristocratic and lordly dwelling. My father and I
have often shot or hunted for a whole day without going off our own land
or out of our own woods. Our stables were vast, and filled with
expensive horses of which my father was very fond and very proud.
Besides, we had a town-house in Paris on the Boulevard des Capucines,
where comfortable quarters were always reserved for occasional visits.
And nothing in our ordinary way of living could suggest either a small
income or close management. Even as regards the table, my father
insisted upon a particular degree of delicacy and refinement.
My mother's health declined almost imperceptibly. In time there came an
alteration in her disposition. The mouth which, at all events in my
presence, had spoken only kind words, grew bitter and aggressive. Every
step I took beyond the house provoked a sarcasm. My father was not
spared, and bore these attacks with a patience that seemed to me
exemplary, but he got more and more into the habit of living away from
home. He told me that he must have distraction and amusement. He always
wanted me to go with him, and my love of pleasure, and the eagerness of
youth, and, to speak truly, my lack of moral courage, made me obey him
too readily.
In September, 185-, there were some races near the chateau, and several
of my father's horses were to run. We started early and lunched on the
course. About the middle of the day, as I was riding by the course
watching the fortunes of a race, one of our men came up and said he had
been looking for me for more than half an hour. He added that my father
had already been sent for and had gone back to my mother at the chateau,
and that he wanted me to follow him at once.
"But what in Heaven's name is the matter?"
"I think madame is worse," said the servant.