On the other hand the intensity of Paris had not much power to
transfigure the impression made upon him by such intercourse with
Paul Muniment as he had enjoyed during the weeks that followed
Pinnie’s death—an impression considerably more severe than any idea of
renunciation or oblivion that could connect itself with Millicent. Why
it should have had the taste of sadness was not altogether clear, for
Muniment’s voice was as distinct as any in the chorus of approbation
excited by the news that the youth was about to cultivate the most
characteristic of the pleasures of gentility—an applausive unanimity
the effect of which was to place his journey to Paris in a light almost
ridiculous. What had got into them all—did they think he was good for
nothing but to amuse himself? Mr. Vetch had been the most zealous, but
the others clapped him on the back almost exactly in the same manner
he had seen his mates in Soho bring their palms down on one of their
number when it was disclosed to them that his “missus” had made him
yet once again a father. That had been Poupin’s tone, and his wife’s
as well; and even poor Schinkel, with his everlasting bandage, whom he
had met in Lisson Grove, appeared to feel it necessary to remark that
a little run across the Rhine while he was about it would open his
eyes to a great many wonders. The Poupins shed tears of joy, and the
letters which have already been mentioned and which lay day after day
on the mantel-shelf of the little room our hero occupied at an _hôtel
garni_ tremendously tall and somewhat lopsided in the Rue Jacob (that
recommendation proceeded also from Lisson Grove, the garni being kept
by a second cousin of Madame Eustache) these valuable documents had
been prepared by the obliging exile many days before his young friend
was ready to start. It was almost refreshing to Hyacinth when old
Crook, the sole outspoken dissentient, told him he was a blockhead to
waste his money on the bloody French. This worthy employer of labour
was evidently disgusted at such an innovation; if he wanted a little
recreation why couldn’t he take it as it had been taken in Soho from
the beginning of time, in the shape of a trip to Brighton or two or
three days of alcoholic torpor? Old Crook was right. Hyacinth conceded
freely that he was a blockhead, and was only a little uncomfortable
that he couldn’t explain why he didn’t pretend not to be and had a kind
of right to that compensatory ease.
Paul guessed why, of course, and smiled approval with a candour which
gave Hyacinth a strange inexpressible heartache. He already knew his
friend’s view of him as mainly ornamental, as adapted only to the
softer forms of the subversive energy, as constituted in short to
show that the revolution was not necessarily brutal and illiterate;
but in the light of the cheerful stoicism with which Muniment faced
the sacrifice our hero was committed to, the latter had found it
necessary to remodel a good deal his original conception of his
sturdy friend’s character. The result of this process was not that
he admired it less but that he felt almost awe-stricken in presence
of it. There had been an element of that sort in his appreciation
of Muniment from the first, but the weight now to carry was the
sense of such a sublime consistency. Hyacinth felt that he himself
could never have risen so high. He was competent to take the stiff
engagement to Hoffendahl and was equally competent to keep it; but
he couldn’t have had the same fortitude for another, couldn’t have
detached himself from personal prejudice so effectually as to put
forward in that manner for the terrible “job” a little chap he to all
appearance really liked. That Muniment did like him it never occurred
to the little chap to doubt. He had quite all the air of it to-day;
he had never been more good-humoured, more placidly talkative; he
was like an elder brother who knew that the “youngster” was clever
and felt rather proud of it even when there was no one there to see.
That temporary look of suspending their partnership which had usually
marked him at the “Sun and Moon” was never visible in other places;
in Audley Court he only chaffed his young friend occasionally for
taking him too seriously. To-day that devotee hardly knew just how
to take him; the episode of which Hoffendahl was the central figure
had, as far as one could see, made so little change in his attitude.
For a loyal servant, an effective agent, he was so extraordinarily
candid—bitterness and denunciation so rarely sat on his lips. The
criticism of everything—since everything was wrong—took so little of
his time. It was as if he had been ashamed to complain; and indeed for
himself as the months went on he had nothing particular to complain
of. He had had a rise at the chemical works and a plan of getting a
bigger room for Rosy was under serious consideration. On behalf of
others he never sounded the pathetic note—he thought that sort of thing
unbusiness-like; and the most that he did in the way of expatiation on
the woes of humanity was occasionally to allude to certain statistics,
certain “returns,” in regard to the remuneration of industries,
applications for employment and the discharge of hands. In such matters
as these he was deeply versed, moving ever in a dry, statistical and
scientific air in which it cost Hyacinth an effort of respiration to
accompany him. Simple and kindly as he was, and thoughtful of the
sufferings of beasts, attentive and merciful to small insects and
addicted even to kissing dirty babies in Audley Court, he sometimes
emitted a short, satiric gleam which showed that his esteem for the
poor was small and that if he had no illusions about the people who
had got everything into their hands he had as few about those who had
egregiously failed to do so. He was tremendously reasonable, which was
largely why Hyacinth admired him, having a desire to be so himself but
finding it terribly difficult.
Muniment’s absence of passion, his fresh-coloured coolness, his easy,
exact knowledge, the way he kept himself clean (save for fine chemical
stains on his hands) in circumstances of foul contact, constituted a
group of qualities that had always appeared to his admirer singularly
enviable. Most enviable of all was the force that enabled him to sink
personal sentiment where a great public good was to be attempted and
yet keep up the form of caring for that minor interest. It seemed to
our friend that if _he_ had introduced a young fellow to Hoffendahl for
his purposes, and Hoffendahl had accepted him on such a recommendation
and everything had been settled, he would have preferred never to look
at the young fellow again. That was his weakness and Paul carried it
off far otherwise. It must be added that he had never made an allusion
to their visit to the great taskmaster; so that Hyacinth also, out of
pride, held his tongue on the subject. If his friend didn’t propose
expressly to yearn over him he wasn’t going to beg for it (especially
as he didn’t want it) by restless references. It had originally been
a surprise to him that Muniment should be willing to countenance a
possible assassination; but after all none of his ideas were narrow
(one had such a sense that they ripened all the while) and if a
pistol-shot would do any good he was not the man to raise pedantic
objections. It is true that as regards his quiet acceptance of the
predicament in which Hyacinth might be placed by it our young man had
given him the benefit of a certain amount of doubt; it had occurred
to him that perhaps Muniment had his own good grounds for believing
that imperative sign would never really arrive, so that he might
only be treating himself to the entertainment of judging of a little
bookbinder’s nerve. But in this case why did he take an interest in
the little bookbinder’s going to Paris? That was a thing he wouldn’t
have cared for had he held that in fact there was nothing to fear. He
despised the sight of idleness, and in spite of the indulgence he had
more than once been good enough to express on the subject of his young
friend’s sneaking love of ease what he would have been most likely
to say at present was: “Go to Paris? Go to the dickens! Haven’t you
been out at grass long enough for one while, didn’t you lark enough
in the country there with the noble lady, and hadn’t you better take
up your tools again before you forget how to handle them?” Rosy had
said something of that sort in her free, familiar way—whatever her
intention she had been in effect only a little less caustic than old
Crook: that Mr. Robinson was going in for a life of leisure, a life of
luxury, like herself; she must congratulate him on having the means
and the time. Oh the time—that was the great thing! She could speak
with knowledge, having always enjoyed these advantages herself. And she
intimated—or was she mistaken?—that his good fortune emulated hers also
in the matter of his having a high-born and beneficent friend (such a
blessing now he had lost dear Miss Pynsent) who covered him with little
attentions. Rose Muniment in short had been more exasperating than
ever.
The Boulevard became even more brilliant as the evening went on and
Hyacinth wondered whether he had a right to occupy the same table for
so many hours. The theatre on the other side discharged its multitude;
the crowd thickened on the wide asphalt, on the terrace of the
café; gentlemen accompanied by ladies of whom he knew already how to
characterise the type—_des femmes très-chic_—passed into the portals of
Tortoni. The nightly emanation of Paris seemed to rise more richly, to
float and hang in the air, to mingle with the universal light and the
many-voiced sound, to resolve itself into a thousand solicitations and
opportunities, addressed, however, mainly to those in whose pockets the
chink of a little loose gold might respond. Hyacinth’s retrospections
had not made him drowsy, but quite the reverse; he grew restless and
excited and a kind of pleasant terror of the place and hour entered
into his blood. But it was nearly midnight and he got up to walk
home, taking the line of the Boulevard toward the Madeleine. He passed
down the Rue Royale, where comparative stillness reigned; and when he
reached the Place de la Concorde, to cross the bridge which faces the
Corps Législatif, he found himself almost isolated. He had left the
human swarm and the obstructed pavements behind, and the wide spaces of
the splendid square lay quiet under the summer stars. The plash of the
great fountains was audible and he could almost hear the wind-stirred
murmur of the little wood of the Tuileries on one side and of the vague
expanse of the Champs Elysées on the other. The place itself—the Place
Louis Quinze, the Place de la Révolution—had given him a sensible
emotion from the day of his arrival; he had recognised so quickly
its tremendous historic character. He had seen in a rapid vision the
guillotine in the middle, on the site of the inscrutable obelisk, and
the tumbrils, with waiting victims, were stationed round the circle
now made majestic by the monuments of the cities of France. The great
legend of the French Revolution, a sunrise out of a sea of blood, was
more real to him here than anywhere else; and, strangely, what was
most present was not its turpitude and horror, but its magnificent
energy, the spirit of creation that had been in it, not the spirit of
destruction. That shadow was effaced by the modern fairness of fountain
and statue, the stately perspective and composition; and as he lingered
before crossing the Seine a sudden sense overtook him, making his heart
falter to anguish—a sense of everything that might hold one to the
world, of the sweetness of not dying, the fascination of great cities,
the charm of travel and discovery, the generosity of admiration. The
tears rose to his eyes as they had done more than once in the past six
months, and a question, low but poignant, broke from his lips, to end
in nothing. “How could he—how _could_ he——?” It may be explained that
“he” was a reference to Paul Muniment; for Hyacinth had dreamed of the
religion of friendship.
Three weeks after this he found himself in Venice, whence he addressed
to the Princess Casamassima a letter of which I reproduce the principal
passages.
“This is probably the last time I shall write you before I return
to London. Of course you’ve been in this place and you’ll easily
understand why here, especially here, the spirit should move me. Dear
Princess, what an enchanted city, what ineffable impressions, what a
revelation of the exquisite! I have a room in a little campo opposite
a small old church which has cracked marble slabs let into the front;
and in the cracks grow little, wild, delicate flowers of which I
don’t know the name. Over the door of the church hangs an old battered
leather curtain, polished and tawny, as thick as a mattress and with
buttons in it like a sofa; and it flops to and fro laboriously as women
and girls, with shawls on their heads and their feet in little wooden
shoes which have nothing but toes, pass in and out. In the middle
of the campo is a fountain that looks still older than the church;
it has a primitive, barbaric air, and I’ve an idea it was put there
by the first settlers—those who came to Venice from the mainland,
from Aquileia. Observe how much historical information I’ve already
absorbed; it won’t surprise you, however, for you never wondered at
anything after you discovered I knew something of Schopenhauer. I
assure you I don’t think of that musty misogynist in the least to-day,
for I bend a genial eye on the women and girls I just spoke of as
they glide with a small clatter and with their old copper water-jars
to the fountain. The Venetian girl-face is wonderfully sweet and the
effect is charming when its pale, sad oval (they all look underfed)
is framed in the old faded shawl. They have also the most engaging
hair, which never has done curling, and they slip along together, in
couples or threes, interlinked by the arms and never meeting one’s
eye—so that its geniality doesn’t matter—dressed in thin, cheap cotton
gowns whose limp folds make the same delightful line that everything
else in Italy makes. The weather is splendid and I roast—but I like it;
apparently I was made to be spitted and ‘done,’ and I discover that
I’ve been cold all my life even when I thought I was warm. I’ve seen
none of the beautiful patricians who sat for the great painters—the
gorgeous beings whose golden hair was intertwined with pearls; but
I’m studying Italian in order to talk with the shuffling, clicking
maidens who work in the bead-factories—I’m determined to make one or
two of them look at me. When they’ve filled their old water-pots at the
fountain it’s jolly to see them perch them on their heads and patter
away over the polished Venetian stones. It’s a charm to be in a country
where the women don’t wear the hideous British bonnet. Even in my own
class—forgive the expression, I remember it used to offend you—I’ve
never known a young female in London to put her nose out of the door
without it; and if you had frequented such young females as much as I
have you would have learnt of what degradation that dreary imposition
is the source. The floor of my room is composed of little brick tiles,
and to freshen the air in this temperature one sprinkles it, as you no
doubt know, with water. Before long if I keep on sprinkling I shall be
able to swim about; the green shutters are closed and the place makes
a very good tank. Through the chinks the hot light of the campo comes
in. I smoke cigarettes and in the pauses of this composition recline
on a faded magenta divan in the corner. Convenient to my hand in that
attitude are the works of Leopardi and a second-hand dictionary. I’m
very happy—happier than I have ever been in my life save at Medley—and
I don’t care for anything but the present hour. It won’t last long,
for I’m spending all my money. When I’ve finished this I shall go forth
and wander about in the splendid Venetian afternoon; and I shall spend
the evening in that enchanted square of Saint Mark’s which resembles
an immense open-air drawing-room, listening to music and feeling
the sea-breeze blow in between those two strange old columns of the
piazzetta which seem to make a doorway for it. I can scarcely believe
that it’s of myself I’m telling you these fine things; I say to myself
a dozen times a day that Hyacinth Robinson isn’t in it—I pinch my leg
to see if I’m not dreaming. But a short time hence, when I’ve resumed
the exercise of my profession in sweet Soho, I shall have proof enough
that it has been my very self: I shall know this by the terrible grind
of the life and the penance to come.
“That will mean, no doubt, that I’m deeply demoralised. It won’t
be for you, however, in this case, to cast the stone at me; for my
demoralisation began from the moment I first approached you. Dear
Princess, I may have done you good, but you haven’t done me much.
I trust you’ll understand what I mean by that speech and not think
it flippant or impertinent. I may have helped you to understand and
enter into the misery of the people—though I protest I don’t know
much about it; but you’ve led my imagination into quite another train.
Nevertheless I’m not wholly pretending it’s all your fault if I’ve lost
sight of the sacred cause almost altogether in my recent adventures.
It’s not that it hasn’t been there to see, for that perhaps is the
clearest result of extending one’s horizon—the sense, increasing as
we go, that want and toil and suffering are the constant lot of the
immense majority of the human race. I’ve found them everywhere but
haven’t minded them. Forgive the cynical confession. What has struck
me is the great achievements of which man has been capable in spite of
them—the splendid accumulations of the happier few, to which doubtless
the miserable many have also in their degree contributed. The face
of Europe appears to be covered with them and they’ve had much the
greater part of my attention. They seem to me inestimably precious
and beautiful and I’ve become conscious more than ever before of how
little I understand what in the great rectification you and Poupin
propose to do with them. Dear Princess, there are things I shall be
too sorry to see you touch, even you with your hands divine; and—shall
I tell you _le fond de ma pensée_, as you used to say?—I feel myself
capable of fighting for them. You can’t call me a traitor, for you
know the obligation I supremely, I immutably recognise. The monuments
and treasures of art, the great palaces and properties, the conquests
of learning and taste, the general fabric of civilisation as we know
it, based if you will upon all the despotisms, the cruelties, the
exclusions, the monopolies and the rapacities of the past, but thanks
to which, all the same, the world is less of a ‘bloody sell’ and life
more of a lark—our friend Hoffendahl seems to me to hold them too
cheap and to wish to substitute for them something in which I can’t
somehow believe as I do in things with which the yearnings and the
tears of generations have been mixed. You know how extraordinary I
think our Hoffendahl—to speak only of him; but if there’s one thing
that’s more clear about him than another, it’s that he wouldn’t have
the least feeling for this incomparable, abominable old Venice. He
would cut up the ceilings of the Veronese into strips, so that every
one might have a little piece. I don’t want every one to have a little
piece of anything and I’ve a great horror of that kind of invidious
jealousy which is at the bottom of the idea of a redistribution. You’ll
say I talk of it all at my ease while in a delicious capital I smoke
cigarettes on a magenta divan; and I give you leave to scoff at me
if it turns out that when I come back to London without a penny in
my pocket I don’t hold the same language. I don’t know what it comes
from, but during the last three months there has crept over me a deep
mistrust of that same grudging attitude—the intolerance of positions
and fortunes that are higher and brighter than one’s own; a fear,
moreover, that I may in the past have been actuated by such motives,
and a devout hope that if I’m to pass away while I’m yet young it may
not be with that odious stain upon my soul.”