My dear Uncle H----,
We arrived in Paris last night.... (Here I omit a passage regarding
the children of a family some of whom still survive.) Last night we
spent a very agreeable evening at Madame Jaubert’s. There were a great
many people present, for we had been invited to meet the celebrated
Bellini. There were many people I did not know, and many others who
were introduced to me whose names did not reach me. Signor Bellini
himself came early. His appearance is charming; he is just like a
fat child, pink and white, amiable and good-natured, and not in the
least conceited or pretentious. Soon afterwards Prince and Princess
Belgiojoso arrived. This was the first time I had set eyes on the
Princess. Her beauty and the grace of her person have not, indeed, been
exaggerated. She resembles a classical statue, but her face has an
expression which recalls later and more romantic times. Her features
are regular, but there is something mysterious and rather _strange_
about her face and her dark orbs. Her hair is like ebony, but her skin
is very white, and she smiles with a kind of wearied look, as though
she were a Chinese idol. Her hands and her hair are most beautiful,
and she walks into a room as if there could not be the slightest doubt
that she is the most beautiful woman there. And this is true, although
perhaps she is too slender. She was elegantly dressed in violet velvet,
trimmed with fur, which showed her graceful figure and disappeared
in the folds of a black skirt; she wore a black lace mantilla, which
she took off when she came into the room. She talks well, and her
voice is musical, but, at the same time, it has a cold ring like a
crystal glass being tapped. Of course one could not help seeing that
she was agreeable and accomplished, but I could not restrain a wicked
wish to see her dethroned from her pedestal. It is impossible to say
that she gives herself airs, but at the same time there is something
_irritating_ about her beauty.
As soon as they arrived, Madame Jaubert took the Prince to the
pianoforte and said he must sing a duet with Madame de Vergennes, and
that it should be the duet out of the “Pirate,” as Bellini was there.
The Prince said that he was loth to sing before the Master, but Madame
Jaubert appealed to Bellini, and they both succeeded in persuading him.
Madame de Vergennes herself accompanied at the pianoforte. The Prince
has a real tenor voice, his _méthode_ is excellent, and they sang the
duet as it should be sung. Madame Jaubert said to me that if you ask
musicians to a party you must let them play an active part at once in
public, but if, on the other hand, you invite politicians and literary
men it is best to place them in corners and let them talk.
Bellini was childish about the music: he danced with delight when they
had finished, and clapped his hands and said: “Do sing it again!”
Somebody suggested their singing a French song, but Bellini said: “No,
no, please sing some more of my own music: I do enjoy it so much more,
and you know it is much better.” So they sang something from “Norma,”
and after that the trio from “The Comte Ory,” in which the Prince, M.
du Tillet, and a young girl took part, with Madame de Vergennes at the
pianoforte.
When the trio was over, Madame Jaubert interrupted the music, although
we were all anxious to hear more, I myself among others; but she
took me aside and whispered to me that you must always stop music
_before_ people have had enough, because the moment they have one
second too much of it they will go away with the impression that they
have spent a tiresome evening. I think she was right. But there was
a young man there, a M. de Musset--he writes--who was both obstinate
and persistent, and never ceased for a moment asking for more. Madame
Jaubert was firm and turned a deaf ear to him. This young man was
introduced to me: he is good-looking and well-mannered, but sulky
and overdressed. He is in love with Princess Belgiojoso, and this I
suppose affected him on this occasion because she was paying but scant
attention to him, and talked incessantly to Major Fraser, who was there.
Gradually the greater part of the people took their departure, and
we all sat down round the table in a small room and talked about
table-turning and spirits. Then, I forget how, the conversation turned
upon caricatures, and Princess Belgiojoso said, with a lovely smile,
that nobody had ever been able to caricature her. Upon which M. de
Musset instantly accepted the challenge and said he would make a
caricature of the Princess at once. He fetched a scrap-book which was
in the room, and a pencil, and on a blank page, drew, in four strokes,
her face and figure in profile, exaggerating her thinness and making an
enormous black eye. It exactly resembled her; we all craned over the
table to look at it, and she took up the book and said in a tone of
the utmost indifference: “Really, M. de Musset, it is unfair that you
should have all the talents,” and she shut the book.
Madame Jaubert took the book and put it away, and I heard her whisper
to M. de Musset: “You have burnt your boats.” He turned round and
looked at the Princess and his eyes filled with tears, and at that
moment I felt that I could have gladly chastised her.
After that we went in to supper. Almost everybody had gone; the
only people who remained were Prince and Princess Belgiojoso, M. de
Musset, Major Fraser, Mlle. de Rutières, a lovely Créole, the Comte
d’Alton-Shée, Bellini, and Herr Heine, the German writer. I sat between
him and Prince Belgiojoso. M. de Musset was on Madame Jaubert’s left,
Bellini and the Princess were sitting opposite us.
Herr Heine, like all Germans, is a trifle tiring and long-winded; of
course he is cultivated and accomplished, and they say he has written
most interesting books, but I cannot read a word of German. He talks
French well, but he is heavy and continues a subject long after one
has sufficiently discussed it. This is so different from the French,
who skate over every topic so lightly and never dwell too long on any
subject, and understand what you want to say before you have half said
it. All the same, you see at once that he is an interesting man, and
every now and then he says something truly remarkable. He wears big
spectacles, and his hair, which is very fair, is cut straight and is
rather long and bunches over his low collar. He astonished everybody at
supper by saying that the perpetual praise of Goethe and Byron tired
him.
“I cannot understand you Parisians,” he said, “when you talk about
poetry. You go out of the way to search out and idolize all sorts of
foreign poets when you have got a real native poet who is worth all
these foreigners put together.” Somebody said “Victor Hugo.” “Nothing
of the sort,” he answered, “Victor Hugo is like a wheel which turns
round and round in space without any intellectual cog-wheel. It is all
words, words, words. But he has no thought and no real feeling. He is
screaming at the top of his voice about nothing.”
“Then who is our great poet?” asked Madame Jaubert.
“Why, M. de Musset, of course,” said Herr Heine.
We all laughed, and Madame Jaubert said it was a very pretty
compliment. M. de Musset himself appreciated the joke quite as much as
we did. But they say he really does write very well, rather in the same
manner as Lord Francis Egerton.
M. de Musset remained sulky all through supper. Once or twice he said
things across the table to Princess Belgiojoso, and she answered him
as if she were an empty portfolio from which her real self was absent.
We talked about music; Herr Heine said we were all barbarians as far
as music was concerned; that it was true the Italians had a notion of
what tune meant, but that the French, and especially the Parisians,
did not know the difference between music and pastry. Somebody asked
him how he could say such things after what we had heard that evening,
and appealed to Bellini as to whether his music had ever been better
interpreted.
“Ah, Bellini is a genius,” said Herr Heine, and he turned to him and
added: “You are a great genius, Bellini, but you will have to expiate
your genius by an early death. You are condemned to die. All great
geniuses die young--very young, and you will die like Raphael and
Mozart.”
“Don’t talk like that! for Heaven’s sake don’t say that!” said Bellini.
“Please do not speak about death. Forbid him to talk like that,” he
said to the Princess.
“Perhaps my fears are groundless,” Herr Heine said to the Princess.
“Perhaps Bellini is not a genius after all. Besides which I have never
heard a note of his music. I purposely came in this evening after it
was all over. Is he a genius, Princess? What do you think?” Then he
addressed himself again to Bellini: “Let us hope, my dear friend, that
the world has made a mistake about you, and that you are not a genius
after all. It is a bad thing to be. It is the gift of the wicked fairy.
The good fairies have given you every other gift, the face of a cherub,
the simplicity of a child, and the digestion of an ostrich. Let us hope
the bad fairy did not come in and spoil it all by giving you genius.”
Bellini laughed, but I suspect he did not appreciate the joke.
Princess Belgiojoso said that Herr Heine had no right to talk like
that, for he was a poet himself.
“A poet, yes,” he answered, “but not a genius. That is quite a
different thing. I have never been accused of that, not even in my own
country.”
“But no man is a prophet in his own country,” said Madame Jaubert.
“I am neither a prophet in my own country nor in any one else’s,” said
Herr Heine. “My countrymen think I am frivolous, and the French think
I am German and heavy. When I am with people like you they think I am
an old professor, and when I am with professors they consider I am
a frivolous _mondain_. When I am with Conservatives I am reckoned a
Revolutionary, and by Revolutionaries I am considered a Reactionary.
And when I am among the geniuses,” he said, bowing with an ironical
smile towards Bellini, “I become a pedant, a philosopher, and an
ignoramus, almost as bad as M. Cousin.”
“I wondered,” said Madame Jaubert, “whether we should get through the
evening without an allusion to M. Cousin.”
“When I die,” said Herr Heine, “I should like a stool to be placed on
either side of my tomb, with an inscription: ‘Here lies a man who fell
from Heaven between two stools.’”
“Geniuses,” said M. de Musset....
(The end of the letter is missing)
_P.S._--Bellini died suddenly to-day, so Herr Heine’s prophecy came
true.