It is the first week in the month of May, 1870. Celebrities are of rapid
growth in the salons of Paris. Gustave Rameau has gained the position
for which he sighed. The journal he edits has increased its hold on the
public, and his share of the profits has been liberally augmented by the
secret proprietor. Rameau is acknowledged as a power in literary
circles. And as critics belonging to the same clique praise each other
in Paris, whatever they may do in communities more rigidly virtuous, his
poetry has been declared by authorities in the press to be superior to
that of Alfred de Musset in vigour--to that of Victor Hugo in refinement;
neither of which assertions would much, perhaps, shock a cultivated
understanding.
It is true that it (Gustave's poetry) has not gained a wide audience
among the public. But with regard to poetry nowadays, there are plenty
of persons who say as Dr. Johnson said of the verse of Spratt, "I would
rather praise it than read."
At all events, Rameau was courted in gay and brilliant circles, and,
following the general example of French _litterateurs_ in fashion, lived
well up to the income he received, had a delightful bachelor's apartment,
furnished with artistic effect, spent largely on the adornment of his
person, kept a coupe, and entertained profusely at the cafe Anglais and
the Maison Doree. A reputation that inspired a graver and more unquiet
interest had been created by the Vicomte de Mauleon. Recent articles in
the Sens Commun, written under the name of Pierre Firmin on the
discussions on the vexed question of the plebiscite, had given umbrage to
the Government, and Rameau had received an intimation that he, as editor,
was responsible for the compositions of the contributors to the journal
he edited; and that though, so long as Pierre Firmin had kept his caustic
spirit within proper bounds, the Government had winked at the evasion of
the law which required every political article in a journal to be signed
by the real name of its author, it could do so no longer. Pierre Firmin
was apparently a _nom de plume_; if not, his identity must be proved, or
Rameau would pay the penalty which his contributor seemed bent on
incurring.
Rameau, much alarmed for the journal that might be suspended, and for
himself who might be imprisoned, conveyed this information through the
publisher to his correspondent Pierre Firmin, and received the next day
an article signed Victor de Mauleon, in which the writer proclaimed
himself to be one and the same with Pierre Firmin, and, taking a yet
bolder tone than he had before assumed, dared the Government to attempt
legal measures against him. The Government was prudent enough to
disregard that haughty bravado, but Victor de Mauleon rose at once into
political importance. He had already in his real name and his quiet way
established a popular and respectable place in Parisian society. But if
this revelation created him enemies whom he had not before provoked, he
was now sufficiently acquitted, by tacit consent, of the sins formerly
laid to his charge, to disdain the assaults of party wrath. His old
reputation for personal courage and skill in sword and pistol served,
indeed, to protect him from such charges as a Parisian journalist does
not reply to with his pen. If he created some enemies, he created many
more friends, or, at least, partisans and admirers. He only needed fine
and imprisonment to become a popular hero.
A few days after be had thus proclaimed himself, Victor de Mauleon--who
had before kept aloof from Rameau, and from salons at which he was likely
to meet that distinguished minstrel--solicited his personal acquaintance,
and asked him to breakfast.
Rameau joyfully went. He had a very natural curiosity to see the
contributor whose articles had so mainly insured the sale of the Sens
Commun.
In the dark-haired, keen-eyed, well-dressed, middle-aged man, with
commanding port and courtly address, he failed to recognise any
resemblance to the flaxen-wigged, long-coated, be-spectacled, shambling
sexagenarian whom he had known as Lebeau. Only now and then a tone of
voice struck him as familiar, but he could not recollect where he had
heard the voice it resembled. The thought of Lebeau did not occur to
him; if it had occurred it would only have struck him as a chance
coincidence. Rameau, like most egotists, was rather a dull observer of
men. His genius was not objective.
"I trust, Monsieur Rameau," said the Vicomte, as he and his guest were
seated at the breakfast-table, "that you are not dissatisfied with the
remuneration your eminent services in the journal have received."
"The proprietor, whoever he be, has behaved most liberally," answered
Rameau.
"I take that compliment to myself, _cher confrere_; for though the
expenses of starting the Sens Commun, and the caution money lodged, were
found by a friend of mine, that was as a loan, which I have long since
repaid, and the property in the journal is now exclusively mine. I have
to thank you not only for your own brilliant contributions, but for those
of the colleagues you secured. Monsieur Savarin's piquant criticisms
were most valuable to us at starting. I regret to have lost his aid.
But as he has set up a new journal of his own, even he has not wit enough
to spare for another. _A propos_ of our contributors, I shall ask you to
present me to the fair author of The Artist's Daughter. I am of too
prosaic a nature to appreciate justly the merits of a _roman_; but I have
heard warm praise of this story from the young--they are the best judges
of that kind of literature; and I can at least understand the worth of a
contributor who trebled the sale of our journal. It is a misfortune to
us, indeed, that her work is completed, but I trust that the sum sent to
her through our publisher suffices to tempt her to favour us with another
roman in series."
"Mademoiselle Cicogna," said Rameau, with a somewhat sharper intonation
of his sharp voice, "has accepted for the republication of her _roman_ in
a separate form terms which attest the worth of her genius, and has had
offers from other journals for a serial tale of even higher amount than
the sum so generously sent to her through your publisher."
"Has she accepted them, Monsieur Rameau? If so, _tant pis pour vous_.
Pardon me, I mean that your salary suffers in proportion as the Sens
Commun declines in sale."
"She has not accepted them. I advised her not to do so until she could
compare them with those offered by the proprietor of the Sens Commun."
"And your advice guides her? Ah, _cher confrere_, you are a happy man!--
you have influence over this young aspirant to the fame of a De Stael or
a Georges Sand."
"I flatter myself that I have some," answered Rameau, smiling loftily as
he helped himself to another tumbler of. Volnay wine--excellent, but
rather heady.
"So much the better. I leave you free to arrange terms with Mademoiselle
Cicogna, higher than she can obtain elsewhere, and kindly contrive my own
personal introduction to her--you have breakfasted already?--permit me to
offer you a cigar--excuse me if I do not bear you company; I seldom
smoke--never of a morning. Now to business, and the state of France.
Take that easy-chair, seat yourself comfortably. So! Listen! If ever
Mephistopheles revisit the earth, how he will laugh at Universal Suffrage
and Vote by Ballot in an old country like France, as things to be admired
by educated men, and adopted by friends of genuine freedom!"
"I don't understand you," said Rameau.
"In this respect at least, let me hope that I can furnish you with
understanding.
"The Emperor has resorted to a plebiscite--viz., a vote by ballot and
universal suffrage--as to certain popular changes which circumstances
compel him to substitute for his former personal rule. Is there a single
intelligent Liberal who is not against that plebiscite?--is there any
such who does not know that the appeal of the Emperor to universal
suffrage and vote by ballot must result in a triumph over all the
variations of free thought, by the unity which belongs to Order,
represented through an able man at the head of the State? The multitude
never comprehend principles; principles are complex ideas; they
comprehend a single idea, and the simplest idea is, a Name that rids
their action of all responsibility to thought.
"Well, in France there are principles superabundant which you can pit
against the principle of Imperial rule. But there is not one name you
can pit against Napoleon the Third; therefore, I steer our little bark in
the teeth of the popular gale when I denounce the plebiscite, and Le Sens
Commun will necessarily fall in sale--it is beginning to fall already.
We shall have the educated men with us, the rest against. In every
country--even in China, where all are highly educated--a few must be yet
more highly educated than the many. Monsieur Rameau, I desire to
overthrow the Empire: in order to do that, it is not enough to have on my
side the educated men, I must have the _canaille_--the _canaille_ of
Paris and of the manufacturing towns. But I use the canaille for my
purpose--I don't mean to enthrone it. You comprehend?--the _canaille
quiescent_ is simply mud at the bottom of a stream; the _canaille_
agitated is mud at the surface. But no man capable of three ideas builds
the palaces and senates of civilised society out of mud, be it at the top
or the bottom of an ocean. Can either you or I desire that the destinies
of France shall be swayed by coxcombical artisans who think themselves
superior to every man who writes grammar, and whose idea of a common-
wealth is the confiscation of private property?" Rameau, thoroughly
puzzled by this discourse, bowed his head, and replied whisperingly,
"Proceed. You are against the Empire, yet against the populace!--What
are you for? not, surely, the Legitimists?--are you Republican?
Orleanist? or what?"
"Your questions are very pertinent," answered the Vicomte, courteously,
"and my answer shall be very frank. I am against absolute rule, whether
under a Buonaparte or a Bourbon. I am for a free State, whether under a
constitutional hereditary sovereign like the English or Belgian, or
whether, republican in name, it be less democratic than constitutional
monarchy in practice, like the American. But as a man interested in the
fate of _le Sens Commun_, I hold in profound disdain all crotchets for
revolutionising the elements of Human Nature. Enough of this abstract
talk. To the point. You are of course aware of the violent meetings
held by the Socialists, nominally against the plebiscite, really against
the Emperor himself?"
"Yes, I know at least that the working class are extremely discontented;
the numerous strikes last month were not on a mere question of wages--
they were against the existing forms of society. And the articles by
Pierre Firmin which brought me into collision with the Government, seemed
to differ from what you now say. They approve those strikes; they
appeared to sympathise with the revolutionary meetings at Belleville and
Montmartre."
"Of course--we use coarse tools for destroying; we cast them aside for
finer ones when we want to reconstruct.
"I attended one of those meetings last night. See, I have a pass for all
such assemblies, signed by some dolt who cannot even spell the name he
assumes--'Pom-de-Tair.' A commissary of police sat yawning at the end of
the orchestra, his secretary by his side, while the orators stammer out
fragments of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more
wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his
penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed
silhouette of a man, and affecting a solemnity of mien which might have
become the virtuous Guizot, moves this resolution: 'The French people
condemns Charles Louis Napoleon the Third to the penalty of perpetual
hard labour.' Then up rises the commissary of police and says quietly,
'I declare this meeting at an end.'
"Sensation among the audience--they gesticulate--they screech--they
bellow--the commissary puts on his greatcoat--the secretary gives a last
touch to his nails and pockets his penknife--the audience disperses--the
silhouette of a man effaces itself--all is over."
"You describe the scene most wittily," said Rameau, laughing, but the
laugh was constrained. A would-be cynic himself, there was a something
grave and earnest in the real cynic that awed him.
"What conclusion do you draw from such a scene, _cher poete_" asked De
Mauleon, fixing his keen quiet eyes on Rameau.
"What conclusion? Well, that--that--"
"Yes, continue."
"That the audience were sadly degenerated from the time when Mirabeau
said to a Master of the Ceremonies, 'We are here by the power of the
French people, and nothing but the point of the bayonet shall expel us.'"
"Spoken like a poet, a French poet. I suppose you admire M. Victor Hugo.
Conceding that he would have employed a more sounding phraseology,
comprising more absolute ignorance of men, times, and manners in
unintelligible metaphor and melodramatic braggadocio, your answer might
have been his; but pardon me if I add, it would not be that of Common
Sense."
"Monsieur le Vicomte might rebuke me more politely," said Rameau,
colouring high.
"Accept my apologies; I did not mean to rebuke, but to instruct. The
times are not those of 1789. And Nature, ever repeating herself in the
production of coxcombs and blockheads, never repeats herself in the
production of Mirabeaus. The Empire is doomed--doomed, because it is
hostile to the free play of intellect. Any Government that gives
absolute preponderance to the many is hostile to intellect, for intellect
is necessarily confined to the few.
"Intellect is the most revengeful of all the elements of society. It
cares not what the materials through which it insinuates or forces its
way to its seat.
"I accept the aid of Pom-de-Tair. I do not demean myself to the extent
of writing articles that may favor the principles of Pom-de-Tair, signed
in the name of Victor de Mauleon or of Pierre Firinin.
"I will beg you, my dear editor, to obtain clever, smart writers, who
know nothing about Socialists and Internationalists, who therefore will
not commit _Le Sens Commun_ by advocating the doctrines of those idiots,
but who will flatter the vanity of the _canaille_--vaguely; write any
stuff they please about the renown of Paris, 'the eye of the world,'
'the sun of the European system,' &c., of the artisans of Paris as
supplying soul to that eye and fuel to that sun--any _blague_ of that
sort--_genre Victor Hugo_; but nothing definite against life and
property, nothing that may not be considered hereafter as the harmless
extravagance of a poetic enthusiasm. You might write such articles
yourself. In fine, I want to excite the multitude, and yet not to commit
our journal to the contempt of the few. Nothing is to be admitted that
may bring the law upon us except it be signed by my name. There may be a
moment in which it would be desirable for somebody to be sent to prison:
in that case, I allow no substitute--I go myself.
"Now you have my most secret thoughts. I intrust them to your judgment
with entire confidence. Monsieur Lebeau gave you a high character, which
you have hitherto deserved. By the way, have you seen anything lately of
that bourgeois conspirator?"
"No, his professed business of letter-writer or agent is transferred to a
clerk, who says M. Lebeau is abroad."
"Ah! I don't think that is true. I fancy I saw him the other evening
gilding along the lanes of Belleville. He is too confirmed a conspirator
to be long out of Paris; no place like Paris for seething brains."
"Have you known M. Lebeau long?" asked Rameau. "Ay, many years. We are
both Norman by birth, as you may perceive by something broad in our
accent."
"Ha! I knew your voice was familiar to me; certainly it does remind me of
Lebeau's."
"Normans are like each other in many things besides voice and accent--
obstinacy, for instance, in clinging to ideas once formed; this makes
them good friends and steadfast enemies. I would advise no man to make
an enemy of Lebeau.
"_Au revoir, cher confrere_. Do not forget to present me to Mademoiselle
Cicogna."