PART III

THE TWO DREAMS

In 1786 Bodard de Saint-James, treasurer to the Navy, was of all the

financiers of Paris the one whose luxury gave rise to most remark and

gossip. At that time he was building his famous _Folly_ at Neuilly, and his

wife bought, to crown the tester of her bed, a plume of feathers of which

the price had dismayed the Queen. It was far easier then than now to make

oneself the fashion and be talked of by all Paris; a witticism was often

quite enough, or the caprice of a woman.

Bodard lived in the fine house in the Place Vendome which the

farmer-general Dange had not long since been compelled to quit. This

notorious Epicurean was lately dead; and on the day when he was buried,

Monsieur de Bievre, his intimate friend, had found matter for a jest,

saying that now one could cross the Place Vendome without danger (or

Dange). This allusion to the terrific gambling that went on in the deceased

man's house was his funeral oration. The house is that opposite to the

Chancellerie.

To complete Bodard's history as briefly as possible, he was a poor

creature, he failed for fourteen millions of francs after the Prince de

Guemenee. His clumsiness in not anticipating that Serene bankruptcy--to use

an expression of Lebrun-Pindare's--led to his never even being mentioned.

He died in a garret, like Bourvalais, Bouret, and many others.

Madame de Saint-James indulged an ambition of never receiving any but

people of quality--a stale absurdity that is ever new. To her the cap of a

lawyer in the Parlement was but a small affair; she wanted to see her rooms

filled with persons of title who had at least the minor privileges of

_entree_ at Versailles. To say that many blue ribbons were to be seen in

the lady's house would be untrue; but it is quite certain that she had

succeeded in winning the civility and attention of some members of the

Rohan family, as was proved subsequently in the too famous case of the

Queen's necklace.

One evening--it was, I believe, in August 1786--I was greatly surprised to

see in this millionaire's room, precise as she was in the matter of proofs

of rank, two new faces, which struck me as being of decidedly inferior

birth.

She came up to me as I stood in a window recess, where I had intentionally

ensconced myself.

"Do tell me," said I, with a questioning glance at one of these strangers,

"who is that specimen? How did he get into your house?"

"He is a charming man."

"Do you see him through the prism of love, or am I mistaken in him?"

"You are not mistaken," she replied, laughing; "he is as ugly as a toad;

but he has done me the greatest service a woman can accept from a man."

As I looked at her with mischievous meaning, she hastened to add: "He has

entirely cured me of the ugly red patches which spoiled my complexion and

made me look like a peasant woman."

I shrugged my shoulders with disgust.

"A quack!" I exclaimed.

"No," said she, "he is a physician to the Court pages. He is clever and

amusing, I assure you; and he has written books too. He is a very learned

physicist."

"If his literary style is like his face!----" said I, smiling.

"And the other?"

"What other?"

"That little prim man, as neat as a doll, and who looks as if he drank

verjuice."

"He is a man of good family," said she. "He has come from some province--I

forget which.--Ah! yes, from Artois. He is in Paris to wind up some affair

that concerns the Cardinal, and His Eminence has just introduced him to

Monsieur de Saint-James. They have agreed in choosing Monsieur de

Saint-James to be arbitrator. In that the gentleman from the provinces has

not shown much wisdom. What are people thinking of when they place a case

in that man's hands? He is as gentle as a lamb, and as shy as a girl. His

Eminence is most kind to him."

"What is it about?" said I.

"Three hundred thousand livres," said she.

"What! a lawyer?" I asked, with a little start of astonishment.

"Yes," replied she.

And, somewhat disturbed by having to make this humiliating confession,

Madame Bodard returned to her game of faro.

Every table was made up. I had nothing to do or to say. I had just lost two

thousand crowns to Monsieur de Laval, whom I had met in a courtesan's

drawing-room. I went to take a seat in a deep chair near the fire. If ever

on this earth there was an astonished man, it certainly was I on

discovering that my opposite neighbor was the Controller-General. Monsieur

de Calonne seemed to be drowsy, or else he was absorbed in one of those

brown studies which come over a statesman. When I pointed out the Minister

to Beaumarchais, who came to speak to me, the creator of _Figaro_ explained

the mystery without speaking a word. He pointed first to my head and then

to Bodard's in an ingeniously significant way, by directing his thumb to

one and his little finger to the other, with the rest of the fingers

closed. My first impulse was to go and say something sharp to Calonne, but

I sat still; in the first place, because I intended to play the favorite a

trick, and also because Beaumarchais had somewhat familiarly seized my

hand.

"What is it, monsieur?" said I.

With a wink he indicated the Minister.

"Do not wake him," he said in a low tone; "we may be only too thankful when

he sleeps."

"But even sleeping is a scheme of finance," said I.

"Certainly it is," replied the statesman, who had read our words by the

mere motion of our lips. "And would to God we could sleep a long time;

there would not be such an awakening as you will see!"

"Monseigneur," said the play-writer, "I owe you some thanks."

"What for?"

"Monsieur de Mirabeau is gone to Berlin. I do not know whether in this

matter of the Waters we may not both be drowned."

"You have too much memory and too little gratitude," replied the Minister

drily, vexed at this betrayal of one of his secrets before me.

"Very possibly," said Beaumarchais, greatly nettled. "But I have certain

millions which may square many accounts." Calonne affected not to have

heard.

It was half-past twelve before the card-tables broke up. Then we sat down

to supper--ten of us: Bodard and his wife, the Controller-General,

Beaumarchais, the two strangers, two pretty women whose names may not be

mentioned, and a farmer-general named, I think, Lavoisier. Of thirty

persons whom I had found on entering the drawing-room but these ten

remained. And the two "specimens" would only stay to supper on the pressing

invitation of the lady of the house, who thought she could discharge her

debt to one by giving him a meal, and asked the other perhaps to please her

husband, to whom she was doing the civil--wherefore I know not. Monsieur de

Calonne was a power, and if any one had cause to be annoyed it would have

been I.

The supper was at first deadly dull. The two men and the farmer-general

weighed on us. I signed to Beaumarchais to make the son of Esculapius, by

whom he was sitting, drink till he was tipsy, giving him to understand that

I would deal with the lawyer. As this was the only kind of amusement open

to us, and as it gave promise of some blundering impertinence on the part

of the two strangers, which amused us by anticipation, Monsieur de Calonne

smiled on the scheme. In two seconds the ladies had entered into our

Bacchic plot. By significant glances they expressed their readiness to play

their part, and the wine of Sillery crowned our glasses again and again

with silvery foam. The surgeon was easy enough to deal with; but as I was

about to pour out my neighbor's second glass, he told me with the cold

politeness of a money-lender that he would drink no more.

At this time, by what chance I know not, Madame de Saint-James had turned

the conversation on the wonderful suppers to the Comte de Cagliostro, given

by the Cardinal de Rohan. My attention was not too keenly alive to what the

mistress of the house was saying; for since her reply I had watched, with

invincible curiosity, my neighbor's pinched, thin face, of which the

principal feature was a nose at once wide and sharp, which made him at

times look very like a ferret. Suddenly his cheeks flushed as he heard

Madame de Saint-James disputing with Monsieur de Calonne.

"But I assure you, monsieur," said she in a positive tone, "that I have

seen Queen Cleopatra."

"I believe it, madame," said my neighbor. "I have spoken to Catherine de'

Medici."

"Oh! oh!" said Monsieur de Calonne.

The words spoken by the little provincial had an indescribably sonorous

tone--to use a word borrowed from physical science. This sudden clearness

of enunciation, from a man who till now had spoken very little and very

low, in the best possible taste, surprised us in the highest degree.

"Why, he is talking!" exclaimed the surgeon, whom Beaumarchais had worked

up to a satisfactory condition.

"His neighbor must have touched a spring," replied the satirist.

Our man colored a little as he heard these words, though they were spoken

in a murmur.

"And what was the late lamented Queen like?" asked Calonne.

"I will not assert that the person with whom I supped last night was

Catherine de' Medici herself; such a miracle must seem as impossible to a

Christian as to a philosopher," replied the lawyer, resting his finger-tips

lightly on the table, and leaning back in his chair as if preparing to

speak at some length. "But, at any rate, I can swear that that woman was as

like to Catherine de' Medici as though they had been sisters. The lady I

saw wore a black velvet dress, absolutely like that which the Queen is

wearing in the portrait belonging to the King; on her head was the

characteristic black velvet cap; her complexion was colorless, and her face

the face you know. I could not help expressing my surprise to His Eminence.

The suddenness of the apparition was all the more wonderful because

Monsieur le Comte de Cagliostro could not guess the name of the personage

in whose company I wished to be. I was utterly amazed. The magical

spectacle of a supper where such illustrious women of the past were the

guests robbed me of my presence of mind. When, at about midnight, I got

away from this scene of witchcraft, I almost doubted my own identity.

"But all these marvels seemed quite natural by comparison with the strange

hallucination under which I was presently to fall. I know not what words I

can use to describe the condition of my senses. But I can declare, in all

sincerity of heart, that I no longer wonder that there should have been, of

old, spirits weak enough--or strong enough--to believe in the mysteries of

magic and the power of the Devil. For my part, till I have ampler

information, I regard the apparitions of which Cardan and certain other

thaumaturgists have spoken as quite possible."

These words, pronounced with incredible eloquence of tone, were of a nature

to rouse extreme curiosity in those present. Our looks all centered on the

orator, and we sat motionless. Our eyes alone showed life as they reflected

the bright wax lights in the candlesticks. By dint of watching the

stranger, we fancied we could see an emanation from the pores of his face,

and especially from those of his brow, of the inner feelings that wholly

possessed him. This man, apparently so cold and strictly reserved, seemed

to have within him a hidden fire, of which the flame came forth to us.

"I know not," he went on, "whether the figure I had seen called up made

itself invisible to follow me; but as soon as I had laid my head on my

pillow, I saw the grand shade of Catherine rise before me. I instinctively

felt myself in a luminous sphere; for my eyes, attracted to the Queen with

painful fixity, saw her alone. Suddenly she bent over me----"

At these words the ladies with one consent betrayed keener curiosity.

"But," said the lawyer, "I do not know whether I ought to go on; although I

am inclined to think that it was but a dream, what remains to be told is

serious."

"Does it bear on religion?" asked Beaumarchais.

"Or is it in any way indecent?" asked Calonne. "These ladies will forgive

it."

"It bears on government," replied the lawyer.

"Go on," said the Minister. "Voltaire, Diderot, and their like have done

much to educate our ears."

The Controller-General was all attention, and his neighbor, Madame de

Genlis, became absorbed. The stranger still hesitated. Then Beaumarchais

exclaimed impetuously:

"Come, proceed, Maitre! Do not you know that when the laws leave folks so

little liberty, people revenge themselves by laxity of manners?"

So the lawyer went on:

"Whether it was that certain ideas were fermenting in my soul, or that I

was prompted by some unknown power, I said to her:

"'Ah, madame, you committed a very great crime.'

"'Which?' she asked in a deep voice.

"'That for which the signal was given by the Palace clock on the 24th of

August.'

"She smiled scornfully, and some deep furrows showed on her pallid cheeks.

"'Do you call that a crime?' replied she; 'it was only an accident. The

undertaking was badly managed, and the good result we looked for

failed--for France, for all Europe, and for the Catholic Church. How could

we help it? Our orders were badly carried out. We could not find so many

Montlucs as we needed. Posterity will not give us credit for the defective

communications which hindered us from giving our work the unity of impulse

which is necessary to any great _Coup d'Etat_; that was our misfortune. If

by the 25th of August not the shadow of a Huguenot had been left in France,

I should have been regarded to the remotest posterity as a noble

incarnation of Providence. How often have the clear-seeing spirits of

Sixtus V., of Richelieu, of Bossuet, secretly accused me of having failed

in my undertaking, after daring to conceive of it! And how many regrets

attended my death!

"'The disease was still rife thirty years after that Saint-Bartholomew's

night; and it had caused the shedding of ten times more noble blood in

France than was left to be shed on August 26, 1572. The revocation of the

Edict of Nantes, for which you had medals struck, cost more tears, more

blood and money, and killed more prosperity in France than three

Saint-Bartholomews. Letellier, with a dip of ink, carried into effect the

decree which the Crown had secretly desired since my day; but though on

August 25, 1572, this tremendous execution was necessary, on August 25,

1685, it was useless. Under Henri de Valois' second son heresy was scarcely

pregnant; under Henri de Bourbon's second son the teeming mother had cast

her spawn over the whole world.

"'You accuse me of crime, and you raise statues to the son of Anne of

Austria! But he and I aimed at the same end. He succeeded; I failed; but

Louis XIV. found the Protestants disarmed, while in my day they had

powerful armies, statesmen, captains, and Germany to back them.'

"On hearing these words slowly spoken, I felt within me a tremulous thrill.

I seemed to scent the blood of I know not what victims. Catherine had grown

before me. She stood there like an evil genius, and I felt as if she wanted

to get into my conscience to find rest there----"

"He must have dreamed that," said Beaumarchais, in a low voice. "He

certainly never invented it."

"'My reason is confounded,' said I to the Queen. 'You pride yourself on an

action which three generations have condemned and held accursed, and----'

"'Add,' said she, 'that writers have been more unjust to me than my

contemporaries were. No one undertakes my defence. I am accused of

ambition--I who was so rich and a Queen. I am taxed with cruelty--I who

have but two decapitations on my conscience. And to the most impartial

minds I am still, no doubt, a great riddle. Do you really believe that I

was governed by feelings of hatred, that I breathed only vengeance and

fury?' She smiled scornfully. 'I was as calm and cold as Reason itself. I

condemned the Huguenots without pity, but without anger; they were the

rotten orange in my basket. If I had been Queen of England, I should have

judged the Catholics in the same way, if they had been seditious. To give

our power any vitality at that period, only one God could be allowed in the

State, only one faith and one master. Happily for me, I left my excuse

recorded in one sentence. When Birague brought me a false report of the

loss of the battle of Dreux--"Well and good," said I, "then we will go to

Sermon."--Hate the leaders of the New Religion? I esteemed them highly, and

I did not know them. If I ever felt an aversion for any political

personage, it was for that cowardly Cardinal de Lorraine, and for his

brother, a wily and brutal soldier, who had me watched by their spies. They

were my children's enemies; they wanted to snatch the crown from them; I

saw them every day, and they were more than I could bear. If we had not

carried out the plan for Saint-Bartholomew's Day, the Guises would have

done it with the help of Rome and its monks. The Ligue, which had no power

till I had grown old, would have begun in 1573.'

"'But, madame,' said I, 'instead of commanding that horrible

butchery--excuse my frankness--why did you not employ the vast resources of

your political genius in giving the Reformers the wise institutions which

made Henri IV.'s reign so glorious and peaceful?'

"She smiled again, shrugging her shoulders, and her hollow wrinkles gave

her pale features an ironical expression full of bitterness.

"'After a furious struggle a nation needs repose,' said she. 'That is the

secret of that reign. But Henri IV. committed two irremediable blunders. He

ought neither to have abjured Protestantism nor to have left France

Catholic after his own conversion. He alone has ever been in a position to

change the face of France without a shock. Either not a single stole, or

not a single conventicle! That is what he ought to have seen. To leave two

hostile principles at work in a government with nothing to balance them is

a crime in a King; it is sowing the seed of revolutions. It belongs to God

alone to leave good and evil for ever at odds in the work of His hand. But

this sentence was perhaps inscribed at the foundations of Henri IV.'s

policy, and perhaps it was what led to his death. It is impossible that

Sully should not have cast a covetous eye on the immense possessions of the

clergy--though the clergy were not their sole masters, for the nobles

dissipated at least two-thirds of the Church revenues. Sully the Reformer

owned abbeys nevertheless.' She paused, to think, as it seemed.

"'But does it occur to you,' said she, 'that you are asking a Pope's niece

her reason for remaining Catholic?'--Again she paused--'And, after all, I

would just as soon have been a Calvinist,' she went on, with a gesture of

indifference. 'Can the superior men of your age still think that religion

had really anything to do with that great trial, the most tremendous of

those that Europe has been required to decide--a vast revolution retarded

by trivial causes, which will not hinder it from overflowing the whole

world, since I failed to stop it.--A revolution,' said she, with a look of

deep meaning, 'which is still progressing, and which you may achieve.--Yes,

_You_, who hear me!'

"I shuddered.

"'What! Has no one yet understood that old interests on one hand, and on

the other new interests, had taken Rome and Luther to be their standards of

battle! What! When Louis IX., to avoid a somewhat kindred struggle, dragged

after him a population a hundred times greater than that I condemned to

death, and left them in the sands of Egypt, he earned the title of Saint,

while I!--But I,' she added, 'failed.'

"She looked down and stood silent for a minute. It was no longer a Queen

that I beheld, but rather one of those Druidesses of old who sacrificed

men, and could unroll the pages of the future while exhuming the lore of

the past. But she presently raised her royal and majestic face.

"'By directing the attention of the middle classes to the abuses of the

Roman Church,' said she, 'Luther and Calvin gave birth in Europe to a

spirit of investigation which inevitably led the nations to examine

everything. Examination leads to doubt. Instead of the faith indispensable

to social existence, they brought in their train, and long after them, an

inquisitive philosophy, armed with hammers, and greedy of destruction.

Science, with its false lights, sprang glittering from the womb of heresy.

Reform in the Church was not so much what was aimed at as the indefinite

liberty of man, which is fatal to power. I have seen that. The result of

the successes of the Reformers in their contest against the

priesthood--even at that time better armed and more formidable than the

Crown--was the destruction of the monarchical power raised with so much

difficulty by Louis XI. on the ruins of feudality. Their aim was nothing

less than the annihilation of Religion and Royalty, and over their wreck

the middle classes of all lands were to join in a common compact. Thus this

contest was war to the death between these new allies and ancient laws and

beliefs. The Catholics were the representative expression of the material

interests of the Crown, the Nobility, and the Priesthood.

"'It was a duel to the death between two giants; the night of

Saint-Bartholomew was, unfortunately, only a wound. Remember that, to save

a few drops of blood at the right moment, a torrent had to be shed at a

later day. There is a misfortune which the Intelligence that looks down on

a kingdom cannot avert; that, namely, of having no peers by whom to be

judged when he succumbs under the burden of events. My peers are few; fools

are in the majority; these two propositions account for everything. If my

name is held in execration in France, the inferior minds which constitute

the mass of every generation are to blame.

"'In such great crises as I have been through, reigning does not mean

holding audience, reviewing troops, and signing decrees. I may have made

mistakes; I was but a woman. But why was there no man then living who was

superior to the age? The Duke of Alva had a soul of iron, Philip II. was

stultified by Catholic dogmas, Henri IV. was a gambler and a libertine, the

Admiral was systematically pig-headed. Louis XI. had lived too soon;

Richelieu came too late. Whether it were virtuous or criminal, whether the

Massacre of Saint-Bartholomew is attributed to me or no, I accept the

burden. I shall always stand between those two great men as a visible link

in an unrecognized chain. Some day paradoxical writers will wonder whether

nations have not sometimes given the name of executioner to those who, in

fact, were victims. Not once only will mankind be ready to immolate a God

rather than accuse itself! You are all ready to shed tears for two hundred

louts, when you refuse them for the woes of a generation, of a century, of

the whole world! And you also forget that political liberty, the peace of a

nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in

blood!'

"'May the nations never be happy at less cost?' cried I, with tears in my

eyes.

"'Great Truths leave their wells only to find fresh vigor in baths of

blood. Christianity itself, the essence of all truth, since it proceeds

from God, was not established without martyrs. Has not blood flowed in

torrents? Must it not forever flow?--You will know--you who are to be one

of the builders of the social edifice founded by the apostles. As long as

you use your instruments to level heads, you will be applauded; then, when

you want to take up the trowel, you will be killed.'

"'Blood! blood!'--the words rang in my brain like the echo of a bell.

"'According to you,' said I, 'Protestantism has the same right as you have

to argue thus?'

"But Catherine had vanished as though some draught of air had extinguished

the supernatural light which enabled my mind to see the figure which had

grown to gigantic proportions. I had suddenly discerned in myself an

element which assimilated the horrible doctrines set forth by the Italian

Queen.

"I woke in a sweat, and in tears; and at the moment when reason, triumphing

within me, assured me in her mild tones that it was not the function of a

King, nor even of a nation, to practise these principles, worthy only of a

people of atheists----"

"And how are perishing monarchies to be saved?" asked Beaumarchais.

"God is above all, monsieur," replied my neighbor.

"Well, then," said Monsieur de Calonne, with the flippancy which

characterized him, "we have always the resource of believing ourselves to

be instruments in the hand of God, as the gospel according to Bossuet has

it."

As soon as the ladies understood that the whole scene was a conversation

between the Queen and the lawyer, they had begun whispering. Indeed, I have

spared the reader the exclamations and interruptions with which they broke

into the lawyer's narrative. However, such phrases as, "What a deadly

bore!" and "My dear, when will he have done?" reached my ear.

When the stranger ceased speaking, the ladies were silent. Monsieur Bodard

was asleep. The surgeon being half drunk, Lavoisier, Beaumarchais, and I

alone had been listening; Monsieur de Calonne was playing with the lady at

his side.

At this moment the silence was almost solemn. The light of the tapers

seemed to me to have a magical hue. A common sentiment linked us by

mysterious bonds to this man who, to me, suggested the inexplicable effects

of fanaticism. It needed nothing less than the deep hollow voice of

Beaumarchais' neighbor to rouse us.

"I too dreamed!" he exclaimed.

I then looked more particularly at the surgeon, and felt an indescribable

sentiment of horror. His earthy complexion, his features, large but vulgar,

were the exact expression of what I must be allowed to call _la canaille_,

the rough mob. A few specks of dull blue and black dotted his skin like

spots of mud, and his eyes flashed with sinister fires. The face looked

more ominous perhaps than it really was, because a powdered wig _a la

frimas_ crowned his head with snow.

"That man must have buried more than one patient," said I to my neighbor.

"I would not trust my dog to his care," he replied.

"I hate him involuntarily," said I.

"I despise him," replied he.

"And yet how unjust!" cried I.

"Oh! bless me, by the day after to-morrow he may be as famous as Volange

the actor," replied the stranger.

Monsieur de Calonne pointed to the surgeon with a gesture that seemed to

convey, "This fellow might amuse us."

"And did you too dream of a Queen?" asked Beaumarchais.

"No, I dreamed of a people," said he with emphasis, making us laugh. "I was

attending a patient whose leg I was to amputate the next day----"

"And you found a people in your patient's thigh?" asked Monsieur de

Calonne.

"Exactly so!" replied the surgeon.

"Is not he amusing?" cried Madame de Genlis.

"I was greatly surprised," the speaker went on, never heeding these

interruptions, and stuffing his hands into his breeches pockets, "to find

some one to talk to in that leg. I had the strange power of entering into

my patient. When I first found myself in his skin, I discerned there an

amazing number of tiny beings, moving, thinking, and arguing. Some lived in

the man's body, and some in his mind. His ideas were creatures that were

born, grew, and died; they were sick, gay, healthy, sad--and all had

personal individuality. They fought or fondled. A few ideas flew forth and

went to dwell in the world of intellect. Suddenly I understood that there

are two worlds--the visible and the invisible universe; that the earth,

like man, has a body and a soul. A new light was cast on nature, and I

perceived its immensity when I saw the ocean of beings everywhere

distributed in masses and in species, all of one and the same living

matter, from marble rocks up to God. A magnificent sight! In short, there

was a universe in my patient. When I inserted my lancet in his gangrened

leg, I destroyed a thousand such beings.--You laugh, ladies, at the idea

that you are a prey to a thousand creatures----"

"No personalities," said Monsieur de Colonne, "speak for yourself and your

patient."

"My man, horrified at the outcry of his animalcules, wanted to stop the

operation; but I persisted, telling him that malignant creatures were

already gnawing at his bones. He made a motion to resist me, not

understanding that what I was doing was for his good, and my lancet pierced

me in the side----"

"He is too stupid," said Lavoisier.

"No, he is drunk," replied Beaumarchais.

"But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning," cried the surgeon.

"Oh, oh!" cried Bodard, waking, "my leg is asleep!"

"Your animalcules are dead," said his wife.

"That man has a vocation," said my neighbor, who had imperturbably stared

at the surgeon all the time he was talking.

"It is to Monsieur's vocation what action is to speech, or the body to the

soul," said the ugly guest.

But his tongue was heavy, and he got confused; he could only utter

unintelligible words. Happily, the conversation took another turn. By the

end of half an hour we had forgotten the surgeon to the Court pages, and he

was asleep.

When we rose from table, the rain was pouring in torrents.

"The lawyer is no fool," said I to Beaumarchais.

"Oh! he is dull and cold. But you see the provinces can still produce good

folks who take political theories and the history of France quite

seriously. It is a leaven that will spread."

"Have you a carriage?" Madame de Saint-James asked me.

"No," said I shortly. "I did not know that I should want it this evening.

You thought, perhaps, that I should take home the Controller-General? Did

he come to your house _en polisson_?" (the fashionable name at the time for

a person who drove his own carriage at Marly dressed as a coachman). Madame

de Saint-James left me hastily, rang the bell, ordered her husband's

carriage, and took the lawyer aside.

"Monsieur de Robespierre, will you do me the favor of seeing Monsieur Marat

home, for he is incapable of standing upright?" said she.

"With pleasure, madame," replied Monsieur de Robespierre with an air of

gallantry; "I wish you had ordered me to do something more difficult."

PARIS, _January 1828_.

NOTE.

This is the song published by the Abbe de la Place in his collection of

interesting fragments, in which may be found the dissertation alluded to.

[It will be seen that it goes to the old tune of _Malbrouk s'en va-t-en

guerre_.]

THE DUC DE GUISE'S BURIAL.

Qui veut ouir chanson? (_Bis._)

C'est du Grand Duc de Guise;

Et bon bon bon bon,

Di dan di dan don,

C'est du Grand Duc de Guise!

(This last line was spoken, no doubt, in a comic tone.)

_Qui est mort et enterre._

Qui est mort et enterre. (_Bis._)

Aux quatre coins du poele,

Et bon bon bon bon,

Di dan di dan don,

_Quatre gentilshomm's y avoit_.

Quatre gentilshomm's y avoit. (_Bis._)

L'un portoit son grand casque,

Et bon, etc.

_Et l'autre ses pistolets._

Et l'autre ses pistolets. (_Bis._)

Et l'autre son epee,

Et bon, etc.

_Qui tant d'Hugu'nots a tues._

Qui tant d'Hugu'nots a tues. (_Bis._)

Venoit le quatrieme,

Et bon, etc.

_Qui etoit le plus dolent._

Qui etoit le plus dolent; (_Bis._)

Apres venoient les pages,

Et bon, etc.

_Et les valets de pied._

Et les valets de pied, (_Bis._)

Avecque de grands crepes,

Et bon, etc.

_Et des souliers cires._

Et des souliers cires. (_Bis._)

Et des beaux bas d'estame,

Et bon, etc.

_Et des culottes de piau._

Et des culottes de piau. (_Bis._)

La ceremonie faite,

Et bon, etc.,

_Chacun s'alla coucher._

Chacun s'alla coucher: (_Bis._)

Les uns avec leurs femmes,

Et bon, etc.

_Et les autres tout seuls._

The discovery of these curious verses seems to prove, to a certain extent,

the guilt of Theodore de Beze, who tried to mitigate the horror caused by

this murder by turning it to ridicule. The principal merit of this song

lay, it would appear, in the tune.

GAMBARA

_To Monsieur le Marquis de Belloy_

It was sitting by the fire, in a mysterious and

magnificent retreat,--now a thing of the past but

surviving in our memory,--whence our eyes commanded a

view of Paris from the heights of Bellevue to those of

Belleville, from Montmartre to the triumphal Arc de

l'Etoile, that one morning, refreshed by tea, amid the

myriad suggestions that shoot up and die like rockets

from your sparkling flow of talk, lavish of ideas, you

tossed to my pen a figure worthy of Hoffmann,--that

casket of unrecognized gems, that pilgrim seated at the

gate of Paradise with ears to hear the songs of the

angels but no longer a tongue to repeat them, playing

on the ivory keys with fingers crippled by the stress

of divine inspiration, believing that he is expressing

celestial music to his bewildered listeners.

It was you who created GAMBARA; I have only clothed

him. Let me render unto Caesar the things that are

Caesar's, regretting only that you do not yourself take

up the pen at a time when gentlemen ought to wield it

as well as the sword, if they are to save their

country. You may neglect yourself, but you owe your

talents to us.

New Year's Day of 1831 was pouring out its packets of sugared almonds, four

o'clock was striking, there was a mob in the Palais-Royal, and the

eating-houses were beginning to fill. At this moment a coupe drew up at the

_perron_ and a young man stepped out; a man of haughty appearance, and no

doubt a foreigner; otherwise he would not have displayed the aristocratic

_chasseur_ who attended him in a plumed hat, nor the coat of arms which the

heroes of July still attacked.

This gentleman went into the Palais-Royal, and followed the crowd round

the galleries, unamazed at the slowness to which the throng of loungers

reduced his pace; he seemed accustomed to the stately step which is

ironically nicknamed the ambassador's strut; still, his dignity had a touch

of the theatrical. Though his features were handsome and imposing, his hat,

from beneath which thick black curls stood out, was perhaps tilted a little

too much over the right ear, and belied his gravity by a too rakish effect.

His eyes, inattentive and half closed, looked down disdainfully on the

crowd.

"There goes a remarkably good-looking young man," said a girl in a low

voice, as she made way for him to pass.

"And who is only too well aware of it!" replied her companion aloud--who

was very plain.

After walking all round the arcades, the young man looked by turns at the

sky and at his watch, and with a shrug of impatience went into a

tobacconist's shop, lighted a cigar, and placed himself in front of a

looking-glass to glance at his costume, which was rather more ornate than

the rules of French taste allow. He pulled down his collar and his black

velvet waistcoat, over which hung many festoons of the thick gold chain

that is made at Venice; then, having arranged the folds of his cloak by a

single jerk of his left shoulder, draping it gracefully so as to show the

velvet lining, he started again on parade, indifferent to the glances of

the vulgar.

As soon as the shops were lighted up and the dusk seemed to him black

enough, he went out into the square in front of the Palais-Royal, but as a

man anxious not to be recognized; for he kept close under the houses as far

as the fountain, screened by the hackney-cab stand, till he reached the Rue

Froid-Manteau, a dirty, poky, disreputable street--a sort of sewer

tolerated by the police close to the purified purlieus of the Palais-Royal,

as an Italian major-domo allows a careless servant to leave the sweepings

of the rooms in a corner of the staircase.

[Illustration: Placed himself in front of a looking-glass]

The young man hesitated. He might have been a bedizened citizen's wife

craning her neck over a gutter swollen by the rain. But the hour was not

unpropitious for the indulgence of some discreditable whim. Earlier, he

might have been detected; later, he might find himself cut out. Tempted by

a glance which is encouraging without being inviting, to have followed a

young and pretty woman for an hour, or perhaps for a day, thinking of her

as a divinity and excusing her light conduct by a thousand reasons to her

advantage; to have allowed oneself to believe in a sudden and irresistible

affinity; to have pictured, under the promptings of transient excitement, a

love-adventure in an age when romances are written precisely because they

never happen; to have dreamed of balconies, guitars, stratagems, and bolts,

enwrapped in Almaviva's cloak; and, after inditing a poem in fancy, to stop

at the door of a house of ill-fame, and, crowning all, to discern in

Rosina's bashfulness a reticence imposed by the police--is not all this, I

say, an experience familiar to many a man who would not own it?

The most natural feelings are those we are least willing to confess, and

among them is fatuity. When the lesson is carried no further, the Parisian

profits by it, or forgets it, and no great harm is done. But this would

hardly be the case with this foreigner, who was beginning to think he might

pay too dearly for his Paris education.

This personage was a Milanese of good family, exiled from his native

country, where some "liberal" pranks had made him an object of suspicion to

the Austrian Government. Count Andrea Marcosini had been welcomed in Paris

with the cordiality, essentially French, that a man always finds there,

when he has a pleasant wit, a sounding name, two hundred thousand francs a

year, and a prepossessing person. To such a man banishment could but be a

pleasure tour; his property was simply sequestrated, and his friends let

him know that after an absence of two years he might return to his native

land without danger.

After rhyming _crudeli affanni_ with _i miei tiranni_ in a dozen or so of

sonnets, and maintaining as many hapless Italian refugees out of his own

purse, Count Andrea, who was so unlucky as to be a poet, thought himself

released from patriotic obligations. So, ever since his arrival, he had

given himself up recklessly to the pleasures of every kind which Paris

offers _gratis_ to those who can pay for them. His talents and his handsome

person won him success among women, whom he adored collectively as beseemed

his years, but among whom he had not as yet distinguished a chosen one. And

indeed this taste was, in him, subordinate to those for music and poetry

which he had cultivated from his childhood; and he thought success in these

both more difficult and more glorious to achieve than in affairs of

gallantry, since nature had not inflicted on him the obstacles men take

most pride in defying.

A man, like many another, of complex nature, he was easily fascinated by

the comfort of luxury, without which he could hardly have lived; and, in

the same way, he clung to the social distinctions which his principles

contemned. Thus his theories as an artist, a thinker, and a poet were in

frequent antagonism with his tastes, his feelings, and his habits as a man

of rank and wealth; but he comforted himself for his inconsistencies by

recognizing them in many Parisians, like himself liberal by policy and

aristocrats by nature.

Hence it was not without some uneasiness that he found himself, on December

31, 1830, under a Paris thaw, following at the heels of a woman whose dress

betrayed the most abject, inveterate, and long-accustomed poverty, who was

no handsomer than a hundred others to be seen any evening at the play, at

the opera, in the world of fashion, and who was certainly not so young as

Madame de Manerville, from whom he had obtained an assignation for that

very day, and who was perhaps waiting for him at that very hour.

But in the glance at once tender and wild, swift and deep, which that

woman's black eyes had shot at him by stealth, there was such a world of

buried sorrows and promised joys! And she had colored so fiercely when, on

coming out of a shop where she had lingered a quarter of an hour, her look

frankly met the Count's, who had been waiting for her hard by! In fact,

there were so many _buts_ and _ifs_, that, possessed by one of those mad

temptations for which there is no word in any language, not even in that of

the orgy, he had set out in pursuit of this woman, hunting her down like a

hardened Parisian.

On the way, whether he kept behind or ahead of this damsel, he studied

every detail of her person and her dress, hoping to dislodge the insane and

ridiculous fancy that had taken up an abode in his brain; but he presently

found in his examination a keener pleasure than he had felt only the day

before in gazing at the perfect shape of a woman he loved, as she took her

bath. Now and again, the unknown fair, bending her head, gave him a look

like that of a kid tethered with its head to the ground, and finding

herself still the object of his pursuit, she hurried on as if to fly.

Nevertheless, each time that a block of carriages, or any other delay,

brought Andrea to her side, he saw her turn away from his gaze without any

signs of annoyance. These signals of restrained feelings spurred the

frenzied dreams that had run away with him, and he gave them the rein as

far as the Rue Froid-Manteau, down which, after many windings, the damsel

vanished, thinking she had thus spoilt the scent of her pursuer, who was,

in fact, startled by this move.

It was now quite dark. Two women, tattooed with rouge, who were drinking

black-currant liqueur at a grocer's counter, saw the young woman and called

her. She paused at the door of the shop, replied in a few soft words to the

cordial greeting offered her, and went on her way. Andrea, who was behind

her, saw her turn into one of the darkest yards out of this street, of

which he did not know the name. The repulsive appearance of the house where

the heroine of his romance had been swallowed up made him feel sick. He

drew back a step to study the neighborhood, and finding an ill-looking man

at his elbow, he asked him for information. The man, who held a knotted

stick in his right hand, placed the left on his hip and replied in a single

word:

"Scoundrel!"

But on looking at the Italian, who stood in the light of a street-lamp, he

assumed a servile expression.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said he, suddenly changing his tone. "There is a

restaurant near this, a sort of table-d'hote, where the cooking is pretty

bad and they serve cheese in the soup. Monsieur is in search of the place,

perhaps, for it is easy to see that he is an Italian--Italians are fond of

velvet and of cheese. But if monsieur would like to know of a better

eating-house, an aunt of mine, who lives a few steps off, is very fond of

foreigners."

Andrea raised his cloak as high as his moustache, and fled from the street,

spurred by the disgust he felt at this foul person, whose clothes and

manner were in harmony with the squalid house into which the fair unknown

had vanished. He returned with rapture to the thousand luxuries of his own

rooms, and spent the evening at the Marquise d'Espard's to cleanse himself,

if possible, of the smirch left by the fancy that had driven him so

relentlessly during the day.

And yet, when he was in bed, the vision came back to him, but clearer and

brighter than the reality. The girl was walking in front of him; now and

again as she stepped across a gutter her skirts revealed a round calf; her

shapely hips swayed as she walked. Again Andrea longed to speak to her--and

he dared not, he, Marcosini, a Milanese nobleman! Then he saw her turn into

the dark passage where she had eluded him, and blamed himself for not

having followed her.

"For, after all," said he to himself, "if she really wished to avoid me and

put me off her track, it is because she loves me. With women of that stamp,

coyness is a proof of love. Well, if I had carried the adventure any

further, it would, perhaps, have ended in disgust. I will sleep in peace."

The Count was in the habit of analyzing his keenest sensations, as men do

involuntarily when they have as much brains as heart, and he was surprised

when he saw the strange damsel of the Rue Froid-Manteau once more, not in

the pictured splendor of his dream but in the bare reality of dreary fact.

And, in spite of it all, if fancy had stripped the woman of her livery of

misery, it would have spoilt her for him; for he wanted her, he longed for

her, he loved her--with her muddy stockings, her slipshod feet, her straw

bonnet! He wanted her in the very house where he had seen her go in.

"Am I bewitched by vice, then?" he asked himself in dismay. "Nay, I have

not yet reached that point. I am but three-and-twenty, and there is nothing

of the senile fop about me."

The very vehemence of the whim that held possession of him to some extent

reassured him. This strange struggle, these reflections, and this love in

pursuit may perhaps puzzle some persons who are accustomed to the ways of

Paris life; but they may be reminded that Count Andrea Marcosini was not a

Frenchman.

Brought up by two abbes, who, in obedience to a very pious father, had

rarely let him out of their sight, Andrea had not fallen in love with a

cousin at the age of eleven, or seduced his mother's maid by the time he

was twelve; he had not studied at school, where a lad does not learn only,

or best, the subjects prescribed by the State; he had lived in Paris but a

few years, and he was still open to those sudden but deep impressions

against which French education and manners are so strong a protection. In

southern lands a great passion is often born of a glance. A gentleman of

Gascony who had tempered strong feelings by much reflection had fortified

himself by many little recipes against sudden apoplexies of taste and

heart, and he advised the Count to indulge at least once a month in a wild

orgy to avert those storms of the soul which, but for such precautions, are

apt to break out at inappropriate moments. Andrea now remembered this

advice.

"Well," thought he, "I will begin to-morrow, January 1st."

* * * * *

This explains why Count Andrea Marcosini hovered so shyly before turning

down the Rue Froid-Manteau. The man of fashion hampered the lover, and he

hesitated for some time; but after a final appeal to his courage he went

on with a firm step as far as the house, which he recognized without

difficulty.

There he stopped once more. Was the woman really what he fancied her? Was

he not on the verge of some false move?

At this juncture he remembered the Italian table-d'hote, and at once jumped

at a middle course, which would serve the ends alike of his curiosity and

of his reputation. He went in to dine, and made his way down the passage;

at the bottom, after feeling about for some time, he found a staircase with

damp, slippery steps, such as to an Italian nobleman could only seem a

ladder.

Invited to the first floor by the glimmer of a lamp and a strong smell of

cooking, he pushed a door which stood ajar and saw a room dingy with dirt

and smoke, where a wench was busy laying a table for about twenty

customers. None of the guests had yet arrived.

After looking round the dimly lighted room where the paper was dropping in

rags from the walls, the gentleman seated himself by a stove which was

roaring and smoking in the corner.

Attracted by the noise the Count made in coming in and disposing of his

cloak, the major-domo presently appeared. Picture to yourself a lean,

dried-up cook, very tall, with a nose of extravagant dimensions, casting

about him from time to time, with feverish keenness, a glance that he meant

to be cautious. On seeing Andrea, whose attire bespoke considerable

affluence, Signor Giardini bowed respectfully.

The Count expressed his intention of taking his meals as a rule in the

society of some of his fellow-countrymen; he paid in advance for a certain

number of tickets, and ingenuously gave the conversation a familiar bent to

enable him to achieve his purpose quickly.

Hardly had he mentioned the woman he was seeking when Signor Giardini, with

a grotesque shrug, looked knowingly at his customer, a bland smile on his

lips.

"_Basta!_" he exclaimed. "_Capisco._ Your Excellency has come spurred by

two appetites. La Signora Gambara will not have wasted her time if she has

gained the interest of a gentleman so generous as you appear to be. I can

tell you in a few words all we know of the woman, who is really to be

pitied.

"The husband is, I believe, a native of Cremona and has just come here from

Germany. He was hoping to get the Tedeschi to try some new music and some

new instruments. Isn't it pitiable?" said Giardini, shrugging his

shoulders. "Signor Gambara, who thinks himself a great composer, does not

seem to me very clever in other ways. An excellent fellow with sense and

wit, and sometimes very agreeable, especially when he has had a few glasses

of wine--which does not often happen, for he is desperately poor; night and

day he toils at imaginary symphonies and operas instead of trying to earn

an honest living. His poor wife is reduced to working for all sorts of

people--the women on the streets! What is to be said? She loves her husband

like a father, and takes care of him like a child.

"Many a young man has dined here to pay his court to madame; but not one

has succeeded," said he, emphasizing the word. "La Signora Marianna is an

honest woman, monsieur, much too honest, worse luck for her! Men give

nothing for nothing nowadays. So the poor soul will die in harness.

"And do you suppose that her husband rewards her for her devotion? Pooh, my

lord never gives her a smile! And all their cooking is done at the baker's;

for not only does the wretched man never earn a sou; he spends all his wife

can make on instruments which he carves, and lengthens, and shortens, and

sets up and takes to pieces again till they produce sounds that would scare

a cat; then he is happy. And yet you will find him the mildest, the

gentlest of men. And he is not idle; he is always at it. What is to be

said? He is crazy and does not know his business. I have seen him,

monsieur, filing and forging his instruments and eating black bread with an

appetite that I envied him--I, who have the best table in Paris.

"Yes, Excellenza, in a quarter of an hour you shall know the man I am. I

have introduced certain refinements into Italian cookery that will amaze

you! Excellenza, I am a Neapolitan--that is to say, a born cook. But of

what use is instinct without knowledge? Knowledge! I have spent thirty

years in acquiring it, and you see where it has left me. My history is that

of every man of talent. My attempts, my experiments, have ruined three

restaurants in succession at Naples, Parma, and Rome. To this day, when I

am reduced to make a trade of my art, I more often than not give way to my

ruling passion. I give these poor refugees some of my choicest dishes. I

ruin myself! Folly! you will say? I know it; but how can I help it? Genius

carries me away, and I cannot resist concocting a dish which smiles on my

fancy.

"And they always know it, the rascals! They know, I can promise you,

whether I or my wife has stood over the fire. And what is the consequence?

Of sixty-odd customers whom I used to see at my table every day when I

first started in this wretched place, I now see twenty on an average, and

give them credit for the most part. The Piedmontese, the Savoyards, have

deserted, but the connoisseurs, the true Italians, remain. And there is no

sacrifice that I would not make for them. I often give them a dinner for

five and twenty sous which has cost me double."

Signor Giardini's speech had such a full flavor of Neapolitan cunning that

the Count was delighted, and could have fancied himself at Gerolamo's.

"Since that is the case, my good friend," said he familiarly to the cook,

"and since chance and your confidence have let me into the secret of your

daily sacrifices, allow me to pay double."

As he spoke Andrea spun a forty-franc piece on the stove, out of which

Giardini solemnly gave him two francs and fifty centimes in change, not

without a certain ceremonious mystery that amused him hugely.

"In a few minutes now," the man added, "you will see your _donnina_. I

will seat you next the husband, and if you wish to stand in his good

graces, talk about music. I have invited every one for this evening, poor

things. Being New Year's Day, I am treating the company to a dish in which

I believe I have surpassed myself."

Signor Giardini's voice was drowned by the noisy greetings of the guests,

who streamed in two and two, or one at a time, after the manner of

tables-d'hote. Giardini stayed by the Count, playing the showman by telling

him who the company were. He tried by his witticisms to bring a smile to

the lips of a man who, as his Neapolitan instinct told him, might be a

wealthy patron to turn to good account.

"This one," said he, "is a poor composer who would like to rise from

song-writing to opera, and cannot. He blames the managers,

music-sellers,--everybody, in fact, but himself, and he has no worse enemy.

You can see--what a florid complexion, what self-conceit, how little

firmness in his features! he is made to write ballads. The man who is with

him, and looks like a match-hawker, is a great musical celebrity--Gigelmi,

the greatest Italian conductor known; but he has gone deaf, and is ending

his days in penury, deprived of all that made it tolerable. Ah! here comes

our great Ottoboni, the most guileless old fellow on earth; but he is

suspected of being the most vindictive of all who are plotting for the

regeneration of Italy. I cannot think how they can bear to banish such a

good old man."

And here Giardini looked narrowly at the Count, who, feeling himself under

inquisition as to his politics, entrenched himself in Italian

impassibility.

"A man whose business it is to cook for all comers can have no political

opinions, Excellenza," Giardini went on. "But to see that worthy man, who

looks more like a lamb than a lion, everybody would say what I say, were it

before the Austrian ambassador himself. Besides, in these times liberty is

no longer proscribed; it is going its rounds again. At least, so these good

people think," said he, leaning over to speak in the Count's ear, "and why

should I thwart their hopes? I, for my part, do not hate an absolute

government. Excellenza, every man of talent is for despotism!

"Well, though full of genius, Ottoboni takes no end of pains to educate

Italy; he writes little books to enlighten the intelligence of the children

and the common people, and he smuggles them very cleverly into Italy. He

takes immense trouble to reform the moral sense of our luckless country,

which, after all, prefers pleasure to freedom,--and perhaps it is right."

The Count preserved such an impenetrable attitude that the cook could

discover nothing of his political views.

"Ottoboni," he ran on, "is a saint; very kind-hearted; all the refugees are

fond of him; for, Excellenza, a liberal may have his virtues. Oho! Here

comes a journalist," said Giardini, as a man came in dressed in the absurd

way which used to be attributed to a poet in a garret; his coat was

threadbare, his boots split, his hat shiny, and his overcoat deplorably

ancient. "Excellenza, that poor man is full of talent, and incorruptibly

honest. He was born into the wrong times, for he tells the truth to

everybody; no one can endure him. He writes theatrical articles for two

small papers, though he is clever enough to work for the great dailies.

Poor fellow!

"The rest are not worth mentioning, and Your Excellency will find them

out," he concluded, seeing that on the entrance of the musician's wife the

Count had ceased to listen to him.

* * * * *

On seeing Andrea here, Signora Marianna started visibly and a bright flush

tinged her cheeks.

"Here he is!" said Giardini, in an undertone, clutching the Count's arm and

nodding to a tall man. "How pale and grave he is, poor man! His hobby has

not trotted to his mind to-day, I fancy."

Andrea's prepossession for Marianna was crossed by the captivating charm

which Gambara could not fail to exert over every genuine artist. The

composer was now forty; but although his high brow was bald and lined with

a few parallel, but not deep, wrinkles; in spite, too, of hollow temples

where the blue veins showed through the smooth, transparent skin, and of

the deep sockets in which his black eyes were sunk, with their large lids

and light lashes, the lower part of his face made him still look young, so

calm was its outline, so soft the modeling. It could be seen at a glance

that in this man passion had been curbed to the advantage of the intellect;

that the brain alone had grown old in some great struggle.

Andrea shot a swift look at Marianna, who was watching him. And he noted

the beautiful Italian head, the exquisite proportion and rich coloring that

revealed one of those organizations in which every human power is

harmoniously balanced, he sounded the gulf that divided this couple,

brought together by fate. Well content with the promise he inferred from

this dissimilarity between the husband and wife, he made no attempt to

control a liking which ought to have raised a barrier between the fair

Marianna and himself. He was already conscious of feeling a sort of

respectful pity for this man, whose only joy she was, as he understood the

dignified and serene acceptance of ill fortune that was expressed in

Gambara's mild and melancholy gaze.

After expecting to see one of the grotesque figures so often set before us

by German novelists and writers of _libretti_, he beheld a simple,

unpretentious man, whose manners and demeanor were in nothing strange and

did not lack dignity. Without the faintest trace of luxury, his dress was

more decent than might have been expected from his extreme poverty, and his

linen bore witness to the tender care which watched over every detail of

his existence. Andrea looked at Marianna with moistened eyes; and she did

not color, but half smiled, in a way that betrayed, perhaps, some pride at

this speechless homage. The Count, too thoroughly fascinated to miss the

smallest indication of complaisance, fancied that she must love him, since

she understood him so well.

From this moment he set himself to conquer the husband rather than the

wife, turning all his batteries against the poor Gambara, who quite

guilelessly went on eating Signor Giardini's _bocconi_, without thinking of

their flavor.

The Count opened the conversation on some trivial subject, but at the first

words he perceived that this brain, supposed to be infatuated on one point,

was remarkably clear on all others, and saw that it would be far more

important to enter into this very clever man's ideas than to flatter his

conceits.

The rest of the company, a hungry crew whose brain only responded to the

sight of a more or less good meal, showed much animosity to the luckless

Gambara, and waited only till the end of the first course, to give free

vent to their satire. A refugee, whose frequent leer betrayed ambitious

schemes on Marianna, and who fancied he could establish himself in her good

graces by trying to make her husband ridiculous, opened fire to show the

newcomer how the land lay at the table-d'hote.

"It is a very long time since we have heard anything about the opera on

'Mahomet'!" cried he, with a smile at Marianna. "Can it be that Paolo

Gambara, wholly given up to domestic cares, absorbed by the charms of the

chimney-corner, is neglecting his superhuman genius, leaving his talents to

get cold and his imagination to go flat?"

Gambara knew all the company; he dwelt in a sphere so far above them all

that he no longer cared to repel an attack. He made no reply.

"It is not given to everybody," said the journalist, "to have an intellect

that can understand Monsieur Gambara's musical efforts, and that, no doubt,

is why our divine maestro hesitates to come before the worthy Parisian

public."

"And yet," said the ballad-monger, who had not opened his mouth but to

swallow everything that came within his reach, "I know some men of talent

who think highly of the judgments of Parisian critics. I myself have a

pretty reputation as a musician," he went on, with an air of diffidence. "I

owe it solely to my little songs in _vaudevilles_, and the success of my

dance music in drawing-rooms; but I propose ere long to bring out a mass

composed for the anniversary of Beethoven's death, and I expect to be

better appreciated in Paris than anywhere else. You will perhaps do me the

honor of hearing it?" he said, turning to Andrea.

"Thank you," said the Count. "But I do not conceive that I am gifted with

the organs needful for the appreciation of French music. If you were dead,

monsieur, and Beethoven had composed the mass, I would not have failed to

attend the performance."

This retort put an end to the tactics of those who wanted to set Gambara

off on his high horse to amuse the new guest. Andrea was already conscious

of an unwillingness to expose so noble and pathetic a mania as a spectacle

for so much vulgar shrewdness. It was with no base reservation that he kept

up a desultory conversation, in the course of which Signor Giardini's nose

not infrequently interposed between two remarks. Whenever Gambara uttered

some elegant repartee or some paradoxical aphorism, the cook put his head

forward, to glance with pity at the musician and with meaning at the Count,

muttering in his ear, "_E matto_!"

Then came a moment when the _chef_ interrupted the flow of his judicial

observations to devote himself to the second course, which he considered

highly important. During his absence, which was brief, Gambara leaned

across to address Andrea.

"Our worthy host," said he, in an undertone, "threatens to regale us to-day

with a dish of his own concocting, which I recommend you to avoid, though

his wife has had an eye on him. The good man has a mania for innovations.

He ruined himself by experiments, the last of which compelled him to fly

from Rome without a passport--a circumstance he does not talk about. After

purchasing the goodwill of a popular restaurant he was trusted to prepare a

banquet given by a lately made Cardinal, whose household was not yet

complete. Giardini fancied he had an opportunity for distinguishing

himself--and he succeeded! for that same evening he was accused of trying

to poison the whole conclave, and was obliged to leave Rome and Italy

without waiting to pack up. This disaster was the last straw. Now," and

Gambara put his finger to his forehead and shook his head.

"He is a good fellow, all the same," he added. "My wife will tell you that

we owe him many a good turn."

Giardini now came in carefully bearing a dish which he set in the middle of

the table, and he then modestly resumed his seat next to Andrea, whom he

served first. As soon as he had tasted the mess, the Count felt that an

impassable gulf divided the second mouthful from the first. He was much

embarrassed, and very anxious not to annoy the cook, who was watching him

narrowly. Though a French _restaurateur_ may care little about seeing a

dish scorned if he is sure of being paid for it, it is not so with an

Italian, who is not often satiated with praises.

To gain time, Andrea complimented Giardini enthusiastically, but he leaned

over to whisper in his ear, and slipping a gold piece into his hand under

the table, begged him to go out and buy a few bottles of champagne, leaving

him free to take all the credit of the treat.

When the Italian returned, every plate was cleared, and the room rang with

praises of the master-cook. The champagne soon mounted these southern

brains, and the conversation, till now subdued in the stranger's presence,

overleaped the limits of suspicious reserve to wander far over the wide

fields of political and artistic opinions.

Andrea, to whom no form of intoxication was known but those of love and

poetry, had soon gained the attention of the company and skilfully led it

to a discussion of matters musical.

"Will you tell me, monsieur," said he to the composer of dance-music, "how

it is that the Napoleon of these tunes can condescend to usurp the place of

Palestrina, Pergolesi, and Mozart,--poor creatures who must pack and vanish

at the advent of that tremendous Mass for the Dead?"

"Well, monsieur," replied the composer, "a musician always finds it

difficult to reply when the answer needs the co-operation of a hundred

skilled executants. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, without an orchestra,

would be of no great account."

"Of no great account!" said Marcosini. "Why, all the world knows that the

immortal author of _Don Giovanni_ and the _Requiem_ was named Mozart; and I

am so unhappy as not to know the name of the inexhaustible writer of

quadrilles which are so popular in our drawing-rooms----"

"Music exists independently of execution," said the retired conductor, who,

in spite of his deafness, had caught a few words of the conversation. "As

he looks through the C-minor symphony by Beethoven, a musician is

transported to the world of fancy on the golden wings of the subject in

G-natural repeated by the horns in E. He sees a whole realm, by turns

glorious in dazzling shafts of light, gloomy under clouds of melancholy,

and cheered by heavenly strains."

"The new school has left Beethoven far behind," said the ballad-writer,

scornfully.

"Beethoven is not yet understood," said the Count. "How can he be

excelled?"

Gambara drank a large glass of champagne, accompanying the draught by a

covert smile of approval.

"Beethoven," the Count went on, "extended the limits of instrumental music,

and no one has followed in his track."

Gambara assented with a nod.

"His work is especially noteworthy for simplicity of construction and for

the way the scheme is worked out," the Count went on. "Most composers make

use of the orchestral parts in a vague, incoherent way, combining them for

a merely temporary effect; they do not persistently contribute to the whole

mass of the movement by their steady and regular progress. Beethoven

assigns its part to each tone-quality from the first. Like the various

companies which, by their disciplined movements, contribute to winning a

battle, the orchestral parts of a symphony by Beethoven obey the plan

ordered for the interest of all, and are subordinate to an admirably

conceived scheme.

"In this he may be compared to a genius of a different type. In Walter

Scott's splendid historical novels, some personage, who seems to have least

to do with the action of the story, intervenes at a given moment and leads

up to the climax by some thread woven into the plot."

"_E vero!_" remarked Gambara, to whom common sense seemed to return in

inverse proportion to sobriety.

Andrea, eager to carry the test further, for a moment forgot all his

predilections; he proceeded to attack the European fame of Rossini,

disputing the position which the Italian school has taken by storm, night

after night for more than thirty years, on a hundred stages in Europe. He

had undertaken a hard task. The first words he spoke raised a strong murmur

of disapproval; but neither repeated interruptions, nor exclamations, nor

frowns, nor contemptuous looks, could check this determined advocate of

Beethoven.

"Compare," said he, "that sublime composer's works with what by common

consent is called Italian music. What feebleness of ideas, what limpness of

style! That monotony of form, those commonplace cadenzas, those endless

bravura passages introduced at haphazard irrespective of the dramatic

situation, that recurrent _crescendo_ that Rossini brought into vogue, are

now an integral part of every composition; those vocal fireworks result in

a sort of babbling, chattering, vaporous music, of which the sole merit

depends on the greater or less fluency of the singer and his rapidity of

vocalization.

"The Italian school has lost sight of the high mission of art. Instead of

elevating the crowd, it has condescended to the crowd; it has won its

success only by accepting the suffrages of all comers, and appealing to the

vulgar minds which constitute the majority. Such a success is mere street

juggling.

"In short, the compositions of Rossini, in whom this music is personified,

with those of the writers who are more or less of his school, to me seem

worthy at best to collect a crowd in the street round a grinding organ, as

an accompaniment to the capers of a puppet show. I even prefer French

music, and I can say no more. Long live German music!" cried he, "when it

is tuneful," he added in a low voice.

This sally was the upshot of a long preliminary discussion, in which, for

more than a quarter of an hour, Andrea had divagated in the upper sphere of

metaphysics, with the ease of a somnambulist walking over the roofs.

Gambara, keenly interested in all this transcendentalism, had not lost a

word; he took up his parable as soon as Andrea seemed to have ended, and a

little stir of revived attention was evident among the guests, of whom

several had been about to leave.

"You attack the Italian school with much vigor," said Gambara, somewhat

warmed to his work by the champagne, "and, for my part, you are very

welcome. I, thank God, stand outside this more or less melodic frippery.

Still, as a man of the world, you are too ungrateful to the classic land

whence Germany and France derived their first teaching. While the

compositions of Carissimi, Cavalli, Scarlatti, and Rossi were being played

throughout Italy, the violin players of the Paris opera house enjoyed the

singular privilege of being allowed to play in gloves. Lulli, who extended

the realm of harmony, and was the first to classify discords, on arriving

in France found but two men--a cook and a mason--whose voice and

intelligence were equal to performing his music; he made a tenor of the

former, and transformed the latter into a bass. At that time Germany had no

musician excepting Sebastian Bach.--But you, monsieur, though you are so

young," Gambara added, in the humble tone of a man who expects to find his

remarks received with scorn or ill-nature, "must have given much time to

the study of these high matters of art; you could not otherwise explain

them so clearly."

This word made many of the hearers smile, for they had understood nothing

of the fine distinctions drawn by Andrea. Giardini, indeed, convinced that

the Count had been talking mere rhodomontade, nudged him with a laugh in

his sleeve, as at a good joke in which he flattered himself that he was a

partner.

"There is a great deal that strikes me as very true in all you have said,"

Gambara went on; "but be careful. Your argument, while reflecting on

Italian sensuality, seems to me to lean towards German idealism, which is a

no less fatal heresy. If men of imagination and good sense, like you,

desert one camp only to join the other; if they cannot keep to the happy

medium between two forms of extravagance, we shall always be exposed to the

satire of the sophists, who deny all progress, who compare the genius of

man to this table-cloth, which, being too short to cover the whole of

Signor Giardini's table, decks one end at the expense of the other."

Giardini bounded in his seat as if he had been stung by a horse-fly, but

swift reflection restored him to his dignity as a host; he looked up to

heaven and again nudged the Count, who was beginning to think the cook more

crazy than Gambara.

This serious and pious way of speaking of art interested the Milanese

extremely. Seated between these two distracted brains, one so noble and the

other so common, and making game of each other to the great entertainment

of the crowd, there was a moment when the Count found himself wavering

between the sublime and its parody, the farcical extremes of human life.

Ignoring the chain of incredible events which had brought them to this

smoky den, he believed himself to be the plaything of some strange

hallucination, and thought of Gambara and Giardini as two abstractions.

Meanwhile, after a last piece of buffoonery from the deaf conductor in

reply to Gambara, the company had broken up laughing loudly. Giardini went

off to make coffee, which he begged the select few to accept, and his wife

cleared the table. The Count, sitting near the stove between Marianna and

Gambara, was in the very position which the mad musician thought most

desirable, with sensuousness on one side and idealism on the other.

Gambara, finding himself for the first time in the society of a man who did

not laugh at him to his face, soon diverged from generalities to talk of

himself, of his life, his work, and the musical regeneration of which he

believed himself to be the Messiah.

"Listen," said he, "you who so far have not insulted me, I will tell you

the story of my life; not to make a boast of my perseverance, which is no

virtue of mine, but to the greater glory of Him who has given me His

strength. You seem kind and pious; if you do not believe in me at least you

will pity me. Pity is human; faith comes from God."

Andrea turned and drew back under his chair the foot that had been seeking

that of the fair Marianna, fixing his eyes on her while listening to

Gambara.

* * * * *

"I was born at Cremona, the son of an instrument maker, a fairly good

performer and an even better composer," the musician began. "Thus at an

early age I had mastered the laws of musical construction in its twofold

aspects, the material and the spiritual; and as an inquisitive child I

observed many things which subsequently recurred to the mind of the

full-grown man.

"The French turned us out of our own home--my father and me. We were ruined

by the war. Thus, at the age of ten I entered on the wandering life to

which most men have been condemned whose brains were busy with innovations,

whether in art, science, or politics. Fate, or the instincts of their mind

which cannot fit into the compartments where the trading class sit,

providentially guides them to the spots where they may find teaching. Led

by my passion for music I wandered throughout Italy from theatre to

theatre, living on very little, as men can live there. Sometimes I played

the bass in an orchestra, sometimes I was on the boards in the chorus,

sometimes under them with the carpenters. Thus I learned every kind of

musical effect, studying the tones of instruments and of the human voice,

wherein they differed and how they harmonized, listening to the score and

applying the rules taught me by my father.

"It was hungry work, in a land where the sun always shines, where art is

all pervading, but where there is no pay for the artist, since Rome is but

nominally the Sovereign of the Christian world. Sometimes made welcome,

sometimes scouted for my poverty, I never lost courage. I heard a voice

within me promising me fame.

"Music seemed to me in its infancy, and I think so still. All that is left

to us of musical effort before the seventeenth century, proves to me that

early musicians knew melody only; they were ignorant of harmony and its

immense resources. Music is at once a science and an art. It is rooted in

physics and mathematics, hence it is a science; inspiration makes it an

art, unconsciously utilizing the theorems of science. It is founded in

physics by the very nature of the matter it works on. Sound is air in

motion. The air is formed of constituents which, in us, no doubt, meet with

analogous elements that respond to them, sympathize, and magnify them by

the power of the mind. Thus the air must include a vast variety of

molecules of various degrees of elasticity, and capable of vibrating in as

many different periods as there are tones from all kinds of sonorous

bodies; and these molecules, set in motion by the musician and falling on

our ear, answer to our ideas, according to each man's temperament. I myself

believe that sound is identical in its nature with light. Sound is light,

perceived under another form; each acts through vibrations to which man is

sensitive and which he transforms, in the nervous centres, into ideas.

"Music, like painting, makes use of materials which have the property of

liberating this or that property from the surrounding medium and so

suggesting an image. The instruments in music perform this part, as color

does in painting. And whereas each sound produced by a sonorous body is

invariably allied with its major third and fifth, whereas it acts on grains

of fine sand lying on stretched parchment so as to distribute them in

geometrical figures that are always the same, according to the

pitch,--quite regular when the combination is a true chord, and indefinite

when the sounds are dissonant,--I say that music is an art conceived in the

very bowels of nature.

"Music is subject to physical and mathematical laws. Physical laws are but

little known, mathematics are well understood; and it is since their

relations have been studied, that the harmony has been created to which we

owe the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Rossini, grand geniuses,

whose music is undoubtedly nearer to perfection than that of their

precursors, though their genius, too, is unquestionable. The old masters

could sing, but they had not art and science at their command,--a noble

alliance which enables us to merge into one the finest melody and the power

of harmony.

"Now, if a knowledge of mathematical laws gave us these four great

musicians, what may we not attain to if we can discover the physical laws

in virtue of which--grasp this clearly--we may collect, in larger or

smaller quantities, according to the proportions we may require, an

ethereal substance diffused in the atmosphere which is the medium alike of

music and of light, of the phenomena of vegetation and of animal life! Do

you follow me? Those new laws would arm the composer with new powers by

supplying him with instruments superior to those now in use, and perhaps

with a potency of harmony immense as compared with that now at his command.

If every modified shade of sound answers to a force, that must be known to

enable us to combine all these forces in accordance with their true laws.

"Composers work with substances of which they know nothing. Why should a

brass and a wooden instrument--a bassoon and horn--have so little identity

of tone, when they act on the same matter, the constituent gases of the

air? Their differences proceed from some displacement of those

constituents, from the way they act on the elements which are their

affinity and which they return, modified by some occult and unknown

process. If we knew what the process was, science and art would both be the

gainers. Whatever extends science enhances art.

"Well, these are the discoveries I have guessed and made. Yes," said

Gambara, with increasing vehemence, "hitherto men have noted effects rather

than causes. If they could but master the causes, music would be the

greatest of the arts. Is it not the one which strikes deepest to the soul?

You see in painting no more than it shows you; in poetry you have only what

the poet says; music goes far beyond this. Does it not form your taste, and

rouse dormant memories? In a concert-room there may be a thousand souls; a

strain is flung out from Pasta's throat, the execution worthily answering

to the ideas that flashed through Rossini's mind as he wrote the air. That

phrase of Rossini's, transmitted to those attentive souls, is worked out in

so many different poems. To one it presents a woman long dreamed of; to

another, some distant shore where he wandered long ago. It rises up before

him with its drooping willows, its clear waters, and the hopes that then

played under its leafy arbors. One woman is reminded of the myriad feelings

that tortured her during an hour of jealousy, while another thinks of the

unsatisfied cravings of her heart, and paints in the glowing hues of a

dream an ideal lover, to whom she abandons herself with the rapture of the

woman in the Roman mosaic who embraces a chimera; yet a third is thinking

that this very evening some hoped-for joy is to be hers, and rushes by

anticipation into the tide of happiness, its dashing waves breaking against

her burning bosom. Music alone has this power of throwing us back on

ourselves; the other arts give us infinite pleasure. But I am digressing.

"These were my first ideas, vague indeed; for an inventor at the beginning

only catches glimpses of the dawn, as it were. So I kept these glorious

ideas at the bottom of my knapsack, and they gave me spirit to eat the dry

crust I often dipped in the water of a spring. I worked, I composed airs,

and, after playing them on any instrument that came to hand, I went off

again on foot across Italy. Finally, at the age of two-and-twenty, I

settled in Venice, where for the first time I enjoyed rest and found myself

in a decent position. I there made the acquaintance of a Venetian nobleman

who liked my ideas, who encouraged me in my investigations, and who got me

employment at the Venice theatre.

"Living was cheap, lodging inexpensive. I had a room in that Capello

palace from which the famous Bianca came forth one evening to become a

Grand Duchess of Tuscany. And I would dream that my unrecognized fame would

also emerge from thence one day to be crowned.

"I spent my evenings at the theatre and my days in work. Then came

disaster. The performance of an opera in which I had experimented, trying

my music, was a failure. No one understood my score for the _Martiri_. Set

Beethoven before the Italians and they are out of their depth. No one had

patience enough to wait for the effect to be produced by the different

motives given out by each instrument, which were all at last to combine in

a grand _ensemble_.

"I had built some hopes on the success of the _Martiri_, for we votaries of

the blue divinity Hope always discount results. When a man believes himself

destined to do great things, it is hard not to fancy them achieved; the

bushel always has some cracks through which the light shines.

"My wife's family lodged in the same house, and the hope of winning

Marianna, who often smiled at me from her window, had done much to

encourage my efforts. I now fell into the deepest melancholy as I sounded

the depths of the gulf I had dropped into; for I foresaw plainly a life of

poverty, a perpetual struggle in which love must die. Marianna acted as

genius does; she jumped across every obstacle, both feet at once. I will

not speak of the little happiness which shed its gilding on the beginning

of my misfortunes. Dismayed at my failure, I decided that Italy was not

intelligent enough, and too much sunk in the dull round of routine to

accept the innovations I conceived of; so I thought of going to Germany.

"I traveled thither by way of Hungary, listening to the myriad voices of

nature, and trying to reproduce that sublime harmony by the help of

instruments which I constructed or altered for the purpose. These

experiments involved me in vast expenses which had soon exhausted my

savings. And yet those were our golden days. In Germany I was appreciated.

There has been nothing in my life more glorious than that time. I can think

of nothing to compare with the vehement joys I found by the side of

Marianna, whose beauty was then of really heavenly radiance and splendor.

In short, I was happy.

"During that period of weakness I more than once expressed my passion in

the language of earthly harmony. I even wrote some of those airs, just like

geometrical patterns, which are so much admired in the world of fashion

that you move in. But as soon as I made a little way I met with insuperable

obstacles raised by my rivals, all hypercritical or unappreciative.

"I had heard of France as being a country where novelties were favorably

received, and I wanted to get there; my wife had a little money and we came

to Paris. Till then no one had actually laughed in my face; but in this

dreadful city I had to endure that new form of torture, to which abject

poverty ere long added its bitter sufferings. Reduced to lodging in this

mephitic quarter, for many months we have lived exclusively on Marianna's

sewing, she having found employment for her needle in working for the

unhappy prostitutes who make this street their hunting ground. Marianna

assures me that among those poor creatures she has met with such

consideration and generosity as I, for my part, ascribe to the ascendency

of virtue so pure that even vice is compelled to respect it."

"Hope on," said Andrea. "Perhaps you have reached the end of your trials.

And while waiting for the time when my endeavor, seconding yours, shall set

your labors in a true light, allow me, as a fellow-countryman and an artist

like yourself, to offer you some little advance on the undoubted success of

your score."

"All that has to do with matters of material existence I leave to my wife,"

replied Gambara. "She will decide as to what we may accept without a blush

from so thorough a gentleman as you seem to be. For my part,--and it is

long since I have allowed myself to indulge such full confidences,--I must

now ask you to allow me to leave you. I see a melody beckoning to me,

dancing and floating before me, bare and quivering, like a girl entreating

her lover for her clothes which he has hidden. Good-night. I must go and

dress my mistress. My wife I leave with you."

He hurried away, as a man who blames himself for the loss of valuable time;

and Marianna, somewhat embarrassed, prepared to follow him.

Andrea dared not detain her.

Giardini came to the rescue.

"But you heard, signora," said he. "Your husband has left you to settle

some little matters with the Signor Conte."

Marianna sat down again, but without raising her eyes to Andrea, who

hesitated before speaking.

"And will not Signor Gambara's confidence entitle me to his wife's?" he

said in agitated tones. "Can the fair Marianna refuse to tell me the story

of her life?"

"My life!" said Marianna. "It is the life of the ivy. If you wish to know

the story of my heart, you must suppose me equally destitute of pride and

of modesty if you can ask me to tell it after what you have just heard."

"Of whom, then, can I ask it?" cried the Count, in whom passion was

blinding his wits.

"Of yourself," replied Marianna. "Either you understand me by this time, or

you never will. Try to ask yourself."

"I will, but you must listen. And this hand, which I am holding, is to lie

in mine as long as my narrative is truthful."

"I am listening," said Marianna.

"A woman's life begins with her first passion," said Andrea. "And my dear

Marianna began to live only on the day when she first saw Paolo Gambara.

She needed some deep passion to feed upon, and, above all, some interesting

weakness to shelter and uphold. The beautiful woman's nature with which she

is endowed is perhaps not so truly passion as maternal love.

"You sigh, Marianna? I have touched one of the aching wounds in your heart.

It was a noble part for you to play, so young as you were,--that of

protectress to a noble but wandering intellect. You said to yourself:

'Paolo will be my genius; I shall be his common sense; between us we shall

be that almost divine being called an angel,--the sublime creature that

enjoys and understands, reason never stifling love.'

"And then, in the first impetus of youth, you heard the thousand voices of

nature which the poet longed to reproduce. Enthusiasm clutched you when

Paolo spread before you the treasures of poetry, while seeking to embody

them in the sublime but restricted language of music; you admired him when

delirious rapture carried him up and away from you, for you liked to

believe that all this devious energy would at last come down and alight as

love. But you knew not the tyrannous and jealous despotism of the ideal

over the minds that fall in love with it. Gambara, before meeting you, had

given himself over to the haughty and overbearing mistress, with whom you

have struggled for him to this day.

"Once, for an instant, you had a vision of happiness. Paolo, tumbling from

the lofty sphere where his spirit was constantly soaring, was amazed to

find reality so sweet; you fancied that his madness would be lulled in the

arms of love. But before long Music again clutched her prey. The dazzling

mirage which had cheated you into the joys of reciprocal love made the

lonely path on which you had started look more desolate and barren.

"In the tale your husband has just told me, I could read, as plainly as in

the contrast between your looks and his, all the painful secrets of that

ill-assorted union, in which you have accepted the sufferer's part. Though

your conduct has been unfailingly heroical, though your firmness has never

once given way in the exercise of your painful duties, perhaps, in the

silence of lonely nights, the heart that at this moment is beating so

wildly in your breast, may, from time to time, have rebelled. Your

husband's superiority was in itself your worst torment. If he had been less

noble, less single-minded, you might have deserted him; but his virtues

upheld yours; you wondered, perhaps, whether his heroism or your own would

be the first to give way.

"You clung to your really magnanimous task as Paolo clung to his chimera.

If you had had nothing but a devotion to duty to guide and sustain you,

triumph might have seemed easier; you would only have had to crush your

heart, and transfer your life into the world of abstractions; religion

would have absorbed all else, and you would have lived for an idea, like

those saintly women who kill all the instincts of nature at the foot of the

altar. But the all-pervading charm of Paolo, the loftiness of his mind, his

rare and touching proofs of tenderness, constantly drag you down from that

ideal realm where virtue would fain maintain you; they perennially revive

in you the energies you have exhausted in contending with the phantom of

love. You never suspected this! The faintest glimmer of hope led you on in

pursuit of the sweet vision.

"At last the disappointments of many years have undermined your

patience,--an angel would have lost it long since,--and now the apparition

so long pursued is no more than a shade without substance. Madness that is

so nearly allied to genius can know no cure in this world. When this

thought first struck you, you looked back on your past youth, sacrificed,

if not wasted; you then bitterly discerned the blunder of nature that had

given you a father when you looked for a husband. You asked yourself

whether you had not gone beyond the duty of a wife in keeping yourself

wholly for a man who was bound up in his science. Marianna, leave your hand

in mine; all I have said is true. And you looked about you--but now you

were in Paris, not in Italy, where men know how to love----"

"Oh! Let me finish the tale," cried Marianna. "I would rather say things

myself. I will be honest; I feel that I am speaking to my truest friend.

Yes, I was in Paris when all you have expressed so clearly took place in my

mind; but when I saw you I was saved, for I had never met with the love I

had dreamed of from my childhood. My poor dress and my dwelling-place had

hidden me from the eyes of men of your class. A few young men, whose

position did not allow of their insulting me, were all the more

intolerable for the levity with which they treated me. Some made game of my

husband, as if he were merely a ridiculous old man; others basely tried to

win his good graces to betray me; one and all talked of getting me away

from him, and none understood the devotion I feel for a soul that is so far

away from us only because it is so near heaven, for that friend, that

brother, whose handmaid I will always be.

"You alone understood, did you not? the tie that binds me to him. Tell me

that you feel a sincere and disinterested regard for my Paolo----"

"I gladly accept your praises," Andrea interrupted; "but go no further; do

not compel me to contradict you. I love you, Marianna, as we love in the

beautiful country where we both were born. I love you with all my soul and

with all my strength; but before offering you that love, I will be worthy

of yours. I will make a last attempt to give back to you the man you have

loved so long and will love forever. Till success or defeat is certain,

accept without any shame the modest ease I can give you both. We will go

to-morrow and choose a place where he may live.

"Have you such regard for me as will allow you to make me the partner in

your guardianship?"

Marianna, surprised at such magnanimity, held out her hand to the Count,

who went away, trying to evade the civilities of Giardini and his wife.

* * * * *

On the following day Giardini took the Count up to the room where the

Gambaras lodged. Though Marianna fully knew her lover's noble soul,--for

there are natures which quickly enter into each other's spirit,--Marianna

was too good a housewife not to betray her annoyance at receiving such a

fine gentleman in so humble a room. Everything was exquisitely clean. She

had spent the morning in dusting her motley furniture, the handiwork of

Signor Giardini, who had put it together, at odd moments of leisure, out of

the fragments of the instruments rejected by Gambara.

Andrea had never seen anything quite so crazy. To keep a decent countenance

he turned away from a grotesque bed, contrived by the ingenious cook in the

case of an old harpsichord, and looked at Marianna's narrow couch, of which

the single mattress was covered with a white muslin counterpane, a

circumstance that gave rise in his mind to some sad but sweet thoughts.

He wished to speak of his plans and of his morning's work; but Gambara, in

his enthusiasm, believing that he had at last met with a willing listener,

took possession of him, and compelled him to listen to the opera he had

written for Paris.

"In the first place, monsieur," said the composer, "allow me to explain the

subject in a few words. Here, the hearers receiving a musical impression do

not work it out in themselves, as religion bids us work out the texts of

Scripture in prayer. Hence it is very difficult to make them understand

that there is in nature an eternal melody, exquisitely sweet, a perfect

harmony, disturbed only by revolutions independent of the divine will, as

passions are uncontrolled by the will of men.

"I, therefore, had to seek a vast framework in which effect and cause might

both be included; for the aim of my music is to give a picture of the life

of nations from the loftiest point of view. My opera, for which I myself

wrote the _libretto_, for a poet would never have fully developed the

subject, is the life of Mahomet,--a figure in whom the magic of Sabaeanism

combined with the Oriental poetry of the Hebrew Scriptures to result in one

of the greatest human epics, the Arab dominion. Mahomet certainly derived

from the Hebrews the idea of a despotic government, and from the religion

of the shepherd tribes or Sabaeans the spirit of expansion which created the

splendid empire of the Khalifs. His destiny was stamped on him in his

birth, for his father was a heathen and his mother a Jewess. Ah! my dear

Count, to be a great musician a man must be very learned. Without knowledge

he can get no local color and put no ideas into his music. The composer who

sings for singing's sake is an artisan, not an artist.

"This magnificent opera is the continuation of the great work I projected.

My first opera was called _The Martyrs_, and I intend to write a third on

Jerusalem delivered. You perceive the beauty of this trilogy and what a

variety of motives it offers,--the Martyrs, Mahomet, the Deliverance of

Jerusalem: the God of the West, the God of the East, and the struggle of

their worshipers over a tomb. But we will not dwell on my fame, now for

ever lost.

"This is the argument of my opera." He paused. "The first act," he went on,

"shows Mahomet as a porter to Kadijah, a rich widow with whom his uncle

placed him. He is in love and ambitious. Driven from Mecca, he escapes to

Medina, and dates his era from his flight, the _Hegira_. In the second act

he is a Prophet, founding a militant religion. In the third, disgusted with

all things, having exhausted life, Mahomet conceals the manner of his death

in the hope of being regarded as a god,--last effort of human pride.

"Now you shall judge of my way of expressing in sound a great idea, for

which poetry could find no adequate expression in words."

Gambara sat down to the piano with an absorbed gaze, and his wife brought

him the mass of papers forming his score; but he did not open them.

"The whole opera," said he, "is founded on a bass, as on a fruitful soil.

Mahomet was to have a majestic bass voice, and his wife necessarily had a

contralto. Kadijah was quite old--twenty! Attention! This is the overture.

It begins with an _andante_ in C major, triple time. Do you hear the

sadness of the ambitious man who is not satisfied with love? Then, through

his lamentation, by a transition to the key of E flat, _allegro_, common

time, we hear the cries of the epileptic lover, his fury and certain

warlike phrases, for the mighty scimitar of the Khalifs begins to gleam

before him. The charms of the one and only woman give him the impulse to

multiplied loves which strikes us in _Don Giovanni_. Now, as you hear these

themes, do you not catch a glimpse of Mahomet's Paradise?

"And next we have a _cantabile_ (A flat major, six-eight time), that might

expand the soul that is least susceptible to music. Kadijah has understood

Mahomet! Then Kadijah announces to the populace the Prophet's interviews

with the Angel Gabriel (_maestoso sostenuto_ in F major). The magistrates

and priests, power and religion, feeling themselves attacked by the

innovator, as Christ and Socrates also attacked effete or worn-out powers

and religions, persecute Mahomet and drive him out of Mecca (_stretto_ in C

major). Then comes my beautiful dominant (G major, common time). Arabia now

harkens to the Prophet; horsemen arrive (G major, E flat, B flat, G minor,

and still common time). The mass of men gathers like an avalanche; the

false Prophet has begun on a tribe the work he will achieve over a world (G

major).

"He promises the Arabs universal dominion, and they believe him because he

is inspired. The _crescendo_ beings (still in the dominant). Here come some

flourishes (in C major) from the brass, founded on the harmony, but

strongly marked, and asserting themselves as an expression of the first

triumphs. Medina has gone over to the Prophet, and the whole army marches

on Mecca (an explosion of sound in C major). The whole power of the

orchestra is worked up like a conflagration; every instrument is employed;

it is a torrent of harmony.

"Suddenly the _tutti_ is interrupted by a flowing air (on the minor third).

You hear the last strain of devoted love. The woman who had upheld the

great man dies concealing her despair, dies at the moment of triumph for

him in whom love has become too overbearing to be content with one woman;

and she worships him enough to sacrifice herself to the greatness of the

man who is killing her. What a blaze of love!

"Then the Desert rises to overrun the world (back to C major). The whole

strength of the orchestra comes in again, collected in a tremendous quintet

grounded on the fundamental bass,--and he is dying! Mahomet is

world-weary; he has exhausted everything. Now he craves to die a god.

Arabia, in fact, worships and prays to him, and we return to the first

melancholy strain (C minor) to which the curtain rose.

"Now, do you not discern," said Gambara, ceasing to play, and turning to

the Count, "in this picturesque and vivid music--abrupt, grotesque, or

melancholy, but always grand--the complete expression of the life of an

epileptic, mad for enjoyment, unable to read or write, using all his

defects as stepping-stones, turning every blunder and disaster into a

triumph? Did not you feel a sense of his fascination exerted over a greedy

and lustful race, in this overture, which is an epitome of the opera?"

At first calm and stern, the maestro's face, in which Andrea had been

trying to read the ideas he was uttering in inspired tones, though the

chaotic flood of notes afforded no clue to them, had by degrees glowed with

fire and assumed an impassioned force that infected Marianna and the cook.

Marianna, too, deeply affected by certain passages in which she recognized

a picture of her own position, could not conceal the expression of her eyes

from Andrea.

Gambara wiped his brow, and shot a glance at the ceiling of such fierce

energy that he seemed to pierce it and soar to the very skies.

"You have seen the vestibule," said he; "we will now enter the palace. The

opera begins:--

"Act I. Mahomet, alone on the stage, begins with an air (F natural, common

time), interrupted by a chorus of camel-drivers gathered round a well at

the back of the stage (they sing in contrary time--twelve-eight). What

majestic woe! It will appeal to the most frivolous women, piercing to their

inmost nerves if they have no heart. Is not this the very expression of

crushed genius?"

To Andrea's great astonishment,--for Marianna was accustomed to

it,--Gambara contracted his larynx to such a pitch that the only sound was

a stifled cry not unlike the bark of a watch-dog that has lost its voice. A

slight foam came to the composer's lips and made Andrea shudder.

"His wife appears (A minor). Such a magnificent duet! In this number I have

shown that Mahomet has the will and his wife the brains. Kadijah announces

that she is about to devote herself to an enterprise that will rob her of

her young husband's love. Mahomet means to conquer the world; this his wife

has guessed, and she supports him by persuading the people of Mecca that

her husband's attacks of epilepsy are the effect of his intercourse with

the angels (chorus of the first followers of Mahomet, who come to promise

him their aid, C sharp minor, _sotto voce_). Mahomet goes off to seek the

Angel Gabriel (_recitative_ in F major). His wife encourages the disciples

(_aria_, interrupted by the chorus; gusts of chanting support Kadijah's

broad and majestic air, A major).

"Abdallah, the father of Ayesha,--the only maiden Mahomet had found really

innocent, wherefore he changed the name of Abdallah to Abubekir (the father

of the virgin),--comes forward with Ayesha and sings against the chorus, in

strains which rise above the other voices and supplement the air sung by

Kadijah in contrapuntal treatment. Omar, the father of another maiden who

is to be Mahomet's concubine, follows Abubekir's example; he and his

daughter join in to form a quintette. The girl Ayesha is first soprano,

Hafsa second soprano; Abubekir is a bass, Omar a baritone.

"Mahomet returns, inspired. He sings his first _bravura_ air, the beginning

of the _finale_ (E major), promising the empire of the world to those who

believe in him. The Prophet, seeing the two damsels, then, by a gentle

transition (from B major to G major), addresses them in amorous tones. Ali,

Mahomet's cousin, and Khaled, his greatest general, both tenors, now arrive

and announce the persecution; the magistrates, the military, and the

authorities have all proscribed the Prophet (_recitative_). Mahomet

declares in an invocation (in C) that the Angel Gabriel is on his side, and

points to a pigeon that is seen flying away. The chorus of believers

responds in accents of devotion (on a modulation to B major). The soldiers,

magistrates, and officials then come on (_tempo di marcia_, common time, B

major). A chorus in two divisions (_stretto_ in E major). Mahomet yields to

the storm (in a descending phrase of diminished sevenths) and makes his

escape. The fierce and gloomy tone of this _finale_ is relieved by the

phrases given to the three women who foretell Mahomet's triumph, and these

motives are further developed in the third act in the scene where Mahomet

is enjoying his splendor."

The tears rose to Gambara's eyes, and it was only upon controlling his

emotion that he went on.

"Act II. The religion is now established. The Arabs are guarding the

Prophet's tent while he speaks with God (chorus in A minor). Mahomet

appears (a prayer in F). What a majestic and noble strain is this that

forms the bass of the voices, in which I have perhaps enlarged the borders

of melody. It was needful to express the wonderful energy of this great

human movement which created an architecture, a music, a poetry of its own,

a costume and manners. As you listen, you are walking under the arcades of

the Generalife, the carved vaults of the Alhambra. The runs and trills

depict that delicate mauresque decoration, and the gallant and valorous

religion which was destined to wage war against the gallant and valorous

chivalry of Christendom. A few brass instruments awake in the orchestra,

announcing the Prophet's first triumph (in a broken _cadenza_). The Arabs

adore the Prophet (E flat major), and Khaled, Amru, and Ali arrive (_tempo

di marcia_). The armies of the faithful have taken many towns and

subjugated the three Arabias. Such a grand recitative!--Mahomet rewards his

generals by presenting them with maidens.

"And here," said Gambara, sadly, "there is one of those wretched ballets,

which interrupt the thread of the finest musical tragedies! But Mahomet

elevates it once more by his great prophetic scene, which poor Monsieur

Voltaire begins with these words:

"Arabia's time at last has come!

"He is interrupted by a chorus of triumphant Arabs (twelve-eight time,

_accelerando_). The tribes arrive in crowds; the horns and brass reappear

in the orchestra. General rejoicings ensue, all the voices joining in by

degrees, and Mahomet announces polygamy. In the midst of all this triumph,

the woman who has been of such faithful service to Mahomet sings a

magnificent air (in B major). 'And I,' says she, 'am I no longer loved?'

'We must part. Thou art but a woman, and I am a Prophet; I may still have

slaves but no equal.' Just listen to this duet (G sharp minor). What

anguish! The woman understands the greatness her hands have built up; she

loves Mahomet well enough to sacrifice herself to his glory; she worships

him as a god, without criticising him,--without murmuring. Poor woman! His

first dupe and his first victim!

"What a subject for the _finale_ (in B major) is her grief, brought out in

such sombre hues against the acclamations of the chorus, and mingling with

Mahomet's tones as he throws his wife aside as a tool of no further use,

still showing her that he can never forget her! What fireworks of triumph!

what a rush of glad and rippling song go up from the two young voices

(first and second soprano) of Ayesha and Hafsa, supported by Ali and his

wife, by Omar and Abubekir! Weep!--rejoice!--Triumph and tears! Such is

life."

Marianna could not control her tears, and Andrea was so deeply moved that

his eyes were moist. The Neapolitan cook was startled by the magnetic

influence of the ideas expressed by Gambara's convulsive accents.

The composer looked round, saw the group, and smiled.

"At last you understand me!" said he.

No conqueror, led in pomp to the Capitol under the purple beams of glory,

as the crown was placed on his head amid the acclamations of a nation, ever

wore such an expression. The composer's face was radiant, like that of a

holy martyr. No one dispelled the error. A terrible smile parted Marianna's

lips. The Count was appalled by the guilelessness of this mania.

"Act III," said the enchanted musician, reseating himself at the piano.

"(_Andantino, solo._) Mahomet in his seraglio, surrounded by women, but not

happy. Quartette of Houris (A major). What pompous harmony, what trills as

of ecstatic nightingales! Modulation (into F sharp minor). The theme is

stated (on the dominant E and repeated in F major). Here every delight is

grouped and expressed to give effect to the contrast of the gloomy _finale_

of the first act. After the dancing, Mahomet rises and sings a grand

_bravura_ air (in F minor), repelling the perfect and devoted love of his

first wife, but confessing himself conquered by polygamy. Never has a

musician had so fine a subject! The orchestra and the chorus of female

voices express the joys of the Houris, while Mahomet reverts to the

melancholy strain of the opening. Where is Beethoven," cried Gambara, "to

appreciate this prodigious reaction of my opera on itself? How completely

it all rests on the bass.

"It is thus that Beethoven composed his E minor symphony. But his heroic

work is purely instrumental, whereas here, my heroic phrase is worked out

on a sextette of the finest human voices, and a chorus of the faithful on

guard at the door of the sacred dwelling. I have every resource of melody

and harmony at my command, an orchestra and voices. Listen to the utterance

of all these phases of human life, rich and poor;--battle, triumph, and

exhaustion!

"Ali arrives, the Koran prevails in every province (duet in D minor).

Mahomet places himself in the hands of his two fathers-in-law; he will

abdicate his rule and die in retirement to consolidate his work. A

magnificent sextette (B flat major). He takes leave of all (solo in F

natural). His two fathers-in-law, constituted his vicars or Khalifs, appeal

to the people. A great triumphal march, and a prayer by all the Arabs

kneeling before the sacred house, the Kasbah, from which a pigeon is seen

to fly away (the same key). This prayer, sung by sixty voices and led by

the women (in B flat), crowns the stupendous work expressive of the life

of nations and of man. Here you have every emotion, human and divine."

Andrea gazed at Gambara in blank amazement. Though at first he had been

struck by the terrible irony of the situation,--this man expressing the

feelings of Mahomet's wife without discovering them in Marianna,--the

husband's hallucination was as nothing compared with the composer's. There

was no hint even of a poetical or musical idea in the hideous cacophony

with which he had deluged their ears; the first principles of harmony, the

most elementary rules of composition, were absolutely alien to this chaotic

structure. Instead of the scientifically compacted music which Gambara

described, his fingers produced sequences of fifths, sevenths, and octaves,

of major thirds, progressions of fourths with no supporting bass,--a medley

of discordant sounds struck out haphazard in such a way as to be

excruciating to the least sensitive ear. It is difficult to give any idea

of the grotesque performance. New words would be needed to describe this

impossible music.

Andrea, painfully affected by this worthy man's madness, colored, and stole

a glance at Marianna; while she, turning pale and looking down, could not

restrain her tears. In the midst of this chaos of notes, Gambara had every

now and then given vent to his rapture in exclamations of delight. He had

closed his eyes in ecstasy; had smiled at his piano; had looked at it with

a frown; put out his tongue at it after the fashion of the inspired

performer,--in short, was quite intoxicated with the poetry that filled his

brain, and that he had vainly striven to utter. The strange discords that

clashed under his fingers had obviously sounded in his ears like celestial

harmonies.

A deaf man, seeing the inspired gaze of his blue eyes open on another

world, the rosy glow that tinged his cheeks, and, above all, the heavenly

serenity which ecstasy stamped on his proud and noble countenance, would

have supposed that he was looking on at the improvisation of a really great

artist. The illusion would have been all the more natural because the

performance of this mad music required immense executive skill to achieve

such fingering. Gambara must have worked at it for years.

Nor were his hands alone employed; his feet were constantly at work with

complicated pedaling; his body swayed to and fro; the perspiration poured

down his face while he toiled to produce a great _crescendo_ with the

feeble means the thankless instrument placed at his command. He stamped,

puffed, shouted; his fingers were as swift as the serpent's double tongue;

and finally, at the last crash on the keys, he fell back in his chair,

resting his head on the top of it.

"_Per Bacco!_ I am quite stunned," said the Count as he left the house. "A

child dancing on the keyboard would make better music."

"Certainly mere chance could not more successfully avoid hitting two notes

in concord than that possessed creature has done during the past hour,"

said Giardini.

"How is it that the regular beauty of Marianna's features is not spoiled by

incessantly hearing such a hideous medley?" said the Count to himself.

"Marianna will certainly grow ugly."

"Signor, she must be saved from that," cried Giardini.

"Yes," said Andrea. "I have thought of that. Still, to be sure that my

plans are not based on error, I must confirm my doubts by another

experiment. I will return and examine the instruments he has invented.

To-morrow, after dinner, we will have a little supper. I will send in some

wine and little dishes."

The cook bowed.

Andrea spent the following day in superintending the arrangement of the

rooms where he meant to install the artist in a humble home.

In the evening the Count made his appearance, and found the wine, according

to his instructions, set out with some care by Marianna and Giardini.

Gambara proudly exhibited the little drums, on which lay the powder by

means of which he made his observations on the pitch and quality of the

sounds emitted by his instruments.

"You see," said he, "by what simple means I can prove the most important

propositions. Acoustics thus can show me the analogous effects of sound on

every object of its impact. All harmonies start from a common centre and

preserve the closest relations among themselves; or rather, harmony, like

light, is decomposable by our art as a ray is by a prism."

He then displayed the instruments constructed in accordance with his laws,

explaining the changes he had introduced into their constitution. And

finally he announced that to conclude this preliminary inspection, which

could only satisfy a superficial curiosity, he would perform on an

instrument that contained all the elements of a complete orchestra, and

which he called a _Panharmonicon_.

"If it is the machine in that huge case, which brings down on us the

complaints of the neighborhood whenever you work at it, you will not play

on it long," said Giardini. "The police will interfere. Remember that!"

"If that poor idiot stays in the room," said Gambara in a whisper to the

Count, "I cannot possibly play."

Andrea dismissed the cook, promising a handsome reward if he would keep

watch outside and hinder the neighbors or the police from interfering.

Giardini, who had not stinted himself while helping Gambara to wine, was

quite willing.

Gambara, without being drunk, was in the condition when every power of the

brain is over-wrought; when the walls of the room are transparent; when the

garret has no roof, and the soul soars in the empyrean of spirits.

Marianna, with some little difficulty, removed the covers from an

instrument as large as a grand piano, but with an upper case added. This

strange-looking instrument, besides this second body and its keyboard,

supported the openings or bells of various wind instruments and the closed

funnels of a few organ pipes.

"Will you play me the prayer you say is so fine at the end of your opera?"

said the Count.