A young man has forsaken his natal city in the depths of one of the
departments, rather clearly marked by M. Charles Dupin. He felt that
glory of some sort awaited him: suppose that of a painter, a novelist,
a journalist, a poet, a great statesman.
Young Adolphe de Chodoreille—that we may be perfectly understood
—wished to be talked about, to become celebrated, to be somebody. This,
therefore, is addressed to the mass of aspiring individuals brought to
Paris by all sorts of vehicles, whether moral or material, and who rush
upon the city one fine morning with the hydrophobic purpose of
overturning everybody’s reputation, and of building themselves a
pedestal with the ruins they are to make,—until disenchantment follows.
As our intention is to specify this peculiarity so characteristic of
our epoch, let us take from among the various personages the one whom
the author has elsewhere called _A Distinguished Provencal_.
Adolphe has discovered that the most admirable trade is that which
consists in buying a bottle of ink, a bunch of quills, and a ream of
paper, at a stationer’s for twelve francs and a half, and in selling
the two thousand sheets in the ream over again, for something like
fifty thousand francs, after having, of course, written upon each leaf
fifty lines replete with style and imagination.
This problem,—twelve francs and a half metamorphosed into fifty
thousand francs, at the rate of five sous a line—urges numerous
families who might advantageously employ their members in the
retirement of the provinces, to thrust them into the vortex of Paris.
The young man who is the object of this exportation, invariably passes
in his natal town for a man of as much imagination as the most famous
author. He has always studied well, he writes very nice poetry, he is
considered a fellow of parts: he is besides often guilty of a charming
tale published in the local paper, which obtains the admiration of the
department.
His poor parents will never know what their son has come to Paris to
learn at great cost, namely: That it is difficult to be a writer and to
understand the French language short of a dozen years of heculean
labor: That a man must have explored every sphere of social life, to
become a genuine novelist, inasmuch as the novel is the private history
of nations: That the great story-tellers, Aesop, Lucian, Boccaccio,
Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, La Fontaine, Lesage, Sterne, Voltaire,
Walter Scott, the unknown Arabians of the _Thousand and One Nights_,
were all men of genius as well as giants of erudition.
Their Adolphe serves his literary apprenticeship in two or three
coffee-houses, becomes a member of the Society of Men of Letters,
attacks, with or without reason, men of talent who don’t read his
articles, assumes a milder tone on seeing the powerlessness of his
criticisms, offers novelettes to the papers which toss them from one to
the other as if they were shuttlecocks: and, after five or six years of
exercises more or less fatiguing, of dreadful privations which
seriously tax his parents, he attains a certain position.
This position may be described as follows: Thanks to a sort of
reciprocal support extended to each other, and which an ingenious
writer has called “Mutual Admiration,” Adolphe often sees his name
cited among the names of celebrities, either in the prospectuses of the
book-trade, or in the lists of newspapers about to appear. Publishers
print the title of one of his works under the deceitful heading “IN
PRESS,” which might be called the typographical menagerie of bears.[*]
Chodoreille is sometimes mentioned among the promising young men of the
literary world.
[*] A bear (_ours_) is a play which has been refused by a multitude of
theatres, but which is finally represented at a time when some manager
or other feels the need of one. The word has necessarily passed from
the language of the stage into the jargon of journalism, and is applied
to novels which wander the streets in search of a publisher.
For eleven years Adolphe Chodoreille remains in the ranks of the
promising young men: he finally obtains a free entrance to the
theatres, thanks to some dirty work or certain articles of dramatic
criticism: he tries to pass for a good fellow; and as he loses his
illusions respecting glory and the world of Paris, he gets into debt
and his years begin to tell upon him.
A paper which finds itself in a tight place asks him for one of his
bears revised by his friends. This has been retouched and revamped
every five years, so that it smells of the pomatum of each prevailing
and then forgotten fashion. To Adolphe it becomes what the famous cap,
which he was constantly staking, was to Corporal Trim, for during five
years “Anything for a Woman” (the title decided upon) “will be one of
the most entertaining productions of our epoch.”
After eleven years, Chodoreille is regarded as having written some
respectable things, five or six tales published in the dismal
magazines, in ladies’ newspapers, or in works intended for children of
tender age.
As he is a bachelor, and possesses a coat and a pair of black cassimere
trousers, and when he pleases may thus assume the appearance of an
elegant diplomat, and as he is not without a certain intelligent air,
he is admitted to several more or less literary salons: he bows to the
five or six academicians who possess genius, influence or talent, he
visits two or three of our great poets, he allows himself, in
coffee-rooms, to call the two or three justly celebrated women of our
epoch by their Christian names; he is on the best of terms with the
blue stockings of the second grade,—who ought to be called _socks_,—and
he shakes hands and takes glasses of absinthe with the stars of the
smaller newspapers.
Such is the history of every species of ordinary men—men who have been
denied what they call good luck. This good luck is nothing less than
unyielding will, incessant labor, contempt for an easily won celebrity,
immense learning, and that patience which, according to Buffon, is the
whole of genius, but which certainly is the half of it.
You do not yet see any indication of a petty trouble for Caroline. You
imagine that this history of five hundred young men engaged at this
moment in wearing smooth the paving stones of Paris, was written as a
sort of warning to the families of the eighty-six departments of
France: but read these two letters which lately passed between two
girls differently married, and you will see that it was as necessary as
the narrative by which every true melodrama was until lately expected
to open. You will divine the skillful manoeuvres of the Parisian
peacock spreading his tail in the recesses of his native village, and
polishing up, for matrimonial purposes, the rays of his glory, which,
like those of the sun, are only warm and brilliant at a distance.
From Madame Claire de la Roulandiere, nee Jugault, to Madame Adolphe de
Chodoreille, nee Heurtaut.
“VIVIERS.
“You have not yet written to me, and it’s real unkind in you. Don’t you
remember that the happier was to write first and to console her who
remained in the country?
“Since your departure for Paris, I have married Monsieur de la
Roulandiere, the president of the tribunal. You know him, and you can
judge whether I am happy or not, with my heart _saturated_, as it is,
with our ideas. I was not ignorant what my lot would be: I live with
the ex-president, my husband’s uncle, and with my mother-in-law, who
has preserved nothing of the ancient parliamentary society of Aix but
its pride and its severity of manners. I am seldom alone, I never go
out unless accompanied by my mother-in-law or my husband. We receive
the heavy people of the city in the evening. They play whist at two
sous a point, and I listen to conversations of this nature:
“‘Monsieur Vitremont is dead, and leaves two hundred and eighty
thousand francs,’ says the associate judge, a young man of forty-seven,
who is as entertaining as a northwest wind.
“‘Are you quite sure of that?’
“The _that_ refers to the two hundred and eighty thousand francs. A
little judge then holds forth, he runs over the investments, the others
discuss their value, and it is definitely settled that if he has not
left two hundred and eighty thousand, he left something near it.
“Then comes a universal concert of eulogy heaped upon the dead man’s
body, for having kept his bread under lock and key, for having shrewdly
invested his little savings accumulated sou by sou, in order, probably,
that the whole city and those who expect legacies may applaud and
exclaim in admiration, ‘He leaves two hundred and eighty thousand
francs!’ Now everybody has rich relations of whom they say ‘Will he
leave anything like it?’ and thus they discuss the quick as they have
discussed the dead.
“They talk of nothing but the prospects of fortune, the prospects of a
vacancy in office, the prospects of the harvest.
“When we were children, and used to look at those pretty little white
mice, in the cobbler’s window in the rue St. Maclou, that turned and
turned the circular cage in which they were imprisoned, how far I was
from thinking that they would one day be a faithful image of my life!
“Think of it, my being in this condition!—I who fluttered my wings so
much more than you, I whose imagination was so vagabond! My sins have
been greater than yours, and I am the more severely punished. I have
bidden farewell to my dreams: I am _Madame la Presidente_ in all my
glory, and I resign myself to giving my arm for forty years to my big
awkward Roulandiere, to living meanly in every way, and to having
forever before me two heavy brows and two wall-eyes pierced in a yellow
face, which is destined never to know what it is to smile.
“But you, Caroline dear, you who, between ourselves, were admitted
among the big girls while I still gamboled among the little ones, you
whose only sin was pride, you,—at the age of twenty-seven, and with a
dowry of two hundred thousand francs,—capture and captivate a truly
great man, one of the wittiest men in Paris, one of the two talented
men that our village has produced.—What luck!
“You now circulate in the most brilliant society of Paris. Thanks to
the sublime privileges of genius. You may appear in all the salons of
the Faubourg St. Germain, and be cordially received. You have the
exquisite enjoyment of the company of the two or three celebrated women
of our age, where so many good things are said, where the happy
speeches which arrive out here like Congreve rockets, are first fired
off. You go to the Baron Schinner’s of whom Adolphe so often spoke to
us, whom all the great artists and foreigners of celebrity visit. In
short, before long, you will be one of the queens of Paris, if you
wish. You can receive, too, and have at your house the lions of
literature, fashion and finance, whether male or female, for Adolphe
spoke in such terms about his illustrious friendships and his intimacy
with the favorites of the hour, that I imagine you giving and receiving
honors.
“With your ten thousand francs a year, and the legacy from your Aunt
Carabas, added to the twenty thousand francs that your husband earns,
you must keep a carriage; and since you go to all the theatres without
paying, since journalists are the heroes of all the inaugurations so
ruinous for those who keep up with the movement of Paris, and since
they are constantly invited to dinner, you live as if you had an income
of sixty thousand francs a year! Happy Caroline! I don’t wonder you
forget me!
“I can understand how it is that you have not a moment to yourself.
Your bliss is the cause of your silence, so I pardon you. Still, if,
fatigued with so many pleasures, you one day, upon the summit of your
grandeur, think of your poor Claire, write to me, tell me what a
marriage with a great man is, describe those great Parisian ladies,
especially those who write. Oh! I should _so_ much like to know what
they are made of! Finally don’t forget anything, unless you forget that
you are loved, as ever, by your poor
“CLAIRE JUGAULT.”
From Madame Adolphe de Chodoreille to Madame la Presidente de la
Roulandiere, at Viviers.
“PARIS.
“Ah! my poor Claire, could you have known how many wretched little
griefs your innocent letter would awaken, you never would have written
it. Certainly no friend, and not even an enemy, on seeing a woman with
a thousand mosquito-bites and a plaster over them, would amuse herself
by tearing it off and counting the stings.
“I will begin by telling you that for a woman of twenty-seven, with a
face still passable, but with a form a little too much like that of the
Emperor Nicholas for the humble part I play, I am happy! Let me tell
you why: Adolphe, rejoicing in the deceptions which have fallen upon me
like a hail-storm, smoothes over the wounds in my self-love by so much
affection, so many attentions, and such charming things, that, in good
truth, women—so far as they are simply women—would be glad to find in
the man they marry defects so advantageous. But all men of letters
(Adolphe, alas! is barely a man of letters), who are beings not a bit
less irritable, nervous, fickle and eccentric than women, are far from
possessing such solid qualities as those of Adolphe, and I hope they
have not all been as unfortunate as he.
“Ah! Claire, we love each other well enough for me to tell you the
simple truth. I have saved my husband, dear, from profound but
skillfully concealed poverty. Far from receiving twenty thousand francs
a year, he has not earned that sum in the entire fifteen years that he
has been at Paris. We occupy a third story in the rue Joubert, and pay
twelve hundred francs for it; we have some eighty-five hundred francs
left, with which I endeavor to keep house honorably.
“I have brought Adolphe luck; for since our marriage, he has obtained
the control of a feuilleton which is worth four hundred francs a month
to him, though it takes but a small portion of his time. He owes this
situation to an investment. We employed the seventy thousand francs
left me by my Aunt Carabas in giving security for a newspaper; on this
we get nine per cent, and we have stock besides. Since this
transaction, which was concluded some ten months ago, our income has
doubled, and we now possess a competence, I can complain of my marriage
in a pecuniary point of view no more than as regards my affections. My
vanity alone has suffered, and my ambition has been swamped. You will
understand the various petty troubles which have assailed me, by a
single specimen.
“Adolphe, you remember, appeared to us on intimate terms with the
famous Baroness Schinner, so renowned for her wit, her influence, her
wealth and her connection with celebrated men. I supposed that he was
welcomed at her house as a friend: my husband presented me, and I was
coldly received. I saw that her rooms were furnished with extravagant
luxury; and instead of Madame Schinner’s returning my call, I received
a card, twenty days afterward, and at an insolently improper hour.
“On arriving at Paris, I went to walk upon the boulevard, proud of my
anonymous great man. He nudged me with his elbow, and said, pointing
out a fat little ill-dressed man, ‘There’s so and so!’ He mentioned one
of the seven or eight illustrious men in France. I got ready my look of
admiration, and I saw Adolphe rapturously doffing his hat to the truly
great man, who replied by the curt little nod that you vouchsafe a
person with whom you have doubtless exchanged hardly four words in ten
years. Adolphe had begged a look for my sake. ‘Doesn’t he know you?’ I
said to my husband. ‘Oh, yes, but he probably took me for somebody
else,’ replied he.
“And so of poets, so of celebrated musicians, so of statesmen. But, as
a compensation, we stop and talk for ten minutes in front of some
arcade or other, with Messieurs Armand du Cantal, George Beaunoir,
Felix Verdoret, of whom you have never heard. Mesdames Constantine
Ramachard, Anais Crottat, and Lucienne Vouillon threaten me with their
_blue_ friendship. We dine editors totally unknown in our province.
Finally I have had the painful happiness of seeing Adolphe decline an
invitation to an evening party to which I was not bidden.
“Oh! Claire dear, talent is still the rare flower of spontaneous
growth, that no greenhouse culture can produce. I do not deceive
myself: Adolphe is an ordinary man, known, estimated as such: he has no
other chance, as he himself says, than to take his place among the
_utilities_ of literature. He was not without wit at Viviers: but to be
a man of wit at Paris, you must possess every kind of wit in formidable
doses.
“I esteem Adolphe: for, after some few fibs, he frankly confessed his
position, and, without humiliating himself too deeply, he promised that
I should be happy. He hopes, like numerous other ordinary men, to
obtain some place, that of an assistant librarian, for instance, or the
pecuniary management of a newspaper. Who knows but we may get him
elected deputy for Viviers, in the course of time?
“We live in obscurity; we have five or six friends of either sex whom
we like, and such is the brilliant style of life which your letter
gilded with all the social splendors.
“From time to time I am caught in a squall, or am the butt of some
malicious tongue. Thus, yesterday, at the opera, I heard one of our
most ill-natured wits, Leon de Lora, say to one of our most famous
critics, ‘It takes Chodoreille to discover the Caroline poplar on the
banks of the Rhone!’ They had heard my husband call me by my Christian
name. At Viviers I was considered handsome. I am tall, well made, and
fat enough to satisfy Adolphe! In this way I learn that the beauty of
women from the country is, at Paris, precisely like the wit of country
gentleman.
“In short, I am absolutely nobody, if that is what you wish to know:
but if you desire to learn how far my philosophy goes, understand that
I am really happy in having found an ordinary man in my pretended great
one.
“Farewell, dear Claire! It is still I, you see, who, in spite of my
delusions and the petty troubles of my life, am the most favorably
situated: for Adolphe is young, and a charming fellow.
“CAROLINE HEURTAUT.”
Claire’s reply contained, among other passages, the following: “I hope
that the indescribable happiness which you enjoy, will continue, thanks
to your philosophy.” Claire, as any intimate female friend would have
done, consoled herself for her president by insinuations respecting
Adolphe’s prospects and future conduct.