The day following my victory--_Henri III._ is interdicted--I obtain
an audience with M. de Martignac--He removes the interdiction--_Les
hommes-obstacles_--The Duc d'Orléans sends for me into his
box--His talk with Charles X. on the subject of my drama--Another
scribbler--Visit to Carrel--Gosset's shooting-box and pistols No. 5--An
impossible duel
To few men has it been given to see such a rapid change take place
in their lives as took place in mine during those four hours of the
representation of _Henri III._ I was totally unknown until that night,
and, next day, whether for good or for evil, I was the talk of all
Paris. From that night dated the hatreds of people whom I had never
seen--hatreds roused by the unwelcome fame attached to my name. But
friendships also dated from that epoch. What multitudes of people
envied me that night, who had no idea that I spent it on a mattress
on the floor by the side of my dying mother! Next day, the room was
filled with bouquets; I covered my mother's bed with them, and she
touched them with the hand that was left unparalysed, pulling them
nearer to her or pushing them away, unconscious what all these flowers
meant--and, possibly, even unconscious that they were flowers at
all. By two o'clock in the afternoon, the day after the performance,
my manuscript had sold for six thousand francs. These six thousand
francs were paid me in six bank-notes; and I went to show them to M.
Deviolaine.
"What are those?" he asked.
"They are the price of my manuscript," I replied. "You see it amounts
to M. Laffitte's three thousand francs and three thousand francs
besides."
"What!" cried M. Deviolaine; "are there idiots who have bought it of
you?"
"You see for yourself."
"Well, they are brainless idiots!"
Then, handing me back the notes, and shrugging his shoulders, he said--
"You do not inquire how I am!"
"I did not dare.... How are you?"
"A little better, happily."
"Were you able to return to the theatre?"
"Yes, I was there for the conclusion."
"Were you there when my name was given out?"
"The deuce I was!"
"And did it not give you a little gratification?"
"A little! Why, you rascal, I wept like a baby!"
"Come now! it cost you a lot to acknowledge that.... Let us shake
hands."
"Ah!" said M. Deviolaine, "if only your poor father could have been
there!"
"My mother could have been there if people had not made her so unhappy."
"Come, come! you are not going to tell me that it is my fault
your mother is in bed, are you? Good gracious me! it tormented me
sufficiently during your representation. I could not think of anything
else; I believe it was that which gave me the beastly colic.... By the
bye, what are they saying in the office?"
I showed him M. de Broval's letter. He read it through twice over.
"Well, I never!..." he said, as he handed it me back, shrugging his
shoulders. "Shall you return to the office?"
"I? Dear me no!"
"Well, I think you are right. Shall you go and see M. Fossier?".
"No, indeed."
"He likes you, nevertheless."
"Then why did he not write me a letter of congratulation, too?"
"Well, but he might have expected tickets for his daughter."
"That reminds me. Shall I save you a box for the second performance?
You hadn't a good place for the first ... you were close to the door."
"You scoundrel! I was right where I was, near the door.... Do you
believe this mad prank you have just played is going to bring you in
any more than what you have just shown me?"
"Certainly I do."
"About how much?"
"Fifteen thousand francs."
"What!"
"About fifteen thousand francs."
"And how long will it run to gain that?"
"Perhaps two months."
"So in two months, you will have earned the whole year's salary of
three chief clerks, including bonuses?"
"Call in your three chief clerks and tell them to do as much for
themselves."
"Get out! I am afraid the very ceiling will fall on our heads while you
are saying such monstrous things!"
"To-morrow night, then?"
"Yes, to-morrow night, if I have nothing better to do."
I was quite easy. M. Deviolaine would not have anything better to do,
nor would he have accepted a year of his salary to be kept away.
From M. Deviolaine's house I ran to M. Laffitte's. I was proud to be
able to pay him what I owed him so promptly. I gave him his thousand
crowns, and he returned me my promissory note and my manuscript.
But I always remembered the service rendered me, which, coming when
my mother was taken ill, was of priceless value. Still, I had not
reached the conclusion of my worries. When I returned to my temporary
dwelling-place, I found a letter from the Théâtre-Français asking me
to go to the office there immediately. I rushed there, and found the
Committee in a state of consternation from Taylor downwards. They had
received a letter from the Home Minister suspending _Henri III._
This was a far more serious matter than the suspension of my salary.
Luckily, Taylor had made up his mind what should be done. He proposed
I should urgently demand an audience of M. de Martignac. He himself
undertook to take the letter and see that it was conveyed to him. I
sat down and wrote at once, asking for an audience for the next day.
I received an answer two hours later. M. de Martignac would see me
at seven next morning. By seven next morning I was at his house. Oh!
what a blessing it is to find a Minister who is both polished and
cultivated, like M. de Martignac! _rara avis_, as Juvenal would call
it, and, worse still, a bird of passage! We remained together for an
hour, not talking of the play, but of all sorts of subjects; in ten
minutes, we came to an understanding over the play, and I carried my
manuscript back, saved, this time not from Annihilation, but from
Limbo. Oh! poor M. de Martignac! how well he understood Art! How
thoroughly well he knew that type of human being who obstructs all
progress he meets with on the way, with a view rather of hindering
others from advancing than of advancing himself! It was not under M. de
Martignac's administration that Art, wherever it turned, encountered
the notice, "This road is closed by order of the authorities." And to
think that for twenty years the same men blocked the same avenues;
that, from being old men, they grew into being decrepit ones, whilst
we young men grew old; that, by dint of ill-will and persecution, they
managed to drive both Lamartine and Hugo into politics, Soulié and
Balzac into their graves; that I stood almost alone, in my struggle
against them; that they set their mark on things, like the seal of
Solomon which enclosed the genii of the _Thousand and One Nights_ in
clay vases; and that all this political and literary compression will
one day burst in their faces, killing and overturning all around it
without injuring itself--wrinkled dwarfs who everlastingly stir up the
glowing fires of revolutions! Some things, at least, are very clear;
that, for twenty years, these rulers were petty, paltry, contemptible;
that they left behind them a sad and shameful memory amongst the
Germans, Hungarians, Italians, along the banks of the Nile as well
as on the shores of the Bosphorus, at Mogador even as at Montevideo,
in the old World as well as the New; that, during the whole of the
time which transpired between the day on which M. Sébastiani made his
announcement at the Tribune that "Order reigned at Warsaw," and that on
which M. Barrot wrote in the _Moniteur_ that "The French have entered
Rome," they gave the lie not only with respect to every promise made
by man--whether these promises came through M. de la Fayette or M. de
Lamartine--but still, more, with respect to everything hoped of God,
who destined France to be the Pole Star to other nations, who said to
the peoples, "You wish to sail towards the unknown world, towards the
Promised Land called Liberty; there is your compass. Spread your sails
and follow boldly!" Instead of keeping faith with men and fulfilling
God's will, what did you do, you poor slaves of passion, and miserable
servants of blindness? You made the sea rough and the winds contrary
for every noble vessel that set sail under divine inspiration. You know
it is so, I am not telling you anything fresh; you know that whatever
is young and noble and pure, that has not been dragged through the
mud of the past, and reaches forth to ethereal regions in the future,
is against you; you know that those whom you allowed to be murdered
by Austrian rods, those whom you left shut up in pontifical dungeons,
those whom you suffered to be shot down by Neapolitan cannon, were
martyrs. You are aware that, whilst people hail you, you tyrants, as
you go to your places of entertainment, we shall have their devotion;
you are aware, in short, that we, the torchbearers, are loved, whilst
you, the workers of darkness, are detested; you know that should you
ever be forgiven your deeds, it will be because of what we have said on
your behalf; and hence come your persecutions--powerless, thank God,
like all things that come from below and seek to harm what is above....
Yes, what is above, for he who can say "I have just written this page,
and you could not write it," is above you!
Let us return to _Henri III._, which had nothing to do with all this,
and which suddenly and unexpectedly found itself raised sky-high.
My return was awaited with impatience, for they dared not advertise
without the minister's permission. I brought them that permission, and
they advertised. M. le Duc d'Orléans announced that he would be present
at the second performance. When I reached the theatre that night, I was
told that he had already arrived and had asked me to go to his box. I
did as I was bidden, between the first and second acts. The densely
packed theatre bore witness to the genuine strength of my success. The
Duc d'Orléans received me most graciously.
"Now, M. Dumas," he said, "are you not satisfied? You have gained your
case against everybody--the public and myself included. Even Broval,
Deviolaine and Oudard are enchanted."
I bowed.
"But for all that, do you know," he continued laughingly, "you have
very nearly got me into serious trouble?"
"You, monseigneur?"
"Yes, I."
"How is that?"
"The king sent for me yesterday."
"The king?"
"Yes, indeed."
"And what about, monseigneur?"
"About your drama."
"About _Henri III.?_"
"'Are you aware of what I have been informed, _cousin_?' he said,
laying emphasis upon the last word. 'I have been told that you have a
youth in your offices who has written a play in which both you and I
figure--I as Henri III., and you as the Duc de Guise?'"
"Monseigneur, you could of course have replied that the king was
mistaken and that the young man was no longer in your employ."
"No; I much preferred to reply otherwise, and not to lie, since I mean
to keep you on."
"Then what did your Highness say?..."
"I said, 'Sire, people have misinformed you, and for three
reasons:--First, I do not beat my wife; secondly, Madame la Duchesse
d'Orléans has not made me a cuckold; thirdly, your Majesty has not a
more faithful subject than myself.' Do you think my reply was equal to
anything you would have advised me to make?"
"Indeed, monseigneur, it is infinitely more witty."
"And nearer the truth, monsieur.... Ah! the curtain is rising: go about
your business; mine is to listen to you."
I bowed.
"By the bye," said the duke, "Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans desires to
see you to-morrow morning, to inquire how your mother is."
I bowed and withdrew.
Oh! what a power is success, with its notoriety and fuss over a
name; with its calm and serene supremacy of mind over matter! M. de
Broval, M. Deviolaine and M. Oudard were enchanted; the Duc d'Orléans
had called me to his box to repeat a witty _mot_ he had said to the
king; and, finally, Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans would see me on the
morrow to ask me news of my mother! Birth, it would seem, only bestows
principalities; talent gives the dignity of princehood.
Next day, I paid my visit to the Duchesse d'Orléans, who was as
gracious to me as could be; but, alas! why did all this kindness come
so late? When I returned, I found in an envelope a newspaper, the name
of which I have forgotten;--some friend who was sensitive concerning my
reputation had sent it me. It announced the success of _Henri III.,_
and added--
"That success, great though it be, is not surprising to
those who know how these literary and political jobs are put
up by the House of Orléans. The author is an underling in
His Royal Highness's _pay._"
The article was painful as well as untruthful; a lie, because the House
of Orléans, as was well known, had not schemed to help me in any way;
and painful, because the writer by the use of the word "pay" _(gages)_
had evidently intended to imply that I was only a common servant. I
looked at my poor sick mother, who, unaware of what I was reading,
was trying to express the first desires of returning consciousness
by smiles of tender affection; and at such a moment as this I was
compelled, by an individual whom I had never set eyes upon, whose very
existence was unknown to me and who had no reason for hating me, to
leave her in order to demand an apology for a gross and gratuitous
insult! I went to de la Ponce. I begged him to go to the office of the
paper and arrange there and then, with the writer of the article, the
conditions of a duel for the following morning. Such a long time has
elapsed since then and I have so short a memory for injuries, that I
have completely forgotten both the name of the paper and the name of
the writer with whom I had the quarrel. I regret the latter, for he
bore himself so well in the whole affair that I am still of opinion
he took upon himself the responsibility for an article that was not
his. As I cannot recollect his name, allow me to speak of him as M.
X---. De la Ponce returned in about an hour's time. The duel had been
accepted for the next day but one, as M. X---, who acknowledged himself
the author of the article, had a duel on the day between with Carrel.
I went to call on Carrel, whom I had known for a long time, having met
him at M. de Leuven's and also with Méry. Like myself, he, too, had
been gratuitously insulted; like me, he had demanded satisfaction, and
he was to meet my future adversary in a pistol duel at eight o'clock
next morning. Carrel complimented me on my success, and promised to do
his utmost so that M. X--- would not be able to fight with me the day
after. It was a sad fact that scarcely had I begun my dramatic career
before, in less than a week, I was compelled to demand satisfaction
from two men, not on account of criticisms passed upon my talent, but
for injury done to my personal character. A few words de la Ponce
dropped led me to believe that pistols would be the weapons chosen, and
Carrel confirmed me in this opinion; so, when I met Adolphe, I told him
what had happened and begged him to come and practise shooting with
me next day. Although I could not afford to squander money, I still
had sufficient to permit myself a turn once a month at Gosset's. I had
become a habitué there. We reached the place about ten o'clock.
"Philippe!" I shouted to the lad attendant as I passed in, "pistols No.
5 and twenty-five balls."
Philippe came up.
"You can have twenty-five balls," he said, "but not pistols No. 5,
unless you are going to practise alone."
"Why so?"
"Because they were lent this morning to a gentleman who had a duel, and
you should see the state in which he brought them back."
And, indeed, the second No. 5 pistol had the trigger-guard broken and
the butt end blown off.
"What did that?"
"Why! a bullet," said Philippe.
"Quite so, but what about the gentleman who held it?"
"He had two of his fingers cut."
"Cut?"
"Yes, cut!"
"So he had to pay the price of two of his fingers?"
"And also for the mending of the pistol."
"What was this gentleman's name?"
"I do not recollect his name; he was fighting with M. Carrel."
"Stuff and nonsense!"
"It's true."
"Are you certain?"
"Of course I am. M. Carrel's seconds brought back the pistols."
"See," I said to Adolphe, "this will postpone my duel of to-morrow and
no mistake."
And then I related to him that my adversary had arranged to fight a
duel with Carrel that very day, and that it was probably he who had had
his two fingers injured.
"It is very easy to find out," said Adolphe; "let us go and inquire."
We went to M. X---'s house, and found that it was really he who had
been fighting; he had had two fingers blown off--his third and little
fingers. I sent up my visiting-card by his man-servant, and we took
our departure. We had not gone more than two storeys downstairs when
we heard the man running after us. M. X--- begged me to go in. I found
him smiling in spite of his wounds, and very courteous in spite of his
attack.
"Pray excuse me, monsieur," he said, "for the liberty I took in asking
you to come back and see me; I use the privilege of a wounded person."
"Is your injury a serious one, monsieur?" I asked.
"No--I escaped with the loss of two fingers from my right hand; and
since I still have three left with which to write and tell you how
sorry I am for having made myself unpleasant towards you, I have all I
need."
"You still have the use of your left to shake hands with me, monsieur,"
I said, "and that would be better than tiring your right over anything
imaginable."
We shook hands; conversed on indifferent topics; and then, ten minutes
later, we took leave of one another. We have never seen each other
since, and, as I have said, I have totally forgotten his name. I bear
my memory a grudge, for I shall ever remember him with pleasure.
Singular freak of chance! If this man had not had a quarrel with
Carrel, and if Carrel had not deprived him of his two fingers, he would
have fought with me, and he might have killed me or been killed by me.
And for what reason, I ask you?
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
The Arsenal--Nodier's house--The master's profile--The congress of
bibliophiles--The three candles--Debureau--Mademoiselle Mars and
Merlin--Nodier's family--His friends--In which houses I am at my
best--The salon of the Arsenal--Nodier as a teller of tales--The ball
and the warming-pan
I promised I would return to Nodier, and I will keep my word. After the
service Nodier rendered me by opening the doors of the Théâtre-Français
to me, I went to thank him. Nodier did better for me on my second visit
than he did on the first--he opened the doors of the Arsenal to me.
And, lest my readers should be frightened at the word, and think that I
mean a collection of arms, a museum of artillery, let me hasten to add
that the doors of the Arsenal were the doors of Charles Nodier's house.
Everybody knows the large, gloomy-looking building called the Arsenal,
in a line with the quai des Célestins, at the back of the rue de
Morland, looking over the river. This was where Nodier lived. In these
unpretentious Memoirs it would take us too far afield to relate how,
once upon a time, when Paris was preparing for war, this heavy building
was raised upon a piece of ground called the Champ-au-Plâtre; how, when
the heavy-looking building was raised, François I. had the cannon cast
there which did much unlucky work at Pavia; how, requiring a plot of
ground, he borrowed a farm from his good town of Paris, promising to
return it; how, having borrowed this first farm, he borrowed a second
from it, and a third; how, in short, on the principle of the axiom
"What is good to take is good to keep," he kept the three borrowed
farms--we will relate these matters when, at the end of our impressions
of Europe, Asia and Africa, we set about putting down our impressions
of rambles in Paris. These farms, together with the great building of
which we have spoken, were used to store cannon and powder. One day, in
the reign of Henri II., a spark, coming from nobody knew where,--who
knows whence terrible fires spring!--set fire to the powder-magazine
and exploded it. Paris shook as Naples and Catana shake when Vesuvius
or Etna are in a state of eruption; the fish perished in the river;
at the unexpected concussion the neighbouring houses swayed and then
collapsed one upon another. Melun, a dozen leagues off, shuddered at
the noise of the explosion; thirty persons blown into the air by this
volcano fell down in fragments, a hundred and fifty were wounded and,
unacquainted with the cause of the accident, attributed it to the
Protestants, against whom they were not slow to pick a grievance. It
will be readily understood that the buildings erected by François I.
and the three farms of the city of Paris disappeared in this commotion.
Charles IX., who was a great hand at building, and was responsible for
the sculpturing in the Louvre and the carving of the fountain of the
Innocents, paid a visit to the ruins with his architect. He designed
the plan of a new building, began the fresh erection and, as he was
both a great artist and a great poet, it is probable that he would have
made a good piece of work of it. But Queen Catherine of Medici, having
already got rid of one son, was not sorry to be rid of Charles IX.,
after the fashion of François II., in order to hasten the coming of
Henri III. In case this accusation against Catherine de Medici should
strike our readers as rather too strong, who may prefer to look upon
the death of Charles IX. as the judgment of God (an act which, indeed,
might quite possibly go hand in hand with the poisoning of Charles
IX. by his mother), we will here reproduce a dialogue recorded by
Bassompierre; it is short, but instructive.
"Sire," Bassompierre said to King Louis XIII., who was seated in
the embrasure of a window of the old Louvre, fiercely blowing a
horn,--"sire, you ought not to blow with all your strength like that;
you are weak in the lungs, and the same thing might happen to you as
happened to King Charles IX."
"My dear Bassompierre," Louis XIII. replied, "King Charles IX. did not
die from blowing his horn too long and too frequently; he died from
being so imprudent as to become reconciled to his mother, after he had
had the prudence to quarrel with Catherine of Medici."
Let us return to the Arsenal, and to another king who was so imprudent
as to quarrel with his wife--or, rather, with the House of Austria to
which she belonged--to Henri IV. He it was, in fact, who finished the
Arsenal and laid out the beautiful garden, which we can still see in
pictures of the period of Louis XIII. He gave it to Sully, wherein to
carry on his ministry of finance; and here it was that the parsimonious
minister amassed the millions with which Henri III. intended to carry
on his war with Flanders, when the poignard of Ravaillac put an end
to that strange dream of the seventeenth century, which was to become
a reality in the nineteenth, namely, the union of the seven elective
republics and of the six hereditary monarchies, under one supreme head,
established under the title of the _Congrès de la Paix._
Ah! my dear Mr. Cobden, you with whom I once spent several dull days
and shared some melancholy dinners in Spain, the idea of this Peace
Congress did not originate with you; it came from our unfortunate King
Henri IV.,-"Let us render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's."
And so all you who visit the Arsenal should know that those beautiful
rooms which now form the library were decorated by Sully with Henri
IV.'s money.
In 1823, Charles Nodier was appointed librarian of this library, and
left the rue de Choiseul, where he lived, to establish himself in
his new habitation. But the building that was often the subject of
illustrations was not a very magnificent place to live in! On the first
landing of a flight of steps with massive balustrades, you came upon a
badly fitting door on the left which led to a bricked corridor; the
dining-room and the office were paved with bricks like the corridor.
Three other rooms completed the suite--three luxurious rooms, with
parquetried floors and panelled walls: one was Madame Nodier's bedroom;
the other the salon; and the third the workroom, library and bedchamber
of Charles. Charles led two separate existences: his week's existence
was that of a worker and bibliophile; his Sunday existence was that
of a society man and host. Nodier was an adorable personality; I have
never met nor ever known anyone so learned, so much of an artist and
yet so kindly in disposition as he, save, perhaps, Méry. And though
he possessed plenty of faults he hadn't a vice, and his winning
faults sprang from the originality of the man of genius. Nodier was
extravagant, careless, dilatory; but his was the delightful idleness
of a Figaro. He might, perhaps, have been accused of being rather too
worldly; but that, too, sprang from his carelessness, in not taking the
trouble to examine into his feelings. It was rather the whole community
of martyrs, so to speak, that Nodier loved after this fashion; he had
an inner circle of privileged friends whom he loved with all his heart;
others, he liked only intellectually. Nodier was _par excellence_ a man
of learning: he knew everything and a host of things besides; for he
exercised the prerogative of men of genius: if he did not know a thing
he invented his knowledge of it, and it must be confessed his invention
was generally far more likely, far more ingenious and romantic and
specious and, I will venture to say, far nearer the truth than the
reality itself. It will be readily guessed that, with this gift of
invention, Nodier was a veritable mine of paradoxes. But he never tried
to force you to accept these paradoxes; he created three-fourths of his
paradoxes for his own diversion.
One day, when I had been lunching with a minister, I was asked--
"How did the luncheon pass off?"
"All right," I replied; "but if I hadn't been there myself I should
have been horribly bored!"
And so it was with Nodier; for fear of being bored, he made up
paradoxes, just as I told stories.
I must return to what I said about Nodier being a little too much
inclined to love everybody. My sentence sounds somewhat reproachful,
but it must not be taken so. Nodier was the philanthropist of Terence,
the man unto whom nothing is alien. Nodier loved, as fire warms, as a
torch lightens, as the sun shines; he loved because to love and make
friendships were as much the fruition of his nature as grapes are the
fruit of the vine. Let me be permitted to coin a _mot_ to describe
the man who himself coined so many, he was a lover (_aimeur_). I
have said he loved and made friendships because, for Nodier, women
existed as well as men. As he loved all men of goodwill, so, in his
youth (and Nodier was never old), did he love all lovable women. How
he managed this he himself would have found it impossible to explain.
But, in common with all eminently poetic minds, Nodier always confused
the dream with the ideal, and the ideal with the material world; for
Nodier, every fancy of his imagination really existed--Thérèse Aubert,
la Fée aux miettes, Inès de las Sierras--he lived in the midst of all
these creations of his genius, and never sultan had a more magnificent
harem.
It is interesting to know how a writer who produced so many books,
and such entertaining ones too, as he did, worked. I am going to tell
you. We will take the Nodier of the week-days, romance-writer, savant
and bibliophile, the writer of the _Dictionnaire des Onomatopées_,
_Trilby_, the _Souvenirs de Jeunesse._ In the morning, after two or
three hours of easy work, when he had covered a dozen or fourteen
pages of paper six inches long by four wide, with a regular, legible
handwriting, without a single erasure, he considered his morning task
done, and went out. When he was out of doors, Nodier wandered about
aimlessly, going up now one street of the boulevards, now another, now
along this or that quay. No matter what road he took, three things
preoccupied him: the stalls of the second-hand bookshops, booksellers'
windows and book-binders' shops; for Nodier was almost as fond of
fine bindings as of rare books, and I believe he really classed
Deneuil, Derome, Thouvenin and the three Elzevirs in the same rank in
his mind. These adventurous walks of Nodier, which were protracted by
discoveries of books or by meetings with his friends, usually began
at noon and nearly always ended between three and four o'clock at
Crozet's or at Techener's. In these houses, at about that hour, the
book-lovers of Paris gathered together: the Marquis de Ganay, the
Marquis de Châteaugiron, the Marquis de Chalabre; Bérard, the Elzevir
collector, who, in his spare moments, made the Charter of 1830;
finally, the bibliophile Jacob, king of bibliographical knowledge when
Nodier was not present, viceroy when Nodier came on the scenes. Here
they exchanged opinions and discussed _de omni rescibili et quibusdam
aliis._ These causeries lasted till five o'clock. At five o'clock,
Nodier went home by some other route than that which he had traversed
in the morning; thus, if he had come by the quays he would return by
the boulevards, and if he had gone along the boulevards, he would
return by the quays. At six o'clock, Nodier dined with his family.
After dinner, came a cup of coffee sipped like a true Sybarite, in
little and big draughts, then the cloth was removed with everything
on it, and three candles were placed on the bare table. Three tallow
candles, not three wax ones. Nodier preferred tallow to wax--why, no
one ever knew: it was one of Nodier's caprices. These three candles,
never more, never fewer, were placed triangularly. Then Nodier brought
out the work on which he was engaged and his quill pens--he detested
steel pens--and he worked until nine or ten o'clock at night. At that
hour, he went out a second time; but, this time, he invariably followed
the course of the boulevards; and, according to what might be on, he
would go to the Porte-Saint-Martin, to the Ambigu or to the Funambules.
It will be remembered that it was at the Porte-Saint-Martin that I met
him for the first time.
There were three actors whom Nodier adored--Talma, Potier and Debureau.
When I made Nodier's acquaintance, Talma had been dead three years; and
Potier had retired two years before; so there only remained to him the
irresistible attraction of Debureau. He it was who first extolled the
famous Pierrot; in this respect, Janin came after Nodier and was merely
his imitator. Nodier saw the _Bœuf enragé_ nearly a hundred times. At
the first representation of the piece he waited for the ox until the
end, and not seeing it, he went out and spoke about it to the boxkeeper.
"Madame," he asked, "will you please inform me why this pantomime that
I have just seen is called the _Bœuf enragé?_"
"Monsieur," replied the boxkeeper, "because that is its title."
"Ah!" exclaimed Nodier; and he withdrew satisfied with the explanation.
The six days of the week were spent in exactly the same way: then came
Sunday. Every Sunday Nodier went out at nine o'clock in the morning to
breakfast with Guilbert de Pixérécourt, for whom at that time he had
a profound admiration and the friendliest feelings. He called him the
Corneille of the boulevards. Here he met the scientific gatherings of
Crozet or of Techener.
We have mentioned that one of these bibliomaniacs was called the
Marquis de Chalabre. He died leaving a very valuable library, which he
bequeathed to Mademoiselle Mars. Mademoiselle Mars read very little
or, to be truthful, she did not read at all. She commissioned Merlin
to classify the books left her and to arrange for their sale. Merlin
was the most honest man on the face of the earth; and he set about
this commission with his usual conscientiousness, and he turned and
re-turned the leaves of each volume so carefully that one day he went
to Mademoiselle Mars with thirty or forty one-thousand franc notes in
his hand, which he laid on a table.
"What is that, Merlin?" asked Mademoiselle Mars.
"I do not know, madame," he replied.
"What do you mean? Why, those are bank-notes!"
"Certainly."
"Where have you found them?"
"In a pocket-book, within the cover of a very rare Bible; and, as the
Bible belongs to you, these bank-notes are yours too."
Mademoiselle Mars took the bank-notes, which were of course hers, and
she had the greatest difficulty in making Merlin accept a present of
the Bible in which he had, as I understand, discovered the bank-notes.
Nodier would return home between three and four o'clock, and, like M.
Villenave, would allow his daughter Marie to dress and titivate him.
For we have omitted to mention that Nodier's family was composed of
his wife, his daughter, his sister Madame de Tercy and his niece. At
six o'clock, Nodier's table would be laid. Three or four spare covers
would be provided in excess of the number of the family party, and
these were for regular habitués. Three or four more covers were put for
chance comers. The habitués were Cailleux, the director of the Musée;
Baron Taylor, who was soon to leave his place vacant because of his
journey to Egypt; Francis Wey, whom Nodier loved as though he were his
own child, whose old French aristocratic accent was but little less
noticeable than Nodier's own, and Dauzats'. The casual diners were
Bixio, the huge Saint-Valery and myself. Saint-Valery was a librarian,
like Nodier. He was six feet one inch in height and an extremely well
informed man but possessed of no originality or any wit: it was of him
that Méry wrote this line--
"Il se baisse, et ramasse un oiseau dans les airs!"
When he was at the library, it was a very rare thing for him to need a
ladder to reach down a book, so tall was he. He would stretch up one of
his long arms, standing on tiptoe, and find the book that was required,
even if it were close to the ceiling. He was susceptible in the
extreme, and could not bear any joking references to his tall figure no
matter how harmless they were; he was angry with me for a long while
because once, when he was complaining to Madame Nodier of a violent
cold in his head, I asked him if he had had cold feet a year ago.
When you were admitted into that charming and desirable inner circle
of the Nodier family, you could dine with them as often as you liked.
If one, two or three covers were needed beyond the number already
laid, they were added; if the table had to be enlarged, it was made
longer. But unlucky was the man who happened to be the thirteenth! he
was pitilessly placed at a little table to dine by himself, unless
a fourteenth guest, still less expected than he, should turn up to
relieve him of his penance. I was very soon among the number of the
more intimate friends of whom I have just spoken, and my place at
the table was settled once for all, between Madame Nodier and Marie
Nodier. When I appeared at the door I was greeted with exclamations of
joy; they all rushed at me, from Nodier downwards, who stretched out
his two great arms to embrace me or shake me by the hand. At the end
of a year, from being an accepted fact, my place became recognised as
mine by right: it remained vacant for me until after the soup course;
then they ventured to fill it, but if I happened to arrive, either ten
minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or half an hour late, even if I did
not arrive until dessert, the interloper got up, or was made to do so,
and my place given up to me. Nodier used to make out that I was as
good as a fortune to him, because I saved him from doing the talking;
but what may have been a pleasure, in this respect, to the idle master
of the house, was a source of sorrow to his guests: to relieve the
most fascinating talker imaginable from conversing was tantamount to
a crime. Nevertheless, when I was charged with being viceroy of the
conversation I was on my mettle to fill my position to the best of
my abilities. There are certain houses wherein one is spontaneously
brilliant; others where one is dull no matter how one tries to be
the reverse. There were three houses where I was at my best, three
houses in which my spirits ever rose and scintillated with youthful
exuberance; these houses were Nodier's, Madame Guyet-Desfontaines' and
Zimmermann's. At all other places I could still be entertaining, but
merely in the ordinary way of social intercourse. However, no matter
whether Nodier himself was the talker (and when this was the case,
grown-up people and small children all held their peace to listen);
whether his silence left the conversation to Dauzats, to Bixio or to
me, the time flew by unheeded until the close of dinner was reached--a
dinner that might have been envied by the most powerful prince of the
earth, provided his tastes were intellectually inclined. Dinner over,
coffee was handed round, while we were still at table. Nodier was
far too much of a Sybarite to rise from the table to take his Mocha
standing uncomfortably in a half-warmed salon, when he could take it
lolling back in his chair, in a warm dining-room, well scented with
the aroma of fruits and liqueurs. During this last act, or rather this
epilogue to the dinner, Madame Nodier and Marie rose to go and light
up the salon, and I, who took neither coffee nor liqueurs, accompanied
them, to help in their task, my tall figure being very useful to them
in lighting the lustres and candelabras without the necessity of
standing on chairs. I need hardly say that if M. Saint-Valery, who was
a foot taller than I, were there, the charge of lighting up fell to him
by right.
When, thanks to us, the salon was lit up,--a ceremony that only took
place on Sundays, for on week-days the receptions were held in Madame
Nodier's room--the light illuminated white panelled walls with Louis
XV. mouldings, and furniture of extreme simplicity, comprising a
dozen chairs or easy-chairs and a sofa covered with red cashmere, the
hangings being of the same colour; a bust of Hugo, a statue of Henri
IV. as a child, a portrait of Nodier and a landscape of a view in the
Alps, by Régnier. On the left, as you entered, was Marie's piano, in a
recess almost like a room in itself. This recess was large enough, like
the spaces between bedsteads in the time of Louis XIV., for the friends
of the household to stand round and talk with Marie as she played
quadrilles and valses with her clever, agile fingers. But quadrilles
and valses did not begin before the given moment: two hours, from eight
to ten, were invariably devoted to conversation; then we danced from
ten to one in the morning. Five minutes after Madame Nodier, Marie and
I had lighted up the salon, Taylor and Cailleux were the first to come
in--they were far more at home in the house than was Nodier himself;
then came Nodier with his arm through that of Dauzats or Francis Wey or
Bixio; for although Nodier was only thirty-eight or forty at that time,
he was like a tall climbing plant that covers walls with leaves and
flowers, but already needs something to lean on. Behind Nodier entered
the rest of the guests, with his little daughter dancing and skipping.
Ten minutes later, the usual callers began to drop in--Fontanay and
Alfred Johannot, with their two impassive faces, always melancholy in
the midst of our laughter and gaiety, as though they were under some
vague presentiment of death; Tony Johannot, who never came without a
fresh drawing or an engraving to enrich Marie's album or collection;
Barye, who looked lonely in the midst of the tumult, for it always
seemed as though his mind were far away from his body in quest of
something wonderful; Louis Boulanger, with his variable moods, to-day
sad, to-morrow gay, ever the same great artist, great poet and faithful
friend; Francisque Michel, a seeker of old manuscripts, often so
preoccupied with his researches of the day that he would forget he
had come in an ancient hat of the period of Louis XIII. and yellow
slippers; de Vigny, who, in ignorance of his future transfiguration,
still deigned to mix with mortals; de Musset, almost a boy, dreaming
over his _Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie_; and, bringing up the rear,
Hugo and Lamartine, the two kings of poetry, the peaceful Eteocles and
Polynices of Art, one bearing the sceptre of the ode and the other the
crown of elegy.
Alas! and alas! what has become of all those who gathered there?
Fontanay and Alfred Johannot are dead; de Vigny has made himself
invisible; Taylor is given over to his travels; Lamartine, with his
provisional government, has let France slip through his fingers; Hugo
is a deputy and strives to hold the country together, a task that
proved too difficult for his colleague's hands; and the rest of us
are all scattered, each following his own laborious career, hampered
with spiteful enemies, harassing laws and petty ministerial hatreds;
we struggle on, blindfold and weary, towards that new world which
Providence is preserving for our sons and our grandsons, which we shall
not see, but towards which at least our tombs, like milestones, will
point the way.
Let us go back to our salon, into which those of whom I have just
been speaking were now entering, hailed with effusive greetings of
delight. If Nodier, when he left the dinner-table, went and stretched
himself out in his arm-chair by the fireside, it was because he liked,
after the fashion of the egoistic Sybarite he was, to enjoy at his
ease some chance play of his imagination, during that blissful moment
which follows in the wake of coffee; if, on the other hand, making
an effort to remain standing, he leant against the chimneypiece, his
calves to the fire and his back to the mirror, it meant he was going
to tell some of his stories. We were then all on the _qui vive_ to
smile at the anecdotes which were to drop from those finely modelled,
satirical and witty lips; everybody kept silence; and he would pour
forth one of the delightful stories of his youth, which sounded like
a romance of Longus, or an idyll of Theocritus. He seemed like Walter
Scott and Perrault; the savant grappling with the poet, memory battling
with imagination. Nodier was not merely amusing to listen to, but in
addition he was delightful to watch. His tall, lean body, his long
thin arms, his white tapering hands, his long face, full of a serene
melancholy, all harmonised and fitted in with his rather languid voice,
and with the afore-mentioned aristocratic accent; and, whether Nodier
were reciting a love-story, or describing a fight on the plains of la
Vendée, or some drama that happened in the place de la Révolution,
a conspiracy of Cadoudal or of Oudet, his hearers would hold their
breath to listen, so wonderfully did the story-teller know how to get
at the heart of everything he described. Those who came in in the
middle bowed silently and sat down in an arm-chair or leant against the
wainscotting; the recital always came to an end too soon; why he ever
concluded was a mystery, for we knew that Nodier could draw eternally
on that purse of Fortunatus which we call imagination. We did not
applaud,--do we applaud the murmur of a stream, the song of a bird,
the perfume of a flower?--but when the murmur ceased, the song died
away, the perfume evaporated, we listened, we waited, we longed for
more! Then Nodier would slide back quietly from his position at the
fireplace into his big arm-chair; would smile and turn to Lamartine or
Hugo with--
"Enough of such prose as that--now let us have poetry, poetry!"
And, without a second bidding, one of the two poets would, from where
he was, with hands leant on the back of an armchair, or shoulders
propped up against the panelled walls, give birth to the harmonious and
eager flow of his poetic fancy; then every head would turn in the fresh
direction, every intellect would follow the flight of a thought which
soared above them on eagle's wings to play now in the mist of clouds
among the lightnings of the tempest, now in the rays of the sun.
On these occasions applause followed; then, when the applause had
ceased, Marie would go to her piano and a brilliant rush of notes would
burst upon the air. This was the signal for a quadrille; arm-chairs and
chairs were put away, card-players took refuge in corners, and those
who, instead of dancing, preferred to talk with Marie, would slip into
her alcove. Nodier was one of the earliest at the card-tables; for a
long time he would only play at _bataille_, at which he claimed to be
very expert; but, finally, he was induced to make a concession to the
taste of the century and played _écarté_. When the ball had begun,
Nodier, who was usually very unlucky, would call for cards. From the
moment he began, Nodier effaced himself, disappeared and was utterly
forgotten; he was one of those old-fashioned hosts who obliterated
themselves in order to give precedence to their guests, who, when
made welcome, become masters of the house themselves. Moreover, after
Nodier had disappeared for a time, he would disappear entirely. He went
to bed in good time, or, to speak more correctly, he was put to bed
early. To Madame Nodier belonged the care of putting this great child
to bed; she would therefore leave the salon first in order to get
his bed ready. If it were winter, and very cold, and the kitchen fire
had perchance gone out, a warming-pan would be seen to thread its way
amidst the dancers to the salon fireplace, its wide jaws would open to
receive the glowing coals, and then it would be taken away to Nodier's
bedroom. Nodier followed the warming-pan, and we saw him no more that
night.
Such was Nodier; such was the life of that excellent man.
Once we came upon him in a mood of humiliation and shame and
embarrassment. The author of the _Rot de Bohème et ses Sept Châteaux_
had just been nominated an Academician. He made very humble apologies
to Hugo and to me, and we forgave him.
After having been rejected five times, Hugo was nominated in his turn.
He offered me no excuses, which was as well; since I should certainly
not have forgiven him!
CHAPTER II
Oudard transmits to me the desires of the Duc d'Orléans--I am
appointed assistant librarian--How this saved His Highness four
hundred francs--Rivalry with Casimir Delavigne--Petition of the
Classical School against Romantic productions--Letter of support from
Mademoiselle Duchesnois--A fantastic dance--The person who called
Racine a _blackguard_--Fine indignation of the _Constitutionnel_--First
representation of _Marino Faliero_
It will be remembered that, during the brief conversation which I had
the honour of holding with M. le Duc d'Orléans in his private box, he
had expressed the desire to keep me near him. I had no motive, now I
had gained my liberty of action, for leaving the man who, at any rate,
had assured me a living for six years and had allowed me to continue
my studies and to become what I was. Moreover, at that time, M. le Duc
d'Orléans was a typical representative of that Opposition party to
which I belonged by rights as the son of a Republican general. M. le
Duc d'Orléans, son of a regicide, member of the Jacobin Club, defender
of Marat and indebted to Collot d'Herbois, seemed, indeed, to me, I
must admit, if he had not greatly degenerated since 1793, to be far
more advanced in 1829 than I was myself. He acted well up to the _mot_
he uttered the day I was writing to his dictation: "Monsieur Dumas,
bear in mind that, if one is descended from Louis XIV., if only by
means of one of his bastards, it is still a sufficient honour to be
proud of." I had, of course, called forth this _mot_ by my ignorant
hesitation. Besides, one could be proud of being descended from Louis
XIV., while still blaming the turpitude of Louis XV. and the faults of
Louis XVI.; furthermore, where had even our Republican fathers come
from?--the Parc-aux-Cerfs and the Petit Trianon. So then the Duc
d'Orléans, if not precisely a Republican prince, as he had been styled
in 1792, was at least a citizen prince, as he was called in 1829. In
short, it was good for my position, and in harmony with my sympathies,
to remain attached to M. le Duc d'Orléans. All these reflections had
had sufficient time to ripen in my mind before I received a letter
from Oudard asking me to call on him at his office. Formerly, such an
invitation would have made me very uneasy; now, it only made me smile,
and I presented myself. Raulot bowed nearly to the ground before me; he
opened the door and announced--
"M. Alexandre Dumas."
Oudard came to meet me with a laughing face.
"Well, my dear poet," he said, "it seems you have had an undoubted
success?"
"Yes."
"First, let me congratulate you heartily.... But who could have
foreseen it?"
"Those who suppressed my bonus money and kept back my salary; for I
presume that if they had foreseen a failure they would not have had the
cruelty to expose my mother and me to die of starvation."
"Did not M. de Broval write to you the night of the representation?"
Oudard asked in some confusion.
"Yes, indeed; here is his letter."
I showed him the letter the reader has seen.
"And I am keeping it as a model," I continued, putting it back into my
pocket again.
"As a model of what?"
"Of diplomatic lying and of stupid sycophancy."
"Come, that is strong language!"
"True, but one ought to call a spade a spade."
"However that may be, let us drop the subject and speak of your
position here."
"That is equivalent to discussing castles in the air."
"I do not refer to your past position, for I am well aware that you
would decline to remain in the household under the old conditions;
neither do we desire you to do so.... You must have leisure for your
work."
"Continue, my lord Mæcenas, speak in the name of Augustus; I am
listening."
"No, on the contrary it is for you to speak. What do you desire?"
"I? I desired success and I have had it. I do not want anything else."
"But what can we do that will be agreeable to you?"
"Not a great deal."
"Nevertheless, there must be some position in the house you would like."
"There is none I covet; but there is one post that would suit my
convenience."
"Which is that?"
"To be M. Casimir Delavigne's colleague at the library."
Oudard's facial muscles twitched with an expression indicative of, "You
are indeed ambitious, my friend."
"Oh! indeed I quite understand the difficulties," I said.
"You see," Oudard continued, "we already have Vatout and Casimir, a
librarian and assistant librarian."
"Of course, and that is ample, is it not, when there is no library?"
For, as a matter of fact, the library of the Duc d'Orléans, at that
time especially, was very inferior.
"What do you mean by no library?" Oudard exclaimed; for, like the
servant of a curé, he could not bear to have his master's house
depreciated. "We have three thousand volumes!"
"You are mistaken, my dear Oudard: there are three thousand and four;
for I saw the _Mémoires de Dumouriez_, which had just come from London,
in the house of M. le Duc d'Orléans, the day before yesterday."
I gave the thrust good-humouredly, and so Oudard took it. He could not
ward it off without acknowledging himself hit: he continued--
"Well, well, you are wonderfully clever, my friend; I will convey
to monseigneur your desire to become attached to the household as
librarian."
I stopped him.
"Stay, let us quite understand one another, Oudard."
"I do not wish for anything better."
"Did you not ask me to come to you?"
"Certainly."
"It was not I who came on my own initiative?"
"No."
"I should not have come if you had not written to me."
"That would have been very remiss on your part."
"Possibly; but, all the same, I did not come. Now you talk of a desire:
I have not expressed any; it is not I who desire to remain attached to
the household. If they want to keep me, they must make me librarian;
as to salary, they need not give me any. You see I am making things
exceedingly easy for His Royal Highness."
"Ah! are you always going to be wilful?"
"No, but I remember what M. le Duc d'Orléans condescended to write, by
the side of my name, in his own handwriting, a month ago: 'Suppress his
bonuses,' etc. etc."
"Come, I will tell you something that will restore the prince in your
estimation."
"Ah! my dear Oudard, I am indeed far too insignificant an individual to
lay claim to the right of quarrelling with him."
"Well, then, I fancy he would accept the dedication of your drama."
"The dedication of my play, my dear Oudard, belongs to the man who got
it acted; my drama _Henri III._ will be dedicated to Taylor."
"You are making a mistake, my dear friend."
"No, I am repaying a debt."
"All right, we will not continue the subject; so, a librarian like
Casimir Delavigne...."
"Or like Vatout, if the comparison seems to you to be simpler."
"Are you aware how epigrammatic you have become since your success?"
"No; it is only that I can now say aloud what I formerly thought
unspoken."
"Well, I see clearly that you mean to have the last word."
"Of course; try and find a word to which I cannot fit an answer. _Au
revoir!_"
"Adieu!"
Two days later, Oudard called me in again; he had discovered a post
that would suit me much better than being librarian: namely, to be
reader to Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans. I thanked Oudard; but I assured
him that I still held to my first idea of being librarian or nothing at
all.
We parted rather more coldly than at first. Two days later, I received
a third letter; this time, he had found something that would suit
me best of all. They would make me _chevalier d'honneur_ to Madame
Adélaïde! I persisted obstinately that I wanted to be librarian.
Finally, I received a fourth invitation, and I paid a fourth visit.
They had decided to grant my request, and I was appointed assistant
librarian, at a salary of 1200 francs.
As I had announced beforehand that the question of money was not of any
consequence, they had taken advantage of it to suggest to monseigneur
to pay me 300 francs less as librarian than they had paid me as a
clerk. That didn't matter; but listen, and may Harpagon and Grandet
hang themselves for not having invented what the people devised who
arranged the affairs of M. le Duc d'Orléans and myself. As they had
not paid me any salary for six months, they antedated my nomination by
six months. Consequently, as I had a salary of 1500 francs as clerk
and 1200 francs as librarian, they saved, by paying me for these six
months as a librarian, the sum of 150 francs, which, added to my unpaid
up bonuses of 1829, saved them 350 francs; and the 350 francs, added
to the 50 francs cut off my bonus of 1828, amounted to a net total of
400 francs more into the princely coffers. It will be admitted, will
it not? that the Duc d'Orléans was surrounded by men of large views!
Unfortunately, these were the very same men who, later, surrounded the
king.
When I was installed at the Library, I became acquainted with Vatout
and Casimir Delavigne, who, as Oudard had warned me, did not welcome
my advent with much warmth. Casimir Delavigne in particular, who,
although he made it up with me afterwards, at first could not forgive
me the success I had had with _Henri III._ Indeed, my success with
_Henri III._ continued throughout the year, and, as there is a proverb
to the effect that two successes, on the stage, never come together,
the success of _Henri III._ prevented the success of _Marino Faliero_,
which was awaiting its turn, and in which Mademoiselle Mars was to play
Héléna. But Mademoiselle Mars was engaged for three long months in
_Henri III._; then came her two months' holiday; so _Marino Faliero_
was put off until the coming winter. This did not in the least suit
Casimir Delavigne.
I have related how Casimir Delavigne's dramatic affairs were
conducted: a family council was called on account of _Marino Faliero_,
and it was decided that the Doge of Venice should migrate to the
Porte-Saint-Martin; that Madame Dorval, whose reputation had begun to
spread, should replace Mademoiselle Mars and that Ligier should be
seduced from the Odéon to play Marino Faliero. This migration made a
great sensation. Casimir at the Porte-Saint-Martin! It was Coriolanus
among the Volscians; all the papers wailed aloud and made moan over
this exile of the national bard, and people began to look on me as a
usurper who had risen up to drive out a crowned and anointed king from
his legitimate throne. The situation was complicated by an event as
novel as it was unexpected. A petition to the king appeared, entreating
His Majesty to do for Corneille, Molière and Racine--who stood on
their marble pedestals in the _foyer_ unmoved by this agitation--what
His Majesty's august predecessor had done for King Ferdinand VII.
when he was expelled by the Cortes:--to re-establish them on their
thrones. Alas! no one was ever less ambitious to snatch other people's
thrones than I.... I was willing enough to take a seat or a comfortable
arm-chair, ay, an elevated one, well in view, by all means, but a
throne! the word and the position were too classic, and I never aspired
thereto. It is inconceivable, is it not? that there could be found
seven men of letters sufficiently intolerant, silly and ridiculous
to appeal to a king to proscribe a method of art, an invisible,
indefinable and intangible conception, and boldly to say to him, "Sire,
we are the representatives of Art; we alone know what is beautiful; we
alone possess knowledge, taste and genius; true, the public hisses at
us as soon as we appear; true, our tragedies do not attract anyone when
they are acted; the Comedians play our pieces with marked aversion, it
is true, since they do not draw the same profits from them, although
expenses are the same; but what does all that matter! It is hard for
us to die and to be forgotten; we would rather be hooted at than
buried. Sire, issue your commands that our plays, and ours alone, be
played;--for we are the sole descendants of Corneille, and Molière and
Racine, whilst these new-comers are but the bastards of Shakespeare and
Goethe and Schiller!"
How very logical! I was a bastard of Shakespeare, of Goethe and
of Schiller, because I had just composed _Henri III._, a play so
pre-eminently French, that, if it were open to any reproach, it would
be that I had represented the manners of the end of the sixteenth
century too faithfully. And as the thing really sounds incredible,
we will place before our readers' own eyes the petition of these
gentlemen:--
"SIRE,--The glory of letters is not the least brilliant
among French glories, and the glory of our theatre is not
the least brilliant of our literary glories. So thought your
ancestors when they honoured the Théâtre-Français with a
special protection; so thought Louis XIV., to whom it owed
its first organisation. That regal protector of letters,
persuaded that the _chefs d'œuvre_ which his reign had
produced could not be represented too perfectly, decreed
that the best actors who were scattered about in the various
companies which the capital then possessed should be united
into one company, to be called the Comedians in Ordinary
to the King. He gave rules to this select company, granted
them rights and, among others, the exclusive privilege of
representing tragedy and high comedy; and he added to these
favours that of endowment. His object in doing this, sire,
as you are aware, was not solely to reward those actors who
had the good fortune to please him, but also to encourage
them in the exercise of an art which by its elevation should
be in harmony with his royal spirit; also to perpetuate the
prosperity of that art, and to establish a model theatre
on a solid foundation, for both actors and authors. For a
long while, the intentions of Louis XIV. were fulfilled by
his successors, in whom there was no falling off, either in
good taste or in generosity; the two arts that he loved,
and to which the French stage owed its dignity and its
superiority, have reigned there in almost undisputed sway.
Such was the condition of things at the time of the decease
of your august brother; why must it be confessed that it
is no longer the same to-day? The death of the actor whose
talents vied with those of the most perfect artist of any
epoch, has brought about more than one injury to the noble
art which he upheld. Whether from depravity of taste or from
consciousness of their inability to take his place, certain
associates of the Théâtre-Français have pretended that the
method of art in which Talma excelled could no longer be
beneficially carried on; they are seeking to exclude tragedy
from the stage and to substitute for it plays composed
in imitation of the most eccentric dramas that foreign
literature affords--dramas which no one had ever dared
before to reproduce except in our lowest theatres. It is
quite conceivable that third-rate actors should pursue these
tactics, which are in accordance with their indifferent
performances; and that, since they are incapable of rising
to the height of tragedy, they should wish to lower art to
the level of their talent; but it is almost inconceivable,
sire, that this attitude should be encouraged by those who
should combat it. They not only violate the privileges
granted them in order to advance, on every possible
occasion, the particular method of art to which they have
become attached; but, in order to satisfy the exigencies of
this method, which seeks less to elevate the soul, entice
the heart and occupy the mind, than to dazzle the eyes by
material means, by the distraction of vain show and by stage
effect, they are exhausting the capital of the theatre,
increasing its debt and bringing about its ruin. And, in
addition, as tragedy still struggles, and struggles with
some success, against its ignoble rival, in spite of all
that is done to prevent it, the authorities, not satisfied
with refusing to undertake necessary expenses and supply
the apparatus needed, are doing their best to discourage
tragic representations altogether, and only give subsidies
to the principal actors in subjects of which the public
disapproves; far worse still, in order to make all tragic
acting henceforth impossible, in anticipation of the time
when the two leading exponents of tragedy, Mademoiselle
Duchesnois and M. Lafond, shall have retired from the stage,
they have compelled them to submit to an exile of a year,
under cover of a holiday, during which time they promise
themselves to complete the absolute ruin of the theatre of
Racine, Corneille and Voltaire.
"Sire, are the agents in whom you have placed confidence, to
watch over and control the theatre, responding properly to
your beneficent designs? Was it intended that the liberty
with which they were entrusted was to be used to advance
the cause of melodrama to the detriment of tragedy? Ought
the funds placed, by your liberality, at their disposal, in
order to advance the cause of good taste, to be squandered
over their own particular fancies, which tend to make the
greatest names in Art subservient to the Melpomene of the
boulevards, and to reduce their sublime art to the condition
of a vile trade? We are convinced, sire, that the glory of
your reign is concerned in the preservation of all sources
of French glory, and we therefore consider it our duty to
call your attention to the degradation by which the foremost
of our theatres is threatened. Sire, the evil is already
grave! In a few months' time it will be past redress; in a
few months' time the theatre founded by Louis le Grand will
be entirely closed to works which have been the delight of
the most polite of courts, the most enlightened of nations;
it will have fallen below the level of the meanest of
stages, or, rather, the Théâtre-Français will have ceased to
exist.
_"(Signed)_ A. V. ARNAULT, N. LEMERCIER, VIENNET, JOUY,
ANDRIEUX, JAY, O. LEROY"
This curious epistle was capped by another quite as strange--or, more
correctly speaking, it was preceded by it. The letter of Mademoiselle
Duchesnois, which we shall produce in its entirety, in the same way
that we have produced the petition of these gentlemen, was the rocket
which warned the public that a great pyrotechnic display was about to
take place.
My readers will recall the visit M. Lafond paid me in my office, to
ask me if I had a smart, well-groomed fellow in my play who could say
to Queen Christine, "_Sacrebleu!_ your Majesty has not the right to
assassinate this poor devil!" It will be remembered that I told him
I had not. Whereupon M. Lafond had turned daintily upon his heels,
remarking that his visit was, therefore, fruitless.
After the reading of _Henri III._, M. Lafond had said to himself
that the part of that extremely well set up courtier, the Duc de
Guise, would be his by right; but, alack, he had seen the rôle
given to Joanny, who played it strikingly well although he was
not irreproachable. It had been just as bad for poor Mademoiselle
Duchesnois: she had seen successively the rôle of Christine and that
of the Duchesse de Guise pass over her; she had done me the honour of
wishing to act them both, and each time, with infinite trouble, I had
had to explain to her how impossible it was for her to undertake either
rôle; consequently, she was furious. Now, anger is a bad counsellor, so
it came about that Mademoiselle Duchesnois wrote the following letter
under its sway:--
"MONSIEUR,--I should have preferred to keep out of the
quarrel which is engaging the attention of the newspapers
concerning the Théâtre-Français; but, inasmuch as the
defence of a system which is compromising our social
existence is based upon erroneous facts, I have thought it
my duty to the public to offer certain explanations which
will show the question in its true light. Unquestionably,
the first duty of the French Comedians should be to retain
the favour of the public, and we cannot be reproached with
respect to this, since, during the past three years, we have
successively produced, at a very heavy expense, all the
works of the new school; in consequence, our shares have
fallen from sixteen thousand to seven thousand francs, and
we have contracted, in the interim, a debt estimated at a
hundred thousand francs. However, the old repertoire and
works based on those of the old masters, such as _Tartufe,
Phèdre, Zaïre, Germanicus, Sylla, Pierre de Portugal,
Marie Stuart, l'École des Vieillards, Blanche, le Roman_
while they no longer glorify the stage, still bring some
money to our pockets, and help to provide for the terrible
expenses of the scenery and properties required for the
dramas. In spite of the ruin of our prosperity and the
increase of our liabilities, I should have kept silence
if the rumour had not spread abroad that we were about to
dissolve our Association in order to prepare ourselves for
a new management, and to raise a so-called Romantic theatre
on our ruins. These reports have gained enough strength to
be repeated by several papers, and it has been noticed that
the usual supporters of the Commissary Royal have gone out
of their way to point out the advantages of such an absurd
proposition, instead of denying it. The tragic actors, who,
since the arrival of M. Taylor, have been the object of an
animadversion for which, until recently, they have not been
able to find a cause, were attacked in these same papers
with unheard-of bitterness, and with the catchword of the
moment, _The public does not want any more tragedies._
There is no denying that tragedy no longer brings in the
enormous sums of the prosperous days of Talma and of the
first fifteen years of my theatrical career; but, without
dwelling upon its importance and its necessity, it can be
seen by the receipts--not those obtained from the Commissary
Royal, but the actual receipts entered on the _registre
des pauvres_ (which I am having looked out, at this very
moment, in order to their publication)--that tragedy would
again see prosperous days if the Government would grant it
the protection that is its due, rather than persecute the
actors and authors who are still its supporters. It would
be a difficult task to enumerate all the instances of M.
Taylor's ill-will: here are one or two which will be enough
to convince you. Three young actors who were taken away from
the Odéon showed some interest and aptitude for tragedy. M.
Taylor tried to drive them away from the Comédie-Française.
He succeeded with regard to MM. Ligier and Victor; and, if
M. David has been saved to us, it was because a decision of
the court overruled the Commissary Royal. M. Beauvallet,
a young man who roused high hopes among the friends of
dramatic art, has been obliged to take an engagement at a
secondary theatre. Nor is this all; my presence and that
of M. Lafond were obstacles in the way of carrying out
the plans of the Romantic school. So we received, this
winter, an intimation, almost tantamount to a command, to
leave Paris for a year, without having solicited anything
of the kind, as certain wrongly informed journals have
announced. It is under these circumstances, monsieur, that
distinguished literary men who, by their connection with
actors, are much better acquainted with the situation at
the Théâtre-Français than are the writers of many articles,
have felt it their duty to present a memorial to the King,
not in order to exclude the new style of drama (a pleasantry
invented by M. Taylor's friends to hold up to _ridicule_ a
perfectly justifiable proceeding), but to claim a protection
for authors who belong to the _Classical_ school and for the
actors who support them, at least equal to that given to the
Romantic school.
"I beg you, monsieur, to have the goodness to announce
that I have just cited MM. Taylor and the Vicomte de
la Rochefoucauld before the courts to answer for their
violation of the rules of our company, by means of which
they have prorogued a committee for the past four years, a
third part of which, according to the terms of our statutes,
ought to have been renewed annually. I beg you also to be so
good as to announce, in my name, that the article contained
in the _Journal de Paris_ of this morning is incorrect in
all its statements and in all its calculations, and that I
shall hasten to put the proofs of this statement before the
public with the least possible delay. Allow me at the same
time to contradict the false statement that any one of those
who signed the petition wished to _withdraw_ or to _disown_
his signature; on the contrary, I know that several of our
most distinguished authors are preparing to make public
their adhesion to the memorial to the King.--I am, etc.,
J. DUCHESNOIS"
We said before that under a clever ministry everybody, even the king,
has his wits sharpened.
The king made answer to his petitioners as follows:--
"GENTLEMEN,--I cannot do anything in the matter you desire;
I only occupy one seat in the theatre, like every other
Frenchman."
Now, I shall be asked how it was that M. Arnault reconciled this demand
directed against me with his friendliness towards me? How could he
receive me intimately at his house and table every Sunday, while he
was doing his best to have me driven away from the theatre? Oh! be
quite easy on that score! M. Arnault had a more logical mind than that.
On the Sunday following the production of _Henri III._--namely, the
very next day--I found Madame Arnault quite alone in the house, and she
said to me, in course of conversation--
"Dumas, when you intend dining with us, tell us beforehand; for
otherwise you will run the risk of dining _tête-à-tête_ with me, as
to-day, which is not very entertaining for you."
I took the hint, and I never returned there again.
The success of _Henri III._, therefore, it will be seen, brought in
its train all the advantages and all the drawbacks of great successes.
I was the fashionable author for the rest of the winter of 1829; I
received invitations innumerable, and M. Sosthène de la Rochefoucauld,
Minister of the King's Household, wrote me a letter, giving me free
entry to all the royal theatres, being shrewd enough to see that, if he
did not give me the privilege, I was just the sort of man to take it.
Devéria made a lithograph of me; David d'Angers, a medallion. It will
be seen that nothing was wanting to complete my triumph, not even the
ridiculous side which always accompanies a rising reputation.
Then a crowd of anecdotes were related about me, each more absurd than
the last. It was said that, after the representation of _Henri III._,
when the lights in the house had all been put out, a sabbatical dance
took place _round_ the bust of Racine (it is set against the wall!), by
the light of the dying fires in the green-room, similar to Boulanger's
magnificent dance; that the spectral dancers were heard to utter the
sacrilegious refrain, "Racine is fallen!" and that even shouts for
blood were raised by a young fanatic of the name of Amaury Duval, who
demanded the heads of the Academicians--a parricidal cry, since this
unfortunate creature was the son of M. Amaury Duval of the Institut,
and nephew of M. Alexandre Duval of the Académie française.
Further, a rabid Romantic, to whom God had sent one of the seven
plagues of Egypt in punishment for his sins, was accused--and this
story might well be true--of saying in a burst of frenzied scratching,
"Racine was a regular scoundrel!"
This fanatic was called Gentil.
Stories like these, told by the fireside, were enough, it may well be
imagined, to make the hair of all respectable people stand on end, and
the _Constitutionnel_, which has always been the literary and political
representative of respectable people, was particularly shocked.
It was from this period that every worthy man gave himself up to hatred
of all ideas which did not date back a half-century, and of every
author who was not at least sixty years of age--a style of writing
which lasted from 1830 to 1850--the vigorous style of hatred to which
Alceste refers, and which, we think, eats far more readily into the
hearts of weak-minded, wicked and jealous people, than into the hearts
of men of goodwill.
People waited in daily expectation of a new St. Bartholomew's Eve,
and poor M. Auger, who had just killed himself under such sad
circumstances, was congratulated on having escaped a general massacre
by means of suicide. So great was the consternation that the whole
of the Classical party only produced one play--which was a failure.
This was _Elisabeth d'Angleterre_, by M. Ancelot. For we do not call
Casimir Delavigne's _Marino Faliero_, pompously christened a melodrama
in verse, a classical production. The very choice of subject, _Marino
Faliero_, and the imitation of Byron's principal scenes, formed a
twofold concession to foreign genius and to modern taste.
Casimir Delavigne, as we have remarked elsewhere, was born fifteen
years too soon to take part whole-heartedly in the new school; his
style seemed ever hampered, and incessantly vacillating between
Voltaire and Byron, Chénier and Shakespeare, never succeeding in
clothing his ideas in a definite manner. Still, nothing had been
neglected to make _Marino Faliero_ a success. The papers had made much
of the ingratitude of the members of the Comédie-Française and of the
transfer of M. Ligier to the Porte-Saint-Martin. It was announced
that the music of the overture was by Rossini, and the costumes by M.
Delaroche. Now M. Delaroche was the exact analogy in painting of what
Casimir Delavigne was in literature; both at that time enjoyed far
too great a reputation to last, and were destined to see it pale and
decrease and almost expire during their life-time. However, Rossini had
composed the music, and Delaroche had designed the costumes.
The play was produced on 30 May, and was very successful; but, strange
to relate, the author's most elaborately conceived rôle was not the
most applauded one, nor did the actor's chief success fall to the share
of Ligier or of Madame Dorval: it fell to Gobert, who played the rôle
of Israël Bertuccio.
The work was mounted with great sumptuousness and scrupulous care,
especially with regard to the costumes. M. Delaroche, having deemed it
desirable, in order to lend a more picturesque effect to his designs,
that they should be wafted by the wind, the theatrical costumier
devised the ingenious notion of sewing air into the mantles.
I have elsewhere given my opinion of this play.
CHAPTER III
Mesmerism--Experiment during a trance--I submit to being mesmerised--My
observation upon it--I myself start to mesmerise--Experiment made in
a diligence--Another experiment in the house of the _procureur de la
République_ of Joigny--Little Marie D---- --Her political predictions--I
cure her of fear
Between the representation of my play and Casimir Delavigne's, the
scientific world was much taken up with an important event which
established the power of magnetism, that had been under dispute since
Mesmer's day.
One of the cleverest surgeons of the time, Jules Cloquet, had just
performed an operation on Madame Pl--- for cancer in the breast,
without her feeling the least pain, she having been put into a trance
by mesmerism.
One word about mesmerism. Let us leave actualities and turn to
abstractions.
Madame Pl---, upon whom this strange experiment had just been made,
was between sixty-four and sixty-five years of age; she had been a
widow ten years and had suffered for two or three years from glandular
swellings on the right breast. Doctor Chap---- was her medical
adviser; he had practised magnetism for some time and found himself
apt at it. He attempted to apply it to the cure of Madame Pl---, but
the disorder had gone too far, and he decided to try if it might be
possible to lessen her pain while the operation was being performed.
Jules Cloquet was consulted, and it was proposed that he should operate
on the sleeping patient. He consented, welcoming the opportunity of
seeing for himself a phenomenon concerning which he was sceptical,
and also, at the same time, glad to be able to spare the patient the
suffering inevitably connected with one of the most painful of surgical
operations. Doctor Chap---- magnetised Madame Pl--- and rendered the
whole of her right side completely insensible to pain. The ablation of
the breast began by an incision eleven inches long, followed by another
nine inches long. By means of these two incisions they could get at
several glands under the armpit, which were carefully dissected. During
the operation, which lasted ten minutes, the patient gave no signs of
sensibility. To use the surgeon's own words--
"It seemed as though he were _operating on a dead body_; save that,
when the operation was over and the patient's wound was being bathed
with a sponge, she twice cried out, without coming out of her state of
trance, 'Be quick and finish, and do not tickle me like that!'"
When the operation was over, Madame Pl--- was brought out of her
trance: she did not remember anything, had not felt any pain and showed
profound astonishment that the operation was over. The dressing was
done in the usual way, and the wound showed every symptom of quick
healing. At the end of a week's time Madame Pl--- drove out in a
carriage. The suppuration was decreased and the wound was making rapid
progress towards healing, when, about the evening of the fifteenth day,
the patient complained of feeling great oppression, and swellings began
to show in the lower extremities.
All this is nothing but the simple truth: now comes in the marvellous.
Madame Pl--- had a daughter who came from the country to nurse her
mother. Dr. Chap----, having seen that she had a very clear mind,
put her into a magnetic sleep and consulted her about her mother's
condition. At the first attempt she made to see, her face grew troubled
and tears rose to her eyes.
Then she announced that the peaceful but inevitable death of her mother
would take place the next morning. When questioned upon the internal
state of her mother's chest, she said that the right lung was quite
dead, that it was empty, suppurating on the side nearest the lower
portion of the spine and bathed in serous fluid; that the left lung
was sound and alone supported life. As for the abdominal viscera, the
liver, according to her, was whitish and wrinkled; but the intestines
were sound.
These depositions were taken down in the presence of witnesses.
The next day, at the given hour, Madame Pl--- died. The autopsy was
made in the presence of deputies from the Académie, and the state of
the body was found to conform precisely with the description given by
the mesmerised girl.
This was what was reported in the papers, stated in the official
return, related to me and confirmed by Jules Cloquet himself, one day
when we were talking together--before the discovery of chloroform--of
the great mysteries of nature which baffle human intelligence. Later,
when I was preparing my book _Joseph Balsamo_, being interested
to fathom the often debated question of the power or impotence of
magnetism, I decided to make some personal experiments, not relying
upon those produced by foreigners interested in accrediting magnetism.
So I studied magnetism first hand, and the result of my investigations
was as follows:--
I was endowed with great magnetic powers, and this power, as a rule,
took effect on two out of every three persons upon whom I experimented.
Let me hasten to state that I never practised it except upon young
girls or women. This power in connection with physical phenomena is
incontestable. A woman who has once submitted to magnetic sleep is
the slave of the man who sent her to sleep. Even after she has waked
she remembers or forgets what passed during her sleep, according to
the will of the magnetiser. She could be made to kill someone during
her sleep and, if he willed that she should be totally ignorant of
having committed her crime, she would never know anything about it.
The mesmeriser can make his victim feel pain of any kind in any part;
he has only to touch the place with the tip of his finger, the end of
a stick, or the end of an iron rod. He can cause a sensation of warmth
with ice, a sensation of cold with fire; he can cause drunkenness with
a glass of water, or even with an empty glass. He can put an arm, a
leg or the whole body into a state of catalepsy, and make it hard and
rigid as a bar of iron or as soft and supple as a scarf. He can cause
insensibility to the prick of a needle, to the blade of a bistoury or
the smart of cautery.
I believe all these things come under the domain of physical phenomena.
Even the brain can be impelled to such a pitch of excitement as to make
an ordinary being a poet, a child of twelve possess the ideas, feelings
and manner of expressing them of a person of twenty or twenty-five.
In 1848, I made a tour in Burgundy. My daughter and I were in the
same coach with a very charming lady of thirty to thirty-two; we
only exchanged a few words; it was eleven o'clock at night; and one
of the things she had told me was that she never slept when she was
travelling. Ten minutes later, she was not only asleep, but asleep with
her head on my shoulder. I waked her up; she was extremely surprised to
find she had fallen asleep, and fallen asleep in the position in which
she found herself. I renewed the experiment two or three times during
the night, and my strength of will was sufficient, without my needing
to touch my neighbour, to be successful in every instance.
When the coach stopped at the posting-house and horses were being
changed, I woke her abruptly and asked her what time it was; she opened
her eyes and tried to pull out her watch.
"Never mind that," I said to her; "tell me the time by your watch
without looking at it."
"Three minutes to three o'clock," she replied immediately
We called the postillion, and by the light of his lantern we verified
that it was exactly three minutes to three.
These were nearly all the experiments I tried upon that lady; they
yielded the results I have just related, and, with the exception of the
time being told without looking at the watch, they all appertain to the
order of physical phenomena.
At Joigny, I made an official call on M. Lorin, the _procureur de la
République_, whom I had never met before. It was just about the time of
the publication of _Balsamo_, which had made magnetism quite the rage.
I rarely entered a salon at that period without being questioned about
this great mystery. At Joigny I replied, as I always did--
"Magnetic power exists; it can be practised, but its scientific basis
is not yet known. It is in a similar condition to that of air balloons:
we can send them up, but no means of directing them have yet been
devised."
Doubts were then expressed by persons present, and especially by women.
I asked one of these ladies, Madame B----, if she would allow me to
put her to sleep; she refused in such a manner as to convince me that
she would not be overweeningly angry if I did it without her leave.
Nevertheless, I assumed an attitude of submission to her; but, five
minutes later, having got up as though to look at an engraving hanging
above her arm-chair, I summoned to my aid all my magnetic power and for
five minutes I persistently willed her to go to sleep; at the end of
that five minutes she was asleep. Then I began a series of extremely
curious experiments on this lady, who was a total stranger to me, in a
house which I had never entered before or have since re-entered. Madame
B----, in spite of her will, obeyed both my expressed mandates and also
my mute wishes. Every ordinary sensation in her was reversed: fire felt
like ice, ice like fire. She complained of a bad headache: I bound her
forehead with an imaginary bandage which I told her contained snow,
and she immediately experienced a delicious sensation of coolness;
then, a moment later, she wiped away from her forehead the water from
the imaginary bandage, as though the heat of her head were melting
the supposititious snow; but, soon, her handkerchief was not enough
for the operation; she borrowed a friend's; finally, the demand for a
handkerchief was followed by that for a serviette; then, her dress and
the rest of her clothes being damp, she asked to be allowed to go to a
room to change everything. I let her feel this sensation of cold till
she shivered; then, suddenly, I gave the order for her clothes to dry
themselves, and they dried themselves. The whole thing, of course, was
in the imagination of the lady mesmerised. She had an extremely fine
voice, of a fairly wide range, but which stopped short at the Ionic
_si._ I ordered her to sing as high as _re;_ she sang, and gave the
two last notes perfectly--an impossible feat for her in her ordinary
state, and one which she tried in vain when I had wakened her from
her magnetic sleep. A woman was working in the next room. I put a
paper-knife in the somnambulist's hands and made her think it was a
real knife. Then I ordered her to go and stab the workwoman. Thereupon
what free will she had left in her revolted; she refused, writhed,
hung back on the furniture, but I had only to will and to point in
the direction I wished her to take, and she obeyed and went up to the
workwoman, utterly stupefied, the knife raised.
Her eyes were open and her face, which was a very lovely one, assumed
an admirable stage expression, as beautiful as that of Miss Faucit when
she is acting the sleep-walking scene in _Hamlet._ The _procureur de la
République_ was terrified at the thought of such a power, which could
urge a person to a crime, in spite of herself. When I had willed Madame
B---- back to calmness, I tried to make her see things at a distance.
When Colonel S. M----, who was a friend of mine, had been staying in
Joigny with his regiment, she had made his acquaintance, so I asked
where the colonel was at that hour, and what he was doing.
She replied that Colonel S. M---- was in garrison at Lyons and at that
moment, at the officers' café, where he was standing talking with the
lieutenant-colonel, near the billiard-table. Then, suddenly, she saw
the colonel grow pale, totter and sit down on a bench. He had just
been seized with rheumatics in his knee. I touched her on the knee and
willed that she should feel the same pain herself: she uttered a cry,
grew rigid and shed many tears. We were so alarmed by this fictitious
grief, which showed every symptom of real trouble, that I woke her
up. As soon as she was awakened, she remembered what I wished her to
remember, and forgot the things I commanded her to forget.
Then began another series of experiments on the woman when she was
awake.
I enclosed her within an imaginary circle, which I drew with a stick,
and I left the room, forbidding her to quit the circle. In five
minutes' time I came back, and found her seated in the centre of the
salon, waiting my permission to regain her liberty. She sat in one
corner of the room, and I placed myself at the opposite end; I told
her to do her utmost to resist coming over to me, and at the same
time I commanded her to come to me. She clung tight to her arm-chair,
but, drawn by an irresistible force, she was obliged to release her
hold; then she sat down on the floor to resist the attraction, but the
precaution was useless: she came, dragging herself along. When she was
at my feet, I only had to stretch out my hand to her head and slowly
lift my hand; she rose obediently, and in spite of her efforts, she
stood before me. She asked for a glass of water; she tasted it, and it
was really water; then, before she had put the glass down, or it had
left her hands, I told her the water was Kirsch: she knew perfectly
well it was not, and yet, at the first draught she swallowed, she cried
out that it was burning her mouth. Poor woman! She was a charming young
creature, who has since experienced an even profounder mystery--that of
death! I wonder whether she remembers or has forgotten what happened
when she was on the earth?
I have not yet done with the subject of magnetism; on the contrary, I
have another most extraordinary incident of this kind to relate which
took place in the presence of twelve to fifteen people. What follows is
a simple recital, drawn up in the form of a legal report by two of the
witnesses and signed at the time by us all.
During my stay at Auxerre, I was received into the house of M. D----.
He had two children, a boy of six and a girl of eleven years of age.
Marie was the name of the daughter, and she was a lovely child, like
an angel, for her cheeks were pale and her eyes were black and almost
austere. She was an exquisitely delicate creature, but, of course, she
only possessed the intelligence and qualities usual to a child of her
age, and I had, accordingly, paid very little attention to her, beyond
remarking to my daughter that she was very pretty. And my daughter,
who agreed with me, made a portrait of the child awake. One day we
were dining in a room which opened out on the garden. We had reached
dessert; the two children had left the table and were playing amidst
the shrubs and flowers. We were discussing the everlasting question of
magnetism, a subject the constant recurrence of which bored me the more
because the usual doubts were expressed which I could only confront
with facts; now, as these facts had nearly always taken place in a
different locality from that in which the discussion was being held, I
was obliged to choose from among those present a subject whom I guessed
might be easily hypnotised, and, whether willing or not, to operate
on this subject. Now, anyone who has ever practised the hypnotic art
knows that the exercise is as fatiguing to the hypnotiser as to the
hypnotised. I related several of the incidents I have just recorded
in the preceding chapter, but they were received with the utmost
incredulity.
"I should not believe in mesmerism," Madame D---- said to me, "unless,
for instance (and she tried to think of the most unlikely subject she
could find),--unless you could send my daughter Marie into a trance."
"Call Mademoiselle Marie and let her sit down to her usual place at the
table; give her a biscuit and some fruit, and while she is eating I
will try and put her into a trance."
"There is no danger, is there?"
"Of what?"
"It will not injure my daughter's health?"
"Not in the least."
"Marie!"
They called the child, and she ran up; they put some greengages and a
biscuit on her plate and told her to eat them, where she was. Her seat
was near me, on my left. While everyone continued talking, as though
nothing were going on, I stretched out my hand behind the child's head
and was the only one to keep silence, my will being concentrated on
making the child go to sleep. In half a minute, she had stopped every
movement, and seemed absorbed in the contemplation of a greengage which
she was just going to put into her mouth.
"What is the matter, Marie?" asked her mother.
The child did not reply: she was asleep.
The thing had come about so rapidly that I could hardly believe it
myself. I made her lean her head against the back of the chair without
touching her, just by my power of attraction; her face looked the
picture of perfect peace. I made some passes with my hand, up and down
in front of her eyes, to make her open them. She opened her eyes, her
eyeballs lifted skywards, a light iridescent film appearing beneath
them,--the child was in a state of trance. When in this condition the
eyelids do not flinch, and objects can be brought quite close to the
pupil without causing the slightest movement. My daughter drew her
portrait, while she was in this trance, as a companion to the other.
There was such a striking likeness in the second portrait to that of an
angel, that she added wings to it, and the drawing looked like a study
after Giotto's or Perugino's lovely angel-heads. The child was in a
trance: it now remained to find out if she could speak. A simple touch
of my hand on hers gave her her voice: a simple invitation to get up
and walk about endowed her with movement. But her voice was plaintive
and toneless; her movements were more like those of an automaton than
of a living creature. Whether her eyes were closed or open, whether
she walked forward or backward, she moved with the same ease and sense
of safety. I began by isolating her from others, so that she only
heard me and only replied to me. The voices of her father and mother
ceased to reach her; a simple wish on my part I expressed by a sign,
changed her state of isolation and put the child again in touch with
whatsoever person I chose to select as her interrogator. I transmitted
several questions to her, to which she responded so accurately, so
intelligently and so concisely that the idea suddenly came into her
uncle's head to say to me--
"Question her upon political subjects."
The child, let me repeat, was eleven years old. All political
questions were therefore perfectly unknown to her; she was equally
ignorant of politics and of political personages.
I will put down an exact account of the proceedings of that strange
cross-examination, without putting the least faith in any of the
predictions the child uttered; they were predictions, I confess, which
I should be extremely sorry to see fulfilled, and I can only attribute
them to the feverish state into which the hypnotic sleep had thrown her
brain.
I will devote the following pages to the dialogue and give the exact
terms in which it was conducted.
"In what social State are we at the present time, my child?"
"We are a Republic, monsieur."
"Can you explain to me what a Republic is?"
"It is the sharing of rights equally between every class of people of
which the nation is composed, without distinction of rank or birth or
circumstances."
We all stared at one another, amazed at this beginning; the answers
had come without any hesitation and as though she had learnt them
beforehand. I turned to her mother.
"Shall we proceed any further, madame?" I asked.
She was almost struck dumb with astonishment.
"Oh! Heavens!" she said, "I am afraid it will exhaust the poor child
too much to answer such questions as those; they are far beyond the
range of her age and understanding. The way she answers them," added
the mother, "terrifies me."
I turned again to the child.
"Does the hypnotic sleep tire you, Marie?"
"Not in the slightest, monsieur."
"You think, then, that you can answer my questions easily?"
"Certainly."
"Yet they are not the usual questions that are addressed to a child of
your age."
"God is willing that I should understand them."
We again looked at each other.
"Continue," said the mother.
"Go on," all the rest of the company exclaimed, in eager curiosity.
"Will the present form of government continue?"
"Yes, monsieur; it will last for several years."
"Will Lamartine or Ledru-Rollin be its bulwark?"
"Neither the one nor the other."
"Then we shall have a president?"
"Yes."
"And after this president whom shall we have?"
"Henri V."
"Henri V.?... But you know quite well, my child, that he is in exile!"
"Yes, but he will return to France."
"How will he return to France? By force?"
"No; by the consent of the French people."
"And where will he re-enter France?"
"At Grenoble."
"Will he have to fight to gain an entry?"
"No; he will come by way of Italy; from Italy he will enter Dauphiné,
and one morning it will be reported, 'Henri V. is in the citadel of
Grenoble.'"
"So there is a citadel at Grenoble?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Can you see it?"