Ver.07/27/01*END*
This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
entire meal of them. D.W.]
A ROMANCE OF YOUTH
By FRANCOIS COPPEE
With a Preface by JOSE DE HEREDIA, of the French Academy
FRANCOIS COPPEE
FRANCOIS EDOUARD JOACHIM COPPEE was born in Paris, January 12, 1842. His
father was a minor 'employe' in the French War Office; and, as the family
consisted of six the parents, three daughters, and a son (the subject of
this essay)--the early years of the poet were not spent in great luxury.
After the father's death, the young man himself entered the governmental
office with its monotonous work. In the evening he studied hard at St.
Genevieve Library. He made rhymes, had them even printed (Le Reliquaire,
1866); but the public remained indifferent until 1869, when his comedy in
verse, 'Le Passant', appeared. From this period dates the reputation of
Coppee--he woke up one morning a "celebrated man."
Like many of his countrymen, he is a poet, a dramatist, a novelist, and a
writer of fiction. He was elected to the French Academy in 1884. Smooth
shaven, of placid figure, with pensive eyes, the hair brushed back
regularly, the head of an artist, Coppee can be seen any day looking over
the display of the Parisian secondhand booksellers on the Quai Malaquais;
at home on the writing-desk, a page of carefully prepared manuscript, yet
sometimes covered by cigarette-ashes; upon the wall, sketches by Jules
Lefebvre and Jules Breton; a little in the distance, the gaunt form of
his attentive sister and companion, Annette, occupied with household
cares, ever fearful of disturbing him. Within this tranquil domicile can
be heard the noise of the Parisian faubourg with its thousand different
dins; the bustle of the street; the clatter of a factory; the voice of
the workshop; the cries of the pedlers intermingled with the chimes of
the bells of a near-by convent-a confusing buzzing noise, which the
author, however, seems to enjoy; for Coppee is Parisian by birth,
Parisian by education, a Parisian of the Parisians.
If as a poet we contemplate him, Coppee belongs to the group commonly
called "Parnassiens"--not the Romantic School, the sentimental lyric
effusion of Lamartine, Hugo, or De Musset! When the poetical lute was
laid aside by the triad of 1830, it was taken up by men of quite
different stamp, of even opposed tendencies. Observation of exterior
matters was now greatly adhered to in poetry; it became especially
descriptive and scientific; the aim of every poet was now to render most
exactly, even minutely, the impressions received, or faithfully to
translate into artistic language a thesis of philosophy, a discovery of
science. With such a poetical doctrine, you will easily understand the
importance which the "naturalistic form" henceforth assumed.
Coppee, however, is not only a maker of verses, he is an artist and a
poet. Every poem seems to have sprung from a genuine inspiration. When
he sings, it is because he has something to sing about, and the result is
that his poetry is nearly always interesting. Moreover, he respects the
limits of his art; for while his friend and contemporary, M. Sully-
Prudhomme, goes astray habitually into philosophical speculation, and his
immortal senior, Victor Hugo, often declaims, if one may venture to say
so, in a manner which is tedious, Coppee sticks rigorously to what may be
called the proper regions of poetry.
Francois Coppee is not one of those superb high priests disdainful of the
throng: he is the poet of the "humble," and in his work, 'Les Humbles',
he paints with a sincere emotion his profound sympathy for the sorrows,
the miseries, and the sacrifices of the meek. Again, in his 'Grave des
Forgerons, Le Naufrage, and L'Epave', all poems of great extension and
universal reputation, he treats of simple existences, of unknown
unfortunates, and of sacrifices which the daily papers do not record.
The coloring and designing are precise, even if the tone be somewhat
sombre, and nobody will deny that Coppee most fully possesses the
technique of French poetry.
But Francois Coppee is known to fame as a prosewriter, too. His 'Contes
en prose' and his 'Vingt Contes Nouveaux' are gracefully and artistically
told; scarcely one of the 'contes' fails to have a moral motive. The
stories are short and naturally slight; some, indeed, incline rather to
the essay than to the story, but each has that enthralling interest which
justifies its existence. Coppee possesses preeminently the gift of
presenting concrete fact rather than abstraction. A sketch, for
instance, is the first tale written by him, 'Une Idylle pendant le Seige'
(1875). In a novel we require strong characterization, great grasp of
character, and the novelist should show us the human heart and intellect
in full play and activity. In 1875 appeared also 'Olivier', followed by
'L'Exilee (1876); Recits et Elegies (1878); Vingt Contes Nouveaux (1883);
and Toute une Jeunesse', mainly an autobiography, crowned by acclaim by
the Academy. 'Le Coupable' was published in 1897. Finally, in 1898,
appeared 'La Bonne Souffrance'. In the last-mentioned work it would seem
that the poet, just recovering from a severe malady, has returned to the
dogmas of the Catholic Church, wherefrom he, like so many of his
contemporaries, had become estranged when a youth. The poems of 1902,
'Dans la Priere et dans la Lutte', tend to confirm the correctness of
this view.
Thanks to the juvenile Sarah Bernhardt, Coppee became, as before
mentioned, like Byron, celebrated in one night. This happened through
the performance of 'Le Passant'.
As interludes to the plays there are "occasional" theatrical pieces,
written for the fiftieth anniversary of the performance of 'Hernani'
or the two-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the "Comedie
Francaise." This is a wide field, indeed, which M. Coppee has cultivated
to various purposes.
Take Coppee's works in their sum and totality, and the world-decree is
that he is an artist, and an admirable one. He plays upon his instrument
with all power and grace. But he is no mere virtuoso. There is
something in him beyond the executant. Of Malibran, Alfred de Musset
says, most beautifully, that she had that "voice of the heart which alone
has power to reach the heart." Here, also, behind the skilful player on
language, the deft manipulator of rhyme and rhythm, the graceful and
earnest writer, one feels the beating of a human heart. One feels that
he is giving us personal impressions of life and its joys and sorrows;
that his imagination is powerful because it is genuinely his own; that
the flowers of his fancy spring spontaneously from the soil. Nor can I
regard it as aught but an added grace that the strings of his instrument
should vibrate so readily to what is beautiful and unselfish and delicate
in human feeling.
JOSE DE HEREDIA
de l'Academie Francaise.
A ROMANCE OF YOUTH
BOOK 1.
CHAPTER I
ON THE BALCONY
As far back as Amedee Violette can remember, he sees himself in an
infant's cap upon a fifth-floor balcony covered with convolvulus; the
child was very small, and the balcony seemed very large to him. Amedee
had received for a birthday present a box of water-colors, with which he
was sprawled out upon an old rug, earnestly intent upon his work of
coloring the woodcuts in an odd volume of the 'Magasin Pittoresque', and
wetting his brush from time to time in his mouth. The neighbors in the
next apartment had a right to one-half of the balcony. Some one in there
was playing upon the piano Marcailhou's Indiana Waltz, which was all the
rage at that time. Any man, born about the year 1845, who does not feel
the tears of homesickness rise to his eyes as he turns over the pages of
an old number of the 'Magasin Pittoresque', or who hears some one play
upon an old piano Marcailhou's Indiana Waltz, is not endowed with much
sensibility.
When the child was tired of putting the "flesh color" upon the faces of
all the persons in the engravings, he got up and went to peep through the
railings of the balustrade. He saw extending before him, from right to
left, with a graceful curve, the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, one of the
quietest streets in the Luxembourg quarter, then only half built up.
The branches of the trees spread over the wooden fences, which enclosed
gardens so silent and tranquil that passers by could hear the birds
singing in their cages.
It was a September afternoon, with a broad expanse of pure sky across
which large clouds, like mountains of silver, moved in majestic slowness.
Suddenly a soft voice called him:
"Amedee, your father will return from the office soon. We must wash your
hands before we sit down to the table, my darling."
His mother came out upon the balcony for him. His mother; his dear
mother, whom he knew for so short a time! It needs an effort for him to
call her to mind now, his memories are so indistinct. She was so modest
and pretty, so pale, and with such charming blue eyes, always carrying
her head on one side, as if the weight of her lovely chestnut hair was
too heavy for her to bear, and smiling the sweet, tired smile of those
who have not long to live! She made his toilette, kissed him upon his
forehead, after brushing his hair. Then she laid their modest table,
which was always decorated with a pretty vase of flowers. Soon the
father entered. He was one of those mild, unpretentious men who let
everybody run over them.
He tried to be gay when he entered his own house. He raised his little
boy aloft with one arm, before kissing him, exclaiming, "Houp la!" A
moment later he kissed his young wife and held her close to him,
tenderly, as he asked, with an anxious look:
"Have you coughed much to-day?"
She always replied, hanging her head like a child who tells an untruth,
"No, not very much."
The father would then put on an old coat--the one he took off was not
very new. Amedee was then seated in a high chair before his mug, and the
young mother, going into the kitchen, would bring in the supper. After
opening his napkin, the father would brush back behind his ear with his
hand a long lock on the right side, that always fell into his eyes.
"Is there too much of a breeze this evening? you afraid to go out upon
the balcony, Lucie? Put a shawl on, then," said M. Violette, while his
wife was pouring the water remaining in the carafe upon a box where some
nasturtiums were growing.
"No, Paul, I am sure--take Amedee down from his chair, and let us go out
upon the balcony."
It was cool upon this high balcony. The sun had set, and now the great
clouds resembled mountains of gold, and a fresh odor came up from the
surrounding gardens.
"Good-evening, Monsieur Violette," suddenly said a cordial voice. "What
a fine evening!"
It was their neighbor, M. Gerard, an engraver, who had also come to take
breath upon his end of the balcony, having spent the entire day bent over
his work. He was large and bald-headed, with a good-natured face, a red
beard sprinkled with white hairs, and he wore a short, loose coat. As he
spoke he lighted his clay pipe, the bowl of which represented Abd-el-
Kader's face, very much colored, save the eyes and turban, which were of
white enamel.
The engraver's wife, a dumpy little woman with merry eyes, soon joined
her husband, pushing before her two little girls; one, the smaller of the
two, was two years younger than Amedee; the other was ten years old, and
already had a wise little air. She was the pianist who practised one
hour a day Marcailhou's Indiana Waltz.
The children chattered through the trellis that divided the balcony in
two parts. Louise, the elder of the girls, knew how to read, and told
the two little ones very beautiful stories: Joseph sold by his brethren;
Robinson Crusoe discovering the footprints of human beings.
Amedee, who now has gray hair upon his temples, can still remember the
chills that ran down his back at the moment when the wolf, hidden under
coverings and the grandmother's cap, said, with a gnashing of teeth, to
little Red Riding Hood: "All the better to eat you with, my child."
It was almost dark then upon the terrace. It was all delightfully
terrible!
During this time the two families, in their respective parts of the
balcony, were talking familiarly together. The Violettes were quiet
people, and preferred rather to listen to their neighbors than to talk
themselves, making brief replies for politeness' sake--"Ah!" "Is it
possible?" "You are right."
The Gerards liked to talk. Madame Gerard, who was a good housekeeper,
discussed questions of domestic economy; telling, for example, how she
had been out that day, and had seen, upon the Rue du Bac, some merino:
"A very good bargain, I assure you, Madame, and very wide!" Or perhaps
the engraver, who was a simple politician, after the fashion of 1848,
would declare that we must accept the Republic, "Oh, not the red-hot, you
know, but the true, the real one!" Or he would wish that Cavaignac had
been elected President at the September balloting; although he himself
was then engraving--one must live, after all--a portrait of Prince Louis
Napoleon, destined for the electoral platform. M. and Madame Violette
let them talk; perhaps even they did not always pay attention to the
conversation. When it was dark they held each other's hands and gazed at
the stars.
These lovely, cool, autumnal evenings, upon the balcony, under the starry
heavens, are the most distant of all Amedee's memories. Then there was a
break in his memory, like a book with several leaves torn out, after
which he recalls many sad days.
Winter had come, and they no longer spent their evenings upon the
balcony. One could see nothing now through the windows but a dull, gray
sky. Amedee's mother was ill and always remained in her bed. When he
was installed near the bed, before a little table, cutting out with
scissors the hussars from a sheet of Epinal, his poor mamma almost
frightened him, as she leaned her elbow upon the pillow and gazed at him
so long and so sadly, while her thin white hands restlessly pushed back
her beautiful, disordered hair, and two red hectic spots burned under her
cheekbones.
It was not she who now came to take him from his bed in the morning, but
an old woman in a short jacket, who did not kiss him, and who smelled
horribly of snuff.
His father, too, did not pay much attention to him now. When he returned
in the evening from the office he always brought bottles and little
packages from the apothecary. Sometimes he was accompanied by the
physician, a large man, very much dressed and perfumed, who panted for
breath after climbing the five flights of stairs. Once Amedee saw this
stranger put his arms around his mother as she sat in her bed, and lay
his head for a long time against her back. The child asked, "What for,
mamma?"
M. Violette, more nervous than ever, and continually throwing back the
rebellious lock behind his ear, would accompany the doctor to the door
and stop there to talk with him. Then Amedee's mother would call to him,
and he would climb upon the bed, where she would gaze at him with her
bright eyes and press him to her breast, saying, in a sad tone, as if she
pitied him: "My poor little Medee! My poor little Medee!" Why was it?
What did it all mean?
His father would return with a forced smile which was pitiful to see.
"Well, what did the doctor say?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing! You are much better. Only, my poor Lucie, we
must put on another blister to-night."
Oh, how monotonous and slow these days were to the little Amedee, near
the drowsy invalid, in the close room smelling of drugs, where only the
old snuff-taker entered once an hour to bring a cup of tea or put
charcoal upon the fire!
Sometimes their neighbor, Madame Gerard, would come to inquire after the
sick lady.
"Still very feeble, my good Madame Gerard," his mother would respond.
"Ah, I am beginning to get discouraged."
But Madame Gerard would not let her be despondent.
"You see, Madame Violette, it is this horrible, endless winter. It is
almost March now; they are already selling boxes of primroses in little
carts on the sidewalks. You will surely be better as soon as the sun
shines. If you like, I will take little Amedee back with me to play with
my little girls. It will amuse the child."
So it happened that the good neighbor kept the child every afternoon, and
he became very fond of the little Gerard children.
Four little rooms, that is all; but with a quantity of old, picturesque
furniture; engravings, casts, and pictures painted by comrades were on
the walls; the doors were always open, and the children could always play
where they liked, chase each other through the apartments or pillage
them. In the drawing-room, which had been transformed into a work-room,
the artist sat upon a high stool, point in hand; the light from a
curtainless window, sifting through the transparent paper, made the
worthy man's skull shine as he leaned over his copper plate. He worked
hard all day; with an expensive house and two girls to bring up, it was
necessary. In spite of his advanced opinions, he continued to engrave
his Prince Louis--"A rogue who is trying to juggle us out of a Republic."
At the very most, he stopped only two or three times a day to smoke his
Abu-el-Kader. Nothing distracted him from his work; not even the little
ones, who, tired of playing their piece for four hands upon the piano,
would organize, with Amedee, a game of hide-and-seek close by their
father, behind the old Empire sofa ornamented with bronze lions' heads.
But Madame Gerard, in her kitchen, where she was always cooking something
good for dinner, sometimes thought they made too great an uproar. Then
Maria, a real hoyden, in trying to catch her sister, would push an old
armchair against a Renaissance chest and make all the Rouen crockery
tremble.
"Now then, now then, children!" exclaimed Madame Gerard, from the depths
of her lair, from which escaped a delicious odor of bacon. "Let your
father have a little quiet, and go and play in the dining-room."
They obeyed; for there they could move chairs as they liked, build houses
of them, and play at making calls. Did ever anybody have such wild ideas
at five years of age as this Maria? She took the arm of Amedee, whom she
called her little husband, and went to call upon her sister and show her
her little child, a pasteboard doll with a large head, wrapped up in a
napkin.
"As you see, Madame, it is a boy."
"What do you intend to make of him when he grows up?" asked Louise, who
lent herself complacently to the play, for she was ten years old and
quite a young lady, if you please.
"Why, Madame," replied Maria, gravely, "he will be a soldier."
At that moment the engraver, who had left his bench to stretch his legs a
little and to light his Abd-el-Kader for the third time, came and stood
at the threshold of his room. Madame Gerard, reassured as to the state
of her stew, which was slowly cooking--and oh, how good it smelled in the
kitchen!--entered the dining-room. Both looked at the children, so
comical and so graceful, as they made their little grimaces! Then the
husband glanced at his wife, and the wife at the husband, and both burst
out into hearty laughter.
There never was any laughter in the apartment of the Violettes. It was
cough! cough! cough! almost to suffocation, almost to death! This gentle
young woman with the heavy hair was about to die! When the beautiful
starry evenings should come again, she would no longer linger on the
balcony, or press her husband's hand as they gazed at the stars. Little
Amedee did not understand it; but he felt a vague terror of something
dreadful happening in the house. Everything alarmed him now. He was
afraid of the old woman who smelled of snuff, and who, when she dressed
him in the morning, looked at him with a pitying air; he was afraid of
the doctor, who climbed the five flights of stairs twice a day now, and
left a whiff of perfume behind him; afraid of his father, who did not go
to his office any more, whose beard was often three days old, and who
feverishly paced the little parlor, tossing back with a distracted
gesture the lock of hair behind his ear. He was afraid of his mother,
alas! of his mother, whom he had seen that evening, by the light from the
night-lamp, buried in the pillows, her delicate nose and chin thrown up,
and who did not seem to recognize him, in spite of her wide-open eyes,
when his father took her child in his arms and leaned over her with him
that he might kiss her cold forehead covered with sweat!
At last the terrible day arrived, a day that Amedee never will forget,
although he was then a very small child.
What awakened him that morning was his father's embrace as he came and
took him from his bed. His father's eyes were wild and bloodshot from so
much crying. Why was their neighbor, M. Gerard, there so early in the
morning, and with great tears rolling down his cheeks too? He kept
beside M. Violette, as if watching him, and patted him upon the back
affectionately, saying:
"Now then, my poor friend! Have courage, courage!"
But the poor friend had no more. He let M. Gerard take the child from
him, and then his head fell like a dead person's upon the good engraver's
shoulder, and he began to weep with heavy sobs that shook his whole body.
"Mamma! See mamma!" cried the little Amedee, full of terror.
Alas! he never will see her again! At the Gerards, where they carried
him and the kind neighbor dressed him, they told him that his mother had
gone for a long time, a very long time; that he must love his papa very
much and think only of him; and other things that he could not understand
and dared not ask the meaning of, but which filled him with
consternation.
It was strange! The engraver and his wife busied themselves entirely
with him, watching him every moment. The little ones, too, treated him
in a singular, almost respectful manner. What had caused such a change?
Louise did not open her piano, and when little Maria wished to take her
"menagerie" from the lower part of the buffet, Madame Gerard said
sharply, as she wiped the tears from her eyes: "You must not play to-
day."
After breakfast Madame Gerard put on her hat and shawl and went out,
taking Amedee with her. They got into a carriage that took them through
streets that the child did not know, across a bridge in the middle of
which stood a large brass horseman, with his head crowned with laurel,
and stopped before a large house and entered with the crowd, where a very
agile and rapid young man put some black clothes on Amedee.
On their return the child found his father seated at the dining-room
table with M. Gerard, and both of them were writing addresses upon large
sheets of paper bordered with black. M. Violette was not crying, but his
face showed deep lines of grief, and he let his lock of hair fall over
his right eye.
At the sight of little Amedee, in his black clothes, he uttered a groan,
and arose, staggering like a drunken man, bursting into tears again.
Oh, no! he never will forget that day, nor the horrible next day, when
Madame Gerard came and dressed him in the morning in his black clothes,
while he listened to the noise of heavy feet and blows from a hammer in
the next room. He suddenly remembered that he had not seen his mother
since two days before.
"Mamma! I want to see mamma!"
It was necessary then to try to make him understand the truth. Madame
Gerard repeated to him that he ought to be very wise and good, and try to
console his father, who had much to grieve him; for his mother had gone
away forever; that she was in heaven.
In heaven! heaven is very high up and far off. If his mother was in
heaven, what was it that those porters dressed in black carried away in
the heavy box that they knocked at every turn of the staircase? What did
that solemn carriage, which he followed through all the rain, quickening
his childish steps, with his little hand tightly clasped in his father's,
carry away? What did they bury in that hole, from which an odor of
freshly dug earth was emitted--in that hole surrounded by men in black,
and from which his father turned away his head in horror? What was it
that they hid in this ditch, in this garden full of crosses and stone
urns, where the newly budded trees shone in the March sun after the
shower, large drops of water still falling from their branches like
tears?
His mother was in heaven! On the evening of that dreadful day Amedee
dared not ask to "see mamma" when he was seated before his father at the
table, where, for a long time, the old woman in a short jacket had placed
only two plates. The poor widower, who had just wiped his eyes with his
napkin, had put upon one of the plates a little meat cut up in bits for
Amedee. He was very pale, and as Amedee sat in his high chair, he asked
himself whether he should recognize his mother's sweet, caressing look,
some day, in one of those stars that she loved to watch, seated upon the
balcony on cool September nights, pressing her husband's hand in the
darkness.