In the evening the Duke of Northumberland gave a ball. It was a
magnificent, fairylike spectacle. This Arabian Nights ambassador brought
one of these nights to Rheims. Every woman found a diamond in her
bouquet.
I could not dance. Nodier had not danced since he was sixteen years
of age, when a great aunt went into ecstasies over his terpsichorean
efforts and congratulated him in the following terms: “_Tu est charmant,
tu danses comme rim chou_!” We did not go to Lord Northumberland’s ball.
“What shall we do tonight?” said I to Nodier. He held up his odd volume
and answered:
“Let us read this.”
We read.
That is to say, Nodier read. He knew English (without being able
to speak it, I believe) enough to make it out. He read aloud, and
translated as he read. At intervals, while he rested, I took the book
bought from the ragpicker of Soissons, and read passages from the
_Romancero_. Like Nodier, I translated as I read. We compared the
English with the Castilian book; we confronted the dramatic with the
epic. Nodier stood up for Shakespeare, whom he could read in English,
and I for the _Romancero_, which I could read in Spanish. We brought
face to face, he the bastard Faulconbridge, I the bastard Mudarra. And
little by little in contradicting we convinced each other, and Nodier
became filled with enthusiasm for the _Romancero_, and I with admiration
for Shakespeare.
Listeners arrived. One passes the evening as best one can in a
provincial town on a coronation day when one doesn’t go to the ball. We
formed quite a little club. There was an academician, M. Roger; a man of
letters, M. d’Eckstein; M. de Marcellus, friend and country neighbour
of my father, who poked fun at his royalism and mine; good old Marquis
d’Herbouville, and M. Hémonin, donor of the book that cost six sous.
“It isn’t worth the money!” exclaimed M. Roger.
The conversation developed into a debate. Judgment was passed upon _King
John_. M. de Marcellus declared that the assassination of Arthur was an
improbable incident. It was pointed out to him that it was a matter of
history. It was with difficulty that he became reconciled to it. For
kings to kill each other was impossible. To M. de Marcellus’s mind the
murdering of kings began on January 21. Regicide was synonymous with
‘93. To kill a king was an unheard-of thing that the “populace” alone
were capable of doing. No king except Louis XVI. had ever been violently
put to death. He, however, reluctantly admitted the case of Charles
I. In his death also he saw the hand of the populace. All the rest was
demagogic lying and calumny.
Although as good a royalist as he, I ventured to insinuate that the
sixteenth century had existed, and that it was the period when the
Jesuits had clearly propounded the question of “bleeding the basilic
vein,” that is to say of cases in which the king ought to be slain;
a question which, once brought forward, met with such success that it
resulted in two kings, Henry III. and Henry IV., being stabbed, and a
Jesuit, Father Guignard, being hanged.
Then we passed to the details of the drama, situations, scenes, and
personages. Nodier pointed out that Faulconbridge is the same person
spoken of by Mathieu Paris as Falcasius de Trente, bastard of Richard
Coeur de Lion. Baron d’Eckstein, in support of this, reminded his
hearers that, according to Hollinshed, Faulconbridge, or Falcasius,
slew the Viscount de Limoges to avenge his father Richard, who had
been wounded unto death at the siege of Chaluz; and that this castle of
Chaluz, being the property of the Viscount de Limoges, it was only right
that the Viscount, although absent, should be made to answer with his
head for the falling of an arrow or a stone from the castle upon the
King. M. Roger laughed at the cry of “Austria Limoges” in the play and
at Shakespeare’s confounding the Viscount de Limoges with the Duke of
Austria. M. Roger scored the success of the evening and his laughter
settled the matter.
The discussion having taken this turn I said nothing further. This
revelation of Shakespeare had moved me. His grandeur impressed me. _King
John_ is not a masterpiece, but certain scenes are lofty and powerful,
and in the motherhood of Constance there are bursts of genius.
The two books, open and reversed, remained lying upon the table. The
company had ceased to read in order to laugh. Nodier at length became
silent like myself. We were beaten. The gathering broke up with a laugh,
and our visitors went away. Nodier and I remained alone and pensive,
thinking of the great works that are unappreciated, and amazed that the
intellectual education of the civilized peoples, and even our own, his
and mine, had advanced no further than this.
At last Nodier broke the silence. I can see his smile now as he said:
“They know nothing about the Romancero!”