On leaving Lemercier and De Breze, Savarin regained the Boulevard,
and pausing every now and then to exchange a few words with
acquaintances--the acquaintances of the genial author were
numerous--turned into the quartier Chaussee d’Antin, and gaining a
small neat house, with a richly-ornamented facade, mounted very
clean, well-kept stairs to a third story. On one of the doors on the
landing-place was nailed a card, inscribed, “Gustave Rameau, homme de
lettres.” Certainly it is not usual in Paris thus to afficher one’s self
as a “man of letters”? But Genius scorns what is usual. Had not Victor
Hugo left in the hotel-books on the Rhine his designation “homme de
lettres”? Did not the heir to one of the loftiest houses in the peerage
of England, and who was also a first-rate amateur in painting, inscribe
on his studio when in Italy, “--artiste”? Such examples, no doubt, were
familiar to Gustave Rameau, and “homme de lettres” was on the scrap of
pasteboard nailed to his door.
Savarin rang; the door opened, and Gustave appeared. The poet was, of
course, picturesquely attired. In his day of fashion he had worn within
doors a very pretty fanciful costume, designed after portraits of the
young Raffaelle; that costume he had preserved--he wore it now. It
looked very threadbare, and the pourpoint very soiled. But the beauty of
the poet’s face had survived the lustre of the garments. True, thanks
to absinthe, the cheeks had become somewhat puffy and bloated. Grey was
distinctly visible in the long ebon tresses. But still the beauty of
the face was of that rare type which a Thorwaldsen or a Gibson seeking a
model for a Narcissus would have longed to fix into marble.
Gustave received his former chief with a certain air of reserved
dignity; led him into his chamber, only divided by a curtain from his
accommodation for washing and slumber, and placed him in an arm-chair
beside a drowsy fire--fuel had already become very dear.
“Gustave,” said Savarin, “are you in a mood favourable to a little
serious talk?”
“Serious talk from M. Savarin is a novelty too great not to command my
profoundest interest.”
“Thank you,--and to begin: I who know the world and mankind advise you,
who do not, never to meet a man who wishes to do you a kindness with
an ungracious sarcasm. Irony is a weapon I ought to be skilled in, but
weapons are used against enemies, and it is only a tyro who flourishes
his rapier in the face of his friends.”
“I was not aware that M. Savarin still permitted me to regard him as a
friend.”
“Because I discharged the duties of friend--remonstrated, advised, and
warned. However, let bygones be bygones. I entreated you not to quit the
safe shelter of the paternal roof. You insisted on doing so. I entreated
you not to send to one of the most ferocious of the Red, or rather,
the Communistic, journals, articles, very eloquent, no doubt, but which
would most seriously injure you in the eyes of quiet, orderly people,
and compromise your future literary career for the sake of a temporary
flash in the pan during a very evanescent period of revolutionary
excitement. You scorned my adjurations, but at all events you had the
grace not to append your true name to those truculent effusions. In
literature, if literature revive in France, we two are henceforth
separated. But I do not forego the friendly interest I took in you in
the days when you were so continually in my house. My wife, who liked
you so cordially, implored me to look after you during her absence from
Paris, and, enfin, mon pauvre garcon, it would grieve me very much if,
when she comes back, I had to say to her, ‘Gustave Rameau has thrown
away the chance of redemption and of happiness which you deemed was
secure to him.’ A l’oeil malade, la lumiere nuit.”
So saying, he held out his hand kindly.
Gustave, who was far from deficient in affectionate or tender impulses,
took the hand respectfully, and pressed it warmly.
“Forgive me if I have been ungracious, M. Savarin, and vouchsafe to hear
my explanation.”
“Willingly, mon garcon.”
“When I became convalescent, well enough to leave my father’s house,
there were circumstances which compelled me to do so. A young man
accustomed to the life of a garcon can’t be always tied to his mother’s
apron-strings.”
“Especially if the apron-pocket does not contain a bottle of absinthe,”
said Savarin, drily. “You may well colour and try to look angry; but I
know that the doctor strictly forbade the use of that deadly liqueur,
and enjoined your mother to keep strict watch on your liability to its
temptations. And hence one cause of your ennui under the paternal roof.
But if there you could not imbibe absinthe, you were privileged to
enjoy a much diviner intoxication. There you could have the foretaste of
domestic bliss,--the society of the girl you loved, and who was pledged
to become your wife. Speak frankly. Did not that society itself begin to
be wearisome?”
“No,” cried Gustave, eagerly, “it was not wearisome--”
“Yes, but--”
“But it could not be all-sufficing to a soul of fire like mine.”
“Hem,” murmured Savarin--“a soul of fire! This is very interesting; pray
go on.”
“The calm, cold, sister-like affection of a childish undeveloped
nature, which knew no passion except for art, and was really so little
emancipated from the nursery as to take for serious truth all the old
myths of religion--such companionship may be very soothing and pleasant
when one is lying on one’s sofa, and must live by rule, but when one
regains the vigour of youth and health--”
“Do not pause,” said Savarin, gazing with more compassion than envy on
that melancholy impersonation of youth and health. “When one regains
that vigour of which I myself have no recollection, what happens?”
“The thirst for excitement, the goads of ambition, the irresistible
claims which the world urges upon genius, return.”
“And that genius, finding itself at the North Pole amid Cimmerian
darkness in the atmosphere of a childish intellect--in other words,
the society of a pure-minded virgin, who, though a good romance-writer,
writes nothing but what a virgin may read, and, though a bel esprit,
says her prayers and goes to church--then genius--well, pardon my
ignorance, what does genius do?”
“Oh, M. Savarin, M. Savarin! don’t let us talk any more. There is no
sympathy between us. I cannot bear that bloodless, mocking, cynical mode
of dealing with grand emotions, which belongs to the generation of the
Doctrinaires. I am not a Thiers or a Guizot.”
“Good heavens! who ever accused you of being either? I did not mean
to be cynical. Mademoiselle Cicogna has often said I am, but I did
not think you would. Pardon me. I quite agree with the philosopher who
asserted that the wisdom of the past was an imposture, that the meanest
intellect now living is wiser than the greatest intellect which is
buried in Pere la Chaise; because the dwarf who follows the giant, when
perched on the shoulders of the giant, sees farther than the giant ever
could. Allez. I go in for your generation. I abandon Guizot and Thiers.
Do condescend and explain to my dull understanding, as the inferior
mortal of a former age, what are the grand emotions which impel a
soul of fire in your wiser generation. The thirst of excitement--what
excitement? The goads of ambition--what ambition?”
“A new social system is struggling from the dissolving elements of the
old one, as, in the fables of priestcraft, the soul frees itself from
the body which has become ripe for the grave. Of that new system I
aspire to be a champion--a leader. Behold the excitement that allures
me, the ambition that goads.”
“Thank you,” said Savarin, meekly; “I am answered. I recognise the dwarf
perched on the back of the giant. Quitting these lofty themes, I venture
to address to you now one simple matter-of-fact question: How about
Mademoiselle Cicogna? Do you think you can induce her to transplant
herself to the new social system, which I presume will abolish, among
other obsolete myths, the institution of marriage?”
“M. Savarin, your question offends me. Theoretically I am opposed to the
existing superstitions that encumber the very simple principle by
which may be united two persons so long as they desire the union, and
separated so soon as the union becomes distasteful to either. But I
am perfectly aware that such theories would revolt a young lady like
Mademoiselle Cicogna. I have never even named them to her, and our
engagement holds good.”
“Engagement of marriage? No period for the ceremony fixed?”
“That is not my fault. I urged it on Isaura with all earnestness before
I left my father’s house.”
“That was long after the siege had begun. Listen to me, Gustave. No
persuasion of mine or my wife’s, nor Mrs. Morley’s, could induce Isaura
to quit Paris while it was yet time. She said very simply that, having
pledged her truth and hand to you, it would be treason to honour and
duty if she should allow any considerations for herself to be even
discussed so long as you needed her presence. You were then still
suffering, and, though convalescent, not without danger of a relapse.
And your mother said to her--I heard the words: ‘‘Tis not for his bodily
health I could dare to ask you to stay, when every man who can afford
it is sending away his wife, sisters, daughters. As for that, I should
suffice to tend him; but if you go, I resign all hope for the health of
his mind and his soul.’ I think at Paris there may be female poets and
artists whom that sort of argument would not have much influenced. But
it so happens that Isaura is not a Parisienne. She believes in those old
myths which you think fatal to sympathies with yourself; and those old
myths also lead her to believe that where a woman has promised she will
devote her life to a man, she cannot forsake him when told by his mother
that she is necessary to the health of his mind and his soul. Stay.
Before you interrupt me, let me finish what I have to say. It appears
that, so soon as your bodily health was improved, you felt that your
mind and your soul could take care of themselves; and certainly it seems
to me that Isaura Cicogna is no longer of the smallest use to either.”
Rameau was evidently much disconcerted by this speech. He saw what
Savarin was driving at--the renunciation of all bond between Isaura and
himself. He was not prepared for such renunciation. He still felt for
the Italian as much of love as he could feel for any woman who did not
kneel at his feet, as at those of Apollo condescending to the homage of
Arcadian maids. But on the one hand, he felt that many circumstances had
occurred since the disaster at Sedan to render Isaura a very much less
desirable partie than she had been when he had first wrung from her
the pledge of betrothal. In the palmy times of a Government in which
literature and art commanded station and insured fortune, Isaura,
whether as authoress or singer, was a brilliant marriage for Gustave
Rameau. She had also then an assured and competent, if modest, income.
But when times change, people change with them. As the income for
the moment (and Heaven only can say how long that moment might last),
Isaura’s income had disappeared. It will be recollected that Louvier
had invested her whole fortune in the houses to be built in the street
called after his name. No houses, even when built, paid any rent now.
Louvier had quitted Paris; and Isaura could only be subsisting upon such
small sum as she might have had in hand before the siege commenced. All
career in such literature and art as Isaura adorned was at a dead stop.
Now, to do Rameau justice, he was by no means an avaricious or mercenary
man. But he yearned for modes of life to which money was essential. He
liked his “comforts;” and his comforts included the luxuries of elegance
and show-comforts not to be attained by marriage with Isaura under
existing circumstances.
Nevertheless it is quite true that he had urged her to marry him at
once, before he had quitted his father’s house; and her modest shrinking
from such proposal, however excellent the reasons for delay in the
national calamities of the time, as well as the poverty which the
calamity threatened, had greatly wounded his amour propre. He had
always felt that her affection for him was not love; and though he could
reconcile himself to that conviction when many solid advantages were
attached to the prize of her love, and when he was ill, and penitent,
and maudlin, and the calm affection of a saint seemed to him infinitely
preferable to the vehement passion of a sinner,--yet when Isaura
was only Isaura by herself--Isaura minus all the et cetera which had
previously been taken into account--the want of adoration for himself
very much lessened her value.
Still, though he acquiesced in the delayed fulfilment of the engagement
with Isaura, he had no thought of withdrawing from the engagement
itself, and after a slight pause he replied: “You do me great injustice
if you suppose that the occupations to which I devote myself render me
less sensible to the merits of Mademoiselle Cicogna, or less eager
for our union. On the contrary, I will confide to you--as a man of the
world--one main reason why I quitted my father’s house, and why I desire
to keep my present address a secret. Mademoiselle Caumartin conceived
for me a passion--a caprice--which was very flattering for a time, but
which latterly became very troublesome. Figure to yourself--she
daily came to our house while I was lying ill, and with the greatest
difficulty my mother got her out of it. That was not all. She pestered
me with letters containing all sorts of threats--nay, actually kept
watch at the house; and one day when I entered the carriage with my
mother and Signora Venosta for a drive in the Bois (meaning to call for
Isaura by the way), she darted to the carriage-door, caught my hand, and
would have made a scene if the coachman had given her leave to do so.
Luckily he had the tact to whip on his horses, and we escaped. I had
some little difficulty in convincing the Signora Venosta that the girl
was crazed. But I felt the danger I incurred of her coming upon me some
moment when in company with Isaura, and so I left my father’s house; and
naturally wishing to steer clear of this vehement little demon till I
am safely married, I keep my address a secret from all who are likely to
tell her of it.”
“You do wisely if you are really afraid of her, and cannot trust your
nerves to say to her plainly, ‘I am engaged to be married; all is at an
end between us. Do not force me to employ the police to protect myself
from unwelcome importunities.’”
“Honestly speaking, I doubt if I have the nerve to do that, and I doubt
still more if it would be of any avail. It is very ennuayant to be so
passionately loved; but, que voulez vous? It is my fate.”
“Poor martyr! I condole with you: and, to say truth, it was chiefly
to warn you of Mademoiselle Caumartin’s pertinacity that I call this
evening.”
Here Savarin related the particulars of his rencontre with Julie, and
concluded by saying: “I suppose I may take your word of honour that you
will firmly resist all temptation to renew a connection which would be
so incompatible with the respect due to your fiancee? Fatherless and
protectorless as Isaura is, I feel bound to act as a virtual guardian
to one in whom my wife takes so deep an interest, and to whom, as she
thinks, she had some hand in bringing about your engagement: she is
committed to no small responsibilities. Do not allow poor Julie, whom
I sincerely pity, to force on me the unpleasant duty of warning your
fiancee of the dangers to which she might be subjected by marriage with
an Adonis whose fate it is to be so profoundly beloved by the sex in
general, and ballet nymphs in particular.”
“There is no chance of so disagreeable a duty being incumbent on you,
M. Savarin. Of course, what I myself have told you in confidence is
sacred.”
“Certainly. There are things in the life of a garcon before marriage
which would be an affront to the modesty of his fiancee to communicate
and discuss. But then those things must belong exclusively to the past
and cast no shadow over the future. I will not interrupt you further. No
doubt you have work for the night before you. Do the Red journalists for
whom you write pay enough to support you in these terribly dear times?”
“Scarcely. But I look forward to wealth and fame in the future. And
you?”
“I just escape starvation. If the siege last much longer, it is not of
the gout I shall die. Good-night to you.”