Isaura had, as we have seen, been hitherto saved by the siege and its
consequences from the fulfilment of her engagement to Gustave Rameau;
and since he had quitted his father’s house she had not only seen less
of him, but a certain chill crept into his converse in the visits
he paid to her. The compassionate feeling his illness had excited,
confirmed by the unwonted gentleness of his mood, and the short-lived
remorse with which he spoke of his past faults and follies, necessarily
faded away in proportion as he regained that kind of febrile strength
which was his normal state of health, and with it the arrogant
self-assertion which was ingrained in his character. But it was now
more than ever that she became aware of the antagonism between all that
constituted his inner life and her own. It was not that he volunteered
in her presence the express utterance of those opinions, social or
religious, which he addressed to the public in the truculent journal to
which, under a nom de plume, he was the most inflammatory contributor.
Whether it was that he shrank from insulting the ears of the pure virgin
whom he had wooed as wife with avowals of his disdain of marriage bonds,
or perhaps from shocking yet more her womanly humanity and her religious
faith by cries for the blood of anti-republican traitors and the
downfall of Christian altars; or whether he yet clung, though with
relapsing affection, to the hold which her promise had imposed on him,
and felt that that hold would be for ever gone, and that she would
recoil from his side in terror and dismay, if she once learned that the
man who had implored her to be his saving angel from the comparatively
mild errors of youth, had so belied his assurance, so mocked her
credulity, as deliberately to enter into active warfare against all that
he knew her sentiments regarded as noble and her conscience received
as divine: despite the suppression of avowed doctrine on his part, the
total want of sympathy between these antagonistic natures made itself
felt by both--more promptly felt by Isaura. If Gustave did not frankly
announce to her in that terrible time (when all that a little later
broke out on the side of the Communists was more or less forcing ominous
way to the lips of those who talked with confidence to each other,
whether to approve or to condemn) the associates with whom he was
leagued, the path to which he had committed his career--still for her
instincts for genuine Art--which for its development needs the
serenity of peace, which for its ideal needs dreams that soar into the
Infinite--Gustave had only the scornful sneer of the man who identifies
with his ambition the violent upset of all that civilisation has
established in this world, and the blank negation of all that patient
hope and heroic aspiration which humanity carries on into the next.
On his side, Gustave Rameau, who was not without certain fine and
delicate attributes in a complicated nature over which the personal
vanity and the mobile temperament of the Parisian reigned supreme,
chafed at the restraints imposed on him. No matter what a man’s
doctrines may be--however abominable you and I may deem them--man
desires to find, in the dearest fellowship he can establish, that
sympathy in the woman his choice singles out from her sex-deference
to his opinions, sympathy with his objects, as man. So, too, Gustave’s
sense of honour and according to his own Parisian code that sense was
keen--became exquisitely stung by the thought that he was compelled to
play the part of a mean dissimulator to the girl for whose opinions he
had the profoundest contempt. How could these two, betrothed to each
other, not feel, though without coming to open dissension, that between
them had flowed the inlet of water by which they had been riven asunder?
What man, if he can imagine himself a Gustave Rameau, can blame the
revolutionist absorbed in ambitious projects for turning the pyramid of
society topsy-turvy, if he shrank more and more from the companionship
of a betrothed with whom he could not venture to exchange three words
without caution and reserve? And what woman can blame an Isaura if she
felt a sensation of relief at the very neglect of the affianced whom she
had compassionated and could never love?
Possibly the reader may best judge of the state of Isaura’s mind at this
time by a few brief extracts from an imperfect fragmentary journal, in
which, amid saddened and lonely hours, she held converse with herself.
“One day at Enghien I listened silently to a conversation between M.
Savarin and the Englishman, who sought to explain the conception of duty
in which the German poet has given such noble utterance to the thoughts
of the German philosopher--viz., that moral aspiration has the same goal
as the artistic,--the attainment to the calm delight wherein the pain
of effort disappears in the content of achievement. Thus in life, as in
art, it is through discipline that we arrive at freedom, and duty only
completes itself when all motives, all actions, are attuned into one
harmonious whole, and it is not striven for as duty, but enjoyed as
happiness. M. Savarin treated this theory with the mockery with which
the French wit is ever apt to treat what it terms German mysticism.
According to him, duty must always be a hard and difficult struggle; and
he said laughingly, ‘Whenever a man says, “I have done my duty,” it is
with a long face and a mournful sigh.’
“Ah, how devoutly I listened to the Englishman! how harshly the
Frenchman’s irony jarred upon my ears! And yet now, in the duty that
life imposes on me, to fulfil which I strain every power vouchsafed to
my nature, and seek to crush down every impulse that rebels, where is
the promised calm, where any approach to the content of achievement?
Contemplating the way before me, the Beautiful even of Art has vanished.
I see but cloud and desert. Can this which I assume to be duty really be
so? Ah, is it not sin even to ask my heart that question?
“Madame Rameau is very angry with her son for his neglect both of his
parents and of me. I have had to take his part against her. I would not
have him lose their love. Poor Gustave! But when Madame Rameau suddenly
said to-day: ‘I erred in seeking the union between thee and Gustave.
Retract thy promise; in doing so thou wilt be justified,’--oh, the
strange joy that flashed upon me as she spoke. Am I justified? Am I? Oh,
if that Englishman had never crossed my path! Oh, if I had never
loved! or if in the last time we met he had not asked for my love,
and confessed his own! Then, I think, I could honestly reconcile my
conscience with my longings, and say to Gustave, ‘We do not suit each
other; be we both released!’ But now-is it that Gustave is really
changed from what he was, when in despondence at my own lot, and in
pitying belief that I might brighten and exalt his, I plighted my troth
to him? or is it not rather that the choice I thus voluntarily made
became so intolerable a thought the moment I knew I was beloved and
sought by another; and from that moment I lost the strength I had
before,--strength to silence the voice at my own heart? What! is it
the image of that other one which is persuading me to be false?--to
exaggerate the failings, to be blind to the merits of him who has a
right to say, ‘I am what I was when thou didst pledge thyself to take me
for better or for worse’?
“Gustave has been here after an absence of several days. He was not
alone. The good Abbe Vertpre and Madame de Vandemar, with her son,
M. Raoul, were present. They had come on matters connected with our
ambulance. They do not know of my engagement to Gustave; and seeing him
in the uniform of a National Guard, the Abbe courteously addressed
to him some questions as to the possibility of checking the terrible
increase of the vice of intoxication, so alien till of late to the
habits of the Parisians, and becoming fatal to discipline and bodily
endurance,--could the number of the cantines on the ramparts be more
limited? Gustave answered with rudeness and bitter sarcasm, ‘Before
priests could be critics in military matters they must undertake
military service themselves.’
“The Abbe replied with unalterable good-humour, ‘But, in order to
criticise the effects of drunkenness, must one get drunk one’s self?’
Gustave was put out, and retired into a corner of the room, keeping
sullen silence till my other visitors left.
“Then before I could myself express the pain his words and manner
had given me, he said abruptly, ‘I wonder how you can tolerate the
tartuferie which may amuse on the comic stage, but in the tragedy
of these times is revolting.’ This speech roused my anger, and the
conversation that ensued was the gravest that had ever passed between
us.
“If Gustave were of stronger nature and more concentrated will, I
believe that the only feelings I should have for him would be antipathy
and dread. But it is his very weaknesses and inconsistencies that secure
to him a certain tenderness of interest. I think he could never be
judged without great indulgence by women; there is in him so much of
the child,--wayward, irritating one moment, and the next penitent,
affectionate. One feels as if persistence in evil were impossible to
one so delicate both in mind and form. That peculiar order of genius
to which he belongs seems as if it ought to be so estranged from all
directions, violent or coarse. When in poetry he seeks to utter some
audacious and defying sentiment, the substance melts away in daintiness
of expression, in soft, lute-like strains of slender music. And when
he has stung, angered, revolted my heart the most, suddenly he subsides
into such pathetic gentleness, such tearful remorse, that I feel as if
resentment to one so helpless, desertion of one who must fall without
the support of a friendly hand, were a selfish cruelty. It seems to me
as if I were dragged towards a precipice by a sickly child clinging to
my robe.
“But in this last conversation with him, his language in regard to
subjects I hold most sacred drew forth from me words which startled
him, and which may avail to save him from that worst insanity of human
minds,--the mimicry of the Titans who would have dethroned a God to
restore a Chaos. I told him frankly that I had only promised to
share his fate on my faith in his assurance of my power to guide
it heavenward; and that if the opinions he announced were seriously
entertained, and put forth in defiance of heaven itself, we were
separated for ever. I told him how earnestly, in the calamities of the
time, my own soul had sought to take refuge in thoughts and hopes beyond
the earth; and how deeply many a sentiment that in former days passed
by me with a smile in the light talk of the salons, now shocked me as
an outrage on the reverence which the mortal child owes to the Divine
Father. I owned to him how much of comfort, of sustainment, of thought
and aspiration, elevated beyond the sphere of Art in which I had
hitherto sought the purest air, the loftiest goal, I owed to intercourse
with minds like those of the Abbe de Vertpre; and how painfully I felt
as if I were guilty of ingratitude when he compelled me to listen to
insults on those whom I recognised as benefactors.
“I wished to speak sternly; but it is my great misfortune, my prevalent
weakness, that I cannot be stern when I ought to be. It is with me in
life as in art. I never could on the stage have taken the part of a
Norma or a Medea. If I attempt in fiction a character which deserves
condemnation, I am untrue to poetic justice. I cannot condemn and
execute; I can but compassionate and pardon the creature I myself have
created. I was never in the real world stern but to one; and then, alas!
it was because I loved where I could no longer love with honour; and I,
knowing my weakness, had terror lest I should yield.
“So Gustave did not comprehend from my voice, my manner, how gravely I
was in earnest. But, himself softened, affected to tears, he confessed
his own faults--ceased to argue in order to praise; and--and--uttering
protestations seemingly the most sincere, he left me bound to him
still--bound to him still--woe is me!”
It is true that Isaura had come more directly under the influence of
religion than she had been in the earlier dates of this narrative. There
is a time in the lives of most of us, and especially in the lives of
women, when, despondent of all joy in an earthly future, and tortured by
conflicts between inclination and duty, we transfer all the passion and
fervour of our troubled souls to enthusiastic yearnings for the Divine
Love; seeking to rebaptise ourselves in the fountain of its mercy,
taking thence the only hopes that can cheer, the only strength that can
sustain us. Such a time had come to Isaura. Formerly she had escaped
from the griefs of the work-a-day world into the garden-land of Art.
Now, Art had grown unwelcome to her, almost hateful. Gone was the spell
from the garden-land; its flowers were faded, its paths were stony, its
sunshine had vanished in mist and rain. There are two voices of Nature
in the soul of the genuine artist,--that is, of him who, because he can
create, comprehends the necessity of the great Creator. Those voices
are never both silent. When one is hushed, the other becomes distinctly
audible. The one speaks to him of Art, the other of Religion.
At that period several societies for the relief and tendance of the
wounded had been formed by the women of Paris,--the earliest, if I
mistake not, by ladies of the highest rank--amongst whom were the
Comtesse de Vandemar and the Contessa di Rimini--though it necessarily
included others of stations less elevated. To this society, at the
request of Alain de Rochebriant and of Enguerrand, Isaura had eagerly
attached herself. It occupied much of her time; and in connection with
it she was brought much into sympathetic acquaintance with Raoul de
Vandemar--the most zealous and active member of that Society of
St. Francois de Sales, to which belonged other young nobles of the
Legitimist creed. The passion of Raoul’s life was the relief of human
suffering. In him was personified the ideal of Christian charity.
I think all, or most of us, have known what it is to pass under the
influence of a nature that is so far akin to ours that it desires
to become something better and higher than it is--that desire being
paramount in ourselves--but seeks to be that something in ways not akin
to, but remote from, the ways in which we seek it. When this contact
happens, either one nature, by the mere force of will, subjugates and
absorbs the other, or both, while preserving their own individuality,
apart and independent, enrich themselves by mutual interchange, and
the asperities which differences of taste and sentiment in detail might
otherwise provoke melt in the sympathy which unites spirits striving
with equal earnestness to rise nearer to the unseen and unattainable
Source, which they equally recognise as Divine.
Perhaps, had these two persons met a year ago in the ordinary
intercourse of the world, neither would have detected the sympathy of
which I speak. Raoul was not without the prejudice against artists and
writers of romance, that is shared by many who cherish the persuasion
that all is vanity which does not concentrate imagination and intellect
in the destinies of the soul hereafter; and Isaura might have excited
his compassion, certainly not his reverence. While to her, his views
on all that seeks to render the actual life attractive and embellished,
through the accomplishments of Muse and Grace, would have seemed
the narrow-minded asceticism of a bigot. But now, amid the direful
calamities of the time, the beauty of both natures became visible
to each. To the eyes of Isaura tenderness became predominant in the
monastic self-denial of Raoul. To the eyes of Raoul, devotion became
predominant in the gentle thoughtfulness of Isaura. Their intercourse
was in ambulance and hospital-in care for the wounded, in prayer for the
dying. Ah! it is easy to declaim against the frivolities and vices of
Parisian society as they appear on the surface; and, in revolutionary
times, it is the very worst of Paris that ascends in scum to the top.
But descend below the surface, even in that demoralising suspense of
order, and nowhere on earth might the angel have beheld the image of
humanity more amply vindicating its claim to the heritage of heaven.