THERMOPYLÆ.
How dreary 'tis for women to sit still
On winter nights by solitary fires,
And hear the nations praising them far off.
AURORA LEIGH.
Abolished by the National Convention of 1793, re-established in 1795,
reformed by the first Napoleon in 1803, and remodelled in 1816 on the
restoration of the Bourbons, the Académie Française, despite its changes
of fortune, name, and government, is a liberal and splendid institution.
It consists of forty members, whose office it is to compile the great
dictionary, and to enrich, purify, and preserve the language. It assists
authors in distress. It awards prizes for poetry, eloquence, and virtue;
and it bestows those honors with a noble impartiality that observes no
distinction of sex, rank, or party. To fill one of the forty fauteuils
of the Académie Française is the darling ambition of every eminent
Frenchman of letters. There the poet, the philosopher, the historian,
the man of science, sit side by side, and meet on equal ground. When a
seat falls vacant, when a prize is to be awarded, when an anniversary is
to be celebrated, the interest and excitement become intense. To the
political, the fashionable, or the commercial world, these events are
perhaps of little moment. They affect neither the Bourse nor the Budget.
They exercise no perceptible influence on the Longchamps toilettes. But
to the striving author, to the rising orator, to all earnest workers in
the broad fields of literature, they are serious and significant
circumstances.
Living out of society as I now did, I knew little and cared less for
these academic crises. The success of one candidate was as unimportant
to me as the failure of another; and I had more than once read the
crowned poem of the prize essay without even glancing at the name or the
fortunate author.
Now it happened that, pacing to and fro under the budding acacias of the
Palais Royal garden one sunny spring-like morning, some three or four
weeks after the conversation last recorded, I was pursued by a
persecuting newsvender with a hungry eye, mittened fingers, and a shrill
voice, who persisted in reiterating close against my ear:--
"News of the day, M'sieur!--news of the day. Frightful murder in the Rue
du Faubourg St. Antoine--state of the Bourse--latest despatches from the
seat of war--prize poem crowned by the Académie Française--news of the
day, M'sieur! Only forty centimes! News of the day!"
I refused, however, to be interested in any of those topics, turned a
deaf ear to his allurements, and peremptorily dismissed him. I then
continued my walk in solitary silence.
At the further extremity of the square, near the _Galerie Vitrée_ and
close beside the little newspaper kiosk, stood a large tree since cut
down, which at that time served as an advertising medium, and was daily
decorated with a written placard, descriptive of the contents of the
_Moniteur_, the _Presse_, and other leading papers. This placard was
generally surrounded by a crowd of readers, and to-day the crowd of
readers was more than usually dense.
I seldom cared in these days for what was going on in the busy outside
world; but this morning, my attention having been drawn to the subject,
I amused myself, as I paced to and fro, by watching the eager faces of
the little throng of idlers. Presently I fell in with the rest, and
found myself conning the placard on the tree.
The name that met my astonished eyes on that placard was the name of
Hortense Dufresnoy.
The sentence ran thus:--
"Grand Biennial Prize for Poetry--Subject: _The Pass of
Thermopylæ_,--Successful Candidate, _Mademoiselle Hortense Dufresnoy_."
Breathless, I read the passage twice; then, hearing at a little distance
the shrill voice of the importunate newsvender, I plunged after him and
stopped him, just as he came to the--
"Frightful murder in the Rue du Faubourg Saint ..."
"Here," said I, tapping him on the shoulder; "give me one of your
papers."
The man's eyes glittered.
"Only forty centimes, M'sieur," said he. "'Tis the first I've sold
to-day."
He looked poor and wretched. I dropped into his hand a coin that would
have purchased all his little sheaf of journals, and hurried away, not
to take the change or hear his thanks. He was silent for some moments;
then took up his cry at the point where he had broken off, and started
away with:--
--"Antoine!--state of the Bourse--latest despatches from the seat of
war--news of the day--only forty centimes!"
I took my paper to a quiet bench near the fountain, and read the whole
account. There had been eighteen anonymous poems submitted to the
Academy. Three out of the eighteen had come under discussion; one out of
the three had been warmly advocated by Béranger, one by Lebrun, and the
third by some other academician. The poem selected by Beranger was at
length chosen; the sealed enclosure opened; and the name of the
successful competitor found to be Hortense Dufresnoy. To Hortense
Dufresnoy, therefore, the prize and crown were awarded.
I read the article through, and then went home, hoping to be the first
to congratulate her. Timidly, and with a fast-beating heart, I rang the
bell at her outer door; for we all had our bells at Madame Bouïsse's,
and lived in our rooms as if they were little private houses.
She opened the door, and, seeing me, looked surprised; for I had never
before ventured to pay her a visit in her apartment.
"I have come to wish you joy," said I, not venturing to cross the
threshold.
"To wish me joy?"
"You have not seen a morning paper?"
"A morning paper!"
And, echoing me thus, her color changed, and a strange vague look--it
might be of hope, it might be of fear--came into her face.
"There is something in the _Moniteur_" I went on, smiling, 'that
concerns you nearly."
"That concerns me?" she exclaimed. "_Me_? For Heaven's sake, speak
plainly. I do not understand you. Has--has anything been discovered?"
"Yes--it has been discovered at the Académie Française that Mademoiselle
Hortense Dufresnoy has written the best poem on Thermopylæ."
She drew a deep breath, pressed her hands tightly together, and
murmured:--
"Alas! is that all?"
"All! Nay--is it not enough to step at once into fame--to have been
advocated by Béranger--to have the poem crowned in the Theatre of the
Académie Française?"
She stood silent, with drooping head and listless hands, all
disappointment and despondency. Presently she looked up.
"Where did you learn this?" she asked.
I handed her the journal.
"Come in, fellow-student," said she, and held the door wide for me to
enter.
For the second time I found myself in her little _salon_, and found
everything in the self-same order.
"Well," I said, "are you not happy?"
She shook her head.
"Success is not happiness," she replied, smiling mournfully. "That
Béranger should have advocated my poem is an honor beyond price;
but--but I need more than this to make me happy."
And her eyes wandered, with a strange, yearning look, to the sword over
the chimney-piece.
Seeing that look, my heart sank, and the tears sprang unbidden to my
eyes. Whose was the sword? For whose sake was her life so lonely and
secluded? For whom was she waiting? Surely here, if one could but read
it aright, lay the secret of her strange and sudden journeys--here I
touched unawares upon the mystery of her life!
I did not speak. I shaded my face with my hand, and sat looking on the
ground. Then, the silence remaining unbroken, I rose, and examined the
drawings on the walls.
They were water-colors for the most part, and treated in a masterly but
quite peculiar style. The skies were sombre, the foregrounds singularly
elaborate, the color stern and forcible. Angry sunsets barred by lines
of purple cirrus stratus; sweeps of desolate heath bounded by jagged
peaks; steep mountain passes crimson with faded ferns and half-obscured
by rain-clouds; strange studies of weeds, and rivers, and lonely reaches
of desolate sea-shore ... these were some of the subjects, and all were
evidently by the same hand.
"Ah," said Hortense, "you are criticizing my sketches!"
"Your sketches!" I exclaimed. "Are these your work?"
"Certainly," she replied, smiling. "Why not? What do you think of them?"
"What do I think of them! Well, I think that if you had not been a poet
you ought to have been a painter. How fortunate you are in being able to
express yourself so variously! Are these compositions, or studies
from Nature?"
"All studies from Nature--mere records of fact. I do not presume to
create--I am content humbly and from a distance to copy the changing
moods of Nature."
"Pray be your own catalogue, then, and tell me where these places are."
"Willingly. This coast-line with the run of breaking surf was taken on
the shores of Normandy, some few miles from Dieppe. This sunset is a
recollection of a glorious evening near Frankfort, and those purple
mountains in the distance are part of the Taunus range. Here is an old
mediæval gateway at Solothurn, in Switzerland. This wild heath near the
sea is in the neighborhood of Biscay. This quaint knot of ruinous houses
in a weed-grown Court was sketched at Bruges. Do you see that milk-girl
with her scarlet petticoat and Flemish _faille?_ She supplied us with
milk, and her dairy was up that dark archway. She stood for me several
times, when I wanted a foreground figure."
"You have travelled a great deal," I said. "Were you long in Belgium?"
"Yes; I lived there for some years. I was first pupil, then teacher, in
a large school in Brussels. I was afterwards governess in a private
family in Bruges. Of late, however, I have preferred to live in Paris,
and give morning lessons. I have more liberty thus, and more leisure."
"And these two little quaint bronze figures?"
"Hans Sachs and Peter Vischer. I brought them from Nuremberg. Hans
Sachs, you see, wears a furred robe, and presses a book to his breast.
He does not look in the least like a cobbler. Peter Vischer, on the
contrary, wears his leather apron and carries his mallet in his hand.
Artist and iron-smith, he glories in his trade, and looks as sturdy a
little burgher as one would wish to see."
"And this statuette in green marble?"
"A copy of the celebrated 'Pensiero' of Michel Angelo--in other words,
the famous sitting statue of Lorenzo de Medici, in the Medicean chapel
in Florence. I had it executed for me on the spot by Bazzanti."
"A noble figure!"
"Indeed it is--a noble figure, instinct with life, and strength, and
meditation. My first thought on seeing the original was that I would not
for worlds be condemned to pass a night alone with it. I should every
moment expect the musing hand to drop away from the stern mouth, and the
eyes to turn upon me!"
"These," said I, pausing at the chimney-piece, "are _souvenirs_ of
Switzerland. How delicately those chamois are carved out of the hard
wood! They almost seem to snuff the mountain air! But here is a rapier
with a hilt of ornamented steel--where did this come from?"
I had purposely led up the conversation to this point. I had patiently
questioned and examined for the sake of this one inquiry, and I waited
her reply as if my life hung on it.
Her whole countenance changed. She took it down, and her eyes filled
with tears.
"It was my father's," she said, tenderly.
"Your father's!" I exclaimed, joyfully. "Heaven be thanked! Did you say
your father's?"
She looked up surprised, then smiled, and faintly blushed.
"I did," she replied.
"And was your father a soldier?" I asked; for the sword looked more like
a sword of ceremony than a sword for service.
But to this question she gave no direct reply.
"It was his sword," she said, "and he had the best of all rights to wear
it."
With this she kissed the weapon reverently, and restored it to its
place.
I kissed her hand quite as reverently that day at parting, and she did
not withdraw it.