stranger look to the old tree-trunks and the ivies that enlace them;
he has taken the trees in the park for his models, accentuating and
exaggerating them, as should properly be done for stage scenery. The
whole thing is done with admirable spirit and fancy; the rocks, the
cliffs, the clouds are of mysterious, fantastic shapes; reflections
play upon the surface of the water, more trembling and shimmering than
quicksilver, and the ordinary coldness of the foliage is wonderfully
relieved by the saffron tints laid on by the brush of autumn; the
forest varies from emerald green to purple; the warmest and coldest
tints blend harmoniously and the very sky changes from a delicate blue
to the most glowing colors.
He has designed all the costumes in accordance with my suggestions;
they are of the most beautiful type. There was an outcry at first that
they could not be translated in silk and velvet or any known material,
and there was a moment when the troubadour costume was on the point
of being generally adopted. The ladies said that the brilliant colors
would put out their eyes. To which we replied that their eyes were
inextinguishable stars, and that they, on the other hand, would put
out the colors, as well as the Argand lamps, the candles and the sun,
if they had the chance.--They had no reply to make to that; but there
were other objections that sprung up in crowds and bristled with heads
like the Lernean hydra; no sooner was one head cut off than two others
appeared even more stupid and obstinate.
"How do you suppose that can be done?--Everything looks all right on
paper, but it's a different matter on your back; I can never get
into that!--My skirt's at least four inches too short; I shall never
dare to appear that way!--That ruff is too high; I look as if I were
hunchbacked and hadn't any neck.--That wig ages me intolerably."
"With starch and pins and good-will anything can be done.--You're
joking! a figure like yours, slenderer than a wasp's waist and quite
capable of going through the ring on my little finger! I will bet
twenty-five louis against a kiss that that waist will have to be pulled
in.--Your skirt is very far from being too short, and if you could see
what an adorable leg you have you would certainly be of my opinion.--On
the contrary, your neck stands out admirably in its halo of lace.--That
wig doesn't make you look a day older, and even if it should seem to
add a few years, you look so exceedingly young that it ought to be a
matter of perfect indifference to you; really, you would arouse strange
suspicions in our minds if we didn't know where the pieces of your last
doll are,"--_et cetera._
You cannot imagine the prodigious quantity of compliments we have been
obliged to squander, to compel our ladies to don charming costumes
which are becoming to them beyond words.
We have also had much trouble to make them adjust their patches
properly. What devilish taste women have! and of what titanic obstinacy
a capricious dainty creature is capable, who thinks that straw-yellow
is more becoming to her than jonquil-yellow or bright pink! I am sure
that if I had applied to public affairs one-half the ruses and scheming
I have employed to induce a woman to wear a red feather on the left
side and not on the right, I should be Minister of State or Emperor at
the very least.
What a pandemonium! what a vast, inextricable tangle a real theatre
must be!
Since the suggestion of giving a play was first made, everything here
has been in the most complete disorder. All the drawers are open,
all the wardrobes emptied; it is a genuine case of pillage. Tables,
chairs, consoles, all are covered, and we have no place to put our
feet; enormous quantities of dresses, mantles, veils, petticoats,
capes, caps, hats, are scattered about the house; and when you reflect
that they are all to go on the bodies of seven or eight people, you
involuntarily think of the jugglers at a fair who wear eight or ten
coats one over the other, and you cannot realize that from all that
mass only one costume for each will emerge.
The servants are constantly coming and going;--there are always two or
three on the road between the chateau and the town, and if this goes on
all the horses will be broken-winded.
A theatrical manager has no time to be melancholy, and I have been
in that condition hardly at all for some days. I am so benumbed and
bewildered that I am beginning to lose all comprehension of the
play. As I play the part of _impresario_ in addition to the part of
_Orlando_, my task is twofold. When any difficulty arises, I am the
one to whom they all run, and as my decisions are not listened to like
oracles, interminable disputes are the result.
If what is called living is to be always on one's legs, to answer
twenty people at once, to go up and down stairs, not to think for a
minute during the day, I have never lived so hard as I have this week;
and yet _I_ do not take so much part in this constant movement as you
might think.--The excitement extends a very short distance below the
surface, and a few fathoms down you would find dead water, without
any current; life does not penetrate me so easily as that; indeed, at
such times I am least alive, although I seem to act and to mingle in
what is going on; action stupefies and tires me to an inconceivable
degree;--when I am not acting, I am thinking or dreaming, and that is
one manner of living;--I have it no longer since I have laid aside my
porcelain-image repose.
Thus far I have done nothing, and I doubt if I ever shall do
anything. I do not know how to stop my brain, therein lies all the
difference between a man of talent and a man of genius; there is
a constant effervescence, wave pushing wave; I cannot master this
sort of waterspout that rises from my heart to my head, and drowns
all my thoughts because they have no means of exit.--I can produce
nothing, not from sterility but from superabundance; my ideas sprout
in such dense, serried masses that they choke one another and cannot
ripen.--However swift and impetuous the execution, it can never attain
such velocity:--when I write a sentence the thought that it expresses
is already as far from me as if a century had passed instead of a
second, and it often happens, in spite of myself, that some part of the
thought that succeeded it in my brain is mingled with it.
That is why I cannot live,--either as poet or as lover.--I can express
only the ideas that I no longer have;--I have women only when I have
forgotten them and love others;--how can I, a man, make my will known,
when, however much I hasten, I no longer feel what I am doing and act
only in accordance with a faint memory.
To take a thought from some one of my brain-cells, in the rough, like a
block of marble just from the quarry, to place it before me, and from
morning to night, a chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other, hew
and pound and chip, and carry away a pinch of dust at night to dry my
writing,--that is what I never shall be able to do.
I can distinguish clearly enough in my mind the slender figure from the
unhewn block, and I have a very distinct idea of it; but there are so
many angles to smooth, so many protuberances to hew away, so many blows
of rasp and hammer to be given to approximate the shape and catch the
true curve of the outline, that my hands blister and the chisel drops
to the ground.
If I persist, my fatigue reaches such a point that my sight is totally
obscured and I can no longer see through the marble cloud the white
divinity concealed within it. Thereupon I follow it at random, feeling
my way; I bite too deep in one place, I do not go far enough in
another; I hack away what should be a leg or an arm, and I leave a
compact mass where there should be a hollow; instead of a goddess I
make a monkey, sometimes less than a monkey, and the magnificent block,
taken at such great expense of money and labor from the bowels of the
earth, hammered and hewn on every side, has rather the appearance
of having been gnawed and bored by polypi to make a bee-hive, than
fashioned by a sculptor according to a preconceived plan.
How were you able, Michael Angelo, to cut marble in slices as a child
carves a chestnut? of what steel were your unconquerable chisels
made? and from whose robust loins did ye come forth, ye fruitful,
hard-working artists, whom no form of matter can resist, and who
describe your dream from beginning to end in color and in bronze?
It is innocent and justifiable vanity in a certain sense, after the
cruel remarks I have made concerning myself--and you surely will not
blame me for it, O Silvio!--but, although the world is unlikely ever
to know it, and my name is predestined to oblivion, I am a poet and
a painter!--I have as beautiful ideas as any poet on earth; I have
created types as pure, as divine as those that are most admired among
the masters.--I see them before me as clear, as distinct as if they
were really painted, and if I could open a hole in my head and put a
window in so that people could look, there would be the most marvellous
gallery of pictures the world has ever seen. No king on earth can
boast of possessing such a one.--There are Rubenses as flaring, as
brilliantly lighted as the purest examples at Antwerp; my Raphaels are
in a most excellent state of preservation and his Madonnas have no more
winning smiles; Buonarotti does not twist a muscle with more spirit and
more appalling force; the sun of Venice shines upon yonder canvas as if
it were signed: _Paulus Cagliari_; the shadows of Rembrandt himself are
heaped up in this picture, with a pale star of light glimmering in the
distance; the pictures that are in my own manner would certainly not be
despised by any one.
I am well aware that it seems strange for me to say this and that I
shall seem to be suffering from the vulgar intoxication of the most
idiotic pride;--but it is a fact and nothing will shake my conviction
in that respect. No one will share it probably; but what am I to do?
Every one is born marked with a black or white stamp. Apparently mine
is black.
Sometimes I have difficulty in concealing my thoughts on this subject;
it has happened not unfrequently that I have spoken too familiarly of
the exalted geniuses whose footprints we should adore and upon whose
statues we should gaze from afar on our knees. Once, I forgot myself so
far as to say: _We._--Luckily it was in the presence of a person who
took no notice of it, otherwise I should undoubtedly have been looked
upon as the most conceited puppy that ever was.
Am I not a poet and a painter, Silvio?
It is a mistake to think that all people who have been supposed to
possess genius were really greater men than others. No one knows how
much the pupils and obscure artists employed by Raphael contributed to
his reputation; he gave his signature to the product of the mind and
talent of several,--that is all.
A great writer and a great painter are in themselves enough to people a
whole epoch: they must first of all attack all styles of work at once,
so that, if any rivals should rise up, they can instantly accuse them
of plagiarism and check them at the first step in their career; those
are familiar tactics and succeed none the less every day, even though
they are not new.
It may be that a man already famous has precisely the same sort of
talent that you have; under penalty of being considered an imitator of
him, you are obliged to divert your natural inspiration and make it
flow in another channel. You were born to blow with all your lungs into
the heroic clarion, or to evoke pale phantoms of the times that are no
more; but you must move your fingers up and down the flute with seven
holes, or tie knots on a sofa in some boudoir, all because monsieur
your father did not take the trouble to throw you into the mould eight
or ten years earlier, and because the world cannot conceive of such a
thing as two men tilling the same field.
Thus it is that many noble intellects are compelled knowingly to take
a road that is not theirs, and constantly to skirt their own domain
from which they are banished, happy to cast a stealthy glance over the
hedge, and to see on the other side, blooming in the sunlight, the
lovely bright-colored flowers which they possess in the form of seed,
but cannot sow for lack of soil.
For my own part, except for the greater or less opportunity afforded
by circumstances, the difference in air and light, a door which has
remained closed and should have been thrown open, a meeting missed,
some one I ought to have known but have not known,--I cannot say
whether I should ever have succeeded in anything.
I have not the necessary degree of stupidity to become what is called
a _genius_ pure and simple, nor the prodigious obstinacy which is
eventually deified under the high-sounding name of _will_, when the
great man has reached the radiant summit of the mountain, and which
is indispensable to attain that height;--I know too well how hollow
all things are and that they contain only putrefying matter, to attach
myself for very long to anything and follow it ardently and exclusively
through everything.
Men of genius are very shallow, and that is why they are men of genius.
Lack of intelligence prevents them from perceiving the obstacles that
separate them from the end they wish to attain; they go ahead, and in
two or three strides devour the intervening spaces.--As their mind
remains obstinately closed to certain currents, and as they see only
the things that are most closely connected with their ends, they expend
much less thought and action; nothing diverts them, nothing turns them
aside, they act more by instinct than otherwise, and some of them, when
removed from their special sphere, exhibit a nullity hard to understand.
Assuredly it is a rare and charming gift to write poetry well; few
people take more pleasure than I in poetical matters;--but I do not
choose to limit and circumscribe my life within the twelve feet of
an alexandrine; there are a thousand things that interest me as much
as a hemistich:--the state of society and the reforms that must be
undertaken are not among those things; I care extremely little whether
the peasants know how to read and write or whether men eat bread or
browse on grass; but there pass through my brain, in an hour, more than
a hundred thousand visions which have not the slightest connection with
rhyme or the cæsura, and that is why I actually do so little, although
I have more ideas than some poets who could be burned alive with their
own works.
I adore beauty and I feel it; I can describe it as well as the most
amorous sculptors can understand it,--and yet I am no sculptor.
The ugliness and imperfections of the rough sketch disgust me; I
cannot wait until the work reaches perfection by dint of polishing
and repolishing; if I could make up my mind to omit certain things
in what I do, whether in versifying or in painting, I should end
perhaps by writing a poem or painting a picture which would make me
famous, and they who love me--if there be any one on earth who takes
that trouble--would not be compelled to believe me on my word alone
and would have a triumphant retort for the sardonic sneers of the
detractors of that great unknown genius, myself.
I see many who take a palette and brushes and cover their canvas,
paying no further attention to what caprice produces at the end of the
bristles, and others who write a hundred lines at a time without an
erasure and without once stopping to look up at the ceiling.--I always
admire them, even if sometimes I do not admire their productions;
I envy with all my heart the fascinating intrepidity and fortunate
blindness that prevent them from seeing even their most palpable
defects. As soon as I have drawn anything out of line I notice it
instantly and am concerned beyond measure by it; and, as I am much more
learned in theory than in practice, it often happens that I cannot
correct an error of which I am conscious; thereupon I turn the canvas
with its face to the wall and never go back to it.
I have my ideal of perfection so constantly present in my mind, that
disgust with my work seizes me at once and prevents me from continuing.
Ah! when I compare with the sweet smile of my thought the ugly pout
it makes on the canvas or the paper, when I see a hideous bat fly by
in place of the lovely dream that opened its long wings of light in
the bosom of my nights; a thistle spring up in response to the idea of
a rose; and when I hear a donkey bray as I am expecting the sweetest
melodies of the nightingale, I am so horribly disappointed, so angry
with myself, so furious at my impotence, that I resolve never to write
again or say a single word of my life, rather than commit thus the
crime of high treason against my thoughts.
I cannot succeed even in writing a letter as I would like to do; I
often say something entirely different; certain portions develop
immeasurably, others dwindle away till they become imperceptible, and
very often the idea I had it in my mind to express is not there at all,
or is in a postscript.
When I began to write you I certainly did not intend to say the half of
what I have said.--I simply intended to inform you that we were going
to give a play; but one word leads to a sentence; parentheses are big
with other little parentheses, which in their turn have others in their
wombs all ready to be born. There is no reason why this should end, why
it should not go on to two hundred folio volumes--which would certainly
be too much.
As soon as I take up a pen, there is a great humming and rustling of
wings in my brain, as if millions of June-bugs had been let loose
inside. They bump against the walls of my skull and turn and fly up and
down with a horrible uproar; they are my thoughts, trying to fly away
and seeking an outlet;--all of them struggle to get free at once; more
than one of them breaks his paws and tears the down from his wings;
sometimes the door is so blocked that not one succeeds in crossing the
threshold and reaching the paper.
That is the way I am made: it is not what can be called well made, I
agree, but what would you have? the fault is with the gods and not with
me, a poor devil who cannot help himself. I do not need to ask your
indulgence, my dear Silvio; it is accorded me in advance, and you are
kind enough to read my undecipherable scrawls to the end, my headless
and tailless musings; however disjointed and absurd they may be, they
always interest you, because they come from me, and anything that is a
part of me, even when it is worthless, is not without some value to you.
I can let you see the thing that most offends the common herd: honest
pride.--But let us cry truce for a while to all these exalted topics,
and as I am writing on the subject of the play we are to give, let us
return to it and talk about it a little.
The rehearsal took place to-day:--never in my life have I been so
upset,--not because of the embarrassment that one always feels in
reciting anything before a number of people, but from an entirely
different cause. We were in costume and ready to begin; Théodore alone
had not appeared; we sent to his room to see what delayed him; he
replied that he was almost ready and would come down in a moment.
He came; I heard his step in the corridor long before he appeared, and
yet no one on earth has a lighter step than Théodore; but my feeling
of sympathy for him is so strong that I divine his movements through
the walls, and when I felt that he was about to put his hand on the
door-knob, I began to tremble and my heart beat with horrible force. It
seemed to me that something of importance in my life was about to be
decided, and that I had reached a solemn, long-expected moment.
The folding-doors slowly opened and closed.
There was a general cry of admiration.--The men applauded, the women
turned scarlet. Rosette alone became extremely pale and leaned
against the wall, as if a sudden revelation were passing through her
brain; she went through the same experience as myself in the opposite
direction.--I have always suspected her of loving Théodore.
I have no doubt that, at that moment, she believed as I did that the
pretended Rosalind was nothing less than a young and lovely woman, and
the fragile card-house of her hope suddenly collapsed, while mine rose
on its ruins; at least that is what I thought; I may be mistaken, for I
was hardly in a condition to make accurate observations.
Aside from Rosette, there were three or four pretty women present; they
looked disgustingly ugly.--Beside that sun, the star of their beauty
was suddenly eclipsed, and every one wondered how he could ever have
thought them passable. Men who, before that moment, would have deemed
themselves very fortunate to have them for mistresses, would hardly
have taken them for servants.
The image which hitherto had been drawn only faintly and with vague
outlines, the adored, vainly-pursued phantom was there, before my eyes,
living, palpable, no longer in half light and haze, but bathed in
floods of white light; not in a fruitless disguise, but in her true
costume; not in the mocking guise of a young man, but with the features
of the loveliest of women.
I experienced a sensation of unbounded well-being, as if a mountain or
two had been lifted off my chest.--I felt my horror of myself vanish
and I was delivered from the tiresome duty of regarding myself as a
monster. I began to form an altogether pastoral opinion of myself and
all the violets of spring bloomed anew in my heart.
He, or rather she--for I wish to forget that I was stupid enough to
take her for a man--remained a moment motionless on the threshold,
as if to give the assemblage time to utter its first exclamation. A
brilliant light shone upon her from head to foot, and against the dark
background of the corridor that stretched away behind her, the carved
doorway serving as a frame, she glowed as if the light emanated from
herself instead of being reflected simply, and you would have taken her
for a marvellous product of the brush rather than a human creature made
of flesh and blood.
[Illustration: Chapter XI--_The folding-doors slowly opened and closed.
There was a general cry of admiration.--The men applauded, the women
turned scarlet. Rosette alone became extremely pale and leaned against
the wall, as if a sudden revelation were passing through her brain;
* * * I have always suspected her of loving Théodore._]
Her long dark hair, mingled with ropes of huge pearls, fell in natural
ringlets beside her lovely cheeks! her shoulders and her breast were
bare, and I never saw anything so beautiful in the world; the finest
marble would not compare with that exquisite perfection.--How the
life rushes beneath that dark transparent skin! how white the flesh
and at the same time how richly colored! and how happily the changing
golden tints soften the transition from the skin to the hair! what a
fascinating poem in the graceful undulations of those contours, more
supple and velvety than a swan's neck!--If there were words to express
what I feel, I would write you a description fifty pages long; but
languages were made by some donkeys or other who had never looked
closely at a woman's back or breast, and we haven't half enough of the
most indispensable terms.
I really think that I must become a sculptor; for to have seen such
beauty and to be unable to reproduce it in one form or another is
enough to make one a raving maniac. I have written twenty sonnets on
those shoulders, but that is not enough: I would like something exactly
similar which I could touch with my finger; verses reproduce only
the phantom of beauty and not beauty itself. The painter produces a
more exact likeness, but it is only a likeness. Sculpture has all the
reality that a thing absolutely false can have; it can be looked at
on every side, it casts a shadow, and you can touch it. Your carved
mistress differs from the genuine only in that she is a little harder
and cannot speak, two very trifling drawbacks.
Her dress was made of some material of changing color, azure in the
light, golden in the shadow; a close-fitting buskin was tightly
laced about a foot that needed not that to make it too small, and
scarlet silk stockings clung amorously about the most perfectly
moulded and most tempting of legs; her arms were bare to the elbows,
where they emerged from a mass of lace, round and plump and white,
gleaming like polished silver and of unimaginable fineness of texture;
her hands, laden with rings, languorously waved a great fan of
fantastically-colored feathers, like a little pocket rainbow.