CHAPTER VII.

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THE GALAXY.

VOL. XXIII.--APRIL, 1877.--No. 4.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON &

CO., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS.

M. Francisque Sarcey, the dramatic critic of the Paris "Temps," and the

gentleman who, of the whole journalistic fraternity, holds the fortune

of a play in the hollow of his hand, has been publishing during the

last year a series of biographical notices of the chief actors and

actresses of the first theatre in the world. "Comédiens et Comédiennes:

la Comédie Française"--such is the title of this publication, which

appears in monthly numbers of the Librairie des Bibliophiles, and is

ornamented on each occasion with a very prettily etched portrait, by M.

Gaucherel, of the artist to whom the number is devoted. By lovers of

the stage in general, and of the Théâtre Français in particular, the

series will be found most interesting; and I welcome the pretext for

saying a few words about an institution which--if such language be not

hyperbolical--I passionately admire. I must add that the portrait is

incomplete, though for the present occasion it is more than sufficient.

The list of M. Sarcey's biographies is not yet filled up; three or

four, those of Mme. Favart and of MM. Fèbvre and Delaunay, are still

wanting. Nine numbers, however, have appeared--the first being entitled

"La Maison de Molière," and devoted to a general account of the great

theatre; and the others treating of its principal _sociétaires_ and

_pensionnaires_ in the following order:

Regnier,

Got,

Sophie Croizette,

Sarah Bernhardt,

Coquelin,

Madeleine Brohan,

Bressant,

Mme. Plessy.

(This order, by the way, is purely accidental; it is not that of age or

of merit.) It is always entertaining to encounter M. Francisque Sarcey,

and the reader who, during a Paris winter, has been in the habit, of a

Sunday evening, of unfolding his "Temps" immediately after unfolding

his napkin, and glancing down first of all to see what this sturdy

_feuilletoniste_ has found to his hand--such a reader will find him in

great force in the pages before us. It is true that, though I myself

confess to being such a reader, there are moments when I grow rather

weary of M. Sarcey, who has in an eminent degree both the virtues and

the defects which attach to the great French characteristic--the habit

of taking terribly _au sérieux_ anything that you may set about doing.

Of this habit of abounding in one's own cause, of expatiating,

elaborating, reiterating, refining, as if for the hour the fate of

mankind were bound up with one's particular topic, M. Sarcey is a

capital and at times an almost comical representative. He talks about

the theatre once a week as if--honestly, between himself and his

reader--the theatre were the only thing in this frivolous world that

is worth seriously talking about. He has a religious respect for his

theme, and he holds that if a thing is to be done at all, it must be

done in detail as well as in the gross.

It is to this serious way of taking the matter, to his thoroughly

businesslike and professional attitude, to his unwearying attention to

detail, that the critic of the "Temps" owes his enviable influence and

the weight of his words. Add to this that he is sternly incorruptible.

He has his admirations, but they are honest and discriminating; and

whom he loveth he very often chasteneth. He is not ashamed to commend

Mlle. X., who has only had a curtsey to make, if her curtsey has been

_the_ curtsey of the situation; and he is not afraid to overhaul M. A.,

who has delivered the _tirade_ of the play, if M. A. has failed to hit

the mark. Of course his judgment is good; when I have had occasion to

measure it, I have usually found it excellent. He has the scenic

sense--the theatrical eye. He knows at a glance what will do, and what

won't do. He is shrewd and sagacious and almost tiresomely in earnest,

but this closes the list of his attractions. He is not witty--to speak

of; and he is not graceful; he is heavy and common, and above all what

is familiarly called "shoppy." He leans his elbows on his desk, and

does up his weekly budget into a parcel the reverse of coquettish. You

can fancy him a grocer retailing tapioca and hominy--full weight for

the price; his style seems a sort of integument of brown paper. But the

fact remains that if M. Sarcey praises a play, the play has a run; and

that if M. Sarcey says it won't do, it does not do at all. If M. Sarcey

devotes an encouraging line and a half to a young actress, mademoiselle

is immediately _lancée_; she has a career. If he bestows a quiet

"bravo" on an obscure comedian, the gentleman may forthwith renew his

engagement. When you make and unmake fortunes at this rate, what

matters it whether you have a little elegance the more or the less?

Elegance is for M. Paul de St. Victor, who does the theatres in the

"Moniteur," and who, though he writes a style only a trifle less

pictorial than that of Théophile Gautier himself, has never, to the

best of my belief, brought clouds or sunshine to any playhouse. I may

add, to finish with M. Sarcey, that he contributes a daily political

article--generally devoted to watching and showing up the "game" of the

clerical party--to Edmond About's journal, the "XIXième Siècle"; that

he gives a weekly _conférence_ on current literature; that he "confers"

also on those excellent Sunday morning performances now so common in

the French theatres, during which examples of the classic repertory

are presented, accompanied by a light lecture upon the history and

character of the play. As the commentator on these occasions M. Sarcey

is in great demand, and he officiates sometimes in small provincial

towns. Lastly, frequent playgoers in Paris observe that the very

slenderest novelty is sufficient to insure at a theatre the (very

considerable) physical presence of the conscientious critic of the

"Temps." If he were remarkable for nothing else, he would be remarkable

for the fortitude with which he exposes himself to the pestiferous

climate of the Parisian temples of the drama.

For these agreeable "notices" M. Sarcey appears to have mended his pen

and to have given a fillip to his fancy. They are gracefully and often

lightly turned; occasionally, even, the author grazes the epigrammatic.

They deal, as is proper, with the artistic and not with the private

physiognomy of the ladies and gentlemen whom they commemorate; and

though they occasionally allude to what the French call "intimate"

matters, they contain no satisfaction for the lovers of scandal. The

Théâtre Français, in the face it presents to the world, is an austere

and venerable establishment, and a frivolous tone about its affairs

would be almost as much out of keeping as if applied to the Académie

herself. M. Sarcey touches upon the organization of the theatre, and

gives some account of the different phases through which it has passed

during these latter years. Its chief functionary is a general

administrator, or director, appointed by the State, which enjoys this

right in virtue of the considerable subsidy which it pays to the house;

a subsidy amounting, if I am not mistaken (M. Sarcey does not mention

the sum), to 250,000 francs. The director, however, is not an absolute,

but a constitutional ruler; for he shares his powers with the society

itself, which has always had a large deliberative voice.

Whence, it may be asked, does the society derive its light and its

inspiration? From the past, from precedent, from tradition--from the

great unwritten body of laws which no one has in his keeping, but many

in their memory, and all in their respect. The principles on which the

Théâtre Français rests are a good deal like the common law of

England--a vaguely and inconveniently registered mass of regulations

which time and occasion have welded together, and from which the

recurring occasion can usually manage to extract the rightful

precedent. Napoleon I., who had a finger in every pie in his dominion,

found time during his brief and disastrous occupation of Moscow to send

down a decree remodelling and regulating the constitution of the

theatre. This document has long been a dead letter, and the society

abides by its older traditions. The _traditions_ of the Comédie

Française--that is the sovereign word, and that is the charm of the

place--the charm that one never ceases to feel, however often one may

sit beneath the classic, dusky dome. One feels this charm with peculiar

intensity as a newly arrived foreigner. The Théâtre Français has had

the good fortune to be able to allow its traditions to accumulate. They

have been preserved, transmitted, respected, cherished, until at last

they form the very atmosphere, the vital air, of the establishment. A

stranger feels their superior influence the first time he sees the

great curtain go up; he feels that he is in a theatre which is not as

other theatres are. It is not only better, it is different. It has a

peculiar perfection--something consecrated, historical, academic. This

impression is delicious, and he watches the performance in a sort of

tranquil ecstasy.

Never has he seen anything so smooth, and harmonious, so artistic and

complete. He heard all his life of attention to detail, and now, for

the first time, he sees something that deserves the name. He sees

dramatic effort refined to a point with which the English stage is

unacquainted. He sees that there are no limits to possible "finish,"

and that so trivial an act as taking a letter from a servant or

placing one's hat on a chair may be made a suggestive and interesting

incident. He sees these things and a great many more besides, but at

first he does not analyze them; he gives himself up to sympathetic

contemplation. He is in an ideal and exemplary world--a world that has

managed to attain all the felicities that the world we live in misses.

The people do the things that we should like to do; they are gifted

as we should like to be; they have mastered the accomplishments that

we have had to give up. The women are not all beautiful--decidedly

not, indeed--but they are graceful, agreeable, sympathetic, ladylike;

they have the best manners possible, and they are delightfully well

dressed. They have charming musical voices, and they speak with

irreproachable purity and sweetness; they walk with the most elegant

grace, and when they sit it is a pleasure to see their attitudes. They

go out and come in, they pass across the stage, they talk, and laugh,

and cry, they deliver long _tirades_ or remain statuesquely mute; they

are tender or tragic, they are comic or conventional; and through it

all you never observe an awkwardness, a roughness, an accident, a

crude spot, a false note.

As for the men, they are not handsome either; it must be confessed,

indeed, that at the present hour manly beauty is but scantily

represented at the Théâtre Français. Bressant, I believe, used to be

thought handsome; but Bressant has retired, and among the gentlemen of

the troupe I can think of no one but M. Mounet-Sully who may be

positively commended for his fine person. But M. Mounet-Sully is, from

the scenic point of view, an Adonis of the first magnitude. To be

handsome, however, is for an actor one of the last necessities; and

these gentlemen are mostly handsome enough. They look perfectly what

they are intended to look, and in cases where it is proposed that they

shall _seem_ handsome, they usually succeed. They are as well mannered

and as well dressed as their fairer comrades, and their voices are no

less agreeable and effective. They represent gentlemen, and they

produce the illusion. In this endeavor they deserve even greater credit

than the actresses, for in modern comedy, of which the repertory of the

Théâtre Français is largely composed, they have nothing in the way of

costume to help to carry it off. Half a dozen ugly men, in the periodic

coat and trousers and stove-pipe hat, with blue chins and false

moustaches, strutting before the footlights, and pretending to be

interesting, romantic, pathetic, heroic, certainly play a perilous

game. At every turn they suggest prosaic things, and their liabilities

to awkwardness are increased a thousand fold. But the comedians of the

Théâtre Français are never awkward, and when it is necessary they solve

triumphantly the problem of being at once realistic to the eye and

romantic to the imagination.

I am speaking always of one's first impression of them. There are spots

on the sun, and you discover after a while that there are little

irregularities at the Théâtre Français. But the acting is so

incomparably better than any that you have seen, that criticism for a

long time is content to lie dormant. I shall never forget how at first

I was under the charm. I liked the very incommodities of the place; I

am not sure that I did not find a certain mystic salubrity in the bad

ventilation. The Théâtre Français, it is known, gives you a good deal

for your money. The performance, which rarely ends before midnight, and

sometimes transgresses it, frequently begins by seven o'clock. The

first hour or two is occupied by secondary performers; but not for the

world at this time would I have missed the first rising of the curtain.

No dinner could be too hastily swallowed to enable me to see, for

instance, Mme. Nathalie in Octave Feuillet's charming little comedy of

"Le Village." Mme. Nathalie was a plain, stout old woman, who did the

mothers, and aunts, and elderly wives; I use the past tense because she

retired from the stage a year ago, leaving a most conspicuous vacancy.

She was an admirable actress, and a perfect mistress of laughter and

tears. In "Le Village" she played an old provincial _bourgeoise_ whose

husband takes it into his head, one winter night, to start on the tour

of Europe with a roving bachelor friend, who has dropped down on him at

supper-time, after the lapse of years, and has gossiped him into

momentary discontent with his fireside existence. My pleasure was in

Mme. Nathalie's figure when she came in dressed to go out to vespers

across the _place_. The two foolish old cronies are over their wine,

talking of the beauty of the women on the Ionian coast; you hear the

church bell in the distance. It was the quiet felicity of the old

lady's dress that used to charm me; the Comédie Française was in every

fold of it. She wore a large black silk mantilla, of a peculiar cut,

which looked as if she had just taken it tenderly out of some old

wardrobe where it lay folded in lavender, and a large dark bonnet,

adorned with handsome black silk loops and bows. Her big pale face had

a softly frightened look, and in her hand she carried her neatly kept

breviary. The extreme suggestiveness, and yet the taste and temperance

of this costume, seemed to me inimitable; the bonnet alone, with its

handsome, decent, virtuous bows, was worth coming to see. It expressed

all the rest, and you saw the excellent, pious woman go pick her steps

churchward among the puddles, while Jeannette, the cook, in a high

white cap, marched before her in sabots, with a lantern.

Such matters are trifles, but they are representative trifles, and they

are not the only ones that I remember. It used to please me, when I had

squeezed into my stall--the stalls at the Français are extremely

uncomfortable--to remember of how great a history the large, dim

_salle_ around me could boast: how many great things had happened

there; how the air was thick with associations. Even if I had never

seen Rachel, it was something of a consolation to think that those very

footlights had illumined her finest moments, and that the echoes of her

mighty voice were sleeping in that dingy dome. From this to musing upon

the "traditions" of the place, of which I spoke just now, was of course

but a step. How were they kept? by whom, and where? Who trims the

undying lamp and guards the accumulated treasure? I never found out--by

sitting in the stalls; and very soon I ceased to care to know. One may

be very fond of the stage, and yet care little for the green room; just

as one may be very fond of pictures and books, and yet be no frequenter

of studios and authors' dens. They might pass on the torch as they

would behind the scenes; so long as, during my time, they didn't let it

drop, I made up my mind to be satisfied. And that one could depend upon

their not letting it drop became a part of the customary comfort of

Parisian life. It became certain that the "traditions" were not mere

catchwords, but a most beneficent reality.

Going to the other Parisian theatres helps you to believe in them.

Unless you are a voracious theatre-goer you give the others up; you

find they don't pay; the Français does for you all that they do and so

much more besides. There are two possible exceptions--the Gymnase and

the Palais Royal, The Gymnase, since the death of Mlle. Desclée, has

been under a heavy cloud; but occasionally, when a month's sunshine

rests upon it, there is a savor of excellence in the performance. But

you feel that you are still within the realm of accident; the

delightful security of the Rue de Richelieu is wanting. The young lover

is liable to be common, and the beautifully dressed heroine to have an

unpleasant voice. The Palais Royal has always been in its way very

perfect; but its way admits of great imperfection. The actresses are

classically bad, though usually pretty, and the actors are much

addicted to taking liberties. In broad comedy, nevertheless, two or

three of the latter are not to be surpassed, and (counting out the

women) there is usually something masterly in a Palais Royal

performance. In its own line it has what is called style, and it

therefore walks, at a distance, in the footsteps of the Français. The

Odéon has never seemed to me in any degree a rival of the Théâtre

Français, though it is a smaller copy of that establishment. It

receives a subsidy from the State, and is obliged by its contract to

play the classic repertory one night in the week. It is on these

nights, listening to Molière or Marivaux, that you may best measure the

superiority of the greater theatre. I have seen actors at the Odéon, in

the classic repertory, imperfect in their texts; a monstrously

insupposable case at the Comédie Française. The function of the Odéon

is to operate as a _pépinière_ or nursery for its elder--to try young

talents, shape them, make them flexible, and then hand them over to the

upper house. The more especial nursery of the Français, however, is the

Conservatoire Dramatique, an institution dependent upon the State,

through the Ministry of the Fine Arts, whose budget is charged with

the remuneration of its professors. Pupils graduating from the

Conservatoire with a prize have _ipso facto_ the right to _débuter_ at

the Théâtre Français, which retains them or lets them go, according to

its discretion. Most of the first subjects of the Français have done

their two years' work at the Conservatoire, and M. Sarcey holds that an

actor who has not had that fundamental training which is only to be

acquired there, never obtains a complete mastery of his resources.

Nevertheless some of the best actors of the day have owed nothing to

the Conservatoire--Bressant, for instance, and Aimée Desclée, the

latter of whom, indeed, never arrived at the Français. (Molière and

Balzac were not of the Academy, and so Mlle. Desclée, the first actress

after Rachel, died without acquiring the privilege which M. Sarcey says

is the day-dream of all young theatrical women--that of printing on

their visiting cards, after their name, _de la Comédie Française_.)

The Théâtre Français has, moreover, the right to do as Molière did--to

claim its property wherever it finds it. It may stretch out its long

arm and break the engagement of a promising actor at any of the other

theatres; of course after a certain amount of notice given. So, last

winter, it notified to the Gymnase its danger of appropriating Worms,

the admirable _jeune premier_, who, returning from a long sojourn

in Russia, and taking the town by surprise, had begun to retrieve the

shrunken fortunes of that establishment.

On the whole, it may be said that the great talents find their way,

sooner or later, to the Théâtre Français. This is of course not a rule

that works unvaryingly, for there are a great many influences to

interfere with it. Interest as well as merit--especially in the case of

the actresses--weighs in the scale; and the ire that may exist in

celestial minds has been known to manifest itself in the councils of

the Comédie. Moreover, a brilliant actress may prefer to reign supreme

at one of the smaller theatres; at the Français, inevitably, she shares

her dominion. The honor is less, but the comfort is greater.

Nevertheless, at the Français, in a general way, there is in each case

a tolerably obvious artistic reason for membership; and if you see a

clever actor remain outside for years, you may be pretty sure that,

though private reasons count, there are artistic reasons as well. The

first half dozen times I saw Mlle. Fargueil, who for years ruled the

roost, as the vulgar saying is, at the Vaudeville, I wondered that so

consummate and accomplished an actress should not have a place on the

first French stage. But I presently grew wiser, and perceived that,

clever as Mlle. Fargueil is, she is not for the Rue de Richelieu, but

for the Boulevards; her peculiar, intensely Parisian intonation would

sound out of place in the Maison de Molière. (Of course if Mlle.

Fargueil has ever received overtures from the Français, my sagacity is

at fault--I am looking through a millstone. But I suspect she has not.)

Frédéric Lemaître, who died last winter, and who was a very great

actor, had been tried at the Français and found wanting--for those

particular conditions. But it may probably be said that if Frédéric was

wanting, the theatre was too, in this case. Frédéric's great force was

his extravagance, his fantasticality; and the stage of the Rue de

Richelieu was a trifle too academic. I have even wondered whether

Desclée, if she had lived, would have trod that stage by right, and

whether it would have seemed her proper element. The negative is not

impossible. It is very possible that in that classic atmosphere her

great charm--her intensely _modern_ quality, her supersubtle

realism--would have appeared an anomaly. I can imagine even that her

strange, touching, nervous voice would not have seemed the voice of the

house. At the Français you must know how to acquit yourself of a

_tirade_; that has always been the touchstone of capacity. It would

probably have proved Desclée's stumbling-block, though she could utter

speeches of six words as no one else surely has ever done. It is true

that Mlle. Croizette, and in a certain sense Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt, are

rather weak at their _tirades_; but then old theatre-goers will tell

you that these young ladies, in spite of a hundred attractions, have no

business at the Français.

In the course of time the susceptible foreigner passes from that

superstitious state of attention which I just now sketched to that

greater enlightenment which enables him to understand such a judgment

as this of the old theatre-goers. It is borne in upon him that, as the

good Homer sometimes nods, the Théâtre Français sometimes lapses from

its high standard. He makes various reflections. He thinks that Mlle.

Favart rants. He thinks M. Mounet-Sully, in spite of his delicious

voice, insupportable. He thinks that M. Parodi's five-act tragedy,

"Rome Vaincue," presented in the early part of the present winter, was

better done certainly than it would have been done upon any English

stage, but by no means so much better done than might have been

expected. (Here, if I had space, I would open a long parenthesis, in

which I should aspire to demonstrate that the incontestable superiority

of average French acting to English is by no means so strongly marked

in tragedy as in comedy--is indeed sometimes not strongly marked at

all. The reason of this is in a great measure, I think, that we have

had Shakespeare to exercise ourselves upon, and that an inferior

dramatic instinct exercised upon Shakespeare may become more flexible

than a superior one exercised upon Corneille and Racine. When it comes

to ranting--ranting even in a modified and comparatively reasonable

sense--we do, I suspect, quite as well as the French, if not rather

better.) Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his entertaining little book upon "Actors

and the Art of Acting," mentions M. Talbot, of the Français, as a

surprisingly incompetent performer. My memory assents to his judgment

at the same time that it proposes an amendment. This actor's special

line is the buffeted, bemuddled, besotted old fathers, uncles, and

guardians of classic comedy, and he plays them with his face much more

than with his tongue. Nature has endowed him with a visage so admirably

adapted, once for all, to his rôle, that he has only to sit in a chair,

with his hands folded on his stomach, to look like a monument to

bewildered senility. After that it doesn't matter what he says or how

he says it.

The Comédie Française sometimes does weaker things than in keeping M.

Talbot. Last autumn, for instance, it was really depressing to see

Mlle. Dudley brought all the way from Brussels (and with not a little

flourish either) to "create" the guilty vestal in "Rome Vaincue." As

far as the interests of art are concerned, Mlle. Dudley had much better

have remained in the Flemish capital, of whose language she is

apparently a perfect mistress. It is hard, too, to forgive M. Perrin

(M. Perrin is the present director of the Théâtre Français) for

bringing out "L'Ami Fritz" of M. Erckmann-Chatrian. The two gentlemen

who write under this name have a double claim to kindness. In the first

place, they have produced some delightful little novels; every one

knows and admires "Le Conscrit de 1813"; every one admires, indeed, the

charming tale on which the play in question is founded. In the second

place, they were, before the production of their piece, the objects of

a scurrilous attack by the "Figaro" newspaper, which held the authors

up to reprobation for having "insulted the army," and did its best to

lay the train for a hostile manifestation on the first night. (It may

be added that the good sense of the public outbalanced the impudence of

the newspaper, and the play was simply advertised into success.) But

neither the novels nor the persecutions of M. Erckmann-Chatrian avail

to render "L'Ami Fritz," in its would-be dramatic form, worthy of the

first French stage. It is played as well as possible, and upholstered

even better; but it is, according to the vulgar phrase, too "thin" for

the locality. Upholstery has never played such a part at the Théâtre

Français as during the reign of M. Perrin, who came into power, if I

mistake not, after the late war. He proved very early that he was a

radical, and he has introduced a hundred novelties. His administration,

however, has been brilliant, and in his hands the Théâtre Français has

made money. This it had rarely done before, and this, in the

conservative view, is quite beneath its dignity. To the conservative

view I should humbly incline. An institution so closely protected by a

rich and powerful State ought to be able to cultivate art for art.

The first of M. Sarcey's biographies, to which I have been too long in

coming, is devoted to Regnier, a veteran actor, who left the stage four

or five years since, and who now fills the office of oracle to his

younger comrades. It is the indispensable thing, says M. Sarcey, for

a young aspirant to be able to say that he has had lessons of M.

Regnier, or that M. Regnier has advised him, or that he has talked

such and such a point over with M. Regnier. (His comrades always speak

of him as M. Regnier--never as simple Regnier.) I have had the fortune

to see him but once; it was the first time I ever went to the Théâtre

Français. He played Don Annibal in Emile Augier's romantic comedy of

"L'Aventurière," and I have not forgotten the exquisite humor of the

performance. The part is that of a sort of seventeenth century Captain

Costigan, only the Miss Fotheringay in the case is the gentleman's

sister, and not his daughter. This lady is moreover an ambitious and

designing person, who leads her threadbare braggart of a brother quite

by the nose. She has entrapped a worthy gentleman of Padua, of mature

years, and he is on the eve of making her his wife, when his son, a

clever young soldier, beguiles Don Annibal into supping with him, and

makes him drink so deep that the prating adventurer at last lets the

cat out of the bag, and confides to his companion that the fair

Clorinda is not the virtuous gentlewoman she appears, but a poor

strolling actress who has had a lover at every stage of her journey.

The scene was played by Bressant and Regnier, and it has always

remained in my mind as one of the most perfect things I have seen on

the stage. The gradual action of the wine upon Don Annibal, the

delicacy with which his deepening tipsiness was indicated, its

intellectual rather than physical manifestation, and, in the midst of

it, the fantastic conceit which made him think that he was winding his

fellow drinker round his fingers--all this was exquisitely rendered.

Drunkenness on the stage is usually both dreary and disgusting; and I

can remember besides this but two really interesting pictures of

intoxication (excepting always, indeed, the immortal tipsiness of

Cassio in "Othello," which a clever actor can always make touching).

One is the beautiful befuddlement of Rip Van Winkle, as Mr. Joseph

Jefferson renders it, and the other (a memory of the Théâtre Français)

the scene in the "Duc Job," in which Got succumbs to mild inebriation,

and dozes in his chair just boosily enough for the young girl who loves

him to make it out.

It is to this admirable Emile Got that M. Sarcey's second notice is

devoted. Got is at the present hour unquestionably the first actor at

the Théâtre Français, and I have personally no hesitation in accepting

him as the first of living actors. His younger comrade, Coquelin, has,

I think, as much talent and as much art; but the older man Got has the

longer and fuller record, and may therefore be spoken of as the master

_par excellence_. If I were obliged to rank the half dozen _premiers

sujets_ of the last few years at the Théâtre Français in their absolute

order of _talent_ (thank Heaven, I am not so obliged!), I think I

should make up some such little list as this: Got, Coquelin, Mme.

Plessy, Sarah Bernhardt, Mlle. Favart, Delaunay. I confess that I have

no sooner written it than I feel as if I ought to amend it, and wonder

whether it is not a great folly to put Delaunay after Mlle. Favart. But

this is idle.

As for Got, he is a singularly interesting actor. I have often wondered

whether the best definition of him would not be to say that he is

really a _philosophic_ actor. He is an immense humorist, and his

comicality is sometimes colossal; but his most striking quality is the

one on which M. Sarcey dwells--his sobriety and profundity, his

underlying element of manliness and melancholy, the impression he gives

you of having a general conception of human life and of seeing the

relativity, as one may say, of the character he represents. Of all the

comic actors I have seen he is the least trivial--at the same time that

for richness of detail his comicality is unsurpassed. His repertory is

very large and various, but it may be divided into two equal

halves--the parts that belong to reality and the parts that belong to

fantasy. There is of course a vast deal of fantasy in his realistic

parts and a vast deal of reality in his fantastic ones, but the general

division is just; and at times, indeed, the two faces of his talent

seem to have little in common. The Duc Job, to which I just now

alluded, is one of the things he does most perfectly. The part, which

is that of a young man, is a serious and tender one. It is amazing that

the actor who plays it should also be able to carry off triumphantly

the frantic buffoonery of Maître Pathelin, or should represent the

Sganarelle of the "Médecin Malgré Lui" with such an unctuous breadth of

humor. The two characters, perhaps, which have given me the liveliest

idea of Got's power and fertility are the Maître Pathelin and the M.

Poirier, who figures in the title to the comedy which Emile Augier and

Jules Sandeau wrote together. M. Poirier, the retired shop-keeper who

marries his daughter to a marquis and makes acquaintance with the

incommodities incidental to such a piece of luck, is perhaps the

actor's most elaborate creation; it is difficult to see how the

portrayal of a type and an individual can have a larger sweep and a

more minute completeness. The _bonhomme_ Poirier, in Got's hands,

is really great; and half a dozen of the actor's modern parts that I

could mention are hardly less brilliant. But when I think of him I

instinctively think first of some rôle in which he wears the cap and

gown of the days in which humorous invention may fairly take the bit in

its teeth. This is what Got lets it do in Maître Pathelin, and he leads

the spectators' exhilarated fancy a dance to which their aching sides

on the morrow sufficiently testify.

The piece is a _réchauffé_ of a mediæval farce, which has the credit of

being the first play not a "mystery" or a miracle piece in the records

of the French drama. The plot is of the baldest and most primitive. It

sets forth how a cunning lawyer undertook to purchase a dozen ells of

cloth for nothing. In the first scene we see him in the market-place,

bargaining and haggling with the draper, and then marching off with the

roll of cloth, with the understanding that the shop-man is to call at

his house in the course of an hour for the money. In the next act we

have Maître Pathelin at his fireside with his wife, to whom he relates

his trick and its projected sequel, and who greets them with Homeric

laughter. He gets into bed, and the innocent draper arrives. Then

follows a scene of which the liveliest description must be ineffective.

Pathelin pretends to be out of his head, to be overtaken by a

mysterious malady which has made him delirious, not to know the draper

from Adam, never to have heard of the dozen ells of cloth, and to be

altogether an impossible person to collect a debt from. To carry out

this character he indulges in a series of indescribable antics,

out-Bedlams Bedlam, frolics over the room dressed out in the

bed-clothes and chanting the wildest gibberish, bewilders the poor

draper to within an inch of his own sanity, and finally puts him

utterly to rout. The spectacle could only be portentously flat or

heroically successful, and in Got's hands this latter was its fortune.

His Sganarelle, in the "Médecin Malgré Lui," and half a dozen of his

characters from Molière besides--such a part, too, as his Tibia, in

Alfred de Musset's charming bit of romanticism, the "Caprices de

Marianne"--have a certain generic resemblance with his treatment of the

figure I have sketched. In all of these the comicality is of the

exuberant and tremendous order, and yet, in spite of its richness and

flexibility, it suggests little connection with high animal spirits. It

seems a matter of invention, of reflection and irony. You cannot

imagine Got representing a fool pure and simple--or at least a passive

and unsuspecting fool. There must always be an element of shrewdness

and even of contempt; he must be the man who knows and judges--or at

least who pretends. It is a compliment, I take it, to an actor, to say

that he prompts you to wonder about his private personality; and an

observant spectator of M. Got is at liberty to guess that he is both

obstinate and proud.

In Coquelin there is perhaps greater spontaneity, and there is a not

inferior mastery of his art. He is a wonderfully brilliant, elastic

actor. He is but thirty-five years old, and yet his record is most

glorious. He too has his "actual" and his classical repertory, and here

also it is hard to choose. As the young _valet de comédie_ in Molière,

Regnard, and Marivaux, he is incomparable. I shall never forget the

really infernal brilliancy of his Mascarille in "L'Etourdi." His

volubility, his rapidity, his impudence and gayety, his ringing,

penetrating voice, and the shrill trumpet-note of his laughter, make

him the ideal of the classic serving-man of the classic young

lover--half rascal and half good fellow. Coquelin has lately had two or

three immense successes in the comedies of the day. His Duc de

Sept-Monts, in the famous "Etrangère" of Alexandre Dumas, last winter,

was the capital creation of the piece; and in the revival, this winter,

of Augier's "Paul Forestier," his Adolphe de Beaubourg, the young man

about town, consciously tainted with _commonness_, and trying to shake

off the incubus, seemed, while one watched it and listened to it, the

last word of delicately humorous art. Of Coquelin's eminence in the old

comedies M. Sarcey speaks with a certain picturesque force: "No one is

better cut out to represent those bold and magnificent rascals of the

old repertory, with their boisterous gayety, their brilliant fancy, and

their superb extravagance, who give to their buffoonery _je ne sais

quoi d'épique_. In these parts one may say of Coquelin that he is

incomparable. I prefer him to Got in such cases, and even to Regnier,

his master. I never saw Monrose, and cannot speak of him. But good

judges have assured me that there was much that was factitious in the

manner of this eminent comedian, and that his vivacity was a trifle

mechanical. There is nothing whatever of this in Coquelin's manner.

The eye, the nose, and the voice--the voice above all--are his most

powerful means of action. He launches his _tirades_ all in one breath,

with full lungs, without bothering too much over the shading of

details, in large masses, and he possesses himself only the more

strongly of the public, which has a great sense of _ensemble_. The

words that must be detached, the words that must decisively 'tell,'

glitter in this delivery with the sonorous ring of a brand-new louis

d'or. Crispin, Scapin, Figaro, Mascarille have never found a more

valiant and joyous interpreter."

I should say that this was enough about the men at the Théâtre

Français, if I did not remember that I have not spoken of Delaunay. But

Delaunay has plenty of people to speak for him; he has, in especial,

the more eloquent half of humanity--the ladies. I suppose that of all

the actors of the Comédie Français he is the most universally

appreciated and admired; he is the popular favorite. And he has

certainly earned this distinction, for there was never a more amiable

and sympathetic genius. He plays the young lovers of the past and the

present, and he acquits himself of his difficult and delicate task with

extraordinary grace and propriety. The danger I spoke of a while

since--the danger, for the actor of a romantic and sentimental part, of

being compromised by the coat and trousers, the hat and umbrella of the

current year--are reduced by Delaunay to their minimum. He reconciles

in a marvellous fashion the love-sick gallant of the ideal world with

the "gentlemanly man" of to-day; and his passion is as far removed from

rant as his propriety is from stiffness. He has been accused of late

years of falling into a mannerism, and I think there is some truth in

the charge. But the fault in Delaunay's situation is certainly venial.

How can a man of fifty, to whom, as regards face and figure, Nature has

been stingy, play an amorous swain of twenty without taking refuge in a

mannerism? His mannerism is a legitimate device for diverting the

spectator's attention from certain incongruities. Delaunay's

juvenility, his ardor, his passion, his good taste and sense of

fitness, have always an irresistible charm. As he has grown older he

has increased his repertory by parts of greater weight and sobriety--he

has played the husbands as well as the lovers. One of his most recent

and brilliant "creations" of this kind is his Marquis de Presles in "Le

Gendre de M. Poirier"--a piece of acting superb for its lightness and

_désinvolture_. It cannot be better praised than by saying it was

worthy of Got's inimitable rendering of the part opposed to it. But I

think I shall remember Delaunay best in the picturesque and romantic

comedies--as the Duc de Richelieu in "Mlle. De Belle-Isle"; as the

joyous, gallant, exuberant young hero, his plumes and love knots

fluttering in the breath of his gushing improvisation, of Corneille's

"Menteur"; or, most of all, as the melodious swains of those charmingly

poetic, faintly, naturally Shakespearian little comedies of Alfred de

Musset.

To speak of Delaunay ought to bring us properly to Mlle. Favart, who

for so many years invariably represented the object of his tender

invocations. Mlle. Favart at the present time rather lacks what the

French call "actuality." She has made this winter an attempt to recover

something of that large measure of it which she once possessed; but I

doubt whether it has been completely successful. M. Sarcey has not yet

put forth his notice of her; and when he does so it will be interesting

to see how he treats her. She is not one of his high admirations. She

is a great talent which has passed into eclipse. I call her a great

talent, although I remember the words in which M. Sarcey somewhere

speaks of her: "Mlle. Favart, who, to happy natural gifts, _soutenu par

un travail acharné_, owed a distinguished place," etc. Her talent is

great, but the impression that she gives of a _travail acharné_ and of

an insatiable ambition is perhaps even greater. For many years she

reigned supreme, and I believe she is accused of not having always

reigned generously. However that may be, there came a day when Mlles.

Croizette and Sarah Bernhardt passed to the front, and the elder

actress receded, if not into the background, at least into what

painters call the middle distance. The private history of these events

has, I believe, been rich in heart-burnings; but it is only with the

public history that we are concerned. Mlle. Favart has always seemed to

be a powerful rather than an interesting actress; there is usually

something mechanical and overdone in her manner. In some of her parts

there is a kind of audible creaking of the machinery. If Delaunay is

open to the reproach of having let a mannerism get the better of him,

this accusation is much more fatally true of Mlle. Favart. On the other

hand, she knows her trade as no one does--no one, at least, save Mme.

Plessy. When she is bad she is extremely bad, and sometimes she is

interruptedly bad for a whole evening. In the revival of Scribe's

clever comedy of "Une Chaine," this winter (which, by the way, though

the cast included both Got and Coquelin, was the nearest approach to

mediocrity I have ever seen at the Théâtre Français), Mlle. Favart was,

to my sense, startlingly bad. The part had originally been played by

Mme. Plessy; and I remember how M. Sarcey in his _feuilleton_ treated

its actual representative. "Mlle. Favart does Louise. Who does not

recall the exquisite delicacy and temperance with which Mme. Plessy

rendered that difficult scene in the second act?" etc. And nothing

more. When, however, Mlle. Favart is at her best, she is prodigiously

strong. She rises to great occasions. I doubt whether such parts as the

desperate heroine of the "Supplice d'une Femme," or as Julie in Octave

Feuillet's lugubrious drama of that name, could be more effectively

played than she plays them. She can carry a great weight without

flinching; she has what the French call her "authority"; and in

declamation she sometimes unrolls her fine voice, as it were, in long

harmonious waves and cadences, the sustained power of which her younger

rivals must often envy her.

I am drawing to the close of these rather desultory observations

without having spoken of the four ladies commemorated by M. Sarcey in

the publication which lies before me; and I do not know that I can

justify my tardiness otherwise than by saying that writing and reading

about artists of so extreme a personal brilliancy is poor work, and

that the best the critic can do is to wish his reader may see them,

from a quiet _fauteuil_, as speedily and as often as possible. Of

Madeleine Brohan, indeed, there is little to say. She is a delightful

person to listen to, and she is still delightful to look at in spite of

that redundancy of contour which time has contributed to her charm. But

she has never been ambitious, and her talent has had no particularly

original quality. It is a long time since she created an important

part; but in the old repertory her rich, dense voice, her charming

smile, her mellow, tranquil gayety, always give extreme pleasure. To

hear her sit and _talk_, simply, and laugh and play with her fan, along

with Mme. Plessy, in Molière's "Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes," is an

entertainment to be remembered. For Mme. Plessy I should have to mend

my pen and begin a new chapter; and for Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt no less a

ceremony would suffice. I saw Mme. Plessy for the first time in Emile

Augier's "Aventurière," when, as I mentioned, I first saw Regnier. This

is considered by many persons her best part, and she certainly carries

it off with a high hand; but I like her better in characters which

afford more scope to her talents for comedy. These characters are very

numerous, for her activity and versatility have been extraordinary. Her

comedy of course is "high"; it is of the highest conceivable kind, and

she has often been accused of being too mincing and too artificial. I

should never make this charge, for, to me, Mme. Plessy's _minauderies_,

her grand airs and her arch-refinements, have never been anything but

the odorous swayings and queenly tossings of some splendid garden

flower. Never had an actress grander manners. When Mme. Plessy

represents a duchess, you have to make no allowance. Her limitations

are on the side of the pathetic. If she is brilliant, she is cold; and

I cannot imagine her touching the source of tears. But she is in the

highest degree accomplished; she gives an impression of intelligence

and intellect which is produced by none of her companions--excepting

always the extremely exceptional Sarah Bernhardt. Mme. Plessy's

intellect has sometimes misled her--as, for instance, when it whispered

to her, a few years since, that she could play Agrippine in Racine's

"Britannicus," when that tragedy was presented for the _débuts_ of

Mounet-Sully. I was verdant enough to think her Agrippine very fine;

but M. Sarcey reminds his readers of what he said of it the Monday

after the first performance. "I will not say"--he quotes himself--"that

Mme. Plessy is indifferent. With her intelligence, her natural gifts,

her great situation, her immense authority over the public, one cannot

be indifferent in anything. She is therefore not indifferently bad. She

is bad to a point which cannot be expressed, and which would be

afflicting for dramatic art if it were not that in this great shipwreck

there rise to the surface a few floating fragments of the finest

qualities that nature has ever bestowed upon an artist."

Mme. Plessy retired from the stage six months ago, and it may be said

that the void produced by this event is irreparable. There is not only

no prospect, but there is no hope of filling it up. The present

conditions of artistic production are directly hostile to the formation

of actresses as consummate and as complete as Mme. Plessy. One may not

expect to see her like, any more than one may expect to see a new

manufacture of old lace and old brocade. She carried off with her

something that the younger generation of actresses will consistently

lack--a certain largeness of style and robustness of art. (These

qualities are in a modified degree those of Mlle. Favart.) But if the

younger actresses have the success of Mlles. Croizette and Sarah

Bernhardt, will they greatly care whether they are not "robust"? These

young ladies are children of a later and eminently contemporary type,

according to which an actress undertakes not to interest, but to

fascinate. They are charming--"awfully" charming; strange, eccentric,

and imaginative. It would be needless to speak specifically of Mlle.

Croizette; for although she has very great attractions, I think she may

(by the cold impartiality of science) be classified as a secondary, a

less inspired, and (to use the great word of the day) a more "brutal"

Sarah Bernhardt. (Mlle. Croizette's "brutality" is her great card.) As

for Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt, she is simply, at present, in Paris, one of

the great figures of the day. It is hard to imagine a more brilliant

embodiment of feminine success. It is hard to imagine a young woman

leading a more complete and multifold existence. The intellectual

fermentation of a productive, creative (and most ambitious) artist, the

splendors of a princess, the glories of a celebrity, and various other

matters besides--these are a sufficiently interesting combination. But

as an artist, as I have said, Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt would almost

deserve a chapter for herself.

HENRY JAMES, JR.

MISS MISANTHROPE.

BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY.

CHAPTER VII.

ON THE BRIDGE.

There was one walk of which Minola Grey was especially fond, and which

she loved to enjoy alone. It led by a particular track through Regent's

Park, avoiding for the most part the frequented paths, and bringing her

at one time to the summit of a little mound or knoll, from which she

could look across broad fields where sheep were grazing, and through

clumps of trees and over hedges, and from which, by a happy

peculiarity, all sight of the beaten and dusty avenues of the park was

shut out. The view from this little eminence was perhaps most beautiful

on a moist and misty day. There the soft, loving, artistic breath of

the rain-charged clouds breathed tenderly on the landscape, and effaced

any of the harsher, or meaner, or in any way more prosaic details.

There the gazer only saw a noble expanse of delicious green grass and

darker hedgerows, and trees of dun and gray, and softly-mottled

moss-grown trunks, and here and there a bed of flowers, and all under a

silver-gray atmosphere that almost seemed to dissolve while the eye

rested on it. When Minola had looked long enough on the scene opening

below the mound, she then usually pursued her course by devious ways

until she reached one of the bridges of the canal, and there she made

another halting place. The scene from the canal-bridge, unlike that

from the mound, looked best on a bright, breezy day, of quick changing

lights and shadows. There the brown water of the canal sparkled and

gladdened in the sun, and Minola, leaning over the little bridge, and

fixing her eyes on the water as it rippled past the nearer bank, might

enjoy, for the hour, the full sensation of one who floats in a boat

along a stream, and watches the trees and grasses of the shore. The

place was quiet enough, and rich enough in trees and shrubs, and little

reeds quivering out of the water, to seem, at least in Minola's pleased

eyes, like a spot on the bank of the canal far in the country, while

yet there was to her the peculiar and keen delight of knowing herself

in London. Sometimes, too, a canal boat came gliding along, steered by

a stalwart and sunburnt woman in a great straw bonnet, and the boat and

the woman brought wild and delicious ideas of far-off country places,

with woods and gipsies, and fresh, half savage, half poetic life.

Minola extracted beautiful pictures and much poetry and romance from

that little bridge over the discolored canal, creeping through the

heart of London.

The population of London--even its idlers--usually move along in tracks

and grooves. Where some go, others go; where few go, at last none go.

It is wonderful what hours of almost absolute solitude Minola was able

to enjoy in the midst of Regent's Park. Voices, indeed, constantly

reached her: the cries and laughter of children, the shoutings of

cricketers, the dulled clamor of the metropolis itself. These reached

her as did the bleating of sheep and the tinkle of their bells, the

barking of dogs, and occasionally the fierce, hoarse, thrilling growl

or roar of some disturbed or impatient animal in the Zoölogical Gardens

near at hand. But many and many a time Minola lounged for half an hour

on her little knoll or on her chosen bridge, without seeing more of man

or woman than of the lions in their cages on the other side of the

enclosure. There was a particular hour of the day, too, when the park

in general was especially deserted, and it appears almost needless to

say that this was the time selected usually by Miss Grey for her

rambles. It was sometimes a curious, half sensuous pleasure for her

thus alone, amid the murmur of the trees, to fancy herself, for the

moment, back again within sight of the mausoleum at Keeton, where she

had spent so many weary and solitary hours, and then, awaking, to

rejoice anew in her freedom and in London.

It was a fortunate and kindly destiny which assigned to our heroine a

poetess for a companion. Much as she loved occasional solitude, Minola

loved still better the spirit of fidelity to the obligations of true

_camaraderie_, and if Miss Blanchet had had any manner of work to

do, from the mending of a stocking to the teaching of a school, in

which Minola could possibly have assisted her, Minola would never have

thought of leaving her to do the work alone. Or even if Miss Blanchet

had work to do in which Minola could not have helped her, but to which

her presence would be any manner of encouragement, Minola would have

stayed with her, and never dreamed of play while her companion had to

be at work. But we may safely appeal to all the poets of all time to

say whether anybody ever desired companionship while engaged in the

composition of poetry. Sappho herself could have well dispensed with

the society of Phaon at such a moment. It is true that Corinne threw

off some of her grandest effusions in full face of an admiring crowd,

and recited them not only with Lord Nelvil, but at him. Corinne,

however, was of the improvisatrice class, to which Mary Blanchet did

not profess to belong; and we own, moreover, to a constant suspicion

that Corinne must have sat up late for many previous nights getting her

improvisations by heart. At all events Miss Blanchet was not Corinne,

and required seclusion, and much thought, and comparison of rhymes, and

even looking out in dictionaries, in order to the composition of her

poems. At the present time Minola was well aware that her friend had a

new collection of poems on hand, and that the poems would be churned

off with less difficulty if the author were occasionally left to

herself for an hour or two. Therefore Minola was free to go into

Regent's Park, with untroubled conscience and light heart. The woman

who was not a poet revelled in the rustling branches and the sight of

the soft grass, and was filled with glad visions and dreams by the

flowing even of a poor, clouded, slow canal stream, and was rapt into

the ideal at the sight of a reed growing in the water and shaken by the

wind. The poetess remained at home in a dull room, and hammered out

rhymes with the help of a dictionary.

But, to do Minola justice, she was not wholly given up, even in these

free and lonely hours, to the sweet, innocent sensuousness that fills

certain beings when amid trees and the sounds of flowing water. She had

many scruples about the possible selfishness of her life, and wondered

whether it was not wrong thus to live, and whether it was not through

some fault of hers that no opportunity presented itself to her of doing

any good for man or woman. She asked herself sometimes whether she had

not been impatient and wilful in her dealings with the people at home.

She still, when in a self-questioning and penitential mood, thought and

spoke of Keeton as "home," and whether she had not done wrong in

leaving the material enclosure of any place bearing even by tradition

the name of home, for a life of freedom which some censors might have

thought unwomanly. There are metaphysicians who hold that, although man

of his nature has no intuitive knowledge, yet that the accumulated

experience of generations supplies gradually for men, as they are born,

a something which is like intuition to start with, and which they could

not now start clear of. So the experience or the traditions of

generations form a sort of factitious and accumulated conscience for

women independent of any abstract or eternal laws, and amounting in

strength to something like intuition. Over this shadow they cannot

leap. Minola, filled as she was with a peculiarly independent spirit,

and driven by circumstances to consider its indulgence a right and even

a duty, could not keep from the occasional torment of a doubt whether

there must not be something wrong in the conduct of any woman who,

under any circumstances, leaves voluntarily, and while she is yet under

age, the home of her childhood, and takes up her abode among strangers,

without guardians, mistress of herself, and in lodgings.

Perhaps some such ideas were in Minola's mind when she left Mary

Blanchet, a few mornings after the meetings described in the last

chapter, and set out for a pleasant lonely walk in Regent's Park.

Perhaps it was the very pleasure of the walk, and the loneliness, now

missed for some days, that made her dread being selfish, and sent her

down into a drooping and penitent reaction. "This will never do," she

kept thinking. "I ought to try to do something for somebody. I am

growing to think only of myself--and I broke away from Keeton because I

was getting morbid in thinking about myself."

It was in this remorseful condition of mind that she approached her

favorite mound, longing for an hour of quiet delight there, and half

ashamed of her longing. When she had nearly reached its height, she

discerned that the fates had seemingly resolved to punish her for her

love of solitariness, by decreeing that her chosen retreat should that

day be occupied. There was a seat on which she usually sat, and now a

man was there. That was bad enough, but she could in an ordinary case

have passed on, and sought some other place. Now, however, she saw that

that was denied to her; for the intruder was Mr. Victor Heron, and at

the sound of her footstep he looked round, recognized her, and was

already coming toward her, with hat uplifted and courteous bow.

The very rapid moment of time between Minola's first seeing Mr. Heron

and his recognizing her had enabled her quick eyes to perceive that

when he thought himself alone he was anything but the genial and joyous

personage he appeared in company. At first Miss Grey's attention was

withdrawn from her own disappointment by the air of melancholy and even

of utter despondency about the face and figure of the seated man. He

sat leaning forward, his chin supported by one hand, his eyes fixed

moodily on the ground. He seemed to have no manner of concern with air,

or sky, or scene, and his dark-complexioned face gave the impression of

one terribly at odds with fortune. Minola felt almost irresistibly

drawn toward one who seemed unhappy. Her harmless misanthropy went out

at a breath in the presence of any man who appeared to suffer.

But the change which came over Mr. Heron when he saw her can only be

likened to that which would be made by the sudden illumination of a

house that a second before was all dark, and seemingly tenantless. He

came to meet her with sparkling eyes and delighted expression. Mr.

Heron, it should perhaps be explained, considered himself so much older

than Miss Grey, so entirely an experienced, mature, not to say outworn

man, that he did not think of waiting to see whether Miss Grey was

inclined to encourage a renewal of the acquaintance. He considered it

his duty to be polite and friendly to the pretty girl he had met at

Money's, and whom he assumed to be poor, and wanting in friends.

"How fortunate I am to meet you here to-day!" he said. "You remember

me, I hope, Miss Grey? I haven't called you Miss Money this time. Come

now--don't say you have forgotten me."

"I could not say I had forgotten you, for it would not be true, Mr.

Heron."

"Thank you; that was very prettily said, and kindly."

"Was it? I really didn't mean it to be either pretty or kind--only the

truth."

"I see, you go in for being downright, and saying only what you mean. I

am very glad. So do I, and I am very much delighted to meet you here,

Miss Grey. Come, you won't say as much for me?"

"I cannot say that I was glad to see anybody just here; this place is

always deserted, except by me."

"You come here often, and you are sorry to have your retreat broken in

upon? Don't hesitate to say so, Miss Grey, and I will promise not to

come into this part of the park--or into any part of the park for that

matter--any more. Why should I disturb you?"

He spoke with such earnestness and such evident sincerity that Minola

began to feel ashamed of her previous ungraciousness.

"That would be rather hard upon you, and a little arrogant on my part,"

she said smiling. "The park isn't mine, and, if it were, I am sure I

could not be selfish enough to wish to shut you out from any part of

it. But I am in the habit of being a good deal alone; and I fear it

makes me a little rude and selfish sometimes. I was thinking of that

just as I came up here, and saw you."

"Then you saw me before I saw you?"

"Oh, yes."

"I am afraid you must have seen a very woe-begone personage."

"Yes; you seemed unhappy, I thought."

"There is something sympathetic about you, Miss Grey, for all your

coldness and loneliness."

"Surely," said Miss Grey, "a woman without some feeling of sympathy

would be hardly fit to live."

"You think so?" he asked quite earnestly and gravely. "So do I--so do I

indeed. Men have little time to sympathize with men--they are all too

busy with their own affairs. What should we do but for the sympathy of

women? Now tell me, why do you smile at that? I saw that you were

trying not to laugh."

"I could not help smiling a little, it was so thoroughly masculine a

sentiment."

"Was it? How is that now?" His direct way of propounding his questions

rather amused and did not displease her. It was like the way of a

rational man talking with another rational being--a style of

conversation which has much attraction for some women.

"Well, because it looked upon women so honestly as creatures only

formed to make men comfortable, by coming up and sympathizing with them

when they are in a humor for sympathy, and then retiring out of the way

into their corner again."

"I can assure you, Miss Grey, that never has been my idea--nothing of

the kind, indeed. To tell the truth, I have not known much about the

sympathy of women and all that. I have lived awfully out of the world,

and I never had any sisters, and I hardly remember my mother. I know

women chiefly in poems and romances, and I believe I generally adopt

the goddess theory. In honest truth, most women do seem to me a sort of

goddesses."

"You will not be long in England without unlearning that theory," Miss

Grey said. "Our writers seem to have hardly any subject now but the

faults and follies of women. One might sometimes think that woman was a

newly-discovered creature that the world could never be done wondering

at."

"Yes, yes; I read a good deal of that sort of thing out in the

colonies. But I have retained the goddess theory, so far at least. Mrs.

Money seems to me a sort of divinity. Miss Money is a born saint; she

ought to go about with a gilt plate round her head. Miss Lucy Money

seems like a little angel of light. Are you smiling again? I do assure

you these are my real feelings."

"I was not smiling at the idea, but only at the difference between it

and the favorite ideas of most people at present, even of women about

women."

"May I walk a little with you," Mr. Heron said, "or will you sit and

rest here, if you are tired, and we will talk? Don't stand on formality

and send me away, although I will go if you like, and not feel in the

least offended. But if we might talk for a little, it would give me

great pleasure. You said just now that you did not wish to be selfish.

It will be very unselfish and very kind if you will let me talk to you

a little. I felt very wretched when you came up--quite in a suicidal

frame of mind."

"Oh, no! Pray don't speak in that way. You do not mean it I am sure."

"In one sense I do mean it--that is, it is quite true that I should not

have thrown myself into the water or blown my brains out; that sort of

thing seems to me like abandoning one's post without orders from

headquarters. But I felt in the condition of mind when one can quite

understand how such things are done, and would be glad if he were free

to follow the example. For _me_ that is a great change in itself," the

young man added with some bitterness.

"What can I do for him?" Miss Grey asked herself mentally. "Nothing but

to show him the view from the canal bridge. There is nothing else in my

power."

"There is a very pretty view a short distance from this," she said; "a

view from a bridge, and I am particularly fond of looking from bridges.

Should you like to walk there?"

"I should like to walk anywhere with you," Victor Heron said, with a

look of genuine gratefulness, which had not the faintest breath of

compliment in it, and could only be accepted as frank truth.

Perhaps, if Miss Grey had been a town-bred girl, she might have

hesitated about setting out for a companionable walk in the park with a

young man who was almost a stranger to her. But, as it was, she

appeared to herself to have all the right of free action belonging to

one in a place of which the public opinion can in no wise touch her.

She acted in London as freely as one speaks with a friend in a foreign

hotel room, where he knows that the company around are unable to

understand what he is saying. In this particular instance, however,

Minola hardly thought about the matter at all. There was something in

Heron's open and emotional way which made people almost at the first

meeting cease to regard him as a stranger. Perhaps, if Minola had

thought over the matter, she might have cited in vindication of her

course the valuable authority of Major Pendennis, who, when asked

whether Laura might properly take walks in the Temple Gardens with

Warrington, eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad, of course, you go out with

him. It's like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody

in the Gardens; and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of

thing. Everybody walks in the Temple Gardens." Regent's Park, one would

think, ought to come under the same laws. There are beadles there, too,

or guardian functionaries of some sort, although it may be owned that

in their walk to and from the canal bridge Heron and Minola encountered

none of them.

It is doubtful whether Heron at least would have noticed such a

personage even had they come in their way, for he talked nearly all the

time, except when he paused for an answer to some direct question, and

he seldom took his eyes from Minola's face. He was not staring at her,

or broadly admiring her; nor, indeed, was there anything in his manner

to make it certain that he was admiring her at all, as man

conventionally is understood to admire woman. But he had evidently put

Miss Grey into the place of a sympathetic and trusted friend, and he

talked to her accordingly. She was amused and interested, and she now

and then kept making little disparaging criticisms to herself, in order

to sustain her place as the cool depreciator of man. But she was very

happy for all that.

One characteristic peculiarity of this sudden and singular

acquaintanceship ought to be mentioned. When people still read "Gil

Blas" they would have remembered at once how the waiting-woman received

delightedly the advances of Gil Blas, believing him to be a gentleman

of fortune, and how Gil Blas paid great court to the waiting-woman,

believing her to be a lady of rank. The pair of friends in Regent's

Park were drawn together by exactly opposite impulses: each believed

the other poor and unfriended. Minola was under the impression that she

was giving her sympathy to a ruined and unhappy young man, who had

failed in life almost at the very beginning, and was now friendless in

stony-hearted London. Victor Heron was convinced that his companion was

a poor orphan girl, who had been sent down by misfortune from a

position of comfort, or even wealth, to earn her bread by some sort of

intellectual labor, while she lived in a small back room in a depressed

and mournful quarter of London.

He told her the story of his grievance; it may be that he even told her

some parts of it more than once. It was a strange sensation to her, as

she walked on the soft green turf, in the silver gray atmosphere, to

hear this young man, who seemed to have lived so bold and strange a

life, appealing to her for an opinion as to the course he ought to

pursue to have his cause set right. The St. Xavier's Settlements do not

geographically count for much, and politically they count for still

less. But when Mr. Heron told of his having been administrator and

commandant there; of his having made treaties with neighboring kings

(she knew they were only black kings); of his having tried to put down

slavery, and to maintain what he persisted in believing to be the true

honor of England; of war made on him, and war made by him in

return--while she listened to all this, it is no wonder if our romantic

girl from Duke's Keeton sometimes thought she was conversing with one

of the heroes and master-spirits of the time. He made the whole story

very clear to her, and she thoroughly understood it, although her

imagination and her senses were sometimes disturbed by the tropic glare

which seemed to come over the places and events he described. At last

they actually came to be standing on the canal bridge, and neither

looked at the view they had come to see.

"Now what do you advise?" Heron said, after having several times

impressed some particular point on her. "I attach great importance to a

woman's advice. You have instincts, and all that, which we haven't; at

least so everybody says. Would you let this thing drop altogether, and

try some other career, or would you fight it out?"

"I would fight it out," Minola said, looking up to him with sparkling

eyes, "and I would never let it drop. I would make them do me justice."

"Just what I think; just what I came to England resolved to do. I hate

the idea of giving in; but people here discourage me. Money discourages

me. He says the Government will never do anything unless I make myself

troublesome."

"Well, then, why not make yourself troublesome?"

"I have made myself troublesome in one sense," he said, with a vexed

kind of laugh, "by haunting ante-chambers, and trying to force people

to see me who don't want to see me. But I can't do any more of that

kind of work; I am sick of it. I am ashamed of having tried it at all."

"Yes, I couldn't do that," Minola said gravely.

"Then," Heron said, with a little embarrassment, "a man--a very kind

and well-meaning fellow, an old friend of my father's--offered to

introduce me to Lady Chertsey--a very clever woman, a queen of society,

I am told, who gets all the world (of politics, I mean) into her

drawing-room, and delights in being a sort of power, and all that. She

could push a fellow, they say, wonderfully if she took any interest in

him. But I couldn't do that, you know."

"No? Why not?"

"Well, I shouldn't care to be introduced to a lady's drawing-room with

the secret purpose of trying to get her to do me a service. There seems

something mean in that. Besides, I have a cause (at least, I think I

have) which is too good to be served in that kind of way. If I can't

get a hearing and justice from the Government of England and the people

of England for the sake of right and for the claims I have, I will

never try to get it through. Oh, well, perhaps, I ought not to say what

I was going to say."

"Why not?" Minola asked again.

"I mean, perhaps I ought not to say it to you."

"I don't know really. Tell me what it is, and then I'll tell you

whether you ought to say it."

He laughed. "Well, I was only going to say that I don't care to have my

cause served by petticoat influence."

"I think you are quite right. If I were a man, I should think petticoat

influence in such a matter contemptible. But why should you not like to

say so?"

"Only because I was afraid you might think I meant to speak

contemptuously of the influence and the advice of women. I don't mean

anything of the kind. I have the highest opinion of the advice of women

and their influence, as I have told you already; but I couldn't endure

the idea of having a lady, who doesn't know or care anything about me

and my claims, asked by somebody to say a word to some great man or

some great man's wife, in order that I might get a hearing. I am sure

you understand what I mean, Miss Grey."

"Oh, yes, I never should have misunderstood it; and I know that you are

quite right. It would be a downright degradation."

"So I felt. Anyhow, I could not do it. Then there remains the making

myself troublesome, as Money advises----"

"Yes, what is that?"

"Getting my case brought on again and again in the House of Commons,

and having debates about it, and making the whole thing public, and so

forcing the Government either to do me justice or to satisfy the

country that justice has already been done," he said bitterly.

"That would seem to me a right thing to do," Miss Grey said; "but I

know so little that I ought not to offer a word of advice."

"Oh, yes, I should trust to your feelings and instincts in such a case.

Well, I don't like, somehow, being in the hands of politicians and

party men, who might use me and my cause only as a means of annoying

the Government--not really from any sense of right and justice. I don't

know if I make myself quite understood; it is hard to expect a lady,

especially a young lady, to understand these things."

"I think I can quite understand all that. We are not so stupid as you

seem to suppose, Mr. Heron."

"Stupid? Didn't I tell you of my goddess theory?"

"Some of the goddesses were very stupid I always think. Venus was

stupid."

"Well, well; anyhow you are not Venus."

"No, indeed."

"In that sense I mean. Then I do succeed in making myself understood?"

"Oh, yes!" She could see that he was looking disappointed at her

interruption and her seeming levity, which was indeed only the result

of a momentary impulse to keep up to herself her character as a scorner

of men. "I think I understand quite clearly that you fear to be made

the mere instrument of politicians; and I think you are quite right. I

did not think of that at first, but, now that you explain it, I am sure

that you are right."

He nodded approvingly. "Then comes the question," he said, "what is to

be done?"

Leaning against the bridge, he thrust his hands into his pockets, and

stood looking into her face, as if he were really waiting for her to

solve the problem for him.

"That is entirely beyond me," she said. "I know nothing; I could not

even guess at what ought to be done."

"No? Now here is my idea. Why not plead my cause myself?"

"Plead your cause yourself? Can that be done?"

"Yes; myself--in Parliament."

Minola's mind at once formed and framed a picture of a stately

assembly, like a Roman Senate, or like the group of King Agrippa,

Festus, Bernice, and the rest, and Mr. Heron pleading his cause like

Cicero or Paul. The thing seemed hardly congruous. It did not seem to

her to fall in with modern conditions at all. Her face became blank;

she did not well know what to answer.

"Are people allowed to do such things now, in England?" she asked--"to

plead causes before Parliament?"

An odd idea came up in her mind, that perhaps by the time this strange

performance came to be enacted, Mr. Augustus Sheppard might be in

Parliament, and Mr. Heron's enthusiastic eloquence would have to be

addressed to him. She did not like the idea.

"You don't understand," Heron said. "You really don't this time. What I

mean is to get into Parliament--be elected for some place, and then

stand up and make my own fight for myself."

She kindled at the idea.

"Oh, yes, of course! How stupid I am not to see at once! That is a

splendid idea; the very thing I should like to do if I were a man and

in your place."

"You really think so?"

"Indeed I do. But then----" And she hesitated, for she feared that she

had been only encouraging him to a wild dream. "Does it not cost a

great deal of money to get into Parliament?"

"No; I think not; not always at least. I should look out for an

opportunity. I have money enough--for me. I'm not a rich man, Miss

Grey, but my father left me well enough off, as far as that goes; and

you know that in a place like St. Xavier's one couldn't spend any

money. There was no way of getting rid of it. No, my troubles are none

of them money troubles. I only want to vindicate my past career, and so

to have a career for the future. I ought to be doing something. I feel

in an unhealthy state of mind while all this is pressing on me. You

understand?"

"I can understand it," Miss Grey said, turning to leave the bridge, and

bestowing one glance at the yellow, slow-moving water, and the reeds

and the bushes, of which she and her companion had not spoken a word.

"It is not good to have to think of oneself. But you are bound to

vindicate yourself; that I am sure is your duty. Then you can think of

other things--of the public and the country."

"He is rich," she thought, "and he is clever and earnest, in spite of

his egotism. Of course he will have a career, and be successful. I

thought that he was poor and broken down, and that I was doing him a

kindness by showing sympathy with him."

They went away together, and Heron, delighted with her encouragement

and her intelligence, unfolded splendid plans of what he was to do. But

Minola somehow entered less cordially into them than she had done

before, and Mr. Heron at last became ashamed of talking so much about

himself.

"I hope we shall meet again," he said as she stopped significantly at

one of the gates leading out of the park, to intimate that now their

roads were separating. "I wish you would allow me to call and see you.

I do hope you won't think me odd, or that I am presuming on your

kindness. I am a semi-barbarian, you know--have been so long out of

civilization--and I haven't any idea of the ways of the polite world."

"Nor I," said Minola. "I have come from utter barbarism--from a country

town."

"But I do hope we shall meet again, for you are so sympathetic and

kind."

She bade him good day, and nodded with a friendly smile, but made no

answer to the repeated expression of his hope, and she hastened away.

Heron could not endure walking alone just then. He hailed a hansom and

disappeared.

"How vain men are!" Minola thought as she went her way. "How

egotistical they all are!" Of course she assumed herself to have

obtained a complete knowledge of all the characters of men. "How

egotistic he is! Of course he tells his whole story to every woman he

meets. Lucy Money no doubt has it by heart."

She did not remember for the moment that her own favorite hero was

likewise somewhat egotistical and effusive, and that he was very apt to

pour out the story of his wrongs into the ear of any sympathetic woman.

But she was disappointed with herself and her friend just now, and was

not in a mood to make perfectly reasonable comparisons.