"Exactly; he is a bear, but a premeditated bear; a reflecting and determined bear."
"I don"t see," said Joseph Bridau, "why this savage inclination for solitude should be so bad for an artist. What does a sculptor gain by frequenting salons where gentlemen and ladies have taken to a habit of wearing clothes?"
"Well, in the first place, a sculptor can amuse himself in a salon; and that will keep him from taking up a mania, or becoming a visionary; besides, he sees the world as it is, and learns that 1839 is not the fifteenth nor the sixteenth century."
"Has Dorlange any such delusions?" asked Emile Blondet.
"He? he will talk to you by the hour of returning to the life of the great artists of the middle ages with the universality of their studies and their knowledge, and that frightfully laborious life of theirs; which may help us to understand the habits and ways of a semi-barbarous society, but can never exist in ours. He does not see, the innocent dreamer, that civilization, by strangely complicating all social conditions, absorbs for business, for interests, for pleasures, thrice as much time as a less advanced society required for the same purposes.
Look at the savage in his hut; he hasn"t anything to do. Whereas we, with the Bourse, the opera, the newspapers, parliamentary discussions, salons, elections, railways, the Cafe de Paris and the National Guard--what time have we, if you please, to go to work?"
"Beautiful theory of a do-nothing!" cried Emile Blondet, laughing.
"No, my dear fellow, I am talking truth. The curfew no longer rings at nine o"clock. Only last night my concierge Ravenouillet gave a party; and I think I made a great mistake in not accepting the indirect invitation he gave me to be present."
"Nevertheless," said Joseph Bridau, "it is certain that if a man doesn"t mingle in the business, the interests, and the pleasures of our epoch, he can make out of the time he thus saves a pretty capital.
Independently of his orders, Dorlange has, I think, a little competence; so that nothing hinders him from arranging his life to suit himself."
"But you see he goes to the opera; for it was there he found his duel.
Besides, you are all wrong in representing him as isolated from this contemporaneous life, for I happen to know that he is just about to harness himself to it by the most rattling and compelling chains of the social system--I mean political interests."
"Does he want to be a statesman?" asked Emile Blondet, sarcastically.
"Yes, no doubt that"s in his famous programme of universality; and you ought to see the consistency and perseverance he puts into that idea!
Only last year two hundred and fifty thousand francs dropped into his mouth as if from the skies, and he instantly bought a hovel in the rue Saint-Martin to make himself eligible for the Chamber. Then--another pretty speculation--with the rest of the money he bought stock in the "National," where I meet him every time I want to have a laugh over the republican Utopia. He has his flatterers on the staff of that estimable newspaper; they have persuaded him that he"s a born orator and can cut the finest figure in the Chamber. They even talk of getting up a candidacy for him; and on some of their enthusiastic days they go so far as to a.s.sert that he bears a distant likeness to Danton."
"But this is getting burlesque," said Emile Blondet.
I don"t know if you have ever remarked, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that in men of real talent there is always great leniency of judgment. In this, Joseph Bridau is pre-eminent.
"I think with you," he said, "that if Dorlange takes this step, and enters politics, he will be lost to art. But, after all, why should he not succeed in the Chamber? He expresses himself with great facility, and seems to me to have ideas at his command. Look at Ca.n.a.lis when he was made deputy! "What! a poet!" everybody cried out,--which didn"t prevent him from making himself a fine reputation as orator, and becoming a minister."
"But the first question is how to get into the Chamber," said Emile Blondet. "Where does Dorlange propose to stand?"
"Why, naturally, for one of the rotten boroughs of the "National." I don"t know if it has yet been chosen."
"General rule," said the writer for the "Debats." "To obtain your election, even though you may have the support of an active and ardent party, you must also have a somewhat extended political notoriety, or, at any rate, some provincial backing of family or fortune. Has Dorlange any of those elements of success?"
"As for the backing of a family, that element is particularly lacking,"
replied Bixiou; "in fact, in his case, it is conspicuously absent."
"Really?" said Emile Blondet. "Is he a natural child?"
"Nothing could be more natural,--father and mother unknown. But I believe, myself, that he can be elected. It is the ins and outs of his political ideas that will be the wonder."
"He is a republican, I suppose, if he is a friend of those "National"
gentlemen, and resembles Danton?"
"Yes, of course; but he despises his co-religionists, declaring they are only good for carrying a point, and for violence and bullying.
Provisionally, he is satisfied with a monarchy hedged in by republican inst.i.tutions; but he insists that our civic royalty will infallibly be lost through the abuse of influence, which he roughly calls corruption.
This will lead him towards the little Church of the Left-centre; but there again--for there"s always a but--he finds only a collection of ambitious minds and eunuchs unconsciously smoothing the way to a revolution, which he, for his part, sees looming on the horizon with great regret, because, he says, the ma.s.ses are too little prepared, and too little intelligent, not to let it slip through their fingers.
Legitimacy he simply laughs at; he doesn"t admit it to be a principle in any way. To him it is simply the most fixed and consistent form of monarchical heredity; he sees no other superiority in it than that of old wine over new. But while he is neither legitimist, nor conservative, nor Left-centre, and is republican without wanting a republic, he proclaims himself a Catholic, and sits astride the hobby of that party, namely,--liberty of education. But this man, who wants free education for every one, is afraid of the Jesuits; and he is still, as in 1829, uneasy about the encroachments of the clergy and the Congregation. Can any of you guess the great party which he proposes to create in the Chamber, and of which he intends to be the leader? That of the righteous man, the impartial man, the honest man! as if any such thing could live and breathe in the parliamentary cook-shops; and as if, moreover, all opinions, to hide their ugly nothingness, had not, from time immemorial, wrapped themselves in that banner."
"Does he mean to renounce sculpture absolutely?" asked Joseph Bridau.
"Not yet; he is just finishing the statue of some saint, I don"t know which; but he lets no one see it, and says he does not intend to send it to the Exhibition this year--he has ideas about it."
"What ideas?" asked Emile Blondet.
"Oh! that religious works ought not to be delivered over to the judgment of critics, or to the gaze of a public rotten with scepticism; they ought, he thinks, to go, without pa.s.sing through the uproar of the world, piously and modestly to the niches for which they are intended."
"_Ah ca_!" exclaimed Emile Blondet, "and it is this fervent Catholic who fights a duel!"
"Better or worse than that. This Catholic lives with a woman whom he brought back from Italy,--a species of G.o.ddess of Liberty, who serves him as model and housekeeper."
"What a tongue that Bixiou has; he keeps a regular intelligence office,"
said some of the little group as it broke up at the offer of tea from Madame de Montcornet.
You see from this, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that the political aspirations of Monsieur Dorlange are not regarded seriously by his friends. I do not doubt that you will write to him soon to thank him for the warmth with which he defended you from calumny. That courageous devotion has given me a true sympathy for him, and I shall hope that you will use the influence of early friendship to turn his mind from the deplorable path he seems about to enter. I make no judgment on the other peculiarities attributed to him by Monsieur Bixiou, who has a cutting and a flippant tongue; I am more inclined to think, with Joseph Bridau, that such mistakes are venial. But a fault to be forever regretted, according to my ideas, will be that of abandoning his present career to fling himself into the maelstrom of politics. You are yourself interested in turning him from this idea, if you strongly desire to entrust that work to his hands. Preach to him as strongly as you can the wisdom of abiding by his art.
On the subject of the explanation I advised you to have with him, I must tell you that your task is greatly simplified. You need not enter into any of the details which would be to you so painful. Madame de l"Estorade, to whom I spoke of the role of mediator which I wanted her to play, accepted the part very willingly. She feels confident of being able, after half an hour"s conversation, to remove the painful feeling from your friend"s mind, and drive away the clouds between you.
While writing this long letter, I have sent for news of his condition.
He is going on favorably, and the physicians say that, barring all unforeseen accidents, his friends need have no anxiety as to his state.
It seems he is an object of general interest, for, to use the expression of my valet, people are "making cue" to leave their names at his door.
It must be added that the Duke de Rhetore is not liked, which may partly account for this sympathy. The duke is stiff and haughty, but there is little in him. What a contrast the brother is to her who lives in our tenderest memory. She was simple and kind, yet she never derogated from her dignity; nothing equalled the lovable qualities of her heart but the charms of her mind.
IV. THE COMTESSE DE L"ESTORAADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
Paris, February, 1839.
Nothing could be more judicious than what you have written me, my dear friend. It was certainly to have been expected that my "bore" would have approached me on the occasion of our next meeting. His heroism gave him the right to do so, and politeness made it a duty. Under pain of being thought unmannerly he was bound to make inquiries as to the results of the accident on my health and that of Nais. But if, contrary to all these expectations, he did not descend from his cloud, my resolution, under your judicious advice, was taken. If the mountain did not come to me, I should go to the mountain; like Hippolyte in the tale of Theramene, I would rush upon the monster and discharge my grat.i.tude upon him at short range. I have come to think with you that the really dangerous side of this foolish obsession on his part is its duration and the inevitable gossip in which, sooner or later, it would involve me.
Therefore, I not only accepted the necessity of speaking to my shadow first, but under pretence that my husband wished to call upon him and thank him in person, I determined to ask him his name and address, and if I found him a suitable person I intended to ask him to dinner on the following day; believing that if he had but a shadow of common-sense, he would, when he saw the manner in which I live with my husband, my frantic pa.s.sion, as you call it, for my children, in short, the whole atmosphere of my well-ordered home, he would, as I say, certainly see the folly of persisting in his present course. At any rate half the danger of his pursuit was over if it were carried on openly. If I was still to be persecuted, it would be in my own home, where we are all, more or less, exposed to such annoyances, which an honest woman possessing some resources of mind can always escape with honor.
Well, all these fine schemes and all your excellent advice have come to nothing. Since the accident, or rather since the day when my physician first allowed me to go out, nothing, absolutely nothing have I seen of my unknown lover. But, strange to say, although his presence was intolerably annoying, I am conscious that he still exercises a sort of magnetism over me. Without seeing him, I feel him near me; his eyes weigh upon me, though I do not meet them. He is ugly, but his ugliness has something energetic and powerfully marked, which makes one remember him as a man of strong and energetic faculties. In fact, it is impossible not to think about him; and now that he appears to have relieved me of his presence, I an conscious of a void--that sort of void the ear feels when a sharp and piercing noise which has long annoyed it ceases. What I am going to add may seem to you great foolishness; but are we always mistress of such mirages of the imagination?
I have often told you of my arguments with Louise de Chaulieu in relation to the manner in which women ought to look at life. I used to tell her that the pa.s.sion with which she never ceased to pursue the ideal was ill-regulated and fatal to happiness. To this she answered: "You have never loved, my dearest; love has this rare phenomenon about it: we may live all our lives without ever meeting the being to whom nature has a.s.signed the power of making us happy. But if the day of splendor comes when that being unexpectedly awakes your heart from sleep, what will you do then?" [See "Memoirs of Two Young Married Women."]
The words of those about to die are often prophetic. What if this man were to be the tardy serpent with whom Louise threatened me? That he could ever be really dangerous to me; that he could make me fail in my duty, that is certainly not what I fear; I am strong against all such extremes. But I did not, like you, my dear Madame de Camps, marry a man whom my heart had chosen. It was only by dint of patience, determination, and reason that I was able to build up the solid and serious attachment which binds me to Monsieur de l"Estorade. Ought I not, therefore, to be doubly cautious lest anything distract me from that sentiment, be it only the diversion of my thoughts in this annoying manner, to another man?
I shall say to you, as, MONSIEUR, Louis XIV."s brother, said to his wife, to whom he was in the habit of showing what he had written and asking her to decipher it: See into my heart and mind, dear friend, disperse the mists, quiet the worries, and the flux and reflux of will which this affair stirs up in me. My poor Louise was mistaken, was she not? I am not a woman, am I, on whom the pa.s.sion of love could gain a foothold? The man who, on some glorious day, will render me happy is my Armand, my Rene, my Nais, three angels for whom I have hitherto lived--there can never be for me, I feel it deeply, another pa.s.sion!